Get Even (22 page)

Jack was pleased, Lenny and Reggie were pleased, and Terry was ‘over the bastard moon’, as he kept telling them all repeatedly. It had been a hair-raising few weeks but now the future was set. It would be a nine-day wonder, like everything else in their world, and then things would gradually settle down and get back to normal.

They left Terry to make the final arrangements and, after a few drinks, Reggie drove them to Jack’s house to finish the evening off properly. Jack would be interested in the ‘nitty-gritty’, as he called it, and they would be only too happy to fill him in on the details. This was a big night in many respects, and the two men were aware that, for Jack, it was the paying of a debt long overdue.

Sharon had bathed the boys and put them to bed amidst loud protests of ‘another five minutes’. But she had looked particularly ferocious for some reason, and the boys had picked up on that fact, deciding eventually that bed might be the best place to be. After kissing them and threatening pain, torture and destruction if she heard a peep out of them, they had looked at her wide-eyed and nodded in agreement. They both guessed rightly it was something to do with Daddy.

Lenny had not been home for twenty-four hours and she’d not heard a word from him. This had happened before, but that was normally under much different circumstances. She was still reeling from what Liam had said to her the day before. It was at the forefront of her mind and she was unable to decide what she was supposed to do. In her heart she wondered if she would have the nerve, the guts, to tell Lenny what Liam had said. But she dismissed it. The thing was, once something was spoken out loud, there was no
un
saying it. This was what worried her so much. If she questioned Lenny, what would be his reaction? But, if she
didn’t
question him, how could she live with the wondering?

Every photo looked suspicious now. Times when he and Reggie had gone fishing on the boat for weekends seemed to be mocking her. She had a terrible feeling that Liam was telling her the truth about exactly what he had seen. This was something so far removed from her realm of experience that she didn’t know what on earth she was supposed to do. She felt sick when she thought of them together, him and Reggie like man and wife. Or, more precisely, man and man. She knew what those kind of people got up to, everyone did. But she would never, in a million years, have believed it of the man she had married, the man who’d professed to love her for all these years.

She felt the hot sting of tears and was determined not to cry again. She knew this was something she could never tell another living soul. Imagine her mother if she heard something like this? Or her father. Not that he would believe a word of it. Even Gerry, who was the first to say that Reggie, her big, handsome brother Reggie, had no interest in women, wouldn’t believe it. This was one time Sharon was completely on her own; she would have to find the solution for herself.

She looked up at the crucifix on the wall in the hallway. It was beautiful, made of carved oak with the body of Christ fashioned in solid silver, His eyes raised to the heavens as He died for the sins of the world. She wondered if a prayer would help, but she knew it wouldn’t. Nothing could help because she still didn’t know what the fuck she was supposed to do. Lenny would deny it; he had no choice in the matter. That was something she knew for sure – he would not sit down and pour his heart out to the woman he had married and given two children, beg her forgiveness and say it would never happen again. That wasn’t Lenny’s style, she knew that much. Lenny would accuse her of all sorts, be outraged and on his dignity. He would feel she had impugned his reputation and, of course, he would want to know who she had told her suspicions to. She felt that she could pick up a knife and stick it through his cheating, filthy black heart. But she would not do that either.

She wandered into her front room, the room that they were so proud of with its grey walls and deep-red furnishings and she poured herself a generous helping of brandy. Somehow she had a feeling that wine wasn’t going to do it for her tonight.

Lenny was drunk and full of camaraderie. He had enjoyed taking that cunt out, and he had enjoyed explaining it all to Jack Johnson too. He loved Jack more than he could have ever thought possible. He loved his Reggie too, but tonight he needed a bit of strange to round off the excitement. Unlike Reggie, who he knew loved him and him alone, Lenny had found he liked a bit of a cottage – a good, faceless fuck – sometimes.

There was a place in Ilford where like-minded men would converge to partake of their certain brand of sex, with no questions asked and definitely no fucking morning-after remembrances. Lenny parked his car carefully – the last thing he needed was a fucking parking ticket. He walked past Tiffany’s and took a short cut through to the big car park behind the club. At this time of night it was full of men just like him – men who were looking for a quick connection. He knew it was dangerous – that was half of the excitement as far as he was concerned – but he always took precautions. It was the whole concept of the strange that appealed; the different smells and tastes were the big draw for Lenny, something Reggie would never understand or even suspect.

He stopped as a large man came out of the shadow of the bins and smiled easily. He was big, dark and hard-looking – just his type. The man was smiling now as he walked over, and Lenny instinctively moved to meet him, craving the darkness and all that he knew it contained. As the man drew closer Lenny smiled back at him. Then the man brought up his hand and, before he could react, Lenny was on his knees, a terrible pain shooting through his body, and he knew that something was radically wrong. He was lying on the floor, unable to move even a finger, when the man knelt down and said softly, ‘I just paralysed you, Lenny, but you will feel every cut and blow I give you. This is payback, you cunt. Eye out first, I think.’

Lenny lay there incapacitated and, as the man used the same sharp instrument to slice into his eyeball, he could not even scream out in pain. In the distance he could make out the sounds of traffic and people talking, the occasional shout and the high-pitched laughter of girls making their way into the clubs. The man was calm and collected and he took his time, inflicting the maximum pain and damage, so that when he finally started beating him with a metal bar Lenny Scott was almost relieved. He felt grateful that his ordeal was finally over – even if it meant his death. His last thoughts were for his boys, who would have to grow up without him.

Jack was in a quandary and he didn’t know what to do about it. He had a call from a friendly Filth, namely Daniel Smithson, saying that a body had been found tortured and beaten to death in an alleyway in Ilford. It looked like it had been in a train wreck. But Smithson had said it seemed to be Lenny Scott.

The body had been found an hour ago at the back of a nightclub when the cleaners had come out to empty the rubbish into the bins. He had been there a while, and Daniel thought he should give Jack a heads-up. But it couldn’t be Lenny, surely? And where the fuck was Reggie? What the fuck was happening? The men had left him quite happily the night before and he had told them he would see them Monday at the yard. It was now Saturday evening and he had assumed they were working, as per usual. Lenny normally picked up his money from the betting shop, and had a drink with his old man and Reggie – well, he assumed Reggie had gone out and ended up on the nest somewhere. With some old sort, no doubt – he wasn’t exactly the marrying kind.

All Jack’s instincts were telling him that it could not be Lenny Scott. Surely not Lenny? He picked up the phone and started ringing round; once he located him he would feel a lot better in himself. No matter how much he thought about the last few nights, there was not one person he could think of who would have dared to retaliate for Frank Barber. He was a Face in his day, admittedly, but now he was a fucking bit of a joke. No youngster would put themselves out. So what the fuck could be going on?

For the first time in many years, Jack Johnson was seriously frightened. He looked on Lenny like a son. He loved that lad like a son. Lenny was far too shrewd; no one would get near him. This had to be a fucking big misunderstanding. But there was a small part of him that knew that cunt Smithson would not have rung him unless he knew what he was talking about. Lenny Scott was dead and that was the truth of it.

Jack felt an inordinate need to cry. Lenny Scott had been everything to him, and he had been cut down in his prime, never to reach his full potential. It was a crying shame because that boy had been going places and he had been going to make sure of that personally. He was devastated as he carried on calling round; there was still a hope that ponce Smithson had got it all wrong. Fucking detective? He couldn’t sniff out his own fucking arse! He was hardly the sharpest knife in the drawer. But as time went on Jack began to lose every shred of the hope he’d been clinging to.

Reggie was still reeling from the knowledge that Lenny Scott was dead. It was unbelievable. He loved Lenny like he had never loved another person in his whole life. It just could not be possible that he was gone from him.

As Reggie pulled up at Jack’s yard, he checked his face in the mirror. He could see the shock and desolation in his eyes, and he felt the urge to cry once more. But that was a luxury he would have to forgo until he was locked inside his own flat where no one could see him and could guess the strength of his grief. How would he live without Lenny: the one person who had made everything in his life make sense? And, more importantly, who had done the dirty deed? If it was anything to do with Jack’s businesses with they’d find out soon enough and exact retribution. But maybe Lenny had pissed off some fucker Reggie knew nothing about. He had to box clever, whatever the lie of the land. His hands were shaking as he lit a cigarette.