by Julie Thomas
She frowned and wagged her finger at him. ‘For goodness sake, you go straight into that bathroom and scrub your hands with hot water and soap. Get right underneath the nails. Whatever will Nanny say?’
Marcus grinned. ‘Nothing, because you’re not going to tell her.’
Vinnie followed him into the bathroom and they washed their hands. He scrubbed his as the cook had ordered, but Marcus just rinsed his under the cold tap and dried them on the towel. When they came back, Cookie was pouring two glasses of cola for them.
‘Have you made any scones, Cookie?’
She frowned at him. ‘It’s nearly time for tea.’
Marcus wrapped his arms around her waist. ‘Oh please! We’ve been playing for ages and we’re so hungry. Aren’t we, Vinnie?’
Vinnie was surprised at how hungry he was. He nodded solemnly. ‘Actually, I am, and scones are delicious. My mum –’
Marcus saw an opening and pounced. ‘I bet your mum’s aren’t anything like as good as Cookie’s. She makes the best scones and homemade strawberry jam.’
Cookie smiled fondly down at him. ‘As it happens, I do have some scones and jam, and even some whipped cream!’
CHAPTER TWO
MARCUS
‘What’s your name, pretty lady?’
She took a drag on her cigarette and turned to look at him. He was leaning on the bar and playing with a drink coaster; his frame was tall, muscular and powerful.
‘What kind of a pick-up line is that, Mr Lane?’
He smiled, and she could see that he was pleased that she knew who he was. ‘Just a simple question. You have me at a disadvantage.’
‘Melissa Morrison.’
‘Now, if I said “pretty name for a pretty lady”, that would be a lame pick-up line.’
Her laugh was deep and throaty. ‘You could just buy me a drink and we’ll go from there.’
Melissa Morrison was the daughter of an enforcer who worked for many of East London’s gangs, including the Kray twins. A pretty, green-eyed blonde with a sharp tongue and plenty of street smarts, she’d had a tough upbringing, with her father frequently in jail and her mother liking to drink.
Norman Lane was the heir to a well-established dynasty, and that made him a catch. So, he had a temper and a reputation for physical cruelty – Melissa was used to men like that. When Norman took her home, Tobias liked her. She had an old head on young shoulders, and she knew how to calm his son’s violent side. Tobias wanted his fiery, impetuous son to marry into the ‘family’, someone who would understand what her husband did for a living, know her place, and have no qualms about the source of her lifestyle.
Norman was infatuated, and in April 1965 they were married in an elaborate, somewhat ostentatious church wedding with a huge reception. On that day she told her new husband that if he ever laid a finger on her in anger, she would take her revenge with a knife in the middle of the night and he would never see it coming. He laughed, until he realised she wasn’t laughing. She fell pregnant on the Italian honeymoon and, on 6 January 1966, Marcus Tobias Lane was born.
‘What’s your house like, then?’
Marcus looked at the boy playing across from him in the sandpit in the local park. He obviously didn’t have a nanny.
‘It’s very big, but not as big as my granddad’s house,’ Marcus said.
‘Who lives in your house?’
‘The gardener and the cook, they live in a cottage. And Billy, he’s the chauffeur, and Mrs Teed, she’s the housekeeper and her husband is our butler, Maurice. And Nanny, of course.’
Melissa had hired a woman who came from the ‘family’ and knew the kind of upbringing the Lanes wanted for their son. His earliest memory was Nanny taking him into the drawing room to see his parents and the large train track that covered the carpet. He ran to the shiny black engine and all the carriages. ‘A train!’
His father got down on one knee beside him. ‘I’m going to get Maurice to set this up in the playroom. Look at all the things you can put in there. It can pull a passenger train or a freight train.’
The engine felt cold and smooth under Marcus’s small fingers. He pushed it along the carpet. ‘Make it go, Daddy!’
His father laughed. ‘Maurice will, I promise.’
In July 1970 Melissa had a daughter, and they called her Millicent after Tobias’s mother. From the moment she came home, Millie was the centre of her big brother’s life. He helped Nanny to bath her, dress her and feed her, and he pushed the pram when they went for walks. For a while he insisted that Nanny call him ‘Marcus Big Brother’, telling his parents it was his Red Indian name. Life was blissful.
Then towards the end of that year he sensed a change in Nanny’s behaviour. She told him he was growing up and, at nearly five, he was now too old to sit on his father’s lap. And yet she started to give him hugs out of the blue for no reason. It was all very confusing.
‘Do you want Christmas to come, Nanny?’
She was feeding Millie and answered without looking at him. ‘Of course. All that food and presents and snow.’
Marcus nodded. ‘Then it’ll be next year. And then you know what happens? My birthday!’
There was a moment of silence.
‘Do you know what you’re going to give me for my birthday?’ he asked.
‘What would you like?’
He grinned. He liked this game.
‘A real giraffe. Or maybe an elephant or a lion.’
She gave him her usual good-natured laugh.
‘Now where would you put a giraffe? We certainly don’t have room for an elephant, and what would we feed a lion?’
‘Daddy would make Billy build me a giraffe house, like we saw at the zoo. We could feed it branches from a tree.’
‘Wouldn’t you rather have a seal? It could swim in your granddad’s lake.’
He squealed with joy. ‘Seal eat fish. I could feed my goldfish to the seal.’
On 6 January, Marcus was given an enormous stuffed toy giraffe with its own wooden giraffe house. He tried not to show his disappointment at the fact that his goldfish were safe. After a birthday tea with cake and lemonade, he made a snowman in the garden with his parents. Then they explained to him that his life was about to change. The halcyon days with Nanny were over, and it was time for him to start growing into a man; it was time for school.
Later in life he would go to Priory College, an elite public school, but his first school was a primary in the East End. Williams Street was a school with a roll no one talked about, because if the locals talked about where many of the children came from, someone might visit them with a sledgehammer and a not-so-polite request for silence.
Marcus was oblivious to all this on his first day, in his new uniform and shiny shoes, with his writing book and pencil case. He sat very still on the mat with all the other beginners and listened to the rules. At playtime he followed some of them to the bathroom and urinated in public for the first time in his life.
‘Who are you?’
He looked up to see two older boys looking down at him. A shiver of unease ran down his back.
‘Marcus Lane,’ he said quietly.
‘First day, Lane?’
The questioner was a thickset boy with longish hair and glasses.
‘Yes.’
‘Do you know what happens on the first day?’
Marcus frowned. ‘No.’
Both boys laughed.
‘No one told you about the induction, then?’
‘No.’
They grabbed him by a shoulder each and picked him up. His feet, in their new shoes, dangled off the ground. He was about to demand that they put him down, but before the words came out they had carried him into a nearby stall and thrust him head-first into a toilet bowl.
‘Welcome to Williams, Lane.’
Marcus decided to obey their threats and tell no one, not the teacher, not Nanny, not his parents, but on the evening of his fourth day something changed.
Nanny wa
s putting him to bed. ‘Would you like to get back at those boys who are dunking you in the toilet?’
He looked up at her in astonishment. ‘How do you know about that?’
She smiled. ‘I just do, and I have a plan.’
The next morning she gave him a plastic bowl and instructed him to pee into it. Then she transferred the contents into a small water pistol and put it in his pocket.
‘Just as they go to dunk you, pull free and squirt them both in the face with your gun. Can you do that?’
Marcus grinned at her. He knew exactly what to do. ‘I can and I won’t miss.’
He was so excited that he could hardly wait until playtime, but he knew part of the ‘game’ was to appear as scared as ever. He walked with the other children into the bathroom and waited for his tormentors to approach. They were a little late and he was beginning to worry that they had given up.
‘You still using the bathroom, Lane?’
The familiar sensation of being lifted up by the shoulders followed, and he had only a second to slip his hand into his blazer pocket. The gun felt reassuringly hard under his fingers. As they put him down and went to grab his head, he kicked out and spun free. He had a split second to pull the gun out, aim for a face and pull the trigger.
‘Ahhhh!’ The boy’s hands went to his eyes.
Marcus swung around and squirted the rest at the other culprit.
‘Shit! That stings!’
Both boys ran out and started washing their faces at the basins. Marcus pushed the gun back into his pocket and straightened his clothes. He paused behind the boys still bent over the taps. ‘Don’t ever touch me again.’
To his surprise, his classmates came up to him throughout the day and talked to him, asked to be his friend and seemed really impressed with what he had done. Slowly he began to pick up the language of the playground, and when he swore at home he expected Nanny to reprimand him like she used to, but she didn’t.
Three boys who lived close to the school asked him if he would like to be in their gang. One often had bruises on his face and arms, but Marcus didn’t dare ask why. They were tough kids and they expected him to be tough too. It was time to get some advice.
‘Dad?’
His father looked up from the notebook on his desk. ‘Marcus. Come in.’
Norman got up and walked over to the sofa, sat down and patted the spot beside him. Marcus missed sitting on his father’s lap but understood that he was too old for that now. He ran to the sofa and sat down.
‘How’s school?’ Norman asked.
‘Okay, I guess. I want to know something.’
His father nodded. ‘Ask away, little man.’
‘I have three friends – Mikey, Rory and Tom – and we’re in a gang together. They don’t like Jimmy Richardson because he’s scared all the time. When we talk to him, he cries. Tom wants Rory and me to beat him up. If I don’t, they won’t let me be in their gang anymore.’
‘Do you like them?’ his father asked.
‘I guess so. Tom’s dad hits him, but Rory said Tom deserves it ’cause he answers back. Rory and Mikey do everything Tom tells them. Rory lets me share his lunch, and he shows me his dinosaur books. Tom says books are stupid.’
‘Beating up Jimmy – this is Tom’s idea?’
Marcus nodded slowly. ‘Everything we do is Tom’s idea.’
His father studied him for a moment.
‘Tom’s a leader, but you need to be a leader too. Tom’s right – if this Jimmy is weak and cries, then he needs to toughen up. Weak men don’t make it in this world.’
Marcus watched his father closely. ‘So it’s okay, then?’
‘What’s Tom’s other name?’
Marcus frowned and thought hard.
‘Tom McGregor.’
Norman smiled. ‘Thought so. I know his dad – he works for us sometimes. A good man, a hard man. This is what I want you to do: listen up.’
Marcus nestled closer and focused his full attention on his father.
The next day he met Tom, Rory and Mikey in their usual place behind the janitor’s shed. Marcus could hear his father’s words ringing in his ears as he approached them: Make a tight ball with your hand, lock your wrist and drive from your shoulder, through your elbow.
He clenched his hand into a fist, walked straight up to Tom and punched him in the chest. The boy doubled over in pain, and Marcus drove his fist upwards in a savage upper cut that knocked Tom to the ground.
‘What are you doing?’ Rory yelled.
Marcus waited until Tom stood up. Marcus was at least two inches taller, and the height advantage meant he could glare down at his opponent. Tom was rubbing his chin but said nothing.
‘I’m the top dog now, and we’re going to do what I say. Rory and Tom, you’re going to beat up Jimmy Richardson – this afternoon, when he takes a shortcut across the back field.’
The other two boys looked at Tom, who shrugged his agreement.
Eighteen months after he started school, Marcus was a changed boy. His father had taught him how to clench his fist, draw his elbow back and throw a strong, accurate punch. When he had a boy on the ground, he knew where to bite and use his nails to inflict maximum pain. On the odd occasion he came out on the wrong side of a dust-up, he knew how to rub it hard and swallow his tears so no one saw that it hurt.
In class he had raced ahead of his friends. Nanny had taught him well, and from day one he could write him own name and follow simple words in a book. He enjoyed the playground and the sports ground more, the rough and tumble of physical play. His frame was tall and thin, deceptively strong and fit, and undergoing a growth spurt.
Tom had decided that he wanted Marcus as his best friend, so had taken him home to show him where his father hid the guns, chains and baseball bats. Marcus was fascinated by the weapons, the weight of them in his hands, the menace they contained just by their shape and purpose. He had overheard conversations at home, but he had never actually seen a gun before.
‘You never point a gun at someone unless you mean to use it,’ Marcus said, with the usual authority in his voice.
‘What about to scare them?’ Tom asked.
‘Well, maybe that’s okay. But you need to know if it’s loaded. I might point this at you for fun and pull the trigger, and someone might have left it loaded and I might blow your brains out.’
One fateful Saturday afternoon they were playing in the garage, pretending to drive one of the classic cars Tom’s father collected. The double doors at one end swung open and two men staggered in, dragging a third between them. The middle man was covered in blood. When the two men let him go, he fell to the ground.
‘Leave him here until dark. Get the van.’
Marcus tugged on Tom’s sleeve and pointed to the footwell below them. Both boys sank down and curled into balls. Tom had more room because Marcus was on the driver’s side and some of his space was taken up with pedals. Marcus closed his eyes tight and tried to hold his breath. The men were walking away, he could hear their footsteps on the floor, then something must have grabbed one of them and he tripped.
‘Don’t leave me! I … won’t tell … anyone. I need –’
The voice was muffled as though the speaker had something in his mouth.
‘Just shut the fuck up!’
There was a hard whack, the sound of something hitting concrete followed by a loud groan, then more footsteps and the slamming of the doors. Marcus opened his eyes and watched Tom. The boy’s face was flushed and his eyes mirrored the excitement Marcus felt. Tom put his finger to his lips and they both waited in silence. Eventually Marcus pulled himself up and peered over the dashboard. He looked back at Tom.
‘They’ve gone,’ he whispered. ‘Come on.’
Slowly the boys climbed out of the car and shut the doors behind them as quietly as they could.
The man lay face-down on the concrete, a pool of blood spreading from under his head. Marcus reached out with his foot and tentatively kicked
the body. It didn’t move.
‘He’s dead,’ said Tom in a normal voice.
Marcus stared at the man’s scalp: the black hair was matted with blood, and he could see bone sticking out from the wound.
‘What did they hit him with?’ Tom asked.
‘I don’t know. A bat, an iron bar.’
He could hear Tom walking to the door, but Marcus’s limbs felt heavy and wouldn’t move, even if he told them to. It was the most horrible and amazing thing he had ever seen, and he wanted to remember it.
‘Marcus, come on! Before they look for us.’
Reluctantly, Marcus pulled himself away and joined Tom in the doorway. He looked over his shoulder, but Tom pulled him around.
‘We didn’t see anything, we were never here. If Dad finds out, he’ll thrash us both.’
CHAPTER THREE
TOM
Tom McGregor’s earliest memory was the sound of his father’s fists on bone, his mother screaming as she was dragged down the hall by her hair, and his elder sisters shielding him from the fallout. He was the same age as Marcus and Vinnie for part of the year, born in the East End in December 1966 to Dorothy and Stuart McGregor. He was their fourth child and first son, and over the next seven years they had another boy and then twin boys.
Stuart was a brutal, Glaswegian-born enforcer for hire, which meant he worked as a bouncer and as muscle for gangs who needed money collected or if they wanted to persuade clients that protection was worth paying for. He helped pimps establish new territory by persuading existing hookers to leave, and occasionally he boxed bare-knuckle fights for a purse. What he didn’t do was kill people, not for any price. If he went to jail, it was for more minor offences and never for very long. If he hadn’t had a fondness for drink and a gambling addiction, his family could have lived quite well off the money he earned.
Dorothy took in washing and ironing for people who couldn’t, or wouldn’t, do their own. Tom spent his early years playing among other people’s clothing, which was hanging on lines inside and outside the housing estate flat where they lived. He learned young to share – food, clothes, toys, his bed – and if someone had something he wanted for his family, he learned to take that as well. He was a stocky little boy, strong and fearless, and he could punch and kick almost before he could walk.
