The Business (46 page)

People, it seemed to Basil, saw what they wanted to, what they needed to. Not what was there in front of their eyes. And it seemed that his theory had been proved by this woman’s son. Only a child would still want to know someone with her reputation, and her knack for walking away from anyone who might even pretend to care about her.

Basil was here now because he believed in damage limitation. He knew that the boy would not welcome this much interference on his part, but he also knew that the boy was still far too young to understand that he was only doing this in his best possible interests.

‘You make me laugh, Mel, I hammered the fuck out of you and yet you still think you can talk to me like I am a cunt. Like I am one of your punters. Your mother is right about you, never did learn when to keep your trap shut, did you?’

Imelda sighed. Basil knew she was irritated by his presence, knew she was more than willing to take another hiding if that was what it would take to get him off her back. She forced the admiration from him; he knew men who would be wary of a private visit like this.

Imelda shook her head, and he saw a flicker of the younger Mel, the feisty girl who had captured his imagination all those years ago.

‘What can I say, Basil? In prison I was told by a shrink that I had a negative personality disorder. He also wanted me to wank him off. You tell me, who wouldn’t be negative in a situation like that?’

‘Did you do it?’

She grinned then, and it softened her whole face. ‘What do
you
think?’

‘You are scum, Mel, but then you know that, don’t you?’

She shrugged nonchalantly. ‘You say that as if I would care about your opinion. You should know me better than that by now. I might have to let you dictate to me, you are stronger these days, but I don’t have to let you bother me as such. The shrink was right, Basil, I do not give a shit about anyone, it’s part of my charm. I am a negative person, it’s what gets me up in the afternoons.’

Imelda was satisfied to see that Basil was not smiling now. She had hit a nerve, as she had intended to. If she was going to get a hiding she was of the opinion that it was better to get beaten as a sheep than as a lamb.

‘You ain’t got anything charming about you, Mel. You’re a dog, pure and simple. But I need you to do a favour for me.’

Imelda sat back in the car seat, relaxing her body now. Basil could smell the muskiness that always seemed to emanate from her. It was strange how she always managed to put him on his dignity. How, after a few minutes in her company, he felt the urge to obliterate her from the face of the earth. She had a way about her, she always seemed as if she was laughing at you even though you could not prove it in any way. She made sure the people around her could feel her utter contempt for them.

Imelda Dooley was more than capable of murder, Basil knew that and she knew that he knew that. His only real concern was that her son didn’t seem to understand that about her. In fact, he wondered if her son had inherited the mutant lunacy gene he obviously carried from her. But whereas Imelda’s ruthlessness was seen as something to be abhorred, in her son it could, one day, be seen as his greatest asset. Even for Basil, that was food for thought.

‘So, who do you need tucked up?’

It was the way she said the words that caused Basil to side-swipe her; catching her on the side of her face with his fist as he put all his considerable strength behind the blow. The sound was loud in the darkness, he could almost hear the pain it caused and yet she didn’t even whimper. Instead, she sat back in her seat once more and, as the blood dripped on to his nice leather upholstery once again, she didn’t even attempt to use her tissue to stem it. She was bleeding profusely, and Basil knew she probably needed stitches.

As the blood found its own pathway, as it glistened and thickened all over her clothes, her skin, and the interior of his car, he knew she was pleased at his reaction. He knew he had done what she wanted. Imelda loved a violent reaction, if not from her then from the people around her. It was what made her like she was, what set her apart from everyone else. It was why she was like she was; violence was the thing she craved once the high had dissolved, it was the same thing that had caused all her problems in life. She was an adrenaline junkie.

‘Feel better now, do you? Feel like you’re better than me?’ She was looking directly at him now. In the half-light of the lamp-post he was parked under, she looked like something from a Hammer Horror film.

Not for the first time, Basil wondered if heroin killed not only emotions, but also pain. She seemed immune to pain of any kind. Mental or physical. He was convinced that even if she did feel real hurt like everyone else, she at least enjoyed the sensation of it. Or, at least, she enjoyed the guilt it caused in the perpetrator of the pain. She wanted to be the victim at times, it suited her. If she could not control the situation by her own force, she controlled it by letting the protagonist use their own force, their own anger, against her. Taking the passive stance gave her a strength that was in some ways more powerful. Mainly because, unlike
her
, the people she was dealing with were capable of guilt, disgust and shame at their actions.

Imelda was like a predatory animal, she sensed the weakness in her foe, and she exploited it without any kind of preamble whatsoever. She used, or she allowed herself to be used. Either way, it had kept her alive much longer than expected. She was a real piece of dirt, and he was about to inflict her and all she stood for on a young man who was completely without the strength needed to deal with her and everything that came with her.

His only regret was that he would need to wait until this animal showed her real self to the boy and, when that happened, he would be in a position to make her disappear once more. Only then would he be in a position to pick up the pieces. Because Imelda would shatter her son’s life as completely as she had ruined everyone else’s around her.

Basil pulled a pristine white handkerchief out of his jacket pocket and threw it at her. ‘Wipe yourself, have you no fucking shame?’

Imelda shook her head, and he could see the puzzlement at his anger and his hatred. He knew that she was willing to take what he was going to give her, but that his actions had affected her for the wrong reasons.

‘Have
you
no shame? You sought me out, not the other way round. I have the bruises to prove it.’ She was laughing gently, as if it was an intimate moment they were sharing together.

‘What is it with you, Mel, why do you make people so fucking angry with you? Why do you enjoy other people’s hatred so much?’ He was being honest with her, wanted to know the answer to his question.

Imelda knew that what he was really interested in was why he felt the need to hurt her so much, and she was confident that they both knew the answer to that one.

The blood was everywhere now, as she wanted it to be. She hoped it was sinking into every nook and cranny around her. The stitching would never be the same again, nor would the carpets. Blood was a fucker like that, it lingered longer than a bad fart.

She wanted him to see the damage he had caused her. Wanted him to know that his back-hander had caused a real wound once again. She did not really care about things like that, she never had.
He
was the one who cared about this crap. He cared far more than she did that he was once again guilty of opening up her face. She knew that his reaction to her simply proved that she had been right about him all along. He still felt something, and they both knew it.

Satisfied that he was not going to repeat his earlier action, she picked up the handkerchief from her lap and began to wipe away the blood from her face with gentle, feminine strokes. The action was almost sexual in its intensity. Looking at the blood that now soaked the white cotton, she looked towards him once again and said sadly, ‘Is this about Kenny Boy? Only, he has been watching me for a while now. After Jordanna’s histrionics and your fucking outrage, I had a feeling he might come around. I heard many moons ago that he was asking everyone about me. I know that you and my mother keep him close. So, what do you want from me, Basil? Only, I think I might need to see a quack, don’t you?’

He realised then that she had known what he would want from the second she had laid eyes on him. She had been expecting something like this.

‘How come you are saying all this to me now? If you knew what I wanted, why not save this aggro?’

Imelda grinned. Basil noticed that she had lost a few of her back teeth. All junkies lost them eventually, it was because they spent the best part of their lives gritting them. She was also missing clumps of her hair, another junkie trait. But she did what all functioning drugheads did, she backcombed the remaining hair and, in so doing, she managed to look normal.

‘Why would I, Bas? I didn’t know for certain what you wanted from me. I ain’t a fucking mind-reader. You never gave me credit for what I am capable of. I junk because I
like
it. It’s the same reason I gave my kids to my mother, because
she
wanted them. She needs them like I need the junk. Except, unlike her, I can only fuck meself up these days. Now, can we finally get to the point?’

Basil had a handgun underneath his seat. It was loaded, ready for action. He knew that he could retrieve it quick smart, then blow this skank’s head off. He looked around him, the road was quiet; it was very late, two-forty in the morning. He would be able to dispose of her and the car within an hour. It would not be the first time he had felt the urge to take out trash on short notice. He was in possession of a scrapyard near Tilbury Docks where more than one belligerent fucker had been crushed and forgotten about. But he knew that this was not an option at this particular moment in time.

Kenny would not appreciate the favour he would be doing him until he had experienced the evil slag first-hand.

‘You know the boy needs to see you; now, I want you to be nice to him. Not too nice, but I want you to make him understand that you have nothing personal against him or his sister. Let him down gently, and when the time’s right, you can do one of your famous disappearing acts.’

‘So you don’t want me to fuck him off then, is that it?’

Basil shook his head slowly, and pointing his finger into her face he snarled, ‘Just be yourself, Mel, that should do more than enough damage. But if you draw him into your shit, the drugs or the whoring, I will fucking decimate you and laugh while I do it. I mean it, Imelda, I’ll torture you and watch as you die in fucking agony. Just give me a fucking excuse, that is all I ask. He is at an age where he needs to know who you are. He needs to know where he sprang from. He ain’t a cunt either, naïve maybe, but he has a fucking built-in shit detector and I am relying on that to make him see you for what you are. But he would not survive you using him for money, drugs or just because you think you can. He cares about you, needs to understand you and why you left him.’

‘So what am I supposed to do with him then? What if he decides to drag Jordanna into this family reunion or, God forbid, me fucking mother? What then?’

Basil grinned, his expensively capped teeth were bright in the muted light. ‘You just be nice. No more and no less. Don’t feign too much interest, just make him feel like you remember him. All he needs is a hello and a goodbye, that’s it. He is a handful, Mel, and if you upset him, he’ll let you know. He ain’t got the intelligence yet to suss out the exact nature of the mind games you rely on to exist. But he will suss out if you take him for a mug. If that does happen, I will see to it that you end your days delirious with pain and regrets.’

She knew he meant every word he said. She was quiet for a long while, then, sighing with inevitability, she said, ‘It’s his birthday next week. Bring him round my place then.’

She never ceased to amaze him, he would have laid odds of a thousand to one that her children’s dates of birth were something she had long forgotten. It was this kind of thing that reminded him just how dangerous she really was. Imelda forgot nothing of importance. It was another reason she had lasted so long in such a precarious occupation.

Chapter Twenty

Jordanna was drunk, dangerously drunk and seriously stoned. She knew she was not capable of cohesive rational thoughts, and the knowledge pleased her. She was with it enough to know she was out of it, and this was the feeling she liked. She was just broken enough to be able to blame any bad behaviour on her condition. As she listened to the noise of the people around her, heard the chatter, the laughter, she felt a sense of security. She needed to be in company, needed the anonymity that being part of a crowd afforded her. She was not aware of where she was, but that was something she was used to these days.

She glanced around the packed room, was aware that she had slept with the majority of the men in there and felt a wave of self-hatred. As always, when reality kicked in, she went in search of more alcohol, more cannabis, more disco biscuits. She knew she was letting herself down, but she didn’t care any more. She was her mother’s daughter and she had a reputation to live up to.

Jordanna remembered all the things that had happened to her as a child, they were inside her head day and night, and the only way to cancel them out was to get off her lovely little face. To blot everything out, and do it in a spectacular fashion. Her mother had taught her that much anyway.

Julie Parsons, a girl she had known from school and who she had once actively disliked, avoided like the plague, was now her new bosom buddy. All her old friends had been systematically alienated by her, they had all been witnesses to her shame. Joanie, the bitch, had made her disgust self-evident and she had never forgiven her for that. Never would, either. Her mother calling out for her to provide her with a drink had been the catalyst she needed for her hatred to take root inside her. If her mother had only left her alone that day, had not felt the urge to make her feel like an object of derision, of scorn, she knew she could have overcome everything once again. But her mother had gone out of her way to humiliate her, and she had more than succeeded.