by Jessie Keane
Clara could only stand there, her shoulders slumped in defeat.
The watch was gone.
It had been the last item they had of any value – apart from Mum’s old Singer sewing machine, and they daren’t sell that, it was their only means of income.
Now, they had nothing.
4
‘Fuckin’ things have been doped, if you ask me,’ said the red-faced man standing alongside Marcus Redmayne, shouting to be heard above the roar of the crowd. The cheers echoed all around White City Stadium as the five greyhounds raced around the track after the rabbit. Number one – a pure-black dog – was steadily pulling away from the other four. ‘You see that? They been got at, I’m tellin’ ya.’
Marcus didn’t reply; he was already making his way through the packed stadium to collect his loot. When the black dog shot past the winning post the crowd went mad: the cheers from the handful of winners drowned out by the hundreds of losers baying their displeasure as they tore up their betting slips and hurled them to the concrete floor. Too right the other dogs had been doped; Marcus had personally slipped the kennel lads a hefty bung apiece and told them to mix a dose of chloretone in with their food before the race.
A cure for travel-sickness in humans, chloretone sent a dog’s blood pressure sky-high the minute he started to run, so he ‘faded’ fast. Best of all, it was damned near impossible for a vet to trace.
The bookie gave Marcus a surly look as he collected his winnings. With a smirk of satisfaction he made a show of counting the money, then he moved along to the next bookie, and the next – collecting all the while.
Satisfied with his evening’s takings, he made his way out of the ground and strolled, deep in thought, toward his motor. He was justifiably proud of his car. A few years ago he’d been a half-starved kid with his arse hanging out of his trousers, not a pot to piss in; now he was minted – and his choice of motor reflected that. It was a sporty racing-green Jaguar XK120, newly imported from California, left-hand drive, soft top. An expensive beauty – and he had earned it by the sweat of his brow. First thing he’d done when he got it was drive over to his mum’s place so he could show it off. And his mum had taken one look and said, ‘It’s just a car,’ before going back inside.
As chief enforcer for Lenny Lynch, Marcus worked hard for his money. He expected others to do the same, but it turned out a lot of Lenny’s so-called friends had cottoned on to the fact he was getting soft in his old age and they were ripping him off left, right and centre. Take the Blue Banana, for instance. That mouthy cunt Delilah was slicing a big hit off the top every month, doctoring the books and thinking nobody was ever going to notice. Well, he had. And he’d got his old pal Gordon to do an audit.
Delilah had shrieked and complained and moaned to Lenny about it, but what could she do? Marcus was Lenny’s number one. She had to soak it up.
Her accounts might have got past Lenny, but Gordon was a different prospect entirely. Soon as he put the books under the microscope he uncovered all her little tricks: crates of drinks going ‘missing’ and being sold on, all sorts of stuff being left off the accounts. Marcus had told Lenny about it, but did Lenny believe him? He did not.
‘Delilah – do a thing like that?’ Lenny had shaken his head and laughed when Marcus told him. ‘She been with me for years, that girl.’
‘Yeah, and that’s why she’s doing it,’ Marcus had argued. ‘She knows you won’t come down on her, check the books over. When’d you last check them? Seriously?’
‘Marcus,’ Lenny had said, almost sadly, ‘I don’t have to check. Delilah’s straight as a die.’
‘Len—’
‘No.’ Lenny’s pouchy eyes had sharpened in their folds of fat, grown mean and threatening. He’d raised a stubby, nicotine-stained finger, waved it under Marcus’s nose. ‘Leave it right there, or we’re gonna fall out, I’m telling you.’
So Marcus had left it. But he’d done so reluctantly, and deep down he was still seething. Unlike some, he appreciated what Lenny Lynch had done for him.
When they first met, he’d been living on the streets, running wild. He had no home to go to; after his dad died, his mum had found herself a new bloke – a good earner, with his own joinery business, and he treated her like a queen, which was all Lulu Redmayne cared about – and she’d been only too happy to defer to her new husband’s wishes and kick her tearaway teenage son’s backside out the door.
Relations had remained strained between Lulu and Marcus, but after his stepdad had departed for that great workshop in the sky he’d started visiting home again. So long as he showered her with gifts, he could be sure of a welcome. Lulu still liked the high life and she expected to be treated like royalty. Show up empty-handed and she’d soon let you know about it.
Even if his mum didn’t rate Marcus highly, women in general seemed to like him. He was tall, athletically built, muscled up from hardship on the streets. His hair was thick, black and straight, and he had dense black brows that gave him a dangerous look when they drew together. His eyes were so deep a brown that they appeared black, with lashes any woman would envy. His nose was almost patrician, and he had a wide mouth that rarely tilted upward in a smile. Marcus looked hard, threatening, and – yes, all the girls said it – very sexy. And it didn’t hurt that he was loaded. Which he wouldn’t have been, if Lenny Lynch hadn’t come along.
Under Lenny’s guidance, Marcus’s natural talent for strong-arm tactics had been honed. He had grown fit and tough and formidable, and he’d built a reputation for himself. In the streets of Soho, his was a name to be reckoned with. He had carved a place for himself and he felt secure in his ability to hang on to it. With that sense of security came confidence, and a fierce almost fanatical loyalty to the man who had saved him from a life in the gutter.
Back when he was a kid, Lenny Lynch had seemed like a god. Now that he was a man himself he saw that Lenny was just a man too, and that he had flaws. Biggest among them was that Lenny trusted people too much, whereas Marcus didn’t trust them at all – he barely even trusted himself.
So he’d been doing what he did best, covering his boss’s back, making sure no one was taking the piss. But he had discovered that most of them were. He had told Lenny the bad news, because it was his duty to do so. And what did Lenny say?
Drop it.
Don’t go there.
So here he was, with a situation. Hang on as Lenny’s number one, with all Lenny’s old drinking pals laughing their bollocks off at him behind his back, or do something different?
He walked faster; it was a cold night and he stuffed his hands into his jacket pockets, feeling the reassuring rustle of his winnings in there.
Marcus was whistling ‘Broken Wings’ by the Stargazers. He was not exactly happy, because he had all this shit with Lenny going on, but he was cheerful enough. And why not? He had cash on the hip, he was clever and he was young and strong. Anything was possible. Up ahead, parked under a street lamp that set its buffed bodywork glowing was his Jag – and now he paused and saw there were two men leaning against the front of it. He thought he recognized them from the way they moved.
Yeah, he did.
They were Lenny’s boys.
He knew them. He’d even given them their orders, in the past. Dimly, in the distance, he heard the church bells ring, sounding the hour; it was eleven o’clock.
5
‘You sold the watch then?’ asked Kathleen hopefully, wincing as another gigantic contraction hit her. ‘Ahhh, oh Jesus . . . ’
‘Yeah,’ lied Clara, and she smiled and held her mother’s hand. Kathleen’s frantic grip nearly crushed her fingers.
She’d come back and fixed bread and jam for Bernie and Henry, but Kathleen was feeling too ill to eat. And so now here they were. It just kept spinning around in Clara’s brain, an ever-expanding loop, a fast-spinning merry-go-round of panic.
What could she do?
Everything rested on her shoulders.
She had to think o
f something. Her mother was still in labour, there was no sign of the child getting itself born. Clara was climbing the walls with worry but desperate not to show her fears to her mother or to little Henry, who’d been playing Ludo with Bernie in the next room. Finally she was forced to send Bernie out again with a request that the district nurse should come urgently, the doctor, or anyone.
And once the baby was here, how would they feed yet another mouth when already they were out of their depth? She was dreading Hatton’s knock on the door tomorrow. But more than that, she was dreading that this labour was going to go on and on, until her mother was too exhausted to struggle any more.
Until she was dead.
It could come to that, Clara knew. And what would become of them all then? This was what it meant, being poor. You were powerless. She hated it, bitterly. And one way or another, she was going to change it. She didn’t know how, but one day, she swore, she was going to break them all out of here. The Dolans were going to be rich once more. Fuck this!
She took up the cool cloth and wiped her mother’s brow again.
‘It’s going to be all right,’ she said, but it was a lie, how could it be all right?
Her mother could die.
She thought of turning to their neighbours for help. But no. Since they’d moved into this bloody hovel, not one of them had said a kind word to the family. Clara had seen the furtive looks as she passed them. One or two of the women – one of the younger black women in particular – had glanced at her, had even smiled. But she didn’t want to call on any of them for help.
What she wanted was to turn the clocks back, back to the time when Dad had been there, laughing in his madcap way, and they’d been a proper family. But that was impossible. So she fixed a smile on her face and smoothed her mother’s hair back from her sweating brow.
What the hell am I going to do? she wondered in abject fear.
She’d do what she’d always done. She’d get on with it. She’d cope.
In the meantime she could only pray that Bernie was going to come back with help, very soon.
6
Lenny Lynch trudged wearily up the steps of the Blue Banana club and came out onto the rain-slicked street. Vic Damone’s voice, singing ‘April in Paris’, drifted after him. Lenny had never seen Paris. He’d been to NewYork, though. They said New York was the city that never slept, but London didn’t get much shut-eye either; late at night, the streets were still thronging with people, conducting trade of one sort or another or just walking. Tramps slept in doorways, cars swished by in the wet, pimps loitered, watching their scantily dressed and shivering girls; all human life was here.
He paused in the shadows of a doorway, lit a Players and took a deep lungful, then coughed mightily. Eyes watering, Lenny lifted his wrist, held the watch face up to the soaked glimmer of the street lights. It was a quarter to midnight.
It was done, then. Lenny’s shoulders drooped. Marcus was taken care of and would not be seen again. Even now his dead body was being disposed of. Epping Forest or out in the Channel maybe. He didn’t want to know, he’d told the boys that. A shame, but it had to be done. He was the one in charge, and so he would remain. A pity that Marcus had to go and forget that, the silly cunt.
He finished the cigarette and set off for his flat, two streets away. Halfway there he paused in his stride to light a second cigarette. The wind was getting up, gusting damply, blowing out the match’s flame, so he stepped into a club doorway and leaned against a wall adorned with a garishly painted flame-red poster depicting two half-naked dancing girls, heads thrown back, mouths open in erotic invitation. The match flared and he took a long drag. A skinny, flashy-looking man with a black Rhett Butler moustache stepped past, bumping against him, heading for the stairs down into the club.
‘Oi! Watch your fucking self, will you?’ snapped Lenny. He wasn’t in a good mood. He’d lost his best man tonight, and that pained him.
Lenny saw the man turn, saw the glint of a smile on his face. In a flash of recognition, Lenny realized that he looked familiar. His hand lifted and in total shock Lenny saw the gun there.
‘Marcus Redmayne says hello,’ hissed the man.
Lenny didn’t even have time to step away, start to run, nothing. He felt the cold hard barrel of the gun drill into his temple, and then the man pulled the trigger and Lenny Lynch’s brains shot out of his skull and decorated the lurid poster behind him with globs of grey and fountains of red. His lifeless corpse slumped to the ground.
A couple of people turned, looked as the man with the moustache hurried away down the wet night-time street. There’d been a noise, hard to hear over the traffic, probably a car had backfired. They saw a drunk dossing down in the shadowy doorway beneath a garish, brightly lit club sign, then someone came along and helped him to his feet, got him into the back of the car. The car roared away. Everyone shrugged their shoulders and walked on, minding their own business.
Delilah lounged against the bar after Lenny had gone home, watching the punters drink and play cards. She had thought that Lenny might be going soft in his old age, but good old Len had put her mind at rest: Marcus was going to be dealt with, thank God. Boy was getting all out of hand. Before you knew it, he’d be in here taking over, and she couldn’t have that. This was her little piece of heaven, she’d been running this place so long now that it felt like home.
So what if Lenny had practically raised the boy? Sometimes in life you had to do things that were hard. It would hurt Lenny, dealing with Marcus, she knew it. But what the hell. Sighing, she went back to the optics and squirted herself out a measure of the dark sweet rum she favoured. Something moved behind her. Sipping the drink, she turned back to the bar to serve whoever was waiting.
The rum splattered on the floor and all down her naked torso as she choked.
Marcus Redmayne was standing there, leaning on the other side of the bar. Those black eyes of his were gazing at her unblinkingly, with steady concentration. He had a way of looking at a person that was unnerving. Like he could see straight through you and out the other side. She hated it. And hadn’t Lenny said he was dealing with this fucker tonight?
‘Sorry, did I startle you?’ Marcus asked, his eyes not leaving hers.
Delilah’s eyes were watering. She coughed again, cleared her throat, tried to think. No, it couldn’t be him. It couldn’t. Marcus should be dead meat by now, not standing here. Lenny had said he was sorting it. Eleven o’clock, he’d said.
Bullshit. Marcus was here, and he was very much alive.
Somehow she managed a ghastly forced smile of welcome.
‘Or were you not expecting to see me?’ asked Marcus.
‘You . . . surprised me, that’s all,’ she croaked, coughing again.
‘Yeah?’ Marcus straightened and looked around. On either side of him, two big muscle-heads appeared. They looked at Delilah. She took a half-step forward, reaching under the counter to where she had the machete stashed in case the customers got lively.
‘Leave that,’ said Marcus sharply.
Delilah hesitated. One of the men opened the front of his coat, showed her the gun there.
Marcus was smiling at her. She sagged. Game up, she thought. Game over.
‘Tonight’s going to be full of surprises, Delilah,’ said Marcus. ‘Ring the damned bell. You’re shutting early.’
The news roared through the streets like a hurricane. Lenny Lynch was no more; his number one, Marcus Redmayne, had taken over Lenny’s manor. Word was that Lenny had retired to the country, snap decision, something like that. No one was really sure.
All around Soho they whispered about it. Lenny had been a fixture in the area since forever, and suddenly he was gone. So were the managers of five snooker halls and four clubs that Lenny had previously had under his control. They’d all been Lenny’s people, hand-picked by him over the years, but now new faces were appearing and the old ones were history. Most notable by her absence was Delilah from the Blue Banana. A couple of days
later she washed up on a pebbled stretch near the Limehouse Ship Lock. She was still wearing her boots and her birthday suit.
Suicide, they said.
Sad.
But what the fuck.
7
When the knock came at the door Clara sprang upright. Bernie . . . ? Yes, she could hear Bernie’s voice out there. And she could hear another voice – did Bernie have someone with her? She ran to the door, unlocked it, flung it open.
‘Oh my God, at last!’ she burst out, hugging her sister.
One flight down, Clara could see the bulky figure of the district nurse brushing her way past the people who always seemed to be sitting, giggling, chatting and smoking foulsmelling roll-ups on the stairs. The nurse was doling out dirty looks left and right, clouting slow-movers with her bag. ‘Out the way, you bastards, let me pass!’ she snarled. As she came up to the top floor, she was unfastening her navy-blue cloak and gazing hard-eyed at Clara.
‘Your mam up here then?’ she asked.
‘She is,’ said Bernie.
Bernie led the woman through to the bedroom, showing her the washbasin where she could clean her hands. Clara stood aside as the grey-haired and red-faced woman eyed her groaning mother.
‘She’s been like this for ages,’ said Clara.
‘Right. Let’s see shall we?’ The nurse turned to Bernie, twitching nervously and watching with fearful eyes at the doorway, Henry round-eyed and clutching at her skirts.
‘Take that bowl. Boil up some water, fetch some towels too, all right?’
Bernie ran off to do as she was told. Clara pushed the door closed behind her.
‘She needs some bloody help,’ said Clara heatedly to the nurse. But then she bit her tongue. At least the nurse was here.
‘Well, help is what we’re going to give her,’ said the nurse, still smiling though her voice was edged with irritation now. ‘Christ, she’s not the only woman in labour in London today. I’m rushed off my bloody feet. Hold your mother’s hand, girl, that’s it. What’s her name?’