by Jessie Keane
All right, fair enough. He hadn’t said ‘I love you’ either, he was still probably hung up on his wife. Right now, Ruby didn’t even care. She was too caught up in the moment, feeling his strong hands roaming everywhere, sliding over her skin, dipping down inside the elasticated waistband of her flimsy white trousers to cup the cheeks of her behind and pull her in close.
Then he tripped her, and suddenly they were on the floor, on the carpet, and he was pushing the tunic up and over her head, throwing it aside, and pulling down the white trousers, throwing aside the towel he’d been wearing around his waist, and he was so beautiful, so strong, kneeling naked between her thighs, almost grinning down at her.
‘Why’d you take so long?’ he managed to say. ‘I’ve been dying to do this . . .’
‘I thought you didn’t want me,’ she panted, pulling him close, pulling him in. ‘Ahhh,’ she moaned as he slipped inside her.
‘You’re crazy,’ he gasped. ‘I adore you.’
It wasn’t a declaration of love, but it would have to do. Now he was thrusting into her, and the pleasure was so intense that Ruby thought she was just going to die of happiness. She hugged him, murmuring endearments, until he could stand no more and he shuddered and grew still.
‘Think I’ve got carpet burns,’ said Ruby lazily, feeling so replete, so relaxed. She had forgotten how good this could be.
‘Then let’s get on the bed,’ said Michael, and they went over to the bed and sank down onto it, kissing, caressing, making love all over again, until it was eight and time for dinner. Ruby didn’t think about Cornelius or Charlie that night. Not even once.
80
Charlie Darke was hopeful of parole. He’d been careful to be on good behaviour for a while now, and here was his reward at last: he’d been downgraded to a Category C. No longer did he have to be escorted out to work, to bathe, to do any fucking thing at all. Now he had a small glimpse of greater freedom, even if he was still in stir.
But he quickly found there were drawbacks to this new arrangement. He was going out of the wing to his labour one day when a huge con coming in shouldered him hard. Charlie was a big bloke, but he was nearly knocked sideways by the impact.
‘What the fuck you doing?’ he said, and turned and whacked the cunt straight across the face.
The new man, bald, massive, with a drooping Sancho Panza ginger-brown moustache, only smiled and wiped a smear of blood from his mouth where Charlie had cuffed him. The screws went mental, hustling Charlie away, dragging the new one in the opposite direction.
Things settled down, and later in the day Charlie started making enquiries. The new man was from Maidstone, he’d arrived in Charlie’s orbit yesterday.
‘John Corah,’ his contacts told him. ‘Mean bastard. He’s in A for rape and assault.’
‘He wants to watch himself,’ said Charlie.
He was offended that this new man had treated him with disrespect. He was one of the ‘top’ cons in this place, and he wasn’t used to being treated as anything less than royalty. Everyone knew Charlie Darke, that he’d done the Post Office job during the war and the police had never recovered the haul. He was a legend. He wouldn’t tolerate anyone taking the piss.
He was in the workshop next day and Corah was there again, sneering at him.
‘What you looking at, you arsehole?’ asked Charlie.
‘Nothing,’ said Corah.
‘Watch your fucking step,’ said Charlie, and got on with his work.
‘You watch your step, you fucking fool,’ said Corah.
Charlie hit the roof. ‘What you say?’
‘Shut it, the pair of you,’ said the screw nervously.
The whole thing blew up at teatime when they passed on the landing. Despite the screws being right there on the spot, Charlie found himself hustled into a cell by Corah. He’d been expecting trouble. The screws had clearly been paid to look the other way. He was on his own, and there were three men with Corah, waiting in the cell. Suddenly they were slapping him about, kicking him.
He was furious. He was king of this shit heap, and here they were, knocking him around like a Saturday-night barmaid. He let the six-inch nail he’d pocketed in the workshop slip down his shirt cuff and into his hand when the next one came at him. He whacked it into a big beer-bellied bastard’s eye and felt it connect with gristle. Charlie twisted the thing and the geezer’s eye popped straight out of his head in a shower of blood and rolled onto the floor.
‘Jesus!’ bellowed the injured man, scrabbling around on the floor in agony with his hands over his face.
Charlie stamped on the bloke’s eye, pulverizing it.
The man writhed and screamed, blood streaming from the socket, splashing around the cell.
‘Get him out of here,’ said Corah, and one of the screws grabbed the injured man while the other two got the nail off Charlie and got him on the floor with more kicks and punches.
Finally, bruised and battered half to death, Charlie lay still, face down.
‘All done?’ asked John Corah, and pulled up a chair.
Twisting his head – the other two were on his back, he couldn’t move an inch – he could see Corah, sitting there grinning.
There was blood and a squashed eyeball right in Charlie’s eyeline. His head felt like shit where he’d been punched so hard.
‘Tough nut, ain’t you?’ said Corah almost admiringly.
‘You’re dead,’ grunted Charlie.
‘No, you see, that’s you, not me. If you don’t answer a few questions.’
‘Questions? What is this? Take Your Pick? Who are you, Michael fucking Miles?’
‘Yeah, funny. Now tell me all about what you did with your sister’s kid, back in the war.’
‘You what?’
‘The boy. Someone wants to know.’
‘The boy’s dead,’ Charlie managed to get out.
‘How. When. Who. Come on, details.’
‘You serious?’
One of the men pinning Charlie down clouted him hard in the ear. Charlie’s head started ringing like an alarm clock.
‘All right,’ he gasped. ‘You want to know? It’s nothing to me. I took him to a mate of mine in Finsbury Park. Rubbish man. Lots of the gangs used him. Bloke was a fire-watcher during the war, he had all the gear. Used to dissolve rubbish in a big vat of acid in the cellar. The kid’s long gone. You won’t find a trace. No one will. Who the fuck wants to know, after all this time . . . ?’
‘None of your business. You see the deed done?’ asked Corah, his eyes fixed on Charlie’s bloodied face.
‘I paid him to do it. He was sound.’
‘So you didn’t see it done?’
‘He wouldn’t have mucked me about. He wouldn’t dare.’
‘Big man, yeah?’
‘Bigger than you, shit-face,’ said Charlie, and that earned him another punch in the head.
‘This bloke’s name,’ said Corah.
‘He’ll be dead and buried by now, you’re wasting your time. Who wants to know this?’
‘Shut the fuck up and answer the question. His name.’
‘Hugh Burton. Sound. Dependable.’
‘Good man, uh? He’d do a kid in acid.’
‘It was a little black bastard. What else would any decent man have done?’
Even Corah felt sick at this. He liked kids, he had four little ankle-biters of his own. He stood up, put the chair neatly to one side.
‘Give him a bit more,’ he said, and left the cell to let his two friends attend to Charlie Darke.
Charlie was in the hospital wing by that evening, and by the following day he was making enquiries and planning a rematch in which John Corah would be carried out as a corpse. Fuck good behaviour, that bastard had it coming. But he was too late. Corah had already been moved to Leicester. And the governor had turned down Charlie’s parole.
81
1970
‘No,’ said Aunt Ju. ‘Absolutely not, Daisy. Out of the question.’
Daisy wasn’t the type of girl to be deterred if a man didn’t contact her. She would contact him instead. Why not? Everyone was liberated these days, you didn’t have to wait for a man to do the running any more.
But why hadn’t he? She was very good looking. She was young. She was fanciable. She had made it clear that she wanted him to get in touch. What was his problem?
‘Oh please, Aunt Ju,’ she whined. ‘I’m really sorry I messed up. And I’d so love to see you.’
‘Daisy – no.’
Daisy pulled a face and put the phone down. She found Vanessa in the drawing room, engrossed in gardening books as always, and got straight to the point.
‘I’m thinking of going up to London for a while to stay with Aunt Ju,’ she said.
Vanessa looked at her daughter and sighed. It was horrible to admit, but she found Daisy such hard work. But then – she’s not your daughter, is she? floated into her brain.
Certainly, Daisy was nothing like her at all. In looks, she was very like her Aunt Ju, very like her father. Very blonde, very blue-eyed, robust and clear-skinned. And in character, she was just so wild.
If I’d ever had a child, my own child, would she have been like this?
Vanessa didn’t think so. She was genteel, reserved. Daisy was just crazy, making up her own rules as she went along. Crashing cars. Attending those awful parties, getting herself deflowered – for the love of God! – at such an early age. So fortunate there had been nothing to show for that, but there could have been. She really didn’t know what Daisy was going to get up to next.
But at the same time, she felt bad about her own antipathy towards Daisy. She had been so desperate for a child that she had thought she could handle it, taking on a child that her husband had fathered on another woman. Now she knew that she should never have done it.
Over the years the whole thing had become harder and harder to bear. Every misdemeanour Daisy committed only reinforced the truth: that she was not Vanessa’s child, and that she would have to struggle forever to maintain an appearance of affection for the girl, even when – more often than not – she didn’t feel it. All Daisy did was remind her that her husband had cheated on her, that she was a failure as a wife, and a failure as a mother too.
Daisy looked at her mother, who was watching her again with that judgemental look on her face. As usual, she felt the full weight of Vanessa’s disapproval. Ever since she could remember, she’d felt that she was a great disappointment, that she could never live up to her mother’s expectations.
‘I can go and stay with Aunt Ju for a while, can’t I?’ said Daisy. ‘What do you think? If you suggested it to her, I could go. Could you do that?’
Daisy knew that if Vanessa asked, Aunt Ju would cave in.
‘All right,’ said Vanessa. ‘Why not? I’ll phone her tonight.’ And she couldn’t suppress it even though she tried – that tiny, treacherous prickle of feeling that she later identified as relief. She was glad Daisy was going back to town. She could tend her garden, immerse herself in it. And forget about the rest.
82
Two of Michael Ward’s men went over to Finsbury Park to see if there was any hope of tracking down Hugh Burton after all this time.
‘Probably dead,’ said Kit to his companion, Rob.
Certainly the house – the row of houses – wasn’t there any more. Instead, there was a cable factory on the site. It was early morning and workers were flooding in through the gates to start their day’s labour.
The two men stood there and watched all this activity.
‘Parish records . . . ?’ suggested Rob. ‘Electoral register? Don’t they keep that in the library?’
They went to the library first, but there was – unsurprisingly – no Hugh Burton on the register.
Next were the parish records. There were several churches in the area – Anglican, Roman Catholic, Methodist. If Hugh Burton had been in his forties during the war, then his birth date had to be around 1900 to 1910.
‘Shit, this is going to take for ever,’ complained Rob.
‘What, you got a date or something?’ asked Kit.
‘Yeah, with a pie and a pint.’
‘Later.’
The Methodist and Roman Catholic church records yielded nothing of interest, but the Anglican showed up not only Hugh Burton, born to a cabinet-maker and his wife, but a year later a sister called Anthea and a year after that, another sister, called Jennifer. The two men made a note of the address of Hugh, Anthea and Jennifer’s parents, and gave the vicar a large donation to the church funds by way of thanks.
They went to the address. Finsbury Park again. And this time, the house, a Victorian villa in the middle of a row of others, was still standing. They knocked on the door.
A woman answered, looking flustered. She was a young, hard-faced blonde, heavily pregnant, a prodigious bump ballooning the front of her lime-green T-shirt. Above the bump her breasts drooped tiredly. There was a two-year-old perched on her hip and a four- or five-year-old clinging to her denim-clad leg.
Kit thought that someone really ought to tell the poor cow about Durex.
‘Whoever it is, tell them we’re not buying,’ called a female voice from inside.
‘Yes?’ snapped the young woman, eyeing the two men.
‘Hi,’ said Kit, smiling. ‘We’re just down from Blackpool and we’re trying to find a friend of our late father’s called Hugh Burton. Or maybe his sisters? Anthea and Jennifer. Our dad always said we had to look them up.’
‘No, sorry,’ she said, and was shutting the door.
‘Wait,’ said Kit. ‘Just a minute. I haven’t told you the full story. Dad’s just died and he’s left Hugh and his sisters something in the will. So we’d really like to find them.’
The mention of a will stilled the girl’s hand on the door. She hesitated. The two-year-old squirmed and she set him down on the rug. The four- or five-year-old promptly pulled the little one’s hair with a grin, and the baby set up a howling fit to wake the dead.
‘Hush, for God’s sake,’ said the young woman, and now another woman appeared behind her, an older, tireder-looking version of the ludicrously fecund woman in the doorway. Had to be her mother. She grabbed up the baby, shushing and rocking her. The four- or five-year-old ran off down the hall.
‘It’s a sad situation,’ said Kit, looking sincerely into the mother’s eyes. ‘Dad often spoke about Hugh and his sisters, and now Dad’s died but he’s left them gifts of money in the will, and he always said he wanted Hugh and the girls to come to his funeral, and out of respect for his wishes, we’ve come down to find them.’
‘Money?’ The mother’s ears had pricked up. ‘How much money?’
‘Why, do you know them?’ he asked.
‘Jennifer’s my mother,’ she said.
‘Really? That’s great.’
‘Not really, it ain’t,’ said the older woman sourly. ‘Her brother died during the war. And Aunt Anthea passed over a couple of years back.’
‘Right. I’m sorry to hear that.’ So that was the end of it. Hugh Burton was dead and gone, long since. Kit considered the situation. Michael would want details. ‘Could I see Jennifer? Talk to her?’
‘Well,’ said the older woman as the four- or five-year-old decided now was the perfect moment to play trains up and down the hall, very loudly. Added to the wailing baby, it was hellish, the noise in there. ‘You can try.’
83
‘Hey!’
That evening, Kit was in the bar at Michael Ward’s place. He turned at the girl’s call. She was hurrying towards him. Blonde, pretty, young. Done up in a frill
ed smock, feathers hanging off beads around her neck, like a crazy milkmaid.
‘Hi,’ she grinned. ‘Remember me?’
And now of course he did.
‘You crashed my car,’ she said.
‘No,’ said Kit. ‘You crashed your car, because you were driving like a maniac.’
‘Pleased to see me?’
Kit gave her a reluctant half-smile. He seriously hadn’t expected ever to see her again. He’d ‘lost’ her phone number. Eager young posh bints weren’t on his agenda. He had beautiful Gilda with the sea-green eyes and the knowledgeable hands, jingling with gold and lush with promise. He was in love with her. Could never wait to see her.
Also, he had plenty of business to keep him occupied. He was off tomorrow to visit Jennifer Phelps at a place called High Firs, and he had told Michael just an hour ago how the whole Hugh Burton thing was going.
‘That’s good,’ Michael had said.
‘It’s probably not,’ said Kit. ‘The daughter and granddaughter gave the impression we wouldn’t get much out of the old girl.’
Michael was looking very fit and suntanned and relaxed, fresh back from the South of France. ‘This is important to me.’
‘Right.’
‘So keep going with it, son,’ he said.
Kit nodded.
‘And well done. Didn’t think you’d get this far with it, let alone any further.’
Then Kit had come out to the bar, and now . . . Daisy had turned up.
‘How did you find me?’ he asked her.
‘So you’re not pleased to see me,’ she pouted.
‘Have a drink and shut up,’ said Kit, half-amused and half-irritated. ‘White wine?’
‘Please.’
Kit relayed their order to the bartender, who delivered their drinks.
‘So,’ he said, turning to Daisy. ‘How . . . ?’
‘Yellow Pages. Looked up Ward Security. Went to Ward Security, and was directed here.’
‘That easy.’
‘That easy, yes.’
