by Kerry Kaya
“No, Stace, he looks nothing like the boys.” He wondered if now was the time to tell her the truth. She had to know at some point, he decided. “You’ve met him, too.” He watched her eyes widen. “Only you don’t know him by his real name, Cameron. You knew him as Jack, Karen’s boyfriend, Jack.”
Stacey’s mouth fell open. She gripped onto the side of the chair, feeling suddenly light-headed. “What did you just say?”
* * *
Karen had just about had enough. She was in half a mind to tell Maria to stick her job where the sun doesn’t shine. It was only the fact that she needed to pay her rent, that caused her to bite down on her tongue and keep schtum.
A bully through and through, Maria watched Karen through hooded eyes. “Move,” she hissed.
With a wet rag in one hand and a spray bottle of bleach in the other, Karen did as she was told and began wiping down the tables.
“Right.” Maria tore her eyes away from her employee to look across at her son. “I’m going upstairs,” she said, referring to the small, two-bedroom flat on top of the shop, where the Mariano family lived. “Make sure that she finishes cleaning those tables. I want them spotless.” She leaned in closer. “And make sure that she stays until her time. Do not allow her to leave a minute before six,” she warned.
Dutifully, Marco nodded his head. He waited for his mother to leave the café, had a quick sniff underneath his damp armpits, pushed his dark, greasy hair across his spotty forehead, and then winked across to Karen. “Looks like it’s just you and me then,” he said, taking a cigarette from his apron pocket and lighting up.
Karen gave him a pained smile, then promptly turned her back and rolled her eyes. She could think of nothing worse.
* * *
Stacey clasped her hand across her mouth. “No,” she gasped.
Jimmy nodded his head. “Yep, why do you think Tommy kicked up such a fuss about him and Karen?”
“But how? How did he find out?”
“He put two and two together. It was something Mad Dog said about Dean Johnson kicking the bucket.”
“And he works here now?” She placed her coffee cup onto the desk and began to twirl her wedding band around her finger. Her mind was reeling. Now everything made sense. No wonder Tommy had forbidden Karen to see her boyfriend. “Well, he must know where Karen is.” Her voice began to rise. “Have you asked him?”
“No.” Jimmy tilted his head to the side, thinking over her words. “He doesn’t work here.” He gulped at his remaining coffee and narrowed his eyes. Not once had Gary asked for his son to join the business.
Taking the two empty coffee cups, Stacey dropped them into the metal waste bin. “Bit strange that, isn’t it? I would have thought Gary would want his son to work here with him.”
He glanced out of the window and watched as Gary barked out orders to their younger brothers on the forecourt. Stacey was right, it was strange. Why hadn’t he asked for the boy to come on board? It was a question that plagued him for the rest of the afternoon.
* * *
Marcus Gibbs climbed into his gold coloured Rolls Royce. It was early evening, and already, the dark night was drawing in. Having spent the afternoon in one of his favourite clubs in Regent Street, enjoying a late liquid lunch, he was feeling somewhat a little tipsy. He leaned back in his seat and allowed his head to flop against the headrest, his eyes closed.
“So, where we going, mister?”
He opened one eye and turned to look at the boy. There was an underlying scent about him. Ground-in dirt, damp clothes, and something else he couldn’t quite put his finger on. If nothing else, it heightened his arousal. “I have an apartment nearby.”
The boy nodded his scruffy head. Just the mere thought of being able to spend the night off of the cold streets was enough to make him smile.
Gibbs started the ignition, and flicking the indicator, he began to move the car forward. He’d barely turned into Maddox Street, when the full beam of headlights from the car directly behind him blinded his vision. Lifting his hand to shield his eyes, he lifted his foot from the gas, slowing the car down. The car overtook, and within moments, a second car was behind him. Once again, the full beam blinded his vision.
It took him a few moments to realise he had been sandwiched between the two cars. Pulling over to the kerb, the cars pulled over in unison. A sense of irritation spread through him and he turned to look at the boy. “Stay there,” he growled. “Don’t move and keep quiet.”
Looking in the rear-view mirror, he watched as the driver’s door opened. He tore his eyes back to the windscreen. A figure stepped out of the car in front. He sat for a moment, unsure of what he should do. He kept his hands in front of him on the steering wheel.
Certain that the occupants were plain clothed police officers, he wracked his brain trying to think. How many drinks over the limit had he had? It could be no more than two or three, surely. Hardly a rap on the knuckles, and seeing as he was a senior ranking police officer, they were bound to let him go on his way with the minimum of fuss.
A knuckle rapped on his window. All smiles, Marcus opened the door. He began to climb out. “Is there a problem?”
The words caught in his throat as the figure pulled him from the seat and pushed him roughly up against the car. “Yeah, you could fucking say that.”
Marcus’s mouth fell open. Winded by how fast he had been slammed up against the vehicle, he struggled to catch his breath. He watched as the second man opened the passenger’s door to the Rolls Royce and he inwardly groaned.
He could feel his breath become even more laboured and a layer of sweat broke out across his forehead. He was sure the boy was eighteen, at least that’s what he’d told him, wasn’t it? The truth was, he hadn’t even bothered to ask.
Helplessly, he turned his head to watch the boy climb out of the car. The forearm across his chest, restrained him. Unable to move, he began to stutter. “There’s nothing untoward going on here.” He could feel the anger seeping out of the man who restrained him; he could sense his repulsion. “He’s eighteen, for Christ’s sake,” he cried.
Bodily, he was dragged toward the rear car. He had a sneaky feeling the men were not as he had first suspected, police officers. A sense of dread ravaged through him. “What do you want from me?” he cried.
Danny McKay ignored the question; he didn’t trust himself to answer. What he wanted to do was break the man’s neck, and it took all of his strength to restrain himself. “Get in the fucking car,” he bellowed.
Moray gave the boy a critical once over. Like fuck he was eighteen, he thought to himself. He didn’t look a day over fourteen. He pushed his hand into his pocket and pulled out a bundle of cash. He rolled out just over two hundred pounds and passed it across. “Get yourself a bed for the night,” he told him.
The boy’s eyes widened. “Thanks, mister.”
“I mean it,” Moray warned. “Find yourself a cheap hotel for the night.”
“I will do.” He gave a cheeky grin, tightened his fist around the cash, and sped off.
Moray sighed as he watched the boy run. They both knew that he would do no such thing. He turned to look across at Danny as he bundled Gibbs into the car. “Let’s get that nonce out of here,” he growled.
Chapter 18
“Can I have it, please?” Karen was losing patience and there was an edginess to her voice as she held her hand out for her wage packet.
Marco smirked. He held the small brown envelope out toward her and then just as quickly pulled it back.
“Marco, give it to me.” She reached out her hand and tried to grasp her fingertips around the envelope.
With ease, he sidestepped and moved out of her reach. “Give me a kiss first,” he grinned. “And then you can have it.” He held the envelope above his head, whilst his eyes roamed up and down her body, leering.
“I said give it to me.” She’d had just about enough and glanced upwards toward the ceiling. “Do I need to get your mum down
here?” she asked.
Her words had the desired effect, and he begrudgingly held out the envelope. “I was only joking.”
Snatching it from him, Karen stuffed her wages into her jeans pocket, collected her coat from the peg beside the staff toilet, and stormed out of the café. Dirty bloody bastard, she muttered to herself, as she marched down the street.
She stopped by the newsagents on her way home. She wanted to buy herself a pocket diary so she could keep track of what hours she had worked and how much she was being paid. She wouldn’t put it past Maria Mariano to try and swindle her out of her wages.
With the diary in front of her, Karen sat on her bed and flicked through the pages. She began to make notes. Pausing, she frowned and tried to wrack her brain. How long exactly was it that she had she been living in Liverpool?
She flicked back the pages even faster, and taking a deep breath, she began to count the weeks. Seven weeks. Her heart began to beat faster, and her palms became clammy. Seven whole weeks. She needed to double check, she decided, and so turned to look at the calendar at the back of the diary.
Even as she did so, she knew the outcome would be the same. A sense of deep-rooted dread filled her; it consumed her thoughts. No, she wanted to laugh. It couldn’t be possible, even though deep down, she knew it was.
She dropped the diary onto the bed and closed her eyes. How on earth had this happened? She’d thought they’d been careful. She thought back to the last night she had spent with Cameron, and knew in that instant that they hadn’t been careful enough. There was absolutely no mistaking what this meant. She pulled her knees up to her chest and began to cry. There could be no mistaking the fact that she was pregnant.
* * *
Cameron smiled across to his dad. It was on the tip of his to tongue to ask him if he knew of Karen’s whereabouts. He was about to open his mouth to speak when his mother entered the lounge.
“So …” Her high-heeled shoes clip-clopped across the stripped wooden floorboards and she gave Gary a bright smile. “… What are the latest developments?”
Gary returned her smile. He took a seat on the velvet sofa, sat forward, and rested his forearms on his knees. “The planning for the robbery is underway.” He gave a bitter laugh. “That prick, Jimmy, really believes I’m up for it.” He began to laugh even harder. “The no-good cunt won’t know what’s hit him when the old bill turns up.”
Bethany laughed. “Keep up the good work.” Her hand reached up to touch her cheek. That morning, she’d needed to put on extra foundation to hide the palm print left from the stinging slap Stacey had given her. She screwed up her face. “And what plans have you got for her, Stacey?” She could barely say the name out loud, so strong was her hatred for the woman.
“I was thinking a car accident.” Gary gave her a maddening smile. “Faulty brakes being the culprit.”
She could see that working, and nodded her head in agreement. She felt no remorse or shame for the wicked plans they were constructing. Her eyes flickered toward her son, as she gave him a sneaky glance. She took in his solemn expression and had to swallow down the irritation she felt. The hatred she felt for her own son, her own flesh and blood, was as strong as ever.
“And the girl? With Stacey out of the way, she will become the sole beneficiary.” She took a seat on the sofa. “We need to get rid of her.”
Cameron’s head jerked upwards. “Leave her alone. Don’t touch her,” he warned.
“Excuse me?” She looked from her son to his father, and cocked her head to one side, not sure that she had heard him right. “What did you just say to me?”
Cameron swallowed deeply before answering. His voice was small as he spoke. He, better than anyone, knew not to antagonise his mother. After all, he had been on the receiving end of her temper for the majority of his life. “I said, don’t hurt her.” His voice took on a pleading tone. “Please, Mum, leave her alone. Don’t hurt her.”
With a flick of her hand, Bethany dismissed him. She wasn’t about to let her son’s hysterics ruin her plans. “She’s in the way,” she answered, giving him a cold stare. “And you know what we do to people who get in our way.”
She began to laugh at his obvious distress. More than anything, her son needed to grow a backbone, and not for the first time, did she blame her father for how he had turned out. He’d wrapped the boy up in cotton wool and spoilt him to the hilt. She shook her head in disgust. He was supposed to be a man, not a mouse, snivelling over some little tart.
Distressed, Cameron closed his eyes. He would speak to his dad, he decided. Surely, Gary wouldn’t hurt his own niece. The fact that he had already murdered one brother and was willing to set up his four remaining brothers and two nephews, was wiped from his mind.
* * *
Swiping the tears from her eyes, Karen stood up from her bed and began to pace the length of the small room. She just knew that she was pregnant. She had always been as regular as clockwork; every twenty-eight days, without fail, her period had arrived. Now, everything made sense to her: the mornings she had felt nauseas and had naively blamed the food from the café for making her feel unwell; and the tiredness she felt, that again she had wrongly blamed Maria for.
She continued to pace, and wondered briefly how Cameron would have taken the news. Would he have been pleased? She screwed up her face and erased him from her mind. Oh, how she hated him. She glided her hand across her flat stomach. Could she really go through with it and have a child? And not just any child, Cameron’s child?
She closed her eyes tightly. She wanted to speak to her mum; she would know what to do. She searched around in her purse for some loose change and walked out to the hallway where the communal telephone sat perched on a dusty wooden shelf. She lifted the receiver, tapped in a number and waited for it to be answered.
“Hello?”
She heard her mother’s voice and pushed the coins into the little metal box attached to the telephone. Tears instantly formed in her eyes. She cradled the telephone close to her ear, savouring the moment, not wanting it to end.
“Hello? Karen, is that you?”
She could hear the hope in her mother’s voice, and felt as though her heart would break in two. She opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came out. Tears rolled down her cheeks as she silently wept, and ever so gently, she replaced the phone onto the cradle.
Making her way back inside her room, she closed the door and slid the bolt across. Sitting down on the bed, she looked around her, and placing her hand upon her tummy, she spoke out loud. Her voice was hoarse from the tears she had shed. “Looks like it’s just you and me, kid.” She began to laugh through her tears. Until that very moment, she hadn’t even known she was going to keep the baby.
* * *
Marcus Gibbs looked across at the two men through narrowed eyes. Despite his fear, his pride, on the other hand, refused to allow him to cooperate. With a heavy, thick hessian sack pulled down over his head, blinding his vision, they had driven him for what felt like hours, until finally, they had brought the car to a skidding halt, pulled him out of the vehicle and dragged him kicking and screaming inside a cold, musty, and damp building.
Now they had him naked and trussed up like a chicken inside what he could only presume was an empty warehouse. The concrete floor was hard and cold beneath his slight frame.
“This is absurd,” he’d shouted at them. “Don’t you know who I am?” Even as he said the words, he already knew that they would know exactly who he was. He’d lost count of the amount of times he had arrested McKay over the years. They had nodded their heads in answer to his question, causing his heart to sink and his skin to pale beneath the flickering fluorescent lighting.
“We know exactly who and what you are,” they spat. “We even know all about you threatening the son of a very good friend of ours.” They took a step forward, causing him to cower backwards in fear. The tight ropes that bound him dug into his flesh. He could feel a wetness spread from his crotch area, could
feel the heat of the urine as it ran down his legs and puddled underneath him, and he closed his eyes tightly, in both shame and fear.
They had the audacity to laugh at him—huge belly laughs that rang loud in his ears.
“What is it you want?” he cried.
“What do we want?” Moray asked, as he cocked his head to one side and looked across to Danny. A hint of amusement was spread across his face.
Danny mirrored the action. “Well …,” he said as he began to slowly walk around Gibbs’s naked body. “… I had thought about killing you.” He looked down at the man’s panic-stricken face and had to restrain himself from kicking his heavy boot out at him. Instead, he crouched down and grasped a handful of the man’s hair in his fist, roughly snapping Gibbs’s head backwards.
“But then I thought to myself, where would the fun be in that?” He threw the terrified man away from him and straightened up. “No,” he said, walking across the concrete floor. He stopped beside a wooden table and picked up a blowtorch. Pressing the ignition, a blueish-orange flame shot out. He turned back to look at Gibbs. “So then I thought to myself, wouldn’t it be so much better to have some new filth in my pocket.” He stabbed the blowtorch forward. “And not just any filth, a superintendent nonetheless.”
Gibbs began to perspire; he didn’t take his eyes off of the blowtorch. He cowered backwards, his heart beating ten to the dozen. He could feel his bowels begin to loosen as heavy footsteps walked toward him. “I’ll do anything,” he cried. “Please, don’t hurt me.”
“Wonder how many boys have said that to him over the years?” Moray growled. He took a step closer and kicked his foot out twice in quick succession, feeling nothing but satisfaction as Gibbs cried out in pain.
