Like Father, Like Son

by Sarah Masters

  “Are you prepared to do that?”

  “Not anymore. I would have at one time, though—but I wouldn’t have enjoyed it.”

  His way of admitting he’s already robbed an old granny?

  Curious, Matt asked, “Why the change of heart? Why do you now want to leave?”

  “Seeing Ma always makes me feel guilty. Plus, being in here has given me time to think properly. Having my fingers taken off—that’s something that also makes you think. I know this kind of shit happens, you hear about it often enough.” He shifted his gaze to his bandaged hands. “And seeing what it did to my old dear, the way it worried her when she realized who I’ve been running around for…” Robby closed his eyes. A tear trickled out. He didn’t bother wiping it away.

  “Do you want help in getting out?” Matt asked.

  Eyes still closed, Robby gave an almost imperceptible nod.

  “I’d say there’s a threat to your life going on here, isn’t there?” Matt asked.

  “A threat to Ma’s more like it,” Robby whispered. “Fuck’s sake. I didn’t think. Didn’t let myself see that far ahead. If I don’t do what I’ve been asked, someone will hurt Ma. I knew that would be the case, that it’s always the case, I just didn’t think it would happen to me.” He laughed wryly. “Like I’m special or something and the rules don’t apply. What the hell was I on? Deluded wanker.”

  “Self-recrimination will do you no good, Robby. Whoever cut your fingertips off means business. It’s no longer you just playing around with The Jugulars, is it? Got yourself into something bigger, deeper, didn’t you?”

  “Just a bit.”

  “I’d say there’s cause for you to be relocated, but someone higher up than me will have the final say in that. I’m betting the plan is it’s your fingers first, other things later. Do you know what I’m telling you, Robby?”

  Matt wanted to help this young bloke. Despite him always thinking of Robby as a wastrel, he had a form of sympathy for him now. If he could get him to another city—him and Mrs. Zeus—he might just save him yet.

  “Yeah, I know what you’re saying,” Robby slurred.

  “Are you willing to leave everything that you are behind and start again?”

  Another shrug and wince.

  “Leave it with me. There’ll be a police officer outside your room for your protection. I’ll catch up with you tomorrow, after you’re settled at home.”

  “I won’t be going home. Not to my room in the flat.”

  “Where will you be?” Matt asked, as if he couldn’t guess.

  “Ma’s. I’ll be at me ma’s.”

  Chapter Six

  Robby hadn’t been lying to that copper yesterday. He did want out, but he didn’t know how it could be successfully pulled off, not now he was working for Starky. Robby had woken from the operation with the mad need to be free—to never have to go through this sort of shit again. If he stayed with Starky and fucked something up—and he would at some point, he knew he wasn’t the sharpest of tools in the box—he’d be missing more than just his fingers in the future. A hand, maybe he could cope with that, but the other thing… No, he couldn’t cope without his ma and knowing he was the reason she’d been made to disappear.

  The thing was, she didn’t want to leave the house she’d lived in since she’d married all those years ago. Leave those walls full of memories. He’d have to convince her that it was the right thing to do. For the first time, while in the recovery room with its glaring white walls and a drip tube dangling out of his arm, he’d had the sense to really think about his situation, his life. He could find himself back in that very room farther down the line, except no skin graft and the removal of a few bones would be able to fix whatever might be done to him.

  Mental damage followed you wherever you went.

  After the hand usually came the face. Slashes from shivs that left scars.

  And they’d heal and end up looking as knobbly as a Twiglet or one of them Nik Naks crisps.

  He shuddered at the thought of that.

  Then would come a bigger smile, given to him by a knife being sliced between his lips. Then… No. He couldn’t think about what would happen after that. His old dear would just have to get it into her stubborn head that he’d gone into something dangerous, he’d put her at risk, and she’d have to relocate with him, like that copper had suggested. Yeah, she’d leave her neighbors behind, and that really nosy bit of baggage, Vera, but all of them had used his ma to some degree throughout her life. For sugar, a few teabags, the loan of a tenner here and there—money she didn’t get back more often than not. And a shoulder to cry or lean on—they used her for that the most. Why hadn’t she moved away before now? Why had she let them heap pressure on her like that?

  Because she has nothing else to do. Hasn’t got me to look after anymore. Because she’s attached to that bloody house. Because it was her first home with Dad, away from the one she grew up in.

  Robby scrunched his eyes shut. Thinking of Dad would do him no good. The bloke wasn’t coming back. He’d left too many years ago to count, and with no word since, Robby and his ma had had no choice but to accept that they hadn’t been good enough for him. Hadn’t turned out to be the kind of family he’d wanted. Rumor had whipped around the estate that he’d fucked off with some bird, a younger model who’d caught his eye in The Winchester.

  The real reason for joining The Jugulars and wishing he was in The Hardarms hit him then. He’d wanted to belong, yeah, but more than anything he’d wanted to have a load of blokes on his side, at his back, when he finally caught up with his dad. He’d dreamed of beating the crap out of him, hurting him like he’d hurt Ma. Making him pay for all the times Ma had sat crying in the middle of the night when she’d thought Robby hadn’t heard her. Robby would beat that fucker so badly he’d end up killing him. And, because he was a Jugular or a Hardarm, people would ‘clean up’ afterward, no questions asked. A favor for a fellow member. One he’d have to repay someday, but it would be worth it.

  A seed had been planted on the day that man who’d called himself a father had walked out of Robby’s life, one that had grown, unruly and dangerous—the type of emotional weed that strangled and killed off whatever it wrapped itself around.

  Like Robby’s hands if they ever managed to span his dad’s neck.

  He laughed.

  Be a bit of a job to strangle the bastard now, wouldn’t it?

  It was time to let all that shit go. Wasn’t it?

  He opened his eyes as someone came into the room. That nurse who had brought him more painkillers earlier. Nice-looking chick. Easy on the eye. She smiled, and he imagined she fancied him, that she was his wife, tending to him after an injury at work. The fantasy was a good one, but the fact that it was a fantasy smacked him hard. She was only doing her job. Just standing there writing notes on a clipboard that she’d lifted off the hook at the end of his bed. Robby doubted he’d have any sort of chance with her anyway, even if he did dredge up the balls to ask her out.

  “The doctor’ll be round in a second for a final check, then you can go home,” she said.

  She gave him another smile. A beam, it was, all gleaming white teeth—straight teeth he reckoned she’d had professionally cleaned at the dentist or by using one of those kits that were being sold everywhere these days.

  He nodded. Didn’t trust himself to speak, did he. He’d only go and say something stupid, anyway. Her badge told him she was a Louise. Suited her, that name did. She reminded him of Ursula, the girl he’d had a crush on at school, with her blonde hair that looked like it had been dyed by sunshine, her blue eyes painted by the sky.

  He held in a bubble of laughter. Since when had he become so poetic? Maybe he always had been and he hadn’t given himself a chance to blossom in that area. There he went again. Blossom. Who the hell used words like that?

  He grimaced at himself, and Louise frowned, as though she thought that grimace had been directed at her. He went to tell her it hadn’t, bu
t what was the point? She’d be gone in a minute, never to be seen again, unless he caught one last glimpse of her when he was leaving. Then his stupid fantasy would be knocked right on the head. Any idea he’d had of asking her out—and he’d really entertained it, albeit briefly—wasn’t something he could do now.

  Not if he was getting out. Leaving the city. Starting again.

  He was apprehensive yet relieved about his decision to chuck it all in. What if that changed once he was out of here, though? It was easy to imagine, while in here, fucking off into the sunset with Ma but, like when he wasn’t in her house, the old feelings would creep in once he walked through these hospital doors and into the glaring light of real life.

  Once he met up with Starky, like they’d planned.

  Shit.

  The road where Robby stood in the dark beneath an amber streetlight was out of the way and filled with expensive houses. What he wouldn’t give to live in a place like this. He reckoned he’d have to earn a fair whack to afford the rent on one of these gaffs. But with a grand a week, he could, couldn’t he?

  He had to stop thinking like that. One second he wanted out, the next he wanted in. He had to make his mind up one way or the other then stick to his decision. The not knowing which turning he’d end up taking on this mad road was doing a number on his nerves.

  Not long after arriving at Ma’s, he’d grabbed a moment to himself in the loo and had accessed the phone Starky had given him. A few text messages—polite at first then getting angrier the more of them he read—had brought him to where he was now. He’d texted back explaining he’d been in hospital, had had an op on his hands.

  He hoped Starky believed him, otherwise…

  Christ, what am I doing here? Someone in one of those houses is bound to see me, a scruffy bastard, loitering about.

  He reckoned this road had been chosen because of how unlikely it would be that someone from The Jugulars or The Hardarms would stroll down it and see them talking. Like Starky had said, no one was to know Robby worked for him. The secrecy would be the hardest part of the coming year if he continued working for Starky. He’d have to look over his shoulder more often than not, and as for his stomach being tied in knots, well… It was something he’d have to learn to live with.

  Stamping his feet to try to get some heat back into them—it’s bloody cold out here—his hands supported somewhat in his coat pockets, he thought about the slings he was supposed to wear. Louise had left them on the table over his hospital bed before she’d gone from the room to no doubt tend to some other lucky bastard. Then the doctor had come in, checked him over, and applied the slings. Robby was fucked if he’d wear them outside, where people could see what had happened, so he’d taken them off prior to leaving Ma’s tonight. Word of his missing fingers would undoubtedly have spread already—especially with Damien doing the spreading—but all the same, those slings would only draw more unwanted attention. More questions he hadn’t prepared himself enough to answer.

  The thought of being interrogated by the leader of The Jugulars just yet wasn’t something he looked forward to, either. He’d have to go and see him at some point between now and when the police could get him and Ma away, though, otherwise it’d look iffy. But first, he needed to know what Starky wanted him to say to the other leader.

  Sounds like I’ve convinced myself to stay in the city.

  A car was coming, headlights on low beam, the ends of the illuminated cones splashing on the cracked tarmac. If Ma was here, she’d say paying the council tax was a waste of time if they didn’t even use some of it to fix the roads.

  The vehicle pulled to a stop beside him, and the passenger window slid down in a silent, expensive glide. Robby bent to peer through it and, thankfully seeing Starky at the wheel and no one else with him, he got in beside the leader, making a pig’s ear of putting on his seatbelt. The damn bandages were thicker than the ones he’d had on before the op.

  “Sorry about not being able to text you or ring sooner,” Robby said. “The filth turned up at Ma’s and took me to hospital.”

  “What the fuck were they doing at your mum’s? How did they know you were there?” Starky shoved into gear and peeled away, taking a right at the end of the street.

  The engine was so quiet it was like the car drifted by itself. The strong scent of leather from the seats had the potential to give Robby a migraine.

  “They’d been looking for me, hadn’t they—thought I was dead or something.” Robby laughed, hating how easy it was for him to slip right back into being who he no longer wanted to be.

  “What the hell gave them that idea?” Starky glanced across at him. “Why would they think you were dead?”

  Is he testing me? He looks like he knows something.

  “Because Damien—or someone else—has been leaving the ends of my fingers all round the city, that’s why.” He hadn’t meant to sound so thuggish, so on-the-same-level as Starky, so rude, but shit!

  “You what?”

  “Yeah. After he cut each one off, he put them in public places, apparently. The police fingerprinted them, got a hit because of that time I was picked up for being a lookout on that Tesco robbery. They guessed it was gang related, thought I was being tortured—that I’d end up dead. So they went to Ma’s and—

  “That fucking bastard!”

  Starky slapped the heel of his hand on the steering wheel. The horn barked and Robby just about jumped out of his damn skin. Thinking it best not to say anything else, he stared ahead as they drove on. They were traveling the road he’d told that copper he’d been left on. The warehouses stood to the left, and his stomach rolled over at the prospect of why this location had been chosen for a ‘chat’. Was he going to be offed here, his body left to be found by people come the morning? Or would all traces of him disappear, a clean-up crew doing their best to remove evidence that he’d ever been there?

  And this was the life I thought I wanted? Sodding hell…

  He shivered, a lump growing in his throat. He’d left his Ma’s about an hour ago, telling her everything would be all right, that he’d be back before she’d even had time to worry, but he hadn’t told her he loved her.

  He wished he had now.

  Starky parked up between two warehouses, right down the bottom so the darkness seemed absolute. Robby shivered again, and his hands started throbbing, as though they were warning him of the danger to come. He should have known better—should have known Starky didn’t really want him as his right-hand man. It had all been a ruse, something to lure him in, so he trusted Starky and came here with him tonight.

  “Something’s happened,” Starky said, his voice carrying a bitter edge.

  Something had happened all right, and Robby was about to pay the price. He could open the car door and run—he hadn’t heard Starky engaging the child locks when he’d climbed inside—but it would be a pointless endeavor. Starky would be on him like a shot. The man might not engage in gang business in that way, but he kept himself fit enough that he could chase after the likes of Robby.

  “What’s that then?” Robby asked, trying to sound nonchalant.

  “Katrina’s been murdered.”

  Robby’s mouth gaped open. He hadn’t expected that. Who the chuff had the bollocks to kill her? They had to have a death wish. Unless… Oh, no. No. “And you think it’s me?” It made sense now, him being brought here. Yeah, it all made fucking sense.

  “You?” Starky’s rusty laugh reverberated in the small space. “Nah, it wasn’t you—you were with me when it happened. Yesterday morning. While we were chomping down on Whoppers, she was… Yeah.”

  Robby couldn’t digest it. His former question repeated itself.

  Who the hell would have the balls to kill Katrina Starky?

  “I know who I think it was, but I can’t prove it just yet,” Starky said.

  “Not Damien, surely?” All his blood seemed to slide down inside him to pool in his lower legs and feet. Cold—he’d gone well cold. He didn’t think
any blanket on the planet would stop the chill that began spreading upward to encompass his whole body.

  “Makes sense, doesn’t it? You’d caught him messing about with her. He’d have been worried she’d open her mouth, confess to me if you told me what she’d been up to. He had to shut her up.”

  “Fucking hell…”

  “Yeah, fucking hell, and before you know it you’ll have those coppers knocking on your ma’s door again.”

  He knew he would—but they wouldn’t be calling on him for any reason Starky meant. Earlier, Detective Blacksmith had rung Ma’s landline to arrange a meeting about relocation. Him and that other copper—Thaxton or whatever he was called—were coming round to Ma’s tomorrow to discuss things.

  “What would they want with me?” Robby asked. “I told them what you said to tell them. It should be done and dusted now. I didn’t give up any names, I said I didn’t want nothing to do with their investigation about my fingers, and that was that.”

  “They didn’t tell you?” Starky laughed again.

  Man, he sounds nasty.

  “Tell me what?”

  Starky reached up to flick on the interior light. Robby was instantly uneasy seeing the gang leader’s face, with his eyebrows meeting in the middle and his mouth all skewed in a sneer.

  “Katrina had a severed finger shoved up her cheating cunt.”

  Robby winced. The sentence had been delivered with such venom he reckoned he’d never forget it. From those words alone he could tell Starky was hurting. That he’d loved Katrina, and what she’d done right under his nose had given Starky deeper cuts than any Robby had ever received.

  “Shit,” Robby breathed. “Shit.”

  “Yeah. Shit.” Starky stared through the windshield. He blew air out, his cheeks inflating. “Your finger, I’m betting.”

  Starky hadn’t needed to say that. Robby had worked it out well enough by himself.

  “So he’s trying to frame me for it,” Robby said.

  “Seems so, except the police know it wasn’t you—because how can you have killed her with hands like that? I know coppers like to frame people, but that would be taking things a bit too far. No judge or jury would believe you capable.”