The Graft Read online

  Now Nick, he adored them, especially his niece Ria. He was always telling her how beautiful she was, how clever. All three kids adored him as much as he adored them. He was a good mate of Dixon’s as well, and he had helped them over the years although their mother didn’t know that.

  Dixon opened a bottle of brandy and poured his mother-in-law a small glass. She looked like she needed it and accepted it gratefully. Tactfully, he then left the two women alone, taking the kids with him to the local park.

  When they had gone Angela said, ‘You’ve a lovely home and a lovely family.’

  Hester knew how much it had taken her mother to say those words and respected that fact.

  ‘Why are you here, Mum? What happened with you and Nick?’

  ‘Nothing happened, I just wanted to see you all. Can’t I see me grandchildren without being interrogated?’

  It was said in fun, but they both knew there was no joy in any of it for her.

  ‘Mum, with respect, you have seen my kids only a dozen times in sixteen years and even then Nick forced them on you.’

  The two women stared at one another for a while.

  ‘You love Nick, don’t you?’

  Hester smiled widely, she was so like her father it pained Angela to look at her.

  ‘ ’Course I do, Mum. He’s been so good to us over the years. He helped Dixon and me get settled, he loves the kids, he is a really good man.’

  Angela smiled once more. She wanted to ask her daughter why he never invited them to parties at his house, and why he never invited them to his villa in Spain, but she didn’t.

  Why ask the road you know?

  It was because of her, and now that knowledge shamed her. She had begged him not to let them into her life and he had loved her so much he had agreed. Keeping his sister in the background, keeping them apart. To make matters worse, she had a sneaky feeling her daughter was aware of all this and, being the good woman she was, kept it to herself for fear of finally severing the tenuous link that kept them together.

  ‘I’ll ask you once more, Mum. Why are you here? What’s happened with you and Nick?’

  Hester knew it had to be catastrophic, nothing less would have brought her here, but she wouldn’t push it too far. Her mother would tell her in her own good time.

  Nick was the golden boy, her mother’s baby. She had lived with that all her life and now it didn’t bother her so much. She loved Nick, always had and always would. She knew what he had suffered at their father’s hands and even at the hands of this woman sitting before her now, looking for all the world like the average mother.

  She had suffocated her son, uncaring about anyone else in the world and when she had still been drinking heavily she had forced her son to take her side no matter what. It had been awful and she respected what Nick had achieved against all the odds. And the strange thing was this woman had been the cause of most of the trouble and upset, but no one could say that out loud.

  She had been the instigator of most of her husband’s spite; she would goad him into his terrible rages and there had been a time when she had been a part of it all. When she would make her husband lash out because of what she would say or do.

  Yet Nick still saw her as some kind of saint. For herself all she had ever wanted was her mother’s approval, nothing more and nothing less.

  ‘Have you rowed with Nick, or fallen out with Tammy?’

  Angela shrugged.

  ‘Nothing, I just needed a change, that’s all. Now stop asking me questions and tell me what’s been happening? Carl was telling me he has taken ten GCSEs. Clever boy him, like his father.’ Angela smiled.

  ‘Dixon spends a lot of time with them. Carl isn’t naturally the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree, this has been hard graft for him and he has worked for it. If he gets good grades we’re going to get him a motorbike. Well, a trail bike anyway.’

  Angela nodded.

  ’And don’t forget little Ria is having her Holy Communion soon. We’re having a party as usual.’

  Dixon had become Catholic so they could get married in church. It amazed Angela that this little family were so tight together when she knew money must always have been a problem. Why did you never appreciate the right child? Why did most women always see their children so differently from everyone else in their lives?

  Hester saw that her mother was miles away and shook her head sadly. She would not get any answers today.

  ‘I’ll make a cup of tea, eh? Do you want a sandwich, something to keep you going before dinner?’

  Angela smiled then, a real smile.

  ‘I’ll help you with the dinner, lovey, I like to cook. Which was just as well in Nick’s house - Tammy couldn’t boil a shagging egg but she’d ruin it.’

  They both smiled now. The truth was that Tammy could cook, when she bothered, she just didn’t bother any more. Hester couldn’t wait to find out what had happened. If her mother was rowing with Nick it had to be serious. She had stood by him through everything and anything, and it had never been her Nick’s fault.

  Angela would tell Hester what had happened in her own time. She had waited this long for a visit from her mother and she was not going to spoil it now.

  ‘So you’ve never had any dealings with Tyrell Hatcher then?’

  Nick shook his head.

  ‘The name doesn’t ring a bell, no.’

  Billy lit another cigarette as he wondered what Nick was really saying.

  ‘He’s my little brother’s best mate. You remember Louis?’

  Nick nodded, remembering a tall boy with a nice smile.

  ‘Yeah. And?’

  He was getting belligerent now. He poured himself yet another drink as he said through gritted teeth, ‘I ain’t apologising for what I done, Billy. You get up in the night and you find that little cunt in your house and you tell me you would get his fucking family pedigree before you outed him? Is that what you’re trying to say? I never had you down as a social worker.’

  Billy was annoyed.

  ‘Don’t be silly, you know I don’t mean that.’

  Nick laughed.

  ‘Do I? What am I, a fucking mind reader now?’

  Billy Clarke had heard enough. Walking over to where Nick was standing, he said deliberately, ‘You want to lay off the fucking gear, mate. I have seen too many of me mates go down that fucking path. You’re paranoid, you’re acting like a cunt, and you ain’t treating me like one, you hear me? I am here as a friend, I want to sort this out. Tyrell wants to know what brought his boy into your home, that’s all. He don’t hold nothing against you personally.’

  ‘Is that so, Billy? Big of him.’

  Billy closed his eyes and swallowed down his anger.

  ‘Listen to yourself. Look around you. You have more than most people could ever imagine, Nick, and you are fucking it up by shoving it up your nose. Well, that’s your prerogative, ain’t it? But I think you should see Tyrell because that poor fucker has had to deal with not just the death of his son but the life the poor little bastard had to live with his junkie mother.’

  ‘Junkie Jude?’

  It was said with so much hatred that Billy said quietly, ‘How do you know her then?’

  Nick swallowed hard before he said, ‘I read the papers, mate. They’re local, and she is renowned for her lifestyle. It ain’t my fault Hatcher left his son with a piece of shit like her, is it? Maybe he should have looked out for him a bit more, eh? Instead of trying to find out what made him go wrong now, he should have tried to fix it before I had to fucking bash his boy’s head in.’

  ‘Listen to yourself, Nick. This ain’t Tyrell’s fault. And look how we all turned out. Look at my poor mother - we were nearly the death of her. You can’t always blame the parents. You don’t know how your own boys will turn out yet. There’s lots of different kinds of junkies and you don’t seem to be doing too bad yourself. You’ve snorted the equivalent of Escobar’s pension scheme and I’ve only been here a couple of hours, what the fuck is
all that about?’

  He had gone too far now and he knew it, but anger had got the better of him.

  Nick looked into his old friend’s eyes and suddenly the anger left him. He started to cry then, cried openly, and seeing him Billy felt bitterly embarrassed, but it also told him how badly the night of Sonny Hatcher’s death had affected his friend.

  ‘I didn’t mean to kill him, see? I didn’t really want him dead, not really. I was just frightened, that’s all. Just frightened.’

  Nick Leary sank down on to the sofa and with his head in his hands cried loudly, the noise echoing in the silence of the large, imposing house.

  Of all the things Billy Clarke had expected, this was not one of them.

  ‘What you crying for, son?’

  Tyrell’s voice was lower now, kinder. The boy was not making any noise and this was what scared Tyrell the most. He was just sitting there crying in complete silence.

  Willy tapped him on the arm and motioned with his head for Tyrell to go to the kitchen. ‘Let me talk to him. I’ll burn him an armful, see if that straightens him out. His head’s fucked. Let me talk to him, eh? You’re scaring him and I think he doesn’t want to tell you what went on.’

  Tyrell left the room, grateful for the boy’s advice. In the kitchen he relit his joint and puffed on it deeply, wondering how his life had come to this.

  He had two rent boy runaways in his flat when he should be back at home in his nice house. But he knew that would never happen now. He would never go back there. Too much water had flowed under that particular bridge.

  Yet it still seemed amazing to him that in a few short months everything in his life had changed for the worse. His eldest boy was dead and nothing would bring him back, Tyrell knew that, but he had to know what the boy was doing in Leary’s house that night. If he could only get the answer to that question he knew he could start to live again. It had to be because of someone else. Someone had to have sent that boy to his death and when he found out who . . .

  Tyrell didn’t finish the thought. Instead he toked once more on the joint and wondered how long it would be before Willy calmed the boy down. He would sort out what he was going to do next when he found out the score there and not before.

  It was like the old riddle: How did the man get out of the room with no windows and no doors? Well, the answer was: The same way he got in there.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Billy was driving back to London, and as he drove was thinking about two men with no real understanding of the world they lived in. And he was wondering at the way Nicholas Leary, bad man personified, had crumpled over the death of a burglar. A creeper, the lowest of the low in their world, a gas meter bandit, a council house insurance man - call him what you wanted, the kid was just a thief. And yet it was a broken man he had just left, a broken man now reliant on a bit of gear and a pint of vodka to get him through the day. This was Nick Leary who had, according to urban legend, killed before. But that had been for a just cause in their world, and so was killing Sonny Hatcher. Fucking hell, even the filth thought he was in the right this time and how often did that happen?

  Billy had also heard a rumour that Nick had recently taken out his own right-hand man, Gary Proctor, and knew there was more there than met the eye. There was something about Proctor he had never liked, he was far too slippery for Billy. Had too much to say for himself, had way too much front, but that front was usually backed up by Nick Leary.

  Billy could only assume that Leary had had a business run in with his number one and it had resulted in the man’s demise. Quite rightly so. They couldn’t keep anyone around in their world who knew too much about them and their precarious business dealings and was starting to get antsy. That was the unwritten law. Nick had outed him fair and square, Billy should imagine.

  So why was the death of a mere burglar taking over Leary’s life?

  He could understand it from Tyrell’s point of view. Billy knew that there was nothing Tyrell could find out about his boy that would make what he’d done right, he just wanted to know what had caused him to be there in the first place.

  And, he had to admit, Tyrell had a point.

  Where did Sonny get the gun? Were the dogs at the house that night? How did that boy get past all the CCTV and everything else on there?

  Billy himself would be hard pushed to creep up on Nick Leary and he had years of experience on Sonny Boy Hatcher. It would have had to be like a military operation, and from what he had heard about Tyrell’s boy he was not the sharpest knife in the fucking drawer. In fact, he was a bit of a div by all accounts. Followed the leader.

  His own middle boy was like that, his Jason. He was a lovely kid and all that, but he had to take his socks off to count and his reading amounted to comic books and porn magazines. You allowed for it eventually. Everyone wanted to have the next Einstein. Unfortunately now and again you got the next Boris Johnson. If one of the other boys told his Jason to jump off a bridge, then jump off a bridge he would. You still loved kids like that, you just tried to look out for them more. Jason would work for his dad, that was a foregone conclusion. He was going to be a lump, so Billy would use the boy’s pluses. Jason would be a heavy, there was no shame in that in their world.

  Now his eldest boy, Damien, he had the brains of a fucking dictator him, and Billy would see to it that he became a lawyer. The boy was up for it. He could argue his way out of anything and enjoy it while he was doing it. He would go far that one, and good luck to him and all. You could rob more money with a briefcase and an amiable personality, everyone knew that.

  Now, though, after the visit to that house, he thought Tyrell had a point about Sonny’s being there in the first place, and despite himself even Billy wanted to know what the score was. This had Gary Proctor written all over it, but did Nick realise that? Because Proctor would need someone behind him. Like poor Sonny Hatcher he could never have dreamed this one up on his lonesome.

  Yes, there was more here than met the eye, and Billy for one was intrigued. He would make sure that when they finally had the meet all the boys were there for it. He had a feeling that Terry’s personality disorder would come in distinctly handy at that meeting because if any two men were completely alike yet completely different it was Nick Leary and Tyrell Hatcher.

  It was weird how similar they were emotionally while streets apart in every other way. That boy’s death had fucked up too many heads. The sooner it was all put to bed the better.

  Jude was in her element. Gino was well able for what she asked of him. In fact, he was showing off. As she lay back on the sofa and waited for the rush she knew was coming, she was smiling.

  Gino had gone out, got the money for some scran and come back like a conquering hero. She had made a point of letting him know how clever he was, how much she relied on him. He had preened and puffed himself up with pride.

  Now he was burning the brown. He had an old tablespoon full of heroin and had added water gently, burning it from beneath. As it bubbled away Jude saw the glint in his eye as he contemplated what was to come.

  He had the right personality for it, there was no doubt about that.

  Her Sonny, on the other hand, had hated it all, yet he would move heaven and earth to get it for her. Now Gino, who loved it, would be scoring for both of them.

  She had on a Pink Floyd album, Animals, and it was playing ‘Pigs on the Wing’. She loved this track, could listen to it over and over again. The flat was like a tip but she ignored it. It was all part of the game so far as she was concerned. Who was it who said life was too short to stuff a mushroom? Well, whoever it was had a point. Life was also too short to keep cleaning up, and going out and doing the same repetitive job day after day.

  That was for mugs, as far as Jude was concerned.

  The loud banging on the front door startled both of them and she pulled herself up from the sofa with difficulty.

  ‘Ignore it, Gino, they’ll go away soon enough.’

  But seconds later the
banging resumed.

  Gino was too involved in what he was doing now to notice. As he gently pulled the liquid into a syringe the front door was kicked off its hinges. They heard the wood splitting and both jumped up in fright.

  Jude was white-faced. Thinking it was Old Bill she automatically distanced herself from the boy and the loaded syringe.

  ‘Throw it all out of the window, you fucking moron!’

  Her voice was high with fright and Gino, rooted to the spot with fear, stood there and watched in amazement as his mother and three of his uncles burst into the room.

  His mother’s rooms were lovely. Nick had never really appreciated that until now, but then he rarely ventured into them. But in fairness to old Tammy they were out of this world, better than anything Mum had ever had in her whole life before. Not that she would ever admit that, though now they were like best mates maybe he was wrong about that as well.