McAllister walked into the cell and slipped Georgio a piece of paper.
‘Come on, you two,’ he shouted. ‘What you think this is - a fucking holiday camp! Up and out, now!’
Timmy sat up in his bunk, his fat belly quivering with indignation.
‘Up yours, McAllister. Take your fucking bawling somewhere else.’
The man left the cell and Georgio slipped the piece of paper into his underpants.
‘Fucking mouthy git, coming in here like he owns the bloody place. Bleeding ponce, that’s what he is!’
Timmy broke wind loudly. Disgusted, Georgio picked up his chamber pot and hurried from the cell. He queued on the landing to empty his chamber, chatting amicably with Sadie.
‘He stinks! How do you stand it?’
Sadie lifted her shoulders in a Gallic gesture and said, ‘Why do you think I don’t bother too much about getting celled up with him? But he ain’t a bad bloke, Timmy. You’ve just got to know how to handle him.’
Georgio laughed. ‘I can handle him, it’s his go-karts I can’t stand.’
Timmy ambled out and joined them.
‘Something crawl up your arse and die then, Timmy?’ This from a young lag called Peter Barnes. He was in on an eighteen and had already earned the respect of the older men.
Timmy laughed good-naturedly. ‘Yeah, a nest of cockroaches. You’ve got the best part of the sentence to come. You wait till the summer, Peter, they crawl all over you in the night. Bastard things they are.’
Peter Barnes looked decidedly shocked at this revelation and all the men laughed at him.
‘This place is running alive with them, sonny boy. Big bastards some of them are and all. Remember last year, we had the races?’
Everyone laughed again, remembering.
‘I had one, a big bastard and all, called Trigger. It outrun every other roach on the Wing. I coined it in with him. We run them during recreation. I was sorry when he died, to be honest.’ Timmy’s voice was as sad as if the roach had been a personal friend.
‘What did it die of?’ Barnes sounded genuinely interested.
Sadie shouted out: ‘He farted when it was in his pocket and gassed the poor little bugger in its matchbox.’
Everyone laughed at this, even Timmy.
Georgio walked back to his cell with his chamber pot and shut the door, shoving the wedge back in once more.
Taking the paper out of his pants, he uncurled it.
Get a number 2.
Ripping the paper into tiny fragments, Georgio put them in his mouth and chewed them up, swallowing it all.
He removed the wedge, and taking off his underpants, picked up a towel and went back out on the Wing towards the showers. He was wolf-whistled three times and minced like Sadie to make people laugh.
Once in the showers he thought about the note, then dismissed it. The only person he could trust, really trust, was Donna. Plus, she had the added bonus of being completely above suspicion. By Lewis and the Old Bill.
He began washing himself.
So Donna had been to see Alan, and now the ball was well and truly rolling.
Georgio started to sing to himself.
Alan Cox opened his eyes slowly. The room was in darkness. Getting out of bed, he padded naked to the window and pulled back the curtains. The reason he liked living in Soho was because the place never really shut. Even at seven-fifteen in the morning it was already buzzing. Street cleaners were milling around, early-morning stragglers, toms as well as doormen, were moving through the streets, and the shop-keepers were already cashing up. He stretched and yawned, his long body feeling the ache of his advancing years even as its youthful firmness belied them.
He turned back to the bed and frowned.
Lally was twenty-nine, though she swore she was only twenty-two. She had been his girlfriend on and off for two years. Earlier in their relationship, he had made the mistake of giving her a key. She had been there already, fast asleep, when he had trundled home in the small hours, and he had been too tired to throw her out.
‘Come on, Lally, up you get.’
She turned in the bed, displaying a small breast. Her short red hair was spiked and ruffled. She looked very lovely. Sighing, knowing the signs so well, Alan went out to his kitchen and made a pot of coffee. As it perked he savoured the aroma of the Colombian brew and set out two mugs.
Alan enjoyed the early morning, being able to get up without restrictions, no waiting for someone to unlock the door, no sharing with a big hairy-arsed scouser. Since being released from prison he had guarded his freedom with a fervour that Lally and others of her ilk had found hard to understand.
Taking a mug of coffee through to the bedroom, he placed it on the night table and shook Lally gently awake.
‘Come on, wake up, love. I’ve got to get moving in a little while. Got a busy day.’
Lally opened one eye carefully, shutting it immediately against the harsh daylight. Alan could see the lines appearing around her mouth and eyes.
‘You look rough, girl, you should lay off the gear.’
‘Piss off, Alan. It’s too early in the morning for lectures, even from you.’ She sat up in the bed, making no attempt to hide her nakedness.
‘Give me a cigarette, Al.’
He passed her a pack from her handbag, which she had dumped on a chair by the window. She lit up and breathed the smoke deeply into her lungs. As the coughing attack hit her, Alan shook his head.
‘You abuse yourself, Lally, but you know that, don’t you?’
She nodded her head, coughing with all her might, her face red with the effort. ‘Cup of tea and a cough, the great British breakfast!’
Alan picked up the mug and gave it to her. ‘This is coffee, Lally. You don’t drink tea, remember?’
She took another drag on her cigarette and sipped at the steaming coffee.
‘Where were you last night? I thought you’d have closed up by two-thirty.’
Alan walked out of the bedroom without bothering to answer. As he sat at the kitchen table she ambled through with coffee, cigarettes, and his bathrobe draped over her body. She hadn’t bothered to tie it up and he knew it was a calculated gesture. He tied it for her.
‘Listen, Lally, I don’t want you coming and going here as if it’s your place. I gave you the key for emergencies only. Now, if you don’t mind, I want it back.’
She sat at the table and smiled. ‘Why do we always have to go through this, Alan? You’ll get in the shower and I’ll follow, you’ll make love to me, and then I’ll watch while you cook us a bit of breakfast. Then we’ll be all right until the next time.’
Alan shook his head vigorously. ‘There ain’t going to be a next time, Lally. I don’t like this. I don’t like my space being invaded. You know what I’m like, love. I don’t want anything permanent.’
Lally sniffed disdainfully. ‘Who said that I do then? Don’t fancy yourself too much, Alan Cox. I don’t want anything permanent either. You’re not the only bloke I see.’
Alan looked into the clear blue eyes and said softly, ‘But you’d like me to be, wouldn’t you?’
Lally had to drop her eyes then, aware of the truthfulness of the statement. She stamped her foot like a child.
‘Why do you do this to me, Alan?’ Her voice was a low whine. ‘Why do you shut me out? Can’t we just try it together?’
Alan softened but shook his head nonetheless. ‘Not in a million years, darlin’. I don’t want anything permanent, and if I did it wouldn’t be with a tom, no matter how high-class she was.’
He felt bad saying that to her, because in reality he couldn’t care what her job was, but he knew it was the only thing he could say that would wound her enough to make her leave him in peace. Over the years he had known toms he would rather have over fifty so-called respectable housewives, and he’d had a few of those as well, which was why he preferred the toms. They didn’t pretend, they were real, you knew exactly what you were getting.
He saw
the shine of tears and sighed again. ‘I’m sorry Lally.’
She stood up, her dignity all she had to shield herself with. ‘I didn’t deserve that, Alan, and you know it.’
She watched the man before her, his blond hair tousled from sleep, his broad shoulders held back as if warding off a blow, his deep blue eyes with the perfectly placed laughter lines around them, and felt the pull of him. Never before had she wanted anyone so badly.
‘We can still be friends, Lally, only I want us to be proper friends who ring each other before they drop in, who don’t just land on each other’s doorsteps.’
She nodded. He had never rung her, not once. He had never dropped in to see her ever. He was trying to save her dignity and it hurt her more knowing that.
He pulled her into his arms, contrite now because he had wounded her, but sure enough of himself to know she had finally got the message. He could be the big man now, could comfort her.
‘I’m sorry, Lally, you’re wasting your time on me. No woman will ever share my bed or my life again. If any woman was going to, it would have been you, I swear. I just don’t ever want all that again.’
Lally pushed her body into his, feeling the strength of him, smelling his particular odour.
‘I understand, Alan, I won’t ever do anything like this again. I’ll still see you though won’t I?’
He smiled down into her eyes. ‘Course you will.’
But they both knew he was lying.
An hour later there was no trace of Lally in the flat, and Alan was on the telephone organising his day. He was excited about what Georgio had asked him to do. He had been too long away from the stimulus of the criminal world. Alan was actually enjoying himself.
Donna woke at one o’clock. She lay on the bed, her eyes heavy, her limbs weighted with tiredness. As she sat up she saw herself in a mirror and frowned. Her hair had dried all over the place. Pulling herself from the bed, she went into the shower once more.
She felt lighter as the water hit her in hot jets. The last of the sleep left her body and life tingled back into her muscles.
At two-thirty she was walking downstairs, dressed, made-up and immaculate. As she entered the kitchen Dolly sat at the table shelling peas. She smiled at Donna.
‘Have a good sleep?’
Donna smiled back. ‘I take it you knew about Paddy keeping guard on the house, Dolly?’
Dolly had the grace to look ashamed.
‘It’s funny, you know, but you keeping this from me hurts more than anything that Georgio or anyone else could do to me. Because I really thought we had a deep friendship, a mother and daughter relationship even. It seems I was wrong.’
Donna flapped a hand at the older woman. ‘No, don’t bother getting up. I’m going out now and I don’t know when I’ll be back.’ She smiled maddeningly as she added, ‘So don’t wait up, will you?’
Picking up her car keys she marched out of the house, leaving Dolly stunned at her words.
Two hours later, Donna was sitting in Amigo’s, nursing a white wine and soda and listening to Alan Cox as he explained why he thought someone else should be the go-between.
Alan’s eyes were all over the restaurant as he spoke to her. Even deep in conversation he kept his eye on his staff and his customers.
‘The thing is, love, I don’t think you’re cut out for this kind of thing. That’s no offence or anything, in a way it’s a compliment. But this could get a little bit scary, you know? There’s people I need to involve who’d scare Old Nick himself, do you get my drift?’
Donna watched him without saying one word.
His eyes stopped their wandering to look at her properly. ‘Are you listening to me?’ His voice had risen two octaves and he looked cross. Donna guessed most women hung on to his every word, and he wasn’t used to the reaction he was getting from her. Boredom.
‘I don’t have much choice, do I? You talk enough for a battalion. You’re like Georgio in a lot of ways. You expect people to listen, especially people like me: women, menials. Well, Mr Alan Smart Arse Cox, I’ve been listening to you for ages. If you bothered to make eye-contact now and again instead of looking at every other person in the place, you’d have noticed that much yourself.’
Alan frowned, taken aback at her words. ‘Aren’t you feeling all the ticket, love?’
Donna shook her head slowly in consternation. ‘You make me laugh, do you know that? You sit there with your handmade suit and your expensive cigar as if they’re props that will make you someone, a somebody. You talk at me, not to me, and calmly expect me to jump immediately to your way of thinking. Well, Mr Cox, I won’t. In fact, I am just about getting sick and tired of being told what I should think, what I should do, and how I should ruddy well do it.
‘I have a house that is like Fort Knox, I have a man called Lewis apparently threatening me. Oh no, not me, he’s threatening my husband with hurting me - another man who hasn’t the decency or brain capacity to mention it to the person concerned! I have a housekeeper who’s in on the conspiracy, the great “Let’s not let Donna know anything” conspiracy. Even though I am being asked by my errant husband, a man who at this moment in time is hardly in a position to call the shots, if I will kindly break him out of prison. Break the law, put my life, my freedom, and my natural honesty on the line. All for him of course, not for me.
‘And you have the gall to sit in front of me and talk at me like I’m a child, and expect me to be grateful and fall in with all your plans without a by your leave. Well, you can go and take a running jump! Is that in language you understand? Only I was never much of a swearer. Unlike you, my husband and others of your ilk.’
Alan Cox sat back in his seat flabbergasted. Then, to make matters worse, he laughed at her: a deep rollicking laugh that caused other diners to turn their heads.
Donna sat, stiff-backed and straight-faced, and stared at him. It suddenly occurred to her that she didn’t like the man before her. She didn’t like his arrogance, his manner or his clothes. Didn’t like his acceptance that anyone and everyone would automatically fall in with his plans. The way his eyes swept over every woman in the room and silently graded them on a scale of one to ten. She didn’t like him at all.
She had been going to tell him to find a replacement, but now she couldn’t. Because that would make her, in his eyes, what he already thought she was. A bit of skirt, a bit of fluff. Just a woman.
His laughter stopped as abruptly as it had started and Donna saw the Alan Cox that most men saw. His face was now stony, hard-looking. The lines were no longer soft and endearing but now gave his appearance a chiselled quality. He looked for all the world like a man who had indeed kicked another man, another human being, to death and she felt the first prickles of fear.
‘You’ve got a smart mouth, lady.’
Donna smiled, forcing herself to relax. ‘It’s probably the only thing we have in common, Mr Cox. Let’s try and build on that, shall we?’
She picked up her drink and sipped it nonchalantly, aware of his eyes boring into hers.
‘Let’s get something straight, Mrs Brunos. I don’t want you as my number two. I want a geezer, someone in the know. I need someone with experience, acumen and bravado. I want a known face.’ All pretence of being a businessman was gone now and Donna noted the fact.
‘Well, take a good look at mine, Mr Cox, because this is the only one you’re getting.’
Alan Cox looked into the white strained face before him, and his first reaction was to bellow with rage. Alan Cox was used to women like Lally, women who wanted him so badly they automatically fell in with whatever plans he had. In his mind’s eye he had envisioned telling her the bad news, giving her a bit of lunch and getting on with what he had to do. Donna Brunos, however, had pissed over his firework, as he put it to himself, and he wasn’t happy about it. He wasn’t happy about it at all.
Swallowing down his anger, he forced a smile. ‘I don’t think you understand, love . . .’
Donna pushe
d her hand through her hair in a gesture of utter weariness.
‘I am not your love, Mr Cox. Please don’t patronise me with useless terms of endearment which you probably use on the telephone to faceless operators and to your waitresses. I am a grown woman, in case it had escaped your notice. I came to you because my husband looked after your wife and children, probably with far greater respect than you are according his wife. He specifically asked me to be his go-between. I have no criminal record, not even a parking ticket. I have acumen, and I have bravado. I also have a terrible feeling that I don’t like you, Mr Cox, I don’t like you at all. That feeling is growing stronger by the second.’
Alan was aware that he had been bested. A feeling so alien to him that for a few seconds he wasn’t sure what to do.
Realising this, Donna stood up. Holding out her hand, she said, ‘I’m so glad we had this little chat. Now, when you are ready to talk business, I’ll expect to hear from you. I do hope you don’t hold grudges? I find that rather a tiresome trait in older men.’ Shaking his hand, she walked stiffly out of the restaurant.
Alan Cox sat back in his seat and watched her leave. Half of him wanted to catapult from the chair and clout a heavy hand across her face. The other half wanted to laugh.
The laughter won. Alan prided himself on the fact he had never, ever raised his hand to a woman. But Georgio Brunos’s little wife had very nearly made him break that vow.
On his dignity now, like Lally before him, he stood up and, as casually as possible, walked up the stairs to his office. In his small bathroom he looked at himself in the mirror. The jibe about the handmade suit and being a somebody had hit home. Basically an honest person, he knew that was why he was so angry. Why he had wanted to slap her.
He was fuming.
Chapter Seventeen
Anthony Calder was a big man. He weight-trained every day of his life, shutting himself in his personal gym and working out all his stresses with the pumping of iron. His head was bullet-shaped, his hair grey and cut into a very short crewcut. His teeth were expensively capped, his complexion ruddy. His nose would have given W.C. Fields a run for his money.
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