The Graft Read online

  He had been doing security around London for years; now he had his own company. He had no shortage of cronies and employees to sit with him while he got drunk. He wasn’t a rum drinker by nature but it was a good drink to get drunk on. Anyone who tried it once would understand that.

  Tyrell laughed at his own thoughts, and smiled at his friend, Paxton Regis.

  ‘Do you know, when he read the autopsy the Coroner said that the geezer had used excessive force on my boy. Excessive . . . that sounds a lot when you say it out loud, don’t it?’

  He coughed loudly before he continued, ‘He carried on hitting Sonny even after he was unconscious.’

  Tyrell gulped at his drink.

  ‘Fear, see. He was frightened. Guns do that to people, don’t they? They scare me, I can tell you. Once we had an incident on a door in Ilford. We ejected some little bullyboys and they came back with a gun. Little fuckers! I was so angry when I saw it, so angry. So I know what that bloke saw, you know?’

  Paxton nodded sadly.

  ‘I could understand his fear because I have felt it too, you know. But even though I understand how he reacted, I can’t forgive him for taking my Sonny. If he had known my boy, he would have seen what he was really like because he wasn’t a bad kid.’

  Tyrell was really drunk now and Paxton was wondering when it would be time to take him home.

  ‘Now we have to bury him, bury that child, and it’s all wrong. All fucking wrong.’

  He was rambling and Paxton nodded at the barman for another rum. Hopefully his friend would drink himself unconscious. Tyrell was in the wrong job, the wrong life. He was just too nice, that was his trouble.

  He gulped at his drink once more. Tyrell wasn’t really a drinker so it hadn’t taken much for him to get drunk. But the club was quiet today, quieter than usual, as if everyone was grieving with him even though every man there quietly admitted they would have done the same as Nick Leary. You protected your own, especially your kids and your woman.

  Sonny had crossed the line.

  But no one said that out loud, of course. Tyrell was far too well respected and liked for that.

  ’All right, Jude?’

  She heard the voice and tried to focus her eyes but it was hard.

  Sally Hatcher smiled at her even as she tried not to wrinkle her nose at the smell around her. She had promised Tyrell she would pop in and see how Jude was doing. By the looks of it, not very well.

  Tyrell had said that he had to go to work. She knew he didn’t want to deal with the business today but anything was better than watching this woman destroy herself, apparently. Or watching his mother’s heart break all over again.

  ‘Get your coat on and I’ll take you to Verbena’s house, she wants you with her.’

  ‘Go away.’

  Sally sighed. Her short hair sat perfectly on her finely shaped head, and her slim athletic body brimmed over with health and well-being, making Jude look even older and more haggard than she actually was.

  ‘Come on, Jude, Verbena needs you.’

  ‘No one needs me, Sally. Never did, never will. Now do me a favour and fuck off.’

  There was no insult intended in the words, swearing was as normal to Jude as breathing. She was already building herself a joint, only this one would hold heroin. She smoked it sometimes. Once Sally left she would mainline and get properly floating.

  Sally watched her in disgust. No matter how many photos she saw of a younger, prettier Jude, and there were plenty of them in Verbena’s house, she could not equate them with this excuse for a woman before her.

  Sonny would have known what to do with her in this state. She’d been like a job to him. Now Jude was going to have to get used to taking care of herself.

  The front door opened abruptly and three young men walked in without knocking. They were all white with styled and cropped hair. One had the logo of West Ham Utd shaved into the side of his head, two crossed hammers.

  Sally stared at them incredulously.

  ‘How did you get in?’

  The tallest boy looked her over and obviously found her lacking.

  ‘I might ask you the same thing?’

  ‘They’re friends of Sonny’s,’ Jude said testily. ‘Now go home, Sally, for fuck’s sake. I can’t cope with you here and all.’

  Sally picked up her bag and said gently, ‘If you’re sure?’ Jude looked at her slyly, guessing the other woman was glad of an excuse to leave her.

  ‘Oh, I’m sure.’

  Sally left her to it. There wasn’t really anything else she could do.

  It was ten o’clock when Nick finally strolled through the front door. Tammy was in the television room watching a film. She had a large glass of wine beside her and a cigarette in her hand. He stumbled into the room and flopped down beside her. She smiled at him briefly before her gaze turned back to the TV.

  He looked around him. It was a nice room, a comfortable room. It was a room many people would love to possess. Yet to them it was the dossing room. The curling up and watching TV room.

  He moved closer to his wife; he needed her tonight, needed to feel loved. Wanted. He had never felt so low in his life. The guilt was weighing on him heavily. Every time he closed his eyes he saw that boy’s face.

  He clasped Tammy’s hand and she squeezed his back affectionately.

  ‘Tam . . .’

  ‘It’s over, Nick.’

  He nodded.

  ‘But, Tam . . .’

  ‘You’re pissed.’

  She said this without taking her eyes off the TV.

  He nodded once more.

  ‘I need to talk to you, Tam.’

  She looked at him.

  ‘In a minute, wait till this ends.’

  Her voice was warmer now, softer. He looked at the screen. Richard Burton and Geneviève Bujold were fighting.

  ‘What is it?’

  She sighed in annoyance.

  ‘Anne of the Thousand Days. It’s about Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn. He’s just dinged her in the Tower of London and he’s offering her an annulment if she shuts her trap and don’t ask for nothing from him. But she knocks him back so he has her nutted.’

  ‘Sounds good to me.’

  Tammy laughed despite herself.

  ‘Look, let me see her die then I’ll make you a drink and we can talk all night if you want.’

  He watched the screen, amazed by his wife’s passion for history. Whatever else she was, Tammy was without doubt a mine of information about royalty. She had loved Diana and cried for three days after her untimely death. She had more feeling for a woman who had been beheaded centuries before than she did for the boy who had died at her own husband’s hands.

  But that was Tammy all over.

  Nothing ever bothered her unless it affected her personally. And she had taken the threat to Nick’s liberty personally. In Tammy’s mind the fact that her husband could have got into trouble for defending his own family was tantamount to two fingers up at her from the British legal system. At her, Tammy, who adored royalty - except for Prince Charlie, of course. Who saw herself as British through and through. Who even made remarks sometimes about Nick’s Irish heritage. She had been devastated when he had nearly been arrested for doing what he had done. She’d even slagged the Queen off on more than one occasion recently. And all this from a woman who would normally defend the monarchy to the death.

  He had loved her loyalty, though, even if it had always been tinged with selfishness. Tammy saw anything he or the boys did as a reflection on her.

  He glanced at the screen once more. Anne Boleyn was walking sedately to the scaffold. Nick watched her, wondering briefly how it must have felt, leaving her young child in the care of the man who was in effect murdering her.

  He could hear soft crying from Tammy and hugged her close to him. She was a nightmare in some respects, but he had to admire her consistency. Anne Boleyn was her idol. Tammy knew everything there was to know about her. She huddled into Nick’s arms, an
d allowed him to comfort her.

  It did not occur to her that she should be comforting him. As far as she was concerned it was all over.

  And not before time either.

  Tyrell lay on his mother’s sofa, drunker than he had ever been in his life. Though Verbena had never liked alcohol she understood his need to obliterate the last few days.

  She sat studying the pictures all around the room of Sonny Boy and his mother. He had been a handsome child. Sally came into the room with two mugs of tea, made just how Verbena liked it with plenty of sugar and a healthy dollop of condensed milk. The sweet warmth eased her for a moment.

  ‘Was she really bad?’

  Sally sat on the edge of the sofa and shrugged.

  ‘The usual.’

  Verbena sighed.

  ‘You shouldn’t hold a grudge against her, you know, Sally. She is to be pitied.’

  Her daughter-in-law didn’t answer, just smiled tightly. She had been hearing that for so long it had absolutely no effect any more. As she looked into Verbena’s sad eyes she felt the pity she always did for the older woman’s distress at what had befallen her family. It just annoyed Sally that no one blamed Jude Hatcher for any of it. It was always poor Jude, unfortunate Jude. Never selfish, drug-addicted Jude who had systematically ruined everyone around her.

  ‘Can I get you something to eat?’

  Sally was deft now at changing the subject.

  Before Verbena could answer the glass of the living-room window shattered and a brick landed on the coffee table. The unexpected noise made both women scream. Tyrell opened his eyes and sat bolt upright on the sofa, obviously terrified by it as well.

  ‘What the fuck . . .’

  It was as if everything was moving in slow motion. Verbena watched her son as he ran to the broken window, his voice loud as he cursed whoever had thrown the brick. Glass lay everywhere. It was a few seconds before she realised it was all over her lap, and that a few small pieces had cut her legs and face. At first she had thought it was tears she could feel. It wasn’t until Sally screamed that Verbena realised it was actually blood.

  Jude was floating now. In her mind Sonny Boy was home with her once more. He was young again, but not too young. Old enough to help her out with things. He had been such a good kid. He had scored for her since he was old enough to ask for a five-pound bag.

  She pulled the tourniquet off the top of her arm with her teeth. Jude still went through the ritual as she had always done. Pumping the muscle was like a part of the high for her. The whole process was a major part of the high.

  She liked this bit best, when the main high was being replaced by a feeling of complete well-being. This was what she liked to call her thinking time. This was the time when she’d liked to chat to Sonny Boy for hours. He would make her laugh or smile about things. Would roll her a joint to soften the edges once the heroin had worn off and its magic was replaced with the urge to do the whole thing again.

  He had never judged her, never tired of her like everyone else. She had been like his baby, like his child.

  A big fat tear escaped from her eye then. For the first time Jude cried quietly. It was only when she was alone that she could really grieve. She pulled herself up from the sofa and negotiated the chaos of the room, finally stumbling into her son’s bedroom. She sat on the bed, breathing deeply, and opened the drawer of his dressing table. In a tobacco tin was his signet ring. His father had bought it for him and she had made sure the hospital had given it back to her after his death.

  Now Jude weighed it in her hand. It was quite heavy with a small diamond chip set in a plain gold square. It had the letter S written neatly in old italic script on the left-hand corner.

  She remembered his face as he had opened the box on the morning of his fifteenth birthday. He had been so pleased with it. Over the years it had been in and out of Uncle’s when money was tight and Jude had needed her sustenance. Sonny would always move heaven and earth to retrieve it, to have it back on his finger, even thieving to get the money.

  It was all she had left of him, she had already sold almost everything else. But as she looked at it, glinting in the half-light, she knew her Sonny Boy would understand what she was going to do.

  If she hurried Big Ellie would still be up and she could get her money and score some gear ready for the morning. Jude got up off the bed with difficulty, but she clutched the ring tightly in her hand.

  At the end of the day Sonny had known her better than anyone. Until she sorted out a regular supply of money, this would have to go. He would have seen the logic of that. He knew her need and also understood why she had the need in the first place.

  He had been a good kid, her Sonny Boy, and his death would not be in vain. She would make sure she got something out of it if it was the last thing she did.

  Chapter Five

  Tyrell had no interest in what the police had to say about the attack on his mother’s and went off to work with a frown on his face. He was sick to death of it all. He just wanted to grieve in peace.

  No one was surprised by the events of the night before. The police seemed sorry for the boy’s mother but not unduly bothered about the broken window. Sonny had been a legend in his own lunchtime around the estate and people had little sympathy for him personally. He had robbed enough of them over the years to cause widespread offence.

  Tyrell’s mother, though, was a different kettle of fish altogether. She was respected and liked even though she never left the house now. Everyone came to her and she dispensed advice and sympathy, so to think that anyone would take it out on her like this was making Tyrell feel capable of murder himself.

  The paramedics had stitched her eyebrow in the house. Realising she would not leave, they had had to calm her down before they had been able to take care of her wound. Verbena had been more worried about leaving her home than she had been about the attack. But Tyrell understood that. He understood her fear even better than she did.

  His mother had not left the house for over twenty years, and he knew that she would never leave it now. Her nerves had got to her long before his brother’s death, but that had been the catalyst that had caused all their lives to change so dramatically.

  His mother had taken so much in her lifetime, and she had taken it all on the chin in true Jamaican fashion. She had seen her adopted country as the salvation of her family, as the means to give them all a better life. She had worked every hour that the good Lord had sent, and she had dressed her children in fine clothes, fed them the best foods. She had sent her children to school, and made sure they had arrived there and, more importantly, stayed there.

  Unlike their contemporaries, they had been too fearful to play truant, too frightened to let her down, and make her feel ashamed of them.

  She had taken them to church and taught them the goodness of Christ and of a life well lived. Her job had been as a care assistant in a hospital, and it had involved shifts, and she had taken every shift she could, never missing one. Like her husband, she had understood that without money they could not further themselves or their children.

  When her last baby had arrived, it had been Hettie and Maureen to whom she had entrusted him, and it had been Hettie and Maureen who had taken him to school one day and who had watched in horror as he had run into the road and been mown down by a nice man who had been surprised and terrified by the fact that a young boy had run out in front of his car and had died within seconds.

  It had been no one’s fault, but Verbena, already under too much pressure, had taken the death so badly she had gradually lost the urge to do even the most mundane of things. Her children and husband had watched their strongest supporter wither away under the weight of her grief. First the job had gone, then the visits to the shops. Day by day, she had sat indoors reading the Bible, looking for a reason for her son’s death. Going out less and less, until finally even her church had not been enough to make her leave the house, her world had come to her. Until now, her illness was accepted
as an intrinsic part of her and not as something strange or alien. It almost seemed normal to her family and friends.

  Yet there were no photos of her last-born in the house, and there was never any mention of him. Samuel Hatcher had been obliterated from their lives, because Verbena had never been able to cope with his death, or with her own guilt.

  Yet Tyrell knew she thought of him constantly and went over and over in her mind the morning she had sent him off with his sisters to his death, while she had tumbled into bed exhausted from her night’s work, glad to see the back of them.

  Tyrell often wondered if that was why she had taken Jude under her wing the way she had; she had needed someone to love and Jude had come along at the right time. She had never seen Jude for the user she was, had never believed that Jude was capable of manipulating her.