The Graft Read online

  He wondered if Sally was awake, and if so whether she was contemplating his demise. Not that he’d have blamed her if she was.

  He made coffee and listened as Jude moved around the bedroom. He heard her go into the bathroom, heard her coughing her guts up. He actually heard her passing water. He had forgotten how thin the walls were in these flats. There was literally no privacy here. You could hear baths emptying, toilets flushing, people having sex. Could hear fighting, laughing, babies crying, children being beaten or tickled depending on which flat the noise was coming from.

  Once he had lain beside Jude and listened to it all, laughing or frowning depending on what was going on. Now he just found it depressing. This was Jude’s life as it had been his life, then his son’s. Maybe if he had stayed things might have turned out differently. But no, he was fooling himself. When he had finally sussed Jude out for the leech she was, sucking the life from everyone around her, he had run a mile and waited patiently for his eldest son to do the same. Confident that Sonny would run out on her eventually.

  Only now it was too late. He had left his boy here to pick up the pieces of Jude’s wasted life and this was the result.

  Sally was awake. Instead of jumping out of bed and making breakfast for her sons she just stayed there alone, wondering where her husband was and how she could physically maim him when he finally showed up.

  The utter humiliation of the day before still stung: the pitying looks of his family, the questions from the boys about their daddy’s whereabouts. The sadness in Verbena’s eyes as she had realised what had happened. Poor Verbena, always trying to explain about Jude, and her needs.

  Fuck Jude and fuck her needs.

  It felt good cursing in her head. Sally did it sometimes to relieve the pressure, and the pressure was building up now to dangerous levels. If Tyrell didn’t get his arse back home within the hour she was leaving him. Once and for all she was going to go, and as her mother would be sure to point out, not before time.

  Her mother had never understood or liked the fact that Jude was still everybody’s darling. Had seen it as a slight on her own daughter that a drug addict took precedence over a woman who was educated and beautiful and far too good for the Rastaman who had swept her off her size four feet. From the moment her mother had found out about Sonny Boy and learned of his reputation, she had warned Sally it would end badly.

  Sally had liked Sonny Boy to begin with, in her own way even cared for him, but as time had gone on and Sonny Boy had grown up and his mother had still been a big part of their lives, she had started to resent him herself.

  Why couldn’t it have been Jude who died?

  All the famous junkies died young, so why was it that Jude seemed immune to death? She jacked up, was always out of her skull, and yet she looked OK. If she had died, life would have been so much easier for everyone.

  Sally was ashamed of her own thoughts now, for wishing Jude dead. But the truth was, she had wished her dead for years. She thought back to all the times Tyrell had left her to go and see to Jude, poor Jude, wonderful, bleached-blonde Jude. Jude the mother of his first-born son. Jude the woman who still had the power to drag Sally’s husband across London on a whim.

  Finally she started to cry.

  The boys burst through the door. Seeing her distress, they hugged and kissed her and she could see the fear on their little faces as she cried bitter tears. She was crying for herself and for her boys who, no matter what they did, would never be able to take the place of the brother they had buried the day before.

  Sonny Boy was dead and gone and consequently no one would ever be able to live up to him. It had been bad enough when he had been alive, now that he was dead they had no chance.

  Once more she felt the urge to hurt Tyrell, but even more she wanted to hurt Jude. Now Sonny was dead, she’d decided that if her husband went near that woman once more she would divorce him and take the kids. There was no reason for him to run over there any more. Sonny was gone, that part of his life was over and done with.

  Sally was smiling now, the tears drying as she realised she finally had a stick to beat her husband with, as beat him she would.

  ‘Come on, boys, let’s get you breakfast, shall we?’

  ‘Where’s Daddy?’

  She looked down into her son’s face.

  ‘He had some unfinished business, sweetheart. It should be all over by now.’

  Her mobile rang and she picked it up off the dressing table. It was Tyrell. Still smiling widely at her sons she rejected the call.

  Let him sweat, she was sick to death of the lot of it.

  Tammy could see the evidence of her husband’s night out written clearly all over his face. The stubble, the heavy red jowls and bloodshot eyes told her he had been on a drinking marathon again.

  It was happening a lot lately.

  She hoped now that the boy’s funeral was over it would finally put an end to it all. Even though she had liked the notoriety at first, it had begun to interfere with her sex life. Everywhere she went people recognised her, and if she wanted to carry on her liaison with the little Greek waiter she had been cultivating then the sooner they drew a line under this the better.

  The boys had been getting grief at school as well, but for the money they paid the place they could sort it out for her. Then when her sons came home she would get the names of the kids involved from them and give the mothers a piece of her mind.

  If only Nick could sort things out like she did. He dwelt on everything, whereas she just got on with it all. She smiled to herself. That was women for you. The power behind the throne and the real reason men made it in life. ‘From mother to wife,’ as her auntie used to say. She didn’t finish the saying which ended, ‘from the wife to a bird.’

  As Tammy sipped her tea she felt an urge to punch her husband square in the face. She was so lonely at times. Even now, while they sat at breakfast together, he didn’t have a word to throw at her. Even a row would be better than this total silence.

  Nick looked so lost, so sad, that it annoyed her. She had felt like that for years, for all the good it had ever done her. Now he was a national hero, had the world at his feet as far as she was concerned, and all he could do was sit and feel sorry for himself.

  ‘Oh, for crying out loud, Nick, get a grip!’

  Her husband’s miserable face was killing her. In fact she couldn’t for the life of her understand why he wasn’t celebrating. He ignored her as he flicked through the local paper. He had found over the years that if you blanked Tammy often enough she shut up naturally. She was like a kid in that respect. If you didn’t take any notice, she went off in a huff and picked on someone else. When he saw her pick up her mobile he smiled inwardly. One of her friends would now be the recipient of her venom.

  When she walked from the kitchen he gave up any pretence of reading and sipped at his now lukewarm coffee. It was over, finally it was all over and he was still a free man, able to go about his business and live his life.

  In one way this knowledge excited him. His background and environment made him hate Old Bill so in a way he relished the fact he had got one over on them. But in another way he hated the fact he had got away with murder.

  Because when all was said and done that was exactly what it was. It didn’t matter how much his wife and friends twittered on about the circumstances, he had taken that boy’s life. Now he was having to live with that knowledge and he had a feeling it was going to be harder than any prison sentence.

  He saw Sonny Boy Hatcher’s face first thing in the morning and last thing at night. He wondered what the boy would be doing if he was still alive; wondered if he might even have become a fully functioning member of society.

  Nick doubted that very much, but stranger things happened at sea. He wished he had someone he could confide in, someone he could talk to about the feelings bottled up inside him. He reminded himself of the night before, the fights he had tried to have and the one he had managed to orchestrate.
r />   At times he felt like he was having a breakdown. His heart would race and his stomach constantly ached. He felt as if he was going to die himself. And the crying . . . He cried like a baby, unable to stem the tears, feeling such fear and revulsion for what he had done.

  It was terrible to have all that weighing him down. It was as if Sonny Hatcher hadn’t died at all but lived on in Nick’s mind, a constant presence that filled his thoughts and pricked his guilty conscience.

  ‘Don’t go, Tyrell, please.’

  Jude’s voice was quiet and for once it sounded genuinely sorrowful. He could see fear in her eyes at the thought of being alone, truly alone, for the first time in years. He knew it would be a daunting prospect for her but he also knew the sooner she got used to it the better. The night before he had not had it in him to deny her his company, they had just buried their child after all, but now the fear of what he would be going home to was uppermost in his mind. Sally was not answering the phone, and that was worrying him.

  ‘I can’t hack it on me own yet.’

  He looked into Jude’s blue eyes and saw real emotion in them.

  ‘I gotta go, Jude. I am sorry, man, but Sally is pissed off with me big-time.’

  Jude looked into his handsome face and felt her fingers curl into talons. She would get her way. She would keep him near her if it was the last thing she ever did.

  Tyrell was reading her mind all the time, but she was unaware of that. He knew her better than she knew herself.

  He picked up his suit jacket and slipped it on. It felt incongruous to be dressed in a black suit and crumpled white shirt in the disarray of Jude’s home. For the first time ever he had smelt the underlying air of decay that surrounded her. It was in her bedding, in the towels, in the bathroom, in the fridge and cupboards. Why had he never noticed it before? As he had wiped his face on a grubby towel the stench had hit him like never before.

  He’d realised then that what he was really experiencing was his son’s life. His two younger boys with Sally as their mother wiped their faces on towels that smelt of flowers, slept in bedding that was crisp and clean. They ate good nutritious food that didn’t fight for space alongside cans of Tennent’s Super in the fridge.

  Jude had failed their boy, but he had failed Sonny worse than that even. He had left him here. Tyrell had told himself it was because a boy needed his mother, that it was because Jude had nothing else so how could he take her son from her, when in reality he had left the boy here to cope with her when he’d finally tired of it himself.

  He shook his head and said loudly, ‘I’m going, Jude. I’ll pop in another time and see how you are, OK?’

  He wanted to get home and wash the smell of this place from his body. His breath was sour from the white rum of the night before but nothing would induce him to use any of the toothbrushes in that bathroom. He had cleaned them with water and his finger. He just wanted to run away from all this now, it was too distressing to see the squalid reminders of his son’s life now that Sonny was dead.

  Looking around him at this dump that passed for a human habitation Tyrell was beginning to panic at the thought of staying here a second longer. He could see Jude working herself up to laying a massive guilt trip on him with every passing second.

  ‘You can’t leave me, Tyrell, not like this, not with my baby still warm in the ground.’

  She was starting to cry now. She was good at crying, though only once or twice had she managed to shed tears of real emotion. This time was not one of them.

  ‘Stop it, Jude, come on.’

  ‘It’s all right for you. You can waltz out of here and back to your nice normal life with Sally and your boys. And what am I left with, eh? Fuck all as usual . . .’

  She lit a cigarette. After coughing heavily she shrieked, ‘Just leave me! Just fuck off out of it, why don’t you? We never mattered anyway. Not to you.’

  ‘Don’t say that, Jude. You know the trouble you’ve caused me with Sal over the years . . .’

  ‘Oh, Sal, marvellous Sal! What about this family, Tyrell? Me and Sonny, what about us?’ She was poking herself none too gently in the chest as she spoke with nicotine-stained fingers.

  ‘What about you, Jude? I stayed with you last night. I can’t stay all day as well, that would really cause ructions.’

  He was trying to reason with her even though he knew he was wasting his time.

  She changed tack then, seeing her chance.

  ‘I suppose I’d better get used to being on me own, get used to being without me boy. It’s all right for you, ain’t it? You’ve got two more.’

  She sat on the edge of the sofa and he could see the varicose veins in her ankles and the pitted skin between her toes where she sometimes injected herself. Her feet were a disgrace. The nails were dirty and the hard skin was yellowed and looked as if it was decaying. Those feet had rested on his calves the night before and he felt the bile rising inside him at the thought. It was as if he was seeing Jude for the first time. Really seeing her, and the life she led.

  ‘I am going, Jude, and nothing you say will change that. I’ll pop back in the week.’

  He took a wad of money from his pocket and thrust it towards her. He could see a couple of fifty-pound notes among the fivers and expected her to snatch it from his hand as usual but for once she didn’t. It was a calculated gesture and they both knew it.

  ‘I don’t need money, I need company.’

  He shook his head sadly and dropped the wad on the floor.

  ‘What you need, sweetheart, is someone to get stoned with and it ain’t going to be me.’

  Jude saw the determination in his eyes. Sighing, she turned from him, stabbing the cigarette out in the saucer that passed for an ashtray.

  ‘You walk out of here now and that is it, Tyrell, I mean it.’

  Her voice was low. When she looked up at him again he could see the determination on her face. It was the look she always wore when she was out of gear or needed money for something, the look that said she would get what she wanted. As she invariably did. She was stronger at such times than anyone realised, even herself.

  ‘I’m not joking, Tyrell. If you walk out on me now, you’ll regret it.’

  ‘Why? What are you going to do, Jude, kill yourself?’

  He knew she had used that one on their son, knew she had made him toe the line with that threat on many occasions, especially Christmases and birthdays when he had been due to be with his father and his brothers. Unless she had a bloke or a new dealer who would allow her plenty of credit. Then she couldn’t wait to get him out of the door.

  She nodded then.

  ‘What else is there for me now?’

  Her voice was low and hurt. She sounded completely serious.

  Tyrell sighed and said sarcastically, ‘You could pick that money up from the floor and get yourself some gear. That’s what you usually do, ain’t it? That’s what you would be doing if Sonny was still alive.’

  He could not believe what he had just said and neither could Jude. All those years of trying to stop her from killing herself with drugs and now he was actually advising her to take them?

  ‘You bastard!’

  He shrugged.

  ‘I just can’t do this any more, Jude. Don’t you realise that I have lost a child as well? My first-born son was buried yesterday and I really don’t have to listen to all this shit any more. As you so rightly pointed out, I have two other boys who, incidentally, really loved their brother and will miss him. I think they might need me as well today. The world, believe it or not, Jude, does not revolve solely around you.’

  In a part of her brain she knew he was right, but she wasn’t one to listen to the voice of her conscience. Jude only ever did what she wanted and only understood what she allowed herself to.

  Tyrell saw her as she came towards him and put his hands up to defend himself, but her nails caught his face anyway before he grabbed her by the wrists. He struggled with her for a few seconds before she sagged at t
he knees. He kept hold of her wrists as she dropped on to the floor. She was crying once more.

  ‘I can’t cope without him, not today, Tyrell. I can’t go on without him, I can’t.’

  He pulled her up gently and hugged her to him. He was nearly crying himself as he pleaded with her. ‘Please stop this, Jude. Please give me a fucking break. I can’t police you all the time, girl, like poor Sonny did. I have got to get home, can’t you understand that? My family need me as well.’

  They were both startled by the front door opening then and turned to look towards the doorway of the living room. Three young men walked in. Tyrell recognised them as friends of Sonny’s. They had been at the funeral the day before.