But Jimmy hadn’t completely passed Dash and now – both hands being empty of weapons – he flung his arms around the boy, gripping him in a bear hug that dragged them both across the room and body-slammed Dash against the floor, Jimmy on top of him.
Dash squirmed, but Jimmy had his hands around the younger man’s throat.
I ran over and threw myself bodily at the older man’s shoulders, hearing a grunt as the sheer weight of my body dislodged him. I felt a stab of pain as somehow, in the dislodging, we became twisted so that this time I landed on my back, the older man now sitting on my chest, his eyes gleaming as his hand pulled back and descended, ready to slam straight into my face.
I twisted my head, heard a loud crack – followed by the sound of splintering – but felt no pain and when I opened my eyes, Jimmy’s eyes were no more gleaming, but glazed.
For a moment, time went into slow motion and then he toppled, slowly, to one side, disclosing cousin Carlton, the remains of a bar stool still gripped in his hands as Jimmy finally collapsed to the floor, shook his head and – still disorientated, but slowly recovering his faculties – rolled onto his belly and crawled to all fours.
“Quick,” I gasped, staggering to my feet, “get him out of here.”
As one, Carlton, Dash, Ray and I dragged the already struggling Jimmy to his feet and bundled him towards the door.
“Ali,” he growled, then finding strength from somewhere he twisted from Ray’s grasp as his voice rose, “Ali. I want them stones. I wanna know who did this.”
Carlton punched the man squarely in the kidneys, eliciting a howl as Jimmy doubled over, allowing Ray to regain his grasp. Still struggling and throwing wild punches, Jimmy was brought to the doorway of the pub and forced out onto the pavement.
“And don’t come back,” I growled at him as the doors were slammed and bolted shut.
He hammered on the door, bellowing at Ali that, “This ain’t over, girl. You hear me?”
“Get the fuck away from here,” Dash shouted, “or you’ll know real pain.”
The voice on the other side of the door was silent a moment, then a chilling cackle issued forth. “Pain? Boy, you don’t know shit from pain. I been robbed, and I want what’s mine.”
When this brought a puzzled silence from us, the cackle was repeated along with another, half-hearted, bang on the door and a cry of, “Little piggies, little piggies, let me in.”
And then all, apart from the tinny jukebox in the corner which had been playing all along, went silent.
“I think he’s gone,” Ray whispered.
The two regulars went back to their Racing Posts.
I turned to Ali, who was ashen-faced and staring in terror at the bolted door. “What have you done?” she said, her voice coming out in a horrified whisper.
“Ali,” I said, crossing to her, “I think it’s time you explained just what the hell is going on here. You two,” I called to the two regulars, “can you keep an eye on the place?”
“And don’t touch them optics,” Ali, always the consummate bar manager, snapped as her shoulders slumped; and she allowed Caz to put an arm around her shoulders, slip a large brandy into her hand and lead her out of the bar and back towards the pub kitchen.
SEVENTEEN
Ali, her hands still shaking, sat at the kitchen table and lifted the brandy to her lips. The rest of us sat expectantly around the table staring alternatively at her and at each other in puzzlement.
She heaved a deep sigh and nodded as though she’d come to a decision. “This,” she gestured at the young man opposite her, “is Carlton. He’s my son. I’m sorry we lied – about who and what he was – but I needed to hide him, and I was panicking a bit.” She smiled sheepishly.
“Just a bit,” I said quietly. “We’d sort of guessed he wasn’t your cousin. But who were you hiding him from?”
“Who d’you think? That,” she jerked her chin towards the bar beyond, “that thing,” she gasped back a sob, “is my husband, Jimmy Carter.”
“Your husband!” Dash gasped. “I didn’t know you were married.”
“To be honest,” said Ali, “neither did I until a couple of days ago. I hadn’t seen or heard from him for over fifteen years. I’d been told – ages ago, by someone who knew someone – that he’d been topped in Tenerife. Some fight that got out of hand.”
“I was glad to hear he was gone – whatever happened to make him that way. Then last week, he turned back up.”
“Why?” I asked. “After all this time?”
“Cos of your body,” Ali answered, jerking a thumb downward to indicate she was referring to the corpse in the cellar and not my own figure, desirable as I might like to think it. “He reckons he knows who it was. Said he’d done a job with some geezers and they ended up coming back here.”
“Here?” I was puzzled. “Why here?”
“Cos the place was closed for a refurb.”
“Christ,” Caz muttered. “When was this? 1890?”
“There’d been a flood. The central heating pipes had burst and they had to close the place for a week or so to patch it up, so this gang knew it would be empty at night. And they had a key.” At this point, she choked back a sob.
“Which I assume,” I said, “Jimmy stole from you.”
Ali nodded. “I’m guessing so. There was some job in Hatton Garden. They’d tunnelled into some diamond merchants and got away with a shitload of uncut jewels. The gang split as soon as they left the Garden and arranged to meet back here but, when they turned up, the ringleader – the guy who had all the stones – was nowhere to be seen. And they all assumed that he’d done a runner and dropped them in it.”
“And then, ten years later,” I muttered, “the papers report that a body has been uncovered in the cellar.”
Ali nodded. “Jimmy’s convinced it’s the gang leader – that one of the others did him in, stashed the body and took all the stones for themselves.”
“So what’s he want you to do about it?” Carlton asked.
His mum reached out a hand towards him but the young man stayed on the other side of the room, his arms crossed defensively across his chest.
“Jimmy’s been away – wherever the fuck he was – for ten years. He’s lost touch with half the gang. But I’ve been here. So he wants me to round them up. Find out where they are and get his stones back.”
“Well that’s not happening,” Dash said. “you’re never going to see that scumbag again.”
“You don’t understand,” Ali choked back another sob, “we have to help him. We’ve got to find these stones or he’ll…” she trailed off, stopped dead and stared at the tabletop, her whole body trembling.
“Or he’ll what, Ali?” I pressed.
“Or he’ll kill us all,” she finally said, looking up as tears rolled down her face. “He murdered my sister and he…” her body was suddenly racked by sobs, so that Carlton finally came around and put his arms around his mum.
“Shush,” he whispered, “we’ll take care of it, Mum. He won’t hurt you. I promise.”
“Oh God,” Ali sobbed, the words coming in a rush. “I’m so sorry, Carlton. I’m so sorry. He murdered my sister and he murdered your dad. And I should have told you years ago, but I thought he was dead and what would have been the point? Only now he’s back, and I don’t know what I’m going to do.”
Now Carlton, his face transformed from a look of concern to one of horror, uncoiled his arms from around her and stepped back, almost staggering. “He did what?”
“I left him,” Ali sobbed. “I walked away from Jimmy cos I met Arif – your dad. And for the first time in my life, I felt like I was…” Ali swallowed down more sobs, breathed deeply and slowly tried to quiet the emotional overload that was obvious on her face. “For the first time in my life, I felt like a person. Not a thing. Not a possession. Not just Jimmy’s bird.
“But with Jimmy and his gang, if you were their bird, you were their bird for life. You didn’t leave. They might
throw you to one side if some tart turned up but even then you weren’t allowed to even look at another man.
“Then I left Jimmy. I walked. And he came after me. Even when I was with Arif – even when I was pregnant with you and after you’d been born – he’d turn up at the flat, carry on like nothing had changed. ‘You’re on loan,’ I remember him saying. ‘You’ll never not be mine and right now I’ll allow this performance to go on. But you’re mine.’”
Carlton’s face changed again – anger showing now, and, as I glanced around the table, evident on the faces of every one of us.
“I was so afraid to say anything. There was a girl once, and she dumped one of the gang. Chucked him cos she’d had enough of his bullshit. And the bloke she dumped threw acid in her face, blinded her in one eye. They used to laugh about it, call her The Phantom of the Opera. After that, I was so frightened and I couldn’t tell your dad, Carlton, or anyone, cos I was so afraid of what would happen if I did. And then – though I knew nothing about it at the time – they did that robbery, and it all tuned to shit, and I guess Jimmy must have felt slighted – I mean, one of his best mates fucks him over, vanishes into the night with his money. He started turning up, saying he wanted me back.”
“What happened?” I asked, realizing as I did so that I’d been holding my breath.
“I—” she started, choked again, swigged the rest of the brandy – which Caz immediately refilled – and, taking another gasping breath, began again.
“I was out with some friends one night and my sister was babysitting Carlton. There was a fire. Janice managed to throw Carlton out of the bedroom window, but they were too small for her to fit through and whoever had set the fire had blocked the front door so she couldn’t get out. She died. Of smoke inhalation. When I went to identify her, they’d cleaned the soot off her face. She hadn’t been burned. The fire hadn’t touched her. She was so pretty.”
Ali broke down and, through great gulping sobs, continued the story. “Carlton was in hospital for a while. It looked like he wouldn’t make it.” she sobbed and Caz, her face pinched in worry, wrapped her arms around Ali and shushed her. “You nearly died,” Ali swallowed hard and reached out to Carlton who stood staring at her in shock.
“And my dad?” Carlton asked through gritted teeth.
Ali reached out to him, grabbing at his hand which he pulled away from her.
“What happened to my dad?” Carlton demanded once more.
“Your dad was killed – the same night – by a hit and run driver.”
“That’s what you always said,” the young man responded, his voice flat.
“And it’s true. And it’s all anyone’s ever been able to say or to prove. But I knew. I always knew who the driver was.”
“Him.”
Ali nodded. “I never heard from him again. I thought, at first, that he wanted to kill you and me with the fire. Then I realised he’d actually meant to kill Janice and you.”
“So all that was left was for him to kill Arif and I’d be left completely alone. That’s what he’d wanted. Like Anita – not to kill me, but to leave me alone and with a reminder every single day of my life of what it cost to defy him. He wanted me alive and everyone I loved dead.”
“Can I have some of that?” Carlton nodded at the brandy and Caz, fetching a handful of glasses from the cupboard, poured him a large shot, before dumping a shot into a glass for herself, for Dash, for Ray and for me.
Caz downed her shot in one slug and looked around the room. “So what do we do now?” she asked.
Carlton swigged his brandy in one mouthful, winced and put the glass down on the table. “Well I don’t know what you lot are going to do, but I’m going to find that fucker and kill him.”
Ali cried out, beseeching him to do nothing. “He’ll kill you Carlton.”
But the boy had already fled the room.
Ali, her whole body collapsing in paroxysms of grief, cried after him.
“Don’t worry,” Dash downed his drink, “I’ll sort it.” He paused, put a hand on Ali’s shoulder, looking longingly at her – and if I’d been unaware of the fact before now, I was finally unavoidably faced with the fact that my nephew was in love with this irascible, mercurial woman – and, without another glance at the rest of us, he too fled the room.
EIGHTEEN
“Any news?” Caz asked the next morning, as she sat on a stool at one end of the bar and nodded her head at Ali who was back behind the bar.
“Nothing,” I shook my head. “Carlton hasn’t been home. He hasn’t phoned her, and she’s been phoning him every hour since she got in this morning.”
As I spoke, Ali – who’d finally insisted on being taxied home by my dad late the previous night in case Carlton had gone there – pulled her mobile from the pocket of her jeans, glanced at it, sighed and shoved it back into her jeans before ambling over to serve the next punter.
“And what about Dash?” Caz asked, accepting a gin and tonic from me.
“I got a call from Ray about an hour ago. He’s home. They’re due in shortly.”
As I spoke, the door of the bar opened and Carlton, minus the jacket he’d had when he’d left the previous afternoon, with his shirt torn and the hems of his trousers matted in crusted filth, stepped in. Ali, still serving the customer, glanced up, let out a shriek, shoved the round she’d produced so far across the bar, saying, “It’s on the house. Just fuck off and enjoy ‘em,” and ran around from her side of the bar to throw her arms around the boy, expressions of concern and – when she spotted the huge purple bruise around his right eye – outrage pouring from her.
“The prodigal returns,” Caz said quietly.
“I’m just glad he has returned,” I said. “Having heard some of what we heard about Jimmy Carter last night, I was worried.”
“You think he’d have harmed the boy?” she asked.
“I think,” I said, “nothing would be out of the realms of possibility. Can you keep an eye on the bar for a minute?”
Caz nodded, slipping from her stool and heading around behind the bar, as I crossed to Ali and Carlton and suggested we head back to the kitchen.
Carlton looked sheepishly at Ali and me; his good eye expressing a degree of sorrow, his bruised eye almost useless. “I’m sorry about last night, Mum. I needed to get away, but I shouldn’t have just walked out on you. And I shouldn’t have left you,” he turned to me, “to be the one looking after my mum. That’s my job.”
Ali, tears now streaming down her face, shushed him and we headed back to the kitchen where I put the kettle on and, as I made three mugs of tea, Ali hammered the boy with questions:
“What happened to you? Where did you go? Did you find Jimmy? Did he do this to you and, if he didn’t, who did?” (This last referring to the facial bruising.)
Carlton, having expressed his apologies, clammed up somewhat.
“I ran out,” he said, “hoping to catch him. What I would have done, I don’t really know. I mean, would I have killed him then and there in the street?”
He paused, lost for a moment in his thoughts. “Doesn’t matter anyways, cos he’d gone by the time I got out on the street.”
“So where’d you go?” Ali asked again as I slid a mug of tea in front of each of them, poured some of Chopper’s custard creams onto a plate and plonked myself at the table.
“Around. My head was,” he waved a hand in the air as though trying to conjure the words up, and finally settled on, “fucked. Mum, why didn’t you ever tell me? I never even got to know my dad cos that bastard murdered him. And all this time I thought it was a hit and run.”
Ali opened her mouth to speak and he shook his head, silencing her. “I used to look at people in cars – cab drivers, old blokes, women drivers – I’d look at them and think, ‘Was it you? Did you kill my dad? Did you leave him lying in the gutter and drive off cos you were too pissed, or stoned, or scared to call for a fucking ambulance?’ And then I’d get angry, and I’d see them smiling or
singing along to something on the radio and I’d think, ‘How can you do that? How can you run him over like a dog and leave him to die, and now you’re laughing at a joke or singing along to Robbie fucking Williams?’
“Except, they didn’t, did they? He did. He murdered my dad cos – in a way – cos of me.”
“No!” Ali grabbed for his hand, held it and stared beseechingly into his face. “You mustn’t think that. You must never for a second think that you had anything to do with this.”
“But I do,” he pulled, with some difficulty, his hand from her grip. “Cos if it wasn’t for me – if you and my dad had just been together – then it might have been easier for you to go back to Jimmy. He might have got you back.”
“I’d have died first,” Ali, gravel in her voice, spat. “Carlton, I loved your dad. He was the first man who ever made me happy. And he gave me you, and every time I look at you, I see him, and I am happy to have known him. And you – you’ve never given me a moment’s trouble.”
Carlton laughed mirthlessly. “I’d never have dared give you a moment’s trouble.”
Ali reached out and stroked his face, causing him, as her hand floated over bruised skin, to wince.
“What happened to you?” she asked again. “Who did this to you?”
“I don’t know,” he finally sighed. “I didn’t know what to do. I wanted to kill him. Then I was angry at myself for not killing him when I had the chance – when he was on the floor in there. Then I was angry at you for not telling me all these years and finally I was angry at myself again, for being angry at you.
“And all this time, I’d been going from pub to pub, in a wider circle, figuring that he’d have to go in somewhere to get cleaned up, and I might find him if I asked around. Except the pubs got rougher and rougher as I got angrier and angrier.
“And as I got angrier and angrier, I got more and more drunk. Then I was in a pub down by the river and some bloke took exception to me, and the next thing I know punches are being thrown.”
Death Of A Devil Page 11
