Maura's Game

by Martina Cole

  ‘I mean it, Jack. I am starting to lose patience, man.’

  Jack was nearly delirious with the agony and the constant burning.

  ‘Please, Tony. No more, mate. Enough!’

  He was trying to sit up.

  Tony nodded at his second eldest son and Winston Dooley held Jack’s good arm while his father cracked the elbow with a baseball bat.

  Jack screamed once again but no one cared. As far as they were concerned he could scream all he wanted. No one would hear him in this lock-up in Brixton, there was too much background noise, and even if they did no one would give a flying fuck anyway. It was that kind of area. There was another lock-up next door that had a sound system playing reggae all day long, and that as far as Jack was concerned was almost worse than the beating. He was throwing up now and as his arms were both useless trying unsuccessfully to roll on to his side. He had never been in so much pain in his entire life.

  Tony opened the acid bottle again and held it over Jack’s eye.

  ‘I will burn the fuckers out of your head if you don’t tell me what I want to hear, Jack. You are not walking away from this, do you hear me?’

  He was bellowing now in anger and frustration. Tony had loved his eldest son with a vengeance and Maura Ryan was his greatest friend. Jack was paying double bubble for what Tony saw as his deliberate double dealings. His son was dead and Jack should have thought long and hard before he made an enemy of the Dooleys or for that matter the Ryans.

  ‘You are a dead man, Jack. You can die fast or slow but you are going, man, you are finished. Vic expects you to open your trap, for fuck’s sake, anyone would after this lot. No one will think any the less of you.’

  Jack couldn’t even move his arms now to save his face or more importantly his eyes. Tony dropped some acid on to the eyeball. Jack closed his eyes instinctively but it burned through the lid anyway and now he was screaming. He passed out and Tony poured a bucket of cold water over him.

  ‘Put the water on and hose him down.’

  He lit himself a Benson & Hedges and watched as Jack was revived. He was impressed despite himself. Jack had taken far more than he had believed possible. He had always seen the other man as a bully basically.

  Just showed you how wrong you could be.

  The barn was deserted but for Vic when Kenny reached it.

  ‘What is it this time?’ he asked wearily. ‘And it’d better be good, Vic, because I need my beauty sleep.’

  Vic cuffed him jovially on the arm.

  ‘I’ll say you do.’ He put his arm round Kenny’s shoulders. ‘Let’s go and get some breakfast, shall we? I’m starving.’

  Kenny looked around him.

  ‘Where’s Tommy Rifkind?’

  Vic shrugged.

  ‘Who knows the answer to that question, mate? Certainly not me.’

  True to form then, promising a meeting then not delivering. Vic was losing more marbles by the day.

  Kenny said nonchalantly, ‘By the way, Benny Ryan went on the trot last night. Just thought you might want to know that.’

  Vic was roaring with laughter as they got into the Range Rover.

  ‘Nice one! That Abul is one two-faced little fucker, eh? But he was a much-needed cog in my big wheel of skulduggery.’

  Vic was mad, that much was evident. He was also coked out of his head. Kenny was glad he had never really developed a taste for it. Give him a drink any day of the week.

  ‘Where we going, Vic?’

  ‘To Jack’s house, of course. Seems a shame to waste such a nice big empty space, don’t it? Is he dead yet, by the way?’

  His voice was friendly and conversational and Kenny, marvelling at the way Vic seemed to keep tabs on them all, answered him in the same vein.

  ‘Who knows, Vic? Who the fuck knows?’

  Vic grinned.

  ‘More to the point, Kenny me old son, who the fuck cares, eh?’

  Kenny Smith wondered what his daughter was doing. She was expecting him to take her to Marsh Farm to feed the animals. He hoped he would be going home at some point. He just wanted to take her on his lap and love her. Alicia was all that mattered in his life and he had no wish to lose his liberty over this abortion that was taking up too much of his time and energy. It just wasn’t worth it. None of it was.

  He wished he had learned that lesson years ago. If he had he wouldn’t be in the shit he was in now.

  He had enough money to live the rest of his life in relative comfort, so what was he still doing fixing when he could be anywhere in the world he wanted, instead of stuck in a Range Rover with a fucking headcase like Vic Joliff?

  How much money was enough, for fuck’s sake?

  It was a good question to ponder, he decided. Anything was better than thinking of the predicament he now found himself in. He was here for Maura Ryan and he knew that. If nannying a coke-snorting psychopath would help keep her safe, Kenny would do it and no complaints. Maura had a way of inspiring loyalty in him, and maybe something more than that.

  ‘Do you ever wonder how we got ourselves into this life, Vic?’ he said.

  Vic shrugged heavily.

  ‘’Course not, Kenny. What else are we going to do, boy?’

  He sighed.

  ‘I don’t know, Vic. But there has to be more to it all than this, surely?’

  Vic pulled over to the side of the road and looked at Kenny as he said earnestly, ‘When I met Sandra I felt as if someone had turned on a dirty great big light and it was showing me what I had been missing for years. She was a sort in some respects, I know that, but I felt as if she was the other half of me. The part of me that was missing. If that is love, Kenny, then I loved her. I know this much, I’ve never felt like it before or since. Did you feel like that about Lana?’

  Kenny thought long and hard before he answered the question.

  ‘Yeah. Yeah, I did. She wasn’t the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree at times but I thought the world of her, yeah.’

  ‘At least we had that much. Let’s hope they both realised it, eh? At the end.’

  Vic started up the Range Rover and they drove to Jack’s house in silence, each lost in his own thoughts. Vic still hadn’t said why he’d wanted to meet and Kenny had a sneaking suspicion it was because he could no longer remember. As he drove he absentmindedly rubbed his nose and a trickle of blood ran down his chin and splashed on to the steering wheel. Vic didn’t seem to notice.

  He was on the way out. It was a toss up which got to him first – the coke or the Ryans.

  Dezzy Haseem was in his shop in Forest Gate when he saw Benny Ryan walking through the door. He tried to make a run for it but Benny was already all over him like a rash. Grabbing him by his turban, he dragged Abul’s cousin bodily from the shop and out to the waiting car.

  Dezzy was screaming and hollering and no one was taking any notice. Even his father didn’t attempt to stop Benny from taking him away.

  He looked at his wife and said sadly, ‘I knew this would happen in the end. It is a criminal that you bred me.’

  Dezzy’s mum didn’t listen to her husband’s words, she was too busy running out of the shop in an attempt to help her eldest son. She was swearing and carrying on like a maniac but Benny was already driving away. She sank to the pavement and cried loudly, beseeching passers-by to help her. They ignored her. No one wanted to get involved.

  Her husband dragged her inside and shut the shop up. He was fed up with his children; none of them had turned out as he had expected them to do. If they weren’t with English girls they were taking drugs or going out with their friends. He was disappointed with the lot of them. Even his daughter was living with a boy.

  They all thought he didn’t know about any of it, but he knew. He knew everything, whatever his wife might think. She was from Coventry and he decided that was the problem. He should have gone back to India and found himself a wife who would obey him. His mother had said she was too European by half, and she’d been right. He was scandalised and he w
as angry at the humiliation his children had brought to his door.

  He hoped Benny Ryan kicked his son’s arse for him: it might teach him a bloody lesson.

  Dezzy sat in the stolen BMW, shaking with fear. Benny looked at him and smiled and that made Dezzy feel worse instead of better. He could see the light of lunacy in Benny’s eyes.

  ‘How’s Abul these days?’

  Dezzy was stuttering with fear now.

  ‘I don’t know – you see more of him than I do!’

  Benny smiled and said in a calm and conversational manner, ‘I am going to cut him open and pull his liver out. And if you don’t tell me what I want to hear, I am going to make you eat it.’

  Dezzy fainted and Benny was still laughing as he cut through yet another red light. He was a crosspatch today, all right. Even Benny found his own anger an annoyance, a first for him and something else to hold against his one-time friend Abul Haseem.

  Benny was really looking forward to killing him.

  Dezzy was reviving and Benny smiled at him in a friendly manner.

  ‘Do me a favour, Dezzy. You think long and hard about where I could locate Abul and then, me old china, I won’t put you away permanently like I did Casha.’

  Dezzy passed out once more.

  Benny laughed. Never the bravest of souls old Dezzy, but then that would make his own job that much easier. Provided he could keep him conscious, of course.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Maura listened to her mother as she spoke to the young policemen who were sipping tea and smiling away in her kitchen. One of them looked so comfortable there it was as if he was in his own home.

  He was a friendly, meaning they owned him. Maura was quite taken with the way he was handling things and was going to tell Garry to give him an extra drink. Her mother was really enamoured of him, anyone could see that.

  ‘I understand what you are saying perfectly, Mrs Ryan, and let’s face it, if anyone knows that boy it’s you.’

  Tennant knew who was paying his wages and was determined that they would be paid for a long time to come.

  Sarah basked in this unwarranted praise.

  ‘Sure he was always a difficult child, and since his mother’s death he has been under a lot of pressure. Stress, I think they call it these days. But he’s a lovely boy for all that.’

  Tennant’s sidekick Tom Kenning was sitting there in utter shock. Benny Ryan was a fucking headcase and everyone knew that, yet the Ryans talked about him as if he was a perfectly normal human being. No accounting for taste, he supposed, and wondered what this lot did of a night for entertainment. Probably set fire to orphanages or tortured kittens. Nothing would surprise him with this crowd. Even the old mother was a joker short of a full deck.

  He quietly drank his tea and in the process got himself an education. He had heard the talk about DC Tennant but now he was seeing the proof of it.

  Maura Ryan seemed lovely, though, and that surprised him. As he looked at Tennant’s designer jacket and thought of how he talked about his frequent holidays and weekends away, Kenning was wondering if he’d be a fool not to take this chance to better himself. After all, if the Ryans owned so many people, and if the rumours were true and they decided who was promoted and who wasn’t, then maybe he should think again about his career prospects.

  He smiled his most winning smile at the old woman and said in an ingratiating voice, ‘Any more of that lovely cake?’

  If she was anything like his nan that was the magic sentence. Sarah jumped up and immediately cut him another slice. Tennant nodded at him and then winked at Maura who was smiling despite everything that had happened.

  Looked like they had a new recruit. It was best to get them young because then they were into you for a fortune before they knew it and realised exactly what was required for their money.

  ‘If you see him, you will of course contact us, won’t you?’

  Maura nodded with her mother and smiled.

  ‘Of course. We’re as worried about him as you are.’

  She was actually worried in case he killed anyone else, in broad daylight this time. He was capable of it, she knew.

  Sarah was still smiling as they showed the two young men out. When they had gone she said with a chuckle, ‘If you see him, you will contact us, won’t you?’ She laughed again at Maura’s scandalised expression. ‘As if! Jasus, that boy will have to leave the shagging country to get out of this one, no matter who’s behind him giving him a helping hand. A nervous breakdown indeed! If they believe that they’ll believe anything.’

  Maura grinned.

  ‘I can buy him whatever medical opinion I want, Mum, you should know that by now.’

  ‘Of course you can, but is it wise? He’s as mad as a March hare and twice as demented as that fecking Garry – and that’s saying something. God forgive me he’s me own child but even I know he’s always been a bit loopy.’

  The words were said honestly and with spirit.

  Maura hugged her little mother to her and said in a jokey voice, ‘Mum, we are all a bit fucking loopy in this family.’

  Sarah hugged her daughter away and said in all seriousness, ‘Well, it comes from your father’s side of the family. Sure they were all a bit strange. His mother had delusions of grandeur, you know. The first time my father saw her he said, ‘‘Who’s the macadamia!’’’

  She nodded her head to emphasise her words and was very annoyed that her daughter just sat on a chair in the hallway and laughed her head off. It was a desperate sound and Sarah knew that if anyone was under pressure, or stress as the magazines called it, it was this lovely, lost and basically kind daughter of hers.

  ‘Come on, I’ll make a cup of tea even though we’re floating in the stuff.’

  Maura followed her mother meekly and their newly rediscovered closeness was sealed once and for all. As they sat in the kitchen together Sarah was surprised to find that she didn’t care whether she went home again or not. Her daughter needed her and she would be there for her as long as Maura wanted her. She had enjoyed herself the last few days, had felt needed and wanted again. Had felt the love her daughter bore her surrounding her like a cloak, and all Sarah Ryan had ever wanted was to feel loved and wanted by her children.

  Carla lay in bed in Sarah’s Notting Hill house and thought about her life. Since the to-do with Maura over Tommy she had felt as if she had come out of some kind of trance. How she could have done what she had she couldn’t say – though if she was honest she knew she’d been so desperate for a man she was willing to take someone else’s. In fact, she had enjoyed it all the more because he was Maura’s. She pushed that thought from her mind. Like her aunt she had a selective memory at times. And like her aunt it had served her in good stead.

  But all her life she had lived in Maura’s shadow and no one had ever thought that she might want to be her own person. She knew she should have worked, should have taken control of her own life in some way. But it was so seductive being looked after, having unearned money and prestige. Knowing that once people knew who your family were they would treat you like a queen. In a way she understood why Benny was like he was. He was so desperate to be like Michael, to be like ‘the boys’, his uncles, he overcompensated with his violence. He wanted to be known as madder than Michael, as even more frightening. And he was not all the ticket to start with so that made for a dangerous mix.

  But it didn’t matter how she justified it to herself, what she had done was wrong, so very, very wrong. She had resented Maura for years, ever since she had hit thirty. Maura had got her a new car and Carla could still remember her father’s expression as she had proudly showed it off to him. It had suddenly occurred to her then that he, like her mother, thought she was a ponce. Janine had looked at the car and then said grudgingly that she thought it looked very expensive. Her father, though, had said nothing, just walked away, and it had hurt Carla, hurt and annoyed her. Benny, however, who had still been a boy, had loved the car and wanted her to take him out
in it to show off to his mates. If she was honest, she had enjoyed showing it off.

  But she had finally sussed out then that people actually thought she was a leech, and the worst of it all was she knew on some deep level that they were right. Maura had made it so easy for her. She had given Carla whatever she desired, and had given it with a smile and a good heart. She, for her part, had taken it, had taken all Maura had to give while secretly hating the woman giving it to her.

  Now, though, she would do anything to be in her aunt’s favour once more. She would love to be able to jump in her car and go over to Maura’s house and know that she would get a warm welcome and be treated with kindness and respect. It had finally occurred to Carla that her aunt had always accepted her for what she was. She was only sorry she had not been able to accept it herself. She had blamed Maura for her own feelings of inadequacy, had seen her aunt’s success as a yardstick to measure herself against when it had not been necessary. She had made it like that for herself; it had never been a competition, and if it had been, her aunt would have won it hands down.

  Maura’s personality was such that she would help anyone, try and make other people happy, if it was in her power. Whereas Carla knew her own personality was such that unless she had done something first then she would always denigrate it, put it down.

  In fact, at heart she knew that without her family she was basically nothing, a complete nobody. And she was a bully of sorts, making light of other people’s problems, especially if they affected her in any way. Even her father’s breakdown had got on her nerves in the end, though she had hidden that fact very well. She had done what was expected of her and no one had been any the wiser about how she really felt inside.

  She wanted her son to be perfect, and he wasn’t. Now, when she needed him more than ever, Joey, being his mother’s son, had blanked her as she had grown too needy. He was one selfish little fucker. He was still getting his allowance from Maura but hadn’t offered her any of it. She was always overdrawn – it was how she lived, was what she was used to. Maura had taken care of it as she took care of everything. Now Carla was boracic fucking lint and no one seemed to give a toss.