by Martina Cole
He had offered a tearful Donna his expertise along with Mario’s, and she had gratefully accepted. Now he told her exactly what to say, and what not to say on the sites. If the site manager didn’t give her what Paddy called ‘her due’, then Paddy would make it quite plain that they would answer to him. Mark Hancock was the first to find this out and now, seething with indignation, he was once more trying to pacify not only Donna Brunos, a bitch of a woman, but also Big Paddy Donovon, ex-fistfighter and champion of anyone smaller than him - which in Mark’s estimation took in ninety-five percent of the population.
‘The damp course is up, we’re starting the bricklaying in the next two days, the plasterers will be in afterwards. I don’t know what else I can tell you.’
‘How about where the money’s gone? Also who the fecking eejit was who ordered the cement.’
Mark felt himself come over faint. Paddy’s voice was low, but the menace in it was evident nonetheless.
Donna picked up a file to disguise the shaking of her hands. She fiddled with the papers inside while she waited for Hancock to answer.
‘Look, Mr Hancock . . .’ Her voice was shaking along with her whole body and she swallowed deeply before going on. ‘My husband has handed over the running of all his businesses to me. I really need to have these questions answered. The fact that the cement has already been paid for, and that three hundred yards has gone astray, is obviously of paramount importance.’
Mark Hancock wiped a dirty hand across his face. ‘It’s the perk of the job normally that cement would go to another site, but as it didn’t, I sold it off myself.’
‘Huh!’ Paddy’s exclamation was like a gunshot in the small Portakabin. ‘If I know you, Hancock, you already had the buyer when you made the order. It’s the old story. When the cat’s away . . . Especially as this cat is away for a long stretch. Well, you listen to me, and you listen good, boy. I’m personally employed by this young lady to look out for her businesses and I intend to do just that. You get word around the sites that all the paperwork had better be in good shape or I’ll rip the head off the first bastard to try and do her down. Georgio gave us all jobs, even when we’d been in stir, and now you try and have her over. Well, the buck stops here and now. As for the plasterers . . . paying them up front! I’ve heard fairy stories in the Old Country with more credence than that one! But as the money’s been paid then they have to do the work, no matter whose pocket it comes out of. And believe me when I say I want that plastering to shine like glass, the job’s that good. So you’d better bring a good firm in. Now get out of me sight before I brain ye!’
Mark Hancock left the Portakabin as fast as his dignity would allow.
‘Thanks, Paddy. I don’t know what I’d do without you,’ Donna told him.
He grinned, showing surprisingly white teeth.
‘Listen, me little pickaheen, by the time I’ve finished educating you, you’d be able to run fecking Wimpey’s!’
Donna grinned back, but she wished desperately that she had as much faith in herself as Big Paddy did. Just talking to the likes of Mark Hancock terrified her, more so in case she forgot what Paddy had told her to say. But as the big fella had pointed out, if she wanted the men’s respect, the only way she would get it was to do the talking herself. He would back her up afterwards, but the men had to think she had a working knowledge of the sites.
Well, if she kept this up, that’s exactly what she would have. Whether she wanted it or not!
Georgio listened, his whole body alert and tense. In the darkness, he could hear the irregular breathing of Timmy Lambert. He knew Timmy was awake. Georgio forced his breath to come out in regular small snores. His eyes were wide open as he tried to refine his night vision. Finally, after what seemed an age, he felt Timmy move in the bunk above him, then as he clenched his fists, was amazed to see a match flare as Timmy lit himself a roll-up.
‘You awake, Georgio?’
‘Well, I am now, Timmy.’
‘I think we should have a little chat.’
‘What about?’ Georgio’s voice was low now; he was on his guard.
Timmy slipped off the bunk and sat beside him, his big moon face visible as he pulled deeply on his match-thin roll-up. ‘Lewis is back on the Wing tomorrow, I heard the whisper. He’s only been on a laydown, twenty-eight days, that’s all. I also hear he’s after you, boyo, because of that robbery. Now there’s two camps in this dump. One is Lewis’s and the other is Lewis’s. Do you understand what I’m saying?’
Georgio didn’t answer. He wanted desperately to move his head away from the man’s breath, and the stench of his body odour.
‘The thing is, I heard another little whisper that Wilson is for the out. Now there’s something not quite kosher going on here, and I’d love to know what it is.’
Georgio rubbed his eyes roughly with his fingers. ‘So would I, Timmy. All I know is, my face was put in the frame by Wilson. That slag tucked me up. Now Lewis is jumping on the bandwagon and all. Well, he don’t scare me, we go back a long time.’
Timmy laughed softly, the sound eerie in the dimness. ‘I don’t particularly like you, Brunos, but I have to admire you. If Lewis was after me, even I’d be worried.’
Georgio laughed again. ‘Even you? What’s that supposed to mean?’
Timmy’s voice lost its friendliness. ‘What that means, arsehole, is I know Lewis and I know his clout in here. He’s got most of the cons on A Wing up his khyber, and the majority of the screws. I know he got you striped up in the Scrubs. His arm’s long, Georgio, his temper’s short, and every year he does in here it’s getting shorter. That robbery had his stamp on it, and as you already said, you two go back a long way. Now it don’t take a contender for Mastermind to suss out you’ve been a naughty boy, and Lewis has found that out. While you’re in his bad books, you ain’t safe and your family ain’t safe. It also means I ain’t safe, because we share a peter, and if he decides to burn you out, then the chances are I get burned with you. So if you have any dealings with him, I want to know.’
Georgio could understand the man’s concern. In a small part of him he was terrified of what was going to happen, but he had a plan up his sleeve, and after tomorrow he would know whether or not it was going to work.
‘Listen, Timmy, I’m tired. I’ll see Lewis tomorrow, so stop fretting your ugly head over it. All right?’
Timmy wiped a hand across his face, the scraping of his stubble loud in the silent cell.
‘I’m fucking warning you, Georgio. I know you’re a heavyweight, I respect that. But at the end of the day, we’re all hard nuts in here, one way or another, even the nancies. A few years A-Grade soon sorts out the men from the boys, and let’s face it, you ain’t ever done any bird before. So you keep me informed of what’s going on. If you go down the pan, boy, you ain’t taking me with you. Got that?’
Georgio turned over on his side. Tucking his hands under his head he said casually, ‘Loud and clear. Goodnight, Timmy.’
Timmy sat for a few seconds longer before returning to his bunk. Georgio heard the springs groan as the man’s huge bulk lay down above him.
Closing his eyes, he shuddered inwardly. He hadn’t slept properly in a month. The thought of Lewis scared him shitless. But tomorrow, if he played his cards right, everything could be hunky-dory.
For the first time in years, Georgio actually prayed.
Donna awoke to weak sunshine and a lifting of her spirits. If someone had told her a few months ago that she would enjoy doing Georgio’s job she would have laughed in their face. Yet, as she was his wife, and as everyone expected her to ‘see to’ things for him, she had felt pressured into taking everything on. Now she was glad she had. Even the paperwork for the building business was beginning to make sense to her. She needed guidance, she knew, but the day-to-day running was not as difficult as she had feared. In fact, once she had managed to sort through the offices, and had thrown out the rubbish, it was surprisingly straightforward.
Wh
en Georgio came home he would be so proud of her. She hugged this thought to herself.
Big Paddy had seen to it that she was given more than ‘her due’. Now on the sites she was treated with respect, even with awe. But that could be due to Paddy’s watchful presence, she admitted to herself.
Getting out of bed, she saw her reflection in the mirrored wardrobes. Holding her thick chestnut hair back from her face, she surveyed herself. She was thinner than ever since the trial, her ribcage visible through her skin. Pulling back her narrow shoulders she sighed heavily. No amount of thrusting out would ever make her breasts look full. She was still a thirty AA cup, the same as she had been when she was fourteen. All her friends had blossomed, but not Donna. She had hoped that the advent of children would have given her at least a small cleavage. But it wasn’t to be. She liked her legs though, she had always liked them. They were long, slim, and nicely shaped. She looked good in shorts, though she rarely wore them. Georgio always said her breasts were lovely, juicy he had called them, and she had always blushed at this. His rough words had embarrassed her even as she had loved hearing them.
She wrapped her arms around herself in despair. If only things were as they had been . . . Georgio would be getting up now, coughing and spluttering his way to the bathroom, his long muscly body naked. She had always watched him dress, even when she was really tired she had watched him, drinking him in with her eyes. She had never once, in all the years with him, grown bored of looking at him. In fact, she had loved him more as the years had gone on.
She admitted to herself that he had taken her for granted, but that was men, apparently. Dolly said that her husband wouldn’t have noticed if she had fandangoed across the front room in the nude. Unless she had stood in front of the TV, then there would have been hell to pay.
Georgio, though, had always treated Donna with respect, had respected her feelings. Had never let her know when he was unfaithful. Though with the intuition of women, she had known, she had known immediately. It hadn’t happened that often over the years, but when it had it had grieved her. Hurt her deeply. Yet, in a funny way, she had understood why Georgio had done it. He was a man who needed people, needed adoration, and he was a man who got what he wanted.
She had always thanked God for Georgio, thanked Him because He had seen fit to give him to her, little Donna Fenland. A nobody. Georgio had even stood by her when she had lost the babies, and she knew he had dearly wanted children. Being a mixture of Greek and Irish Catholic, it was a certainty he would want children. Yet he had not discarded her in favour of a fertile woman, had never once brought the subject up, even when they had rowed. Which wasn’t often. She was scared to row with Georgio, scared to give him any excuse not to want her.
Now she was deprived of him as she had always feared she would be. But it was the police and the courts who had taken him away, not some large-breasted, blonde model type with hormones bursting out of her every orifice. That had been Donna’s biggest fear all her married life. Yet she almost wished he had left her now; in a funny way, she wished he had gone off with another woman. That would be preferable to thinking of him stuck in that prison on the Isle of Wight. Her Georgio, her free agent. Georgio who had a boat, Georgio who always liked to travel, Georgio who walked across the fields every Sunday after his dinner because he liked being in the air, liked his freedom.
She bit back the tears, their hot saltiness making her cough. Walking to the mirrored wardrobes, she stared into her own face. The eyes were black-rimmed, but still a deep blue. Her cheekbones were prominent, more so now she had lost so much weight. Her lips were dry and cracked from where she cried in the night, and chewed on them to stem the heartwrenching sobs of loneliness. Leaning her forehead on the cool glass, she took a deep breath. Georgio would be home once his appeal was over with; he would be home. She said it over and over like a mantra. She had to believe that, she had to.
If she ever stopped believing it, she would take a length of rope and hang herself. It was no idle threat; it was the truth, a deep inalterable truth.
Without Georgio Brunos, she was nothing.
She was hanging on by a minute thread. If Georgio lost his appeal the thread would snap and with it her reason. Her earlier joy on waking was gone now. The thought of her husband’s pleasure in her work, in the businesses, gone also. Because if he didn’t come home, the businesses, the house, the cars, all they possessed, were nothing.
All she had ever wanted in her life was him.
Donald Lewis was fifty-two years old. He wasn’t a big man in stature, but what he lacked in size he made up for in reputation, and his reputation was one of the hardest. It had taken the Sweeney, the Flying Squad and the Serious Crime Squad eleven years of intensive work before they had brought him in. He was involved in every racket known to man, and a few that were as yet unknown to the police and public in general. He was an international villain, having seen the action over the Pond as a viable proposition before most of his contemporaries. He dealt in anything and everything, from women, to drugs, to boys, to guns. He was noted for his almost surgical cleanliness, and also his dry sense of humour. He liked young men, handsome young men, and his stint in Parkhurst had been likened to a busman’s holiday by the screws.
Lewis’s sheer force of personality gave him the edge over bigger, more violent men; that and his sadistic mind. He was dapper, almost feminine in his dress. He was also shrewd. Donald Lewis had been unable to write his own name before going into Hollandsy Bay Borstal at fifteen; there he had had the three Rs beaten into him, and had never looked back since. He had a natural hatred of any kind of authority, a hatred of women, and also a hatred of most of his contemporaries. Diagnosed as a psychotic, he had spent a lot of money to make sure he wasn’t transferred to Broadmoor. Though the regime was much more relaxed there, you had next to no chance of either escape or, more importantly, parole.
He was a Double A Category prisoner, Maximum Security, which only left four prisons in England which could hold him. He had decided that he would have a stint in Durham in a few years, for a change of scene. Other than that he had no plans for the future except to keep himself alive, run his nefarious businesses, and stay on top of everything going on around him. Lewis was the Baron of Parkhurst, controlling the trade in drugs and tobacco. He also controlled his wing.
He was sitting at his small table now, waiting for his breakfast which was always cooked to perfection in the wing kitchen by a prisoner called Roberts. He was doing a ten stretch and had taken up cookery as a pastime. Being Double A Grade, Lewis could order in food, and the screws bought it for him in Sainsbury’s. It was a joke among them but they accepted it as part of their job. If it kept the lifers happy, they were happy, and the world was an easier place.
As Lewis sipped his tea he smiled.
The laydown had been a pain but he had managed to get a lot of work done. Section 43, which dealt with A and Double A Category prisoners, stated that they could be moved for twenty-eight days at the discretion of the prison governor to a stipulated prison of their choice. Hence the laydown. They were taken away and put in solitary, generally in Wandsworth, which satisfied the governors that they could never plan an escape. The reasoning behind this was that they could be taken at any time of the day or night, with no advance warning. Section 43 was brought in ostensibly for terrorists, but any Maximum Security prisoner was liable to the rule.
His laydowns were a joy to Lewis; he had already bought himself enough staff in the prison service to assure himself an easy stay. His radio was left with him, as were his writing materials and his books. His food was decent and he drank tea and whisky by the gallon. It was the mark of his situation, his reputation, and his considerable bank balance, that he was allowed to live in relative ease.
Having taken to reading in his first year of prison, he was now a knowledgeable man who saw his lack of education as the reason behind his criminal career. Now he craved knowledge as a thirsty man craves water, and used it to further his own
ends. It had never occurred to him that with an education he could have been a legitimate businessman; he saw his lack of education as the reason to work doubly hard to be a success in his illegal businesses. Such was the temperament and mentality of Donald Lewis.
‘Here’s your breakfast, Mr Lewis.’ The younger man placed a plate of bacon, eggs, tomatoes and mushrooms on the table.
Lewis smiled up at him and without a word picked up his knife and fork and tucked in.
The other man stood watching until he had started eating then, sighing with relief, left the cell and made his way back to his own breakfast. It was always a toss up whether Lewis would eat the breakfast or decorate the cell walls with it. Walking into the small kitchen, the cook cursed loudly; his sausage was gone as was his bacon.
‘Thieving bastards!’
He smiled briefly as he heard laughter coming from the other cells. He inspected the rest of his food before beginning to eat. They were capable of anything in here in the name of a joke, from spitting on the food to putting LSD in your baked beans. He was just nervous at having Lewis back from his laydown. Everything was topsy-turvy this morning.
Lewis was mopping up the egg yolk with a slice of bread when he turned to see his minder, Harry Clarkson, standing in the doorway.
‘I’ve brought Brunos, Mr Lewis. Shall I tell him to wait out here?’
Lewis laughed. Putting the bread delicately down he said, ‘No, Harry. Why don’t you ask him to wait in the governor’s office?’
Harry stood still, blinking nervously.
Lewis sighed. Harry was all brawn and no brains but he was a good old stick and would murder for a packet of fags. So he smiled and said, ‘Bring him in, Harry mate, and wait at the door.’