The Faithless (44 page)

He was getting a day release to go to his son’s funeral, how fucking fucked-up was that? Well, he would go and support his Gabby, then he would work at getting out of this dump and, when he did, he was going to hunt down that mad slag of a brother of hers, James fucking dead man Tailor, and he was going to kill him. He would kill him slowly and painfully; he would burn that skank alive, and let him know just how it felt, how his little lad had felt, choking and coughing, the room
filling with black smoke and that cunt laughing about it. Because he would surely laugh about it would James, just like he apparently had when he had killed that poor fucking kitten.

Vincent poured himself another drink, and swallowed it quickly. He would give ten years off his life to be with poor Gabby now, holding her, and comforting her. They said her hands were very badly burned from trying to open the metal doorknob; burnt down to the bone. She was an incredible woman. She had taken their daughter to safety first, and then gone back inside to try and get her boy. She had done everything in her power to save him. Vincent couldn’t hold back the tears then. He felt the uselessness of his life, and the complete waste of these years he had spent away from his family. He could have been with them every day if he had just used his loaf. It was too late for recriminations now, all he had left inside him was a thirst for revenge.

He knelt down in his cell and, placing his hands together, he made a pledge to God; he was going to find James Tailor and he was going to kill him. That was the only thing keeping him sane.

Cynthia was awake. She knew she should at least try to sleep, but it was the child’s funeral tomorrow and she couldn’t stop thinking about it. She wondered if she would be able to face it. She knew she had to go, if for no other reason than to allay suspicion, but she was dreading standing at the grave, knowing that the little boy being buried was there through her fault alone.

She wondered at life and how it could sometimes hold up a mirror and make you see yourself as others see you. It could hurt more than any physical injury. If she could, she would do anything in her power to change the last few weeks.

She had always been faithless; the nuns, priests, all the people who believed in God were nothing more than fools to her. Now, though, she wondered if she had been too hasty in blowing
Him
off. God, her mother used to say, paid back debts without money, and she must owe
Him
more than most people.

She knew she had to face her daughter, and make her believe that she was only interested in what was good for her and the child. She would let Gabriella see Cherie often, she could not be any fairer than that. But, after this, she knew more than ever that she could not live alone now. She could not be without her Cherie – she was all that she had left.

Gabby was pleased it was a cold and grey day – it would have felt wrong to have been burying her baby in the sunshine. She knew that she would never feel any warmth again; it was as if a lump of ice had settled in her chest, and it would never budge.

She glanced at his little white coffin, and wondered at a god who could take away a child from its mother. What really hurt was that she had had him for only one night and now he was dead. It didn’t matter that it was her brother not her who had burned them out – it had still happened on her watch, as her mother had so succinctly put it.

Maybe her mother was right. Gabby’s life was a shambles in many respects, and that had been driven home to her more and more lately. The only man she had ever loved had been twice banged up for armed robbery – hardly a good role model in the eyes of the courts, or anyone else for that matter. She was not allowed access to her kids unless her mother deemed it OK, and
she
had the legal rights that should have been Gabby’s. Life was unfair, but she had to accept the blame for a lot of what had happened to her and her children. She had been too young, too stupid to have a child alone the first time round, and with little Vince fate had interfered once more, and she had been left holding the baby again.

She saw her Vincent walking towards her, flanked by and handcuffed to two prison officers. She stepped towards him, the sight of him opening the floodgates, and she heard herself sobbing as if from a distance.

Cynthia was amazed at the reaction of the people at the funeral. She had been hugged and given condolences by people who would normally cross the road to avoid her.

She could see Gabriella, a beautiful name she had always felt was wasted on her daughter, standing with Vincent. The two POs with him looked suitably solemn and out of place at a child’s funeral.

The sight of Vincent O’Casey in handcuffs angered her; he was bringing this lovely child’s funeral down to the level of his family. They were there as well, though standing apart from everyone else, all looking like rejects from
The Jeremy Kyle Show.
They were just using the boy’s death to worm their way back into Vincent’s good books. She could easily walk over there and fell each and every one of them, punch and kick them to make them leave this place that was not supposed to be soiled by the likes of them. But she would leave that to Vincent; his opinion of his family was just about the only thing they could agree on. The irony was not lost on her.

Cherie was holding her hand tightly and, even though she knew she should make the child go to her mother and father, her innate cunning told her to keep her there. People would see that the child preferred her and that was the main thing. She had made a terrible mistake with little Vince, and she had paid
dearly, but it had just made her all the more determined not to let this little one go from her. Without Cherie she had nothing, and that was wrong; after all, Gabriella could have more kids. She should have looked after the children she already had, not succumbed to her depressions and her pills. She was not fit to look after a child as intelligent and special as Cherie. She was wholly Cynthia’s child, and that, she was determined, was never going to change.

As Vincent listened to his Gabby sobbing, watched that piece of shite Cynthia keeping his daughter by her side, and saw poor old Jack Callahan aged and broken, he swore there and then that this was all going to change.

He had caught Cherie’s eye and she had looked away, then up at her nanny Cynthia, as if asking permission to go to him. He allowed for the fact he was in handcuffs, but it wasn’t as if she didn’t know he was banged up – she had been to visit him. He knew it was Cynthia who had poisoned her, but he also accepted that Cynthia, whatever she was or she wasn’t, had been there for the kids when poor Gabby couldn’t be. He blamed himself for that; he had left her twice on her Jack Jones, twice holding the baby,
literally.

He hadn’t been there for either of his kids for any length of time, so was it any wonder his daughter didn’t beat a path to his door? She was nervous of him and, from what Gabby had said, her mother had made them both out to be the bastards of the universe. They couldn’t blame the child for that, though, in his heart, he hated Cynthia for the way she had manipulated them all, even him. At one time it was either Cynthia or care, and Cynthia was preferable to those kiddies being in the system. It was a fucking abortion and it was his fault.

That moron James had always been a few chips short of a McDonald’s and, as Cynthia had been the cause of his
fruit-caking, he was not impressed with her having too much authority over his daughter.

He felt powerless. He would never get used to it, yet he had been experiencing it for far too long. All he could think about was wiping out that bastard James; after that, everything else would fall into place, of that much he was sure. If he went away again, at least this time it would be for a good reason.

As the thoughts of revenge swirled around his head he held his Gabby as best he could under the circumstances.

Jack Callahan had never felt so old and weak. He could not believe they were burying that lovely boy. Why had he let them go home that night? Why had fate chosen that night for James to have one of his rampages? And why couldn’t the police find him? That’s what he asked himself day and night – where could he be? If Jack had an inkling he would go and take the fucker out himself. It was as if James had disappeared off the face of the earth. Cynthia had said that when he had come to her house he had been high on drugs, accusing them all of ruining his life, accusing her of loving his sister’s kids more than her own, a truth that must have hit home even to someone as thick-skinned as Cynthia.

He glanced at her and wondered how someone like her and her son could be allowed to roam the earth, when such a lovely little boy had died. It was all wrong.

Poor Gabby was beside herself with grief, and Jack was glad his Mary wasn’t here to see this. As the priest himself had said to him, this would surely have killed her. It was a wrong day, in so many ways.

Bertie Warner stood in the cemetery and watched the proceedings with a suitably respectful expression. He didn’t like things like this at all; he saw death as an inevitable thing, but he hoped that he would go naturally when the time came and not by the hand of someone else. In his opinion, cancer was preferable to a bullet in the brain – at least then you had the opportunity to tie up loose ends and say your goodbyes.

A child’s funeral was a bastard; it was the wrong order, and it made everyone who attended feel they were blessed because it wasn’t
their
child who had died. There were times when he could launch his lot into the atmosphere, but he wouldn’t part with them for the world. If one of them died he would be distraught, and that was exactly how poor young Vincent and Gabriella looked.

Truth be told, though, it was Cynthia who was the star turn at this funeral, stealing all the attention. She looked like something from an American mini-series; black fitted suit, high-heeled shoes, and a small hat with a lacey bit hiding her boat race from the world. She still had the looks, he had to admit – not that he would touch her if she begged him. Well, he might if she begged him
really
nicely.

It was a sad day and no mistake. So why did he feel that there was something awry – he liked that word, it was something an
old-fashioned Filth would use. But his shit detector, and he prided himself on his shit detector, was telling him there was something fishy about all this. It
smelt
wrong and, even though that nutter James was capable of something this heinous, it all felt a bit too convenient for his liking.

Now, it was common knowledge that he hated Cynthia; she had outed a close friend of his, even if he couldn’t fault her actions at the time. But that hatred he had for her also made him suspicious of her, and what she was capable of. Though, from what he could gather, she loved those kids, so he was most probably barking up the wrong tree.

Still, he liked a nice little snoop occasionally, and he had plenty of Filth who owed him favours. If nothing else he would be able to give Vincent a proper update on his son’s murder case, because this was murder, whichever way you looked at it.

As they lowered little Vincent’s coffin into the grave, Cynthia’s crying could be heard above everyone else’s, and that only proved to the onlookers how much she had loved that child. The gossips speculated how that boy would still be alive if he had been at his nanny’s where, in fairness, he had lived most of his life.

Gabriella was a lovely girl but she had been incapable of taking proper care of those children. She was like that Celeste and everyone knew
she
hadn’t been the full shilling. No, the general consensus was that Cynthia, whatever people might think of her in the past, had proved herself in the end.

Cynthia felt the tide of good wishes and basked in their warmth and, as she stood by her daughter, hand on her arm, her granddaughter clutching her other hand, she knew that she had won, at least where public opinion was concerned.

Everyone watched her pull Gabby into her arms, and they said afterwards that when it came down to it, no matter what, you always wanted your mum when things were bad.

It was almost nine months since the funeral of little Vince, and Gabby was finally getting back to some kind of normality. It had not been the greatest of times, and she knew it would take a long while before she felt strong enough to feel anything close to happiness again.

Vincent was home, working at a garage in East London and they were gradually getting things together. It had been hard for them; he had never really known his son, but he had grieved for him as they both had. Cherie wasn’t living with them, but they saw her a lot, and that was enough for Gabby these days. As Vincent said, it was a shame to take the child away from her nanny until they had replaced everything and had a proper home for her. But Gabby knew it was because Cherie didn’t really bother with him. He had been away for so much of her life, she just didn’t know him any more. It was sad but it was a fact of life.