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  ‘Go to sleep, son. I’ll sort it all out. Stop worrying, OK?’

  Patrick Junior nodded once more and in the half-light Patrick saw the tiredness that was etched on the boy’s face. This child was already old before his time, he realised now. He saw himself in this boy and Pat Junior was emulating his own life in the way he tried to keep the peace with everyone. He had learned to be a diplomat at a young age as well and had spent his childhood sneaking around his parents, trying not to annoy them. They had walked away from him regularly and left him to fend for himself without a second’s thought and that had been hard. Now his son was in a similar position, trying to keep his brother on track and trying to be the man of the house for his mother, for Lil, who was weak with pregnancy and unsure of what to do about Lance and his antics. He sat there until Pat dropped off. Then he smoothed his son’s thick black hair away from his brow and sighed heavily.

  He went back downstairs into the neat and tidy kitchen and saw that his wife, his lovely Lil, was still standing where he had left her.

  ‘Look, Lil, you’re right. Lance is definitely not all the ticket, but what can we do?’

  She shrugged. ‘I don’t know, Pat, that’s just it. What the fuck do we do about him? I talked Janie Callahan down and she had the sense to keep the Old Bill out of it, so everyone thinks the child fell but the point is, he nearly killed her and he was still denying it, the little fucker.’

  That Lil was at the end of her tether was evident. She was near to tears, and, holding her gently to his chest, he kissed her softly, smelling Vosene shampoo and the sweet aroma of her scent. She favoured Blue Grass and it lingered on her skin. It reminded him that soon she would be brought to bed with another child and would be his lovely Lil once more. No more backache, no more restless nights and no more upset because he was going to sort this out for her and give her peace of mind back.

  ‘I do try with him, but he is hard work, Patrick. He lies, he steals, he causes upset everywhere he goes. Now it turns out he is a bully and all. Bullying girls, fucking little kids . . . What must people think of us, eh? He’s getting away with murder and he knows that he can because of you. This has to stop, Patrick. You have to sort him out . . . I can’t do this any more.’

  She was sobbing now and for his Lil to cry meant she was more than just upset and he understood how she was feeling because he was having trouble keeping a lid on his own temper at the moment.

  ‘Don’t get upset, think of this new baby...’

  She pushed him away from her then, with force; a force that surprised both of them.

  ‘Oh fuck the baby, Patrick. We need to sort out that mad bastard first. Then we can make sure this one doesn’t turn out to be a nutcase and all . . .’

  Patrick had never heard her speak like that before and he understood how she felt about what Lance had done, but shouting at him was not going to change that. He swallowed down his annoyance once more.

  ‘Calm down, Lil. Getting upset is not going to solve anything, is it?’

  Lil clenched her fists in rage at his words, knowing he meant well, but unable to play his game this time. She didn’t want platitudes, she wanted action and she wanted him to tell her that her feelings for her child were merited. That he would sort this all out and take the onus off her. She wanted him to take Lance in hand and make him right in the head, make him normal and make her love him. She wanted him to make the hatred she felt for her child go away.

  Janie Callahan had brought her worst nightmare into her home; as soon as she had seen her on the doorstep, she had known that Lance had finally overstepped the mark. She had almost enjoyed it, beating him and making him pay for the way he made her feel, for the guilt that lay over her like a lead weight.

  ‘You’re telling me to calm down? You fucking kill me. You think a few choice words are going to sort this out?’

  The incredulity in Lil’s voice was apparent and Pat closed his eyes. He only wanted to calm her down, that was all.

  ‘He is a fucking moron and you know it. There is a cunning in him, Pat, a hateful, deceitful cunning that runs through him. He has to be curbed, he has to be taken in hand, Patrick. You can do it for once, you can fucking well sort this one out. For once in your life you can do the honours where that bastard is concerned, because I have had it, I can’t do this any more.’

  Patrick could smell whisky and it was a few moments before it dawned on him that she was drunk. She was half-cut and, as he looked around the kitchen, he saw the half-empty bottle of Bells. Grabbing her arms, he forced her on to a chair.

  ‘Don’t you dare push me like that . . .’ Her voice was louder than she expected and she knew she was getting out of hand, that the drink was talking for her. But she had needed something to take the edge off the day, help her relax and make her sleep.

  ‘I didn’t push you, Lil, I just helped you to a seat before you keeled over. Now, for the last time, calm down for fuck’s sake.’

  His annoyance was in his voice now and she heard it with a thrill of pleasure. He was reacting at last and showing some kind of real emotion.

  ‘You have to send him away from here, send him to a boarding school or something. I want him out of this house and I mean it . . . ’

  Pat poured himself a drink, anything to stop himself from answering his wife. He needed to calm down and think before he spoke to her. She was not in any mood for chit-chat and he wanted her calm and lucid before he talked the problem through.

  ‘There’s a Jesuit school in Ireland. I was reading about it a while back in the church magazine and they take problem kids. It ain’t cheap but who cares about that. The priest will know more about it; we can enquire tomorrow. Either way, he has to go, Pat. He has to go away because I won’t be responsible for my actions if he stays around me.’

  Patrick had always known that Lil had not taken to Lance as she should have. But he had not realised that it was as bad as this. Her mother had taken the boy over and, truth be told, it was the only reason he had tolerated the old bitch, because he knew deep down that Lil had no affection for the boy. He had understood, because Lance had a similar effect on him. But he rationalised his feelings and blamed it on the way Annie had taken him over from the second he had been born. He knew the relationship between Lance and his mother-in-law wasn’t healthy but with Patrick Junior being a handful and the twins arriving so quickly he had let it go. He had tried to cut the cord a few times over the years but Lil had always been the instigator of her mother and Lance being reunited.

  ’A Jesuit school, Lil? That’s your answer, is it? Send him away?’

  She nodded and stared at him defiantly, letting him know that she was deadly serious. Now this had happened, now it was all out in the open, she wanted it resolved once and for all. Knowing what her son was capable of was enough for her to know she didn’t want him near her.

  ‘He ain’t going away, Lil. He might be a fucker but he is eight. Eight years old. He had no real understanding of what he was doing . . .’

  ‘He knew exactly what he was doing to that child. A few days earlier he had blacked her eye and punched her to the ground . . .’

  She was nodding now at the horror on his face. ‘Yeah, punched the poor little mare for no reason at all. He is a spiteful little shit and he ain’t ever going to get the chance to fucking vent his rage on my girls . . .’

  ‘Stop it, Lil; he loves the twins . . .’

  This was too far now; as if the boy would harm his own sisters.

  Lil laughed sadly. ‘You just don’t get it, do you, Pat? Either he goes or I do . . .’

  ‘Don’t be so dramatic, you silly mare, that’s the drink talking. And you should know better than to get pissed in your condition. And as for Lance, he is the product of your fucking mother, and her constant mollycoddling. I’ll hammer the little git and when I have finished with him he won’t fucking dare put a foot wrong. Now, stop talking out of your arse, and let’s get to bed.’

  He had finally had enough. He was going
to nip this lot in the bud. Lil needed a good night’s sleep and then maybe she would see this lot in a different light.

  ‘I am not going anywhere, Patrick Brodie, until you promise me that Lance, the unnatural little bastard, will be taken away from here. Away from my other kids. From this new baby especially. I can’t look at him without wanting to harm him and that is me telling you the truth of it. I want him out of this fucking house and away from me and mine!’

  As she spoke she saw Lance standing in the doorway looking at her with those calm blue eyes that had bothered her even when he had been a babe in arms. She retched then and only just made it to the sink before the whisky and the day’s events finally got the better of her and she threw up. As she retched she could hear her husband’s breathing in the silence of the kitchen and she knew then that he would not do anything that she had asked of him. Lance would be taken in hand by him and he would fool his father as he fooled everyone else.

  Spider was in a dilemma. His mother was looking at the lifeless body of her son and he wasn’t able to do anything to make it better.

  Cain had been found in a skip. The skip was outside a house in Leytonstone; the people who had hired it had expected a few other things to be dumped in it alongside the rubbish they cleared from their garden. A naked black man with a screwdriver forced through his ear had not been on their list. The woman’s screams had alerted the neighbours and she was being sedated by the duty doctor as Spider and his mother were in the mortuary identifying his brother’s remains.

  Spider knew Patrick was angry, but he had not expected anything like this.

  As he looked at his little brother he felt the full weight of his grief and, as his mother began to keen like a trapped animal, he was brought back to reality.

  He nodded at the policeman and then watched as his mother was led from the room by a nurse. Her weeping was loud in the hushed quietness.

  The policeman was watching him warily but Spider expected that and he looked at his brother’s bloodied remains impassively. The less the filth knew, the better. He had to box clever with this now if he was going to convince them it was a random attack and not gang-related. They were more than aware of his credentials, which is why they had come to him quickly and quietly. They wanted to see if this boy’s death was going to have any far-reaching consequences.

  Which of course it would.

  But the police in question would be well looked after if and when forthcoming events warranted it.

  As Spider looked down at Cain and saw the gaping hole in his ear where a screwdriver had been forced through it, he felt nothing except a coldness inside him.

  He only hoped Cain had been unconscious when the fatal blow had been administered; the thought of him knowing what had been happening to him was something he would not be able to bear. Violence was a part of their world and he knew that, but to think of his little brother going through all that pain was more than he could stand.

  ‘Do you have any idea who might have been responsible?’

  The policeman’s voice was low and respectful, as befitted Spider’s standing in the community. Spider knew that anyone else would have been interrogated by now. The assumption being, he had to know who the culprit was.

  Spider shook his head keeping his face impassive as usual and looking as innocent as a newborn baby. ‘He was well-liked, popular; this had to be some kind of mugging. I don’t know what else it could be.’

  The policeman accepted his explanation without any kind of query whatsoever, as Spider knew that he would.

  He left the room and made his way back to his mother and sisters. They were huddled together in a scrum, all crying, smudged lipstick and grief. It was so raw it was almost tangible in the room. As he saw them hugging and trying to comfort one another he felt the futility of many a man before him when faced with the mortality of loved ones and, more frightening in his world, the realisation of their own mortality.

  Young people dying did that to a body; it was like a shock to the system for the people left behind. It proved how tenuous the link was between life and death and how final the latter was. It occurred to Spider that he would never hear his brother’s voice again. Never hear his explanation for the night’s events.

  He cuddled his mother and three sisters in turn, taking their grief on as his own. As he drove them home a while later he swore that Brodie was behind Cain’s death and that he would have to pay for this night’s work.

  A warning was one thing, but this was something else entirely. That his mother had to bury her child was outrageous and Brodie would know his feelings on that subject sooner rather than later.

  It was all going wrong, everything was caving in on him and now he understood what the life he had chosen could be like when you were on the receiving end of someone else’s fuck-up. Until now he had always been the one calling the shots, had been the top dog, but he was finding out what life could be like on the outside looking in and, for the first time, he felt pity for the Williams brothers and all their ilk.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Ricky Williams was pleased with himself. He was like the others in looks but now his older brothers were dead and the others were like nervous brides; he was suddenly the acknowledged genius of the family. Which didn’t exactly say a lot for the intelligence of the others, though no one was arguing about that. As long as someone was taking on the mantle, which they saw as the blame, they were happy enough. As Brodie had always said, if the brothers had someone to do the thinking for them, they were an asset. If they attempted to think for themselves, it was all bound to fall out of bed. Ricky saw himself as the Brain of Britain. In fact, like many before him, he felt he had been a king-in-waiting. The others were looking to him now and wanting him to sort everything out. They were a crowd of useless cunts but they were all he had so he was lumbered with them. Dave, Tommy and the rest were an embarrassment to him these days. He felt it was his duty to bring the family back on top and make people respect them again. They had used Cain for their own ends and they had not achieved anything from that. They were running scared and it was up to him to get the ball rolling once more, to bring them back into the world they had once called their own.

  It had taken the deaths of half his family for him to finally be seen as a leader by his brothers but he was willing to overlook that in the light of his new-found status.

  Ricky, however, for all his plotting and ideas actually had a very short attention span. Unless it was for women that is. And he had no real vocabulary unless it pertained to the female body or the uses he had found for it and even that was speckled with profane language. He was also a man who prided himself on his ability to act on the spur of the moment. He saw an opportunity and was in there quicker than a pimp on a Vespa.

  As he chatted up the dark-eyed girl in the rah-rah skirt and the heavy make-up, he was patting himself on the back. He had seen a chance and he had taken it. When his brothers heard what he had done, he would be hailed a hero, he was sure. Cain, he had decided, had been ready to serve them up to his brother and he had made sure that would never happen. Cain was a piece of shit and his use was over and done with. Ricky had been sensible enough to look out for the others, to look out for the family; a family that had been depleted over the last few years by the likes of Brodie and his side-kick Spider. As his dad used to say: what do you call a man with more money than you? A sworn fucking enemy, and he was right. Why be the breakers, the fucking back-up, the runts who collected the money for everyone else? It was ludicrous that his brothers had not sussed that out long ago. Without people like them, no one could ply their trades; the heavies were the backbone of any moody business. Ricky was absolutely thrilled with himself and with his antics. He was on a roll and knew that he was going to make sure the Williams name was put back where it belonged.

  Now though, he was going to celebrate with a shag and a curry, in that order. This girl with the crooked teeth and the heavy eyeliner was just what the doctor ordered. From her denim wai
stcoat to her Union Jack clogs, she screamed easy lay and he should know, he had been perfecting the art of ferreting out girls like her since he had been at junior school. She was soapy but that didn’t put him off; he wanted to fuck it not marry it. Even though he had acquired a reputation for predominantly shagging birds from the lower-end of the female food chain, he had no shame. If it had a pulse he was there. No matter how old the birds were, as long as they were passable on a dark night, he was game. He didn’t want Miss World, he was happy enough with Miss Buy Me a Drink and I’ll Drop Me Cacks.

  It was all relative as far as he was concerned. He liked the thrill of a new hole and enjoyed the feel of different breasts and different bodies. He didn’t want perfection, he just wanted a bird who was as up for it as he was. A bird who had no illusions about what would be happening to her and didn’t expect declarations of love before, during or after the momentous event. A fuck was a fuck as far as he was concerned and he liked to get in at least a couple on a daily basis. He searched out strange like other men searched for gold or holy grails. He just loved women’s bodies, all shapes and all sizes.

  As young Natalie smiled her acquiescence he felt the familiar rush that a new conquest always gave him. She had been about, he knew that; her eyes and the way that she knocked back her drinks told him that much. She was the type who had found out at an early age that men were really only after one thing and she had been supplying them with it ever since.

  Leaving the pub with her, he was unaware of the man watching him from a black Beamer in the car park. It pulled out quietly behind him as he hit the main road, his radio blaring out and his head full of the night’s coming attractions.

  Annie was alone again and she didn’t like it. Throughout her marriage she had dreamed of a life surrounded by people, a life filled with events and happenings that included her. Unfortunately, she had never learned the knack of actually being around other people. Her daughter had been the reason she had finally found companionship but even then it was only the children she wanted to see. One child more than the others but she couldn’t help where her heart lay, the boy had captured it from the moment she had seen his face. She didn’t admit that her daughter had the baby blues at the time; that she had used her daughter’s post-natal depression to inveigle herself into all their lives. She saw herself as selflessly taking on her daughter’s family and helping her Lil out when she was at her lowest ebb. It was only because of that that she was even tolerated. Even Annie’s harshest critics, and they were legion around their streets, gave her that as her due; she had been there for her daughter when she had needed her.