The Graft

by Martina Cole

  Tammy was trying to take in what was being said to her.

  ‘This is fucking mad. Are you trying to tell me Nick is a fucking nonce, a proper kiddy fiddler not just a fucking queer?’

  Angela nodded.

  ‘It was Gary who liked the older boys, the teenagers. Nick liked them much younger, see. He used the older boys to gain access to younger, more tender boys. Look closely at the photos, Tammy.’

  Tammy picked up the photos and stared at them, then gradually she realised what she should have been looking at instead of her husband’s smiling face. It hit her. The room in the photos had ripped and dirty Thomas the Tank Engine wallpaper on the walls; it was so dilapidated that unless you looked closely you wouldn’t notice it. And there were kiddies’ toys strewn all over the small single bed that they were all happily posing on.

  ‘Now you know why he was terrified of being found out all these years. Now you know why he let you sleep your way across Essex and the East End of London without a murmur.’

  Tammy’s brain was struggling to absorb it all yet, in her heart of hearts, she knew it was true. In a way, she realised, she had half guessed it many years ago.

  ‘Why are you telling me all this now, Angela? You could have saved us all years of unhappiness and heartache if you had told me before or made him get help. He listens to you, no one else but you.’

  Angela poured yet more brandy, but it was not helping either of them. It was just something to do.

  ‘Nick had many accusations over the years. In my heart, I knew they were true, but I didn’t want to believe them, see. No mother does. So I did what I had always done.’

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘I played the game. Until now, of course.’

  Tammy stared at the floor, her first instinct of protecting her children was long gone. This was damage limitation now. She started to cry once more only this time it was quiet, more restrained sobbing.

  Holding her tight in her arms, Angela looked at the doorway to the hall, and said clearly, ‘I know you’re there, Nick. Come and talk to the mother of your children. You owe her that much at least.’

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Gordon Winters lay on the balcony and realised he was in for a hammering from the big man with the mad eyes and the clenched fists.

  The black bloke didn’t look too good either.

  Terry had completely lost the fucking plot. This place was doing his head in and he was being very vocal about it. Terrified kids were sitting there listening to him rant at them and wondering where all this was going to end.

  Winters was watching from the balcony as Terry stood in the front room and harangued all the people in there. Every now and then, in Winters’ world especially, you came up against a force that nothing and no one could harness. He knew that writing out the mathematical formula for nuclear fusion would be far easier than calming down this man who had invaded his home.

  And this was his home, he only rented it out to pay his bills, but he knew that these three guys would not understand that because none of them shared the same sexual peccadillos as him and his friends.

  Tyrell and Louis had stayed on the balcony with him.

  ‘Did you know Sonny Hatcher?’

  Winters smiled then, a slight smile but Tyrell saw it nonetheless. It was a smile that said he’d known him intimately and Tyrell had to contain himself once more. There was plenty of time for revenge when he had found out all he wanted to know. He shook his head slowly as he looked at the man.

  ‘He came here then, did he?’

  Remembering what was going down, Gordon Winters started desperately trying to justify himself. He pointed one tobacco-stained finger towards the window.

  ‘None of them in there is under sixteen, you can check that. They might look under sixteen but they ain’t.’

  Tyrell kicked him hard in the legs, containing his anger with difficulty. Unlike Terry, he could control his urges and he was glad of that fact now more than ever before. It was one of the reasons why he had never tried for the big time: you needed to be constantly on a short fuse to live in that world, or, more to the point, survive in it.

  ‘Did my Sonny Boy come here or not?’

  It was the my that finally made the other man understand what he was dealing with here.

  He nodded.

  ‘Look, mate, you don’t want to hear this but he loved it here, he was always here. He would even tout for us; younger runaways were his speciality.’

  Louis walked away then. Going inside, he shut the door on Tyrell and Winters, leaving them out there in the cold alone. Somehow he knew that Tyrell would not want an audience for what he was going to hear next and in all honesty Louis didn’t want to hear it, either.

  Terry was on the phone to Billy, and Louis guessed from the conversation that their brother was on his way.

  Tyrell could hear his own heart beating in his ears now. He remembered his mother saying that was what happened to her when she tried to leave the house.

  ‘Who brought him here?’

  The man shrugged.

  ‘I can’t remember, to be honest.’

  He was lying and Tyrell knew it.

  ‘Do you want me to get my mate back to ask you these questions?’

  He had a feeling that Gordon Winters, like anyone with half a brain, would be far more scared of Terry Clarke than he would be of anyone else.

  And so he fucking should be.

  Winters sighed, trying it on, fronting it all out.

  ‘Get who you like, mate, he ain’t the only person who scares me.’

  Tyrell understood what he was trying to say.

  He now knew that whoever was behind all this was obviously a well-known face. Was someone to be reckoned with. And after the way Terry had carried on this person had to be very dangerous indeed.

  Tyrell decided to front it out himself. He had nothing to lose and everything to gain. ‘Well, I am Sonny’s father and I ain’t going nowhere.’

  It was said gently but with a dangerous edge to the words. He was trying to appeal to the other man’s better nature. That was assuming he had one. If he didn’t they’d have to terrify him into talking. And if he didn’t start talking soon Tyrell would happily kick the knowledge from him.

  The other man was quiet for a few moments as if weighing him up. Then he got to his knees on the cement floor, wincing at the pain in his legs from where Terry had gripped them while dangling him over the edge.

  ‘Look, mate, no one made him come here, he wanted to be here. When I found him he was on the pavement, selling his little arse round the fucking cottages. Like it or lump it, he was safer here in the long run.’

  He was getting his bit in before he crumpled, Tyrell understood that.

  ‘Who was the man - the older man he was caught up with?’

  ‘I can’t tell you that. I wish I could but I never knew him personally. This ain’t the kind of place where you ask names, know what I mean?’

  Tyrell took back his fist then and, grabbing Gordon’s shirt, pulled him forward as he smashed it into his face with all his might.

  He felt skin and bone crumple under the force of it.

  ‘Once more, Gordon, answer the fucking question!’

  The man was bleeding profusely now. His nose was flattened and his eyes streaming with tears.

  But he still shook his head.

  ‘Please, it’s more than my life’s worth . . .’

  People amazed Tyrell sometimes. This man actually expected him to play the white man, be the good guy, let him off.

  Feel his pain, as they said these days, and respond to it.

  Which was exactly what was wrong with the world nowadays, a nanny state had seen to that. This man had no conception of what he had done to Tyrell and his blood. Didn’t really see he had even done anything wrong.

  This was the way of things now and it scared Tyrell. You could pick up your girlfriend’s baby and swing it round a room by its leg, and if you said you were s
uffering from stress, you walked away from it. Kick your wife to death, just say she was a nagger, and who cared any more? Be a bully-boy twelve year old, torture your elderly neighbours, and when they came back at you, finally snapped, maybe hit you with a walking stick or went after you with a bread knife, they were the ones breaking the law.

  No one was ever held accountable for their own badness any more.

  And even more scary was the fact that these morons believed it really wasn’t their fault, that they were the victims in it all, and then they were let loose on society once more without so much as a slap on the wrist.

  No one took any responsibility for the damage they inflicted on the innocent.

  It was a whole new ball game.

  Yet a villain like Terry, who was a borderline lunatic in other ways, would no more harm a child or a pensioner than he would cut off his own arm. It was all to do with having some kind of moral code. However wacky it might be, the point was, he still had an idea of how to behave. So did his brothers and so did Tyrell. So did most of the people he had grown up with, though they were not the most upstanding members of society in some ways, granted.

  But Sonny Boy had looked for an easy way out. He was just the kind people like Gordon Winters prayed for. He was weak. Jude had brought him up to get money in any way he could. Not earn it like everyone else, oh, no. And people like this Winters, well, they fed off these kids like a lion off a carcass, and when they had had enough discarded it in favour of a newer, fresher one.

  Yet, if you robbed a bank you would get twenty years in jail, but if you mugged an eighty year old, by the time the social workers and psychologists were finished making excuses for you, the old lady should not have been there with her pension in the first place. There was no cause and effect any more.

  No one ever saw the consequences of their own actions, felt sorrow for what they inflicted upon complete strangers. Because it was all about them and their needs and their wants. This man had introduced his boy to this place and this life, and as far as he was concerned he had done Sonny a big favour. Saved him from the squalor of the public toilets.

  Tyrell looked around the narrow balcony and saw a piece of wood. It looked like it had once been a chair leg. Picking it up, he poked the man hard in the face with the end of it, leaving Winters in no doubt now about what he was capable of.

  ‘Your life is worth fuck all to me, right? And at the moment it is me you have to answer to. If your memory is so short you have already forgotten hanging over that fucking balcony then you deserve all you get. Because I will throw you over there meself without a second thought.’

  Tyrell brought the chair leg down across Winters’ shoulders with all the strength he could muster then, and in his state that was considerable.

  ‘You better talk, cunt, because the way I feel now my mate in there won’t be in it if I start, you hear me?’

  Gordon Winters was caught now. This man really was on the edge. He knew he had to decide who he was going to protect. And, like most people, he decided it was going to be himself.

  ‘You’ll let me go, right? If I tell you I walk away, yeah?’

  Tyrell grinned.

  ‘We’ll decide that when you start talking. And I warn you now, I have a built-in shit detector, you hear me?’

  Gordon Winters knew when he was beaten, and he knew he was beaten now. This dreadlocked man with the black eyes and the vicious demeanour was suddenly scaring him.

  ‘I had nothing to do with what happened to him, you have to believe that.’

  This time the chair leg hit him on the side of his face. The cold made the pain worse because it was freezing outside now.

  ‘What - you mean the burglary?’

  Winters was on a roll. He wanted to get it all over with as soon as possible.

  ‘Of course, what else?’

  ‘Well, if you weren’t behind it, you must know who was?’ The man nodded then and Tyrell relaxed a little.

  ‘So someone did send him to that house?’

  Winters nodded once more, his bloodied face a picture of self-pity and subdued anger.

  ’A bloke called Gary Proctor sent him.’

  The name stunned Tyrell for a few seconds but he soon recovered. This was turning out even better than he had hoped. He knew there had to have been something behind his boy’s destruction and finally he was going to find out what it was.

  Nick came into the kitchen, and his mother saw that he was drunk.

  Drunk and frightened.

  He walked towards his wife and tried to put a hand out to her. Tammy threw her arm out and struck him with such force he was almost knocked off his feet.

  ‘You bastard!’

  There was so much hatred in the words that Nick didn’t know how to react.

  She glared at her husband and, hawking deep in her throat, she spat at him. ‘No wonder you never wanted me.’

  It was always about her, never about anyone else. His old animosity rose once more, even as his fear at her knowing terrified him.

  She pointed at the photos on the table. ‘Bit too old for you, ain’t I?’

  She was breaking before his eyes and in a small part of his brain he was genuinely sorry for her.

  ’A fucking nonce. A nonce under my roof, and I never knew.’

  She was talking to herself now. ‘You’re as fucking bad, lying for him, letting him think it was all normal. You hated your father and yet you brutalise little kids. No wonder you became a hard man, who would ever have believed it, eh? Nick Leary, a fucking kiddy shagger. You scumbag fucking piece of dirt.’

  Tammy was out of the chair in seconds and as she launched herself at him he shoved her hard in her expensively enhanced breasts. She flew across the kitchen, hitting her face on the Aga and landing awkwardly on the stone-flagged floor.

  As he walked towards her, Angela stood between them. ‘That’s enough.’

  He laughed then, a harsh sounding, sarcastic laugh.

  ‘Get out of my fucking way, woman. You’re another one, a fucking leech hanging on to me all me life.’

  He shoved her out of his way and, going to Tammy, he pulled her up from the floor. Tammy looked at the man she had loved all her adult life. But she knew him now, really knew him and she realised then with a jolt that she felt nothing for him. It was as if someone had flipped a switch and any feelings she had had were gone. It was like being released from prison. All those years she had wanted him, needed him so much and yet suddenly he was nothing to her any more.

  ‘What are you going to do then, Tams?’

  His voice was quiet, almost normal and, looking at him, you would not believe that he was exactly what his mother had said he was. A child molester, a nonce.

  She could really see him now, see the slackness of his mouth and the paunchiness of his body. She could see him for what he was. Finally his guard was down and his acting would never fool her again. It was a liberating experience and she savoured it, savoured the little hint of fear in his voice as he asked her the question. Then instead of answering him she said softly, ‘What was Sonny Hatcher doing in those photos? He is a lot younger looking but I can see it’s him.’

  It was as though a bomb had exploded in the room.

  ‘Was he one of your little friends and all?’

  Nick stared at her.

  ‘Making up another story, eh? Well, I ain’t your fucking mother so it will take a lot more than a few well-chosen words to shut me up, mate.’

  Her anger was taking over now and it was obvious to all three of them that her fear of him was gone.

  Nick smiled then. It was a smile that showed off the handsomeness of his features. It made him look almost benign. Then he walked away from her and, picking up the brandy bottle, he put it to his mouth and half emptied it in a few swallows.

  ‘You killed that boy, didn’t you? He was meant to come here that night, wasn’t he? By the looks of that picture you knew him well, knew him very well.’

  She wiped her face
with her hands, wiping the blood from the corner of her eye where she had hit the Aga.

  ‘I got rid of him the same way I get rid of anyone who stands in my way.’

  It was a threat.

  ‘So you two better think on, hadn’t you? Because you are both starting to aggravate me.’

  He was goading her once more and the coldness in his tone shocked both his mother and his wife.

  ‘How did you think you would get away with it all, Nick?’