It was a tragic, terrible mess and she was responsible for the lot of it. But this time she was after revenge and she was determined she was going to get it. Patrick Connor did not know what was going to hit him. Neither did her so-called friend Carole Halter who had given Marie’s child up to him for five lousy grand. But then money was her God. Marie had been the same once herself.
Now it was payback time for them all.
Mikey was at home, pacing the room like a parody of a man waiting for his child to be born. The men with him could feel his anger. It was in his eyes, in his body language.
‘What have you found out?’
Old Billy spoke. He was an old friend of Mikey’s and always had first talk because of that fact. The others knew their long friendship gave Billy first call on everything. He was the only person ever to have openly disagreed with Mikey and still lived to tell the tale. Consequently, he was well-respected and liked. A powerful man, with a bull neck and sparse hair, he was also easygoing and funny.
‘Connor done Rasta Malcolm today. It was definitely him from the word on the street. Cut him up with a machete. Ironic, really, since that was always Malcolm’s weapon of choice, as we all know. Done him in his house with his little boy upstairs. Also done three of his blokes. Surprise attack, I’d say. Well-executed and neatly done. Filth are all over the place but Connor will walk away as usual. Obviously he wants Malcolm’s pitches, businesses and henchmen. He will get them and all if we ain’t careful.’
Mikey looked disgusted.
‘He done him with his little kid in the house?’
The men could hear the absolute horror in Mikey’s voice.
‘That is what we are dealing with now, boys. It’s pure fucking laziness. Get to people through their kids. The piece of shit cunt! Give me back the old days when we just spanked the perpetrator of our troubles and left the families out of it.’
Mikey shook his head in disbelief.
‘Well, I want him done and that is that. Get his movements and then we swoop.’
Billy looked puzzled and said, ‘What for, Mikey? That’s not our turf, it’s nothing to do with us. Why stick our neck out over the coons? They want to fight one another – what is it to us?’
Mikey was expecting this question and knew only Billy would have the front to ask it.
‘One, I liked Rasta Malcolm, I was dealing with him years ago when he first come over from the Big J. He was a sound geezer and he knew his place. He kept out of other people’s business and he’d lend a helping hand if one was needed. One hard fuck, I tell you, but he never tried to take what was someone else’s. He kept to his own turf and I respected him for that. Two, I have a private score to settle with that ponce Connor. He is a cancer and I want him dead. Three, he picked on a kid, has a penchant for picking on kids, and four, he is a pimp and I fucking hate pimps. They are carrion and they are scum.’
Old Billy was quiet for a few moments before he said, ‘I agree with all you say, Mikey, but we could cause a fucking war by topping Connor. Are you prepared for that to happen? He’ll be busy making peace with all the other people involved. Drugs cause havoc, you know that.’
Mikey nodded.
‘We’ll take him out with his henchmen if need be. I want all Rasta Malcolm’s men on my payroll by the end of the week. That’ll stop them from going over to Connor. I think I’ll take a cut from South London. It’ll be lucrative and I know most of the main faces personally, black and white. We need to work together anyway with the fucking Bosnians running amok. But I digress – I want Connor dead as a fucking dodo at the earliest opportunity, OK? No more discussion, I have spoken.’
The men were silent, all contemplating what the knock-on effect of their boss’s orders would be. Connor was a ponce in every way. He even lived off his birds’ earnings. But he was also a nutter, and nutters were not to be taken lightly. Chances were Patrick Connor, that blue-eyed bastard, was about to start another war. They all knew they had to take him down at the first opportunity before he had time to regroup and come back at them. They also knew they were in this spot because the boss had taken up with an ex-jailbird and murderess who had got so far under his skin he was willing to cause the Third World War to make her happy.
Whoever would have thought that Mikey Devlin, all-round bastard and known lunatic, would fall for a bird like her and this would be the upshot? She was an ex-brass and an ex-druggie. Love was a strange fucking thing as far as his men were concerned. Most of them wouldn’t have touched her with a barge pole, but then Mikey had always been different.
Still, they would do what they were told. It was the way things worked in their world and they would not question it in any way, shape or form.
Not to Mikey’s face, anyway.
Lou was bad and she knew it. The pain was not getting any easier but they were lowering her dose of painkillers. She moved painfully to make herself more comfortable. She sat in a high green-covered chair where she could see out of the window over the car park.
She was not admiring the view.
Lucy sat with her, her face white and haggard, wondering where the hell she was going to go. She had been given twenty-four hours to leave her so-called fiancé’s house. She could not believe it had come to this. She stared at her mother’s burned body. The scars were red and livid. Lou had refused plastic surgery except on her hands. She wanted to be able to use them so had agreed to go through all the pain of the skin grafts.
The events of the last few months were still unbelievable to Lucy. She could not understand how it had all happened but she knew who was to blame all right: Marie. It was as if she’d deliberately set out to ruin everything for everyone.
Lucy gave her mother a drink. She was sipping the orange juice through a straw when Lucy tentatively made a suggestion.
‘The insurance company have to put us up, don’t they, while the work is being done on the house? I’m going to see about going to a hotel or something. Maybe renting a little flat . . .’
Lou’s eyes narrowed and she pulled her head back sharply and said, ‘I thought you was staying with Mickey.’
Lucy shook her head.
‘They aimed me out. I have till tomorrow to find somewhere else. In fairness, Mum, it ain’t him, it’s her.’
Lou nodded. Her terrible face and head were like a grotesque parody of her former self. She had always kept herself nice, clean and tidy. Had prided herself on her trim figure and her unlined face. Lucy still had trouble looking at her mother for any length of time.
‘That woman, she’s a scourge. And Mickey’s nothing but a fucking mummy’s boy. She rules him. Some women are like that, Luce. They interfere in their kids’ lives when they should keep their bloody noses out of it.’
Lucy didn’t answer her. She didn’t know what to say. That her mother could not see herself in her own words spoke volumes.
‘Old bitch she is. Bitterness is a terrible thing, you know. It’s like a cancer and should be cut out. He’ll rue the day he let you go. I take it the engagement’s off ?’
Lucy shrugged.
‘Well, no. Not as such. He ain’t said it outright . . .’
Louise rolled her eyes heavenwards.
‘You don’t mean to tell me you are still going to go out with him when he has in effect put you out on the street?’
Lucy was defensive, her strained face on the verge of crumpling. Because she wanted to cry her eyes out. She wanted her mother to take her in her arms and tell her it would all be OK. She knew that wasn’t going to happen though. Even if her mother had been fit and well it would still have been the same scenario.
‘It’s not him, it’s his mother . . .’
‘Same difference, Luce. He’s a mummy’s boy, and the sooner you realise that the better. You’ll always come second to her.’
Lucy listened to her mother but on another level she was laughing. In her head she could hear loud uninhibited laughter.
‘I mean, I was close to my Marshall, God rest hi
m, but he was not a mummy’s boy. But Mickey is. A classic mummy’s boy at that. You’re better off out of it. Keep a bit of dignity, tell him to get stuffed, give him his ring back. No one will blame you, they all know what his mother’s like. Some women have a lot to answer for where their kids are concerned. Look at me with Marie. I tried everything to keep her on the straight and narrow but I was wasting me time. From birth she was trouble, never let me get a night’s kip. Your father was no better. Always taking her side. And look where it’s got him . . .’
Lucy listened to her mother’s tirade about Marie, her father, Marshall, and anyone else she felt had done her down. She was sick to death of hearing it all. She knew, deep inside, that her mother was the instigator of many of the troubles that had befallen her. She was like Mickey’s mum, a vindictive old bitch. Even as she was now, scarred and in pain, she still had the energy to give out yards about everyone else.
Lucy remembered how Marie, as a girl, would stand behind Lou, mouthing her mother’s words off pat. They had all heard the same thing over and over and all knew exactly what she was going to say next. Lucy and Marshall had laughed like drains and her mother had beaten Marie black and blue. It was one of the few times the three children had been in agreement about something. But then, Marshall had loved Marie, though her mother was not aware of that, and Marie had loved him. Lucy had always felt left out. Marie would call her Bertie Smalls, meaning she was a grass, because she always told on her brother and sister. Not that it had ever done her much good. Her mother would not have a word said against her son, though she was never surprised at what Marie was up to.
Lucy sighed heavily.
‘Oh, am I boring you?’
Louise’s voice was nasty, and Lucy knew another tirade was about to start.
‘Look, Mum, can’t you just let it go for a few minutes, eh? Do we have to go over the same thing again and again? You’re driving me mad. Marie is at this moment at the hospital with her daughter. Tiffany is dying, Mum.’
As soon as the words were out she regretted them.
‘What are you talking about? How do you know anyway?’
‘I saw Cissy today. She was asking after you, and as you know her daughter lives in the same block of flats as Tiffany. She heard it through Marlene Morrison who works at the Old London. Tiffany’s been really badly beaten, she’s dying.’
Lucy’s voice was sad. Her niece had not been part of her life but she was only a young girl and it was a horrible thing to happen. She saw the smile that spread over her mother’s face and felt sick with disgust.
‘Hah! God pays back debts without money. How often have I said that, eh? She’ll know what it’s like now to lose a child, like I lost my baby, my boy. That was all her fault, he topped himself over her. What she made him do . . .’
Lucy frowned.
‘What on earth are you on about? Marie never made him do anything.’
Louise shook her head.
‘I know what I know. But God has been good to me today. I needed something to cheer me up and you provided it with that news. So that whore will know what it’s like to suffer at last!’
She gave a ghastly smile.
‘What about poor Tiffany, Mum? Your grand-daughter? She’s suffering as well. Surely even you couldn’t wish that on the girl. What about her baby?’
‘What about her? Probably end up like her mother, who was like her own. What’s bred in the bone comes out in the blood.’
‘So who did Marie take after then, Mum? You?’ The words were out before Lucy could stop them.
Louise looked at her daughter in such shock Lucy wondered how she had ever dared say the words out loud.
But she had.
‘You little bitch! Don’t take it out on me because your bloke has put you out on the street. Don’t make me your scapegoat because you can’t get your life together. Like your bloody father, you. Couldn’t get a blasted cold without me to help you. I’ll be lumbered with you all me days because you couldn’t get a man if he fell out of a tree and hit you on the bloody head. Joke, ain’t it? One daughter man bloody mad, the other couldn’t get one if she advertised naked in the paper. You are a loser, Lucy, always were and always will be. Even that prick Mickey was too good for you, and you couldn’t even hang on to that useless bloody twit!’
Lucy picked up her handbag.
‘I am not listening to this. In future you can sort your fucking self out, you vindictive old witch! I might not have a man, Mum, but I’d rather be alone than be with someone who didn’t love me or care about me like you were. Dad hated you and so did me and Marie. Even Marshall laughed at you behind your back. You were a fucking joke to him and to us girls as well. Even me father laughed at you.’
She could hear herself talking and on some level knew she was going too far, that her mother had enough to contend with, but she couldn’t stop herself. It was as if a dam had burst inside her.
‘The neighbours would say to us, “How’s your mum? At Mass as usual?” But we knew they were taking the piss. You put yourself up as a paragon of virtue when you were just a fucking joke to everyone. I remember my Confirmation. You caused murders that day and even I could see the priest was fed up with you as well.
‘Listen to yourself, you’re so bitter and twisted you can’t see what you’ve become. You were never a mother to any of us, not even Marshall. You suffocated him and you neglected us. Face facts, for Christ’s sakes.’
Louise sat back in her chair and smiled smugly. A patient expression had come over her face. She really knew how to annoy someone; she was the master of nasty.
‘So I’m bitter and twisted, am I? Well, at least I had a family and a husband, something you will never have. Dried up and old I might be, but I am old. You’re like an old woman already. Look at yourself, over thirty years old and neither chick nor child to call your own. I pity you, Luce, and I pity the man you finally settle with. Because no man would have you unless they were at rock bottom. Scraping the bottom of the fucking barrel.
‘My Marshall was my life. He was all I wanted and all I needed. You and Marie were nothing to me. If you had died I wouldn’t have shed a tear over either of you. But you both lived and my boy died. Well, I’m glad she is losing her daughter and I’m glad that Mickey has seen through you once and for all. May you both die lonely, manless and friendless. That’s me prayer to God every day from now on.’
Lucy was devastated at her mother’s heartfelt words.
‘We will die like you then, won’t we? Only I don’t see anyone coming to visit you except me. Even the priest tries to give you a wide berth. I won’t be back, Mum, not after what you said today. And do you know something? I’m glad I won’t have to look at you ever again. You were always ugly on the inside, now God has seen fit to make you ugly on the outside too. I hope you live for years and years, and I know you will die the lonely death you predicted for Marie and me. Dad was seeing a woman, you know, a nice woman and all. Even he had someone in his life and she’ll stand by him as well. Like I will and Marie will. I hope you stew in your own hatred and it eats away at you like a cancer. It’s what you deserve.’
As she walked from the room she felt her mother’s dislike of her like a physical thing. She had always known that Louise was not as fond of her daughters as most mothers would be. She had accepted that. But to know that her own mother despised her hurt more than anything. Her father was locked away, her sister was estranged from her, and her boyfriend had given her an ultimatum. Even her own mother had no time for her. Did not even like her by the sound of it, and never had. Lucy had never felt so low in all her life.
She could hear her mother screaming out to her for the name of her father’s mistress. But she ignored her. She would find out soon enough. It was common knowledge. It spoke volumes that no one had grassed him up before now, because so many people knew about it. But her father was well liked, always had been. People had felt sorry for him, chained to her mother and her so-called goodness.
; Lucy cried.
Louise sat back in the chair. She was exhausted by all the emotions running through her body. That her own daughter could talk to her like that! She was another Marie and Louise had never seen it until now. But that last shot about Kevin having a woman had hit home. She had half guessed at it, he had seemed happy at times, and now she knew why.
The filthy bastard of hell! She hoped they put him away for life. He had betrayed her and now he was locked up. God knew what He was doing all right.
He moved in mysterious ways and He was working His miracle for her now, as she sat here in this chair. He was taking Marie’s daughter from her and he had taken Lucy’s man from her. He had also seen fit to put the adulterer in prison. He was a vengeful God and the sooner they realised that the better off they would all be.
Louise stared around the room that was like a prison to her and smiled. Marie would cry bitter tears and she was glad of that fact. She rejoiced to think her daughter was getting a taste of her own medicine at last.
The room was very quiet as Louise said a decade of the Rosary as she always did when she was upset. The Sorrowful Mysteries always made her feel better. But for some unknown reason, they didn’t comfort her this time. She didn’t feel that Marshall was close as she usually did.
In fact, she felt lonelier than she had ever felt in her life.
Marie was holding Tiffany’s hand as the girl drew her last breath. It was all over in seconds, and she was at peace. Marie knew she was at peace, she could see it in her daughter’s face.
Jason put his arms around her waist and she held him as he cried, his body racked with sobs. She held him tightly to her, enjoying the smell of his hair even as she mourned for her daughter. She had lost her child and gained a grand-daughter. It was unbelievable, and she felt responsible for it all. Would always blame herself for what had happened to her daughter.
Her own guilt would make her hurt Patrick Connor. Guilt and revenge were both powerful emotions. Together they were stronger than anything.
She held her son and she cried. For her daughter, her grand-daughter and also for Jason. Finally she cried for herself, at the wasted life she had lived and the knowledge that she was the cause of all the problems her children had encountered. But she could right some of the wrongs she had done and she was going to start with her son’s father, Patrick Connor.
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