He was remembering the sounds of nails being driven into wood; he remembered Vic talking to him as it was going on but he’d been hovering between consciousness and a heroin haze at the time and oblivion had won. He tried to force the lid up with his knees and arms but even as he expended the precious energy he knew it was never going to work.
Vic and his oinks would have made sure he was in this fucking coffin for eternity.
Garry was sitting with his mother when Carla came into the kitchen followed closely by Tony Dooley Senior.
‘She said you had told her to come round, Mrs Ryan.’
Sarah nodded.
Garry stared coldly at his niece and then said, ‘What the fuck do you want, Carla?’
Her lip was quivering as she looked reproachfully at her beloved Nana and her uncle, who were both making it plain she was not welcome.
‘Benny came round. He came round Nan’s.’
Garry shrugged.
‘And?’
She sniffed loudly.
‘I thought you lot should know. The filth are after him, they’ve been round twice since.’
She looked at Sarah and smiled ingratiatingly.
‘They tore the place apart but I cleaned it all up for you.’
It was hard for Sarah to watch her grandchild struggling to be taken back into the fold. She forced a smile.
‘Sit yourself down, child, and I’ll get you some tea. You look parched.’
She busied herself with the filling of the kettle, the atmosphere heavy. She wished Garry would leave the room and ease it somewhat. He didn’t. He sat back in his chair and stared at his niece, making her feel more uncomfortable than ever.
‘Did Tommy ever ask you anything pertaining to the family business?’
His directness startled her and she shook her head.
‘’Course not. Even if he had, I would never have told him.’
Garry laughed derisively.
Carla leant across the table, her long red-brown hair falling over her face as she hissed at him, ‘I can’t tell him what I don’t know, can I? Think about it, Uncle Garry. What would I tell him? You lot never treated me as an important part of the family, did you?’
He knew she was telling the truth but still baited her.
‘You knew enough about Benny and Maura, didn’t you?’
She tossed her head.
‘Nothing the Sunday red tops didn’t know. In fact, that’s where I get most of my information about you all. Let’s face it, you’re hardly unknown quantities, are you?’
Garry shook his head slowly as he watched her stand before him and squirm.
‘Maura will be back in a minute, you do realise that, don’t you? And I seem to remember an old saying about a woman scorned or some such female fucking nonsense.’
Sarah slapped him none too gently round the back of the head.
‘Why don’t you stop fuelling the shagging fire and just let her drink her tea in peace? I will sort out Maura, and you as well if needs be. This has all gone on long enough. If this last lot has taught us nothing else it should at least teach us we should all be pulling together, not trying to rip each other apart.’
She sat back at the table and grabbed her son’s hand in both of hers. He could feel the papery skin that denotes great age and suddenly felt a huge rush of affection for this old woman he had wanted to kiss and strangle alternately for the best part of his life.
‘We all need to stick together for the time being at least, Garry. Her brother is wreaking havoc all over the place and Carla came here to tell us that she’s seen him, so give her the benefit of the doubt for once. She is still our blood and that means more than anything.’
Before he could answer her Maura was in the kitchen and he watched as aunt and niece stared each other out. His mother gripped his hand harder and Garry found himself squeezing back.
‘Carla came to tell us about Benny, didn’t she, Garry?’
He nodded.
‘He’s been round Muvver’s. He was looking for the guns we had there, which can only mean one thing – he’s going after Vic and Abul himself.’
Maura watched her niece as she took off her jacket and placed it carefully over the back of one of the kitchen chairs.
‘How did he look?’
Carla shrugged, pleased that she had been spoken to directly and without apparent malice.
‘Manic would be the word. He had Dezzy in the car with him. I think he’d harmed him . . . well, you know what Benny’s like if he’s upset.’
Sarah got up and Maura said gently, ‘No tea, Mum, not for me. I’m going to have a large brandy.’ She looked at Garry and Carla. ‘Anyone want to join me?’
It was the hand of peace and they all knew it, especially Carla.
‘Please.’
Garry nodded, amazed at the way Maura had handled the situation. He knew his mother was finding it difficult. He could hear the old woman expel her breath with relief.
‘Jasus! I’ll have one too – for medicinal purposes, of course.’
They all smiled at her and Sarah felt herself redden with pleasure as their love washed over her. This was what she wanted, needed, more than all the riches in the world. The simple love of her children.
She knew it would take time for Maura and Carla to get back on their old footing, but at least she could die secure in the knowledge that they were not at each other’s throats any more.
While they sipped the brandy Maura filled Garry in on events at the club. He didn’t seem surprised.
‘I heard that one of our betting shops was nearly knocked over at lunchtime. The geezer running it, Sal Bordy, got rid of them with a sawn-off but I guessed we were coming over as on the way out.’
He finished his drink and said, ‘Fucking real, eh, Maws? We give these cunts their livelihood and then they turn on us like fucking rats.’
‘Who was it then?’
He grinned.
‘Two of Joe the Jew’s boys.’
Maura digested this bit of information before she sipped once more at her drink. ‘Do you think Vic is going to get in touch, Gal?’
He shrugged and lit a cigarette.
‘Your guess is as good as mine.’
‘We’ve been sitting here for over twenty-four hours waiting for a call that ain’t never going to come, ain’t we? He’s playing games with us and I tell you something else, Gal, he is going to regret it.’
She slammed her glass down on the table angrily and even her mother felt the force of her daughter’s personality when crossed. Maura’s hands were shaking as she lit a cigarette, and they all knew the tremor was born of anger not fear.
She drew on the cigarette and blew smoke out noisily. Her eyes were tightly closed as she tried to control herself and Carla wondered what on earth had ever possessed her to cheat this woman who had not only been good to her but was also a fearsome enemy.
‘Fucking mug me off? Is that what this is all about?’
She puffed on the cigarette again, and they felt the animosity coming off her in waves.
‘Well, this is it. I have finally had enough. Do you know what we are going to do now, Garry?’
He shook his head, a half-smile on his face. She grinned back at him.
‘We are going to send Vic a rather grisly and annoying little present. Bring him out of the woodwork.’
‘How are we going to do that? We don’t know where he is.’
Maura took another deep drag on her cigarette before she said gaily, ‘We are going to send his brother’s ear to his mother.’
Garry started to laugh with her, and Carla and Sarah felt completely excluded.
‘We can pick up a body part from Karen Harper at East London Crematorium – she owes us a favour.’
Garry was laughing uproariously.
‘We can also start routing all of Vic’s old associates. Fuck him. The gloves are off now and we can do what the fuck we like.’
‘What happened to the voice of sweet reaso
n, Maws? This isn’t like you, is it?’
She swallowed down her brandy and said gutsily, ‘It is now.’
Chapter Twenty-Five
Sandra Joliff’s mother and two small daughters were at the cemetery in Romford where she was buried. It was a bright day and the two girls were playing I Spy as they walked the familiar path to where their mother rested. They waited while their granny lit another Benson & Hedges. Her hacking cough could be heard all over the hushed cemetery.
Chantel, the elder of the girls by fifteen months, gripped her little sister’s hand as they waited for their granny to catch up with them. Rochelle, a dainty little thing as dark as her sister was blonde, slipped her hand away and ran ahead to her mother’s grave.
She looked at the headstone. It was pretty, black marble with gold lettering displaying her mother’s full name and date of birth. Then it said ‘Beloved Wife and Mother’. She stood staring down at the earth. She knew her mother was underneath there, her granny had explained that you had to be buried to go to Heaven. A boy at school had said that her mother would be eaten by worms and it had made her hysterical. Her teacher, Mrs Harding, had told him off and had also explained that worms haven’t got any teeth so that was a relief.
The ground looked as if it had been disturbed. She knelt down and began to tidy the plants they had placed there until the cement cast was laid down. They had picked out lovely pink glass-like stones to be put on the grave. Her mummy would have loved that; she had liked Barbie as much as her daughters and saw to it that they had everything Barbie needed to be a proper girl about town.
Her granny came up behind her with Chantel. The woman stared down at the mound of earth for long moments before saying, ‘Looks like it’s been dug over, doesn’t it?’
Chantel nodded.
‘Measuring up for the casing, I expect,’ Gran said.
She knelt down by her grand-daughters and stared at Sandra’s last resting place.
‘I heard Mummy calling me.’
Rochelle’s voice was quiet, her little face open and truthful. One thing about Rochelle: she looked like her mother but wasn’t a spinner like Sandra had been. Lily Camborn, sixty years old and tired out from too much smoking and too much grief, took her youngest grand-daughter in her arms and whispered, ‘Mummy’s gone, darlin’, she’s been gone this long time. But she’s watching over you and Chantel. She always will, she’s an angel in Heaven with Jesus.’
‘No, Nanny, listen.’
Chantel and Lily strained their ears to hear whatever it was the little girl claimed to have heard.
Nothing.
‘Put the flowers and the paintings down and we’ll go and get a McDonald’s, eh?’
Suddenly the sun went in and it seemed cold. Lily hated cemeteries, always had, and seeing her daughter’s grave made her doubly depressed. It was the wrong order; she should have been buried, not her Sandra. Her lively girl, who made everything seem like such fun.
She was seeing her daughter through rose-coloured glasses these days. She had completely forgotten the mouthy, argumentative sort, the one who snorted coke till it sent her reeling and drank herself into oblivion regularly.
Then she heard a faint knocking and felt a chill go over her whole body. She was imagining things, surely? She listened, her heart in her mouth, but there was nothing else. She knew it was her imagination working overtime. She often dreamt of her daughter. Felt that she was close by. Wanted to believe that she was watching over her little daughters, taking care of them – something she was not too good at when she was alive.
A psychic had told her that her Sandra was happy and free and Lily wanted to believe that desperately, and so for the grand sum of fifty-five quid that was exactly what she had been told by an aged woman with tired eyes and a smelly house in Dagenham. She didn’t want to think of her daughter unhappy and unsettled in her grave. If she did she would never again sleep at night.
It was important to believe that her daughter was resting in peace, not banging on her coffin lid trying to get out. She had been dead far too long for that, and now that Vic had finally coughed up for the casing the grave would look lovely and the girls and she could visit more often.
Lily forced the silly thoughts from her mind.
‘Come on, girls. Race each other to the gates and then we’ll get a Mackie D, eh?’
The girls raced off and she walked slowly away from Sandra’s grave. That muffled sound had unnerved her. But she knew that there was a perfectly rational explanation. It was just her imagination playing her up. She glanced back over her shoulder at the grave. It looked different somehow, and she couldn’t figure out why that was.
Sighing, she put her lined face up towards the sun which had come out from behind a cloud and relished its warmth on her skin. Everything looked better with the sun shining. It cheered you up and made you glad to be alive.
She forced all frightening thoughts from her mind and concentrated on the two young girls running like gazelles across the cemetery. The wind rustled the branches of a yew tree nearby and she heard a faint knocking as the bucket that hung by the stand pipe swayed against it. Breathing a sigh of relief, she hurried from the cemetery, telling herself she was a silly old woman.
Just for a split second there she had actually believed she’d heard a sound from beyond the grave and it had scared her silly.
She hurried away from the graveyard as fast as her arthritic legs could carry her, unaware that she was the last person ever to hear from Tommy Rifkind.
Leonie was singing as she tidied up her Garry’s flat. She had not been this happy in her whole life. Garry made her feel good about herself and she appreciated that so much. She was used to men who wanted her for all the wrong reasons.
By the time she was fifteen she had already learned about the power a good body could command if used in the right way. It had been her dream to be a stripper or an exotic dancer of some sort. The lapping had suited her down to the ground, but now she was feeling a little jaded from it all and saw Garry as a fit alternative.
He had money and kudos, two requisites that she was adamant a man should have before she would give them the time of day, but he was also kind to her and treated her with respect. She guessed, rightly, that she was the first person he had ever treated in this way and that also pleased her. It proved to her she was special. Garry had told her she was often enough.
She might even have a baby to cement their relationship and guarantee a few quid if it all fell out of bed at some point. A girl had to look to the future, and Leonie had always prided herself on her business acumen.
She loaded the dishwasher and as she did so heard the front door open. Smiling, she went through to the lounge and saw a large man standing there. She looked past him, expecting to see Garry behind him. The dark-haired man looked vaguely familiar.
‘Who are you? Where’s my Garry?’
Her voice was strong but there was an underlying tremor in it.
The man carried on staring at her from deep blue eyes.
‘Will you answer me, please?’
She was frightened now. This was the downside of being with someone like Garry, and it had been the same with Jack. Their enemies were automatically your enemies.
‘Where’s Garry?’
Benny’s voice was soft, but far from reassuring.
She shook her head.
‘I have no idea, he doesn’t discuss his movements with me.’
‘I bet he’s shown you a few movements though, eh, love?’
Leonie was annoyed now. She turned huffily and went back into the kitchen. Benny followed her.
‘You got a number for him?’
She shook her head.
Benny, fed up with all the poncing around, grabbed her by the hair and forced her head back on to her shoulders. It was extremely painful.
‘Ow! What the fuck do you think you’re doing?’ He sighed.
‘Have you a mobile number for him?’
She shook her head
once more. Benny shoved her away from him none too gently then walked back into the lounge and started to search the place. He finally found a mobile in her bag and scrolled through the address book.
Nothing.
She was far too cute to put actual names in there.
He began ringing the numbers one by one. Leonie watched him from the kitchen. He was trouble all right and she’d just realised this was one of Garry’s relatives. Heaven forbid she should ever meet an enemy.
Mickey Ball was watching as Vic listened on his cellphone to his tearful auntie telling him about the severed ear that had arrived at the house minutes before. He saw the veins protruding from Vic’s forehead, the way he was pulling his lips back over his teeth like a rabid dog about to pounce on its victim.
‘The fucking scumbags! Terrifying old women now, are they?’
He kicked out at a chair that was near him and sent it careering into Mickey’s legs. He thought about protesting, then thought better of it. Allies against the Ryans they might be but the last thing he wanted to do was antagonise Vic Joliff when he was in this state.
Sarah sat with Lee while Maura and Garry started on the first stage of their plan. Lee looked haunted and she knew Sheila would be giving him hell over recent events and the possible repercussions.
‘You OK, son?’
He shook his head.
‘Not really, Mum.’
She could hear the tremor in his voice.
‘Is everything all right with Sheila?’
He sighed.
‘It isn’t, Mum, if you want the truth.’
Sarah watched him smoke his cigarette and decided he looked not only old but deeply troubled. Her daughter-in-law was a handful who led this good son of Sarah’s a dance. Sheila didn’t know when she was well off. She had six children, another on the way and a husband who adored her as well as working his arse off for all of them. She was too hard on her man, and if she wasn’t careful he would find himself an alternative face to look at on the pillow of a morning.
‘Is she giving you grief?’