The Graft Read online

‘Yes, I can. I can do what I like, I’m all grown up now.’

  Louis Clarke laughed out loud. He was as blond as Tyrell was dark and they had been friends since they were little kids. Louis was a ducker and diver. He was handsome, a womaniser, and also the most loyal person Tyrell had ever known.

  He had come to Sonny Boy’s funeral with his brothers. Even though Sonny had tucked him up in the past, had stolen from his home, Louis had still marked the boy’s passing with a beautiful wreath. Tyrell knew the gesture was more for himself than for his dead son but he appreciated it just the same.

  ‘You’ve had a hard few months and things like this, well, they take their toll, don’t they? Why don’t you go home and talk to Sally, eh? She’s in bits, I bet.’

  Tyrell popped open two cans of Red Stripe and handed one to his friend as he sat back down. He was barefoot and all he had on was a pair of track suit bottoms. He would never have slobbed out like this at home, Sal would have had heart failure. It was a revelation being here, really. He could sit around, eat what he liked, and even eat while watching TV. He had actually had fish and chips smothered in salt and vinegar and the stench had made him laugh out loud. In fact, he was looking forward to the boys coming to visit. He would show them how to enjoy a Saturday afternoon properly for once in their lives.

  Live dangerously, boys, drop a few crumbs on the carpet, go mad!

  He felt the urge to laugh again at his thoughts.

  ‘Tyrell, are you listening to me?’

  ‘Sorry, Lou, I was just thinking how much I’m enjoying being on me own, you know. I can’t get over how much I love me own company.’

  ‘You fucking love yourself period, Hatcher! I must admit, though, I thought you would be worried about this business with Sal but you look well considering all that’s happened.’

  ‘I feel like I’ve been let out of school, to be honest. I need this time on me own, need to work things through in me own mind. But fuck all that anyway. Now you’re here, I want to ask you a favour.’

  ’Anything, mate, you name it.’

  Tyrell knew that Louis was a true friend. He was honest, loyal and loved Tyrell like a brother. He was the only person he would ask this favour of, and yet he wondered if Louis would say no.

  Tyrell took a deep breath. He was fingering his dreads which Louis knew was always a sign that he was agitated.

  ‘This is going to sound so fucking mad . . .’

  Louis laughed then. Picking up the remainder of the joint, he relit it and puffed deeply.

  ‘You’ve sounded madder over the years.’

  Tyrell smiled, but he didn’t laugh which would normally have been his response. This was serious and Louis suddenly picked up on that fact.

  ‘I want to know what happened to my Sonny Boy.’

  Louis looked at him quizzically. His amazing blue eyes had always been his best feature. All his emotions were mirrored in their depths. Tyrell looked into them and hoped his friend would understand what he was going to ask. More importantly, that he would understand why Tyrell was asking him and nobody else.

  ‘But you know what happened to Sonny Boy, everyone does,’ Louis told him.

  His voice was sad now and Tyrell knew his friend thought he had finally lost the plot. Not only had he left his wonderful wife and gone to live on his own, but he was smoking dope, drinking Red Stripe, and on top of all that growing paranoid about his son’s murder. No, he had to stop thinking of it as a murder. Maybe his friend had a point after all. Maybe he was losing it.

  ‘Look, Tyrell, it was a terrible thing to happen to anyone, but you said yourself that you would have done the same thing as that Leary bloke . . .’

  Tyrell interrupted him.

  ‘I don’t mean Leary, I mean who was behind my boy being there in the first place? My Sonny, God love him, was small-time, a hustler. He wouldn’t have robbed a drum of that calibre: had enough trouble getting into a council flat. You’ve only got to look at his track record, he never actually broke into most places, just nicked stuff while he was there visiting. That place had a state-of-the-art alarm system, the works. There was no fucking way Sonny was behind it, he could not have done it on his own. And I’ll tell you something else, the filth must have sussed that out and all. I mean, think about it logically. He was a kid, a big kid. He could never have devised something like that on his todd, he had to have had help. And another thing - the gun. Where would Sonny have got a fucking semi-automatic from?’

  Louis didn’t want to point out that a semi-automatic gun these days was practically a fashion accessory for a lot of young men.

  Instead he tried to talk his friend down.

  ‘Look, man, you’re grieving . . .’

  ‘ ’Course I’m grieving, but that is neither here nor there. Listen to me and think about what I am saying logically.’

  Louis was quiet again. He didn’t know what to do or what to say to his friend. But he tried once more to reason with him.

  ‘Sonny died tragically young. You have to let him go . . .’

  Tyrell was shouting now. He didn’t need platitudes, he needed someone to listen to what he was saying.

  ‘Did you hear what I just said? Do you think that my Sonny, who could barely tie his own shoelaces, could fucking mastermind a burglary of that calibre? Haven’t you listened to one fucking word I have said here? Louis, look at me, I ain’t a fucking daydreamer, I am a realist, and I know that there was some other skulduggery afoot that night. Where would Sonny have unloaded the stuff from that kind of drum? Where would he even get the idea to rob it in the first place? Think about it. It was not his kind of scene, he didn’t have the savvy for the fuckery he got himself into. Why would he have gone big-time thieving? No, there was an agenda at work here and it was not my Sonny’s. My boy died through someone else’s greed. Can you see where I am coming from now?’

  Louis could and wished to Christ he couldn’t because he knew that his friend had never had any illusions about his son. He’d seen Sonny Boy exactly as the rest of the world saw him, and had still loved and adored him. Jude was the real culprit here. Most of Sonny’s misdemeanours led back to her and her habit.

  ‘So who do you think was part of the show?’

  Louis was alert now to the consequences of his reply and Tyrell knew from that statement that his oldest friend was going to stand by his side no matter what.

  ‘Do you think Jude was in on it?’

  Tyrell smirked.

  ‘Nah, never in a million years, but someone knows who he was dealing with. Sonny has to have told someone. If Jude knew anything she would have told me, not the filth. She would definitely have talked to me about it. That is why I have to find out the score otherwise I will never sleep peacefully another night in my bed.’

  Louis thought about what his friend had said then asked: ‘So where do we start?’

  Tyrell smiled then, his first real smile for weeks.

  ‘I knew I could rely on you, Lou.’

  Louis shrugged, embarrassed by his friend’s gratitude.

  ‘ ’Course you can, you’d do the same for me.’

  But he was worried inside because like the rest of his mates he thought that Sonny Hatcher had finally fucked off the wrong person and paid the ultimate price. End of story. But how could he say so to Tyrell?

  ’Anything you need I will always be there, you know that.’ It was what his friend wanted to hear.

  Lance Walker was in agony, and he wondered when Nick would come back and see him. He thought he would tell him anything he wanted to know now.

  It had been over a week and he was still lying on the cold floor, he was still trussed up and he was slowly going out of his mind.

  He was in dire pain, his shoulders felt as if they had been pulled from their sockets and his mouth was cracked and dry, the thirst was far worse than the hunger. Twice he had had a bucket of icy cold water thrown over him and he had lapped it up off the dirty floor with glee. Now, though, he had been reduced to licking the wa
lls clean of damp and the mission it had taken him to roll over there had left him shaken and in agony.

  The only light at the end of the tunnel was that Nick had always come alone, and that meant he had not told the other members of the syndicate what he knew.

  Nick wanted the poke for himself, and Lance could not quibble with that because it was for that very reason he was lying here in the first place.

  Nick was clever all right, and Lance had underestimated him. Not a mistake he would make again.

  His face was so swollen he had trouble breathing, and the cold of the concrete floor had seeped into his bones.

  Nick was a force, and he should have remembered that. Nick was also too clever to ever have anything come back to his front door, he should have remembered that as well.

  The stench of where he had soiled himself was now so bad that he wanted to vomit, and his clothes were stuck to his skin from the faeces and urine. Even in his anger, he had to admit to himself that he would have done the same if he had been in Nick’s position. But that didn’t make Lance feel any better.

  He became more determined than ever not to tell Nick Leary what he wanted to know.

  Tammy was alone for once and actually enjoying herself. She was sorting through swatches of material for her new bedroom. She had decided to redecorate the upstairs of her house even though it was only nine months since it had been done last. The fact that she had trashed it in a temper with Nick made it a necessity. When Tammy let rip it was a sight to behold. Before and after the event.

  This, though, was her forte: decorating and making her home beautiful. It was as if she compensated for some inner emptiness by spending money. Which, of course, she knew deep inside, was exactly why she did it.

  Nick’s mobile rang. The Dam Busters theme annoyed her and she rushed to answer it. Until now she had not realised he had even left it at home. He must have been in a hurry if he had forgotten his phone, he never left the house without it. When she had got back earlier than she had anticipated, her mother-in-law said he had gone out with Stevie Daly and Tammy had been intrigued.

  Nick usually guarded that phone like it was worth a fortune, which she supposed it was to him with all the numbers he kept in it. Now she saw a chance to have a recce. It was flashing up Call and that alone alerted her suspicions. Normally, the caller’s name flashed up.

  ‘Hello?’

  Silence.

  Tammy looked at the phone in puzzlement. Putting it back to her ear she said once more, ‘Hello.’

  The phone went dead in her hand.

  The dirty filthy stinking bastard had a bird on the go, after all he had said to her, all the reassurances he had given her!

  Well, she would not go through that again, the sleepless nights wondering where he was, the watching and waiting to see exactly what he got up to. No. She could not live like that again. It had nearly brought on a breakdown the last time. He had never admitted anything to her, but she knew. Her face screwed up with anger and pain, she threw the phone across the room.

  The land line rang then and she rushed across the room to answer it.

  ‘Hello.’

  Complete quiet again.

  Tammy lost it.

  She had been in this situation before. Well, it wasn’t going to happen again, not if she had anything to do with it.

  ‘Listen here, you fucking home-wrecking slut! When I find out who you are, I will rip your tits off . . .’

  The line went dead and she sank to the floor, tears already forming in her eyes. It wasn’t so much the fact that he had a bird, she could have coped with that, it was the fact he was capable of having sex with someone else.

  When he had not been near her for so very long.

  She loved sex, and she loved her husband. If only the two could mix. It wasn’t a lot to ask, surely? Most of her friends laughed about how their husbands were always after it and they were always trying to put them off. And Tammy joined in the laughter, but it wasn’t funny. If Nick was batting away from home then it was serious. Especially if that person had his main mobile number.

  He was like her. Normally he had their numbers and rang them. Well, this one must think she was in with a chance if she was daring to ring his home, the one he shared with his wife and children.

  Now Nick was dead. She would cause so much upset over this that it would take more than a world cruise to placate her this time.

  Yet still she cried from the pain, even as she planned how to get even.

  As Tammy gazed at the pieces of material and the colour charts she wondered why the hell she bothered with any of it. Then, as usual, she dried her eyes, pulled herself together and started making her plans. Nick was going nowhere, whatever that slut on the other end of the line might think, and neither was she.

  Gary Proctor was all smiles as he walked into the lock-up garage in Bow. His face lit up with genuine pleasure when he saw Stevie standing there.

  ‘Hello, mate, how’s it going?’

  He assumed that Stevie was here getting a bit of graft put his way through Nick. A guaranteed few quid until he got properly back on his feet.

  No one spoke to him and Gary was nonplussed for a few moments.

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  Nick shook his head sadly at his one-time friend. Then Stevie took back his fist and slammed it with as much force as he could muster into Gary’s face. He hit the ground, winded by the blow. He scrambled up quickly, though, shock evident on his face. Gary could have a row, but he conceded that Stevie was the better man.

  ‘What the fuck is all that about?’

  He seemed genuinely puzzled and for a split second Stevie wondered if he had the right man. But he didn’t question his instincts. Instead he bellowed, ‘You’re a fucking nonce! A nonsense who took my little nephew and tried to get up his arse . . .’

  Gary’s eyes widened at the words. It was as if a thunder-bolt had struck him as he looked at Nick and realised he had had a capture, or a capture and a half as they would put it.

  ‘Listen here, Stevie, I don’t know what you have been told . . .’

  Gary was babbling now, trying to talk his way out of it.

  Stevie began the beating then, as if he couldn’t wait to get it over with. Gary went down swiftly under the rain of blows. As Nick watched he wondered what he should do. He knew it would be pointless trying to stop the beating, and he also knew that honour demanded it had to be of a vicious nature. When he saw Gary curl into a ball and cover his head he was relieved that he was not going to try and come back at Stevie and make it all worse for himself.

  Suddenly there was blood everywhere, and it was then that he realised Stevie’s knuckle dusters were spiked. Stevie punched Gary in the head with such force he had to put his knee on the man’s shoulder to prise the duster out of the flesh.

  Nick winced involuntarily, knowing it must hurt badly yet accepting that the punishment had to fit the crime and this was a crime of enormous proportions. There were gay men in their circle, openly gay men who still managed to keep their credibility. It was the child chasers who brought on this kind of wrath. In their world it was just not on, it was never tolerated, and that went for men who liked really young girls as well.

  Well, for men who liked the girls a bit too young at any rate.

  Gary’s crime also lay in the fact that he had forced the boy, because that again was never tolerated by their circle.

  Stevie was trying to draw breath, his breathing heavy and ragged in the cold night air. Inside the lock-up blood had sprayed everywhere, even on to the ceiling.

  Nick pulled him back by the arm.

  ‘Come on, mate, he’s had enough.’

  ‘No, he ain’t.’

  Stevie was puffing and panting but still ready to finish the job properly.

  Gary looked at his one-time friend.

  ‘Please, Nick . . . I’m warning you . . .’

  The words were faint, hardly audible in the confines of the little garage.


  Nick’s face went very still.

  ‘What you gonna do? Grass me up about me business dealings then?’ His voice was dangerously low.

  Stevie was watching these proceedings with interest. There was something about Gary’s voice as he pleaded with his friend.

  ‘You know I wouldn’t do that . . .’

  ‘Well, what you going to do then? What you warning me about?’

  It was the final insult and all three men knew it. Nick changed then. His whole body seemed to lengthen as he drew himself up to his considerable height.