Wishing and Hoping

by Mia Dolan

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen!’

  The master of ceremonies making the announcement was a chap called Bert Laidlaw. He had a mane of white hair, a chiselled pink face and was elegantly turned out in bow tie and tuxedo.

  The light coming from the blue genie lights and the ones on the table dimmed a little as the stage brightened.

  ‘And may I now present, the one and only Cathy Cooper!’

  The audience clapped enthusiastically. Cathy Cooper was a popular singer who’d just had a big hit with an old Anne Shelton number.

  Once she was leaning against the grand piano, the familiar strains of ‘I’ll Be Seeing You’ tinkled from the piano keys.

  Marcie turned round to listen and to look, and not just because she admired Cathy Cooper. For a fleeting moment she could forget her troubles and relish the fact that the dress Cathy was wearing had been designed and made up in her own sewing room. It was tight fitting and black. Droplets of glittering jet dangled from all over it, the teardrop ends catching the light from the stage backlights.

  Sally leaned across and told her how lovely it looked. ‘A bit more work in it than the usual stuff,’ Sally added.

  She was right of course. The exotic numbers she made were tiny compared to a full-size gown. Although Cathy’s dress was off the shoulder and plunged deeply to reveal an admirable décolletage, it was still a major project compared to the bras and wispy G-strings she made for the exotic dancers and chorus girls.

  ‘She’s considering asking me to design and make two or three more, though it all depends on a tour that’s being planned and an appearance at the London Palladium. She’s also hoping to get a television appearance.’

  ‘Good for her,’ Sally whispered.

  Their faces lit by the light from the stage, they stopped talking for the duration of the performance. Once it was all over and the clapping had died down, the lights came up again.

  ‘Fancy another drink?’ asked Sally.

  ‘On the house. How about . . .?’

  Marcie looked to where Carla had been sitting. The bar stool was empty. Carla was nowhere to be seen.

  ‘Gone to the lav maybe,’ said Sally.

  ‘I didn’t see her go.’

  For the rest of the night she looked for Carla but didn’t see her. It wasn’t usual for Carla to leave without saying goodbye, but there was always a first time.

  She mentioned it to Sally when they caught up with each other after both had circulated, asking questions and generally being sociable – though listening and watching all the time.

  Sally laughed. ‘It must have been something we said.’

  ‘Of course it wasn’t.’

  It wasn’t until later on that she realised Sally had hit the nail on the head. It was something she’d said, and Carla had gone off to act upon it.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  SAM KENDAL BELIEVED in striking while the iron was hot and if Paddy Rafferty didn’t toe the line he was likely to get burned – badly! Paddy was in need of a warning and Sam Kendal was the person to do it.

  She’d given the order for Paddy to be apprehended and brought to her and here he was.

  ‘Enough!’ Sam’s voice.

  Said goon took a breather and so did Paddy, though every breath was like swallowing razor blades, his back was that sore.

  ‘What’s this all about, Sam?’ His voice creaked and blood trickled from the corner of his mouth.

  Paddy Rafferty couldn’t believe what was happening to him. His gloved hands were encapsulated in a vice and a goon with fists like steam shovels was pummelling his kidneys as though trying to beat them out of his belly.

  ‘Look, Sam. Ask your old man. I made a promise years ago that I wouldn’t tread on his toes. And I’ve never done that, Sam. Honest I have not.’

  The Irishman rushed his words and was panting with exertion. Sweat was dripping off his forehead and onto the workbench on which the vice was situated. Why was she doing this? He just didn’t get it.

  Relaxing his arms a bit so they didn’t ache so much, he moved his head so that his sweat dripped onto the floor, making penny-sized roundels on the dusty boards.

  A pair of feet clad in black patent court shoes came into view. The stockings were a smoky-grey colour. He smelled her scent, all flowery and feminine just as female perfume should be.

  The woman known as Sam Kendal ruled her husband’s empire with an iron fist. By turning his head, he managed to look up at her with one fearful eye. She was standing with her arms folded. Her jaw was rock-solid firm and there was no smile on her face.

  ‘You taking the piss, Paddy?’

  ‘No!’ he exclaimed, shaking his head vigorously. ‘I wouldn’t do that, Sam. Honest I wouldn’t.’

  She lowered her face so it was level with his. ‘I’m angry with you, Paddy, but because you’ve been loyal in the past I’m going to let you off with a warning.’

  ‘I’ve always been loyal, Sam. Always!’

  ‘Until you decided to branch out on your own, Paddy.’ She shook her head. Fine wrinkles creased the corners of her heavenly blue eyes, eyes that could be as bright as cornflowers or as cold as steel. ‘Let’s get this straight, Paddy. You’re the bloke who brings the labour over from Ireland. OK, you can dabble in a bit of property yourself when the occasion arises and when I give permission, but nobody gave you leave to muscle in on the Blue Genie. That’s our territory, Paddy. I was not consulted!’

  The word ‘I’ was shouted into his ear thus leaving him in no doubt that she meant what she said.

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘You will be!’

  Paddy gritted his teeth. He thought he’d been so careful cultivating the friendship of certain city politicians. It was so easy really. Give them a good night out when the champagne flowed and the girls were willing and they were putty in his hands – or rather putty in the hands of Sam Kendal and the company she ran for her husband. Sam Kendal was right about that. He’d acted underhand, chancing his luck by himself instead of referring the takeover to the Kendals.

  On paper the company was totally legitimate, but the Kendals were ruthless. The respectable veneer hid a multitude of more sinful sidelines. And Sam Kendal ran it all.

  ‘What about the Blue Genie, Paddy?’

  He fancied her tone of voice had changed and not for the better. There was a more incisive, icier tone to the rounded vowels. She always sounded a bit upper class, did Sam Kendal. Rumour had it she’d gone to public school – a bit like the one Princess Anne went to.

  His sweat had begun to cool, but now it ran anew. ‘I wasn’t just doing it for myself,’ he blurted.

  ‘Liar!’

  The fists pummelled into his back again. He groaned and spat blood on the floor.

  Sam began pacing up and down and it unnerved him. ‘You made one big mistake, Paddy. The Blue Genie is already ours.’

  She proclaimed the fact in a husky voice close to his ear. To all intents and purposes such a voice would turn most men on. Sam Kendal was seductive in looks and speech. In action she was ruthless and he didn’t want any more of Sam Kendal’s action. He’d made a mistake, a mistake that could lead to his death if he didn’t cover his tracks.

  ‘I didn’t know. Honest I didn’t.’

  He racked his brains as to why he hadn’t been aware that the Kendals had an interest in the Blue Genie. He thought he’d done his research well. The joint was owned by Michael Jones. What connection did Sam Kendal have with him? He couldn’t for the life of him work that one out.

  The problem was that he’d set Michael up with that Linda Bell bird. It was the sort of thing the Kendals would do themselves, so no big deal. But, to have set up someone outside the Kendal circle was one thing; to set up one of their own was something else. He couldn’t admit to what he’d done. He daren’t admit what he’d done or heads – his head in particular – would roll.

  The thing was he still couldn’t work out the connection between Michael Jones and Sam Kendal. Were they love
rs? It wouldn’t surprise him, though Michael did have a lovely little wife.

  ‘No more visits to the Blue Genie,’ Sam Kendal was saying. ‘If I hear you’ve been pushing your weight around down there I’ll cut your balls off and stuff them in your gloves for you to fondle at your leisure. Have you got that?’

  He nodded so vigorously that his head seemed in danger of falling off.

  ‘Get out of here.’ The husky voice had changed to a growl.

  Paddy was all apologies and humility. If he were to stay alive he had to be. It seemed that Sam Kendal was unaware of him setting up Michael Jones for murder. Normally he might have boasted of what he’d done and the Kendals would have gained from it. But somehow he felt that she wouldn’t be pleased and he didn’t know why. It could be that when she did find out he would be mincemeat. It struck him that he had two options: either head for a faraway place where they couldn’t reach him – Buenos Aires might be a good bet – or put somebody else in the frame. It would have to be Baxter.

  For her part, Sam Kendal had another important matter to deal with. Carla had phoned outlining a problem Marcie was having to face and it was something she could do something about.

  She called in the big bruiser who had stuffed Rafferty’s head in the vice.

  ‘How do you feel about uniforms, Neil?’

  Neil had a slow, sexy smile that she liked a lot. ‘Depends who’s wearing it – if you get my drift.’

  ‘Cheeky sod.’

  She knew he fancied her and wasn’t averse to coupling up with him once Leo was dead and buried. But not yet. She’d never been unfaithful to Leo and she wasn’t about to start now.

  ‘Not me or you,’ she returned with a grin. ‘A prison officer. A screw.’

  Chapter Thirty

  DAVID MORGAN KNEW that Marcie Jones would have to phone. He’d sensed her reluctance of course, but he’d laid it on the line: play ball with me and I’ll ensure your old man’s left alone.

  With his eyes on the clock and a whisky or two inside him, he sat ruminating on the pleasure he’d got from her phone call.

  ‘So when are you coming round?’ he’d asked her, a smirk running from ear to ear.

  ‘Tonight?’

  He could barely hear her. ‘Speak up.’

  ‘Tonight,’ she said again.

  He glanced at his watch. It was reading seven o’clock. ‘Tonight. Eight o’clock. On the dot.’ He could barely control his smug satisfaction as he stipulated the time. He gave her the address.

  He’d been inclined to say that she didn’t have much to say for herself, but he guessed she was nervous. That’s why she’d sounded so abrupt, more clipped in speech than when she visited the prison.

  Smiling, he poured himself a drink, sat down and waited.

  Car headlamps swept over the ceiling. The curtains were drawn and he resisted the urge to look out. He wanted to savour this moment, to open the door and feel her fear. She had no choice but to submit to him; not if she knew what was good for her and her old man.

  The doorbell rang. Smiling again, he took his time tipping the last of the whisky down his throat and then padded over the dark-turquoise shag pile carpet into the hallway in his slippers. His long departed wife had always stipulated that he wore slippers. Although she was dead and buried he just couldn’t get out of the habit.

  The top half of the front door constituted a glass panel. Normally he could see the shadow of the person waiting there. At this moment in time he could not. He guessed she had stood down from the doorstep. Perhaps she was even stepping away from the door, halfway to changing her mind. Well, he’d certainly take care of that!

  Smoothing back his thin fair hair, he reached for the catch and turned it. The door flew back, surprising him and hitting him off balance. Two bruisers who must have been three times the size of Marcie Jones crashed into him like two-ton bulldozers, pushing him back along the hallway and into the curtained room. A third bloke closed the door in an obscenely gentle fashion, as though they were there to have a church meeting. David Morgan’s instinct told him that religion had sod all to do with what they were there for.

  He was proved right.

  By the time they’d finished with him his guts were aching and already he was pissing blood. He could smell himself, the fear sweating out of him.

  The biggest of the three had huge hands. One of those hands was gripping him by the throat. A breathy voice said, ‘Don’t worry, old son. There won’t be any bruises. Now then, a little word from our boss. Hands off Michael Jones and his missus. While our mate Michael is in your care we want him to have the best of service. You got that?’

  David Morgan nodded; an action that immediately brought on a severe bout of coughing.

  ‘Right, old son. You’ve got the point. Now. As for Michael’s missus, it’s obvious that your hormones are more than you can handle.’

  He nodded to one of the others, a big black guy; a gold earring glinted in his left ear. Wasn’t that the sign of a poof?

  The black guy picked up the half-finished bottle of whisky. Glass shattered from its base as he hit it against the fireplace.

  David Morgan’s eyes opened wide in alarm as the jagged edges of what was left were brought to his face. He waited for the impact, the tearing of his cheeks, the gouging of an eye. As he did so he was aware of his flies being undone.

  He cried out, ‘No!’

  His eyes fastened on the jagged glass and his now flaccid penis.

  His cry became a whimper. He felt the glass cut his groin then lightly skim the stem of his John Thomas.

  ‘Christ, no,’ he whimpered.

  The blood was matting his pubic hair. He fainted when he thought they were going to cut off his tool. When he came around again he still had it. Only his groin bore the marks of their visit, plus the aching in his guts and his ribs.

  Trauma got the better of him. He retched up everything he’d ate that day, pissed some more and smelled the unmistakable stench of his own faeces as his bowels let go.

  Chapter Thirty-one

  BEING DECEMBER, THE Isle of Sheppey was shrouded in a chill mist that cloaked buildings and people like a thick gauze veil.

  It was far from cheerful and not a healthy climate, but that didn’t bother Tony Brooks. London wasn’t too healthy either, though it had to be said, London was far more exciting.

  Babs had thrown a few things at first but had come round when he’d handed over a bundle of money and promised to take her out that night. Money and drink were definitely the way to his wife’s heart – that and a good session in bed.

  For a while things were fine. He’d liked indulging the kids at first but living with Babs was not to his taste. Tony Brooks could stand his wife for just so long. He would have stayed longer on Sheppey if his sons had been around more. For the most part he got lumbered with the little girl who made him feel awkward. He still wasn’t entirely sure that she was his.

  The boys appeared surprisingly independent, a little secretive, a little more grown up than when he’d last seen them. He fancied they were involved in things they shouldn’t be, but counselled that they were still children and couldn’t possibly be turning criminal just yet, conveniently forgetting that he’d been a tearaway at their age.

  Regardless of the threat from Paddy Rafferty, he was seriously considering going back to the Smoke when someone knocked at the front door. On answering it he found himself face to face with a uniformed copper and a plainclothes bloke with shoulder-length hair and a fuzz on his upper lip that was pretending to be a moustache. Both looked surprised to see him.

  ‘Mr Brooks? Tony Brooks?’

  ‘What’s it to you?’

  ‘In a way. Can we come in?’

  ‘Why?’

  He couldn’t help being surly. Up until now the police had never paid him social visits; they always meant business. He held the door tight against his chest, the opening too narrow for a man to get through.

  ‘It’s about your boys.’ The plainclot
hes copper glanced at his notebook. ‘Arnold and Archie.’

  ‘Christ! Are they hurt?’

  He flung the door wide open and the two men stepped inside. He took them into the living room, shoved a pile of ironing aside and bid them sit down.

  ‘We’ll stand.’

  The plainclothes copper introduced himself as Lenny Oswald and his colleague as Constable Plaistow.

  Tony felt his stomach heave into his mouth. He could cope with just about anything except something tragic happening to his kids.

  ‘What is it?’ His heart hammered. He stared unblinking.

  ‘This is something of a social call.’

  Tony stared. His fear plummeted. ‘Well, that’s a bit of a turn up,’ he said scathingly.

  ‘We picked up some boys breaking into a warehouse. They reckoned they were doing it on the orders of your son, a right little Fagin by the sound of it.’

  Tony remembered enough of his schooldays – the few days he’d attended – to know that Fagin was the fence in a story called Oliver Twist. He even remembered who’d written it.

  ‘Charles Dickens! That’s the geezer who wrote that.’ After he’d said it, he realised how much he sounded like someone in a TV quiz like Take Your Pick.

  ‘Do you know where your son is?’

  ‘Why?’ His tone had turned surly. His stance was defiant.

  ‘We’ve got no real evidence, but it wouldn’t hurt to have a word with him – with your permission of course.’

  ‘Get stuffed!’

  Detective Sergeant Lenny Oswald shrugged his shoulders. He had a leaning towards helping kids before they got into trouble too deeply. It was his belief that nipped in the bud early enough a youngster could be steered back onto the straight and narrow.

  Implementing such a strategy hit the bumpers when confronted with an attitude such as that fostered by Tony Brooks. What chance did the boys have with a father like that? Lenny had heard rumours that the boys’ father wasn’t around much. Apparently he spent a lot of time up in London and was involved in God knows what.