Sweetie (27 page)

‘Yeah, probably, Mum. But all the same, let’s keep it tight, shall we?’

‘Don’t panic, Grace. We’ve got their alibis sorted.

If anyone asks, John was at my place plumbing in the washing machine,’ said Gillian.

‘What – at eleven o’clock at night?’ Potty, having listened closely, piped up for the first time. ‘Don’t be daft, Gill. Who’s gonna fix a machine at that time of night? Let’s get this right.’

‘Well, something like that. We’ll think of some -

thing,’ she said, dismissing Potty’s concerns.

‘Potty’s right, Gill,’ said Nanny Parks in a warning tone. ‘You need to come up with something water -

tight.’

‘It’s sorted, I’ve already spoken to Harry,’ said 269

Lizzie. The other women turned to look at her and waited for an explanation; this was a new development.

‘Harry’s said he’ll leave crib early – say he went for pie and mash with all of them. Oh, and Robbo
is
in.

Terry spoke to him yesterday and he’s up for it.’

Lizzie’s eyes held a glint of triumph as she spoke.

‘Do you think it was a good idea to bring Harry in on this?’ asked Potty. ‘I can understand Robbo wanting in . . . after all, Chantal was George’s first victim and he’s been a different man since she died . . .

but Harry?

‘Harry’s as sickened as the rest of us by what’s been happening. He’s had his own suspicions. Don’t forget, it was him who told us George never showed up for crib the night that Maria was attacked. As far as Harry’s concerned, you can count him in.’

‘You’re right,’ Grace conceded. ‘Poor Harry feels so guilty about my Adam, he keeps going over it every time John sees him in the pub. How he should have found him earlier, how bad he feels. Christ, these shorts are tight,’ she said suddenly, pulling at her waistband.

‘You putting weight on?’ asked her mother.

‘No, just a bit bloated, I think. It’s this heat.’

Lizzie, impatient with all their chatter and wanting an agreement, spoke over their voices. ‘So – Monday then?’

The women all looked at each other and nodded 270

before saying in unison, ‘Monday!’

*

John, Terry and Paul had a quick pint in the Birdcage, just to check that George had showed up for crib, before moving on to the Royal Oak and meeting up with Robbo. They occupied a corner table there and didn’t say much to each other beyond,

‘Another pint?’ for the next two hours. Each man knew what he had to do. John, as the tallest, was to approach George from behind and hold him while the other three went in and did the damage. John and Terry were the most nervous while Paul and Robbo remained calm. Paul had boxed for a few years, and although he was not a big bloke, he was fast and accurate. He’d felt helpless and emasculated in the weeks after Chantal’s death, unable to help Michelle in any way. Now he had his chance to put things right, and to support Robbo in his grief and misery too. There wasn’t a lot of love lost between the two men normally but tonight they were united.

John, more cautious by nature, was good ballast for Terry who was fit to be tied. He’d always been a bit of a hen-pecked husband who’d do anything for a quiet life, but since Wayne’s murder his character had changed completely. ‘Don’t go mad, Terry. We wanna give him a good beating, not find ourselves up on a murder charge,’ John warned him. Terry nodded vigorously in agreement but John could see his leg bouncing up and down under the table. He was 271

straining at the leash. Getting him away was going to be the real problem. Terry would want to finish the job. But the whole idea behind all of this was to bring the police in, to get George officially investigated and then charged and convicted. ‘And whatever you do, remember, we’re not to call each other by name at any point.’

‘He’ll see our faces, though, even if it is dark,’ Paul said reasonably.

‘Yeah, but I don’t think that’s gonna matter. He’s not going to go crying to Old Bill, not after what he’s done.’ John looked at the clock behind the bar: 10.20 p.m. ‘Harry should be here in a minute.’ He had agreed with the others that he would leave crib before the final game, claiming a headache, and tip them the wink that George was finishing up before he walked home.

Slightly later than anticipated, Harry came into the Royal Oak and ordered a half. He didn’t speak to the other men, but nodded in their direction to indicate that they should be making tracks along Columbia Road. They had worked out that George would come out of the pub and turn left into Gossett Road to reach his maisonette, a five-minute walk away.

Halfway down, they would be waiting for him in the shadows by the garages, in the gap between the two blocks of flats where the streetlights had been out of order for months. Thank God for the council taking months to fix anything!

272

Terry was so worked up that he muttered, ‘Christ, I’ve got to have another piss,’ even though he’d already been before they left the pub. He was standing in the corner of the garages by a stairwell leading to the flats, unzipping himself, when a faint whistling reached their ears. The men held their breath. Footsteps followed and within seconds George’s large frame came lumbering down the street. They watched as he passed and when he was a few yards in front fell in behind him.

‘Now,’ said John quietly.

He ran up behind George and grabbed him round the neck, winding him and making him go moment -

arily limp. Robbo swept his legs from under him and he fell backwards. By the time George had worked out what was going on and started to try and struggle free, Paul and Terry had gone in, fists flying, while Robbo put in heavy sickening blows with his boots. George was probably unconscious within a minute, such was the ferocity and speed of their attack.

When he curled up on the ground all four of them finished him off with a good kicking. John, sensing when enough was enough, was the one to call the others off, but Robbo turned out to be more enraged than the rest of them.

‘This is for my baby, you sick cunt! I’ll finish you now, here in the street, you bastard!’

For a moment, all three of them watched as the 273

father of the first victim continued to kick the unconscious man. Finally John stepped in. ‘Help me get him off, you two!’ He and the others pulled at Robbo to stop the onslaught of kicks and punches.

John held him pinned against one of the garage doors. ‘He’s had enough, mate. Calm down! This ain’t gonna help no one. Now let’s get out of here.’

With calm restored they separated and made their way home in different directions. It had taken less than two minutes to fell a man of about sixteen or seventeen stone and leave him lying in a crumpled bleeding heap on the pavement.

Potty was in her element. As a result of his injuries, George had suffered a massive heart attack and been admitted to the Chest Hospital somewhere around midnight. When she came on duty at eight o’clock the next morning, there were policemen hanging around the main reception desk. After making a few sur -

reptitious enquiries she was told that a man in his fifties had been admitted with heart failure after a brutal beating. A quick glance in the admissions book con firmed that it was George Rush. It was all she could do not to punch the air in triumph.

He had been discovered minutes after the attack by a group of men who had been drinking in the Birdcage. They confirmed to the police that he had left the pub somewhere around quarter to eleven after playing crib there, and ten minutes later they’d 274

found him bleeding profusely from a head wound and unconscious.

Potty had wanted to go rushing over to Grace’s then and there, but they had agreed that no one was to do anything out of the ordinary. It was to be business as usual. They had to act as surprised as the next person when the news became public knowledge.

It took a lot to shock the nurses at the hospital but at tea break Potty overheard a couple of them having a conversation. She strained her ears to catch one of them saying, ‘I’ve never seen anything like it. There’s no way that was just a fight with another bloke, there had to be a gang of them to do that kind of damage.

He’s black and blue from head to toe and his face has swollen up like a pumpkin. No wonder the police are getting involved.’

Potty was elated. They had done what they had set out to do. The police were involved now and soon they would be swarming all over George’s house, delving into every aspect of his life. No one took a beating like that without good cause.

Meanwhile George was in intensive care and there were several police officers stationed outside in the corridor, waiting for him to come round. Potty felt fearful at the sight of them and kept her head down so that they couldn’t see her guilty expression as she walked past with her mop and bucket. It was a bit of a scare when she spotted PC Watson coming up the 275

stairs, but she managed to avoid being seen by slipping through the janitorial supplies department door and waiting there until the coast was clear. It was irrational, but her heart was banging hard for the whole shift and she had never felt more relieved than when it finished at two o’clock.

She went straight to Grace’s. She could have gone home and waited for Lucy to bring the girls back, but she had to share the news. She knew she had done well. She was proud of herself and her part in the whole scenario. Grace was as eager to hear it as Potty was to tell it. All John had said when he came back the previous night was, ‘It’s done, and I’m going to bed.’ She knew not to push or press for any further information and in the morning he had got up for work and left early. He obviously wasn’t going to talk about it.

Paul Foster had been similarly tight-lipped with Michelle. It was only Terry who relived the entire incident with his wife, all two minutes of it, second by second, deriving some small satisfaction from knowing that the man who had killed their son had himself been badly hurt. Robbo had gone off to lie low. His knuckles had been badly bruised and he didn’t want to arouse any suspicion. Nobody knew how much damage had been done to George until Potty arrived with the news that he’d suffered a heart attack.

Grace and Sue looked panicked when they heard 276

about that. Christ, he wasn’t supposed to die, that would be murder! Assault and battery or GBH might put their husbands away for a few months, even a year, if they were caught, but if they were found guilty of murder they’d be inside for years.

‘What did the nurses say?’ Grace asked, shushing Adam who was after another choc ice.

‘Well, they don’t really talk to us cleaners, but I overheard a couple of them say he was black and blue all over. I could hardly go up to a doctor and ask for any details, though, could I?’ Potty lit a cigarette and drew on it deeply, her hands trembling. ‘I’m sorry,’

she added. ‘But I did see Constable Watson. I avoided him and he didn’t see me. I’ll find out more on my next shift.’

‘It’s not your fault, you dope,’ said Grace, then turning to Adam irritably, ‘I mean it, this is your last one,’ as she reached into the freezer for another choc ice. She was feeling tetchy, the certainty of the last few days giving way to an uncomfortable weight of anxiety in her chest.

‘Well, I’ll just bloody well go up there and ask,’

said Nanny Parks emphatically.

‘No, Mum, leave it!’ Grace turned the full force of her jitteriness on her mother.

‘Why, where’s the harm? They’re not going to suspect anything of me, are they? I’m just a nosy old biddy.’

‘I think Grace is right, Nanny, there’s police 277

everywhere at the moment and they’ll only want to know why you’re asking,’ said Potty.

‘What do you think, Sue?’ Nanny Parks asked her, looking for an ally.

‘Let’s leave it for a day or two, shall we? The news is a bit fresh at the moment. If we wait until everybody has wind of it, it won’t look so strange.

When are you at work again, Potty?’

‘Not till Thursday, tomorrow is my day off,’ she said, looking guilty, as if the rota were her personal responsibility.

‘Well, we’ll just have to sit tight,’ said Grace, eyeing her mother. Nanny had a face like thunder and didn’t like being undermined by her own daughter in front of Sue and Potty. She gathered up her old shopping bag and cardigan and said, ‘I’ll be off then. I said I’d go round Lizzie’s this afternoon and give her an update. She’s arranged for Michelle to pop in too.’

Grace rolled her eyes heavenwards. God only knew what her mother was capable of with Lizzie Foster egging her on. She made her promise that she wouldn’t do or say anything, and they all agreed to meet at Grace’s again in the morning, to see if there had been any developments.

Nanny Parks was as good as her word. Although, frustratingly, nobody had been able to ascertain anything conclusive, they all kept their nerve.

The rumour mill, of course, was in full swing: 278

George was brain-damaged . . . he’d never walk again . . . he’d lost an eye. All kinds of snippets of information reached them, none of which proved to be true.

It wasn’t until Potty came off duty on Thursday after -

noon that the full picture emerged. She had managed to ask one of the nurses casually why the police had been there the other day and had been told that a patient had been attacked and suffered a heart attack but that fortunately there was no long-term or permanent damage.

‘Do they know who did it to him?’ asked Potty, hoping her voice didn’t wobble as she asked what she really needed to know. The nurse shook her head and said that he had been unable to identify his attackers as it was dark and they had come up behind him, but that there had definitely been a couple of them, maybe as many as three or four. Potty shook her head in mock concern and said, ‘Terrible, isn’t it?’ The nurse agreed.

She went on to tell Potty that the victim was out of intensive care and down on the ward, where they would probably keep him for a week or two until his head wound had healed and so they could make sure there had been no internal bleeding. The police visited him there regularly, but as yet they didn’t have a statement from him.

George Rush had been moved down to Howarth 279