The Graft

by Martina Cole

  She remembered her home when she was a kid. A council flat with coats on the bed, the constant smell of fried food and a father who would shout the house down when he got back from the pub. He still did that except he owned the pub now, thanks to Nick, and was slowly drinking himself to death in it.

  Her mother had always been running off with someone, it was how she was, yet Dad always wanted her back. She had been round the turf more times than a Grand National winner and still he wanted her.

  Nick had bought the pub for him. He had been so good to them all. He had come from the same road as them, gone to the same school as Tammy, had started courting her when they had been twelve and thirteen respectively.

  He had worked like a demon all his life. Even then he had had a paper round, a milk round, and worked the market stalls. It was the markets that had got them the first real money they had ever possessed. Her Nick could sell a fridge to an Eskimo. He had the gab all right, and she had loved being the girl he had chosen.

  Now, as she looked around her home, she was aware of just how much he had done for them all. The kitchen alone had cost over sixty grand. It had everything a kitchen could have, and was also the size of most people’s houses. It had a family area built round an inglenook fireplace that was twenty-five feet by eighteen alone. And that was without the actual kitchen itself or the utility areas.

  There was an indoor as well as an outdoor pool, and stabling for ten horses. The whole place was huge and it was tasteful and it was hers. She wondered why she had never really appreciated it before. Nick’s old mum ran the place for her, and Tammy was glad to let her get on with it. It was too big for her to worry about, and she was out more often than not.

  Now she was trying to imagine what it would be like to be without it, wondering for the first time if that boy had tried to rob them through envy, because they had it all and he didn’t.

  But he didn’t know that they had come from nothing themselves. How hard the road had been before they had finally cracked it. And her Nick, whatever his faults, had worked day and night to get them all a better life. She should appreciate him more, she knew that. She meant to, but somehow when they were alone it all deteriorated because they didn’t know how to be alone any more. Those days were gone, the days when they’d waited with bated breath for each other. Not that Nick had ever been much of a one for sex anyway. He was always too busy. It wasn’t until her first affair that Tammy had realised what she had been missing.

  It had blown her mind, what that first fella had done to her, and she had loved it. Had finally realised what her mates had been hammering on about for all those years. If she was honest with herself that was when her dissatisfaction with everything at home had set in. Suddenly having the biggest house and the newest car meant nothing, because she had quickly realised that that kind of sex kept people together even when they hated one another. She had tried the new tricks she had learned on Nick and he had gone ballistic, wanting to know where she had got them. She had told him from women’s magazines and such like, but she thought he knew.

  That was what hurt. She suspected he had sussed her out but, instead of giving her a clump, he had ignored her even more.

  Perhaps it was because the big I am, the big womaniser, knew he was useless in the kip. Not that Tammy had ever told him that, of course, she wasn’t that stupid. Yet she still loved him. In her own way adored him.

  He was lying on the chaise-longue in the dressing room off their bedroom and he had had a drink, that much was obvious.

  ‘You all right, Nick? I didn’t hear you come in.’

  ‘They turned the machine off, Tams, the boy’s gone.’

  She knelt beside him then and took his hand.

  ‘No one can blame you, Nick, you only did what any man would have done.’ She was surprised to see he had been crying. ‘No one can blame you, darlin’.’

  She could smell the beer and whisky on his breath and guessed he had started out in the pub before coming home to finish the job properly.

  She knew him so well.

  He pushed her away gently and sat up. Putting his head into his hands, he groaned, ‘I can blame myself though, Tams. And I will, until the day I die.’

  He was sobbing now, his huge shoulders quaking with emotion. She hugged him to her, the big man, the big I am, reduced to crying like a baby. For some reason this disturbed her more than the boy’s death.

  Chapter Four

  ‘Given the facts of the night in question, we at the Crown Prosecution Service have decided that we shall take no action against Mr Nicholas Leary. It is not in the public interest. We feel that he was a victim of circumstances beyond his control and we offer our sympathies to the family of Sonny Hatcher. Thank you.’

  The spokeswoman walked off camera. It was obvious she’d been nervous. Her voice had quavered and her hands clutched her papers until the knuckles were white. Sky News put the statement out live and Tammy watched it with relief. It was over then.

  Suddenly the screen was filled with a picture of Judy Hatcher and her shrill voice burst out of it.

  ‘Murderers! You’re all murderers. You owe me, Leary. You owe me for my boy’s life.’

  The screen was filled with the image of the grieving woman and her grey screaming mouth. Tammy sat up abruptly in the bath, causing the water to wash all over the marble flooring. Although they had been told the night before what action was going to be taken, until she had seen it with her own eyes she was not inclined to believe it. Now this woman was spoiling it all.

  ‘My son was murdered, he wasn’t doing any harm to anyone. He never owned a gun in his life.’

  Jude sounded lucid for once. Only those who knew her well realised just how capable she could be when the fancy took her. Shame it never lasted for any length of time. She was being hustled from the room by two policemen as if she was the one in trouble. Tammy could see the toll the death of her son had taken on the woman and felt a reluctant twinge of sympathy for her.

  She soon pushed it away.

  The Sky reporter was saying that Judy Hatcher was under the care of a psychiatrist and that she was an ardent advocate of her son’s innocence. He said it in such a way as to make it apparent to anyone listening that Sonny Hatcher was a dangerous young man and only his mother was unaware of that fact.

  Tammy couldn’t listen to it a second longer.

  She lay back in her enormous bath and switched over to ITV 2 for the lunchtime edition of Emmerdale. She wasn’t watching it, but the sound of the voices was soothing. She took a large gulp of her Chardonnay and a long drag on her cigarette.

  Sod that woman! What did they owe her? From what Tammy had heard she was a heroin addict, had brought her son up on her own and made him into the thief he had become. Tammy’s eyes strayed to the small mirror compact full of cocaine she kept near her at all times. Her own hypocrisy didn’t faze her at all.

  Instead she consoled herself with the thought that even though she might have a few lines on a long lunch or a night out with the girls, hers was just recreational drug use. It wasn’t as if she was addicted. It was just the Essex way of keeping the night going. Whereas that woman was a real addict, she injected herself. Which was a different ball game altogether.

  Mainlining meant you were hooked, everyone knew that. Her line of thought reminded Tammy she was due for her Botox injections that afternoon and Christ himself knew, she could do with them. All the worry of the last few weeks had really begun to show on her face and that bothered Tammy.

  It had been her idea to put a TV in the bathroom. Even though she rarely watched it, lately it had been a Godsend.

  Until today, of course.

  She pushed the Hatcher woman from her mind once more. At the end of the day she was just a mother protecting her own. Tammy would have done the same herself. Not that her boys would have been caught up in crap like that, of course, but it was the same principle.

  She gulped down the glass of wine and poured herself another.

&
nbsp; It was over.

  That was the main thing, she had to remember that.

  Nick could go back to his daily grind now and no one would think badly of him and, if she was really honest with herself, she would be glad to get him out from under her feet.

  The strange thing was everyone was on their side yet the way Nick was carrying on you’d think everyone was against him. Still, it must be strange to know you were the reason someone had died even if it was a little thief who only got what he deserved.

  Sonny Hatcher should never have been in their home in the first place. Tammy reminded her husband of that at every available opportunity. No matter how hard she tried, she could summon up no sympathy for the boy. He should have stayed home that night instead of turning their world upside down.

  Detective Inspector Peter Rudde was drinking a large brandy in the company of his DC, Frank Ibbotson. The junior officer raised his glass and then downed his drink in one gulp.

  ‘So that’s it, sir, it’s all over?’

  Rudde nodded.

  ‘Best outcome. Leary wasn’t doing anything I wouldn’t have done. Did you see that boy’s form? Jesus, he’d been up for everything at some point.’

  He pushed his glass at Ibbotson for a refill and the younger man duly made his way to the bar. The news came up on the wide-screen TV and the outcome of the Leary case was broadcast yet again. Once more a cheer went up in the crowded bar and Rudde guessed that the same thing was happening in pubs all over the country.

  You couldn’t pick up a paper but it was the main story. Was an Englishman’s home really his castle? It seemed it was this time and he for one was glad of that fact. Sonny Hatcher was a violent little bastard. Rudde knew just how violent he could be. The papers didn’t know the half of it because most of Sonny Boy’s skulduggery had been when he was a minor. He had stabbed a neighbour and walked away from that one because of his home life. But how long could you blame everything on where or how a young thug lived? Plenty of people lived in terrible conditions and they were all right. Rudde himself had come from one of the roughest council estates in East London and look at him now, he was a law enforcer.

  He didn’t thieve or lie or attack people.

  Well, he conceded, he lied sometimes. But then, didn’t everyone if they were honest? Ibbotson came back with the brandy and Rudde was gratified to see it was a double. The boy was learning at last.

  ‘Good lad.’

  He sipped this one, savouring the taste.

  ‘It should all die down now and we can get back to normal. We wasted too much time on that case.’

  Ibbotson nodded.

  He sipped his pint daintily and this, for some reason, annoyed the life out of Rudde.

  There was a lock-in at the Fox and Ferret even though it was only three in the afternoon. Nick had bought the pub a few years earlier, it was another of his little investments. Today the raucous sound of his friends cheering inside was depressing him.

  One of his workmen, Danny Power, the local wag and joke merchant, shouted out: ‘Here, Nick, I heard the Catholic Church has said that kid has got to be buried thirty foot down . . . because deep down niggers are nice people!’

  The laughter was long and loud until Nick’s fist connected with Danny’s chin then the place went deathly quiet in seconds.

  ‘Get out.’

  Nick Leary’s eyes were wild with grief and anger.

  Danny pulled himself from the floor in shock.

  ‘Here, Nick, I was only joking . . .’

  Nick grabbed him by his shirt and started to drag him to the door. He was aware of all his friends watching, wondering what was wrong with him, but he didn’t care. That was too much, it was going too far.

  ‘Open the fucking door, Jimmy, or I’ll smash this cunt through it.’

  He was more than capable of it and they all knew that. Nick could have a row. He needed to be able to protect himself in his businesses and was a legend in some quarters.

  Jimmy Barr who ran the pub quickly unlocked the door and they all watched as Nick threw his long-time friend out into the car park.

  ‘You’re sacked. I don’t ever want to see you around here again, right?’ Nick was shaking with temper and upset.

  Jimmy Barr quickly brought him inside and relocked the door. He knew Danny was better off away from Nick for the time being.

  ‘Calm down now, Nick, he was drunk, that’s all.’

  He poked his face against his friend’s.

  ‘I don’t give a fuck! That boy is dead and gone. And you lot think it’s fucking funny? Well, I don’t. I don’t care what colour he was or what religion. He was a boy, a seventeen-year-old boy.’

  ’A seventeen-year-old boy with a gun, Nick.’

  This from Anthony Sissons, one of his oldest mates. They went back to infant school together and that gave him the clout to speak his mind.

  Nick stared at him for long seconds before he smiled.

  ’All right, Ant, but I never liked those kind of jokes at the best of times. You know that.’

  The talking started up again then but the atmosphere had soured and they all knew it.

  One of the men at the bar, a new workman of Nick’s, said to the man beside him: ‘What was all that about? It was only a joke.’

  Joey Miles replied gently, ‘Nick’s sister Hester is married to a West Indian bloke called Dixon. Nick’s really close to her.’

  ‘I didn’t know that.’

  Joey laughed because he could hear the surprise in the other man’s voice.

  ‘Most people don’t, and if you want to stay in your job, you’ll keep it to yourself. Now I’m too drunk, me mouth’s running away with me. Time I went home.’

  He pulled himself off the barstool with difficulty, slapped Nick on the back and left.

  Verbena was inconsolable. Her eldest daughter Hettie had come all the way from Birmingham to hold her hand. Verbena didn’t want her there; she didn’t want anyone. She wanted to grieve on her own. Hettie was aware of how her mother felt.

  ‘Mummy, for God’s sake, eat something at least, eh?’

  All her daughters called her ‘Mummy’, but coming from Hettie it was more like a nickname. There was no feeling in it. Since the onset of her agoraphobia her eldest daughter had lost all respect for her mother and it hurt. She was trying to feed her chicken but Verbena had no appetite for it.

  ‘When are you going home, Hettie?’

  It was a loaded question and they both knew it.

  Her daughter sighed.

  ‘Don’t start, Mummy. You know how I felt about Sonny. He stole from me, he stole from us all. Unlike you I don’t have the spirit of Christian forgiveness.’

  Verbena sighed again. Her daughter was very like her in looks. She was big, Caribbean big, with the ample hips and breasts inherited from a long line of Jamaican women. But she didn’t have the kindness that usually went with them. Her whole life was a fight or an argument of some sort. Yet she had loved this child more than the others until Sonny had arrived. Maybe Hettie knew that. Had sensed it? Verbena couldn’t think about it now.

  ‘I just meant the kids are probably missing you, that’s all. I know how you felt about Sonny. You don’t need to come to his funeral. Anyway, we don’t know when they will release the body.’

  Verbena was talking so normally, it was eerie to listen to herself. But she only wanted people at the funeral who’d cared about Sonny, and this daughter of hers hadn’t. Though who could blame her? Sonny had robbed her, stolen a ring from her one Christmas when she had visited her mother, and he’d sold it. The worst of it all was it was her husband’s mother’s ring, worth nothing in money terms but priceless in other ways.

  But it had been for his mother, it had always been for his mother. He was dead because of his mother but Verbena would never say that out loud. Poor Jude had enough to contend with as it was.

  She pushed away the food and stared out of the window again, watching the children as they hung around the estate while
she waited for more news. Any news was welcome at this moment. She had already heard the worst anyone could hear. Nothing else could ever hurt her in quite the same way.

  Tyrell was in a drinking club in Brixton Heights, the Railton Road to the uninitiated. He knew he should not have gone out but he could not sit there at his mother’s and listen to his son being dismissed like so much garbage by everyone but her. He wasn’t ready for that yet even though he knew he should be. Poor Sonny had got what he deserved after all, if anyone really deserved to die for trying to nick a video or a DVD recorder. It was the gun that still troubled Tyrell most. Where would his son have got a gun? No one seemed to know but he was going to make it his mission in life to find that out.