The Graft Read online

  She was justifying what she had done to herself and deep inside she knew that. Jude wiped the tears from her eyes with the back of her hand, remembering how they would sit together and watch EastEnders, discussing the storylines as if the characters were real people that they knew. They had had the time of their lives together, why didn’t anyone see that except her? Sonny had been happy here with his mum, happy doing things with her. Her life had been blighted when her son had died, why did no one see that? Why didn’t they understand that what she had had with Sonny was a special bond that transcended the usual mother and son relationship?

  He would have killed for her, that was how much he loved her. How many women could say that about their kids, eh?

  She turned around as she heard someone come in at the front door. She had left it ajar in case Gino managed to escape his tormentors. Turning round with a big smile on her face, she said gaily, ‘Just in time!’

  But the smile was wiped off her face as she saw who it was. Her heart stopped in her chest as fright took hold.

  ‘Hello Jude, long time no see.’

  The voice was just as she remembered it, but now the man she had scored off for all those years looked dangerous somehow.

  She thought of all the times she had scagged from him, and even though she had expected him to be annoyed, she had never in her wildest dreams expected to feel this fear. He was weighing her up as if she was so much dirt and his nose was wrinkling to show the utter distaste he felt for her and her lifestyle.

  His own home was like an operating theatre in comparison, he wouldn’t even sit down in her house in case he soiled his expensive suit.

  She still thought though, that he had come to weigh her out in some way, either with money or the brown.

  She had just not expected him so soon.

  None of the others she had rung had even bothered to answer her call; maybe this was an omen for the future. Jude, like all junkies, lived in a world of hope.

  Lenny stared into her face, trying to intimidate her and achieving his objective. ‘You think you can make a few phone calls and everyone will come running, do you? Well, I am here to tell you, Jude, that you are wrong.’

  She looked into his eyes, saw the hate, saw the disgust and this prompted her to forget just who she was dealing with. She pointed a dirty finger at him, her anger outweighing her fear now. ‘You fucking owe me, as much as the others, if not more. It was you who pulled my Sonny into the world of baby boys. He was twelve when you started him on the road, introducing him to your so-called mates. Would you like people to know about that, Lenny, eh? You might be a respectable dealer but nonces are a different breed and everyone knows that, and you, Lenny, are a nonce.’

  The words were spoken with all the venom she could muster and in fairness to him she knew she had hit a nerve. Lenny Bagshots saw himself as a man of means, a face on the rise and as a good family man. His aberration, as he put it, was nothing to worry about. As long as it stayed a secret it could not impinge on his other life. He knew other, like-minded men who felt exactly the same. The trouble with Sonny was, he had been a loose cannon and as the time had gone on he had embraced his lifestyle a little bit too openly.

  Now this piece of shite was trying to screw him.

  Well, better people than Jude had tried. Her son was a prime example; he had tried to pull too many people down and he knew in his heart that she was probably behind her son’s skulduggery. Junkies always needed money. If they won the national lottery they would still not feel they had enough. Their eyes were always on the fix they couldn’t afford, never on the one they actually had in their arms at the time.

  It was this that had been her son’s downfall and if she had been any kind of a mother she would have been ashamed of what she had done to him. She had served that boy up to him as quickly as he had served her up the brown. He had bought him really and he had bought him off a woman who had no love for her child.

  He walked towards her quickly and she backed away from him.

  This made him laugh and he said sarcastically, ‘Frightened you have I, Jude?’

  She nodded, her eyes were large, opened to their widest and for a brief second he saw the girl she had once been, a long time ago when the brown had been in her future.

  ‘Well, you be frightened and listen to what I am saying, right?’

  She nodded, allowing herself to relax a tiny bit.

  But he was on her in seconds and she felt the full force of his contained anger and violence. As he punched her to the ground he was saying in a low, controlled voice, ‘You think you can threaten me, do you? You think you are woman enough to try and play me for a cunt, Jude?’

  He had her hair now and he was speaking into her face as she hung limply like a rag doll. ‘Didn’t your Sonny’s death teach you nothing, woman?’

  She stared into his eyes and said in quiet hatred, ‘He was set up!’

  He laughed once more and then, throwing her to the ground, he commenced with the good hiding she knew she deserved. Finally spent he said roughly, ’And we all know who set him up, don’t we? You pushed him into it all and you know you did. Getting him to ask people for money, people he had not seen for years. It was all about you as usual, wasn’t it? All about you and the shit you pump into your arm.’

  She lay on the floor, a crumpled heap but still he saw there were no tears, no real fear in her.

  ‘You’re scum, Jude, nothing more and nothing less and your son was just the same. He might have had a chance without you hanging on to him like a fucking leech. He might have had a different end, who knows. But as it stands, Jude, he’s dead and, if you’re not careful, you might be joining him sooner than you expected.’

  She pulled herself from the floor and despite his anger he admired her for taking what he had doled out without a word of complaint. ‘You owe me, Lenny, whatever you think. You fucking owe me and you owe me big-time.’

  He walked up to her. Grabbing her chin tightly in one hand, he said through gritted teeth: ‘I owe you nothing, lady.’

  He smiled to see her terror.

  ‘Like the song says: “Nothing at all”.’

  He pushed her across the room and she landed awkwardly on the sofa. Lenny Bagshots went over to her and threw an ounce of brown on to her trembling body.

  ‘That’s it, that is your compensation. I had nothing to do with what happened to your boy but I know a man who does.’

  He kicked her in the ribs as a parting shot.

  ‘Oh, by the way, Jude, you want to shut your front door in future. You never know who might be coming in to see you.’

  It was a threat and she knew it, but once he had gone she could relax. He had been first on her list. Now she had gradually worked her way through it. She would get what she wanted, no matter what they thought.

  Grinning now, she picked up the bag of brown. Happier than she had been for days she got up off the floor and poured herself a drink.

  She would celebrate with a large armful of happiness.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  ‘Bit of all right, old big tits, eh?’

  Tyrell and Louis laughed at Terry’s lecherous way of talking. He was a real entertainer when he wanted to be. In another life and with another upbringing he could have gone on the stage and done stand-up. But Terry had something that no other comedian had: he was literally capable of killing someone in the audience if they didn’t laugh loud enough or he thought they were taking the piss. There would have been no heckling when Terry was on the stage. His lightning mood changes would never have suited a legitimate job either.

  Billy always said he should have been born in America and worked for the Post Office there. It would only have been a matter of time before he was picking off his workmates with a high-velocity rifle. Everyone always laughed when he said that, especially Terry who took it as a compliment.

  It was now after ten and they were finally going to pick up Willy. Terry had had the cheek to take the bird outside and, as he put i
t so nicely, trump her in his car. Leonie, a chancer who felt she had hit the jackpot, was definitely going to be on the menu for months to come. He had got her phone number and her level. She was just Terry’s sort. It would take a while before his erratic behaviour and his jealousy started to frighten her, when he was demanding to know where she was every five minutes and who she had spoken to. At first she would enjoy the constant attention, his petty jealousy. It would be a while before she realised just how possessive he actually was. Then she would go the way of all the others, try and stop seeing him, try and reason with him.

  But you couldn’t reason with people like Terry Clarke. He owned her now, until he was fed up with her. If she got another man Terry would turn up at the house and threaten him, hurt him, make sure he knew the score. He would expect to see who he wanted, when he wanted, and she would be expected to wait patiently on her own until he turned up. He would actually enjoy terrorising her and any new man who dared enter her life. Then, one day, another woman would grab his attention and Leonie would be forgotten overnight. Then and only then would he deign to leave her life.

  For now, though, Terry was happy and ready for a night’s work. Tyrell was nervous of Willy being in the car with them. Terry changed with the weather, from laughing his head off to manic depression in seconds. No one who couldn’t watch their own back ever went on a job with him, and that included his own brothers.

  He seemed to take to the boy, though. As Willy climbed in the car Terry smiled at him in a friendly fashion and said, ’All right, Geeze?’

  The way he said it made Willy smile. Like most people when they first met Terry, poor Willy Lomax liked him. Tyrell devoutly hoped nothing happened tonight to change that.

  As the boy only had a location, not an address, they made their way to Plaistow. Willy, a little shrewdie in his own way, directed them as best he could. Eventually, just after 11.30, they were outside a tower block, parking the car.

  Terry turned around in his seat. Looking at Willy, he said, ‘Now you think it’s here, right?’

  He nodded.

  ‘It looks right, yeah.’

  ‘Is he coming with us to make sure we got the right gaff?’

  Louis looked at Tyrell who nodded.

  ‘Once we get there, though, you come back to the car, right?’

  Willy nodded happily.

  ‘Here’s a punter now, see.’ He pointed. ‘I can tell them a mile off.’

  They all looked out of the car and saw a tall bald-headed man getting out of a Lexus. Hardly the kind of car you would expect to see around this area. The man locked his car and looked around him furtively before sauntering towards the flat’s entrance. He was well dressed, obviously a ducker and diver, going by the car and his clothes.

  Terry’s voice was incredulous as he said loudly, ‘What? Are you telling me he is a kiddy shit-stabber?’

  Lewis and Tyrell closed their eyes in distress as they realised he was about to go off on one. Terry was scandalised and disgusted. Yet they both knew the chances were they would be glad of his muscle at some point in the evening.

  Willy laughed.

  ‘You’d be surprised just who these people are, mate.’

  Terry looked at the boy with interest.

  ‘What, honest, they look like him?’

  Willy just stopped himself from saying, And you, and Tyrell, and all the people you drink with in the pub. He guessed rightly that this was not the time or place to give the hard man a lesson in the seamier side of life. Instead he just nodded.

  ‘They’re like the CID then? Coppers in disguise, dressed up as real people?’

  This made Willy laugh and Terry laughed with him.

  ‘They look like normal people, Terry, because that’s how they get away with it for so long. But some of the boys up there are over sixteen, they just look younger, so it’s not illegal as such.’

  Terry digested this information for a few moments. Then his mood changed once more and he was suddenly ferocious.

  ‘I don’t know what’s worse. This is fucking mental! We going up to sort these fuckers out or what?’

  He was really annoyed now. He had seen it with his own eyes. Until then he had never really believed it was possible. Had never believed normal-looking people like him could be nonces.

  He could have drunk in a pub with that bloke.

  He would have let him in his house.

  He thought they all looked like, well, like nonces. Old blokes in dirty raincoats, with grimy fingernails and greasy hair.

  This geezer looked like one of his own!

  It did not occur to Terry that his own sexual appetite had kept them all in the pub for the best part of the evening because his appetites were normal. He liked birds, what man didn’t? As far as he was concerned the fact that he pursued women constantly made him more of a man. It was all about boundaries for Terry.

  His boundaries and his guidelines, of course.

  As far as he could see anyone who liked young boys had to be a perverted lunatic and as such should be taken out of the ball game and redistributed around the planet, preferably in easy-to-bury-sized pieces. They didn’t need prison, paedos needed to be wiped off the face of the earth. Like any cancer, you nuked it as best you could, and if it came back you nuked the fucker again.

  ‘That’s it. Come on, let’s get up there.’

  Terry was up for it now, incensed and feeling inexplicably upset. He liked the little blond boy in his car. Why would anyone want to hurt him like that? He was a little fella, a nice little fella who had had a few bad breaks. If Terry had seen him out begging he would have given him a score, he was like that. Fuck the grown-up tramps with their cans of Tennent’s Super, they could get a fucking job, but the kids always got a few quid off him because they were after all kids.

  He got out of the car quickly and took a short-handled sledge-hammer from the boot. It was a tool he had used often over the years, and it did the job as far as Terry was concerned. Louis and Tyrell got out after him, and Willy stayed inside watching and listening to them all talking.

  ‘Calm down, all right?’

  Terry pushed his brother away.

  ‘I am calm. Calm as I can be with all this going on around me.’

  He was in a state of high tension and both the men with him knew that this was not a good sign. Terry could explode over the tiniest thing.

  ‘What you going to do with that then?’

  Louis pointed to the weapon in his hands.

  Terry sighed heavily and said with undisguised sarcasm, ‘Well, I was going to smash the front door in. What were you two thinking of doing then? Just shouting out, “Let us in, we’re a load of nonces on a fucking pervos’ night out. Bring on the little boys”?’

  Tyrell had to admit he had a point.

  Terry, though, laughed as he said quietly, ‘This, boys,’ he weighed the weapon in his hands to demonstrate his point, ‘is what is called the element of surprise. It will do to whack open the front door and then whack around a few heads and all if need be.’

  He looked at Tyrell.

  ‘You want to know who runs these gaffs, right?’

  Tyrell nodded.

  ‘Well, this guarantees we find that out. They ain’t exactly going to roll over while sipping a cup of tea and chomping daintily on cupcakes, you get my drift?’

  Willy leaned out of the car window then.

  ‘He’s right, guys. If I was you, I’d listen to what he’s saying.’

  Terry grinned at him.

  ‘Come on, son, let’s get this show on the fucking road.’

  Willy followed them happily. He felt safe beside the big man holding the sledgehammer, had already sussed out that Terry was the only one here with any inkling of exactly what they were dealing with tonight.

  Jude fixed herself a good armful and lay back to listen to a bit of music. ‘Trick of the Tail’ was playing low in the background, a Genesis track from her happier days. Before the brown had taken over her life complete
ly. As she lay there her eyes were glazing over and her body was relaxing to the point of coma.

  She would start nodding soon.

  It was the nodding she loved best. What she craved more than anything or anyone in the world. The music was moving inside her body now as the heroin hit her bloodstream. She closed her eyes tightly and enjoyed the colours there. Vibrant greens and pinks, eventually settling to creamy whites and electric blues. This was what it was all about, this was her dream state.