Faceless

by Martina Cole

  Marie was such a good-looking woman. The sight of her long legs was driving him up the wall. She smelled of soap instead of heavy perfume, which was what he was used to from women these days. She was gorgeous, in fact. He could watch her for hours, just sit and watch her. Her hair falling across her face as she leant forward, her movements as she made a cup of coffee. It occurred to him that he was falling for her in a big way. Had already fallen, in fact, and that what he was experiencing was plain old-fashioned jealousy.

  ‘Can I get you a drink?’

  Her husky voice was quieter than usual and he suddenly realised he had been sitting there staring at her. He felt his face flush and looked down at the open paper on his desk. The phone rang and he grabbed it, glad of something to do.

  ‘Hello?’

  It was Mikey Devlin and just hearing the man’s voice made Alan feel capable of murder.

  ‘What can I do for you?’

  Alan sounded jokey but was actually feeling depressed.

  ‘It’s not you I want, it’s your rather luscious assistant.’

  Alan had to stop himself from losing control completely.

  ‘Hang on and I’ll pass you over.’

  He handed the phone to Marie and his eyes said everything he needed her to know. She took the phone and turned her back on him. The atmosphere between them was worse than ever after that.

  Petey Black was terrified out of his life. Kevin Carter had been around looking for him again. He wished he could explain to the other man that he understood his anger. He would have been the same. How he wished his wife was a normal woman who cooked, cleaned and gossiped. But no, he had to lumber himself with Silvertown’s answer to fucking Ma Baker – a big, fat, smelly nutcase.

  He always said he could not remember for the life of him what the fuck had attracted them to one another. But he knew, deep down. It was that same nutter factor that had been the attraction once. Between them they had terrorised half their community and now it was coming back on them and they were finally finding out what it was like to be frightened to open your own front door or go out shopping.

  Petey didn’t like this feeling one bit. It was taking its toll on him. He was even losing weight from all the worry. While Loony Lil was safely ensconced in prison and largeing it up like there was no tomorrow, he was the one who had to sort out all the shit. He was so sorry for himself he was in fear of losing his grip once and for all. Kevin Carter was one hard fuck for all his respectable façade. That was mainly his old woman anyway. Miserable bitch she was, and now she’d been toasted and he was the one having to watch his back.

  His mother-in-law had renounced her daughter and told Petey she wanted him out of the house soon. Then Kevin had been round looking for him. All he wanted was a bit of peace, that was all. Who would take him in now?

  He glanced around the room. It was like a tip as usual. Cups everywhere, some with mould growing over them with wild abandon. Sweet wrappers on the floor. Even the wallpaper looked defeated as it was peeling in places and had a sheen of nicotine over it from all the years of smoking. The place stank. He looked at it as if for the first time. Saw the squalor he lived in and it depressed him even more.

  On the TV was a makeover programme which he’d only watched because it had a fit bird fronting it. But as he looked at the lovely house she was in he realised that what he had mistaken for a life was in fact just an existence. All those years of cultivating a hard man rep were coming back to haunt him. He should have a little house by now, a few kids and a good woman with the dinner on the table and an interest in what he had done during the course of the day. He couldn’t blame Kal over the kids, they had just never happened, but somehow he felt she was to blame for all the rest of it. He couldn’t even use the pub any more in case someone grassed him to Carter.

  That was another lesson he had learned. People were pleased this had happened to him. They would grass him given half the chance and that knowledge had been a real eye opener. The Blacks were thoroughly disliked and though on one level he had always known that, now it was proved it made him feel even more dejected. They were pariahs, and he knew it.

  He rolled himself a cigarette. As he was lighting it two loud bangs erupted in the room and the windows blasted on to him. Shards of glass sliced into his body, embedding themselves in his face and head. One large sliver was hanging out of his hand and he watched in silent amazement as it dropped almost in slow motion to the floor. His eye hurt, and he guessed that he had glass in it. He couldn’t blink.

  What really amazed him was that there was no pain. He was still in shock.

  He saw Kevin Carter through the blood dripping from his own face. He was standing in the front garden with his shotgun, smiling. It was only then that Petey realised he had actually been shot.

  He could hear screaming coming from a far-off place. It was the last thing he heard before he lapsed into the blessed unconsciousness that preceded his death.

  Verbena watched as brother and sister talked in low voices. She was sitting on the far side of the small sitting room allocated to patients and visitors. She didn’t want to listen to them talk. She didn’t even want to be here.

  The whole place had the smell of death and decay as far as she was concerned. Scratched furniture and magazines that were years out of date littered the cramped space. High-backed leather chairs smelling of urine and God knew what else were the only available seating, and her child, her son, was sitting with his tart of a sister and it grieved her to see him there.

  Tiffany had dragged him into her world once more, that twilight world of drug addicts and sleazy people she thought were so great. Verbena swallowed down her anger but each breath she took made her feel physically sick. This place was filled with the smell of despair, of people who had lost all hope.

  An old man was trying to light a cigarette between fits of coughing and spluttering. He was obviously having trouble breathing and Verbena watched in fascination as he finally took a long hard pull on his man-made killing stick.

  Standing up, she nodded to her son and hurried from the room. She couldn’t stay any longer. She couldn’t watch him with his sister. It was as if the past was rearing up before him and she was frightened it would steal him away.

  Blood was thicker than water - how many times had she heard people say that over the years? Could it take the place of love and caring?

  She would soon find out, but she wasn’t sure she wanted the answer.

  ‘I’m sorry I’ve caused all this trouble.’

  Jason smiled gently. He was a good-looking boy but wasn’t aware of the fact.

  ‘Is it true what me dad told me about you and me real dad?’

  Tiffany nodded sadly, a tear escaping from the corner of one eye.

  Jason shook his head in wonderment. He had short locks, more to be fashionable than as an ethnic statement. He liked the fact he was different from most of the people he knew. They all came from liberal families with no racism in them. He realised just how lucky he had been there. Now, looking at his sister and knowing that the man who had destroyed their mother had gone on to destroy her, he wondered if he had any of his real father inside him. Ossie said you were the person you wanted to be. You made your own life and your own luck. Jason was desperate to believe that was true.

  ‘You have to go away, Dad said. To get better.’

  His sister tried to smile. She was desperate to get away from her life as it was now. She was in so much trouble with everyone, especially Patrick. He would kill her if he saw her again and she knew it. She wanted to lie low, just until she got her head together.

  ‘Dad is going to ask for Anastasia to be given to us. I am your next-of-kin, aren’t I? And she is my sister, the same as you are.’

  Jason had said it out loud and still it made no sense to him.

  ‘How was our mum?’ He asked it softly, frightened that his adoptive mother would hear him even though she wasn’t in the room. He didn’t want to hurt her but he had to know.
>
  Tiffany smiled.

  ‘She looked all right. Different from how I remember her. Quieter. She’s still really pretty. She wanted to help me but I wouldn’t listen to her.’

  He squeezed her hand, glad to hear something good about his mother. He barely remembered her, she was a hazy memory, a smell he couldn’t quite recapture but which had stayed with him all his life.

  He remembered crushing embraces when he had kicked his little legs to make her put him back down. Her love wasn’t like Verbena’s gentle love, which was all-powerful because she used her weakness to make you pity her. He had worked out a long time ago that in her weakness she was stronger than all of them put together. She made you do what she wanted because she made you feel bad if you didn’t. Yet she loved him and he loved her, dearly.

  ‘Dad is going to see her and said I could go with him.’

  Tiffany heard the suppressed excitement in Jason’s voice and envied him his confidence.

  ‘Tell her I am sorry, would you?’

  He nodded, his huge brown eyes full of sadness to see his sister brought so low.

  ‘Was it me real dad who beat you up, Tiff ?’

  ‘I stole his money, he won’t let that go.’

  Her face looked like a parody of its real self, so beaten and bloated. He was amazed at how well she was coping with her injuries. But he wasn’t allowing for the fact that she was used to bad treatment. Almost expected it off people. She needed the pain to remind her of what she had done.

  ‘Try and fight for my little Anastasia. Insist on having her, please. I can’t bear the thought of her with strangers even though I know she’s better off with them than she would be with me. I let her down like Mum let us down and I can’t forgive meself for that. Tell Ossie not to let her father anywhere near her. He’ll use her to get back at me.’

  ‘I promise, Tiff. You know Verbena, she’s a good mum.’

  Tiffany smiled, a distorted grimace as her mouth was still split and painful.

  ‘Promise me?’

  He kissed her gently on the forehead.

  ‘I promise.’

  She closed her eyes tightly. She was dying for something to give her a lift, having trouble keeping up this act about rehab. As soon as she was able to move she was out of here. Patrick would not find her, a sitting duck in some halfway house somewhere. She was gone. She just wanted to make sure her daughter was taken care of first.

  She had to make sure he didn’t get her. If Pat got the child he would use her as bait. Like her mother before her Tiffany was finally seeing him through her own clouded eyes instead of the rose-tinted glasses she usually wore.

  All she really wanted now was something to get her out of the ball game, preferably a rather large rock that she could inhale at her leisure, and then lie back and stop thinking, period.

  Mikey and Marie were in his house in Rettenden. It was a lovely old property with a pantiled roof and six acres of land. The house was Elizabethan in parts, beautifully restored, and obviously worth the National Debt. Despite herself Marie was impressed. Mikey had enjoyed seeing the expression on her face as he had driven her up the winding drive.

  ‘Nice, ain’t it?’

  She nodded.

  ‘It’s beautiful, Mikey. A really fabulous-looking place.’

  He was pleased at her reaction and it showed.

  ‘Wait until you see inside. I bought it all off this geezer, furniture and everything. He was going bankrupt and glad of the dough, I can tell you.’

  It had been a bargain and he’d enjoyed the fact he had got it at a fraction of its true value.

  Inside was every bit as beautiful as outside. The entrance hall had been restored to its former glory and Marie stood there for a few minutes enjoying her surroundings. Mikey watched her and felt a glow of pride at her appreciation of his home.

  She was overcome by the sheer age of the place. That people had lived here over hundreds of years amazed her.

  ‘It is fucking fantastic, Mikey. Think of all the people who’ve lived here before you. It’s just unbelievable, don’t you think, that a building lasts so long? I used to think that when I was in Frankland, think of the thousands of people locked up in there over the years. People who had been hung there . . . died there. That their last sight was of such an ugly place. Yet to die here would be worse because think what you’d have to leave behind.’

  He walked across the hall and hugged her, a real hug of appreciation. He was immediately embarrassed, but Marie hugged him back. For the first time they had really connected and they both felt it.

  ‘Come and have a drink.’

  He dragged her by the hand through to the large kitchen and made them both a drink. They sat at the scrubbed oak table and he pottered around getting cold meats and cheese from the fridge and fresh-baked bread from the pantry. Marie got out the ingredients and made a large salad. They chatted amiably as they worked side by side. She was surprised to find she was really enjoying herself. They drank wine, chilled and sweet from cut-glass goblets, and she felt she had stumbled into someone else’s dream.

  As they ate and drank the atmosphere changed. Mikey became more himself and it showed. He wasn’t coked up either and that made all the difference as far as Marie was concerned. She realised that deep down he was a likeable man.

  ‘The thing is, Marie, I only really feel comfortable in here. The rest of the house makes me uneasy.’

  He was smiling as he said the words but she understood what he meant.

  ‘I mean, when this house was still owned by the bloke I bought it off, I wouldn’t have got past the front gate, would I? He wouldn’t have wanted the likes of me in his home.’ He stared off into space for a few seconds. ‘Not until I had the poke to get him out of debt, which I did.’

  Marie laid her hand over his and said gently, ‘Well, it’s your house now and if I was you I would forget all that and enjoy it.’

  ‘It seems weird to me sometimes, being here. I came off a rough council estate and still feel more at home there than I do in this place. But I love owning it. I love the fact it’s mine and no one else’s. Unless the filth give me a capture, of course, then it will be me old woman’s.’

  He laughed loudly.

  ‘Now she loves it here. She even tried to be all refined once we had it, and that was a fucking sight to see, I can tell you. She was pure Essex born and bred, from the roots of her bleached hair to her silicone tits. Kept referring to the place as “the estate”. ’Course, she realised eventually that people thought she meant a council estate so she started calling it “the country house” so there would be no mistake.’

  ‘Do you miss her?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘You don’t miss people like Desrae, you just wonder how the fuck you married it. She was pregnant and it seemed like a good idea at the time. I was off me face on the day and had a fight with me brother. He told me what a prat I was for marrying her and he was right, but I didn’t want to hear that, did I? I miss me kids, though, especially me boy, little Mikey. The girls are all right. The eldest is fourteen now and uses people just like her mother does. Looks twenty and thinks that clubbing and getting laid are what you do for a good night out. Desrae actually goes out with her, believe it or not. I have had to distribute a few slaps, I can tell you, because of them. My younger girl is heavy, a big girl, likes her school. She’s away, private like. Me boy, he’s like me, tough but with a bit of nous. His mother gets on his wick and I can appreciate that. He’s embarrassed by her.’

  Mikey gulped at his wine.

  ‘How come I can talk to you, Marie, when I could never talk to anyone before? I think it’s because unlike most women you actually listen to what’s being said. You look interested as well and that helps.’

  He was smiling at her. His big face still bore traces of his former good looks. When he was being himself she found she liked him. He wasn’t as brash as he made out and she guessed that he got out of it on coke for the same reason she had. It
was to give him confidence, bravado.

  ‘You are a nice man, Mikey, why wouldn’t I be interested in what you have to say?’

  He looked sheepish and that fact amazed her and also endeared him to her even more.

  ‘I shouldn’t be drinking this wine. I have an addictive personality and I have to leave all drink and drugs alone,’ she said.

  ‘What quack told you that?’

  ‘The prison quack.’

  Mikey grinned and refilled her glass.

  ‘Fuck him, what does he know, eh? You drink your wine and I promise to take care of you, OK?’

  ‘Sounds good to me, Mikey.’

  He held his hand gently to her cheek and said softly, ‘What have you done to me, Marie Carter? When I’m with you I want to be a nice bloke.’

  He looked so earnest, so sincere, that she felt a sudden urge to cry for him and the waste that had been his life. Like her he had chased the impossible, but unlike her he had found it and it had not made him any happier.

  She kissed his hand, gently on the palm, and it was more erotic to him than if she had stripped off and lain across the table. It occurred to him suddenly that he was falling for this woman, and falling for her in a big way.

  For all the bad things she had once been – and he had heard the stories about her, who hadn’t? – she still had a dignity that he found irresistible. It was in her voice, in her face and in the way she carried herself.

  She smiled, and as her eyes crinkled at the corners he was undone. For the first time in years he wanted a woman for all the right reasons and it felt good. He didn’t care about her past. He was only interested in her as she was now and how she would be in the future. He wanted her in his bed and in his arms, and he wanted her there sooner rather than later.

  Louise was still in tremendous pain but she was coping with it. Inside her was an overpowering drive to get out of this bed and get home - wherever that was now. At times she felt an urge to scream out at the injustice of it all. She was lying here day after day in pain, her body crying out for drugs to ease it, while her hated daughter was out there causing even more mayhem.