Dangerous

by Jessie Keane

  ‘He was a good man,’ he said. ‘Frank worked for me once. Very reliable.’

  ‘Yes, he was.’

  ‘I’m Toby. Toby Cotton. My card,’ he said, and pressed a small oblong of white vellum into her hand before moving along.

  ‘Thank you for coming,’ she said next to a thin man in glasses who shivered in the breeze.

  ‘I’m sorry we’re meeting under such sad circumstances,’ said Gordon, his face colouring a little, and moved on. Clara’s eyes were drawn back to that unkempt plot.

  Mum’s in there, she thought in anguish. She must be.

  Now there was someone else standing in front of her. She blinked away a sudden sting of tears as she thought of dear sweet Mum, who had been ruined by loving their father, finished by it. That was a trap that Clara herself was never going to fall into. Never. She swallowed hard and fixed a polite smile on her face. At least poor Frank’s grave would be properly marked: she’d be sorting out a headstone this week.

  ‘Thank you for coming,’ she said to a tall grim-faced man of athletic build with black hair. His intense deep-set black eyes rested upon her face with something close to amusement. His cheekbones were so fiercely sculpted that they could have been carved out of stone. Clara stared at him, riveted, feeling like she’d had all the air punched out of her.

  Marcus looked into Clara’s eyes and stopped smiling. ‘Mrs Hatton? I’m Marcus Redmayne,’ he said.

  ‘Oh.’ So this was Redmayne. She had pictured someone older; someone plainer. He was startlingly attractive; very masculine and tough. Suddenly her heart was beating fast and she could feel a blush creeping up from her neck to flood her cheeks with colour.

  ‘Frank worked for me,’ he said.

  ‘I know,’ she said, and it was an effort to keep her voice steady.

  ‘I thought you’d be older,’ he said.

  Clara’s face froze. A tear trickled from her eye and she quickly wiped it away. ‘That’s funny – I thought you would be, too,’ she said, gathering herself. What was wrong with her?

  ‘My condolences, Mrs Hatton. If there’s anything I can do . . . ’

  ‘There isn’t. But thank you for coming,’ she said, and he moved on.

  Almost without thinking, without hearing, she shook the hand of the next in line, then the next, and the next. It took an enormous effort not to turn her head and follow Marcus Redmayne with her eyes. But at last it was over, it was done. She paid the vicar and thanked him, said he would be welcome to come back to the house for refreshments if he wanted. He thanked her and said he would be happy to join them.

  Back at the house, sandwiches were eaten and tea drunk, and Clara didn’t see Redmayne among the mourners. She felt a pang of something dangerously close to disappointment. His face seemed to have imprinted itself on her brain, like a brand.

  Toby Cotton was there, and he buttonholed her immediately. ‘You poor darling,’ he said, touching her arm. ‘Do you miss him terribly?’

  Clara looked into Toby’s eyes and felt that she’d found a friend. ‘Not terribly, no,’ she said. ‘In fact – hardly at all.’

  Their eyes met and she saw surprise in Toby’s before he let out a laugh. Clara moved on quickly, before she let herself down by laughing too, at her husband’s wake. Suddenly, she felt light and airy and – yes – free.

  She went out to the kitchen to powder her nose, looked in the mirror at her reflection and thought It’s true. I’m free at last.

  A laugh did escape her then, a laugh of unstoppable, purest joy. She lifted her arms above her head and twirled, ecstatic. Then she saw a long dark shape in the mirror and whirled around with a gasp of dismay.

  Oh Christ – it was him, it was Redmayne. She hadn’t even seen him come in, but now he was leaning in the doorway, arms folded, watching her.

  ‘If it ain’t the grieving widow,’ he said.

  Clara opened her mouth to speak and not a single sound would come out.

  ‘I’ll catch you later, Mrs Hatton,’ he said, and turned and left.

  ‘Damn,’ said Clara with feeling.

  But her ebullient mood refused to desert her. Fuck Marcus Redmayne with his black knowing eyes and his dangerous good looks.

  Frank was gone and she was free.

  After this, things could only get better.

  26

  Not long after the funeral, Clara got Henry a private tutor. She’d heard bad reports about him, that he played around at school, distracted the other pupils, caused havoc; the headmistress had complained bitterly, and so Clara had asked her very-careful-with-money Frank if they could get a tutor for him.

  ‘Fuck off, what you think I am, the bleeding king or something?’ had been Frank’s reply.

  Mean old bastard, thought Clara.

  But now, with Frank dead, Clara was able to revisit the idea. She was able to do this because she now had a free hand around the house and had discovered that Frank kept large stashes of cash here and there – under floorboards, behind pictures, all over the bloody place – and this enabled her to do the decent thing by her young brother, get him a proper tutor who wouldn’t, hopefully, put up with any of his bullshit.

  Now, leaving Henry studying with Mr Gray and Bernie cleaning up around the house, Clara kept an appointment at the solicitor’s office to hear the reading of Frank’s will. Of course, all Frank’s worldly goods would pass to her as his wife, but she was astounded to learn that he had over a thousand pounds in savings she’d known nothing about, and he owned the modest semi-detached house they lived in outright. Now, both the savings and the house belonged to her.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Clara, and sailed out of the solicitor’s office on a cloud of guilty happiness and dazed relief.

  She had sacrificed a lot for the family, but now she was reaping some reward at last. She owned the house! And she had money. Frank had always moaned that they couldn’t afford this or that, but the lying old fucker! He’d had it all hidden away, out of her reach. Clara thought again of that sorry unkempt plot in the graveyard, her poor mother’s final resting place, and counted herself lucky. That was how you could end up, if you weren’t careful. Fall in love like a brainless fool and be taken for a mug, diddled out of your money and your house and even your life. She wasn’t going to go down that road, not her. Property was cheap to buy right now but soon it would start to move upward again as the market turned. She had the means to advance herself and her family at last. Now was the time to act.

  But when she got home, her happy mood was punctured. The house was curiously quiet as she went through to the kitchen. She was sure she could smell burning out here, like Bernie was cooking a joint of meat and had left it too long in the oven. But the oven was off; when Clara touched it, it was cold.

  ‘What’s going . . . ?’ she started, and then she saw Bernie standing in the open back doorway that led out into the yard, her arms crossed over her middle, her shoulders hunched.

  Bernie turned and looked at her with wide, blinking eyes. She said in a tight voice: ‘Don’t look, Clar. It’s horrible.’

  Clara hurried over and pushed past Bernie and froze.

  Henry was standing out in the yard, holding an old fuel can. Out here, the burning smell was so intense that Clara started to choke. She put a hand over her mouth, her eyes starting to stream.

  ‘Where’s . . . ?’ she started again, and then she saw it.

  Her eyes fell in complete horror on the twisted and charred remains of Frank’s old guard dog Attila, still attached to its chain.

  Jesus!

  She looked from the dog’s smouldering corpse and her eyes met Henry’s. Clara felt a spasm of sickness; a hot bolt of bile surging up into her throat. She put a hand to her mouth, staring at her brother as if she had never seen him before. Over at the side of the yard, the rabbit – Henry’s pet rabbit – hopped agitatedly in its cage.

  ‘Why?’ Clara managed to croak. ‘Henry, why? What did the bloody dog ever do to you?’

  Henry’s eyes wer
e bright and bloodshot, an almost manic expression in them. He sent a look at Bernie, still cowering in the doorway, then he put the paraffin can down on the ground and said: ‘It’s like a Viking burial. The owner dies, and they kill the pets to be with them in Valhalla, you see?’

  All Clara could see was that her brother had committed a vile, cruel act; he’d burned the poor damned dog alive. All right, none of them had loved it, but it hadn’t deserved that.

  Clara felt a revulsion so strong she wondered if she was going to pass out. She swallowed, choked again, and finally said in a chilling voice: ‘You did this? You little bastard! Then you clean it up. Get rid of it. All right? Come on, Bern.’

  Clara grabbed Bernie’s arm, ignoring her flinch of protest – Bernie always flinched when anyone touched her unexpectedly – and yanked her back into the kitchen, slamming the yard door behind them.

  Later, Clara went back out into the yard, to find Attila’s dead body was gone. All that remained were the scorched blackened cobbles where he’d died and the kennel, which was burned out and would have to be disposed of too. She shivered as she caught the lingering whiff of cooked flesh, thinking of the inhuman pain it must have suffered as it died.

  Oh dear God, what was Henry?

  What had made him so cruel, so uncaring?

  When they were clearing away the tea-things that evening, she sat Bernie down at the table and told her the news about the will.

  ‘Oh,’ said Bernie, chewing her nails distractedly. ‘Well, that’s good.’

  ‘Yeah, it is.’ Clara hesitated, then plunged in. She took Bernie’s hand – en route to her mouth – in hers, and looked into those pretty grey-blue eyes. ‘Bernie, we’ve never really talked, have we? About how sad it was, Mum dying like she did with the baby. I know how much it hurt you.’

  But Bernie pulled her hand away and stood up so quickly that her chair fell over. ‘Leave it, will you, Clar? I don’t want to talk about it.’

  Clara stared up at Bernie in surprise. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘But, Bern . . . you know you asked would we have to move again? Well, I’ve decided we are going to move – somewhere better.’

  Clara didn’t want to stay here any more.

  This place was done now.

  It reeked of death.

  27

  Marcus had taken over two more clubs. One was the Dragon, the gaming den in Greek Street that Jacko Sears had snatched off Con Beeston, the other was a place in Old compton Street over which the previous Maltese owner had been running a lucrative ‘blue films’ racket. This was the simplest game in the world: a tout stood outside, inviting tourists in to see blue movies, advertising the content with a couple of mucky postcards. Once he had their money, he directed the tourists upstairs to an empty room and then moved on to another doorway and repeated the process.

  ‘That’s neat,’ said Gordon, who admired money-making skills in anyone.

  ‘Not neat enough though,’ said Marcus. ‘Looks like Giddy the Maltese fell out with the coppers he had on his payroll. Maybe he didn’t pay them enough. Anyway, he’s been done by the vice squad.’

  Giddy’s misfortune was Marcus’s good luck. He got the Old Compton Street club for sod all and set up business. So everything was going well, and he had a vast assortment of people in, drinking and playing poker or chemmy. Earls, tycoons, criminals – they all enjoyed the high life and a gamble, and it was nothing for one of the punters to bet fifteen grand on a single shoe. And of course Marcus took a 10 per cent cut on everything earned at his tables.

  Paulette continued to be a niggling problem. She was costing him a fucking fortune, revelling in her status as his ‘girl’. When he got home, there she was, dancing around his flat to ‘Petite Fleur’ by Chris Barber, shimmying provocatively and humming along, twining her arms around Marcus when he came in and said he was off to see Mum tomorrow.

  ‘I ought to go with you,’ said Paulette, kissing him, moving her hips against him.

  Marcus thought of black-haired Clara Hatton at her husband’s funeral, and felt himself harden.

  ‘Oh! So someone’s awake, I see,’ grinned Paulette, her eyes dipping down the front of his body.

  ‘Then do something about it,’ he said roughly.

  Paulette did.

  Later, when they were in bed, Paulette said: ‘So shall I?’

  ‘Shall you what?’

  ‘Come with you. Tomorrow. See your mum.’

  ‘No fucking way.’ Those visits were hard enough, without Paulette’s high-pitched wittering in his ear at the same time.

  Paulette sulked for days over that. But Marcus thought the ‘visit mother’ business was just a move to cosy up, get things on a more permanent footing. Not content with filling his cupboards with her crap and draping her stockings over his bathroom mirror – Jesus, what had he bought her that sodding flat for? – now she wanted to try arse-licking her way around Mum, thinking that was the way to maybe a wedding and perhaps his heart. Which it wasn’t.

  The way to his heart?

  As far as he knew, he didn’t have one.

  So when he went to visit his mum, he went alone. And – of course – he took a gift with him.

  28

  Using Frank’s carefully hoarded savings, Clara bought up four houses in decent areas, had them redecorated, and waited; the market was rising quickly but even so it was a year before her investment showed the profit she was looking for. At that point, she sold all four houses and got the decorators in to what had been her and Frank’s home to work their magic there; then she sold that too.

  Now they had the profit from five houses in the bank and Clara was ready for her next move. She’d just come back from a very enjoyable day of house viewings. The market was sailing ever upwards and the family home was sold, so she was going to have to act quickly to find them something new: something better. She felt on top of the world. So she was knocked off-kilter when she came into the kitchen and found Bernie sitting at the table looking tearful. Opposite her sat Mr Gray, Henry’s tutor, a tall miserable-faced man of middle years. He was holding a handkerchief to his cheek, and blood was seeping into it, staining it red.

  ‘What the hell . . . ? What’s the matter? What’s happened?’ demanded Clara.

  Bernie looked at Mr Gray, whose face matched his name. He looked grey, sick – and furious.

  ‘This is so embarrassing,’ said Bernie wretchedly.

  Clara tried not to let her exasperation show. Bernie was too sensitive a soul, too big-hearted, feeling the suffering of everyone when she ought to focus more on her own and her immediate family’s problems; but that was Bernie. You couldn’t change her.

  Despite Clara’s comments when she’d first raised the subject, Bernie was doing charitable work now, down the Mission, and coming home with heart-wrenching tales of hardship. This annoyed Clara. She thought they’d all suffered enough hardship to last a lifetime, and she didn’t want to hear about anyone else’s.

  ‘It’s Henry,’ said Bernie, her voice shaking.

  Now Clara felt alarm clutch at her. She thought straight away of Attila, Frank’s Alsatian, burned alive. She looked at Mr Gray’s face. The hand holding the handkerchief was trembling. ‘What about him? Is he all right? What’s he done?’

  ‘He ripped up all his exercise books,’ said Bernie. ‘Every one of them.’

  ‘And when I tried to discipline him, he hit me,’ said Mr Gray faintly. ‘With my own cane. In thirty years of teaching, that has never happened to me before.’

  ‘He’s upstairs. In his room,’ said Bernie.

  Clara took a deep breath. ‘Bern, make Mr Gray some hot sweet tea, will you? I’ll talk to Henry,’ she said, and went out into the freshly decorated hall, up the stairs. The door to Henry’s room was closed, and she didn’t knock; she just pushed it open and walked in.

  And there he was – her brother – jumping up from the bed with a start as she came in. He was a handsome boy, with the same dark reddish-brown hair as Bernie, the same inten
se blue-grey eyes. He was growing up fast, thirteen now. There were scattered bits of paper and book covers all over the floor. Mr Gray’s cane was lying on the rug.

  ‘I suppose that old git told you what I did?’ Henry said into the silence.

  Clara had to swallow, to clear her throat. First that horror with the dog, and now this. ‘Why did you do that? What is the matter with you?’

  He shrugged, looked away. That obstinate, unyielding expression was on his face, the one she was coming to know so well. ‘Dunno.’

  ‘You little bastard!’

  Suddenly Clara dashed forward and slapped him hard across the face. Henry floundered back onto the bed, clutching his head, the skin on his cheek reddening instantly.

  Panting, Clara slapped him again, and again, and then she was aware of Bernie beside her, pulling her back, shouting something. Red rage enveloped her and for several moments she couldn’t even hear what Bernie was saying.

  Then she did. Her heart was racing; she was breathless.

  ‘Clara, stop,’ moaned Bernie.

  Clara stopped. She stood there, gasping. She took a breath. Then another. Finally she said: ‘No supper for you tonight. You hear me? You can stay in here and go to bed hungry!’

  ‘I know you hate me!’ shouted Henry. ‘You had to marry that creepy old drunk to keep me and Bern out of the kids’ home! I know that. You hate Bern too. You do, really! You just don’t ever admit it.’

  Clara staggered back. Maybe there was a grain of truth in what he was saying. Had she somehow created this thing that cowered before her, with her half-hidden resentment of the burden that had been placed on her? She had tried, so hard, to treat her sister and brother well, to care for them, but had they sensed the truth, had they seen the trap she was in?

  She feared that Henry was wrong in the head. That was her true feeling about her brother. It seemed that some vital part, some caring part, was missing from him. That he had ice in his veins. He was only a boy now, but one day soon he would be a man, and . . . oh God, what would he be capable of then?