Rotten to the Core

by Casey Kelleher

  “Mrs Shaw?” He addressed Sonia. “I’m Detective Carlson, and this is my colleague, PC Fowler. I appreciate that you are with your son now, but we need to start our investigation as quickly as possible, so I hope you don’t mind if I ask you a few questions?”

  The two woman exchanged glances, both knowing that Jay wouldn’t want the police involved. Sonia knew that a number of people could have done this to him. Like his father before him, he had pissed enough people off. Kate, however, was sure that it was her brother, but as much as she could kill Billy right now, she knew if she so much as hinted at his involvement, then there would be a whole world of trouble in store for her. As angry as she was with Billy for what he had done to Jay, she would deal with him herself. The police didn’t get much information from the two women: they hadn’t expected to. This sort stick together, Detective Carlson thought, after he had asked several questions and got nothing much from them.

  Kate decided that she would go to Emma’s place for a couple of nights. She couldn’t face going home to her brother, not now. Seeing Jay in such a bad way had knocked her for six, and what if it was all down to her? She watched as the two policemen walked off and then looking back at Sonia’s pale, worried face, she knew she had to tell her the truth.

  “Sonia, I don’t know how to say this but I think I know what this is all about,” she said, looking over at Jay again.

  Sonia looked at the girl with doubt, she was sure that Kate didn’t know half of Jay’s business; if she did, she wouldn’t be sitting at his side. “I doubt very much that you do honey, Jay is a very private man; this could be down to any number of things.”

  Kate looked puzzled by Sonia’s matter-of-fact tone, there was an under-current to the reply, like she was hinting at something, but Kate continued regardless. “I think Jay needed some time to get his head around the idea before he told you, but I should tell you now. I’m pregnant Mrs Shaw: Jay and I are having a baby.”

  It was the last thing that Sonia had expected Kate to say. Jay was not the type to want to settle down and knowing how unfaithful he was to Kate, Sonia couldn’t believe he wanted to stay with her. She let the enormity of what she had just been told sink in. A baby: she was going to be a nan, bloody hell. This girl was going to need her. Thrilled at the idea of having a baby around, she couldn’t help but wonder whether Jay was going to do right by this girl. She very much doubted it.

  “The thing is, my brother had a real problem with it, said he was going to kill Jay. What if it was him that did this?” Kate looked at Sonia with such fear and sadness in her eyes that Sonia couldn’t help but think that maybe Kate was right, maybe it was him. She had heard people talking after Den’s death about Billy being involved, but it had never come to anything; even when the police had looked into it, rumours were often just that, rumours.

  “Hey, don’t you be upsetting yourself honey,” she said, resting a comforting hand on Kate’s arm.

  “Until Jay comes around and can tell us what happened, we should keep our assumptions to ourselves.”

  Knowing that people around here often had nothing better to do than talk about other people’s business, whether it was true or not, Sonia had dismissed it as spiteful gossip and lies. Could there be an element of truth? No doubt she would find out.

  Kate wanted to stay at Jay’s side, but Sonia insisted that she go and get some rest; if not for her sake, then at least for the baby’s. She fancied a bit of time on her own, to get her head round the fact that she was going to be a grandma, and she also wanted to be there on her own when Jay came round, she knew it was a bit selfish, but she was his mum after all.

  Kate reluctantly agreed to go, she was totally exhausted and could do with some rest, and her pregnancy was making her feel sick and drained all the time, she felt as if she had no energy at all. After making Sonia promise to call her the minute that Jay was awake, she made her way to Emma’s; she would stay there for a few days, and sort out what to do about Billy.

  11

  Billy was sitting alone in his office at the warehouse. He yawned loudly; it was only two o’clock but he was knackered, what a day it had been. There had been a few shipments in today and it had been a busy one. He wasn’t complaining though; he smiled as he reminded himself about the wedge they were earning. This warehouse was just one small part of their empire, and it was a nice little earner. He took a sip of his tea, which was now as he discovered with distaste, cold. Then he checked his emails once again, he hoped that all was going well for Lee and Jonny. They were both in France sorting a very lucrative business deal out, the guy they were dealing with was working for customs and excise, he was the ideal answer to a shipping problem they had concerning getting packages that were a bit dodgy to say the least. Keeping this greedy Frog happy was paramount for their business.

  Jonny and Lee had very professional business heads and could basically sell ice-cubes to the Eskimos, so if anyone could strike a deal, these two were the ones to do it. Billy was sure it would go well; after all, they were offering this guy a nice little earner. All he had to do was keep his eyes open and his mouth shut; not hard really.

  Hearing his mobile beep with the sound of a new text message, he grinned as he read it. One of the lads, Gerard, who worked the door at Goldie’s, had told him that Jay had got done over last night. No guesses about who was behind that: a very unhappy nightclub owner. Now he was officially away from the club, Billy’s plan was to fuck up every aspect of Jay’s life, he was going to teach that sorry fucker a lesson for daring he think that he could muscle in on his sister. He had already looked into Jay’s other side-lines and was feeling very smug with himself for gathering so much information. He knew about the debt collecting, which was common knowledge, but had also found out from a few sources that Jay often went round to the local parade of shops at lunchtime and gave kids as young as twelve drugs. Apparently he was handing them out like Sweets. He was like the fucking Pied Piper, befriending kids just to get them hooked; the kids always came back for more, once they were well and truly addicted he was no longer Mr Nice Guy. He was no longer so friendly to them, he’d make them pay up front, or do little “jobs” for him, like mugging people, or breaking into people’s homes or cars, whatever it took until they had paid off their debt. Jay even had a couple of girls making money for him, in a couple of grubby little flats nearby, flats that belonged to the birds he was making earn for him. He was scum, making money off those with fuck all, bullying young girls and innocent kids, ripping off anyone he came across.

  Billy was far from being an angel himself. He knew that if the police ever raided this warehouse or found about their little shipping arrangement, he would go down for years. Billy played with the big boys, ripping off the police and the government, half of whom, let’s face it, he knew were doing a lot of dodgy shit themselves, which made his activities more than okay. If you don’t take it, no-one’s going to just hand it to you, right, he would say. But he would never take from his own, and selling drugs to kids was just the lowest as far as Billy was concerned. Not only was he going to fuck up Jay’s life, he was going to enjoy every second of doing it.

  12

  Kate just could not get her head around Emma’s weird behaviour; she was shocked as she made her way back from Emma’s to her own house.

  Her visit to Emma’s on the way back from the hospital hadn’t quite turned out as she had wanted, so now she was walking home to sort out her options. She wouldn’t be staying at home if Billy was there. Not if she was right and this was all down to him, she couldn’t, it would condone his behaviour. And now Emma had let her down too.

  Emma had been in an absolute state. Her eyes were sunken and dark, her skin grey and dull, and in the five days since Kate had last seen her it might as well have been five months, by the state of her, she looked as if she had lost about a stone, her cheeks looked so gaunt and hollow.

  “What the hell has happened?” Kate asked, looking around the flat as if searching for a clue whe
n she had first arrived.

  Emma didn’t seem to want Kate to be there, she had seemed reluctant to let her in, and Kate could see why now. The curtains were drawn, making the room dark. There were cups filled with cigarette butts, mouldy food on plates on the floor, it was much worse than normal. The place stank. Her friend was sitting there, strewn over the armchair, her legs dangling over the arm; she didn’t even bother to look at Kate, just sat there trance-like and inhaling long drags from her cigarette.

  “What do you mean ‘what’s happened’? Nothing’s blooming well happened,” Emma smirked. She knew what Kate was getting at, but she couldn’t be arsed to go into it. It was her house and she could do what she wanted. She didn’t have to explain herself to anyone, as far as she was concerned. Kate was too boring for her own good, Emma thought, as she put her fag out on the side of a dinner plate on the table next to her. Then, picking up her fag packet, she immediately sparked up another.

  Kate could see her friend was on something. She knew that some of Emma’s friends smoked a bit of weed now and again, but Emma had never done anything other than that as far as she knew, and it had been a sociable thing when she had done it in the past. Now, Emma’s eyes were glassy, her pupils dilated.

  “Are you on something, Em; have you taken anything?” The concern in Kate’s voice turned to anger. What the hell was Emma playing at?

  “Oh, chill out, Kate; it’s just a bit of coke, nothing to get so het up about.” Her friend laughed at her.

  Kate was furious; since when did Emma start using coke, if she had seen her in a nightclub dabbling in it, she still wouldn’t have been happy about it, but it would have made more sense. Emma was easily influenced and would have tried whatever her mates were doing; Kate would have put it down to being a one off while she was out drinking and not thinking straight. It was two o’clock in the afternoon, and Emma was sitting in her dirty flat alone and clearly she was off her face.

  “Emma, what the hell is going on? Since when did you start doing coke?”

  Emma was bored of Kate’s tone: she may be her friend but she wasn’t her mother, and Emma in no way had to explain herself to her. “Kate, I don’t know if you’re aware of this or not but I’m a fucking adult and I don’t need to explain myself to anyone, I’m having a shit day so I’ve done a bit of coke, no big deal. Okay, Miss Goody-Two-Shoes?”

  Kate couldn’t believe it: what had got into her friend? Emma hadn’t seemed herself at the beginning of the week when she had come around either, she realised; what was she doing? “Emma, I came to speak to you about Jay.” Kate spoke quietly.

  “Jay got attacked last night, he’s in hospital.” Kate fought back tears as she spoke, then she felt anger bubble inside her as her friend had no reaction to the news.

  Emma sat there quietly, tapping her foot whilst focusing on the picture frame on the window ledge; she wanted to ask how he was, what had happened, but she knew if she spoke about him now she would give the game up. She knew that she had started to fall for Jay herself, and right now Kate didn’t feature in the bigger picture. She was sure Jay felt the same way about her, but giving the game away to Kate would fuck things up for them before they had even started. She continued to stare ahead blankly, and didn’t appear to react to the news.

  “Don’t you give a shit, Emma? My boyfriend is lying in hospital as we speak. He’s black and blue, he could have been killed. Don’t you even care?”

  Emma stared at Kate. She was feeling higher than a kite, which was the only thing allowing her to keep herself together. She had only just snorted a couple of lines five minutes before Kate had knocked on her door. She had been looking forward to the feeling of complete oblivion that she was craving more and more as the days passed. She hadn’t realised how addictive the stuff she was taking was, but she knew that when she wanted to she could give it up easily: it was only coke. Jay had given her a few lines the night he had stayed, and they had had the most amazing sex. Emma was hooked. She had always been good in bed, it was her thing, and she wanted so badly to be wanted, needed in fact, that she would pretty much do anything. Jay had been persuasive, told her a few lines would loosen her up, and even though she knew that she would do almost anything to please him regardless, she took it anyway. She had never felt such a high, and they had fucked all night. He had been nice enough to leave her a few bags when he left the next day, but this was her last one and Kate was putting a real dampener on her high now; she wished her friend would just go.

  Emma was staring at the floor once again, looking as if she were in a trance. Kate knew she had to get out of there before she grabbed her friend and shook some sense into her. She had taken one last look of disgust at the squalor Emma was living in then made her excuses and left. Not that she had needed to make any excuses; Emma had acted as if she couldn’t wait for her to leave, quickly showing her the door and slamming it almost off its hinges behind her. She could have really done with a friend today, she thought sadly, as she put the key in her own front door. For the first time ever, her friend wasn’t there for her.

  Kate breathed a huge sigh of relief as she looked around the lounge and kitchen once she was home, thank God Billy was still out. She went upstairs to her bedroom, picking up a large bag from the landing cupboard on her way.

  Her bedroom was bright pink, as it had been since she was a little girl. Her mum had painted it after she had begged and pleaded to have a ‘princess’s bedroom’. Her room was the smallest of the three in the house, but neither she nor Billy could bring themselves to sleep in their mother’s room after her death; they had left it exactly as it was, although Kate had washed the bedding and made the bed neatly, as her mum would have. Often, she would go in there and sit on the edge of the bed. Sometimes it almost felt like her mum was there, she felt closer to her. The room still felt as though it belonged to her mum. Kate wasn’t ready to disrupt that, so she stayed put in her pink bedroom. It had always made her feel safe. Some mornings, she would wake up here and forget, and for a few minutes she would feel that nothing had changed, that her mum would be downstairs making tea and toast, grilling Billy at the breakfast table about whatever trouble he’d been in the night before. It only lasted a couple of minutes, and then it hit her: her mum was gone.

  When it had happened, her mum had been walking back from the market. It was her Friday morning ritual, Kate and Billy used to joke about it; they had stopped offering to go with her on the basis that she was so shameless with her haggling, they had both been embarrassed. She would go down there first thing every Friday morning and barter with all the stall holders for the best prices she could get. She always came home with bags full to the brim of every bit of fruit and veg imaginable, and generous cuts of meat at probably half the going rate. She was well liked, being a regular, but due to having hardly a penny to her name, she would try to get the stall holders to give her the cheapest deals possible, sometimes verging on begging.

  That morning had been different. She didn’t come home with her bright smile and her arms full of groceries. Kate remembered it like it was yesterday, although it had been just over a year. Her mum had been coming back from another of her “shopping sprees” and had keeled over: gone, just like that! Heart attack, they said later. She was only fifty four: too young to die.

  Kate wondered what her mum would think of her pregnancy. She would have been a brilliant grandma, she thought sadly. If ever there was a time when Kate needed her mum the most it was now; she knew having this baby was going to be the toughest thing she had ever done. She didn’t have a clue. Nappies, feeding, the constant care a baby required, sometimes if she dwelled on it too much the fear overwhelmed her. Kate glanced around the room. It was purely due to Billy that they were able to stay here. He had taken over the mortgage long before their mum had died. He continued to after too, trying to keep them together as a family, but she knew they could never be that now, not after what he had done to Jay.

  Kate opened her wardrobe and started filling her
holdall with clothes and shoes. She wasn’t sticking around here for Billy anymore. Jay and this baby were her family now, she was sure that Sonia wouldn’t see them on the streets.

  Taking one last look around the house, she closed the front door behind her and picking up her pace in case she bumped into anyone she knew, she made her way to Sonia’s house.

  13

  Jay’s whole body ached. He knew he must look a right state, but there was no point looking in a mirror if he didn’t need to, it would only depress him.

  He had been given a warning. He knew that if they had wanted to kill or seriously hurt him they were more than capable of doing so.

  Jay had instantly known who they were and why they had come to issue his reprisal. He had worked on the door with both of them for the past year, and he had watched many a beating dished out by the two men, mainly to unlucky troublemakers too stupid to realise with whom they were messing. Tommy and Carl were old school, a real force to be reckoned with, and they had a good ten years on Jay and were probably both double his size. He had respected them both when he had worked alongside them at the club, knowing that with their backup, he was as safe as houses, should any trouble come his way. He had always been careful when doing any deals on the door, and apart from a couple of close ones, he’d managed to keep both them and the other doormen from knowing about his little money-making set up.

  The doormen randomly searched people as they went into clubs, so slipping gear into a punter’s pocket with one hand and removing the cash they had ready in the other pocket with his other hand was child’s-play. His gear was good, so he rarely had complaints in that department. The thing that had always made him laugh was that he was actually being paid to stand out on the door, the prime location, and paid to sell his drugs; it had been perfect. Jay sighed now as he realised Goldie’s was over for him; he would be avoiding Paul Goldie in future, he should have realised that you don’t mess someone like Paul about. In fact he had known it from the beginning, but it was just too easy. Punters came to him, he had the best location, good backup on the door if anyone tried to mug him off, he had made good money, and had been getting paid a wage while he was doing it. He wasn’t sure how Paul had found out, as he was always so careful, but he guessed it was bound to come out at some point. He would have to find somewhere else to do his deals, his contacts had been supplying him with some shit-hot gear, and he was making a fortune.