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by Martina Cole

  She tried to phone through to all his known haunts, and once again she was met with either a continuous ringtone or an engaged signal, which told her the phone in question was off the hook. She knew better than to phone certain pubs and watering-holes because it would then have alerted people to what could be a serious situation. Until she knew the score, she knew she had to be circumspect.

  His silence though, and the fact that no one seemed to know his whereabouts, was making her feel ill with worry, and she forced herself to calm down once more. Her belly was heavy, dragging at her whole being. Her fear and tiredness was making her movements sluggish, her back was aching and her eyes were red-rimmed with tiredness. She had sorted out the boys’ room first, making it like a game, encouraging them to help and then settling them into their beds, all the time feeling the bewilderment and fright coming off them in waves. As young as they were though, they knew to keep their traps shut in front of Old Bill. In a strange way she was proud of that. Pat Junior knew where his father’s gun was, he could have tracked it down like a bloodhound if the fancy took him. They often joked between themselves about how many times it had been hidden away and how many times young Pat had found it. The filth had got nowhere near it tonight, and this was a small victory for her. It gave her a little gee-up, made her feel they were still in control. The frightening thing was, until Old Bill turned your place over in front of your kids, and more importantly with what seemed like a good reason, you never really quite understood just how precarious your life actually was. Being left without a breadwinner and a father for your children, a protector, never crossed your mind. When the filth showed up, the precariousness of your situation hit you in the face with the force of a speeding car.

  Now, with a belly full of arms and legs, two boys dependent on her, and an old man she loved so much it hurt her, Lil felt the cold hand of fear patting her on her back. It was warning her, making her start questioning all the things she had taken for granted. Like all villains’ wives, she had received her first real wake-up call. Tonight wasn’t the usual half-hearted assault by the filth to make it all look good on paper, this was serious. Her husband, the father of her kids, was likely on the wrong end of a capture; if it all went pear-shaped he could go away for so long he would be a grandfather before he came home. Judges were handing out outrageous sentences these days, the short sharp shock was a thing of the past; this new government was all for burying the fuckers and forgetting them.

  Once more Lil was reminded of the fact that she had no real dosh, no hard cash, nothing to call her own. Pat controlled it all, as he should. But the seed was sown now, and that would have to be addressed sooner rather than later. When, and if, he came home, she was going to make sure she was never left in this position again.

  She kissed her boys and watched as they settled themselves down in their now tidy bedroom. They were calmer now, drinking their drinks and chatting between themselves as usual. The first shock was over with, normality was gradually being reinstated. Something inside was telling her that they should have been more bothered by the night’s events, but she pushed these thoughts away. Kids were resilient.

  If Pat had a capture, he had a capture. There was nothing she could do about it, but the thought terrified her. Her heart was racing at that thought and she breathed in deeply, knowing that she could easily dissolve into hysterics at any moment.

  She forced herself to concentrate on the job in hand. The sitting room was destroyed. They had even taken the seat cushions off the sofa and split them open with a knife; the stuffing was everywhere and the tears stung her eyes as she cleared it all away.

  She still had not heard a word from Pat and she was getting more and more agitated by the minute. She checked her purse and realised that she had less than eight pounds to her name. If Pat was nicked, or worse, she had no access to his money at all. Her mother’s voice came back to her and, as much as she hated to admit it, the old bitch was right. Pat should have set her straight in case he was nicked. She needed access to money, not just for his brief, but for the daily business of living with a young family and the expense that children brought with them. These were desperate times, and desperate times meant desperate measures.

  A little voice, though, was telling her that she was entitled to his money anyway, she had eight fucking quid and a family to feed. Why didn’t she have a stash? Why was she dependent on him for everything when she had a fucking growing family? More to the point, why hadn’t Pat thought to make provision for them? Plan fucking B was what he always referred to when discussing work, it was for when Plan A fell out of bed. And here she was with nothing, not a Plan A, let alone a Plan B. Not a brass razoo to her bastard name. She was shaking with fear for him and fear for herself and her family. Anger kept her going. She was still cleaning up when her mother arrived, all brown teeth, lavender cologne and pretending a concern she was not capable of feeling.

  She let Annie give the boys their breakfast because she had no heart to do anything except sit and feel her baby kicking as if it was reminding her that it was there. Another mouth to feed on eight poxy quid. Throughout the day young Pat stuck to her like shit to a blanket but Lance acted as if nothing was amiss.

  Annie had the nous to keep her beak out and silence the questions that were hurling themselves around her head. The neighbours were vocal about the raid; speculation was rife as always and the dolt she called a daughter had not uttered one word about any of it. She could see that her daughter was not in the mood for a full and frank discussion of any description. Her daughter’s plight affected her not one iota; she was there for no other reason than accruing some Brownie points. With them she could gain access to her Lance. Without that child her life was meaningless; her feelings for him were so strong she felt them as a physical force. She would endure anything to be near him, and do anything to keep others away from him.

  Love was a strange emotion. It was something she had never felt before, or felt the need to express in any way. She saw herself in him, and that was enough to make her feel that finally her life was worth living.

  Dwyer was trembling so much that he couldn’t light his cigarette. Pat leaned over and struck a match, holding it out for him, watching him trying to inhale and make the cigarette work at last. His three attempts left them all embarrassed and the room was heavy with tension. Dwyer’s breathing was loud, even to his own ears, and his actions were unnatural and overly dramatic. He looked what he was.

  Patrick grinned at him in a friendly manner. ‘You all right, mate? You on the gear as usual?’

  Dwyer smiled then. His wrinkled face was suddenly familiar, his hangdog look back, he could have been a favourite uncle. Pat felt a smidgen of sorrow for him. He was a product of circumstances, as they all were. The bloke Pat thought was filth was watching them nervously, but in fairness he was calm enough to get away with it. Patrick, however, was relaxed. Sitting back in the chair, he waited until Dwyer was puffing away on his Embassy before he spoke. ‘Who are this lot? I think an introduction is on the cards, don’t you?’

  The suspect filth looked him in the face then and Pat smiled gently once more.

  ‘We’re friends of Freddie’s . . .’

  Pat pointed a finger at the suspect filth without looking at him directly, he was now leaning once more across the table staring into Freddie’s eyes, but talking to the other man. ‘Who gave you permission to address me, you cheeky cunt?’

  Freddie was terrified again, this was not what was supposed to happen. Pat wasn’t supposed to be like this, cocky and spoiling for a straightener. It was Pat who was supposed to be caught on the hop. Freddie was not geared up for this behaviour at all.

  ‘You shut the fuck up until I speak to you directly, OK? You are a no-neck, a fucking ice-cream, a nothing.’ The violence behind Pat’s eyes was barely hidden, everyone was reminded of just how slippery he could be, especially when he thought he was being mugged-off.

  Pat had a reputation and the people in the room had conve
niently forgotten it because as a collective they had assumed they would be the stronger. Pat had just reminded them of how big a mistake an assumption could turn out to be.

  The filth was unsure how to react to Brodie. He knew though that he had been tumbled. Pat snapped his head round to look at the man, his eyes were dead now, he was in work mode and anyone who really knew him would be seriously worried. Pat was capable of anything when he felt even remotely threatened, extreme violence was how he had attained his position in the first place. Tonight he was not going down without taking this lot with him, and they were now all aware of that. He planned ahead and he thought on his feet; he was ready for whatever these pieces of shit were intending to lay on him. So when he smiled once more it was with a chilling certainty that he would be the victor no matter what happened.

  ‘Two fucking deaths and you are here with strangers, Fred, fucking strangers. Suspect strangers at that.’ He looked at Dwyer again, his voice high with utter contempt, not only for them but for the situation they had all found themselves in.

  ‘Have I got cunt tattooed on my fucking forehead or what?’ Pat held his arms up in a gesture of supplication. It was overly dramatic, and it was also a warning that he was playing with them, enjoying the moment.

  Dwyer puffed furiously on his cigarette, not even attempting to justify himself and, more to the point, not trying to even introduce his new-found friends. He knew it was over, he knew they were finished. His terror was now communicating itself to the other men in the room.

  Patrick started to laugh. He could feel the power flowing into him, knew he had them on the hop. He was an unknown quantity, all they knew of him was his reputation, none of them had experienced him first-hand. Pat was more than a handful when the fancy took him, and the fancy was on him tonight, he could feel the menace inside him desperate to be unleashed. He was actually enjoying himself. He was willing to go away to avenge this fucking atrocity, and go away for a long time. This was an out-and-out fucking liberty of Olympian standards and, because of that, he was not going to swallow his knob. He wanted blood and retribution and he was determined to get it, no matter what the personal cost might be.

  ‘I came here to try and make some kind of fucking sense out of the deliberate and wilful dereliction of your fucking duties. You had a tug and you fucking sold us down the river, you treacherous cunt. You are the cause of two good men being outed, and the most heinous crime of all is that none of you thought that I might have cottoned on, that you thought I was too thick to suss this lot out? Is this the best you could fucking do, the best you could come up with?’

  He laughed once more, and pointed at Dwyer. ‘Him? You relied on him? Fucking Freezing Freddie? And you are the so-called Sweeney Todd, the scourge of the criminal classes? Oh fuck off!’

  There was no anger in his voice now, just righteous indignation, sarcasm and a smattering of honest disbelief. ‘You’re a fucking joke.’

  The suspect filth was a big lad, he had broad shoulders, but the soft, pudgy body of a lazy man. Like most plain-clothes filth he had never really worked at anything since promotion; he relied on other people to make his cases for him. He was dependent on grasses like Dwyer and statements from the general public. In short, he chased rumours, gossip and idle chit-chat. His mentality was such that he actually thought that a man like Pat Brodie could be brought to book. Would roll over because they might have garnered some information that could put him away. He did not have the experience or intelligence to see that a man like Brodie would go down for a twenty-stretch without letting them hear one of his farts, let alone anything that would incriminate anyone else.

  ‘Look, Pat, you got this all wrong . . . We want you with us . . .’

  The suspect filth had finally spoken, was trying to get him onside, actually thought he would roll over and grass on his mates. The man had a deep voice, a pleasing voice in fact; it had an underlying lilt to it, Welsh maybe. He was playing at the London accent though, so many CID and Flying Squad were guilty of that. They thought it made them seem harder and more on the ball. These upper working-class boys from the Home Counties now saw themselves as the new and improved Z Cars. Patrick looked around the table and sighed in disappointment. This was the legendary Sweeney? He had seen harder nuts in his Christmas stocking. There was even a television programme about them and, after tonight, he could only assume it was a fucking comedy.

  Too late, the suspect filth realised he had said the wrong thing. He was still secure enough in his job to believe that even if Brodie didn’t play the game he would not have the nerve to do any real damage to them; after all they were Lily Law, when all was said and done. He was wondering, though, if Brodie might be tempted to wallop one of them, just to prove a point.

  ‘Who’re you calling Pat? How dare you attempt any kind of familiarity with me?’

  The room was now steeped in animosity and righteous indignation; Patrick’s natural-born hatred of any kind of authority was in evidence and he was offended, really offended. Then, from underneath his coat, he produced a machete. He brandished it with relish, watching the men around him as the realisation of their situation dawned on them. Spider and his Jamaican cousin were standing in the doorway, their own weapons, a scythe and a Japanese samurai sword, clearly visible.

  The three men at the table finally understood that they were in grave danger and the fact that they were part of the establishment guaranteed them nothing from the bunch of psychopaths looking at them with excitement in their eyes and malice in their hearts.

  Standing up, Patrick brought the machete down with all the force he could muster, on to Freddie Dwyer’s head. Spider and Pat laughed out loud as they systematically hacked him to pieces, the blood splattering on to the scandalised faces of the Old Bill as they awaited their turn, making it all the more hilarious.

  A lesson was administered swiftly and with the maximum of brutality. It was a lesson well learned by everyone who had to deal with Patrick Brodie from that day on.

  He had gone from hard nut to headcase overnight, and it was a well-planned, well-executed and deliberate ploy to ensure that anyone who had dreams of grassing him up would remember that Dwyer, and the Old Bill he had been fool enough to associate with, had been sentenced to death without any repercussions whatsoever.

  Lil was lying on the sofa trying to get comfortable. Her belly was tight once more, and the devastation of her home was still in evidence. She had put everything back as neatly as she could, but the police had done a thorough job inasmuch as most of the soft furnishings would have to be replaced.

  She took a few deep breaths and tried to calm the beating of her heart, which was pounding inside her breast with such force it was almost painful. She still had not heard anything from Pat and the time was crawling by. Every time she looked at the clock on her mantelpiece it seemed that an hour had passed, but in fact it had been only minutes. Her mother was still in with the boys and she blocked out the thoughts that were crowding her mind. Her belly was tightening once more and she knew on some level that she was in labour.

  However, the pain was nothing she couldn’t handle and her mind was still racing and reliving the last few hours. She lit a cigarette and pulled on it deeply, the nicotine hitting her brain and making her feel dizzy. The second draw was better and the third eased her nerves. She looked down at herself and saw the movement of her belly that she knew heralded the arrival of a new person into the world. It was early and she was too tired to make a fuss.

  If Patrick had experienced a capture it might be eight or even ten years before he came home to her and his kids; it was a sobering and frightening thought. She felt so alone and so vulnerable, and all she kept focusing on was the fact she had only eight quid to her name.

  Eight poxy quid and a new child fighting for its place in the world. What the fuck was she going to do?>

  Spider and Pat were in a house just off the Railton Road. They were soaked with blood and still on the high that often followed a bout of extreme v
iolence.

  Dicky and the Williams brothers were over the moon at the retribution Pat had doled out in their names. Dicky had been disappointed that he had missed out on the shenanigans but he was also secretly pleased that no one could put him or his brothers anywhere near the crime scene. Dead filth tended to cause serious aggravation, even bent dead filth. His brother’s untimely demise had hit them all hard and he knew that Pat’s logic for keeping this away from them was the act of a good mate. Their boat races would be the first in the frame and they had genuinely been somewhere else, so they had the perfect alibi.

  They were now pouring drinks and assuring each other that if the filth had any intention of feeling their collars it would have happened already. Pat knew, as Spider knew, that the filth were taking time to lick their wounds, especially the ones they had something on. They would regroup at some point, that was human nature, but at this particular moment in time the Old Bill felt it was better to retreat, smile and nod, wait till the time was right then, when they were at their weakest, they would come for them mob-handed. Until then, fuck them! The murder of young Terry Williams had not been a smart move and the up-and-coming young Face they had bought with promises of aggrandisement was now the most wanted Face in the Smoke, for all the wrong reasons, running scared and, suddenly, without any protection whatsoever. Jamie the Book’s death had barely registered on the Richter scale of criminal London, so even that had not given the Flying Squad anything that they could use against the Williamses or Brodie. It was a catastrophic fuck up but lessons had been learned.

  In reality, anything that had been gained from the whole sorry business was in Brodie’s favour; he was the new king of the swingers and the bent police he had gathered made him a no-go because he had been astute enough to buy only the best. As his mum had always told him, you get what you pay for and how true those words had turned out to be.