The Take

  ‘Come on, Maggie, we’re all waiting for you!’

  Dianna’s voice was loud in the salon and everyone automatically turned towards it. Dianna knew that would be the case and she winked at Kimberley as Maggie finally emerged from her office.

  This salon in Chingford, Essex, was the biggest of them all, and it was Maggie’s baby. The girls, like Maggie, knew that this was the forerunner to the others now. It had worked so well that she was now investing a lot of money to bring the others up to spec. It not only had the hairdressing salon, it had sun beds, a nail parlour, and they were also offering waxing - legs, eyebrows and bikini, anything that was required. It offered facials, Reiki, massage and even a slimming clinic once a month where a doctor prescribed anything the clients needed.

  It was a goldmine.

  Maggie offered wine, spritzers, frappés and cappuccinos. She also let her customers snort to their hearts’ content in her toilets, as long as they did it discreetly.

  It was, to all intents and purposes, the place to be.

  Dianna and Kimberley were now there all the time, Kim as a hairdresser, along with her college course in beauty, and Dianna as a trainee.

  But Maggie was not her usual self, and they were determined to get her out of her shell today if it killed them.

  Maggie wanted them there not just because she loved them, which she did, but also because they kept Freddie away. He was nervous of his girls, who had sussed him out at a very young age. They loved him in a haphazard, ‘Oh, he is me dad, and what can I do about it?’ kind of way. But Maggie knew that he loved them, and like he loved any woman in his orbit, he owned them. She also believed that he would be frightened of them knowing about what had happened. Unlike their mother, they would be inclined to believe her side of the story.

  She had been a big part of their lives for so long. They knew her so well and they trusted her. They respected her, and their father had destroyed her.

  Now as she looked around her, saw the busy salon bustling with people, pumping out loud music and coining in money, she felt the urge to scream.

  ‘Come on, Maggie. Everyone keeps asking where you are lately, we can’t keep telling them you’re doing the books, can we?’

  She looked into Kimberley’s face, and, as had been the case since the girl had hit her teens, she saw herself. Kimberley looked like her, she could see it plain as anything and people remarked about it. She had her father’s darkness, his dark hair and his sallow skin, but she had Maggie’s fine bone structure that was at odds with Jackie’s heaviness.

  The thought of Jackie sent her heart racing.

  ‘All right, Mags, long time no see. You sick or something, girl? You look dog rough!’

  Maggie smiled widely at the woman who’d spoken. She was sitting there all tanned skin and streaked hair, having a manicure and a pedicure in the new and expensive black leather pedicure chair, with its own heated little foot bath, and its own drink holder, and once more Maggie wanted to scream. To tell this woman what a vacuous prat she was, how she loathed her selfish existence like she loathed the men like Freddie, because a lot of these women were with Freddie wannabes. Were with men who would shag a table leg if it was available, and who would not even have the decency or the sense to wear a condom. She knew women in this salon who had been given everything from a dose of clap to herpes from a foray their men had made to Thailand. Suddenly, all the gossip was like the Old Testament to her, like some kind of revelation. It showed her life and what it had become because she had once tried to save her sister’s sanity, and tried to make her marriage whole. Look what it had got her.

  She felt an urge to tell everyone to fuck off, but she didn’t, she had taken to doing all her swearing in her head lately. It eased her somehow, but she was not sure for how long it would work.

  Instead, she said as gaily as she could to the bleached-blond no neck who was apparently waiting for her answer, ‘You only want me because I do the strongest drinks!’

  All the women in the salon laughed. Maggie looked around at the perfect teeth and the perfectly toned bodies, and she broke down and cried.

  Kimberley, who had a very good shit detector inherited from her grandmother, walked her back in the office before too many people saw what had happened.

  Maggie held on to her young niece for dear life, and she sobbed her heart out. She was talking incoherently, and all Kimberley could make out was her saying over and over again, ‘I am so sorry, sweetheart, so very sorry.’

  When she finally calmed down, she still would not let on what the hell was wrong with her.

  Freddie and Jimmy were at a house in North London. It was a large property in a nice tree-lined avenue. It had his and hers BMWs in the drive, and it had the air of an expensive and extended family.

  Also in the drive were mountain bikes, slung down on to the concrete with no regard whatsoever, and a child’s electric car. Judging by the state of its paintwork and the fact that it was full of leaves, it had obviously been dumped there a good while ago and left out in the recent rainy spell. Jimmy, who still knew the value of a pound, could not for the life of him comprehend how anyone with half a brain could have left over five hundred quid’s worth of children’s toy out unless they were either stupid, or, as seemed to be the case here, they thought they were always going to earn a serious crust.

  There was also a double garage that had a door that was open halfway. That again was a mug’s game - why would you invite thieves into your yard? Jimmy knew that the electric door was fucked, but even in the twilight he could see freezers, and he also counted three different lawn mowers, one a ride as you cut, and other expensive gardening equipment. Even he didn’t have all that in his sheds, and his garden was like the fucking Serengeti in comparison to this fucking mong’s.

  Jimmy was angry, angrier than he had been for years. Well, he had some news for this ice cream, and he hoped that he took it on board sooner rather than later, and did not attempt to talk his way out of it. Because he was not a happy bunny at all, and this little reprimand was just what he needed to let off a bit of steam.

  Freddie tapped on the front door lightly with his keeper ring. He always wore the ring, even though he knew that Jimmy thought it was dreck. Jimmy hated the way he wore so much gold. It was as if Freddie was advertising his wealth to the world, and it aggravated him. Keeper rings were for bully boys and fucking pub fighters. They were for teenagers who thought they were hard nuts, they were not for grown-ups and serious businessmen. But they did a lot of damage and so tonight Jimmy was willing to let the matter go, but he still thought that it made Freddie look cheap.

  The porch on the house was a recent addition. It had leaded light windows, roses and green leaves, which matched the rest of the house. All the windows were recent by the look of it, as were the doors. The house was like a fucking new NHBC home, except it was a good twenty-five years into its life expectancy. The man who owned it had gone mad with his renovations, and at any other time Jimmy would have spent a good couple of hours, and a few beers, happily discussing all that with him. Unfortunately the man had gone a bit too mad, and had eaten into their profit to fund this marvellous but, in all honesty, overdone, pile of fucking stones.

  Now Lenny Brewster was about to find out that he had been well and truly sussed, and that Jimmy and Freddie were not about to swallow it.

  Lenny had seen the two men come up his drive. His wife, who was making a cup of tea and a bacon sandwich when the knock came on the door, noticed his unusual demeanour. He looked nervous. He looked positively gutted, as they said in her world, absolutely terrified and guilty as if he had just had the biggest capture of his life.

  He was a spinner, a storyteller, and she accepted that, but in fairness he was earning like a drug dealer in a maximum security jail. The poke was constant and it was in large amounts. She knew he worked for the Jacksons, but until now she had never had any dealings with them. Lenny had given her the impression that they needed him, that he was a key player in
their nefarious businesses.

  Now though, like many a woman before her, she was seeing her old man as he really was and it frightened her. More so because she had, that very day, put a down payment on a Caribbean cruise and told everyone she had ever known in her life that they were going on it, first class, in a luxury suite with portholes and a large sitting room.

  ‘Shall I get that, Lenny?’

  He nodded and attempted to smile at her.

  As she opened the door Freddie said, with all the considerable charm he possessed, ‘Is that bacon I can smell wafting out of your gaff?’

  She smiled at him happily. He was just her cup of tea, was Freddie. She was always up for a night out, since her old man was not the most exciting shag in Christendom, so within seconds they understood each other perfectly.

  Jimmy watched the little display with his usual half smile of disbelief. Freddie could pull in a mosque, he would lay money on that.

  He saw Lenny come slowly into the hall. ‘All right, Len?’

  Jimmy’s voice was friendly, but there was an underlying warning and Lenny was trying to decide what to do about it all. So he smiled, and said to his wife, ‘Come on, June, make a fucking brew. Anyone want a sandwich?’

  Freddie grinned. ‘I’ll have whatever is going, mate. Got a beer?’

  June smiled and she looked at Jimmy who shook his head. Then Lenny walked them through the newly decorated hallway and sitting room into the large conservatory at the back of the house.

  Jimmy and Freddie looked round them in a pleasant but distinct way. They made eye contact and raised their eyebrows theatrically to let Lenny know that they were surprised at this outlay on the wages he was pulling in. Even though they were paying him a good wedge, he could see they both felt that this house was far in excess of what he should be living in. And he knew they were right.

  ‘So what can I do for you, then?’

  ‘Come on, Lenny, play the white man. You know why we are here. Why would we bother to come and see a lowlife like you unless we knew you were having us over, eh?’

  Jimmy’s voice was low, but it was reasonable.

  Lenny decided to front it out, he had no other choice as far as he was concerned. He had an expensive wife, six kids and he also had his rep. He had worked for Ozzy when he had still been on the outside and surely that should count for something.

  ‘I had a dip. So what? I needed the money.’ He looked at Freddie as he said this in as reasonable a voice as he could manage. ‘I am shifting three times the gear I was this time last year. I have asked you over and over for a bigger cut, and you just blah blah me.’

  He waited for a reply and when none was forthcoming he said, with what he felt was justifiable anger, ‘I have brought in fortunes for you lot, and you know that.’

  Still there was no answer. Freddie and Jimmy just looked at him without any kind of expression on their faces, and it was this that made him lose his temper.

  ‘I was on the streets working for Ozzy when you were still nicking cars and drinking pints of fucking Coca-Cola in the pub. I have earned my place in this firm. You should have given me my due, and then I would not have felt the need to take it.’ Lenny was smiling at them now, he looked relieved to have said his piece, almost relaxed, and Jimmy saw for the first time a look of defiance. It was as if he was standing there thinking, well, it’s done now, what can they do about it? He would swallow a hiding, and he thought that would be that, it would all be over and they would be quits. Lenny was a bigger mug than he had first thought if he believed that.

  But before Jimmy could say a word, Freddie attacked him, and when Lenny hit the deck heavily on his hands and knees, he saw that Freddie had more or less gutted him with a boning knife.

  Lenny was trying to keep his insides from popping out, and the blood was thick and pumping fast, streaming through his fingers, and making a terrible mess on the newly tiled floor of the conservatory.

  Jimmy could not believe what Freddie had done. This was all they needed.

  Freddie was grinning, that mad, lopsided grin that had always got him out of everything since he had been a kid. He was like a small child who had been caught pinching from his mother’s purse.

  But he wasn’t a kid and he had just murdered Lenny, in his own home, in cold blood. And just because Lenny had fronted them. This was like a nightmare. This was what life sentences were caused by - acting first and thinking later. In many cases, ten or fifteen fucking years later, the person concerned was still thinking of that one moment of fucking madness.

  Jimmy grabbed Freddie by his jacket and shirt, and he slammed him into the wall of the house with all the strength he could muster. The noise echoed around the conservatory, the glass was steamed up now, and the floor was covered in the deep red blood of Lenny, who had now dropped forward on to his face.

  He was brown bread all right, and his wife was in her kitchen waiting to feed them bacon sandwiches and cups of bastard tea.

  Freddie was giggling, he was laughing as if this was some kind of joke. Jimmy held him hard and fast as he tried to push Jimmy’s hands away from him, trying to get clear of the wall. But Jimmy was not having any of it. Freddie could not move and he was using all his strength to try to change that fact.

  It was only now that Freddie finally understood just how strong and how tall Jimmy actually was. He was as strong as an ox, and Freddie, who had always been the strong arm of the duo, realised that Jimmy was not only younger, but also he was bigger, healthier and faster than him.

  The difference between them, Freddie finally acknowledged to himself, was that Jimmy had a controlled strength, a strength that went deeper than the physical. He was strong in his mind as well as his body. Jimmy used his nous, and he used it wisely, whereas Freddie used just his strength all day every day, to get what he wanted. No matter how trivial it might be.

  Jimmy slammed his cousin’s head into the brick wall over and over again. He knew he had drawn blood but he was past caring. This was the one thing he had always dreaded, this was a long time in stir if it all came on top, and it was a pointless nicking, devoid of any kind of principle or reasoning. A completely unnecessary death that could destroy the rest of their lives.

  He chinned Freddie then with all the force he could muster. He hit him so hard that he had to hold him up to stop him toppling into the blood that had spread over the floor.

  ‘You fucking cunt, Freddie, you stupid fucking cunt!’

  Then June walked into the carnage and all hell broke loose.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Jackie could hear the girls talking, and she listened as she always did to their gossip about the salons and her sister Maggie. They were in the kitchen, chatting and eating a late supper.

  Jackie was in her lounge as usual, with a large drink, her cigarettes, a bag full of sweets and her prescription medication on the small glass table by her chair. Her other medication, her real medication was in her purse, but she liked people to see her antidepressants because she felt it spoke volumes about her life and the way she lived it.

  Maggie had once pointed out that her world was so small, it was peopled by her and her alone. Well, by the sounds of it Maggie was finally learning the facts of life.

  ‘She was crying her eyes out, and I didn’t know what to do!’

  Roxanna, who was looking more like Maggie every day, was listening to her sister with wide-open eyes, and pulling on her cigarette in short nervous little puffs as she heard this terrible news about her lovely auntie.

  Little Freddie was watching a video as usual. The sound of the gunfire was loud, and, seeing his mother listening to the girls, he turned the sound up even more. When Jackie snatched the remote from him and turned the volume down, he kicked her hard in the chest. The pain was excruciating and she also lost the majority of the drink in her glass.

  Jackie hit him with the flat of her hand and put all her considerable strength into it. Any other child would have screamed, but he laughed at her and let rip with
a string of expletives even she was shocked to hear.

  ‘You little fucker!’

  He was still laughing at her, and his eyes told her exactly what he thought of her.

  She stood up unsteadily and caught sight of herself in the mirror above the fireplace. Her nightdress was grubby, her hair was like rats’ tails and she was bloated, her face and her body suddenly looking huge.

  She walked to the mirror and stared at herself. She saw the thinness of her hair, which had once been luxuriant, and the sallow tint to her skin. Her back ached constantly, and she had trouble even eating her sweets, which for years had been her staple diet.

  On the mantelpiece was an old photo of her and Freddie from when they were courting and she picked it up and looked at it properly, for the first time in years. She had been a beauty, and she had never really known that. But now, seeing herself in her little dress, with her happy smiling face, it was as if she was looking at a stranger.

  She could hear Little Freddie cussing with the men on the video, word for word. As she walked out into the hallway, the girls were still in the kitchen and she went in and smiled at them. ‘Had a good day, babes?’

  It was forced and they knew it. She could not give a toss what they had done, but as always they humoured her.

  ‘Great, Mum, and you?’

  This from Kimberley who had sarcasm down to a fine art.

  She overlooked the insult and said in a friendly way, ‘What’s all this about Maggie crying in the salon, then?’ She sounded worried and interested and Dianna shook her head in disbelief. They knew what was going on with her mum and Maggie, they could hear everything that went on in this house and it amazed them that their mother didn’t realise that.

  Kimberley shrugged. ‘Dunno, Mum, she wouldn’t say.’

  It was said with loyalty and also in such a way as to make her mother aware that they would not discuss it any further with her.

  Jackie felt the anger that was always boiling away beneath the surface start to rise, but she kept it down and said in a quiet voice, ‘She ain’t right, and she is my little sister. Maybe I should go round and see her, what do you think? Woman to woman, like.’