Ruthless (5 page)

For the time being, Rufus was enforcer for Don’s Island Field gang and he had a job to do. The job was simple. Dispose of a bit of rubbish called Jonathon Pardew, who had been stepping on Big Don’s toes. Don had wanted Rufus to include Pikey, his nephew, on the outing, so who was Rufus to refuse? He would rather have had Rory, who had grown up with him through various scrapes and was to be trusted implicitly. Rory was his companion of choice on such ventures. But he had no say in the matter.

‘Look after the little tit, he’s my sister’s boy,’ Don had said earlier in the day. ‘See what you think of him, give me your opinion.’

Rufus thought that Don would not like his opinion one bit. Pikey was spineless. But he would look after the boy on this one outing, report back to Don that the kid was useless, and hopefully he would never be burdened again.

From early on in the proceedings, Pikey had been displaying nerves. While Rufus siphoned petrol from the can into a Lucozade bottle, Pikey’s hands had been shaking so hard that he couldn’t hold the bottle still. He’d ended up with petrol splashed all over his hand and arm.

When the bottle was full, Rufus stuffed paper into the nozzle to act as a fuse. Then they waited. Their information was that Pardew would come out of his mistress’s house in the suburbs of Moyross dead on ten o’clock, aiming to get home before his old lady started playing up.

And sure enough, here he was, whistling his way down the path as happy as a lark. His breath was like smoke in the cold night air. Pardew had already survived one of Don’s boys taking a pop at him. Someone had walked up to him in the street and fired a gun in his face. Or that had been the intention. The gun had misfired. The would-be assassin had been a marked man after that, showing up in the local morgue a week later.

Pardew’s car wasn’t flashy but it was – according to Don – armour-plated and bullet-proof. None of which was going to save Pardew’s fat cheating arse on this occasion.

‘You won’t get him once he’s in the car,’ said Don. ‘Don’t attempt it.’

Pardew looked portly, balding and faintly yellow in the sodium glare of the street lights.

Rufus nudged Pikey hard.

It was their signal.

Pikey, hands trembling, flicked the lighter. Then he dropped it.

‘Shit!
’ snarled Rufus under his breath.

He glanced at Pardew, who had stopped walking. He’d seen the lighter’s flare. Rufus looked back at Pikey and saw that his hand was on fire.

Pikey let out a shriek.

The fire snaked rapidly up Pikey’s arm and enveloped his head.

His screams were ripping through the evening air now, his skin melting like cheese on a hot griddle.

Shit, shit, shit.

Even in the midst of his panic over Pikey – Christ! Don’s nephew! His fucking
nephew!
– Rufus kept a clear head.

He snatched up the lighter, lit the fuse, lobbed the bottle.

All an instant too late.

Pardew was holding a hand gun, and he was shooting towards the flaming remnants of Pikey. Rufus felt a shot whistle past his ear, then an impact, hard as a hammer, took him in the shoulder, whirling him away, throwing him off his feet. He lay there on the tarmac, hearing the blood thundering in his ears, thinking:
Mustn’t pass out.

Christ, he’d been shot.

Through tears of agony he heard the roar of the Molotov cocktail as it went up. Pardew erupted in flames, a human torch. Rufus heard the screams, smelled the barbeque scent of cooked flesh. Pardew was sorted, done. Rufus crawled to his feet and staggered away from Pardew’s car, which had been half-concealing him and Pikey.

He looked at Pikey.

Or what was left of him, anyway.

Like Pardew, he was well alight, and he wasn’t going to live to tell the tale. He wasn’t screaming any more: he couldn’t. His face was gone, the flames had seared his features into one smeared covering of cooked skin.

That’s Don’s fucking nephew. Boy am I in the shit now,
thought Rufus.

There was only one thing to do.

Run.

Stumbling, bleeding, he turned and did so.

11

Rory’s old lady Megan took one look at Rufus bleeding and swaying in the doorway, and flipped. Five months gone in her pregnancy, she wanted no intruders in her nest. She started on about doctors, ambulances.

‘You crazy?’ snarled her husband as Rufus sat sheet-white at their kitchen table. ‘That’s a bullet wound – you want the Garda in on this? Fetch some towels, don’t be a daft cow.’

Rufus knew he had done right in coming here. If there was one person he could always trust in this world, it was Rory.

His strength ebbing away with the blood pouring out of him, he let himself be half-dragged, half-carried up the stairs to the back bedroom. Agonized, he lay helpless on the bed as Rory stripped off his jacket and shirt.

‘It went straight through,’ said Rory, eyeing the wound, going a bit green around the gills. ‘Shit, I think you’ll be OK if the loss of blood don’t kill you. How’d it happen?’

Rufus was half-fainting with the pain. Megan came haring in with a face like a hatchet to press towels to the wound. Rufus looked at her, then at Rory.

‘I’ll see to him,’ said Rory, taking the hint, and she retreated.

Rory closed the door behind her.

Rufus lay back and tiredly recounted the evening’s events to his pal.

‘Holy shit. That twat Pikey, he was never going to shape up.’

‘He won’t get the chance to now.’

‘Don’s nephew! Holy
shit
.’

‘I just fecking ran. Didn’t know what else to do.’

‘What else
could
you do? He’s not going to come over all understanding, not him.’

Rory was dabbing the wound. The bleeding was slowing up, thank God.

‘Thirsty,’ said Rufus faintly.

‘I’ll fetch water,’ said Rory, and opened the door. Megan started away from it, going red in the face.

‘You been listening in?’ demanded Rory.

‘No, I . . .’

‘Well
don’t.
Go and get some water, he needs a drink.’

Megan went off downstairs, muttering. Rory watched her go. He stood there a moment, staring at the landing carpet, thinking that Big Don was going to want blood for this. He could understand why Rufus had come here, of
course
he could, but in doing so he’d brought trouble to Rory’s door. Still, who could turn their oldest friend away?

Not him.

He went to the landing cupboard and fetched more towels. Right now, there was only one thing on his mind: keeping Rufus alive.

When at last the bleeding stopped and Rory had cleaned and bandaged his friend’s wound, Rufus lapsed into troubled sleep. Rory collected all the blood-soaked towels and went off downstairs. He loaded the dirty washing into the twin tub and made a mental note to fill it up and start it going later. Then he went through to the lounge.

‘It’s on the news,’ Megan said, barely glancing up at him. She hugged her fat stomach, rocked in the armchair, listening intently to the radio.

And so it was. Businessman Jonathon Pardew had perished in a fire, thought to have been deliberately set by one of the rival gangs in his area. A second corpse, later identified as Peter Pike from Moyross, was also found at the scene. IRA involvement was suspected. When the newscaster went on to national news, talking about Nixon, Watergate, and the French detonating an H-bomb at Mururoa Atoll, Megan switched the radio off.

She looked up at her husband. ‘What are we going to do?’ she asked.

‘Get the boy better,’ said Rory. ‘What else
can
we do?’

Rufus was feverish for days, and Rory was worried sick about him. It was lucky the wound hadn’t needed stitching and that the bullet had passed through his bulk unhampered. It must have been a small-bore gun, maybe a lady’s weapon, easy to conceal, and it had spared Rufus too much damage.

It took a couple of weeks before he was able to sit up a little and take some soup instead of water. After that, he healed quickly. He was strong, he’d always been fit. It helped.

Megan kept her distance from him. His presence threatened her composure, made her fearful for her own safety and that of the child she carried. Before Rufus arrived, her only concern had been whether Rory would keep on the straight and narrow with a baby on the way. Now Rufus had pitched up, she knew there’d be trouble and Rory would get dragged into it.

‘Will we go for Diarmuid if it’s a boy, what do you think?’ she asked, trying to get Rory’s mind back to where it should be.

‘Huh?’

He wasn’t even listening to her. His whole concern was for his friend.

‘Diarmuid for a boy. Or Siobhan for a girl. Do you like those?’

‘Ah, whatever makes you happy.’

If Rufus Malone dropped dead,
that
would make her happy.

She went down the shops, and Mrs Simmonds asked her if she had people staying.

‘You what?’ asked Megan, heart galloping in her chest.

‘You got visitors? I’ve seen the light on in your box room, every evening. Is it your ma, come to stay to help with the baby on the way? I haven’t seen her down in the shop, so. She taken up smoking, has she? She never used to smoke.’

‘What?’

‘I’ve seen smoke coming over the fence in the garden.’

‘Oh! No, that’ll be Rory, having a fag.’

‘Is he doing the box room out for a nursery?’

‘Yes, that’s it, we’re decorating. I have to go, I’ve been having twinges . . .’ she said, picking up her shopping and rushing out of the shop.

When Rory came in that evening, his navy-blue overalls dirty and his hands caked black from being under engines all day, she was waiting for him.

‘He’ll have to go,’ she said, straight out.

‘What?’ Rory was dipping his fingers into the Swarfega tin at the sink.

‘Rufus. That old bat Simmonds says she’s seen the box-room light on every night, she knows someone’s in there. And he’s been smoking in the garden. She’s seen someone puffing up smoke out there. I had to tell her it was you. Thank
God
for the high fences. If
she
knows something’s going on, then others do too.’

Rory looked at her in concern. ‘You didn’t tell her anything . . .?’

‘I told her we were decorating the room as a nursery, and that I was cramping and had to go.’

‘Well then.’

‘Well
nothing.
You know what she’s like. Next thing she’ll have baked a cake and she’ll be banging on the door, wanting to see for herself who’s in here.’

‘You’re fretting over nothing.’

‘If Don Callaghan finds out we’re hiding him here, he’ll kill us both.
And
our baby.’

‘But he don’t know. And he won’t.’

‘If he—’

‘He won’t. He can’t. All we have to do is hold our nerve, OK?’

Rory went off upstairs to see how the invalid was doing, leaving Megan on the sofa with the news blaring on the radio. But she wasn’t taking in a single word as she clutched her arms around her swollen abdomen, shielding the child within.

12

London, 1983

‘Good trip?’ asked Annie as Layla, brown as a berry, piled into the hallway wafting Hawaiian Tropic and dropping bags and suitcases on to the floor.

Layla was seventeen now, and just back from Christmas in Barbados with Max. Annie had spent Christmas pretty much alone. As usual.

‘It was OK,’ said Layla, looking at her mother with no appearance of affection. ‘Um, the taxi . . .?’

Annie forced a smile and went out and paid the driver. Then she returned to find Rosa, their housekeeper, gabbling happily in Spanish and enfolding Layla in a welcome-home hug. She knew she didn’t dare do the same. Layla would only push her away.

Rosa hurried off to the kitchen and silence settled between mother and daughter.

‘All spent out then?’ said Annie.

Layla shrugged. ‘Just a few Barbadian dollars and a couple of cents left,’ she said.

‘So! How’s your dad?’ asked Annie, although it hurt.

‘He’s fine,’ said Layla, her face a blank mask as she stared at Annie.

‘You had a good time?’ Annie was still smiling, smiling so hard her cheeks were starting to ache. Layla looked tanned and fit. Her hair was scrunched back in a ponytail, and she was wearing old frayed jeans and a white T-shirt. She looked pretty – and totally hostile.

‘Yeah. It’s fabulous out there.’ Layla gazed around at the marbled hall, the chandeliers, as if this, her mother’s home, was a dosshouse by comparison.

‘Great tan,’ said Annie, longing to hug her.

‘Mm.’ Layla glanced towards the stairs. ‘Well, think I’ll go on up . . .’

‘Sure! Of course.’ Annie stood there, still smiling that brilliant artificial smile, as Layla grabbed her bag and trudged up the stairs.

Annie turned and walked across to the study. She went inside and shut the door, the smile dropping from her face. She closed her eyes and groaned. Then she went over to the desk, picked up the phone and dialled a number she knew off by heart.

‘Hello,’ said the female voice at the other end. Bowie was singing ‘Let’s Dance’ very loudly in the background. ‘Hold on, let me just put the wood in the hole . . .’

‘Doll?’ There was a pause while Dolly shut the door.

‘OK, right.’ Bowie was muted now. ‘That’s better. Annie? How’s it going?’

‘Layla’s home.’

‘How is she?’

‘Fine.’

‘How’s her dad?’

‘Also fine, I suppose.’ Annie drew in a shuddering breath. ‘It’s no good, is it, Doll. This is how it’s going to be, from here until eternity. She hates me.’

‘I told you. She don’t
hate
you, not really. She’s pissed off with you, that’s all.’

‘She’s seventeen. She’s not a child any more. She ought to be able to understand things a bit better now, but she sodding well refuses to. It’s not bloody fair.
He
was the one who acted like an idiot, and
I
get all the grief.’

‘Tea at the Ritz on Thursday, don’t forget. Our usual. Ellie’s tagging along.’