The Graft

  As the nod took her over she saw her Sonny running towards her with his arms open wide and she smiled then. She smiled and tried to lift her own arms up to welcome him into them. But they felt like lead and she knew it would be a while before she could move, before she would even want to move.

  She was gone now and stayed as she was, with her eyes closed and her body totally relaxed. She couldn’t move now if a SWAT team decided to hold their Christmas party in her front room.

  Tammy was drunker than she had been in ages, and it was the first time she had not been out on a Saturday night in years. There was still no food in the house, still no husband to talk to. Not that she wanted to talk to Nick anyway, but he was the only other company in the house now he had driven his mother away.

  All her plans for meeting Janine had died the death after she had got on the brandy at lunchtime. One drink had turned into nearly a whole bottle and now she was out of her brain. She was also up for a fight, or failing that a takeaway.

  Tammy laughed at her own thoughts.

  Going into her mother-in-law’s rooms she decided to have a look in her fridge, see if Angela had left anything edible in there. She was not disappointed. There were a couple of sausage rolls and some Scotch eggs. Angela loved a snack while she watched the telly and her fridge had a good quantity of chocolate in it as well.

  Tammy stuffed a sausage roll into her mouth hungrily. She would regret the food tomorrow, especially the pastry, but at this moment in time it was like manna from heaven. She was drunk hungry and knew it was pointless trying to ignore it.

  She sat on the floor, not caring about the crumbs going everywhere and the fact that she was too drunk to get back up again. Burping loudly, she looked around the room. There were photos everywhere, all of them of the boys and Nick. None of her, she noticed, or poor Hester and her family.

  ‘Old golden boy Nick.’

  Tammy could hear her own voice echoing around the room. This made her laugh for some reason. Pulling herself off the floor, she leaned on the dressing table to keep herself upright. She saw that Angela’s safe had been opened and walked over to it.

  Pulling back the carpet, which had not been replaced properly, she opened the safe easily. All the safes in the house had the same code. For all his so-called class, Nick was a cheapskate about some things.

  Tammy was worried now that if her mother-in-law had cleared her safe she would not be coming back. She wanted Angela back, and wanted her back soon. She picked up the photographs that were lying in the steel box. Seeing Gary Proctor’s face she wondered fleetingly what on earth a photo of him was doing in her mother-in-law’s safe. Looking more carefully, utter shock hit her.

  Tammy stared at them for long moments, taking in each detail of the individual snaps, unable to believe what she was seeing. She retched then, and brought up everything she had eaten on to the expensive carpet. She was still retching when she was empty of everything, even the booze.

  And that was how Angela found her.

  Terry and the others watched as Willy went back to the lift. Once he was in it and out of sight they nodded to one another to start the evening’s entertainment.

  The front door was half-wood and half-glass, but it was reinforced safety glass. It would keep out the average burglar but not a large man with a sledgehammer. Taking back the weapon, Terry crashed it through the lock with all the force he could muster. The door burst open on its hinges and the three men walked inside, shutting it calmly behind them. This was not an area where anyone would be calling in Lily Law.

  The whole place was in pandemonium. Terry watched in disbelief as teenage boys and girls ran out of the rooms that led off the hall, their clothing in disarray, emaciated bodies shining in the dim light of the naked light bulbs.

  But it was the smell that hit the men first. The acrid stench of old carpets and ancient bin bags. No wonder they called them rat houses.

  A large man, the bloke they had seen parking the Lexus, came out of one bedroom dragging on his trousers. He saw the three of them and was almost relieved. His big fear was that it might have been the police, but he could try to talk or buy his way out of his dilemma now.

  Terry grabbed him by the throat and used him to batter open the front-room door. Inside the cramped space were three men, all well into their fifties and casually dressed. Tyrell and Louis guessed that they had not long arrived and were waiting for the next available boy.

  ‘Who runs this gaff?’

  Terry’s voice brooked no defiance. Lexus man, however, didn’t answer him, he was too scared. Terry smashed his head once more into the doorjamb, splitting it open.

  Then, looking around him, he shouted: ‘If you lot don’t answer me you are going over that fucking balcony, one by one. Now . . . who runs this fucking gaff?’

  The balcony door stood open and Tyrell could see a couple of young boys out there. He guessed they must be freezing. The bald-headed man from the Lexus pointed to one of the men on the sofa.

  ‘It’s him . . . he runs it! His name’s Gordon Winters.’

  The man tried to get up but Louis and Tyrell were on him in seconds.

  ‘See, you know it makes sense.’

  Terry’s voice was quieter now. He pushed the man away from him, straightening up and sounding almost friendly.

  ‘Don’t fucking try and leave the flat, any of you, right?’

  He stared around at the youngsters and the men who were all in shock.

  ‘I have got the right hump, and if I have to go looking for any of you . . .’

  He left the sentence unfinished, motioned to Tyrell and Louis.

  ‘Give me him here.’

  Terry grabbed Winters from his brother and unceremoniously pulled him out on to the balcony. The man was terrified and, convinced he was going to die, put up a valiant fight. The two young boys already out there cowered down on the floor.

  ‘Get in there, you little fuckers.’

  The boys ran as fast as they could into the flat, wondering what the hell had been unleashed on them this night.

  ‘Come on, guys, let’s hang him over the balcony. See if he can remember enough to get us going on our way.’

  Terry was enjoying himself, that much was evident. Especially to Gordon Winters, the man now trying desperately to evade his captors.

  The three men hung him over the balcony without difficulty. Winters had stopped fighting. Instead he was begging for his life.

  ‘I’ll tell you anything! Please don’t do this . . . please . . . I only work here, it’s just me job . . .’

  Terry was laughing now.

  ‘You call this a job? You having a fucking laugh?’

  He shook the man then, making him feel even more frightened than he already was. It was a long way down.

  ‘Shut up, you fucking nonce, and talk to me pals.’ He looked at Tyrell and Louis as he shouted, ‘Ask away, guys. But be quick ’cos my arms are getting tired and we don’t want to drop Gordon on to the pavement, do we?’

  The man started crying. He was broken, they all knew that.

  Tyrell saw one of the men inside getting out his mobile. Nudging Louis, he went back inside and removed it from him.

  ‘You dare try anything like that again and see what you get.’ Tyrell stared around him. ‘You lot move one muscle and you’ll regret it for the rest of your days.’

  No one moved.

  ‘Outside that front door are more of me mates and you lot don’t want to meet them, believe me.’

  It did the trick.

  Tyrell walked back on to the balcony. The cold air was refreshing after the stuffiness of the flat. Terry hauled Winters back over the railing and the man slumped down on to the floor. His teeth were chattering with cold and fright.

  ‘Don’t wind me up, Gordon, because if you do you are going back over and this time we won’t pull you back, OK?’

  The man nodded quickly, eyes bulging out of his head with fear. Tyrell started the questioning then and at first the man w
as happy to answer anything he was asked.

  Lenny Bagshots walked back into Jude’s flat quietly. He saw her lying sideways on the sofa and crept up behind her.

  You never knew with Jude, she might be playing possum. But he could see enough to know she had no knowledge of who was there. He knew that thanks to the brown he had left her she would never know anything again. For once the heroin she had injected was pure, and he knew her body could not cope with that.

  If he had a pound for every time he saw a warning on local news broadcasts going out to junkies about pure heroin when it hit the streets, he would be a millionaire. New dealers often made the mistake of undercutting their gear and consequently caused the deaths of many customers without realising it.

  Most junkies got shit. Lenny cut his stuff with everything from quinine to strychnine. If they ever got the dream needle it killed them.

  He smiled as he looked at her dead body. Poor old Jude, she had finally got what she wanted. He felt her face. She was still warm, but cooling fast. She looked at peace, which he guessed was probably a first for her. He was glad she had been greedy, it had saved him from having to finish her off himself. He wanted this to look like any other OD.

  He walked into the bedrooms and started searching through everything. He knew what he was looking for and was determined to find it. He also wanted anything else that could alert the police to the fact that he had a closer relationship with this family than he had ever let on.

  He stared around at the squalor of Jude’s life. The chaos she had lived in amazed him. Lenny was a dealer but it was just a step on the ladder for him. He didn’t even care that he had taken out one of his best customers; there were plenty more where she came from.

  Gino included.

  He was in and out in under fifteen minutes, though now he was carrying a Pound Stretcher carrier bag, containing two mobile phones, Jude’s and Sonny’s, and a pair of leather gloves he had used so that he did not leave any fingerprints. Carefully, he pulled the door closed behind him. He couldn’t lock it properly, but it looked closed enough to keep people out for a while.

  Whistling, he made his way home. His girlfriend wanted to watch Love Actually. They had a snide copy and he had heard it was a good film.

  Jude was now as far from his mind as the moon.

  And that, as Lenny would tell himself later, was exactly how it should be.

  Angela sat with Tammy for a long while on the bedroom floor. She had come back because she didn’t know what else to do. If she had stayed at Hester’s any longer she would have spilled the beans and even after all this she was still protecting her son.

  But she knew she couldn’t protect him from Tammy any more. She had a right to know what was going on.

  Holding the distressed woman tightly to her, Angela murmured endearments until she calmed down.

  ‘Come on, Tammy, come down to the kitchen and let’s get you sorted out, eh?’

  She stood up unsteadily. The two women were leaning against one another now for support. Tammy was visibly shaking, her sobbing loud and unrestrained.

  Angela walked her slowly down to the kitchen. As they passed through the entrance hall she glanced around her. The house that she had once loved, that she had allowed to become her prison, was now making her nervous and jittery.

  In the kitchen she put Tammy on the leather Chesterfield by the big fireplace. She curled up on it, clutching at one of the tapestry cushions and holding it in front of her belly like a child. Angela put the kettle on to make one of her endless cups of tea. She didn’t know what else to do.

  ‘This is why you went, ain’t it?’

  Tammy sat up and threw the photos on to the table.

  Angela barely nodded. She couldn’t look at the poor woman whose life had just been destroyed.

  ‘Where did you find them, Angela?’

  She snorted in derision.

  ‘He’d left them in one of his coats. I found it down in the cellar . . . you know his heavy brown leather jacket? The one he lived and died in until that burglary?’

  She poured water over the tea bags in the cups.

  ‘Well, I was going to hang it up, that was all.’ She had been snooping as usual. ‘They were in the inside pocket . . .’

  She turned to face Tammy.

  ‘They fell out, I wasn’t nosing about.’

  It was important to her that Tammy realised she had found it all out by accident. This was the end of the line for them, she knew that much.

  ‘That’s why he never had any time for me, ain’t it?’

  Angela didn’t answer her now, unsure what to say.

  ‘Did you know about it?’

  Angela stared at the girl before her and at that moment Tammy was a girl again, a girl like she herself had once been.

  She wondered if Tammy would have fought for her sons as she had fought for Nick. Looking into her eyes and then remembering the photos she had found she made a decision and hoped against hope that she would not live to regret it. ‘It’s not his fault, Tammy, not really.’

  Tammy sniffed loudly, wiping her nose with the back of her wrist, reminiscent of a child crying over nothing. With that simple action Angela was brought back in time and the sight she saw was a sight she had forced from her mind over many years.

  ‘What do you mean it ain’t his fault, because it fucking well ain’t mine? They are children in those photos, young boys . . .’

  Tammy’s voice was louder now, and the utter contempt in it was like a physical blow to the old woman trying desperately to find the words that would explain her son’s sexual preferences.

  Suddenly, Tammy thought of her sons and she said in a whisper; ‘What about me boys? Has he been near me boys?’

  All the motherly concern missing from her for so long was now flooding her brain. She half rose from the chair in a panic.

  Angela pushed her back down none too gently. ‘Hush, don’t be letting your imagination run away with you.’

  Tammy stared up into her face earnestly and then it all fell into place for her. ‘That’s why you lived with us, ain’t it? You were protecting him and at the same time you were protecting us.’

  Angela walked to the worktop and poured two more large brandies. She placed one in her daughter-in-law’s hand and, sitting down heavily, she sighed before saying, ‘Nick had a kink even as a child. He was eleven when a neighbour first accused him. I didn’t believe her, of course, my big handsome lad doing something like that to her little boy. And he was a little boy, no more than seven. I put it down to a boyish prank, see.’

  She took a large sip of brandy.

  ‘What had he done?’

  Angela shook her head, ‘You really don’t want to know. But what you do need to know is what my husband and his friends did.’

  She finished off the brandy quickly, then wiped her eyes on a piece of kitchen roll before saying, ‘I couldn’t stop it, you see. Those days his father was drinking all the time, he hated us all, it’s why I don’t see much of my daughter. She forgave me but I could never forgive myself.’

  She took a deep breath before continuing slowly.

  ‘They were children, my children and I couldn’t help them.’

  As the memories she had suppressed for so many years flooded her mind, the history she had rewritten, and which she almost believed, was crumbling in the face of her daughter-in-law.

  She poured more brandy before saying to the dumbstruck girl before her, ‘They were vicious to him, hurt him so much and if I tried to interfere they would turn on me. It’s not all about grooming that they talk about now, this was brutality, and that was all they could enjoy. Nick, well, Nick never knew any different, did he? Poor Nick. For some reason he started wanting it, he liked the money, he liked the affection, he was doing something right for his father for the first time ever. He was being good.’

  She laughed sadly. ‘Can you imagine how that made me feel?’

  She wiped her eyes once more, but the tears had stoppe
d now.

  ‘That bastard destroyed any natural feelings Nick had and when he was older and he fought him back I thought that was an end to it all, see. He beat his father nearly to death and it all stopped then. It was over.’

  She stared at her daughter-in-law with tired eyes.

  ‘You have to believe me. I didn’t realise he had gone on to the same kind of life as his father. You see Nick has always been what he wanted to be, has always had the strength to make you believe that he was the person you saw before you. But he isn’t, he doesn’t know who he is any more.’