The Know

by Martina Cole

  ‘When he had started the lorry driving, see, it had given me and me mum a break. But it was then that he had made all his contacts. But I did the best I could, Joanie.’

  She nodded once more.

  Poor Little Tommy was innocent of anything except his lifelong terror of Joseph Thompson, the man who had first raped him as a child of seven and carried on doing so until, as a cruelly obese and withdrawn teenager, he was at least spared that.

  But still the cruelty continued. Tommy and his mother were beaten for the least little thing they did to annoy Joseph. With her spirit crushed and her body weakened, his wife took refuge in prescription drugs, trying to blot out the evidence of her own eyes. She knew what he’d done to their son and the knowledge was unbearable. There was worse to come.

  Tommy failed to develop like normal teenagers. It seemed in some respects he’d always be a child and retained a natural affinity with them. Joseph traded on it mercilessly, using his son’s continued interest in toys and children’s games to lure in his unsuspecting prey. But when an outraged parent eventually called in the police and Social Services it was his son who got the blame. After all, he looked and behaved like a freak - a hulking teenager playing with dolls and speaking in a childish treble. And when they interviewed his mother, glassy-eyed on Valium and gin, she lied as her husband told her to do. Yes, he was a bit like that, her poor boy. Didn’t mean any harm, though. It wasn’t as if he could actually do anything.

  Not like the monster she’d married, the big manly normal member of the family, who’d threatened to beat her to a pulp unless she backed him up. She did as he said, had no choice.

  And since then there’d been six changes of address, five changes of name. They hadn’t bothered after leaving Bermondsey. Pippy and Kieron baled them out with cash, needing Joseph’s foreign contacts, and Leigh Rowe knew better than to let the story get out.

  To cap it all Little Tommy wasn’t really called Tommy at all. His real name was Darren Weeks. That’s what they called him in hospital now, the new one that Jon Jon was paying for. The nurses there looked after him well, no reason not to. Everyone liked Darren Weeks who always had a smile and a kind word.

  ‘I assume Jon Jon’s going to sort my dad out?’ he said now.

  Joanie nodded without actually answering him. Instead she said, ‘It looks nice here, the gardens are beautiful.’

  She saw relief replace the guarded expression. They would not need to labour their explanations, he was kind that way. Joanie had apologised and that was enough for him. He needed her so much, loved her so much, because she had been the only adult ever to give him the time of day. But she had given him more than that and they both knew it.

  He had betrayed that trust, they both knew that as well, but it had been because he had never dreamed his father or any of his cronies would dare touch a Brewer.

  How wrong he had been.

  ‘I wish I’d told you everything from the off, Joanie.’

  ‘So do I, but you didn’t so let’s forget about it, shall we? You came through for us in the end.’

  He nodded and wiped his eyes.

  The tea girl came in and was amazed to see big fat Darren, as she thought of him, with a visitor.

  ‘Cup of tea?’

  He nodded and she looked at Joanie. Recognising her from the newspapers, she said gently, ‘Can I get you one?’

  Joanie nodded.

  ‘Thank you, that would be lovely.’

  Joanie put her hand out to Darren then and after a brief hesitation he grabbed it and held it to his chest. As he cried she comforted him as best she could.

  His burned face, distorted by tears . . . she felt the shame well up until she just wanted to run away, but she didn’t. Instead she stayed and spent a companionable afternoon with him. Darren Weeks had served up his own father to them and for that much she would always be grateful.

  The door to the apartment building was open and they walked inside quickly.

  Jon Jon was wearing a long coat. He was opening the buttons as they looked around the hallway. There were four doors leading off it and one stood open.

  Inside were two young girls who looked to be about nine and a boy a little older. They were all hollow-eyed and none of them smiled back at Jon Jon or Baxter but dropped their gaze to the floor. There were toys everywhere but none of the children was playing with them. They sat still on a dilapidated sofa and none of them said a word.

  Jon Jon felt the bile rise in his throat.

  If this was how to make a huge return on your investment he wanted none of it. Paulie would have known all about this. Jon Jon knew he would have carefully researched where his money was going, and that knowledge hurt him.

  He had thought Paulie a bigger person than that, a better person.

  One of the little girls rested her head on the arm of the chair and started to suck her thumb. She wanted to sleep, that much was evident. They all looked so tired.

  Baxter was walking to one of the closed doors now and Jon Jon followed. As he opened it they saw a woman in her twenties undressing a young girl. The woman was wearing only a thong and a dirty white bra. She turned in surprise and then smiled at them both.

  It was only on closer inspection of her scrawny body that Jon Jon realised she was still only an adolescent. The life she led had aged her face so much.

  Baxter smiled encouragingly.

  ‘Joseph?’

  She sighed.

  ‘Josef?’

  He nodded matily, desperately embarrassed by the way she was dressed, the bruises on her skinny underdeveloped body. It all felt so wrong; this whole place stank of unwashed children and degradation. She pointed to another door leading off this room and they walked past her. She cuddled the little girl to her and Jon Jon realised they had to be related, the resemblance was so strong.

  The next room was a bathroom. The man they knew as Joseph Thompson lay in a filthy iron bath with an adolescent girl. He turned as the door opened and the look of stunned surprise on his face was worth every hour of Jon Jon’s long search for him.

  ‘Take her out of here,’ he ordered.

  Baxter pulled the girl from the water. Wrapping a dirty towel around her, he led her from the room. Jon Jon kicked the door shut.

  Opening his coat, he took out a piece of lead piping handed to him by Michael Crasna as they drove towards Rahova.

  He tapped it across his palm as he said gently, ‘Well, well, bet you never thought you’d see me again?’

  Joseph tried to stand up but the lead piping smashing down across the legs soon disabused him of that notion. He was sweating with fear, knew he was never going to leave this room alive. All he could do was cower in the warm water and wait for the inevitable.

  ‘How did you find me?’

  Jon Jon spat at him then answered, ‘Your son grassed you. We know everything now. About you, Jesmond, Pippy, and all the other pieces of shit you called your friends.’

  ‘What are you going to do to me?’

  Jon Jon looked into this man’s eyes and knew he had wanted Kira from the first time he laid eyes on her. Knew he had planned to get her, one way or another. He was also the British contact for this hellhole, the man Jesmond and Pippy had been given as a go-between because he had been coming over for years. Joseph had made a fortune from his knowledge of this country and had fled over here, secure in the knowledge that no one would ever find him.

  Now he knew different.

  ‘You must have thought all your Christmases and birthdays had come at once when Kieron brought her to that house in Deptford. Your dream girl had arrived, and you and him laughed about it. Well, his father’s seen him off so back to your question - what am I going to do to you?’

  Jon Jon pretended to think about it for a few moments. Then, walking up to the trembling naked man, he swung at his knees with the pipe once more, this time splitting the bone and destroying the whole kneecap.

  Joseph was screaming in agony as Jon Jon whispered, ‘I’m
sure I’ll think of something even more fitting, aren’t you?’

  Joanie got into the flat and as usual the first thing she did was put the kettle on. As it boiled she lit herself a cigarette and stared out of the kitchen window. Monika would be here any minute with little Bethany. She more or less lived here now. It had been the catalyst for Jon Jon’s leaving home to stay at Sippy’s for a while.

  But it had been time for him to go. He was moving into his new place at the end of the week and, in fairness, he understood his mother’s need to take care of the girl no one seemed to want but her.

  She knew why he couldn’t look at Bethany. After hearing what he had seen in those photographs it had been hard for her to look at the child herself. But unlike him, she saw Bethany as a victim. Knowing she had delivered Kira to them was the real bug-bear, and Joanie had to struggle with herself every day to stop that being an issue.

  Kira had fought to leave that house in Deptford, and even after they’d given her drink and tranquillisers, had still fought them. Pippy had told Jon Jon everything before he died.

  Joanie was proud of the fact that her child had stood her corner even though she must have been terrified. But that was Kira all over, stubborn. With her being who she was, there was no way they would have let her out of that place alive and she must have known that. Joanie closed her eyes a moment and drew deeper on her cigarette.

  Kira’s body had been located where Pippy had said it would be, and that was a relief. At least Joanie could bury her child now.

  Poor Kira had been in the wrong place at the wrong time. If she had not been with Bethany that afternoon it wouldn’t have happened.

  But Joanie would not blame Bethany. That child was a victim, just as her daughter had been. Bethany had been too frightened to say anything about the abuse she’d suffered. Now she had to live with what had happened to her, and with what she had inadvertently brought on her friend, all her life.

  That had to be punishment enough for anyone.

  Monika, still none the wiser as to the truth, was glad to pass her troublesome daughter over to her best friend. For a price, of course.

  But even that didn’t affect Joanie at the moment.

  It was still so raw, still too unbelievably shocking to put into any kind of perspective. But that would come; time would heal much of it. Or at least she hoped so.

  She made her tea and splashed in the vodka. She had made her peace with Little Tommy, as she still thought of him, and was on her way to some kind of peace of mind. If she could get through the next few months she knew that eventually she would climb out of this pit of despair where she was trapped.

  Jeanette came in from school at twenty-past four and walked straight through to her bedroom, as was now the norm.

  Joanie followed her through and said gaily, ‘Good day?’

  Jeanette grinned ruefully. ‘I was actually at school, Mother! How could it have been a good day?’

  Joanie laughed.

  ‘I know you were at school. They still ring me in surprise every time you turn up!’

  Six months before, Jeanette would have taken umbrage at her mother’s words, seen them as some kind of criticism. Now she smiled.

  ‘I like it there really, but don’t tell them that!’

  ‘I won’t. Fancy a cuppa?’

  Jeanette grinned.

  ‘Er . . . no, thanks.’

  Joanie said gently, ‘I was the same when I was having you.’

  Jeanette, who had been emptying her school bag on to her bed, stopped what she was doing and stood stock-still.

  ‘Oh, Mum . . .’

  She started to cry; she had been wondering how to break the news to her mum. Her lovely mum whom she had never really appreciated until the last few months.

  ‘I’m sorry . . .’

  Joanie hugged her errant daughter, glad of the chance to make her feel better, glad to put the girl’s mind at rest.

  ‘We’ll cope, love. On a scale of one to ten, after everything else we’ve had to cope with, this ain’t exactly a disaster, is it?’

  She held her daughter close as she cried tears of relief.

  God was good. Joanie had heard that expression so many times in her life. And sometimes, just sometimes, He really was.

  Jon Jon was in a bar in Ferentari. It was a shit hole, full of local bullyboys and women with shifty eyes and bad boob jobs.

  Baxter was chatting up a woman with bleached hair and blue eye shadow and Jon Jon wondered when he should tell him it was a man in drag. But Baxter was so far gone now he probably wouldn’t notice the difference anyway.

  Michael and Peter were keeping close. He smiled at them as he got another round in. They had been given five thousand pounds to spread a little joy round their police station. It was money well spent. They would make sure Joseph Thompson’s death was recorded as ‘Beaten to death, assailant unknown’.

  Jon Jon wanted the scum he had dealt with in England to learn of his demise. It was justice of a sort, and he had Baxter to thank for going along with it.

  They had been drinking steadily all evening but Jon Jon didn’t feel in the least drunk. He was numb, but he had done what he had set out to do and that was cause for celebration.

  He ordered another large Chivas Regal and downed it in one gulp. He was looking forward to going home next day. It was the first time he had actually looked forward to anything for so long it was a relief to know he could still feel like that.

  He was given another drink by Peter.

  ‘Cheers.’

  Peter and Michael laughed as they held up their drinks and shouted: ‘Cheers.’

  For some reason they found that expression hysterical. They were in a celebratory mood, as was Baxter.

  Jon Jon drank to a job well done, and counted the hours until he could finally be home. He needed his family more than he had ever needed them before, though he would never admit that out loud. But he felt the urge to be with his mother and sister, to make sure they were all right, had everything they needed.

  He also needed to feel the love they had for each other. It was the only thing now that was keeping him sane.

  Epilogue

  Joanie and her two remaining children sat silently in the hearse as it arrived at the cemetery. It was a cold blustery day and they wrapped their coats well around them as they got out and stood with the other mourners.

  Joanie’s eyes were dragged repeatedly to the tiny white coffin that held her daughter’s remains, retrieved by the police from a lock-up in Plaistow after an ‘anonymous’ tip-off. There’d been the remains of two other children too, East European from their dental work, but so far neither had been named.

  Monika came up and smiled sadly at her friend. Jon Jon walked away from them. He could no longer stand to see either Monika or her daughter. Monika remained impervious. She had been so impressed by Jon Jon’s new house and said so now loudly to Joanie - she never did have a proper sense of occasion. Joanie just smiled and agreed.

  It was a lovely house, right enough, but she was happy in her old flat where she still felt at any minute she might see Kira run into a room.

  Funny, but when she finally had the opportunity to live in the house she’d dreamed of, hold her dinner parties for real, she found she didn’t want to. There was a lesson to be learned there somewhere, she knew, but today she didn’t have the strength to think about it.

  It had been a lovely service. All Kira’s friends from school had attended, and all the neighbours. The flowers had been amazing.

  Joanie slipped her arm through Jeanette’s and they walked slowly towards Jon Jon, waiting by the grave-side. They hung back as they saw Big John McClellan and his two eldest boys go over to offer their condolences.

  Joanie’s son was a man of substance now, and still only eighteen years old. Paulie had signed the parlours over to him before he’d topped himself. Jon Jon had not wanted to accept them at first, said it was blood money, but Joanie had made him see sense. Paulie owed them.
/>   These days she preferred to remember him purely as her pimp: a man who’d flogged her arse for as long as it was profitable to him. A low life. A nothing.

  It was far easier that way.

  Jasper was here too, holding Jeanette’s other hand now. Joanie accepted his presence. After the events of the last months she felt any kind of love was not to be sneezed at and as no one else would put up with Jeanette, she supposed she’d better get used to having him around. Especially as the girl was pregnant by him. Jon Jon didn’t know yet, of course. She was saving it up till the right moment.