The Graft (52 page)

He grinned once more and his gaze was almost malevolent. ‘Remember, Mum, remember the Friday nights?’

‘Stop it! Stop it will you, Nick!’

There was something in Angela’s shrill and frightened voice that Tammy picked up on. Shaking her head at what was being said to her she instinctively knew that he was telling the truth.

Realising she believed him, he deflated in seconds. Then he said to her sadly, ’Ask her about how she would comfort me. Go on, Tams, ask her. Ask old holy Joe there what she would do to me.’

He turned and stared at his mother then. ‘You remember, don’t you, Mum?’

Tammy felt sick once more as she watched them.

‘If I am a pervert what does that make you, Mum, eh? Answer me that.’

Had she known all this on some deeper level? Deep in her heart. She remembered him at the christening of his son, James, taking the pats on the back and the ribald comments. Even though he knew most people were asking the same question he was. Who the hell was the real father? Tammy, by then, had been round the turf of Essex more times than Frankie Dettori.

Yet he had swallowed it so that no one would ever find out that he liked young boys. Kids. He was also telling her that his mother had abused him as well.

What the fuck was happening here?

‘Give me that phone, Tammy. If you won’t ring the police, I will.’

Nick’s head shot up and he looked her in the face.

‘You wouldn’t?’

His voice was low.

She laughed then, an utterly sad and broken laugh.

‘Try me, Nick, see what I am really capable of.’

He pushed the phone away from her.

‘Don’t do this, Mum. You need to think about what you’re doing, this is just a knee-jerk reaction, nothing more.’

She tried to grab the phone from him but he had picked it up and was now standing, holding it behind his back.

‘I do not need to think about anything, I know what has to be done and I am going to see that you pay for everything you’ve ever done!’

‘But I am your son, you should be helping me, Mum, protecting me like I’ve protected you.’

She shook her head then, walking towards him, she said quietly, ‘Not any more, Nick, you’re on your own. Now give me the phone.’

He was backing away from her towards the granite island that housed the summer cooker and the chopping board. When his back was against it, he said in a low, babyish voice, ‘Please, Mum, don’t make me do this . . . please!’

‘Look at yourself, a fine thing for a mother to have to look at, eh? Me son, the queer boy.’

Nick closed his eyes in distress at the vitriolic words.

‘Come away from him, Angela, come away now.’ Tammy’s voice was loud in the room but the man and the woman ignored her. This was a private battle and they both knew it. One of them had to give.

‘I want that phone and if you don’t give it to me I will walk out to the hallway and phone the police from there.’

She shook her head at him in derision.

‘Because, son, no matter what you say or what you do, I am going to tell them what you are.’

It was said with finality and as she turned away from him he took the large boning knife from the expensive beech block that housed it and stabbed her in the back with it. Then, with Tammy’s screams ringing in his ears, he walked from the house.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Billy Clarke walked into a scene of pandemonium. He looked around the scruffy flat and was in turn disgusted and fascinated by what he was seeing. It was like something from a television play, something you knew went on but never believed you would see for yourself.

Now, though, they were all seeing it and real life was a bastard when it was so in your face. A classless society? Well, there was no class of any kind in this fucking drum, that much was for sure. His wife, though, would have known all about this kind of life. Caroline was interested in other people, especially the ones no one cared about.

The underclass, she called them.

She was a diamond like that, had educated him in many ways and he loved her for it. And she was absolutely right in what she had said to him: no one seemed to care about these kids, least of all the man who professed to be looking after them.

Terry was grilling the Lexus owner. For some reason the man really seemed to annoy him and Billy could see why. He looked like one of their associates, looked like any normal grafter, and he had obviously done a bit of bird. You could see that by his tattoos and his general demeanour.

Billy walked from the room, leaving his brother to it.

In one of the bedrooms he saw a young girl of about fifteen. She wasn’t even pretty, God love her, not that that should have made any difference, of course, but in all honesty it did to him. He understood about chasing youth and beauty, they were what most men desired. If it wasn’t most films would never be made, all those lovely girls flashing their threepenny bits all over the show. Somehow a young bird always spelled renewed youth to the man screwing her. Luckily most men were happy just looking at pictures of them in the paper or dreaming about them when they rogered the old woman.

These people, though, to them it was a form of control. His wife knew all about that, too. She had explained to him once that rape was not really a sex crime. It was using sex to subdue or
destroy
someone.

It was the weapon of choice, if you liked. The worst thing that could happen to anyone. Billy finally realised that he was staring at the poor girl and probably frightening her. He told her to get dressed but she just stared back at him and he saw she was stoned out of her box.

He walked back into the front room and said to Terry in anger ‘The cream of fucking society in here, eh?’

His brother shook his head in disgust.

‘Look at this cunt. He is masquerading as a fucking
person
, a grafter like us. He works for Liam O’Halloran. Wait till I tell
him
this sorry little tale.’

O’Halloran, another local lunatic, would be honour bound to bounce his man round the pavement when he found out about this.

‘Imagine getting your rocks off with this lot, Bill. It’s like a fucking nightmare, ain’t it?’

Terry clumped O’Halloran’s man without any ceremony in the face. Not knowing how to react to a situation like this, they were all caught between anger and shock.

Louis stayed quiet, just watching his friend through the dirty window as he laid into the man on the balcony outside.

Watching and waiting in case Tyrell needed his help in any way.

Billy loved his brother Louis. He wasn’t cut out for all this really, he was like Tyrell in that way, they were both too nice. You had to have a deep-seated anger at the world to succeed in their business, or in Terry’s case just be a bonafide loony tunes. But Louis was a grafter, in his own way he got things done. Billy remembered him and Tyrell as kids, one so blond and the other so dark. They had loved each other like brothers. When Tyrell’s boy had died, Louis had taken his friend’s grief as his own. Billy respected that. You needed family, but a good friend was as important at times. You could tell them things you could not tell your own flesh and blood.

He heard a smacking sound and saw Terry had lashed out once more. The man with the Lexus was openly terrified and Billy glanced at him without a flicker of remorse. He knew Terry wanted to hurt this scum and as far as he was concerned his brother could go for it.

A young boy with longish red hair and mascara was sitting on the sofa watching it all.

‘What you looking at?’ snarled Terry.

The boy turned away quickly, his fear almost tangible.

‘What’s your name then?’

He looked at Terry and stammered, ‘F-Frankie . . . Frankie Watts.’

He had a girlish voice, quiet and put on. Billy imagined he had practised it over a period of time to get it just right.

It cut no ice with him.

‘How old are you?’

‘Seventeen.’

He looked all of twelve, with his skinny body and baby face.

Terry looked at his brother again and held his arms up as if to say, See what I mean?

‘This place is mental, Bill, I can’t take it all on board.’

Billy nodded, knowing exactly how he felt. This was too far out for them, too fucking weird.

‘Let’s get out of here, this place is giving me the fucking creeps.’

Billy had had enough now. He walked out on to the balcony; he needed to hurry Tyrell up. He honestly didn’t know how much more of this he could take. It made him want to go home and check on his own kids, make sure they were OK.

The cold hit him but he liked the clean feel of it in his lungs. After that flat it was almost like ambrosia.

’All right, Tyrell?’

He nodded.

‘You getting anything useful?’

Billy was lighting a cigarette, something he only did when stressed. Tyrell held his hand out for the smoke and Billy gave it to him gladly.

‘This is sick, Billy, you won’t believe any it, I tell you.’ Tyrell looked down at the man cowering on the floor. Freezing and bloody, he was finally broken. ‘Tell him! Tell him what you told me.’ Tyrell kicked him none too gently in the ribs as he spoke.

The man looked up at him and Billy could see his broken teeth. From the way his arm hung crooked and bleeding he knew Winters had felt the full force of the chair leg more than once during the course of their conversation.

Billy was impressed with old Tyrell. Had thought when it finally came to it he might have shit out. And who could blame him? Who wanted to know the truth about their own kid when it was as ugly as this? He had expected to take over from here, to mete out the punishment for Tyrell, and would have done it gladly. The man needed to know that whoever had taken his boy down was wiped off the face of the earth.

Winters was stuttering in fear. He knew who Billy was and was terrified all over again.

‘Tell him!’

‘It was Proctor . . . Proctor and Leary and their mate Rudde. It was Rudde who brought them here in the first place.’

Billy looked at the man and said in a high, incredulous voice: ‘Rudde? Peter Rudde? The filth?’

Tyrell nodded.

‘Tell him everything.’

Winters was gabbling now, trying to get it all over with as quickly as possible.

‘It was Rudde who tracked them down for us. He looked in the station books, kept an eye out for the runaways and the homeless kids, then Proctor passed the names and details on to me.’

‘What about Leary, where did he fit in then?’

The man sighed heavily.

‘Nick was always here - still comes, in fact. Him and Sonny . . . well, I don’t have to paint you a picture, do I? But Nick likes the kids, Lenny Bagshots provides them.’

Billy’s eyes were open to their widest. If this man had told them Gandhi himself had been in this flat he would have found it easier to believe than what he was hearing now. ‘Fuck off! That’s bollocks . . .’

Rudde he could cope with, but Nick Leary?

‘No, it ain’t, Billy. You ain’t heard the half of it yet.’

Billy didn’t answer Tyrell. He couldn’t. He had been to Nick’s home, had spoken to him . . . Nick Leary was one of them. He was a face, a diamond geezer.

Billy was reeling from the news.

But he knew deep inside that this scum Winters was telling the truth. He didn’t know how but he knew. He had thought Nick cold and sexless the last time they’d met. Seen how he blanked his own highly desirable wife. Now here it was, the missing piece of the puzzle, and he knew it to be true as surely as he knew his own name.

‘Nick Leary lured my boy to his house that night to finish him off, get him out of the frame.’

Tyrell let his words sink in. He knew how Billy was feeling, had felt the same himself. But Winters wasn’t lying.

‘It’s Peter Rudde who keeps this place from being trounced as well. There’s a big network of them, see. They all work together. Sonny had threatened to expose Leary.’

Billy Clarke was still in shock but he could see the pattern here. Rudde was Nick’s tame filth, everyone knew that. They’d even had villas built side by side in Spain. Nick had paid for them, of course, and Rudde’s wasn’t a patch on Nick’s place, but it explained a lot.

The old saying was so true: Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer still.

The man on the ground was whimpering now. Fear and cold had kicked in and he just wanted this over with once and for all.

‘I told you the score, now please let me go. I told you everything you asked of me.’

Tyrell stared down at him for long moments. This man had had intimate knowledge of his boy, his child.

This man had fucked his boy.

This man had taken rent from his son here and allowed him to be used by the likes of Nick Leary and now he wanted to walk away as if nothing had happened?

Leave him here and he’d corrupt other young men, use them until the next new kid on the block hooked his attention.