Fogarty: A City of London Thriller (10 page)

“You bastard!” she screamed, her falsetto voice echoing around hollow s
taircase. “You killed my dog!”

In truth, Den had killed the yappy dog by throwing it off the balcony. Mikey had simply done the humane thing and put it out of its misery, but the old steam iron the woman was brandishing was aimed at Mikey
’s unprotected head, not Den’s.

Mikey had barely turned his head when the heavy iron struck just above his ear. He collapsed in a heap, letting go of an enraged Mickey. As Mikey shook his head to clear it, the old lady lifted the iron for another blow. Mickey pushed her over and threw the iron through the open door into her flat. Even with the red mist falling over him, he knew that a violent death in the flats would give the police the excuse they needed to send in the TSG, the Territorial Support Group. The TSG usually came in armed and heavy; no one wanted that, not when they were trying to establish
a new regime.

Mikey gingerly touched the side of his head. His ear was partially detached and he was bleeding like a stuck pig. Mickey launched a hard kick into Mikey’s face which tore his lip and broke a couple of teeth. The other gang members took this as their
cue and launched a full-blown attack on the prone gangster. Fortunately for him, he passed out part way through the onslaught of boots and fists.

“Take him off the Farm and dump him,” Mickey ordered. “Don’t kill him. He won’t say nothing to the Bill; he knows da code.”

***

It was five o’clock when Dennis Grierson was roused from unconsciousness by the anorexic Sophie. She was holding a phone to his ear. A woman was crying on the other end of the lin
e. It was Debbie, Mikey’s wife.

“Den! Den, an
swer me!” she pleaded.

“Okay,” Den answered groggily, still trying to collect hi
s thoughts. “What is it, Debs?”

“Mikey’s in the hospital. They’
re transferring him into the City because he might have brain damage. They say he might not make it, Den. What do I do?” She broke down on the other end of the phone, her sobbing clearly audible even over the poor line.

“Call Ron and Millie. They’ll help. I’ll come
and see you as soon as I can.”

There were no coherent words coming from the distraught Debbie, and so Den told her to call Ron once more and hung up before collapsing back on to the pillow, a sha
rp pain stabbing into his head.

Sophie stripped Dennis Grierson as he moaned and groaned at every movement. He had stitches on his thigh and some had come loose. Thick congealing blood filled the gap between the edges of skin. As she had nothing else, she closed the wound with a sterile pad and masking tape before bandaging the leg with strips of p
illowcase cut raggedly into two-inch wide bandages.

His face was bruised and his jaw line was a rainbow of colours from yellow, through red to purple. His ribs were equally colourful and had been painted with some kind of orange medical solution that discoloured the skin. Den was a mess, and Sophie was suddenly scared. She had been under Den’s ‘care’ since she had arrived in the capital at the age of fourteen with a holdall and a hundred and twenty pounds stolen from her mother’s latest boyfriend. When Sophie left Manchester Piccadilly on the southbound train she knew full well that when she reached London she would have to sell herself, and now, five years later, she was still selling herself, but at least she operated from
a shared flat. She didn’t have to compete on the streets with the influx of eastern European girls.

Despite Sophie’s best efforts, Den was still in pain and so, at his request, she injected him with some of his own drugs, the ones she usually sold to her clients, and he drifted off into his own private delirium.

Riverview House Care Home, Bootle, Merseyside.

Monday 15
th
August 2011, 4pm.

“Your sister exists, all right, and it is true that she is your twin, but as to whether or not he would hurt her, it’s hard to say.”

“Why do you say th
at?” Ben asked his grandmother.

“To understand that you’ll need a bit of history. Back in 1979 when Siobhan was still an innocent thirteen-year-old schoolgirl, and before Dennis Grierson perverted her, she had a crush on an older boy in the flats called Brendan Grayson. Brendan was a handsome lad, and studious, too. He knew he was destined f
or greater things than life on the Farm. Brendan had taken advantage of an initiative set up in what had been the rent offices on the Farm. The rent offices had been robbed so often they closed them down, and we had to pay our rent at the town hall. That left the offices abandoned and empty. They were just portakabins, really. Eventually the buildings were burned down in the 1985 riots, and the debris was removed to make way for a playground, but in those days a lady called Katy Deland got permission, and funding, to set up a dance and drama school in the vacant offices. Katy Deland had been a dancer on a TV show and, along with Nancy Pollard, a left wing dramatist, they set up an ‘after school’ and weekend dramatic arts academy they called The Shed.

Siobhan was one of the first entrants, along with Brendan and others. In the end they were so oversubscribed they moved to other premises, but when it first opened it was a close knit group. One of
those in the group was Patricia Grierson, Dennis’ wife. She was only nineteen at the time. Anyway, Brendan was a lothario - do you still call them that?” she asked, breaking her narrative. Ben nodded and she continued.

“Rumour had it that he was not just the star of the productions but also the leading man in a number of members’ lives, too. We heard that by the age of seventeen he had bedded a number of the women in the group, including Katy Deland, who was twice his age, but most frequently Pat Grierson. Years later Pat confided in me that Dennis Grierson couldn’t perform with her, and so she sought solace elsewhere. Now, I don’t know whether Dennis found out, or even if he cared, but in 1981 he ran Brendan off the estate; we never knew why. Brendan didn’t care because he had already starred in a couple of TV dramas and at eighteen he was cast as the lead in a film about boys in a borstal. Now, of course, he’s nearly fifty and has lost his good looks, but he still gets a lot of work where a hard, fast talking Londoner is require
d, particularly in the States.”

The
fact that Brendan hailed from the Farm was news to Ben, who had seen the actor in any number of old British TV series over in New Zealand, but who was now better known for his roles in Hollywood blockbusters.

“Anyway, to cut a long story short, after Dennis Grierson got Siobhan pregnant, I delivered both you and a baby girl. She was the oldest. Siobhan never got to bond with the girl because, as soon as she was cleaned up, Den took the child and presented her to his wife Pat as their new daughter. Den had let it be known that his wife was sterile and so, to keep her happy and distracted after Bre
ndan, he stole our grandchild.”

“Bloody hell! Couldn’t you stop him?” Ben was indignant; the thought of the distress his mother must have suffered made him hat
e Dennis Grierson all the more.

“Probably, yes.” May teared up and dabbed at her eyes with an embroidered handkerchief. “But Den made it clear that if we stood in the way of the private adoption we would all suffer. If he couldn’t have one of the children he fathered, no-one would have either of them.” Ben looked on, feeling uncomfortable as his grandmother recounted some
bleak and distressing memories.

“We believed him. Oh, how I wish I’d been braver. We all helped to raise you as your mum went back to school, and we would see Pat out with her baby from time to time. To her credit, Pat was ashamed of Den’s abduction of the baby and she never really bonded to the girl. They called her Ashley Marie
Grierson. She was a pretty little thing, but Pat fell further and further into depression, neglecting her little girl. Eventually Social Services took the child into care when Den was sent to prison, and some time later the little girl was adopted by a childless couple in Kensington. By the time Den came out of prison he had been divorced and lost his child. I honestly believe he had a breakdown himself.

The next time we saw Patricia was on the TV. She looked stunning. She was healthy, fit and glowing, and on the arm of Brendan Grayson at a film premiere in Los Angeles. It turned out that the reason she was glowing was because she was pregnant. She hadn’t been sterile at all. In fact, she and Brendan had three more kids in quick succession. Brendon said in one magazine interview that he just had to walk by his lovely wife too closely and she would fall pregnant. Grierson was humiliated, and he began to concentrate on his criminal career, eventually taking over most of the local drugs and prostitution and taking out his anger on anyo
ne who stood in his way.”

“If she was adopted, how did you know where she was and yet Denn
is Grierson didn’t?” Ben asked.

“We had no idea until just before the
Millennium; we received a note from the adoption agency asking if we would agree to their disclosing Ashley Marie’s mother’s details. We explained that her birth mother was dead, and we spoke with her on the phone, but when she heard the history of her early years she backed off and we never heard from her again.”

“Do you know where she is now? She may be in danger from Grierson.”

May Fogarty was clearly deciding whether she should share something with her grandson. Ben noticed the indecisio
n written on her fine features.

“What is it? What do you know?” he asked, trying to make up her mind for h
er.

“I can tell you how to find her, but anything else she tells you is for her to explain. Suffice to say, I don’t think he will harm her,” May Fogarty said emphatically, closing that line of enquiry. “What I can say is that she changed her name yet again from Ashley Marie Doughty to Ashley Marie Garner in 2007 whe
n she married Lawrence Garner.”

“Lawrence Garner of Garner-
Brinkman, the property developers?” Ben gasped.

“The very same, and she became joint managing director after old man Garner retired last year,” his grandmother confirmed.
“You’ve heard of them, I see?”

“Oh, I’ve heard of them,” Ben confirmed.
“Garner-Brinkman Australasia are clients of my law firm.”

***

Ben Fogarty sat in the first class compartment of the Virgin Pendolino train waiting to depart from Platform 7. With any luck he would be back in London around seven this evening. Ben looked at the architecture around him and reminded himself of what he loved about Britain; its history. The flyer he had picked up outside said that Liverpool Lime Street station was built in the early days of railway expansion and noted that it was constructed following the fashion of the day. Ben looked up at the curved iron roof that was first installed in 1849 in the style of Euston Station in London, with a second roof being added in the 1880s. He read that the North Western Hotel was added to the front of the station soon after, and that the Alfred Waterhouse design is reminiscent of St Pancras, with its vaguely gothic styling. As his taxi passed the station earlier, Ben saw that the magnificent hotel was now student accommodation, and so the taxi dropped him off further along the road where he gained access to Lime Street Station via the ultra modern stainless steel and glass atrium, which pays homage to the original construction by replicating the curved roof of the old iron structure.

Architecture and ancient history aside, Ben had lots of modern history to absorb. Who could have imag
ined that his family history would be so turbulent and yet so fascinating?

T
wins, separated at birth, born in difficult times, and in unprepossessing surroundings, yet both went on to achieve success; one in property development, and the other in International Rugby and Law. Siobhan, his mother, would surely have been proud of them both. Ben struggled to remember his mother - her voice, her face, even her touch - but despite his flawed memory he knew he owed it to her to protect her only daughter, and that meant getting back to London as soon as possible.

Lond
on Bound Virgin Pendolino Train.

Monday 15
th
August 2011, 6pm.

Despite his own best efforts, and those of Vastrick Security, according to her PA, the first appointment that Ashley had available to meet with him was at 5pm the next day. He could probably have seen her earlier had he revealed who he was, but he had decided to make the appointment under the guise of business. He did not want to alarm his sister by explaining that he was her long lost twin, and that their biological father might want to harm her because of what Ben had done.

Ben was still contemplating what he would say to his sister, and her husband, when his mobile phon
e rang. He looked at the caller ID, which read, ‘Dee Hammond, Vastrick’. The two chatted amiably for a minute and then Dee read out the findings from her research.

“Ben, the information given to you by your grandmother was broadly correct. The Griersons privately adopted your sister
, before she was taken from them by social services when Dennis Grierson was sent to prison. Ashley Marie was then adopted by a couple called Doughty, who sent her to school at Queens Gate Girls’ School in Kensington and to college at Girton in Cambridge. Ashley was an intern at Garner Properties, as it was then, in her year out, taking a full time job with them after graduation. She quickly rose up the ranks and was made a Vice President when the merger between Garner and the American consultancy firm Brinkman was announced. The word in the City is that she runs the UK arm of the business and her husband is only there because of his father’s shareholding. In fact, the elder Garner is the one who left her holding the reins in preference to his own son.