Survivor: Only the strongest will remain standing . . .

by Roberta Kray

  Tony worked for his uncle, Freddy’s brother, selling second-hand cars. Well, he claimed he sold them, but Lolly had walked past the place one day and seen him standing on the forecourt washing down a rusty Vauxhall Viva. More dogsbody than salesman, she reckoned, but knew better than to voice this opinion.

  ‘And don’t go messing around with any fireworks. Just watch the display and come straight home.’

  Lolly had the normal excitement of any kid on Bonfire Night. She was looking forward to it, but not to spending time with the Cecil boys. It was her intention, once they got to the green, to make herself scarce and hide in the crowd. She knew they wouldn’t bother searching for her and she could enjoy the rest of the evening in peace.

  ‘And keep an eye on Lolly. I don’t need her wandering off and getting lost.’

  Lolly frowned, wondering how on earth she could get lost in a place she knew like the back of her hand. ‘I’m not going to —’

  ‘Don’t worry, Mrs C.,’ Amy interrupted with an ingratiating smile. ‘We’ll take care of her.’

  Lolly was aware of FJ grinning and a quick exchange of looks between Tony and Amy. Something was going on and, if past experience was anything to go by, it was probably something bad. Suddenly the prospect of the fireworks didn’t seem so appealing. She shifted in her chair, made a swift decision and looked at Brenda.

  ‘I’m not feeling well. I don’t think I’ll go.’

  ‘Well enough to eat your tea,’ FJ said, clearly annoyed by this turn of events.

  And Brenda wasn’t having any of it either. ‘You’ll be fine once you get out in the fresh air. I’ve got the books to sort. I can’t be doing with you under my feet all night.’

  Which meant, in Brenda speak, that she wanted everyone out of the house. Perhaps Joe Quinn was coming round to do a bit of business.

  Amy chipped in again. ‘I’ll make sure she’s okay. I promise. Hey, Lolly, you’ve got to come. You must. I don’t want to be the only girl.’

  Lolly shrugged, knowing that she had no choice. She hadn’t lied about feeling ill; she had a sick feeling in her guts, an instinctive knowledge that she was being set up.

  ‘Good,’ Amy said. ‘That’s settled, then.’

  It was just before six when they all left the house and began walking along the high street. The temperature had dropped and Lolly shivered, although maybe that wasn’t just from the cold. Amy linked an arm through hers as though they were best friends, chatting away while the two boys trailed behind.

  ‘So how long have you known Jude?’ Amy asked.

  ‘A while,’ Lolly replied cautiously. ‘A few years. We used to live in the same block.’

  ‘I don’t really think he’s a wrong ’un. I only said it because Tony doesn’t like him. He’s jealous, you see. He doesn’t like it when other boys fancy me.’

  ‘Oh,’ Lolly murmured.

  ‘I’m sure he’s very nice. Was he nice to you?’

  ‘I guess.’

  Amy left a short pause before asking, ‘In what way was he nice?’

  Sensing a trap, Lolly answered carefully. ‘Just kind, you know, like when my mum was sick.’

  ‘That’s sweet. Did he ever kiss you?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Kiss you. Even if he didn’t, I bet he wanted to. You’re a pretty girl. I bet boys want to kiss you all the time.’

  ‘No,’ Lolly said, astonished by the suggestion. ‘I don’t like boys.’

  Amy laughed. ‘Oh, there must be some. What about the Beatles? You must like them. What about Paul McCartney?’

  ‘He’s all right.’

  ‘Or the Rolling Stones?’ Amy leaned in close and whispered in her ear. ‘I really fancy Mick Jagger.’

  ‘He’s all right,’ Lolly said again.

  ‘So what kind of things did you and Jude talk about?’

  ‘I don’t know. Films and stuff.’

  Amy gave an impatient little sigh. ‘Is that all? You must have talked about something else. Did he ever mention me?’

  Lolly hesitated for a fraction too long.

  ‘He did, didn’t he? Tell me what he said.’

  ‘Just that you were… er… yeah, kind of pretty.’ Lolly wasn’t going to tell her the whole truth. She could hear Jude’s voice in her head: Boys don’t like girls like Amy. They just want them. ‘That’s all. There wasn’t anything else.’

  ‘Sure there was,’ Amy insisted. ‘Come on, spill. I won’t tell anyone, I swear.’

  Lolly stuck to her guns. ‘No, really. Just that, just that you were pretty.’

  By now they had reached the green, which was full of people. The bonfire had already been lit and smoke was drifting in the air. There was the smell of frying onions and the fizz of sparklers. Lolly’s plan was still to slip away, but Amy was hanging on tightly to her arm.

  ‘Let’s go and see the fire,’ FJ said.

  The local kids had been collecting wood all week, everything from old chairs to broken tree branches, and piling it up on the green. Tony and FJ forged a path through the crowd while Amy dragged Lolly along in their wake. A few rockets screamed into the sky, exploding into falling stars of gold and red and green.

  FJ glanced over his shoulder. ‘You should see the guy. You’re going to love it. It’s ace.’

  Lolly didn’t pay much attention. She was too busy drinking in the atmosphere: the people, the noise, the sights and smells. The night air was cold and breath escaped from her mouth in white steamy clouds. As they drew closer she began to feel the heat from the fire and hear the pop and crackle of the flames.

  Amy had stopped asking questions. FJ kept turning around to look at Lolly. His nasty little face was red and shiny, his eyes bright with an odd kind of excitement. ‘Come on, come on!’

  Lolly should have stopped to think, but she didn’t. Caught up in the moment, her first impression of the guy was of a bundle of rags: a pair of old boots, blue trousers, a fat stomach stuffed with straw and… it took a few seconds for her to register the pale pink garment that was wrapped around his shoulders. When she did, bile rose into her throat. Her whole body began to shake. It couldn’t be! Oh, God! Her mum’s cardigan!

  Instinctively she dived towards the fire, but the heat was too fierce for her to get close. ‘No!’ she screamed. ‘No, no, stop it!’ But she knew it was too late. Already the flames were at the guy’s waist, licking at his chest, burning up the wool before her very eyes. She reached out her arms, her heart beating so wildly she thought it would burst out of her body.

  Beside her she could hear the dreadful sound of laughter. Tony had his head thrown back. Amy was grinning like a Cheshire cat. FJ was jumping up and down and pointing.

  ‘Look at it! Ha ha! The guy’s wearing Lolly’s cardi!’

  Lolly felt as though she was watching the last of her mother go up in smoke. Apart from the mother-of-pearl button, it was the only thing she had left, something so precious it could never be replaced. ‘What have you done?’ she screamed. ‘I hate you!’ The tears rose to her eyes but she didn’t let them fall. She wasn’t going to cry in front of her tormentors. She wasn’t going to give them the satisfaction.

  Instead Lolly turned on her heel and ran. Their laughter echoed in her ears as she pushed through the crowd, clearing a path with her sharp little elbows. How could they? Their cruelty was like a knife slicing though her, and all she could think about was getting away. Why had they done it? But she knew the answer. They were mean to the bone, heartless through and through. She would never forgive them, not ever, not in a million years.

  Once Lolly had cleared the green, she swerved left and ran and ran until she reached the Mansfield estate. Her lungs were bursting by the time she passed through the gates. Slowing to a walk, she tried to catch her breath. The gulping didn’t help, the great racking sobs that were shaking her body. She couldn’t think straight, couldn’t think beyond the licking flames and the grotesque laughing mouths.

  As she stumbled across the scrubby patch of grass she
could hear the sound of bangers going off like gunfire, each one making her jump. She stopped to look up at the tall tower of Haslow House, counting off the floors until she came to the old flat. There was a light on in the window, but she knew she couldn’t go there. It wasn’t her home any more. Nowhere was home.

  Lolly wrapped her arms around her chest, trying to contain her grief and anger. Hate coursed through her veins. She would never forgive them, never, and one day she would make them pay. She would get revenge no matter what it took.

  13

  Stanley Parrish had rented the same space in Whitechapel for years. He stared at the building as he approached. The block was old and decrepit, the six floors divided and subdivided into numerous offices. All were as small and shabby as each other, a testament – if one was needed – to the failure of the people who occupied them. The very walls seemed ingrained with a thousand disappointments, scarred with lost dreams and empty hopes. A sour smell always hung in the air.

  Stanley’s dreams had faded long ago. He scraped a living and was grateful for it. Once upon a time he’d had a career, first in the army and then the police. The former had been distinguished, the latter not so much. An ill-fated affair with a senior officer had seen him disgraced and booted out. Homosexuality had been illegal then, of course, a perversion that would not be tolerated within the ranks of Her Majesty’s Constabulary.

  These days Stanley didn’t often think of Richard Price, although occasionally he saw his picture in the paper. The ‘incident’, as the powers that be liked to refer to it, had been hushed up and Richard – claiming a temporary aberration, stress and depression – had managed to salvage his loveless marriage and escape with his career intact. Stanley, on the other hand, had been thrown to the dogs. Cast in the role of the younger, single, predatory male, the blame for the year-long affair had been laid entirely at his feet.

  Since then he had shied away from relationships. The fear of getting hurt again was too much to chance. The betrayal had cut deep, but that was love for you. When push came to shove, Richard had chosen public respectability above his own nature and, perhaps, his own happiness.

  Stanley walked through the front door of the block and went to the reception area to see if there was any mail or phone messages.

  Liz shook her head. ‘Sorry, Stan,’ she said. ‘Nothing today.’

  Stanley, unsurprised, gave a nod and thanked her. He climbed the stairs to the third floor, unlocked the door and went into the tiny waiting area of his office. There were three chairs and a coffee table with some old magazines stacked on top. Everything was covered in a fine layer of dust. He made a mental note to run a cloth over the place, but knew he would never get round to it.

  He went through to the main part of the office and put on the electric fire. There was a chill in the air and a forecast for snow. He rubbed his hands together, sat behind his desk and thought of the bottle of cheap brandy in the bottom drawer. A small one, perhaps, just to take the edge off. He reached down but stopped himself. Better to wait until after Mal Fury had been to see him. It was hard to disguise the smell of booze in a room this small.

  Stanley leaned back, checked his watch and saw that he still had twenty minutes to wait. He stood up, retrieved the Fury file from the half empty metal cabinet and sat down again. Flicking open the folder, he began to read. He knew the contents inside out – eleven years of false leads and dead ends – and yet remained convinced that he was missing something.

  Near the front was a list of all the Furys’ employees at the time of Kay’s abduction, as well as a list of staff Esther had fired over the previous few years: cooks, housekeepers, gardeners and handymen. Any one of them might have held a grudge. Had it been an inside job? Somebody had known the nanny’s routine, known that she always took the baby for a walk in the morning.

  There was yet another list, this one running into pages, of everyone who had visited the house over the previous twelve months. There had to be over two hundred names here, including party guests and weekend visitors. The Furys had been a sociable couple and the guest list read like a roll call of the rich and famous.

  Stanley read through them all again but nothing jumped out. The police had made their own enquiries, checking for form, but nothing untoward had been found. That, however, didn’t prove much. Not all of the ex-employees had been tracked down and anyone on the list could have been feeding information to someone else.

  He thought about Angela Bruce. There hadn’t been a great deal of progress in that direction either. He had tracked down Pym again, but the man had been curiously tight-lipped when it came to Billy Martin.

  ‘To tell the truth, I hardly knew the geezer, Mr Parrish. He weren’t around for long.’

  ‘But he and Angela were seeing each other?’

  ‘Might have been. I couldn’t really say one way or the other.’

  ‘Billy can’t have been too happy when she got fired from the Fox.’

  Pym had given him a long hard stare. ‘Ain’t for me to speak for him. You’d have to ask him that yourself.’

  ‘Bit hard when he’s gone missing.’

  ‘Just ’cause he ain’t around no more, don’t mean he’s missing. He’s just some place else.’

  ‘And you wouldn’t have any idea where that place might be?’

  ‘Like I said, I hardly knew him. People come and go. It were years ago, weren’t it? He could be anywhere.’

  Despite further probing, Stanley hadn’t managed to prise anything useful out of Pym. But he was sure the man knew more than he was letting on. There was something in his manner, a wariness that set alarm bells ringing in Stanley’s head. Why had Billy Martin up and left so suddenly? Maybe he hadn’t had a choice in the matter. Or maybe the only place he’d gone was to meet his maker.

  Stanley sighed and checked his watch again. It was at this very moment he heard the main door open, followed by footsteps on the threadbare carpet through the adjoining room. He closed the file and looked up, expecting to see Mal Fury. But when his own door, which he’d left ajar, swung open it wasn’t Mal standing there at all. Instead Stanley found himself staring up into the face of the infamous Joe Quinn.

  ‘Mr Parrish, yeah?’

  Stanley was tempted to deny it, but lying to Joe Quinn wasn’t a smart idea. ‘That’s right,’ he said, trying to keep his voice steady. He didn’t scare easily, but only a fool would be at ease in the presence of the East End gangster. ‘How may I help you?’

  Quinn walked across the room and stood in front of the desk. ‘I reckon it’s more the other way round.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  Another man appeared in the doorway, a great bear of a guy, well over six foot and with the build of a heavyweight boxer. Quinn glanced over his shoulder and then back at Stanley. ‘Oh, don’t worry about Vinnie. He’s harmless so long as you don’t make any sudden movements.’

  Stanley stayed very still.

  Quinn pulled out a chair, sat down, leaned forward and laid his palms on his heavy thighs. He fixed Stanley with his cruel, piercing eyes. It was a stare so menacing the Devil himself would have flinched. ‘You got something you’d like to tell me, Stan? Only I’ve heard you’ve been poking your nose into my business.’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  An unpleasant sound came from Quinn’s throat, half laugh, half growl. ‘And here was me thinking we were going to get along.’

  ‘Perhaps I should rephrase that. I wasn’t aware that I was poking my nose into your business. It certainly wasn’t deliberate.’