by Jessie Keane
Kit worked some spit into his mouth and managed to speak. ‘Takes two,’ he said.
‘Yeah, well, we’ve done all that.’ Tito tipped his head to the left, indicating the crumpled corpse that was Gilda. ‘And that’s not going to be happening again, is it? Which just leaves you. So hold out your left hand, you cunt. It’s going to be a long night for you.’
Kit’s fists were clenched. He looked at Tito with dumb insolence.
‘Open his hand out,’ said Tito, and they all piled in, Kit was powerless to stop them. They held his hand out, palm up. Tito moved in with the poker, and Kit could feel the heat of the damned thing where he sat.
Delicately, almost lovingly,Tito laid the white-hot tip onto the flesh of Kit’s palm.
Kit thought he was going to pass out. The agony was almost unbearable. He was panting, unable to help himself. Tito held the poker there for what felt like hours, but it was seconds, just seconds.
Then the poker lifted, and it felt to Kit that half his skin had lifted with it. His hand throbbed hotly, sending dancing waves of pain shimmering up his arm. He gulped, swallowed, heaved in a mouthful of air. Sweat had broken out all over his body, and now the nausea followed. He looked at his hand. It was already starting to blister. His head drooped. He blinked. His crotch was wet. Involuntarily, humiliatingly, he’d pissed himself.
‘Only I don’t believe you’re left-handed,’ Tito was saying conversationally. ‘What would I say, in this situation? The same as what you’ve just said. I’d save my good hand. So let’s get started on the right one, shall we? Before we move on to other things.’
The heavies piled in, exposing his right palm just as they’d done his left. Tito moved in, grinning as Kit thrashed about in the chair, unable to stop any of this happening.
‘No good fighting,’ said Tito. ‘You’ve asked for this, boy, and now you’re going to get it.’
The poker came down against Kit’s cringing skin and this time Tito was in no hurry to lift it up. This time he yelled out with the pain. Couldn’t help it.
The smell was bad. The scent of his own cooked flesh filled his nostrils as Tito pressed the thing down hard onto his palm. It smoked, and it sizzled.
Jesus.
Kit was breathing hard, like he’d just run a mile. Both hands were a sea of agony now. Pain seized him, hugged him like a lover.
At last,Tito raised the poker. Smiled right into Kit’s sweat-stinging, watering eyes.
‘Now it gets even more interesting,’ he said. He looked at a small bottle on the table. Kit’s eyes followed Tito’s.
Lighter fuel.
Tito walked over, picked it up. Sauntered back to Kit. Unsnapped the bottle and held it above Kit’s head.
I don’t want to burn, thought Kit. Oh, shit no. Please don’t let me burn.
There was a knock on the door, and another heavy slipped inside.
Kit was nearly out of it. Almost fainting, his head rolling around like a punch-drunk boxer’s.
‘Tito,’ said the heavy. Tito’s hand stopped moving. He paused. ‘Ward’s shown up.’
Michael was waiting in the club below. Tito joined him at the bar.
‘Give Mr Ward a drink,’ he said to the barman, slapping Michael warmly on the back in greeting. ‘What is it, Michael? Whisky?’
‘Not for me,’ said Michael with a calm smile. ‘I’ve come for a boy of mine. Kit Miller.’
‘Ah.’Tito signalled for the barman to set him up a tumbler of Southern Comfort. ‘Now, Michael, I’ll be straight with you. I’ve had trouble with that little cunt. He’s been fiddling around with Gilda – you know Gilda.’
Michael nodded, thinking, Kit you fucking fool. ‘Of course.’
‘You won’t any more. I don’t do sloppy seconds.’ Tito drank down his whisky in one hit.
‘He’s young and he’s foolish,’ said Michael. ‘However, I don’t want any harm coming to him. We can come to some arrangement over this.’
‘Only my thinking is, I’m going to rearrange his face, Michael. I’m sure you understand.’
‘I do. Absolutely. But he’s a valuable man to have around and I don’t want to lose him.’
‘I can appreciate that,’ said Tito.
‘So what can we do here? Come on, Tito. Be the bigger man, yes? What can I offer you in return for your leniency in this matter?’
Tito blew out his cheeks. ‘I dunno . . .’
‘Come on, Tito. We’re businessmen. We work together. And we have other connections too, don’t we? Deeper connections. I’d hate for us to fall out over this – it’s nothing. So come on. Name your price.’
Michael was mad at him, Kit understood that much. He also understood that he was lucky to be breathing as Tito’s thugs untied him and hustled him tripping and stumbling down the stairs and out into a car. Michael was already in the back, one of his boys at the wheel.
‘What are you, a fucking idiot?’ Michael was smoking furiously. ‘I expected better of you.’
Kit felt bad that he had let Michael down. But right now he was living in a world of hurt. Both hands were blistering and the pain was beyond belief. He’d be no use to anyone for quite a while. He thought of Gilda, lying there disfigured and dead. He’d loved her, really loved her. And he had failed to protect her from this.
That fuck Tito.
‘You got nothing to say for yourself?’ asked Michael.
‘I’m going to kill that bastard,’ said Kit.
Michael slapped him once, very hard, across the face.
‘You say anything else stupid like that and I’ll kill you,’ he said, his eyes like flint. ‘You got off lightly. You deserved to be pulled up, you behaved like a cunt. You cost me dear. I’ve had to hand over a lot of wedge to pull your sorry arse out of this shit. Now don’t start coming over all Magnificent Seven with me, because I’m telling you, do that and you’ll have more than Tito and his boys to deal with. You clear on that?’
Kit swallowed and nodded. ‘Daisy tip you off?’ he asked at last.
‘She saved your arse big time.’
Kit was shaking his head. ‘He killed her. He killed Gilda.’
Michael was silent for a long moment. ‘Just be thankful you didn’t join her.’
But Kit kept thinking of her, his beautiful Gilda, crumpled like a disused toy in the corner of the room. His hands hurt like fuck and his pride was smashed. He’d wet himself in terror, like a little kid. His hatred for Tito Danieri knew no bounds.
He was going to get even, sooner or later, whatever Michael said.
He promised himself that much.
93
Vanessa had brought to Cornelius’s attention that their daughter was keeping company with an unsuitable young man. He was coloured – that was bad enough. Cornelius put out a few feelers and soon discovered that the man was a thug by the name of Kit Miller, and he had heard from one of his underworld contacts that his old comrade Tito had caught his girl Gilda cheating with Kit. He questioned Tito about it, but found him surprisingly close-mouthed.
Tito only shrugged. ‘These things happen. The incident passed off, and there are plenty more girls.’
The incident passed off.
Cornelius didn’t think the incident would have passed off quite that easily. He knew Tito, and he’d seen Gilda with him on many occasions. The woman was beautiful, golden, a prize – a cut above the usual gangster groupies who swarmed around men like him.
But Cornelius didn’t continue with the questions; he knew better. Tito could go off into spectacular bursts of temper at a moment’s notice. He couldn’t imagine that Tito would have taken the news of his mistress’s infidelity lying down.
And Kit Miller had bandaged hands. Cornelius had him watched discreetly as he moved around town. His hands were bandaged for over a month; after that, the wraps came off.
‘Looks like his palms have been burned,’ said Cornelius’s informant.
‘I want to know more about him,’ said Cornelius to his man, and back came t
he information that Kit Miller had come out of a children’s home and started throwing his weight about on the streets of the East End, before working for Michael Ward – another powerful gang lord who might or might not have some business links to Tito – and quickly progressing up the ranks until he was head of breakers.
‘They break legs,’ said his informant, a weedy little man who ran an investigation agency working on the shadier borders of government. ‘Hence, breakers. But he’s gone on to greater things, apparently. Ward trusts him. Miller’s his number one man.’
Nothing would get Vanessa up to town these days, and Cornelius rarely bothered to go home at weekends any more, preferring to stay in a cottage he rented on the wilds of the windy Kent coast. But this particular weekend he thought the situation with Daisy was serious enough to warrant a visit to Brayfield.
He still loved the place; adored it. Passing by the gatehouse, he thought of his beloved mother, long gone now. Every day he missed her sound common sense and ever-indulgent love. The gatehouse had stood empty since her passing.
Perhaps now would be the time to gift it to Daisy, to give her the feeling of a stake in the place, her own home, of course, but conveniently out of London and – better still, because Daisy was a loose cannon and he knew it – within her mother’s eyeline.
Vanessa was waiting for him in the gold-and-eggshell-blue morning room with the French windows that led out onto the garden. It was exquisite out there, the lawns manicured, the long borders overflowing with an artfully themed blend of pinks, mauves and whites. Vanessa poured all her love into that garden, and it showed. He went to where she sat on the love seat, seed catalogues spread out all around her.
‘Oh – hello, darling,’ she said, looking distracted as he bent to kiss her cheek.
‘How are you?’ he asked. It was like looking at a stranger. Once, he knew he had loved this woman. But there had never been a strong physical bond between them. For such an intensely sexual man as him, that had rung the relationship’s death knell. The sad truth was, her sex drive had always been low; and his was very high indeed, even in middle age.
‘I’m fine,’ she said, and he could see that she was having to tear her eyes from the catalogues, having to wrench her mind from the garden and the following season. ‘You’re here about Daisy?’
Cornelius nodded and told her all that his contacts had told him.
Vanessa listened, thin-lipped, while he spoke.
‘What are we going to do?’ she asked when he finished speaking. ‘I’m worried about her. I don’t know what she’s going to do next.’
‘I think it’s best we give her a project. Distract her. I thought Mama’s gatehouse.’
‘But will she leave London? What if she’s in love with this . . . common awful person, this thug Kit Miller?’
‘Daisy may be a bit wild, but she’s not stupid. There’s no future in it. He could never keep her in the manner she is accustomed to. And that would finish it before it started. She’s used to a certain level and although she may be enjoying a touch of slumming now, it won’t last.’
‘You sound very sure,’ said Vanessa doubtfully.
‘I know Daisy. Please – just forget it.’
94
Richard Dorley was on the Rotherhithe ferry when it occurred to him that he was being watched. Twice before, he had felt that when he left his digs he was being followed.
Now, he could see two men standing by the rail, chatting. Every so often, one or other of them would lift his head and look straight at Richard. He knew he wasn’t imagining it.
He had hoped to have heard from that newshound Sammy Bell by now, and he was just killing time. A thick mist rose off the river this morning, foghorns calling mournfully. The sun was a tiny butter-yellow dot high up in a pall of grey cloud. He could see his breath in front of his face. Autumn was coming and still he had nothing to tell his wife. He was killing time, riding the ferry, taking in the sights and smells of the river.
But now . . . these two.
They were watching him.
They were going to mug him, that was it. Take his money. This was a big city, he knew things like this could happen. They’d rough him up, snatch his wallet. He felt a stab of fear as one of the men glanced at him. The man’s face was expressionless, like a statue’s: there was no feeling there. No mercy.
The ferry docked and Richard hurried down the walkway, shaking, his legs unsteady, trying to get some distance between him and them. He walked as fast as he could, head down, not daring to look back, carefully keeping among the bustling crowds. Suddenly, the two men were walking on either side of him.
‘Hello, Tony,’ said the bulkier one loudly, smiling, grabbing his arm.
‘We ain’t seen you in ages,’ said the other.
‘Christ, we ain’t seen you in years, you old dog,’ said the bulky one.
Richard stiffened.
‘Keep walking,’ hissed the smaller one close by his ear, and he felt something – Oh, Jesus, was that a knife? – pressing into his side.
He kept walking. Didn’t know what else to do. The crowd was thinning around them. He was too afraid to cry out for help. They hustled him along, chatting away as if he was an old acquaintance.
‘Let’s get a drink, shall we?’ said the bigger one, and suddenly they were peeling off, away from the crowds, and then they were in an alley, restaurant businesses backing onto it, big industrial-sized bins lining it, huge silver chimneys already exhaling steam into the still morning air.
‘Look,’ started Richard.
Suddenly they were hitting him. He tried to run then, but they knocked him over and he fell to the ground, jarring all the breath out of his body. He curled into a ball on the cobbles and then they started kicking him. The pain was monstrous, never-ending.
Richard thought with startling clarity: I’m going to die here.
His whole body throbbed with pain. A steel-capped boot struck his jaw and he felt a distinct snap. A howling crescendo of agony enveloped his head.
‘No . . . please . . .’ he groaned, hardly able to get the words out.
But it went on. And on.
Finally he lay there, bloody, broken: finished. Too hurt even to plead for mercy. Consciousness was flickering in and out like a faulty light switch. He was retching weakly.
The big one grabbed his hair, jerked his head up. It felt like his head was exploding. He saw a face swimming in front of his eyes.
‘Now listen,’ said the man. ‘You drop this, OK?You been bothering a friend of ours, you know what I mean?’
Richard nodded faintly. Couldn’t speak. Couldn’t believe this was happening to him.
‘You know.’The man was nodding too. ‘So let it go, right? Be a good boy. Walk away, while you still got legs to walk with. Understood?’
‘Please . . .’ Richard muttered. There was blood stinging his eyes, and he could taste it. His whole torso was afire. It was agony.
‘It stops here,’ said the man. ‘You got it?’
‘I got it,’ panted Richard, and passed out.
95
It was a long hard haul but eventually they moved Charlie to Acklington, an old RAF Base where Hussein of Jordan had trained to be a pilot. It was a semi-open prison in Northumberland and he was still graded as Category C; no longer seen as an escape risk, no longer so readily inclined to violence.
For Charlie it was a revelation. He had freedom for the first time within Acklington’s walls. Authority was relaxed. There were no dog patrols, no walls, only a single wire fence. Charlie was given work in the prison canteen, but he preferred to be outdoors so applied for work in the gardens and was soon given a try.
All the while, he was thinking about parole. Every time he was given his F75 – an assessment of suitability for release and behaviour in prison – he answered honestly. He’d done his time well, kept his head down. There had been a couple of minor rucks, and his run-in with John Corah, but overall he’d behaved himself, worked hard, passed a
couple of GCE exams in maths and geography, shown that he could become a good citizen once more.
‘Suppose someone shoved you in a bus queue,’ came the question as one day he stood before the board. ‘What would you do?’
Charlie, spivved up to the nines, his thin wiry hair combed, his face washed, his prison garb neat and clean and freshly pressed, looked around at the board. The governor was there, and a doctor, a psychiatrist, an education officer, welfare officer, works instructor and prison officer, plus the probation officer, Mrs Mason, who had been his staunch supporter over his last couple of years inside.
‘I wouldn’t shove them back,’ he said, and smiled slightly. ‘I’d value my freedom too much for that.’
He knew what they wanted to hear. He knew this was an elaborate game, like snakes and ladders. Answer correctly, toe the line, be nice, and you might ascend the ladder to freedom. Say something wrong, and you’d slide down the snake and be stuck in this pesthole until you died.
‘Where will you live?’ prompted Mrs Mason, her eyes saying, Go on.
They’d discussed this before; she’d guided him through the sort of things they’d be asking and told him they’d be very concerned about where he would live, what he was going to do with himself, once released.
‘I have close family,’ he said. ‘They’ll put me up until I can find my feet.’
Joe had continued to visit him inside. Good old Joe. The screws and even the governor knew that he had a brother. He never mentioned his sister. After that single visit, Ruby hadn’t come near, the cow.
It took nearly a year. The board recommended Charlie to the Local Review Committee, which would be made up of the entire review panel who had sat before, plus a magistrate, a judge, a Home Office official and a high-ranking police officer.
That obstacle surmounted, Charlie’s case was recommended to the Joint Committee. It ruled in his favour, and then the whole thing was assessed again by the Parole Board. Finally, a recommendation was made to the Home Secretary.