by Martina Cole
He lit himself a Lucky Strike and pulled on it deeply. Life was a bastard sometimes, it really was.
Michael had tracked the twins down to their aunt’s house and sat just down the road from it in his Ford Deluxe station wagon, waiting for them to emerge. He loved Manor Park, it was a very desirable area. He approved of Briony Cavanagh’s house, which must be worth all of twenty thousand pounds. In fact, this was the sort of life he thought he could get used to.
Michael Money was clever and he knew it. He had had no formal education to speak of, but he’d had the education of the pavements and the streets, which to his mind was all he needed. He was debating whether to make an alliance with the Cavanaghs and help wipe out the Rileys when the twins pulled out of the driveway in an Aston Martin.
Turning on his engine he decided to follow them, until he plucked up the courage to put his money where his mouth was and make a decision on whether to try and take them to Kenny or try and do a deal. He realised almost immediately they were going to Bethnal Green.
Boysie was humming in the car, enjoying the ease with which they travelled. They passed a police car and Boysie, being Boysie, waved at the occupants.
‘How do you think The Aunt took last night, Boysie?’ Danny’s voice was worried.
‘All right. She’s a game old bird, she knows the score.’
Danny turned a comer and looked over his shoulder. ‘We’re being followed by Michael Money in his stupid fucking car with the wood all over it.’ His voice was disgusted.
‘Let him follow, he’ll know the score soon enough. They all will, The Aunt included. Don’t worry about her, Danny. She’s shrewd and she’s crooked, like us. She’ll come round once today’s over and all this is finished once and for all.’
Danny carried on driving while Boysie made sure he had everything they needed for the final part of their exercise.
Briony went to the house in Hyde Park where she knew she would find Mariah. As she walked into the offices behind the main part of the house, Mariah raised her head and the two women locked eyes.
‘Hello, Mariah. I’ve ordered us coffee.’ Briony’s voice was normal. It was her way of saying sorry and Mariah knew this.
‘Great, I could do with a cup. We had a good night last night in all the houses. I had the receipts brought over this morning and I’ve been going through them.’
They chatted about business until they had their coffee in front of them, then Mariah spoke.
‘What happened with the boys?’
Briony smiled brightly, too brightly.
‘Not a lot. They shot McNee all right, today they’re going after the Rileys and the Moneys. But apart from that they’re great.’
‘I’m sorry, Briony.’
‘What for? They’re nearly twenty-one, old enough to look after themselves now. I mean to say, if you’re big enough to shoot a known lunatic with a sawn-off shotgun, you’re old enough for anything, ain’t you?’ It ended in a question and Mariah went round the desk and put her arm around her friend’s shoulders.
‘Do you think they can handle it?’
Briony nodded. ‘Oh, they can handle it, all right. I think that’s the trouble.’
‘Come on, drink your coffee. Like you say, they seem to know what they’re about.’
Briony sipped the coffee and put the cup back in the saucer with a clatter.
‘You know what really bothers me about it all? What Eileen would have thought. She entrusted them boys to me, on her death bed. “Look after my boys”, those were her words. I feel that if she could see them now, she’d be disappointed. You knew our Eileen. She hated any skulduggery. She was straight as a die. You know, I see her in them sometimes, the movement of their heads or an expression when I talk to them. She wouldn’t have allowed them a free rein like I did. She would have chastised them more. Seen to it they kept up their schoolwork. I protected them from so much...’
She put her hand up to her brow and leant her elbow on the desk. ‘I don’t know what to think now. In a way I expected something like this, I think. Only not so soon. I wanted to hand the clubs over to them, the night clubs, and I wanted to expand the other businesses. I wanted them legit, you see. Now they’ve taken matters into their own hands and I can’t do a thing. Only sit back and help them if I can.’
Mariah poured a large scotch and gave it to her. ‘You did your best, girl, you can’t do no more than that. Some people have it built into them. That’s what I think, anyway. Look at them American boys, what’s their names, who committed that murder back in the twenties? Leopold and Loeb, that’s it. They were sons of millionaires and they went off the straight and narrow. All you can do now, as you say, is let them get on with it and pick up the pieces if it goes wrong.’
Boysie and Danny slowed the car down as they approached the headquarters of the Rileys. They had taken over a vacant house in Shoreditch after it had been bomb damaged and now they ran their various businesses from there. Kenneth Riley himself still lived in Bethnal Green.
Michael Money watched aghast as he saw Boysie get out of the Aston Martin in broad daylight and pull the pin from an American issue hand grenade. As he threw it through the window of the building, Michael put his hands up to his face.
The Aston Martin sped away and Michael Money sat in shock and disbelief as the building and surrounding area was rocked by the explosion. Then he turned on his ignition and drove home to tell his brothers the news.
The King was dead, long live the Cavanaghs.
Liselle loved to hear her mother sing. As she sat in the recording studio and watched Kerry talking to the musicians, explaining what particular beat she wanted and whether any musician could have a solo, Liselle always felt proud.
She asked politely, as always, if any of the technicians wanted a coffee and then went in search of a cup for herself. The technicians always said no. She guessed, rightly, that like her mother they preferred a drop of the hard stuff but she asked anyway. It was good manners. Her mother had already topped herself up with a few large vodkas provided by her current amour, Victor Sanderson. Liselle didn’t particularly like him, but he owned Badger Records now and had taken more than a shine to Kerry Cavanagh, one of his star artists.
Where her mother’s love life, or more correctly sex life, was concerned, Liselle stood back. Her mother had always gravitated from man to man, never staying with any of them longer than five minutes. Her temper when in drink generally put them off. But this didn’t seem to deter Victor, which was one thing in his favour with Liselle. As she walked out of the studios in Abbey Road and went over to the coffee shop opposite, she bumped into a big black man.
‘I’m sorry, I didn’t see you there.’
The man touched his cap and walked on. Liselle forgot about him and carried on over the road to get her coffee.
She didn’t see the black man get into a large black Roadster just down the road and carry on watching her from there.
Kerry began to sing. Everything was quiet, as if a funeral was about to take place, and as she sang the opening bars of her song, Victor Sanderson sighed with contentment.
This was talent on a grand scale.
Kerry still sang the blues with a deep throaty voice, but had emerged with a sound all of her own over the last twenty years. She was up there now among the greats and her voice was a guaranteed seller. When people thought of singers, great singers, they thought of Ella, of Billie, and of Kerry Cavanagh. Her voice had wafted through dusty dance halls and expensive night spots all through the war, and she had emerged bigger than ever. Now Victor Sanderson was going to see that she didn’t go the way of Billie Holiday and her counterparts. He was going to watch her like a hawk, an investment that would make him more money than he dreamed of. On top of all that, though secondary to it, she was a great looker, and great in bed when she was sober enough. It was no hardship to him, looking out for her.
If only she could be made to go to America where her records sold like hot cakes, they would be set
. But nothing he or anyone else said would get her there. She’d go to France, anywhere in Europe, but never to the States. Jonathan la Billière had tried to talk her into going over to Hollywood for a holiday, but she had flatly refused. That had fazed even Victor. Jonathan la Billière, the biggest movie star in the whole world, and Kerry had turned him down! Even a pretend romance would have hit all the papers, Victor would have made sure of it. He’d have personally written the copy! La Billière was an old family friend; they went back years apparently. Unlike most women who would have shouted this fact out straight away, he had found it out through a mutual friend. But the fact remained, Kerry would not go anywhere near America and if you wanted a fight with her, you just tried to force that issue. They had been offered a staggering fifty thousand pounds for her to appear at Madison Square Garden and she had coolly declined. Victor could have cried.
He had even tried to speak to that sister of hers, the one who ran the whorehouses, but she had politely told him to get on his bike. Oh, in nicer words than that, but that had been the general drift.
Still, he consoled himself, Kerry was being good at the moment, she was turning up at the right places at the right time and she wasn’t always plastered. Her daughter played a big part in that. She watched her mother like a hawk. Between them they’d see her all right, and maybe get her overseas one day.
Dickie Lawson found the twins in Soho. It was early-evening and they were having a drink in Tommy Lane’s club, The Bolthole. Dickie looked at the two of them and took a deep swallow as he plucked up courage to go over to them.
The club was small and select and it cost a fiver to get in. The people who used The Bolthole wanted to be somewhere where the police, wives, girlfriends, or even Military Police during the war, couldn’t get to them. Dickie had paid over his fiver, signed himself in and now he had to walk into the lion’s den.
He could have kicked himself for trying to tuck the twins up with the bets. He felt faint every time he thought about it. Everywhere he went they were being talked about. Anyone who’d shoot a McNee in the legs and blow up Kenny Riley was guaranteed to frighten Old Nick himself, let alone a small-time hustler like Dickie Lawson. Plucking up courage, he went over to them. Boysie and Danny watched him approach them in the bar mirror. He stood behind them uncertainly for a few seconds before he spoke.
‘All right, lads?’ His voice was strangled-sounding, as if one of the twins already had a hand around his throat.
Both of them turned around at once.
‘Well, well, well, if it ain’t Dickie Lawson. Come to buy us a drink and pay over our winnings, have you?’ Boysie’s voice was loud, jocular, and Dickie took heart.
‘That’s right, lads, what you having?’
He took a brown envelope out of his jacket pocket and slipped it on to the counter. Danny picked it up and opened it, counting the money.
‘There’s only a hundred quid in here, Dickie boy.’
He bit his lip and then licked his lips which had dried in record time with fear.
‘That’s what I owed you, lads ... hundred quid.’
Boysie snapped his fingers and the barmaid sloped over and smiled at them.
‘What can I get you?’
‘Two very large scotches, my love, a half of bitter for me little mate, and whatever you want of course.’
The barmaid set about getting the drinks and Boysie turned back to Dickie who was now a deathly shade of white.
Danny laughed.
‘What we want, Dickie, is our rents. As you probably know, poor Kenny Riley is well out of the ball game now, through explosives like. He left us everything he owned. And that, I think, includes yourself.’
Dickie, seeing the light, the crystal clear, plain as day kind of light, nodded his head furiously.
‘Of course ... Of course, lads.’
He slapped his sweaty forehead with a sweaty palm and, taking out a roll of money, paid up without a murmur.
Boysie poked Dickie in the chest none too gently.
‘A word in your shell-like. We ain’t your lads, see? We are Mr Cavanagh to you. Do you think you can remember that?’
Dickie was once more nodding, harder now.
‘Yes, lad ... I mean, yes, Mr Cavanagh!’
Boysie and Danny laughed out loud.
‘Good lad! Now pay for the drinks like a good boy and then piss off. You’re beginning to annoy us. We’ll see you next week, Dickie. You won’t have to look for us, we’ll find you. All right?’
Half an hour later they were on their way to meet two girls, both good Catholics, both definitely virgins. Both waiting to be plucked like nice ripe gooseberries.
All in all, life couldn’t be better for the Cavanagh twins.
Liselle sat in The New Yorker, Briony’s latest club, with her mother and watched her get roaring drunk. She was the life and soul of the place, as usual, and eventually got up and sang a few numbers to the delight of the audience. Bessie, who now sang there with the Velvetones despite periodic threats to go home to the States, stood in the wings and smiled. Until she turned and saw the black man standing by the stage door. Then her heart began to hammer in her ears and she closed her eyes tightly.
When she opened them again the man was gone.
It was the lights playing tricks on her, that was all, but for one moment she could have sworn she saw Evander Dorsey standing there. Fatter, greyer, but Evander all the same. As Kerry called her out on stage she put a smile on her face and stepped into the lights, but the niggling thought that she had seen Evander spoilt her evening.
As they sang together, that old favourite ‘Summertime’, she looked at Liselle sitting at the table, drinking soda and looking dead on her feet, and felt foreboding wash over her.
That girl wasn’t a child any more and soon, very soon, she’d need to be told the truth. She didn’t look Negro at all, at least she didn’t to the British, but in the South she would be known immediately for what she was, and Bessie knew from experience that the girl could give birth to children as black as the African slaves who were her forefathers.
Oh, the girl needed to be told all right, and Kerry wouldn’t be the one to do it. Kerry had enough difficulty just getting through an average day. Someone else would have to tell her, but who?
As the song finished she bowed and held on to a rather drunken Kerry, stopping her from falling over.
It was seeing that black guy that made her think these morbid things, that was all.
A little later Liselle helped her mother from the club and got a taxi to take them home. Tired out as she was, she didn’t notice the black man standing in the doorway at the side of the club. If she had, she wouldn’t have realised he was the man from earlier in the day.
Evander watched his daughter get into the taxi. He walked to the Roadster once more, and the three white men sitting in it.
‘Yeah, that’s her all right. I had to be sure.’ He lit himself a cheroot with crooked and deformed fingers. ‘Tha’s my girl, no mistakin’. Looks jes like my sister.’
The three white men in the car nodded.
Evander smoked his cheroot and nodded to himself as if carrying on a conversation. Only no one was interested in what he had to say. He pulled out a hip flask and took a deep draught of cheap brandy.
He laughed softly to himself. Liselle! That bitch had named her for his mama.
Chapter Thirty-five
It was two months since the twins had taken over the East End of London. Briony had adjusted to the fact that the boys were now men, that she had very little say in what they did or, worse still, how they did it. Instead, she threw herself into the re-opening of Berwick Manor. The Manor represented a lot to her, it was the pinnacle of her achievements. She had had just about everyone who was anyone in there, and wanted it like that once more. She wanted it lit up like a beacon, with all the old crowd, and some new faces.
As she stood alone looking over the place she felt a tiny thrill of anticipation. The damage wasn’t
too bad when you got used to it. Mainly the carpeting and the wall coverings. Most of the original mouldings were still in perfect condition. In the top bedroom, where prominent cabinet ministers had spent many a sleepless night, she found a letter wedged between the windowsill and a walnut dresser. Briony picked it up and glanced at it.
It was for a Flying Officer Byron, from his wife Juliette. She smiled as she read the endearments from her. The longing for her husband’s return home. The little anecdotes about the children. It was a lovely letter written in graceful handwriting by a woman whom Briony visualised as neat in body, mind and home. She hoped that Flying Officer Byron had made it home, she really did.
She sat on the bare mattress, clutching the letter. Trying to imagine what it must be like to love a man like that. To have his children and look after his home and just dedicate your life to that one person and their progeny. It was a strange thing to her, this being married. It was something she couldn’t for the life of her imagine. Bernadette had married her Marcus and overnight she’d turned into a household drudge. Oh, she enjoyed it, Briony knew and respected that. But there was no real reason for it. She had had the girls and now took care of them, Marcus and the home. Bernadette was happy just overseeing her family. Making sure meals were prepared on time, that the house ran smoothly.
Well, Cissy did all that for Briony, and before her Mrs H had done it. If she had had to stagnate in a house just waiting for a man to breeze in and out as it suited him she’d have gone mad. Stark staring mad.
She glanced down at the letter again. The sender’s address was in Northumberland. She pushed the letter into her pocket. She’d mail it to this Juliette Byron, whoever she was. Maybe she’d want it back. Especially if Flying Officer Byron hadn’t made it home.