The Business

by Martina Cole

  The stench of blood was heavy in the room and Basil stood up, stretching as if he was tired out and ready for his bed. He said to Mary, ‘The kids are in the bedroom. I don’t know how much they heard, or how much they guessed, but they need to be taken away from here.’

  Basil walked to the door, then turning around, he looked at Michael Hannon and said in a low and penetrating voice, ‘You looked down your fucking nose at me for years because of my business, but I could buy and sell you, boy. You blanked me over and over again, until it finally clicked, until you finally realised that this business was worth fucking fortunes. Then you wanted an in. You saw that Bailey was earning off the business, and you demanded your fucking slice from it. Well, you see her down there, and that cunt she thought would protect her from the likes of me; that is my message to anyone who tries to mug me off. I ain’t fucking swallowing it any more.’

  Basil left then, and Mary stood still, her hand still covering her mouth, and she said nothing. Neither did Michael Hannon.

  Then Mary went to the bedroom, gathered up her grandchildren, and walked away from her daughter and her daughter’s excuse for a life without a backward glance.

  It was over.

  Finally over.

  Imelda was finished.

  Book Three

  Blessed are they that mourn:

  For they shall be comforted.

  - Matthew 5:4

  Chapter Seventeen

  1994

  Imelda was tired, and she looked it.

  She had recently been released from prison, and she had the yellowish pallor that was a dead giveaway to anyone in the know. She had been in and out of prison over the years. She had also moved about quite frequently, disappearing for months on end and then turning up again in her old haunts, acting as if she had never been gone. She was a real loner; as always, she only really needed her own company. She still liked her life in many respects, even though she knew it was not a life most people would want for themselves. But it suited her, suited her personality.

  It was a really hot day and Imelda sat in the pub garden and enjoyed her drink. She sipped it slowly, savouring it; she was low on funds, and her need to score was uppermost in her mind. She knew that she was luckier than most of the people in her position; she had no one to lie to, no one to consider at all. She preferred it that way, it suited her. For most people being alone spelt failure; to her it just guaranteed contentment and the knowledge that she was able to do what she wanted, when she wanted, with who she wanted.

  Imelda was watching the world go by, something she had acquired the knack of many years before. Like most junkies she had no interest in the world itself, the actual economics of the world were beyond her interest. For example, if the four-minute warning ever came, heralding a nuclear war, she would only be interested in getting herself an armful, it was her only interest. Her mind would then become focused on whether she would be able to walk into any chemist she wanted to and take what she needed, thanks to the decimation of the world and mankind. It was a junkie’s dream. The world itself and the people who inhabited it were so far beneath her interest that she would never even consider their welfare over her own.

  It was all she really cared about, drugs and money. All she had ever cared about. From her first hit, she had felt as if she had finally come home. It was all she ever thought about, her life was spent gathering the money to purchase it. Anything else was treated with disdain, with her usual disinterest.

  As she watched the young girls around her, in their short skirts, heavy make-up and high-heeled shoes, she didn’t even have the energy to envy them their youth and their freedom. They had their whole lives in front of them, and they didn’t yet understand how fleeting their youth would turn out to be.

  At the moment they could not even imagine being thirty or, God forbid, forty. She knew they were just at the age where drink, men and adventure were calling to them, and she knew by the looks of most of them, they were only too ready to start calling back. It was like a recurring circle of disappointment, it came around every year or so, the launch of a new batch of young girls who thought they were the first ones to know it all. Young girls who didn’t have the brains to see that their mothers had thought that once too, and were now lumbered with kids, bills and the prospect of getting older on a budget, all while pondering how it all happened to them in the first place.

  It was a bastard, life. It had the knack of throwing you a curve every now and then to keep you interested. To give you a reason to keep going. Then, just as you thought you had cracked it, you took delivery of a blow that was so severe you were amazed at how you could ever have survived it. But somehow you did, and somehow you carried on.

  Imelda was not one of those people, she had given her life over to herself at a very early age. She had only ever had one love, and that was the needle and all it could offer her. She spied her dealer as he came into the pub. She could see him through the window, knew he would get himself a drink, say a few hellos to the regulars, and would then come outside to serve her up her usual chemical cosh. She smiled at the thought. Her life was already settling back into a pattern, and the pattern she chose was one that afforded her peace of mind and, occasionally, complete oblivion should she feel the need of it. Imelda knew the real value of oblivion, knew that it was what kept her on an even keel.

  The girls at the table opposite her were getting noisier, she listened to them as they swore and cursed loudly at one another, determined to make sure that everyone heard them. They thought that their bad language made them seem sophisticated, clever even. They believed they were acting like adults instead of the little schoolies they so obviously were. She knew they were looking for trouble and that they were liable to get it, sooner rather than later. Especially in this pub, which was frequented by the lower echelons of society, and that was being kind.

  She lit a cigarette, her hands were stiff; she had never regained the full use of them after Basil had finished with her. He had been angry enough to need personal retribution but, unlike him, she had never needed her own personal revenge, she knew it was a pointless exercise. She held no grudges; she had accepted her capture. In reality, she was amazed that it had taken so long to straighten her out. But then she was of the opinion that her family name had more than likely been a great help in many ways. Not any more though.

  She glanced at the girls once more. They were not that bad looking, they were reminiscent of her at the same age. Although she had been much more sexually aware than these girls. They just wanted to be noticed, wanted to be part of the world that they knew was only a couple of sexual encounters away. They were fucking idiots, they believed that sex would automatically make them grown-ups, make them adults. Nature was a bastard in that way; they were physically ripe but mentally they were still so ignorant they would accept the first man to give them any attention.

  Imelda was sore. Her body was aching, was reminding her that she needed her meds. She still had the long fingers and shapely wrists of her youth, the only difference now was that she sometimes had trouble doing up buttons or using zips. Her fingers were full of arthritis, but she was not about to let that spoil her day. It was over, it had happened. She had made a point of getting over it. She had not had any real choice in the matter, she had been battered so badly that the doctors had not expected her to survive.

  Jed had died on the way to hospital, but who cared? He was never someone who you’d bet on to make old bones.

  When Imelda finally left her hospital bed, she had been hooked on methadone; the people who had saved her life had also been the people who made sure she kept her habit alive and well. She had played them as she had played everyone who came within her eye line. She saw them all as jokes, saw their kindness and concern for her well-being as the ultimate idiocy. She knew she would use them, and that they would let her because they were too fucking stupid to see her for what she was.

  Their kindness had only made her feel even more superior than usual b
ecause she knew that, deep inside, they saw her as nothing; ergo they felt guilt about it. They were so fucking blinkered to the real world, they actually believed that their education and their liberal beliefs would be enough to get them by. So she had played them, like she had played everyone else, and she had loved every second of it. She had told them what they wanted to hear, and she had sat with them and told them her life story. They had believed her, but then why wouldn’t they? It never occurred to them that she was lying through her teeth. The more outrageous the story, the more they were interested in it. She knew they would dine out on her porks for weeks to come. And pork she had, she always made sure she was the victim in her tales of woe, made sure she was seen as someone who had been judged because of her lifestyle, not for the crime she had been accused of. She was dealing with people who had no real experience of the world or its filthy reality, who saw her as the underdog rather than the Queen Bitch.

  She also knew that these same people would eventually move on, would run as far from her and her ilk as was physically possible once the real world they had craved suddenly became a little too real for them. When it started to scare them and that was generally when they suddenly became aware that they were being used, used by people who were experts at it. Once these people realised that they had been exploited by people who laughed up their sleeves at their complete readiness to believe their stories and, even worse, had let on where they lived and where they had grown up. Eventually though, they saw the error of their ways and left the social services for another government job, only next time, they made sure they had no contact with the masses on a personal level.

  Imelda, of course, had not voiced her opinions outright, she had just enjoyed playing them for the fools they were. She laughed at them secretly, watching them as they used their power and influence to make her life easier.

  Eventually she had been given a nice flat to live in and a Social Security book that guaranteed her a weekly wage. She had also been given furniture, clothes and other sundry items that were deemed important to her rehabilitation. She had taken all that they had offered her with a grateful smile, but a hidden anger at them for the condescension in their words and the way they had eventually seen her off with relief and, more to the point, a studied disinterest in how she would cope alone. She knew that there were a lot of women in her position who would need far more than the zealous, but short-term caring of these fucking imbeciles. They were only trying to make themselves feel better; the people they used to make themselves feel useful and needed were forgotten about almost overnight.

  Imelda had sold almost everything they had given her at the first opportunity, apart from the bed and a chair. She had then taken the money offered and scored herself a decent bit of skag with the proceeds. After all the months on methadone, she felt like she had finally come home. She had then settled herself into a routine; she scored, she went out to earn, and she scored again. Not like she had in the old days, of course. She knew her limitations, she always had. She knew her market better than anyone. She was still in pretty good nick bodywise, but her face left a lot to be desired. She had good bone structure, and she looked as though she had once been a good-looking girl, but she was a realist and she knew that the scars and broken bones she had incurred had not exactly helped to make her look like she was worth more than a few quid. That had been the whole point, she had been destroyed by Basil because he had known that was what would bring her the most misery. She also wondered if her destruction had actually been for his personal benefit; after all, she knew he had always had a penchant for her, the same as Jimmy Bailey. She knew that had bothered him. Her looks had caused him to want her, and he had wanted her badly. Even knowing what she was and, in her defence, she had never pretended otherwise.

  She was not that bothered about it though. Even at her best she had never turned down a trick, she would fuck anyone for any amount without any thought whatsoever. Imelda had never cared about the big bucks; she had only ever cared about covering her expenses. She had eventually made her way to Shepherd’s Market, to the Cross, and she earned her crust so she could go out and score for herself in peace. Nothing had really changed in that department.

  Imelda noticed one of the young girls on the table opposite her watching her closely but she was used to that kind of attention. The scar across her forehead was still livid enough to make people give her a second glance. She understood the curiosity, she would have done the same thing in their position. Plus she knew how deep and how noticeable it was. It was not going anywhere, she would never get rid of it. She didn’t see it any more herself, she was used to it. But she knew that for some people it was still a shock. They assumed that she had been in a car crash, had gone through a windscreen. She had played up to that old chestnut on many occasions, had talked to the interested parties about her terrible accident, and they had bought her drinks in exchange for her tragic tale. She told them she had lost her family in the crash, and they would then regret asking her about it, would wish they had left her well alone. She would take their drinks and laugh to herself as they suddenly realised that other people’s tragedies were much better if you read about them in the paper and did not have the person concerned sitting opposite you and, even scarier, they also realised that terrible things could happen to anyone, at any time, even them.

  No one was immune to heartache, and if they wanted a sad story she would provide one for them. All they had to do was buy her a few drinks. They always left before she did, that was another thing she liked about them. Her scars were what had interested them in her initially, and eventually those same scars were what made them want to run a mile. She knew she looked scary on close inspection, knew that her face told the people who were interested in her misfortune that once she had been a real beauty. She still had a vestige of her former glory, and that was why people were so sorry for her. If she had been ugly to begin with they would not have given her a second glance. Human nature was a bastard, and so were most of the humans she had ever had the misfortune to come across.

  The crowd of young girls were now dancing together, gyrating to the music blaring out of the pub with all the passion they could muster. Imelda watched them half-heartedly, her eye still on her dealer. He was engaged in a deep conversation with a redhead of indeterminate years who had a very well-developed bosom. She was drinking Guinness, which Imelda always found startling. She could never understand how women could drink pint after pint like men. She liked her drinks short and to the point, like her drugs. A double vodka could be downed in seconds, a pint of Guinness was not something you could neck quickly.

  The young girls were all sitting back down at the table opposite her once more, the music had been turned down low for some reason, and she watched them lazily as they lay back in their chairs, their languid movements and newly developed bodies causing the men nearby to stare openly at them. She knew the girls wanted that to happen, knew they counted on it, were pleased at the reaction they were getting from the men. She wanted to warn them; they would waste their youth because they did not realise just how fleeting it was, and because most people did.

  She saw one of the young girls stand up, she was walking towards her. Imelda looked away, her interest in them already waning. Then she saw that her dealer had finally extricated himself from the redhead, and was on his way out to her, at fucking last. The girls and their antics were forgotten now, she was only interested in the bit of business she was going to conduct.

  Imelda watched him as he bought another pint for himself en route, willing him to get a move on; she was bored now, she wanted to make herself feel at one with the world again. She wanted her dealer to shift his fat arse and get out here to her.

  Imelda was so engrossed in observing her dealer’s movements that when the girl she had noticed earlier stood in front of her, she did not register her presence for a few moments. She was then forced to look at her, because she was standing right in front of her face, blocking her view of the bar, her dea
ler, and blocking out the sunlight as well. She looked up at the girl with her usual blank expression, wondering what she could possibly want from her.

  She was pretty, she was not someone who would usually try and strike up a conversation with the likes of her. She wondered if the girl was going to ask her to purchase drinks for her and her friends, or cigarettes. She would do that for them, for a price, a few drinks for herself.

  Out of all the people around her, Imelda could see why they might think she was a viable option for something like that. She was sitting alone, she was not threatening, and she was probably the only woman there who was not on the pull.

  Imelda was amazed when the girl said to her quietly and with a certain rough dignity, ‘You don’t even recognise me do you, Imelda? I’m your daughter.’

  Mary was worried, she knew that Kenny was up to no good, but she didn’t know exactly what he was up to or how no good it might be. He was heading for serious trouble, and she knew that he was not geared up for it. He thought he was, they all did at that age. He had no experience of the world of skulduggery, he just thought he did.

  But he had been given an easy ride, thanks to her, and he did not understand the way of the world. In fact, he did not understand that his name guaranteed him the respect and the interest that he got, that because of his name people gave him a few minutes of their time. He thought it was because he was a fucking interesting person. Which he was, if you liked overgrown schoolboys. He was a big lad for his age, and he looked much older than his years. He had not yet realised that petty thieving and the ability to throw a punch were not enough to get him through the rest of his life. He inhabited a small world and in that world he was a big fish. He still had a lot to learn about how big fishes could be swallowed up by even bigger and better fish if they were not careful.