Nameless

by Jessie Keane

‘Yeah, boss.’

  ‘This means you can pick and choose your own jobs,’ said Mr Ward. ‘Delegate any you don’t fancy. And it means you keep an eye on things.’ Mr Ward stared into Kit’s eyes. ‘You watch my back, son. Anybody thieves off me, you let me know. Anybody tries to cross me, you sort them out. You know the drill. Reggie taught you.’

  And it was as simple as that. Kit was in charge of Mr Ward’s boys.

  To Kit, it was like winning the pools.

  ‘How’s it going then, Kit?’ asked Gilda as he passed her in the bar.

  Kit paused. He’d been at pains to avoid contact with Gilda since she’d first propositioned him. She was sitting at the bar, flaunting her long tanned legs in a white miniskirt, her golden-blonde hair spilling down her back, wearing a tight-fitting black top that hugged her opulent breasts. She wore a ton of elaborate make-up that made her sea-green eyes look even more beautiful than they already were. She also wore a gold charm-bracelet, gold necklaces, bangles, earrings. She dripped with gold. All presents from Tito, Kit guessed. She looked good enough to eat, and she knew it.

  ‘Fine,’ he said. ‘Just got promotion.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Oh? How?’

  ‘Pillow talk with Tito.’ She tapped her nose. ‘Michael likes you. Everyone’s been telling him how good you are. Including me.’

  Kit thought this was an exaggeration of her own influence. He’d been watching her and Tito together, and they didn’t seem that close. Mr Ward didn’t seem that close to Tito, either. Kit’s feeling was that Michael Ward tolerated Tito as an occasional business partner: but there was no love lost there.

  ‘You know what?’ Gilda was smiling. One of her long-nailed fingers was running up and down the stem of her Babycham glass on the bar. The charms on her bracelet jingled. ‘I bet you’re more than good. I bet you’re very impressive.’

  Kit looked straight into her smiling green eyes. She wasn’t talking about the work now.

  ‘Get you something?’ asked the barman.

  ‘Beer,’ said Kit.

  ‘What, you having a drink with me? That’s progress.’

  ‘Just a word,’ said Kit.

  ‘Oh? Just one? I expected two.’

  Kit half-smiled. The barman brought his beer and put it down on the mat. There was no charge; there never was for Mr Ward’s boys.

  ‘Thanks,’ said Kit, and took a long, cool mouthful. Then he turned to Gilda and said very quietly: ‘Not your place. Not mine. Go to the Long Bar in Maidstone, and watch you’re not followed. Next week, let me know a day.’

  With that, Kit swallowed the rest of his pint, and turned and walked away.

  66

  1967

  Charlie had finally relented and let Ruby visit him in prison. She had never been within spitting distance of a prison before. Wandsworth depressed her instantly, with its disinfectant stink and its air of sad hopelessness. She was ushered by a prison warder into the visiting room with a large group of others. Though Ruby had dressed down for the occasion, she still stood out. She was taller than most women in the room, and darker, and more elegant.

  Looking around at the others, she was struck by how poor they looked, how haggard, how beaten down, and she understood. Bad enough to be dirt-poor, but to have a husband or a boyfriend or father inside was more than most women could stand.

  The prisoners were filing in now. She kept her head down. Already she’d had enough of this place and she wondered if she was doing a stupid thing, coming here. It had been quite an experience, just getting it all arranged. The Home Office had wanted her photograph, and they had to approve her visit or she couldn’t come.

  Now she almost wished she hadn’t bothered to go to all that effort. Her and Charlie had never got on. All too often she had been the target for his brutality. Bullish Joe had been able to stand up to him; she had not. But she had to do this. This was about her son.

  Just get on with it, she told herself.

  ‘Sis?’

  Ruby looked up. There was a stranger standing there. At least, that was her first thought. But after a split second she recognized this aged man as Charlie, her brother. He didn’t smile. He sat down on the other side of the small table that acted as a barrier between the visitor and the visited. Strange that the first thing Ruby’s mind did was leap back to her childhood. Charlie had always triggered a flinch response in her, like Dad – even now, as an adult, she expected a cuff around the ear.

  She remembered all those times he had sat there grinning and watched their dad pummel her with his fists or lash her with his belt, never trying to intervene. Slapping her himself, time and again. At least Joe had always had the decency to get out of the room when all that happened. But Charlie had relished it.

  Ruby looked around. The warder was standing at the side of the room, watching everyone. Any trouble, he’d be there in an instant. That reassured her.

  She looked back at Charlie. His eyes were the same. But they were sadder, like they’d seen too much. And his curly hair was thin now, his scalp showing palely through wisps of it, and its blackness had faded to white. His face, once so full of life, was still and almost devoid of expression; deep lines ran down beside his mouth, and his eyes were almost lost in folds of loose skin and a network of wrinkles.

  Charlie sat down, folded his arms over his chest.

  ‘Now don’t tell me you’ve come to pay me a social visit at last, Sis,’ he said, half-smiling.

  Ruby eyed him coolly. ‘Why the fuck would I?You always hated me, just like Dad did.’

  Charlie threw back his head and laughed at that. He didn’t deny it.

  ‘Then what you doing here?’ he asked her, tipping his head on one side in a movement she knew so well.

  He was still a scary, intimidating man. It was all in the eyes, in the body movement. Joe had told her before this visit that Charlie was Category A, kept in a maximum-security block away from the ‘regular’ cons, and considered to be a danger to the public.

  ‘Everywhere he goes inside, he’s signed on,’ Joe had said.

  She had asked what that meant.

  ‘Like when he goes from the workshop to the cells, he’s signed in by a warder, and when he’s out in the grounds there’s an escort and a dog handler with him, and when he comes back indoors, he’s signed for again. He’s checked every hour of the day and night. His cell’s impregnable.’

  ‘What, they think he’s going to make a break for it or something?’ asked Ruby, horrified and fascinated.

  ‘Maybe. Or do somebody who looks at him the wrong way. You know Charlie.’

  Oh yes. She knew Charlie all right.

  ‘So, what you doing here then? Asking after my health?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t care about your health,’ said Ruby.

  ‘What then?’

  ‘The baby. The little boy. I want to know who had him,’ said Ruby.

  She hadn’t ever contacted Daisy like she’d told Joe she would. To her shame, she had lost her nerve. Tried to work herself up to it, and failed. She felt a crushing weight of guilt over Daisy. She had been paid to give up her daughter. But now, at least she had summoned her courage to find out about her son. She had to get some answers.

  Now Charlie really did laugh. He laughed so hard Ruby thought he was about to have a stroke. She hoped so. But not before he told her what she needed to hear.

  ‘What’s funny?’ she asked when his laughter wore itself out.

  ‘You,’ said Charlie, the smile dropping from his face, leaving it hard and mean. ‘You’re funny. All these fucking years and not a visit, not so much as a kiss-my-arse or nothing. Now suddenly you pitch up and tell me you’re a concerned mother. Don’t give me that bullshit.’

  ‘I want to know where he is.’

  ‘Yeah. Well.’ He shrugged again.

  Ruby had never hit anyone in her entire life. Now she found herself wanting to fling herself across the table to smack his big meaty head so hard it would bleed.

&nb
sp; ‘So where is he?’ she asked.

  Charlie stared at her. This pleased him, she could see it; that she wanted something from him, that he had her at a disadvantage. ‘He’s dead,’ he said.

  Ruby felt her stomach drop away. ‘What?’

  Charlie leaned forward, rested his elbows on the table. Ruby leaned back.

  ‘Chap who used to do fire-watching in the war,’ said Charlie, smiling and speaking in a low hissing whisper. ‘He got rid of things people didn’t want. Had a vat of sulphuric down in the cellar. People who’d crossed them. People who wouldn’t pay up. And,’ he leaned closer, his voice dropping, hardening, ‘bastard black babies.’

  Ruby tried to draw breath and found she couldn’t. She had to gulp, hard. Clutch at her chest with both hands. She stared at his hated face.

  ‘You’re lying,’ she gasped out.

  Charlie sat upright again, looking at her like she was the lowest form of life.

  ‘Like you give a shit,’ he said. ‘Talk about history repeating itself. Mum was a slag, and so are you. She had it off with a black who worked in a jazz club, she did. I remember it all like it was yesterday. Took boiling-hot baths and drank gin to try and lose it, you know. Maybe that’s why she died when you were born. Maybe she did some damage inside. I ain’t lying about the kid. And you never cared up to now. So what’s changed?’

  Dead? Ruby was still trying to take it in. The horrible, loathsome words pouring out of his mouth . . . a fire-watcher in the war. . . sulphuric . . .

  She couldn’t get her breath. All she could hear was a pulse, beating hard in her head. Her chest was a sea of pain.

  Her baby.

  Dissolved in acid.

  She swallowed hard, tasting bile. ‘Does Joe know about this?’ she asked faintly.

  ‘Yeah. Sure he does. When your sister behaves like a tart, what you supposed to do? You cover her tracks, you don’t want your family disgraced. Joe understood that.’

  Joe had known about this?

  Ruby jumped to her feet.

  ‘It was just a bit of filth, to be disposed of,’ said Charlie, and he actually looked pleased to be saying these awful things. ‘Bad blood only makes bad blood. Best to do away with it. Kid would only have been trouble. And be grateful – you made a good bit of wedge out of the girl.’

  ‘You bastard,’ said Ruby.

  She turned and fled the room.

  ‘Nice of you to come and see me, Sis!’ roared after her, and the sound of his laughter was echoing around her head as she went through the prison gates.

  She sagged against the wall outside, her stomach churning. She doubled over, and was suddenly sick.

  ‘You all right, love?’ called one of the men at the gate.

  She wiped her mouth, panting, crying.

  Her baby.

  And Joe had known.

  Not answering, she reeled away and headed for home.

  67

  The more Kit learned about Michael Ward, the more he admired him. Mr Ward was a big figure in the East End, deeply feared and respected, and a patron of many charities. He raised thousands for the Aberfan Disaster Fund, when a slag heap smothered a Welsh village school, and kept donations flooding in to the Hackney Road Queen Elizabeth Hospital for children. Michael Ward dined with peers of the realm at gentlemen’s clubs in the West End, held court with film stars.

  But Kit had no illusions. His boss had a hugely impressive public façade and some friends in very high places, but he was also a crook. He was paid protection all around the city, and his breakers and enforcers made sure that no one slacked when the time came to cough up.

  The business kept Kit on his toes. He was always sending his lads off to this arcade or that shop to chase late payments. Some of the venues he visited in person, just to keep his hand in, keep his ear to the ground. Or, when a venue was new, Mr Ward himself sometimes showed up, to make sure that everything was done as it should be.

  So it was Michael Ward himself who kept the appointment he’d made to see the owner of the new department store near Marble Arch. He was ushered into the office of a tall dark-skinned woman in her forties, elegantly dressed in an ivy-green business suit and white shirt. Her sleek black hair was tied back in a bun and there was a no-nonsense look in her beautiful brown eyes.

  ‘Hello, I’m Ruby Darke,’ she said, indicating that he should take a seat while she went round behind the desk and sat there.

  Truth to tell, she was rushed off her feet and barely even noticing who the hell she was speaking to. Sometimes she didn’t know how she coped at all, but running the company had at least kept her busy over the years, taking her mind off what could have been. If only it could also stop her reliving that visit to Charlie, and hearing again all those foul things he’d said.

  Her business was sprawling out now. She had enthusiastically followed Marks & Spencer’s brilliant idea of a nationwide distribution network to move chilled and dried foods around the country with speed and efficiency. Darkes now boasted a fleet of thermostatically controlled refrigeration vehicles to carry chilled meats and poultry, so that fresh produce as well as frozen could be provided to the consumer. A big consumer panel had been taking up much of her time, and she now felt that she knew everything she needed to know – in fact, more than she needed to know – about the merits of fresh chicken over frozen.

  ‘I can’t spare much time, I’m afraid,’ she said. ‘I don’t usually see sales reps at all, I generally leave that to the buyers. And it’s pretty late in the day . . .’

  ‘Ah, well,’ said Michael. ‘That’s all right. Because I’m not a sales rep.’

  On the phone to her secretary Jane, he’d said he was.

  Ruby looked at him. Took in the sharp suit, the iron-grey hair, the hard grey unblinking eyes that held hers. He was, she realized for the first time, an extremely attractive man. His appearance was wealthy, cared-for, beautifully groomed. But . . . the only time in her life she’d seen a similar expression in a man’s eyes was when she looked in her brother Charlie’s. Joe’s had that look, too, but to a lesser degree. It was a look that said: I don’t give a fuck who you are; I’m in charge here.

  ‘Then what are you? Exactly?’ she asked, all thoughts of poultry gone from her mind.

  She’d had the week from hell and now she had this dangerous-looking, frankly gorgeous man in here playing silly buggers. Ever since she’d visited Charlie, she hadn’t been able to get what he’d said out of the forefront of her mind, and this Saturday was the christening of Joe and Betsy’s second child, a brand-new baby boy. She was going to attend, and she was going to get some straight answers out of Joe if it was the last thing she did.

  ‘Just a businessman,’ said Michael with a light shrug. ‘I like to offer my services to people to make sure they have no problems. Keep out the unruly elements, and so on.’

  Ruby stared at him. Now she knew exactly what he was.

  ‘Don’t you usually send the breakers in first?’ she asked.

  ‘What?’ He stared at her, wrong-footed.

  ‘The breakers. Soften the mark up a bit.’

  This intrigued him. She knew about his business. He half-smiled.

  ‘Not when the mark’s a lady. Besides, I don’t want to break you.’ His smiled widened slightly. His eyes teased hers. ‘Yet.’

  Ruby stared right back at him. ‘I have a brother who can handle security for me,’ she said. ‘Perhaps you know him: Joe Darke.’

  Joe was still doing his iffy deals, but that was nothing to do with her. She didn’t want to know about Joe’s ‘business’ – it just reminded her of the bad old days with Charlie. But Michael Ward wasn’t to know that.

  The grey eyes blinked, once.

  ‘I know Joe. Top man.’

  ‘So you see, the issue of protection for my business is already covered. But thank you for the offer.’ Actually, she wouldn’t dream of asking Joe for help. She knew he still did the loan-sharking and other stuff, but she didn’t want to know about it: she neve
r had, not even when Charlie was out on the loose and involved in it all.

  Michael smiled slightly. ‘I never knew he had a sister. Never connected the two in my mind. Joe Darke and Darkes the store.’

  No, a sister’s not worth talking about. Not worth mentioning, not among the men of the Darke family, she thought.

  ‘Well, he has,’ she said. ‘And I’m it.’ Ruby stood up in one smooth movement. ‘And now, if that’s all . . . ? I have a busy schedule.’

  Michael thought that maybe this was a bluff. Maybe she wasn’t Joe and Charlie Darke’s sister. Michael knew Charlie had gone down for the mail van robbery during the war. He knew he was still doing time for it. He knew Joe had taken over the reins. But a sister called Ruby? He’d never heard a word about that.

  He’d seen Ruby Darke occasionally in the business pages. She was clearly intelligent, which was good: he hated dumb women. And she was fabulous to look at. He’d already decided he wanted her in bed. The famous Ruby Darke – the Ice Queen, they called her – intrigued him. Unmarried, childless, relentless in her pursuit of profit. And yet . . . hadn’t there been stories about a wild past as a Windmill girl? Stories she had always sidestepped with a brisk: ‘No comment.’ And she was as stunning in the flesh as she was in the papers. Cold as permafrost, yes – but a beauty.

  ‘You don’t look like Joe,’ he said.

  Ruby knew that. She was dark-skinned, exotic-looking; Joe was pasty-white. She said nothing. All that was her business, no one else’s.

  ‘Well, I think that’s all for now,’ he said, when the silence stretched out between them, and stood up and held out a hand. ‘Thanks for your time – Ruby.’

  Ruby took his hand warily and shook it. His hand was hot and dry, his grip very firm. It felt electric, unnervingly thrilling, just that simple contact.

  ‘How about dinner one night?’ he said.

  ‘No,’ said Ruby, and let go of his hand as if it had burned her.

  ‘No? Well, if there’s ever anything I can do for you . . .’

  ‘There isn’t. There won’t be. Goodbye, Mr Ward.’