by Martina Cole
Her mother had always been suspicious of holy Joes, said they were normally bigger bastards than everyone else and Tammy had to give her brownie points for getting that much right.
But she still didn’t want Angela to die. She sat patiently by the bed, waiting for the next drama to unfold. Something told her it would not be long before it did. Nick, she decided, had reached the end of his road. All that was left now was for her to wait and see what he did. Whatever it was, she hoped it did not reflect on her.
If necessary, she would tell the truth about Angela’s injuries. Until then, she would bide her time.
Nick felt his stomach acids rise into his throat and swallowed them down with difficulty. He realised that Rudde had served him up on a plate and in a small recess of his mind he couldn’t blame him. He would have done the same.
It was bad enough seeing Billy Clarke, his old friend, standing there, but the real frightener was seeing Terry. His reputation was such that even a bully like Nick was wary of falling out with him.
‘You perverted cunt, been out on any dates with skate-boarders lately?’ Terry’s voice was low and his intentions were crystal clear to anyone within earshot. Tyrell saw that Nick wasn’t even going to try and deny anything, which made their job so much easier.
Nick’s eyes, he noticed, kept darting to the billiard balls that had been placed inside a thick nylon sock. When they connected with his forehead he crumpled like a deflated balloon. Tyrell then kicked and punched him back inside the flat.
Justin listened to the commotion with an ever rising terror, but he still didn’t make a sound.
Verbena looked at the policeman with tired eyes.
’Are you sure it was her?’
He nodded.
‘She overdosed some time yesterday, she was found this morning by a friend of her son’s.’
‘Gino? It would be Gino, he was good to Jude.’
The police officer didn’t answer her, he didn’t know what to say.
The boy was as out of it as Jude usually was, but he wasn’t going to pile on the shit. This poor woman had enough to contend with.
‘Can I call anyone for you? Get someone to come by?’
She shook her head. ‘That’s OK. No one will really care but me.’
It was said simply and honestly and he couldn’t deny the truth of her statement. Jude’s neighbours were already breathing a sigh of relief, and the few bits she had had in the flat had already disappeared.
‘I’ll be on me way then.’
She nodded, smiling her beatific smile on him. ‘Thank you for letting me know.’
‘She had you down as next of kin at the hospital, love.’
She smiled once more, pleased at this proof of Jude’s love for her.
Alone then, Verbena sat back on her comfortable chair and thought long and hard about the girl who had come into her family like a firework. All noise and bright colours.
She remembered her before the brown had taken her over so completely. Then, picking up her phone book, she looked slowly through it for Jude’s mother’s number. She knew she wouldn’t bother coming to the funeral, knew she would not even pay for it, but she still felt she should alert her to the fact of her daughter’s death. She had a right to know; she was her mother after all.
At least Jude would be with her Sonny Boy, she would be happy with him beside her. She consoled herself with the thought even as the tears overwhelmed her and the shuddering of extreme grief encompassed her body.
Nick’s forehead had split open and the blood was running down into his eyes.
Tyrell watched him closely, strangely detached from what was going on. The smell of the blood was heavy in the room and the Clarke brothers all made ribald comments egging him on to even more extreme violence.
The carpet was soaked and the walls and ceiling were also drenched with the drying, brown, bloodstains.
Nick, by their standards, had to be hurt, and he also had to feel his hurt. Tyrell was aware of this and even agreeable to it now. Sonny’s death demanded it, his lifestyle forced this retribution.
Every time he hurt Nick he thought of Sonny, and then he thought of this man with other little kids. It became easier then.
Where the cut-throat razor had come from he didn’t know, but guessed rightly that it was from Terry. The feel of the blade as it sliced through the skin and jarred on the bone was like nothing he had ever experienced before. But Tyrell was on a violence high, for the first time in his life he was getting off on someone else’s pain. Each blow or slash brought him closer to peace and even though, on one level, he knew what he was feeling was wrong, he savoured it.
Each blow was for his boy, each grunt of pain was pay back for taking his boy and using him like an animal. Each moment he heard this man’s pain was like a balm on a festering sore.
Nick’s mouth was taped up with black, electrician’s duct tape but his moans and screams could still be heard in the room.
He was unrecognisable as a human being, and he sounded more like a wounded bear now than a man.
Terry watched it all bright-eyed. He loved retribution, and this kind, righteous retribution, was the best of all. He almost felt saint-like in his devotion to seeing this man die. Nick was scum and scum had to be eliminated. And for the first time ever Tyrell saw the world through Terry Clarke’s eyes. Something he had never thought would happen.
Billy Clarke and the others egged them both on, but somewhere in Louis and Billy there was a voice saying it was too much. Maybe not for Terry, but for Tyrell; he had after all turned his back on this kind of servitude whereas they had all embraced it as a job.
As Tyrell slashed him again, Nick made a gurgling sound and they all knew that his mouth was filling up with blood and puke. It seemed to last for an eternity and Tyrell watched him in fascinated silence as he fought to stay alive.
Nick was unconscious now and, taking the cattle prod from his pocket, Terry thrust it into Nick’s body, causing his bleeding carcass to leap off the floor from the strength of the current.
‘Wake up, you fucking nonsense!’ Tyrell was laughing in hysterical excitement but he knew in his heart of hearts that Nick Leary would never wake up again.
Hester walked into the intensive-care unit and took her place beside Tammy. Grasping her sister-in-law’s hand, she smiled sadly. ‘Is she dying, Tams?’
Tammy shrugged. She didn’t know what to say.
‘I hope she is.’
Tammy was shocked at what she heard. ‘Stop it, Hess.’
Hester smiled gently. ‘Nick did this, didn’t he?’
Tammy nodded, her eyes filled with tears.
‘Then I hope she dies, because she wouldn’t want to live knowing he had harmed her.’
She wiped at her own eyes with a tissue but there were hardly any tears. ‘They had a strange relationship, Tams. Unless you lived our life you couldn’t understand any of it.’
Tammy understood a lot more than Hester realised but she wasn’t going to let on about that. She had always known there was something not right between Angela and her daughter but she had put it down to the fact she had married a black man. Now she saw that Angela had known Nick’s preferences for boys had erred on the Caribbean side. Sonny Hatcher proved that. All that time her daughter had thought she had never cared for her or her children when, in fact, Angela had been protecting them; as she had protected her own boys by chaperoning them constantly. It suddenly occurred to her that she would have to explain their grandmother’s attack to them and the thought of that frightened her.
Whatever her husband had accused his mother of, she would never breathe a word of it to another soul. She knew her sons had been safe with her. She had to believe that or she would go mad, especially as she had virtually given them to this woman without a backwards glance. She wondered what their reaction would be to all that had happened?
Hester looked old suddenly and unkempt. The years had not been kind to her, yet Tammy knew that Hester’s husban
d adored her and for some strange reason that knowledge made her feel inexplicably sad.
She knew she had never really been loved. Even the kids had only loved her when they were tiny and vulnerable.
Over the years, her indignation at her husband and the boredom of her marriage had changed her. From the happy-go-lucky girl she had been when first married, she was now an unhappy woman who chased meaningless sexual encounters, trying to convince herself they were great love affairs.
What would happen if Nick was caught or, worse, got off with what he had done? She had to think, and think clearly. She knew every deal he had ever done and she knew where the money was placed. She had made a point of knowing over the years in case he had ever got a lump through one or other of his nefarious dealings.
Nick was wrapped in a tarpaulin on the front-room floor of the flat and they were all sitting around smoking quietly.
The violence of the attack had finally hit them and they saw the blood all over themselves and the room.
Going to the kitchen, Terry looked in the fridge, took out some milk and started to make everyone coffee. The thick, latex gloves he wore washed easily and he leaned over the sink under an old gas geyser and washed himself as best he could. The others followed suit. Cleaning up quickly and efficiently.
They still looked bloody, though. Their clothes were covered in it, especially Terry’s and Tyrell’s.
While the kettle boiled, Terry nipped down to the car and took out the bag of shirts he kept in the boot. He always carried spare clothes. With his unpredictable temper, he never knew when he might need them. He prided himself on always being one step ahead of any skulduggery he might encounter in the course of an average day. He also kept a nice, ironed shirt hanging up in the back of his car in case he decided to visit one of his amours. Terry Clarke thought of everything.
Inside the flat, they laughed at his black bag full of clothes and he basked, like a kid, in their appreciation and their humorous ripostes. He had really enjoyed it all, in a funny way; it had made him aware of how lucky he was.
Rudde was alone now, and the pain in his rectum was so acute he felt he could pass out. The bastards had held him down and violated him with a broom handle. Leaving him bleeding and terrified they had told him they would be back after they had seen Nick. Then Kerr had made him phone Nick and left him there.
He knew they spoke the truth. They would be back all right. He had seen Tyrell Hatcher in a new light.
Now he lay on his bed and waited for them to return. They had tied him up like a chicken and he lay there uncomfortably and terrified as he contemplated what their final savage act would be.
Whatever it was it could not match what they would do to Nick Leary and he knew that deep inside.
Tammy was at home and, in the pool house, she opened the safe she had had fitted when Nick was away on one of his Malaga weekends with the lads.
She had copies of every document he had ever possessed as well as his insurance policies. She would be a very rich woman if her husband died or disappeared. She hoped it would be the former.
Nick could never come back. But she knew how sneaky he could be and she had to make sure that everything was taken care of. If necessary, she would serve him up without a second’s thought.
She tried Rudde’s mobile once more, in case he had news of her husband, but it rang until it went to voicemail. There was no way she was going to leave a message on it. She was using one of Nick’s mobiles so she wasn’t too trashed about the call being logged. She heard her landline ringing and knew without a doubt that her mother-in-law was dead.
Sitting on the floor she felt a flicker of sadness run through her. She was finally, irrevocably, on her own.
Getting up she walked sedately back to the hallway and looking around her she felt a small thrill at the knowledge that this was all hers.
Verbena sat in the darkening twilight listening to the radio and thinking about Jude. It was funny, but her heart was lighter than it had been for many a year.
Jude had cast a pall over her family, she had known that, known how much they had all despised her, also known that Sonny had loved her very much.
She looked at the photograph of her own dead son and smiled at it, as she always did. She had once entreated her dead child to watch over Sonny, and now asked him to look out for Jude as well. This made her feel so much better.
Hearing a soft tap on the door, she knew it was the reverend and she plastered a huge smile on her face ready to greet him. She had rung him earlier, had not even bothered to talk to Tyrell, she didn’t want to talk about Jude with the family just yet, they wouldn’t understand.
The reverend, like most people, had had no time for Jude, even with his Christian spirit, but she knew he would say all the right things even if he didn’t really mean it. And she needed to hear them now, more than she had ever needed anything in her life.
Jude, to her, had always been the lost sheep. Well, now, finally, she had been found and nothing or no one could ever hurt her again.
The shadows on his bedroom wall had lengthened when Peter Rudde heard the sound of a key in his lock. He felt his bowels loosen immediately. The pain had subsided a little but he was aware that it would soon be returning and it would be far worse than anything that had gone before.
The men walked into his bedroom and, in the dimness, he saw their changed clothes and hyper stances. He knew they had taken care of Nick.
He closed his eyes on the thought of what Nick had gone through; he knew he was due more of the same.
Billy and Tyrell laughed as they held up a length of rope and some handcuffs. ‘You are going out like a sex-game Peter, me old mucker, and all your photos of little boys are going to be left out for your colleagues to find. Now, I wonder what they will make of that?’
His photographs were of bondage and when he knew that they had found them his fear was tenfold.
It took them twenty minutes to hang him from the butcher’s hook they had screwed into the bedroom ceiling, and another five minutes of pulling on his legs and choking him before they were finally convinced he was dead.
It was Terry who decided to finish the job by pulling down his trousers and shoving a shard of broken glass inside his rectum. He stood back to admire his handiwork, the laughter as usual not far from the surface. He started singing Lou Reed’s ‘Hanging Around’ and even Tyrell laughed.
‘Well, this cunt has certainly had a walk on the fucking wild side tonight, eh lads?’
They left the flat, locking up carefully behind them.
They didn’t want him found just yet. Popping the keys back through the letterbox, they made their way back to the van they had purloined to transport Nick Leary in comfort to one of his building sites.
When Tyrell finally got home he had managed to get a takeaway for himself and Willy Lomax. Roadside cheese-burgers and chips, but it would have to do, the smell had made him realise that he was starving.
Giving the food to Willy to set out on plates, he smiled at the boy and said, ‘Build a kinger, son, eh. I am going to have a shower.’
In the shower, he scrubbed his body clean of the night’s events. As he put his head under the shower the clean hot water mixed with the tears he knew he had to shed for his child. The child he had never really looked out for, not properly, not as he should have.
He felt like a new man now. Felt that he had at last got retribution for what had happened to his son.
Dressing himself in jeans and a T-shirt he went into the lounge and wolfed down the cheeseburger and chips like a man starved for weeks. Cracking open a can of Red Stripe he swallowed it quickly. The meal was over in five minutes.
Willy watched him surreptitiously, afraid of this new man he was seeing. Tyrell had anger washing out of every pore, even in repose his face looked harder than before. He was frightened of him now, seriously frightened, and he didn’t know why. Tyrell glanced at Willy as he lit a joint and, seeing the boy’s face, he put the joint back
in the ashtray and said quietly, ‘You OK?’
Willy Lomax barely nodded. This was the man he had come to know and love. Not the man who had walked in smelling faintly of blood and sweat and with wild, red-rimmed eyes.
‘Hey, little man, what’s wrong?’
Tyrell remembered that Willy had probably seen the man go over the balcony and he sighed inwardly. Without this kid he would never have found out the truth of the situation his son had found himself in. Was he grateful? He didn’t know. What he did know, however, was that this boy looked whiter than ever, looked ill. He was ill, he had HIV, for Christ’s sake.
