by Jessie Keane
The blond guy with the professional happy smile came to the counter again.
‘The money?’ asked Henry.
‘As I told you—’ said the blond guy.
He didn’t have time to get another word out. Joey pulled him over the counter and whacked him on the jaw. He went down in front of the counter like a sack of shit, knocking over a display of multicoloured cotton reels and assorted shoe dyes and brushes. Both Henry and Joey waded in to give him the kicking he deserved. Shrieks and shouts went up from the back room, and the dark-haired woman ran out to the front of the shop and yelled: ‘I’ll call the police!’
By then they were finished with the guy, who lay groaning and blood-covered on the floor.
Henry pointed a finger at him as he lay there, wincing, clutching his bruised stomach, blinking up at his attackers in stark terror, pain and amazement.
‘Half an hour, arsehole. We’ll be back and you’d better have it.’
Henry and Joey left to the merry tinkling accompaniment of the shop bell.
Half an hour later, they were back. The dark-haired woman hadn’t phoned the police. The blond man was propped behind the till on a stool, white-faced, bloodstained and not smiling any more. When he saw Henry and Joey come back in, he opened the till straight away with a shaking hand, and gave Henry another envelope with the fifty pounds inside.
‘Now, why the fuck couldn’t you do that in the first place?’ asked Henry, pocketing the cash.
‘Bloody arseholes,’ said the blond man, trembling with anger. ‘You bastards.’
‘You better remember that,’ said Henry. Then he and Joey moved on to their next venue.
Before they could get there, Clara came up to them in the street, Liam dragging his knuckles along the pavement by her side. She’d tried to catch Henry at home, but his landlady had said he was out at work. She’d looked for him around the area, and here he was, coming out of the dry cleaners while stuffing something in his pocket. He saw her there, turned to Joey and said: ‘Wait in the car.’
‘That’s her, yeah?’ said Joey.
‘Wait in the car,’ said Henry more sharply.
Joey went. Henry looked into his sister’s face. ‘What’s up, you got a death wish or something?’ he asked her.
‘I want to talk,’ said Clara.
‘You’re crazy.’
‘About Sal,’ said Clara.
Henry exhaled. ‘Who?’
‘Sal Dryden. A worker of mine. The woman was killed. But you and she were close for a while.’
‘OK,’ he said. ‘So talk.’
101
They walked in Soho Square, skirting the statue and coming to a halt beside the little Tudor-style summer house. The venerable old Windmill was a few steps away in Great Windmill Street, the Oak was on the corner opposite, and Raymond’s Revue Bar was at Walker’s court with its massive sign, just a stone’s throw away. This – the Square Mile of Vice – was her homeland now. Soho, with its seedy alleyways, its strip joints and its teeming mass of humanity, had become a part of her; it was in her blood.
‘Fulton Sears is after you,’ said Henry.
‘I know.’ Clara indicated Liam, skulking not three feet away. ‘Look, I brought reinforcements.’
‘He got a hit ordered on you, but word is the guy’s gone AWOL. Don’t know why you ain’t dead right now, frankly.’
Clara knew. The hitman was dead – not her. Marcus had seen to that. But Sears would catch up. Once he realized his hired gun was done for, no doubt he’d come at her with another one, or with something different, something worse.
She’d learned a lot in life, but what she’d learned most clearly was that she’d spent nearly ten years chasing after security of one sort or another, only to discover that there was no security to be had anywhere, except in yourself, in your own strength.
So she wasn’t running away from her fears any more: she was running toward them, determined to crush them, once and for all.
‘What you want to talk to me for?’ asked Henry.
‘Someone told me you had a thing going with Sal.’
‘Yeah. For a while last year.’
‘Didn’t it worry you? Going where Yasta Frate went first?’
‘I knew about that.’ Henry frowned. ‘I knew what happened. That Frate came over on the boat and leeched off Sal. She told me. It was no big secret. Besides, it was over. He was her landlord and she wasn’t happy about that, but there you go.’
‘It wasn’t that over. She had some porno pics taken with him last summer. Him and an assortment of kids, I might add.’
Henry was watching her face. ‘I heard something about that,’ he said. ‘The Bill questioned him. Got nowhere, of course. Big surprise.’
Clara returned his look with a stony glare. ‘Maybe you wanted to pay Sal back for getting involved with Frate again.’
Clara had no illusions about her brother. He’d been bad all his life, and she couldn’t think that he would have changed now, not when he was mixing with lowlife like Sears and his boys.
‘So what happened? You have a fight over those pictures, lose it, kill her?’ asked Clara.
Henry stopped walking and stared at her. ‘What? Hey—’
‘Come on, Henry. You’ve done things. Terrible things. I don’t think you’d draw the line at this. I don’t think you even know where the line is.’
Henry was shaking his head. ‘I was sorry as hell over what happened to Sal.’
‘So you’re saying you had no part in it?’ Clara stared at him. He was wearing the same obdurate expression that he’d worn when questioned at twelve years old, and at fifteen. Now he was seventeen, a young man, and she still didn’t trust him an inch. ‘What about the house fire, Henry?’
‘Now what you on about?’
‘My house burned down. Toby was killed. Didn’t you like the thought of me doing well at last? Did you really hate me that much?’
Henry was still shaking his head. ‘Jesus, you don’t change. Anything that happened, it was always my fault, wasn’t it? And it still is.’
‘Well, you said it. Remember the money you stole? And the dog? That poor bloody tutor, how you battered him? Now I guess you’ve moved on to bigger things. Like Sal. Like Toby.’
Henry was silent for a beat, biting his lip. Then he said: ‘You seriously think I did Sal? And Toby Cotton? Fuck’s sake! I didn’t even know the guy.’
‘Yeah, but I know you, Henry. Remember?’
Henry looked her full in the face. ‘You’re wrong,’ he said.
Clara’s expression hardened. ‘I just said it, Henry. I know you, better than anyone else.’
‘Better than Bernie?’
‘Yeah. Even her.’
‘I dunno why you’re concerning yourself with all this shit,’ said Henry. ‘You got enough problems. You got Fulton Sears on your back and now his big brother Ivan’s come down from Manchester to help out. Ivan’s the head of the clan, you don’t want to get on the wrong side of that bastard, believe me.’
‘You enjoy working for that pig?’
‘It’s a job. It’s a living. Better than working for you, I bet. You got to fix everybody’s lives up for them, ain’t you, Clara? You got to be in control. Poor fucking Bernie couldn’t even marry that pitiful bastard photographer of hers, because he didn’t come up to scratch in your eyes.’
‘He didn’t come up to scratch, you got that right. He was the one who took the pictures. Frate paid big money for them, big enough to get David started in business.’
‘Yeah? Well, maybe he is a bad apple, but it was her choice, not yours. And she ain’t all that, anyway. Thank fuck I got out from under your little dictatorship years ago. I’m not sorry about that.’
Clara frowned. What did that mean? ‘Henry—’
‘No. The answer is no. I didn’t do Sal and I didn’t torch your house. You can believe that or not, I don’t give a shit either way, all right?’ He turned away from her. Then he paused, turned back. ‘You thi
nk it was all me, don’t you? Always, it was me. I was the bad one, the one who did wrong.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘The fucking dog, Clara. Think about it. I wasn’t the only person in that house. Yeah, I stepped up and took it on the chin because I was only a kid and I was scared shitless of the consequences. Like they say, sis: The truth will out.’
Clara was so shocked that she could only stare at him. She could feel the sun, beating down on her skin, could hear the traffic, could see people moving around them, but she felt stilled, trapped in time, caught in a bubble of sick awareness where the only focus was Henry’s words.
‘What are you saying?’ she gasped out at last. ‘What the hell are you saying?’
He shook his head at that. ‘Nah, I’ve said enough. Look – don’t come near me again. Joey’s seen us talking and that’s gonna be hard enough to explain away. I don’t want Sears getting any doubts about whose side I’m on in this little war we got going on here. You understand me?’
‘You’re on his side,’ said Clara. Jesus, what was that he’d said?
‘Remember that,’ said Henry.
‘Oh God,’ she murmured. ‘Oh no . . . ’
Into her mind then came Jasper, saying he’d passed Bernie in the hall on the night of Toby’s death, at ten o’clock. And now it came to Clara that Bernie had appeared in front of her hours after that, when the fire was raging. She’d assumed that Bernie had just come home then.
‘Oh, please, no,’ said Clara. But she knew the truth now; she knew it. ‘I have to talk to her.’
‘Do yourself a favour,’ said Henry. ‘Don’t. Not about this.’
‘I have to,’ said Clara. ‘Right now.’
Henry shrugged. ‘Well, on your own head be it.’
102
Sasha opened the door to the fourth-floor flat off Regent Street when Clara knocked on it not an hour after her talk with Henry.
‘Oh, it’s you,’ she said. Her eyes slipped past Clara and fastened on Liam.
‘She in?’ asked Clara.
Sasha shook her head.
‘I’ll wait then,’ said Clara, and pushed past her into the room with the dusty couches and the dream-catchers and the faint sickly sweet lingering smell of pot in the stuffy air. There was a new telephone on a side table. She sat down on one of the couches, Liam remained outside the door.
‘She could be ages,’ said Sasha.
‘Doesn’t matter,’ said Clara.
‘You want some herbal tea or something?’
‘No. Thanks.’
‘Is it urgent then?’ she asked.
Clara gave her a steady-eyed stare. ‘It’s private,’ she said, and Sasha gave up all attempts at social intercourse and went off to her room.
Bernie came in over an hour later. She looked surprised to find Clara waiting for her, and not particularly pleased about it either.
‘Blimey, what brings you here again?’ she asked, coming in and decanting a bag of groceries onto a side table. ‘Did you find Henry?’
Clara opened her mouth to speak and Sasha’s bedroom door opened. Sasha came out, pulling on a pink-and-blue patchwork coat.
‘Going out,’ she said to the room at large, and left, pushing past Liam outside the flat door.
‘OK,’ said Bernie, flopping down on the couch opposite Clara. ‘Did you find him?’ she repeated.
‘Yeah. I did.’
‘And?’
Clara swallowed hard and looked at her sister. Sweet, gentle, jittery little Bernie. ‘He told me a couple of things. Things I couldn’t quite make sense of.’
‘Oh? What?’ Bernie fished in her handbag, pulled out a packet of Capstan cigarettes and a silver lighter. She took out a cigarette, lit it, and inhaled luxuriously. ‘God, that’s better,’ she sighed. She held out the packet. ‘Want one?’
‘No thanks.’
‘So what were these things he told you?’
Bernie inhaled again, then blew out a dragon’s-breath of blue smoke through her nostrils.
‘About Frank’s dog. And the pound note he was supposed to have stolen, remember that?’ asked Clara.
Bernie’s eyes narrowed as she squinted against the smoke. ‘Yeah, of course I do. Why?’
‘Henry said he wasn’t the only person in the house. And he was right, of course. There was also me. And you.’
Bernie’s gaze flickered down and to the left, fastening upon something on the couch. She picked off a speck of lint, dropped it onto the carpet. Then she twitched and gave a little laugh. ‘What, he’s trying to say he didn’t do those things? Come on!’
‘That’s what he’s saying, yes. And I know I didn’t. I wasn’t even in the house at the time when Attila was killed. Which only leaves you, Bernie. Only you.’
Bernie was nodding slowly. She took another deep drag of the cigarette and then rested her head against the high back of the couch, blowing out smoke in a leisurely stream from her open mouth as her eyes rested on the ceiling.
‘You got nothing to say about it?’ asked Clara, as the silence lengthened.
Bernie’s head tilted forward again and her eyes fastened on Clara’s. She smiled, but it was a smile without warmth.
‘I got plenty to say,’ she said. ‘But trust me – you won’t want to hear it.’
‘Try me,’ said Clara.
Bernie crossed her legs and watched Clara, saying nothing. Then she took another drag of her cigarette and said: ‘OK. Settle in, Clara. You sitting comfortably? Then I’ll tell you a story. Only it’s not a story at all, not a made-up one. This one is real.’
103
Henry sent Joey back to Sears’s place with the car, hoping he’d say nothing about seeing him with his sister. Then, making sure he was unobserved, he walked quickly over to the Oak and told the bouncer on the door that he wanted to talk to Redmayne.
‘You’re Sears’s boy,’ said the bouncer, looking at Henry with unfriendly eyes.
‘Yeah. But I want to talk to Redmayne. It’s urgent.’
‘Got a message from Sears then?’
‘No, it’s a message from me. I’m Redmayne’s brother-in-law, you know.’
‘No, you’re fucking not. You’re Sears’s boy,’ repeated the bouncer, and hauled Henry inside and frisked him. Meanwhile, he called one of the bar staff and had them dial through to upstairs, tell Marcus he had a visitor.
Satisfied Henry wasn’t carrying anything he shouldn’t, the bouncer pushed him into the bar.
‘Sit there,’ he said, and shoved Henry down onto a bar stool. The staff moved around, watching Henry curiously while cleaning glasses and restocking the optics.
Marcus came down within five minutes and stopped when he saw who was there.
‘You wanted to speak to me?’ he asked, coming over to where Henry sat.
‘Not really,’ said Henry. He was furious with himself for coming here, for weakening. Clara was his enemy, she had been against him all his life. Blaming him, sending him away, everything his fault, always his fault.
But . . . she was also his sister. And blood was blood, after all. He had a strong feeling that she was walking into things that she couldn’t begin to deal with. That opening a can of worms about all the shit they’d lived with could be a bad move. A terrible move. Push a rat into a corner and it would fly at your throat. Cornered, accused, he had a queasy feeling that Bernie might react the same way.
He hated that he was worried about Clara. But it was a fact; he was. She was, despite it all, despite everything, his blood. And she had tried to do her best for him, he knew that. So he’d had to come here, against his own better judgement.
‘What is it?’ asked Marcus, watching Henry closely.
‘It’s Clara,’ said Henry. ‘There’s something you should know . . . ’
104
For a long time Bernie said nothing. Then slowly, quietly, she began to speak.
‘You got yourself married off to Frank to get us out of that place owned by Lenny Lynch
, you remember?’ said Bernie.
Clara nodded. How could she forget? She could remember even now how miserable, how trapped, how desperate she had felt back then. But she had made a choice; the only possible choice, in the circumstances.
‘The coppers were coming, weren’t they? The doctor knew you were under age and we – me and Henry – were going to get taken into care. Probably you too, I suppose. Turns out, that would have been better, but what did any of us know? Talk about Babes in the Wood. And you took charge, didn’t you, Clara. Like always.’
‘I did what I thought was best, Bernie. For all of us.’ She had, too. Allied herself to an old man, submitted herself to a sham marriage, she’d done all that to make sure the family stayed together and had food on the table. She’d done more than her best, she’d done everything for them.
‘So off we ran to Frank’s place, Frank who used to collect the rent from us with that dog, that fucking thing, alongside him. I couldn’t believe you’d done that at first, because I’d always been so terrified of his rap at the door.’
Clara thought back. Bernie had always cringed at the sight of Frank at the door, Frank wearing his old brown leather coat, the snarling dog at his side.
‘Show me a brown leather coat to this day and I still feel pretty much the same,’ said Bernie.
‘You weren’t frightened of Frank once you got used to him, though – were you?’ asked Clara, perturbed. She had always thought it was the dog that frightened Bernie. Not Frank himself. The thought made her anxious and uneasy.
‘Frightened? No. I got used to it.’ Bernie stubbed out the remains of her cigarette and quickly lit another, inhaling deeply before continuing. ‘But you know what I think? I think something died in me the day we moved in there.’
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ said Clara.
‘You remember that first night we got there? When he was drunk and he tried to get in the bedroom door?’
‘Yes, of course I do.’
‘Well, that set the scene for me.’
What Clara was thinking now was too horrible to give voice to.
Bernie’s face was sneering as she stared at her sister. ‘No one ever fucked with Clara, did they? You were always the tough one. I know you marked Frank’s card for him the very next morning. Made the boundaries very clear. Only they were just your boundaries. They didn’t apply to me.’
