The Ladykiller Read online

  All three stood rooted to the spot as they heard their mother running across the front room and out into the hall. Her heavy footfalls on the stairs were followed by Bert’s.

  ‘Talk to me like that, would you, you slut? You bloody big fat slut!’

  ‘Take your filthy hands off of me, Bert Higgins, I’m warning you now.’

  They listened to the scuffle on the stairs and then heard a thud and all went quiet. The three looked at each other in consternation.

  ‘Nancy? Nance?’ Bert’s voice was low and filled with fear.

  Edith pushed George from her and ran from the room.

  ‘Oh my God!’ She ran down the stairs and pushed Bert roughly away. Her mother was lying sprawled on the stairs, her head bleeding profusely from the temple.

  ‘I never meant it, she fell and hit her head.’

  Edith ignored the man and examined her mother. It was a flesh wound. As she peered at it, Nancy’s eyes opened and she pushed the girl away from her.

  ‘Get away out of it, you.’ Joseph and George stood at the top of the stairs dumbstruck.

  Nancy put her hand to her head and brought the fingers away blood-stained.

  ‘You bastard! I’m bleeding.’

  ‘Look, Nancy, I’m sorry. Honestly, darlin’, I wouldn’t hurt you for the world, you know that. I could cut me hands off.’

  Edith walked slowly up the stairs. She knew she wasn’t needed any more. It was the same thing over and over again. No worries about Georgie who would be bruised for a week or ten days, and who would get another hiding between times. No concern for Joseph who was getting iller and iller with his nerves each week. Not a thought for Edith who had to keep everyone together. Let’s just worry about Mummy and her bloody head. A bloody head she asked for, to all intents and purposes.

  ‘Come on, you two.’ She pushed the two boys into the bedroom and closed the door.

  A while later the three heard Bert and their mother enter their own bedroom and the squeaking of the bed springs and loud groans that heralded their making up.

  Chapter Five

  23 December 1989

  Mandy Kelly pulled her coat tighter across her breasts. It was freezing. Her toes in her flat-heeled boots had already gone numb. She would murder Kevin when he finally arrived. She looked at her watch again. It was eight fifteen, he was a quarter of an hour late. She stood by the light of the phone box and stamped her feet. She wouldn’t mind but he had her car, and if she got a taxi her father would guess immediately what had happened and then all hell would break loose. Plus it was Saturday night and they were supposed to be going out to eat with her father and his new girlfriend. Well, she had to be honest, she wasn’t worried about missing that so much, but her father would be upset. Sod Kevin! He always did this to her.

  She pushed her hands deeper into the pockets of her sheepskin. The cold night air was burning her lungs with every breath she took. The street was deserted except for the occasional car. Everyone was either putting the finishing touches to their trees after a hectic day’s shopping, or ensconced somewhere warm with a drink or a meal. The world was at the quiet empty stage that seemed to suspend the laws of time until Christmas Day came. She pulled her long blond hair from inside the collar of her sheepskin. The air was damp and her hair was lank around her face.

  Oh God, it was so cold.

  She watched a dark blue Orion drive past her slowly and stared after it uneasily. She was sure that it had driven past once before. She shrugged. No need to worry, Kevin would be here soon. She smiled to herself. Her orange lipstick was smudged where she kept rubbing her lips together. Her father would be waiting for them, they were supposed to leave at nine. If Kevin didn’t hurry up she wouldn’t even have time to change.

  She carried on watching the road, hoping against hope that Kevin would drive along in her white Mercedes sports and take her home.

  Sometimes she wondered what exactly it was Kevin liked about her. Whether it was the fact that her father was Patrick Kelly, or whether it was her car, or whether it was in fact her he liked. She tried not to dwell on thoughts like these as they upset her. Like her father’s girlfriends who were getting younger and younger by the month. She looked at her watch again. Eight twenty-five. Oh, sod Kevin! She wasn’t going to stand here all night.

  She went into the phone box and picked up the phone. It was dead.

  That was all she needed. Pulling her coat tighter around her she began to walk down the road, still keeping her eye out for Kevin and her car. The car that she never got the chance to drive any more.

  She saw a set of headlights coming towards her and her heart leapt into her mouth. Please let it be Kevin!

  It was the dark blue Orion and it stopped beside her.

  ‘Come on, Kevin. Have one more drink.’

  ‘Nah. I’d better get going. Mandy will be doing her nut.’

  Jonny Barker laughed out loud and looked at the crowd of men around him.

  ‘He’s well and truly pussy whipped, ain’t he, boys?’

  Everyone laughed, none more so than Kevin Cosgrove himself. ‘Nah, I’ve got to, lads. I’m half an hour late as it is.’

  Garry Aldridge clapped Kevin on the back. He was as drunk as a lord.

  ‘I’ll tell you sommick, mate, since that murder I won’t let my bird go nowhere unless she’s in a cab or a crowd.’

  Kevin looked at his friend’s open face and for the first time worried about Mandy. She was a pain in the arse in a lot of respects, but he would not like anything to happen to her. Not just because he cared about her, though that was part of it, but because her father was what was known as a Bad Man. A very Bad Man indeed.

  Putting his pint of lager on the bar, he said his goodbyes and made his way hastily to the car.

  Opening the door, he climbed into the luxurious smell of leather and musk perfume. Mandy’s perfume.

  He loved this car. He envied Mandy her father’s money, but admired her more because she still went to work. She was a beautician. In a few months her father was going to buy her her own shop.

  He drove into Portaby Road and scanned the kerb looking for Mandy. She was nowhere to be seen. He had arranged to meet her here because it was quiet, and there would not be much chance of anyone who knew her father seeing her standing around waiting. If Patrick Kelly knew that his daughter did not really have the use of her own car he would go mad. He had bought her a car every year since she had passed her test at seventeen. Always a brand new car and always a very expensive one. Kevin knew for a fact that this Mercedes had cost well over forty thousand pounds. That was why he loved driving it. He loved the feel of being in something that was pure class. He turned around at the bottom of Portaby Road and began to drive back up it slowly. Mandy was definitely not here.

  Kevin gripped the steering wheel tightly. That meant only one thing: she had gone home without him and without her car. He felt his heart sink as he began to drive to the outskirts of Grantley where Patrick Kelly lived with Mandy in a large rambling house.

  Kelly would be furious. Though Kevin would never admit it outright to her or to anyone else for that matter, he admitted it to himself: Patrick Kelly frightened him out of his skin. He frightened anyone who had even half a brain.

  Kevin drove slowly. All the excitement he usually felt at driving the car was gone now. It had been replaced by fear.

  Bugger that bloody Mandy! Why didn’t she just wait like he’d told her?

  Patrick Kelly poured himself a brandy in a large snifter and sat back in his chair. He looked at his new girlfriend Tiffany and hid the glimmer of annoyance that swept through his features as he watched her, watching herself, in the full-length mirror opposite her chair.

  Tiffany was nineteen, three years younger than his daughter, and she was built like Jayne Mansfield. Kelly liked his women voluptuous. He allowed himself a slight smile. Tiffany would not even know who Jayne Mansfield was. She was what he commonly termed as thick as two short planks. But that was all right be
cause he didn’t particularly want to talk to her. Just go to bed with her.

  The large Christmas tree in the corner twinkled with lights and he glanced at it for a few seconds, then his eyes strayed once more to the photograph of his late wife, Renée, on the mantelpiece. Suddenly he was engulfed in sadness. He shrugged silently inside his Armani suit. A memory of another Christmas came to his mind, he could see Renée holding Mandy in her arms in their little bedsit, the bathroom was full of steam and the smell of camphor. Mandy, just turned one, had croup and both he and Renée had sat in the damp little bathroom all night with her.

  He missed Renée, missed her every day of his life. They had worked together to build up their businesses, she was the real brains behind the repo business, not him. He had always been the muscle, the hard man. He had collected outstanding debts from villains, men who had done a robbery and then tried to ‘tuck up’ the other men with them.

  Kelly had a knack of finding people, of making people tell him their whereabouts - he still had it to this day, despite his large house, his hand-made suits and his aura of semi-respectability. Deep down in his boots he knew that he was still an East End urchin, still got a thrill from his illegal dealings. Even though these days he mixed with the highest in the land for one reason or another, he knew that inside, he would always be Patrick Kelly from the East End. The years of living in coldwater bedsits, rat-infested tenements and watching his mother work herself into the ground would never be far from his thoughts, and as far as he was concerned, that was how it should be. He was honest enough to admit to himself that it was his dead wife’s business acumen that he could thank for his respectable way of life these days. It had been Renée who had somehow managed to get them their first respectable client. Without her, he would still be pretty well off, but the chances were he’d have been sent down by a judge years before. He had learnt from her, and now he missed her. He had respected her, loved her and built a life with her for their only child.

  Suddenly, Tiffany annoyed him more than ever. He did not want her sitting there, with her tight dress and professionally tanned legs, he wanted Renée. With her blond hair swept up as it had always been and her tiny frame encased in a nice black dress that screamed of class, to him anyway. She had dressed quietly, had a quiet demeanor that he had loved. He looked at the tree again and felt the sting of tears. Christmas was always an emotional time. It was a time to think of absent loved ones, a bitter-sweet remembering. Ten years he had mourned her, taking on the responsibility for his daughter, a daughter who had all her mother’s zest for life, even if she had taken up with that geek of a boyfriend. He looked like he was a bit Stoke on Trent, but Mandy had assured him he was straight as a die. Patrick still had his doubts.

  The silence was beginning to get on his nerves: Tiffany was a girl of few words. Even in bed she lay back with a serious expression while he did the business, then she got up silently and washed herself over the bidet before getting back into bed and going straight to sleep. It was like shagging a blow-up doll. The only time she showed any emotion was when she was admiring herself in the mirror. The telephone jangled into the stillness of the room and Kelly jumped in his chair. He went to the table and picked the phone up thinking it might be Mandy.

  It was Bill Doon.

  ‘Pat, I’ve been to see the bloke and he’s skint. He’s blown the bloody lot on the horses. His wife never even managed to get a bit out of him for Christmas, the ponce.’

  ‘What did you do, Bill?’

  ‘That’s why I’m ringing you, shall I give him a hiding or what?’

  Patrick closed his eyes for a second and then gritted his teeth.

  ‘Now you work for me don’t you, Bill?’ His voice low and patient as if he was talking to a child.

  ‘Yeah.’ Bill’s voice was puzzled.

  ‘And I pay you a good piece of wedge to collect outstanding debts for me don’t I?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Then go and break his fucking arms. Jesus wept, I might as well go and do the fucking job meself.’

  ‘All right, Pat, keep your hair on. He’s got six kids sitting in that flat with him.’

  ‘Then take him out of the flat, you prat, and as it’s Christmas you can give him a dig near a casualty department, how’s that?’ He slammed the phone down. After a couple of seconds he picked it up again and pressed 4. The phone was answered by Kelly’s right-hand man, Willy Gabney.

  ‘What do you want, Pat?’

  ‘I want you to make up a goodie bag, Willy, and drop it round Bob Mason’s place. He won’t be home for Christmas.’

  ‘Okey doke. Mandy back yet?’

  ‘Not a bleeding sign of her. That ponce Kevin’s probably still tarting himself up!’

  He put down the phone and poured himself another large brandy. The ormolu clock on the mantelpiece showed ten to nine. Where the hell was Mandy? He had booked the table for nine thirty.

  Kelly sat back in his chair and fingered a piece of paper in his breast pocket. It was the deeds to a small hairdressing salon and beauty parlour, his gift to his daughter for Christmas. He allowed himself a small smile.

  Mandy would be over the moon.

  He sipped his brandy in the silence once more. Tiffany, he noticed, was still watching herself in the mirror.

  George Markham was smiling at the girl in his car. Her eye was already beginning to swell where he had punched her. It was her own fault for trying to fight him. Here he was trying his hardest to be friendly and nice and all she could do was sulk! He had driven to a piece of wasteground and now they were both watching each other warily.

  Mandy was terrified. Since the man had stopped and asked directions, everything had gone wrong. She had walked to his car and the next thing she had known she was being dragged bodily into the car. She had kicked and screamed and no one had come to help her. She could feel a throbbing above her right eye, and it hurt her ribs every time she took a breath. As he had dragged her across his lap by her hair she had scraped her knees and thighs on the metal of the car. They had driven away fast and she had attempted to open the door and jump but he had held on to her hair, making it impossible. She would have landed under the wheels of the car.

  Oh, please, please. Someone, anyone, help her!

  George liked the look of her, he decided. The only thing he did not like was the orange lipstick. He hated orange lipstick. Mandy saw him scowl at her and her heart lurched. She inched her way round, her arm behind her back. She was going to open the car door and run for it. Run as hard as she could.

  George read her mind.

  Taking a length of rope from the glove compartment, he grabbed her hands.

  Mandy began to fight, her long false nails flying dangerously close to his face. Sighing heavily, George punched her with all his might. He hit her on the cheekbone and heard the high cracking sound as it broke beneath his knuckles.

  The girl slumped back on to the seat dazed, the red hot pain in her face making her quiet and subdued. The man was mad. Suddenly Mandy knew that with stunning clarity. If she didn’t play along he would kill her. Maybe he would kill her anyway. She lay back in the seat crying quietly. Wishing her dad was here. George tied her hands together as if she was going to say her prayers.

  ‘Please let me go.’ Her voice was low and surprisingly gentle and childlike.

  George felt magnanimous, even happy at the humility of the request. She learnt fast, he would say that much for her. Rubbing his hands together, he leaned over her and took a carrier bag off the back seat. He pulled out the black leather mask he had purchased in the sex shop.

  Mandy was in a state of fear so acute she was rooted to the seat. Her eyes opened wide as she saw the man putting the mask on. He even turned on the interior light of the car, and pulled the mirror above the windscreen towards him so he could fit the mask on properly.

  It crossed George’s mind that she had seen his face clearly already, but he could hardly drive around Grantley with the mask on, could he? He felt t
he fear coming from the girl and was gratified. It was all working out even better than he’d expected.

  Getting out of the car, he slipped off his ‘good’ overcoat, as Elaine called his Burberry. Folding it carefully, he laid it across the back seat. It was freezing cold and George shivered. Then he walked round to the passenger side and, opening the door, dragged Mandy out. Pulling her along by her coat, George led her to an old shed that had been standing empty for years. He opened the door and pushed her inside.

  Mandy landed on the dirty floor, and was in too much pain to care. She watched as the man took two candles from his suit pocket and lit them.

  George smiled. That was better. Going to Mandy, he united her hands.

  ‘Take off your coat.’

  She lay on the floor staring up at him. A thin line of blood was seeping from her nose and rolling down the side of her face.

  ‘I said, take off your fucking coat!’

  George put his hand over his mouth. But the swearing seemed to do the trick because she pulled herself up slowly.

  He felt the stirring of excitement and then grabbed the front of her sheepskin and tore it from her body. As he dragged it from her arms she seemed to spin over and George heard a heavy thud as she landed back on the floor.

  He shook his head. Another one! Out in this weather in a little jumper and skirt. Still, at least she had the sense to wear tights. Thick tights.

  He could see the fear in her eyes and he grinned.

  Mandy watched the man lay her coat on the dirt floor. She tried to gather her wits about her and glanced around the shed. There were no windows, only the door, and he was wedging a piece of wood under that. Lying about on the floor were numerous pieces of wood and metal. Just to the right of her was a crowbar. She would await her opportunity and then make a grab for it. She swivelled her eyes back to George. Her face was so sore, she was having difficulty swallowing. She watched as the man came back to her.