by Jessie Keane
And then Ivan went inside. There was dust and mess and dog shit and women’s things scattered over the floor. He put his overnight bag down on the couch and looked around him, spotting a woman’s hankie, a comb, a watch that had been smashed to smithereens.
‘Ma’s about to croak,’ he told his brother. ‘She wants you and Jacko up there. You seen Jacko?’
Fulton shook his head. He looked like he’d done ten rounds with Henry Cooper; he looked finished, Ivan thought.
‘Christ alive! How many years has it been? Thought you were going to track him down.’
Fulton looked at Ivan, the boss of the family. He knew he’d let him down. Somehow that bitch Clara had eaten into his soul, sucked him dry like a bloody vampire, screwed with his head. Cut off his fingers and his thumb. Kicked his balls so hard they swelled up like watermelons and he wasn’t sure they’d ever be right. She’d rejected him, laughed in his face.
Now, he hated her. Now, Dutch Dave was sorting that out for him.
‘You’d better tell me what the hell’s been going on,’ said Ivan, and sat down.
97
Clara didn’t even want to think about what happened after that. She’d gone back to the house, crawled back into bed, cold right through to the bone and shivering with horror. It was a long time before Marcus came back to bed, and when he did he smelled of damp earth and the faint tang of fresh sweat. Clara cringed away from him but he pulled her in tight against him, held her close so they lay like spoons in a drawer.
‘Christ, I’m fucking frozen,’ he complained, cuddling in against her. He was cold. His feet were like ice, his hands when they slid around her and cupped her naked breasts were chilling, but she didn’t complain. What she wanted to say was What did you do with him? But she was afraid of the answer. She knew the answer. She lay there in a state of bewilderment, because he had removed a threat to her but he had also used her to lure that threat, and it could all have gone very badly wrong.
Why would he want to save me? she wondered. The clubs were as much his as hers now, and they would be totally his if she died. No her-indoors to cramp his style, he’d have what he’d always wanted. He’d be King of Clubs, King of Soho, no questions asked. And he wouldn’t be saddled with a copper’s nark for a wife, either.
If he let her die.
But . . . he’d knocked her to the ground when the sniper had struck outside the Oak. Marcus had saved her. And now, by getting rid of the gunman tonight – probably the same man – he had saved her again.
She could feel Marcus’s skin warming, little by little, as he absorbed her body heat. Maybe this was all he’d done it for. To have her in bed. After all, he’d never made a secret of the fact that he wanted her. She’d heard rumours about him, that he’d had a bad time with a cold mother and it had affected his feelings toward women in general. Having met his mother, she could now believe it. Her fear was that, despite his good looks, despite the charm he could turn on like a light when he chose to, despite all that, deep down he hated women. Soon, his breath against the back of her neck deepened and slowed.
He was asleep.
But she couldn’t sleep. She couldn’t work out what was going on here. Not at all.
In the morning, Marcus packed up the car and they set off back to London. She didn’t ask him what had happened after she left him outside last night, and Marcus was silent, not volunteering any information. He dropped her at the Oak with her bag, and drove off, saying he’d catch her later.
‘Oh! You’re back already. I thought you said you were going on your honeymoon?’ said Jan, bouncing up to her as she sat in the bar with the bag at her feet, feeling too wrung-out, too emotionally exhausted after the night she’d just had, to even shift herself to crawl up the stairs for a bath.
‘Marcus had business to get back to,’ she said.
He killed that gunman last night. Deliberately lured him in, trapped him and shot him. Then he buried him somewhere out in the wilds. I know he did that. He’s smart, he wouldn’t leave a trace.
She shivered at the thought. Her husband. She was now married to a man who disposed of his enemies without a single qualm.
But that gunman was my enemy.
‘You two not getting along then?’ asked Jan, hoisting her bulky little frame up onto a bar stool beside Clara, then eyeing her with a frown of sympathy.
‘We’re getting along fine,’ said Clara through gritted teeth.
‘Only he is bloody gorgeous.’
‘So what?’ snapped Clara.
‘I wouldn’t kick him out of bed, that’s for damned sure.’
‘You wouldn’t kick anyone out of bed, Jan.’
‘That’s uncalled for.’ Jan sniffed and looked genuinely affronted. ‘I’m not like Sal, you know. Poor cow, God rest her, she had more dick than I’ve had hot dinners. You know what? I always knew she’d come to grief. The risks she took, the things she did. And all to scrape a bit of bloody cash together. Cash was all she cared about, our Sal. She even had a bloody bank book, can you believe that? She was always on about how much money she had in it. Well, it ain’t doing her much good now, is it.’
Clara looked at Jan’s troubled face. Maybe she had been a bit harsh. ‘Sorry,’ she said.
‘I miss her a lot,’ said Jan, and Clara could see the raw pain on her face. ‘This sounds bloody desperate, I know, but she was my only friend.’
Clara felt bad now, being rotten to Jan. The woman had feelings, after all. And it struck Clara that with her only friend dead and gone, that explained why Jan was always hanging around her. Jan wanted, needed, a friend, and she had clearly decided that Clara fit the bill.
Clara jumped down off the bar stool and snatched up her bag. ‘I need a bath,’ she said, and left Jan sitting there while she went off upstairs to clean up.
By the afternoon, Marcus was back. Somewhere along the way he’d changed his clothes, and when he came up to the flat over the Oak and kissed her cheek he smelled fresh and was clean-shaven and wearing his usual woody aftershave. Yesterday, when his jaw had brushed against her skin, it had been like sandpaper. It had also been hugely erotic, and she felt aroused just remembering it. She couldn’t help but think of their bodies twined together in that candlelit bedroom, of how wonderful it had felt. But then, it hadn’t meant anything to him, not really. The whole thing had been planned as a trap – that was all.
‘Here,’ he said, and put a small blue box in her hand.
Clara stood there looking at it. A white-ribboned blue Tiffany box, identical to the one he had presented to his mother days ago. Yesterday he’d staked her out like a sacrificial goat, and yes, she couldn’t forget it – on their wedding day he’d let his bloody mouthy girlfriend Paulette attend their reception instead of kicking her scrawny arse out the door.
Something in Clara snapped at that thought and she threw the box straight at his head. He stepped aside and it sailed overhead and thunked against the wall, dislodging the biggest of a trio of flying ducks. Both duck and box fell to the shag-pile carpet.
‘What the fuck?’ said Marcus.
‘I’m not your bloody mother!’
‘What?’
‘You heard! I’m not like her, always with my hand out for something or other. Is that what you think? That everything’s about what I can get?’ snarled Clara. ‘What is more, I’m not some tart you have to pay for sex – is that what you think of me? Do you give that whore Paulette this sort of thing after you’ve jumped her bones?’
‘What are you raving on about?’ he asked, glaring at her as he came in close.
‘You don’t have to keep me sweet with little presents all the time. Some honesty would be far more appreciated.’
‘You want honesty?’ He grabbed her shoulders and shook her. ‘Here it is then. You’re more fucking trouble than you’re worth so far, so don’t push me, OK?’
‘I’m trouble? You’re the one who stalks about in the night killing people with a shotgun.’
Marcus stared
into her face. ‘I don’t understand you,’ he said.
‘You made that clear enough.’
‘Most women like gifts,’ said Marcus.
She wanted to tell him that she’d had all that, with Toby. And where had it ended? In a funeral pyre. Toby, done for. All her furs and jewels, the things she had once set such store by, gone up in smoke. All of it, dust and ashes. None of it meant a damned thing, in the end.
But she couldn’t say it. It choked her, every time she thought about Toby and his miserable death. And she looked at her third husband and suddenly the thought was there: He wanted Toby’s clubs. He wanted me. He kills without a second thought.
Clara felt all the blood drain from her face. She stepped back from his embrace, folded her arms around her middle. He’d hurt her with that stupid gift. She felt sad, angry, near to tears. That was what he thought of her. And she . . . oh shit, she really was in love with him.
She’d been in love with him ever since he’d shown up at Frank’s funeral, it had hit her right then, unexpectedly. And him? He’d married her to get her clubs, and her body. That was all. And worse – he might even have killed Toby to do it.
Life had played a massive, sick joke on her. She couldn’t believe it. She’d stumbled into exactly the same trap Mum had – she’d fallen in love, given herself body and soul to a man, left herself wide open to harm. And by tricking him into this marriage, she’d given Marcus more than enough cause to hate her. She’d been all kinds of a fool, she could see that now.
‘Just leave me alone,’ she said sharply, turning away before he could see how hurt and bewildered she was.
‘Glad to,’ said Marcus, and left the room. He didn’t even pause to pick up the box.
98
Next day Clara scooped up one of the bouncers on the door of the Oak and went to the fourth-floor flat off Regent Street that her sister Bernie shared with her friend Sasha. Bernie let her in while Liam and the pit bull stayed outside the door.
‘Where’s Sasha?’ asked Clara, sitting down on one dusty throw-covered sofa.
‘She stayed over at Colin’s – her boyfriend’s.’ Bernie was chewing on a hangnail as she spoke.
‘Right.’
‘What do you want, Clara?’
‘That’s a fine greeting from one sister to another,’ said Clara lightly.
‘I don’t have a sister any more.’
‘Bernie, for God’s sake . . . ’
‘No! Just say what you’ve got to say and bugger off, all right?’
‘All right. I want Henry’s address, if you’ve got it.’
Bernie slumped down onto the sofa opposite Clara and stared at her. ‘What would you want that for? You never had any time for Henry.’
‘He knew a friend of mine,’ said Clara carefully. ‘I want to talk to him about her.’
‘Knew? As in, he doesn’t know her any more?’
‘She’s dead.’
‘Wait, I don’t get this. If the woman’s dead, what’s to talk about?’
‘She was murdered, Bernie.’
Bernie sat up sharply. ‘What?’
‘Yeah. And I want to talk to Henry because he knew her, and he might know something about what happened to her.’
Bernie gave a sour smile at this. ‘Still trying to control the whole world and everything in it, aren’t you, Clara?’
‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘The Bill will sort it. Why go poking into things like that?’
‘The Bill don’t give a shit about people like Sal. They’ve had months to sort it and they’ve done fuck-all. So you won’t give me his address?’ Clara stood up. She was determined to do something for Sal, to let her rest in peace as she should. Her killing could have been random, committed by any thug off the street, or it could have been closer to home.
She thought of Yasta Frate, buck-naked as he mounted Sal in those pictures, flaunting his bull-like body as he abused little boys in those other ghastly images. She’d felt sick just looking at them. Then she thought of Sears, and of Henry. Most of all, she thought of Henry; and her thoughts horrified her.
As if making a decision, Bernie stood up. She went over to the mantelpiece. Grabbed a pencil and pad, jotted something down, then tore off a sheet of paper and handed it to Clara, moving twitchily, like she always did.
‘There you go,’ she said. ‘But trust me – Henry won’t be any more pleased to see you than I am. Now, if there’s nothing else . . . ?’
There wasn’t. Clara took the address and left.
99
One thing that really pissed off Fulton Sears was hiring a geezer to do a job and then finding out that he’d been screwed over the deal.
‘So where the fuck is he then?’ he asked his boys.
They shrugged. Dutch Dave had taken the commission to top Clara Redmayne a week ago. They knew about the near-miss outside the Oak – which had in Sears’s opinion been fucking careless – but Dave had said not to worry, it was in hand. And then the cunt had disappeared off the face of the earth.
‘He’s got half a grand of my money, up front.’
His boys shrugged again, uneasy. They were glad that Ivan Sears had shown up, because Fulton was losing it big-style, muttering about the place about that bitch, that cunt.
‘Paulie? He was supposed to touch base with you, that right?’
Paulie nodded. ‘But he hasn’t, boss. Not a word, not a call, nothing.’
Sears’s boxer dog sniffed around his feet, hungry and hoping for a titbit. Sears kicked the dog away. It yelped, and sloped off to lie down on the other side of the room.
‘Calm down,’ said Ivan, perturbed to see his brother in such a state. This rate, they’d never get back up to Manchester to wave Ma a not-so-fond farewell. He was going to have to take this situation in hand, he could see it.
‘Somebody find him,’ said Fulton, fumbling to light a fag with his shaking bandaged hands. A couple of months on from what she had done to him, and his wounds were healing. But his heart wasn’t. He’d loved her. Truly, deeply. But now that love was gone, turned to bitter hatred, he was stoked up on puff and coke and he wanted her dead.
‘Somebody do it, right now.’
100
You were only as good as your last envelope, the boys had told Henry when he’d first started working for Fulton Sears, and it was true. He did the milk round, collected cash from stalls and restaurants that paid protection, and every time you had to come back with a nice thick wedge of loot in the envelope, or you were in big trouble.
Fortunately, Henry had a talent for collecting cash.
‘You got the money?’ he would ask when he first started on the job. Of course they would try it on, test his mettle.
He always thought of it like that when the fucks wouldn’t pay up, or they said they’d have it next week, or they said they only had part of it and the rest would follow: they were ‘testing his mettle’, seeing how far they could push it.
Not very far at all was the answer to that. Henry had a straight choice, it seemed to him: either he got the cash, or he got a kicking from Sears. So he had to get the cash, and get it he did.
‘You got the money?’ he asked now, talking to a big fat Italian who ran a profitable trattoria off Queen Street, all decked out in red, green and white like the Italian flag, his two sons flipping pizzas out the back room with the scent of garlic and fried tomatoes wafting out into the restaurant, the whole family working away front of house and back, and Sears skimming a good bit off the top so that they never got any trouble.
Of course, fail to pay Fulton Sears and there would be trouble, big-style. Bloke was about as stable as sweating gelignite, and he was getting worse by the day. Word on the street was that Clara had given Fulton Sears his marching orders from the club doors; some people were even saying that Fulton Sears had come on to Clara, gone up to her office with a full set of fingers and come back down with most of them missing and his balls damned near kicked into orbit. But he could
n’t believe that. Now big brother Ivan had shown up, and the whole thing looked like it was about to blow.
The man paid up straight away and Henry moved on to his next target, a brand-new dry-cleaning business, so the new owners were Soho virgins and of course they had no idea how this thing worked. Henry walked into the store and the bell over the door dinged. He was assailed by chemical odours.
‘Stinks in these places,’ he said to the blond guy behind the counter, who was taking a soiled brown garment from a customer for cleaning.
‘That’s the perc,’ said the blond.
‘The what?’ asked Henry, not that he gave a fuck.
‘Perchloroethylene,’ said the man. ‘Otherwise known as tetrachloethydene.’
Henry was looking around at all the big plastic-coated wedding dresses and full-length curtains hanging around the sides of the shop. He could see the back of the shop through an open doorway. There was a whoosh of steam as garments were pressed and finished. Several people were working back there, filling machines, operating dryers, including a darkhaired woman who glanced at Henry with suspicion.
‘Got my money?’ asked Henry when the customer had departed, clutching her ticket.
‘Ah!’ The guy was all big smiles; he was fresh-faced as a school kid. ‘Well, here’s part of it,’ he said, and whipped open the till and handed Henry an envelope. Henry opened it, counted it; fifty pounds short.
‘I’ll have the rest by Friday,’ he was rattling on, smiling.
‘No, this afternoon,’ said Henry, pocketing the envelope.
‘Well, as I said—’
‘No.’ Henry held up a hand, stopping the flow of words. ‘I want my money and I want it by two o’clock. All right?’
The smile was still in place. ‘As I tried to explain—’
‘I’ll be back at two,’ said Henry, and left.
The blond guy was still smiling, silly cunt.
Henry called back in at two o’clock and he had Joey with him – six feet of uncomplicated muscle.