The Take

by Martina Cole

  His voice told her he felt that Jimmy passing on the message to him was out of order, but he would swallow because it was from Ozzy.

  Patricia smiled once more. ‘I am sorry for your troubles.’

  It was an Irish saying, something that was said at funerals. She was telling him she agreed with his actions, agreed with what he had done. He had not been imagining it, she liked him really. The world was once more an exciting place to be. He loved the chase and this bird would make him chase her all over the show. He couldn’t wait.

  Suddenly there was a crashing sound from upstairs. Two of the girls ran towards the sound through force of habit. They tried to get up the narrow staircase together, and Jimmy lifted them backwards bodily as he rushed up to the bedroom with Freddie.

  The girls were good at taking care of each other, especially if there was trouble from a punter. They might fight, argue and try to muscle in on each other’s action, but if one was threatered they knew they were safer in a pack than they were on their own. They needed each other because of the loneliness of their occupation. When you were alone with a complete stranger the danger was astronomical, and they all tried in their way to see that they were as safe as possible. They looked out for one another and they set aside personal grudges if one of them was at risk. Most of them could fight, but even the hardest had trouble fighting a big irate man.

  The small crowd of half-dressed females huddled together at the bottom of the stairs and listened out for what was happening. They knew it would be Ruby who had the trouble, it was always Ruby because she was tiny, and she was innocent looking and she had a mouth like a docker and never tired of using it.

  Freddie was first into the room and he looked around him in shocked disbelief. The room was a small back bedroom, it had old-fashioned wallpaper with big pink roses, and a princess-sized bed with pink nylon sheets. There was a small dressing table that held baby oil, Durex and Johnson’s Baby Powder, these items being the mainstay of a prostitute’s trade. A large man with a beer belly was sitting on the grubby blue shag-pile carpet holding his head in his hands.

  The girl was nowhere to be seen. The room looked tidy enough, and Freddie guessed the noise had been the dressing table being smashed back against the wall because the mirror was cracked.

  The man was fat and had sparse grey hairs all over his chest and shoulders, home-made tattoos and thick, wiry grey hair. The stench in the room was overpowering, and wrinkling his nose Freddie shouted, ‘Where the fuck is the girl?’

  It was more than a question and they all knew it. The doorway was now jammed with Patricia and the girls, whose eyes were round and full of bewilderment.

  No one could understand what had happened, and they had seen everything in their time. The man was crying, an ugly, guttural sound, and Freddie proceeded to drag him up bodily from the floor.

  ‘Where is she?’

  Freddie was looking round the room, demented now. How could the girl have got out without them seeing her? His sensible head was telling him how, but he did not want to believe that. It was too outrageous even for this place. But he turned and motioned with his head to Jimmy, who he could see had already sussed out the situation.

  Jimmy stepped carefully across the room and popped his head out of the open sash window. Ruby was lying across the dustbins and the angle of her neck told him she was dead.

  He turned to Freddie and said quietly, ‘She is down there. He must have slung her out the window, the cunt.’

  Freddie did the unexpected. He threw the man across the bed and, without looking at him again, he walked from the room and Jimmy heard him taking the stairs three at time. Ten seconds later he heard the first of the screams from the girls and all hell breaking loose.

  He threw the man’s trousers at him and said in a loud voice, ‘Get dressed, me and you have to take a ride.’

  The man was still crying and Jimmy was reminded once more why he hated men who used brasses. There was something lacking in them, something radically wrong with a man who needed to rent a hole to vent his spleen.

  Ozzy was walking with the vicar towards the chapel. He made a point of going to Mass at every opportunity. It was worth the time. In the lifers’ unit the born-again were the majority because of the different treatment they received. They were always looking at parole, and if that meant becoming a God-gobbler then so be it.

  The vicar was a nice man, but very gullible. He also had a lot of the different weaknesses he talked about in his sermons.

  Patricia’s doctor had rung that morning from a psychiatric unit in London explaining to him that she was suicidal and needed desperately to talk to her brother. This phone call had been backed up by another reputable doctor who had assured the vicar that Ozzy talking to her would be a big help in her recovery. They had arranged for the phone call to be at seven o’clock that evening.

  This was classed as an act of God, it was what happened when men’s wives or children died, when some kind of access to the outside world was important to the wellbeing of either prisoner or family. It was also very rare, and Ozzy knew the favour he was being done. The vicar knew he would get a serious drink for this little day’s work. He was a gambler, and he was into local bookies for a small fortune. Ozzy had made it his business to find this out and now the vicar, who thought he was doing a one-off favour, would become their lifeline to the outside world. No one had pointed that fact out to him yet, they would let it dawn on him gradually.

  Ozzy was given a cup of tea and the vicar was very solicitous, making sure he had plenty of sugar and a plate of biscuits. Ozzy smiled at him as he slipped from the room quietly to enable the poor man to have some privacy. The vicar’s phone was never tapped. It was what was called an open line and Ozzy was going to use this to his advantage now and in the future.

  On the other end of the phone was Patricia, who took a few moments to fill him in on recent events. He listened quietly and then waited while the phone was passed over to Freddie Jackson.

  Maddie placed a large plate of steak and chips in front of her husband, and he nodded gratefully.

  She hated him like this. He kowtowed to her, he agreed with everything she said, it was as if all his strength had been taken away from him. She forced herself to look at his face because she knew it was important that he did not look hideous to her.

  The pain was bad, she knew that, and he looked awful even now the swelling had gone down. He had had over sixty stitches in his face and if it had been inflicted by anyone other than his son, he could have borne it. But the fact it was their only child - the son he loved, the son he had brought up to be just like him - that had annihilated him, the fact it was his son who attacked him so viciously, made it so hard to accept.

  Yet her husband was the man who had made the monster, he was the man who had taken him on his robberies, who had taught him to fight. Had made sure his education had been sparse, but also that he could work out a bet to the last half point.

  He had made sure there was food on the table and that their home was nice. He had always had his outside women, and she had accepted him for what he was. Yet the monster he had created was the only person she had ever really loved in all her life. Her son had become everything to her, because his father had never really been there since his birth. Freddie Senior had been her life, then his son had been her life.

  She wasn’t sure how she felt about any of them any more. But this man who sat at home and tried to please her just got on her nerves. He was like a caricature of the man she had known. He was polite, he was agreeable, he was the antithesis of the man she had loved.

  She did not know this man. He disappeared into the bedroom if there was a knock on the door, he refused to see anyone, even his brother, and he had no interest in anything that was going on around him. He ate whatever she put in front of him, he nodded and smiled in thanks, and he frightened her.

  It was hard for her to accept that Freddie had in effect emasculated his own father. It was harder for her to unders
tand how her son could have justified the violence of the attack, even though what he had done had made her, in the eyes of every woman she knew, the luckiest of mothers.

  Her friends were actually jealous of a son who would look after his mother in such a public way, though their husbands thought it was a disgrace. Not that any of them would say that to Freddie Junior’s face, of course.

  Life was strange. You never knew what was going to happen to you and you never knew what was going to be the outcome of the most normal and simplest of days.

  Jimmy watched as Freddie spoke to Ozzy on the phone.

  He watched the changing expressions on his face and knew instinctively that Ozzy was with him on the event that had caused so much bad blood. He could practically see him puffing himself up with his own self-importance.

  Freddie Jackson had been given permission to do what he wanted.

  Now that Freddie had the big man’s approval he was back in the fold. No one was going to say a word about him, or to him. Ozzy had just made what Freddie had done acceptable.

  It was about women being taken care of, it was about men being reminded of their responsibilities, but it was mainly about Ozzy keeping everyone sweet. He needed a nutter and Freddie fitted the bill. More than fitted the bill. Ozzy knew that Freddie would never be trusted after what he had done. That no one would ever forget the breach of etiquette, or the fact it had been condoned by Ozzy.

  Freddie for his part had no idea that he was actually working for someone even more slippery than Old Bill.

  Jimmy waited until the call was over, then he went out with Freddie and in silence they disposed of two bodies.

  Poor Ruby was found three days later on a rubbish tip in Essex. The man was burned away, he would spend eternity in a school furnace just south of Brentford. He had been disposed of with the usual rubbish collected in and around a school yard. In this case that consisted of needles, wraps and empty condom wrappers.

  The school really livened up after dark, a bit like Freddie and his cronies.

  Chapter Nine

  Maggie opened her eyes and looked at the badly artexed ceiling in wonderment.

  She would end this day as a Jackson, she would be a married woman. The excitement was filling her body and affecting her senses. All her life she had wanted this one thing and now it was here.

  She could never remember not wanting to be joined with Jimmy Jackson, as his better half, as his wife. Today it was going to come true.

  She looked around her bedroom, at the pink lampshade, at the dark-green candlewick bedspread and the posters of Chrissie Hynde, and was euphoric that she would never wake up in this room ever again.

  She stretched, her arms were over her head and she wiggled in happiness as she surveyed her little world. Then she knelt up in the bed, and looked out of the bedroom window at the same view she had seen for the best part of her life. The other flats, the same curtains, the rain-stained concrete and the underground garages where no one would dream of keeping a car because it was too dangerous.

  She had loved this view. It had always been there, it had been her world. Now she was ready for a different world, and their new little house was never going to be like this. Her kids would have everything. Their rooms would be themed, they would be beautiful little palaces for her little princes and princesses. Her children would have an environment fit for them. They would not have to fight their neighbours to get to the ice-cream van, they would not have to listen to people arguing when they were drunk, or see people fighting outside their bedroom windows.

  They would have the best that could be offered to them, the best that could be bought. Not like this place. This place was concrete hate. It was what was wrong with the world they lived in, and the worst of it all was, in her own way, she loved it. It was all she knew. Yet it was everything she wanted to get away from.

  She and Jimmy had already bought a house to live in, and she would only ever come back here to visit. It was a small, semi-detached place in Leytonstone. It had a lounge diner, it was decorated in browns and creams, and it was beautiful to her. It was also a bus ride away from her family, which was eventually the deciding factor.

  She leaped off the bed. It was six a.m. and she felt as if she was a newborn, as if the world was waiting for her to become a whole person.

  She was eighteen in three weeks. Before then she would be a married woman, and she would be the happiest girl alive.

  Jimmy saw the girl beside him and groaned.

  The night before was a complete blank, and he knew that was how this was meant to be. He had been drinking brandy and port, a lethal combination, and he felt as if someone had hit him over the head with a billiard ball in a sock. Even that scenario was not too off the wall, given the company he kept most nights.

  The girl was young, he could see that much, and she was also snoring, which had woken him up. She sounded like one of the seven dwarfs and he grinned to himself. Trust him to end up with fucking Sleepy. Yet he knew if she woke and tried to strike up a conversation he would then have to change her name to Dopey.

  He sat up and sighed. He felt terrible. His clothes were nowhere to be seen and the window was shut tightly, which was why the smell of sex was so overpowering in the tiny room.

  He had woken up with a tom, and at a glance he couldn’t see any condoms anywhere. He could be clapped up to the eyebrows on his wedding day, and no one would think it was funny other than Freddie.

  He got out of bed and stepped gingerly on to the carpet. It had the tacky feel of a tom’s carpet. Covered in everything that was disgusting, it had the stickiness of what was commonly known as crud, and it smelt of cigarettes and punters.

  He felt as if twenty Paddies with hammers were knocking holes in his skull. It was only after he had spent five minutes trying to open the window that he realised it had been nailed shut.

  He groaned. It followed that the door would be nailed shut as well. The heating in the house was full on, which accounted for the heat and the smell, and he would lay his next paycheque on Freddie already being home and dry and laughing his head off at the predicament he was now in.

  This was Freddie’s idea of a joke.

  If it had happened to anyone but him Jimmy would have been the first person guffawing. As it was he couldn’t just see the funny side. That Freddie had done it to him made him feel as always where Freddie was concerned - that there was an underlying nastiness behind it.

  His only glimmer of hope was a used condom glistening in a green glass ashtray. He breathed a sigh of relief and then tried to escape.

  Patricia had been woken at five thirty, by a phone call from one of her girls.

  She walked into the house in Bayswater all sheepskin coat and Chloe perfume. The elder, a girl of thirty-five with a bad tit job and crooked teeth, was panicking, and Patricia had to talk her down for twenty minutes before she could ring round and locate Freddie.

  She then walked into the bedroom of a black girl called Bernice. The girl was nineteen, looked thirty, and was one of the best earners they had ever had. Unfortunately, one of her regulars, a managing director of a multinational company, had chosen her bed to have a heart attack in an hour earlier. It was put down to amyl nitrate and Patricia thought that this was probably an accurate diagnosis.

  He was over fifty, overweight and overdue a medical.

  Bernice was calm, for which Patricia would be eternally grateful, and the other girls were keeping a low profile.

  This had happened before and so they had a protocol.

  She covered the man with a bright green sheet, and, pouring herself a coffee, she waited for Freddie and Jimmy to come and sort it all out with the minimum of fuss.

  Freddie Senior was lying in the bed staring at the ceiling.

  It was eight months since the attack and he had been out just once. That was only to have the stitches out. Now his wife was expecting him to go to young Jimmy’s wedding, and he had no intention of going anywhere near the place.

 
; Every time he tried to leave the house he felt hot air rushing to his head, he felt physically sick and he knew that if he stepped outside the door he would faint. He looked at his suit hanging on the back of the bedroom door and felt the familiar waves of nausea washing over him.

  Maddie had great hopes for this wedding. She assumed he would go and everything would automatically be back to normal. Women were complete cunts when it suited them. She had caused all this and she was now trying to make out like it was nothing, that his son had only committed a misdemeanour. That it could all be put behind them.

  He had been broken in the most public way possible and there was no way he could ever get even with the perpetrator. He fantasised about killing his son, but he knew he would never actually do it.

  He could hear the familiar sounds of his wife in the kitchen. She didn’t sleep either these days. He heard the kettle boiling, the cups rattling and, closing his eyes, he wished the biggest heart attack ever experienced on his wife of thirty-five years.

  Anything, to get him out of this day.

  Joseph Summers was over the moon, and even though his wife had stopped him having his first celebratory drink of the day the moment he had opened his eyes, he was still happy at the turn of events.

  His daughter was about to marry the man of his dreams. The fact he was also the man of her dreams was just the icing on the cake. He would never have to do a day’s collar again in his life, and no one could say a word. He was set, settled and he was about to begin a whole new way of life.

  If only his other daughter had had the sense to marry a man like Jimmy instead of that useless prick she had settled for, how happy life would be. But he was shrewd and he knew that little Jimmy was one day going to be big Jimmy, and it was that day he would dream of until it came to pass. He had wanted to take Freddie out so many times, but he knew he would never have the guts. But if life had anything left to offer him, then it would be that he lived long enough to bury the bully his elder daughter had tied herself to.