The Graft (13 page)

‘What’s the score?’

Nick’s tone of voice was strictly business. Joey understood his friend’s feelings without anything being said. He would leave all that to the mouthy fools in the pub above, who he just knew would mention the boy’s funeral at every possible opportunity.

Joey knocked back his Scotch in one gulp.

’A rave. Little Bobby Spiers wants to use the land in Bishops Stortford. It’s a proper venue, good DJs, plenty of advertising, Kiss 100, etc. He’s got it sewn up. He’ll get the licence himself so all we do is cream it off.’

‘What did you say to him?’

Joey poured himself another drink.

‘I OK’d it, of course. Why? You got any worries about it?’

Nick shrugged.

Joey grinned as he said, ‘Plenty of young crumpet bombing around. Might give it a look see meself.’

Nick groaned.

‘Not you and all. It’s like Shagland round here.’

‘Wendy’s pregnant again. I won’t get nothing from her for fucking months, you know what she’s like.’

‘Go for it. What else is happening?’

Nick’s voice was bored-sounding now.

Joey looked through his notebook. It was the same kind that women used for shopping lists; in it was everything he needed to know to run his side of the businesses. It was long, slim and perfect for hiding away.

It was also easily disposed of which was its main attraction as far as he was concerned. All the legal stuff was well documented; this was for the other stuff, the semi-legal stuff Nick Leary did so well.

‘Time-shares are doing all right. The flats are all paid up. The clubs are all paid up. Nothing really to worry about. I can sort it all out . . .’

He looked at his friend.

‘Why don’t you go home, mate?’

Nick was holding his head in his hands and crying quietly. Joey didn’t know what to do. In all the years he had known Nick he had never seen such a display of emotion before. On one level he understood it. After all, he had killed the kid. But on another level he felt that Nick should let it go now. ‘What’s done is done,’ as his old mum used to say. You couldn’t undo anything no matter how much you might want to.

She also used to say: ‘Count to five before you answer anyone in anger. It stops you saying things you can’t take back.’ That advice had kept his marriage going longer than anyone had ever thought it could last.

Eventually, after what seemed an age, he went over to his friend and put one arm warily across his shoulder. Nick grabbed at the arm and hugged it, crying even harder. Eventually he pushed his face into his friend’s stomach and held him around the waist tightly. While he cried his heart out Joey stroked his back, hoping against hope that no one came looking for them.

He would hate to have to try and explain this one away.

If he had wanted raw emotion he could quite easily have stayed home and had a ding-dong with his wife. Screaming and crying was, after all, her forte.

‘Come on, Nick mate, pull yourself together, eh?’

He could hear the embarrassment in his own voice and was ashamed.

‘I should never have done it, Joey. He was so young . . . so fucking young . . . but I had no choice, see? I had no fucking choice . . .’

‘ ’Course you didn’t, mate, any man would have done the same thing.’

He pulled away from his friend gently.

‘Go home, mate. You’re in no fit state . . .’ But he knew that going home was the last thing Nick Leary wanted to do. ‘Get your coat,’ he said decisively. ‘We’re going into town and me and you are going on it.’

Nick wiped his eyes.

‘I ain’t in the mood, Joey, honestly.’

‘Neither am I, but we’ll get in the mood, right?’

Nick grinned then.

‘Spearmint Rhino?’

Joey laughed loudly.

‘Eventually. Let’s just see what the day brings, shall we?’

Nick nodded once more.

Anything was better than sitting here thinking about Sonny Hatcher’s imminent burial. Even a pole-dancing club. Tyrell listened as the Reverend Williams said good things about his son. He especially noted how kind Sonny had been to his mother, how he had always taken care of her with love.

He glanced at Jude. She had her eyes closed and he could see the film of sweat over her face. He sighed heavily, wishing the day over.

In his mind’s eye he saw his Sonny Boy when he had been a baby. How did that dear little boy turn into the little fucker they were now burying?>

Anger was getting the better of him again. No matter how often he told himself that this Nick Leary had only done what any man would have done, Tyrell still wanted to tear him limb from limb.

He stood up as he saw Jude walking unsteadily from the church. Glad of an excuse to leave, he followed her. This hypocrisy was killing him. He would have had more respect for the Reverend if he had spoken truthfully about the boy Tyrell had loved.

It had been hard to admit that his son was not the good boy he had been expecting, but at least Tyrell had accepted a long time ago that Sonny was flawed. And it was all because of this woman, now huddled on a bench and scrabbling in her bag for something, anything, to make her high.

‘Come on, Jude.’

He walked her through the graveyard to his car. Inside he opened the armrest and passed her a small bag of H. She took it from him gratefully, her eyes expressing her thanks even as she struggled to open it properly because of the shaking of her hands. Five minutes later she was lying back in the front seat of his BMW, her eyes finally peaceful and her arm dangling beside her. She’d obliterated today as she had obliterated every day of her life since he could remember.

He pressed a button and the CD player came to life. The Supremes were singing that the world was empty without their babe. And the strangest thing of all was, the way he felt inside, at that moment he could have written the song himself.

As bad as Jude was he still cared about her. She was the only woman ever to have affected him in that way. Like his son he felt the urge to take care of her. It was a knack she had.

Jude played the victim so well because she really was one.

Her own biggest victim.

There was something about her eyes that would always attract him. When she was high they looked so deep and lost, she was so totally gone, that he wanted to hold her and bring her back and make it all better.

But you could never make Jude any better because she had never really known that what she did was wrong.

 
Nick was in a club in Rupert Street. It was a private club owned by a mate. A young girl with bright eyes brought on by an influx of Colombian marching gear and a short skirt that just covered her punani was smiling at him. It was a
bought
smile; he had bought her with a bit of gear and a few drinks. The knowledge depressed him.

He went to the toilet and snorted another line; at least on coke he felt that he was alive. It was good gear, it had already given him the rushes. He was only sorry it was the drugs that had given him the racing heart and not the girl.

He was off sex. If he never had another shag as long as he lived it would be too soon. He laughed at his own thoughts then stared at himself in the mirror of the plush and expensive room.

A young man had followed him in. He was in his twenties, good-looking with thick blond hair and piercing blue eyes. He looked like a young Steve McQueen and he knew it. Nick watched him closely: the fluid movements of his body, the arrogance of youth when it knew just how lovely it was.

He felt an urge to tell him to be careful, warn him that: ‘One day, in the not too distant future, you, my son, will be me.’

He wanted to laugh at his thoughts then because he knew this boy, like the girl outside, was wasting the best part of his life selling himself to the highest bidder. He locked eyes with the boy in the mirror. The boy smiled lazily at him before putting his hand leisurely down his trousers. It was the ultimate come-on for queers.

Everything was sex with people these days; all it was now was a commodity. There was no real feeling left with anyone, not even his own wife. Nick glared at the boy and mimed sticking his fingers down his throat and vomiting. The boy’s eyes widened in shock, then he shrugged before walking into one of the cubicles.

Nick glanced down at his hands; they were gripping the basin so hard his knuckles were aching. He waited for the boy to emerge once more before he took back his fist and slammed it with all the force he could muster into the young lad’s perfect face.

Walking from the toilet at an unhurried pace, he caught Joey’s eye and they left the club, laughing. The boy’s jaw was broken and Nick knew it. The knowledge gave him no satisfaction whatsoever but he had made his point. Or at least he felt that he had anyway.

Time enough to be sorry tomorrow.

Sally had seen Tyrell leaving the church and her heart had sunk down to her boots. She knew he was going to look after Jude but stood her ground and made a point of not following him. She knew he loved her, but he loved Jude differently. They all loved Jude differently. Poor Jude, as she was always called.

Well, Sally couldn’t find it in her heart to feel sorry for her like Tyrell did. She saw Jude as a selfish, manipulative bitch. But of course she rarely said that, having learned her lesson over the years.

It still galled her that even Verbena could see no wrong in her. Sally felt she would always come second. Yet here she was, Tyrell’s wife, a good mother, a good daughter-in-law, and a good decent person, but it still wasn’t enough.

It would
never
be enough.

She couldn’t compete with Jude’s neediness and that would always be her downfall. She fantasised sometimes about taking to the bottle so she could compete on the ‘poor little me’ stakes.

Yet she knew this was unfair because in fact Jude just wanted them all to leave her alone so she could get on with whatever shit she happened to be wrapped up in at the time. Jude wanted shot almost as much as Sally did. But only when it suited her. It didn’t stop Sally from hating the woman who had been like a third person in her marriage from day one.

She herself had cared about Sonny Boy after her fashion; he was her sons’ half-brother after all. But she would have been a liar if she didn’t admit deep in her heart that his death had given her a moment or two’s vicarious pleasure because she’d felt that once he was gone, Jude would be gone too.

Now, though, she wasn’t so sure.

Jude would be there still, like the spectre at the feast, as she had always been; only now she really was
poor
Jude who had lost her only child.

Sally prayed that her bitterness would vanish, but feared that it wouldn’t. A dead lover she could have coped with, but Jude was a different kettle of fish altogether. She was the living dead and she wasn’t going anywhere.

 
Spearmint Rhino was packed out. In the VIP bar Nick had been drinking steadily for hours. The coke and the whisky were taking their toll and he felt completely and utterly out of it. His head was starting to ache and his eyes had stopped focusing an hour earlier.

He had also lost Joey.

Nick sat on a sofa and watched the goings on around him. He tried unsuccessfully to find his mate but he was nowhere to be seen. Getting up, Nick lurched into a big man who, suited and booted, was very obviously a City gent.

Nick mumbled an apology as he tried to pass him. But the man, by day a respectable accountant, was as worse for wear as he was. He followed Nick outside.

As he flagged down a cab the man started swearing at him. It took a few moments before Nick even realised this was aimed at him. He actually looked around to see who had annoyed the man.

He watched as the City type came towards him, face screwed up in anger, and felt the urge to laugh. This guy was flabby, a typical desk boy, not an ounce of muscle to be seen. But big enough to be a problem if you didn’t know how to handle yourself.

Nick put up his hand in a friendly fashion.

‘Oh, come on now, you don’t want to fight with me.’

Paul Cross wanted to fight anyone and everyone, that much was evident by his demeanour.

‘You taking the fucking piss?’

It was a fair question, Nick supposed.

‘I don’t know, mate, you tell me.’

It was as good as a battle cry, said with enough disdain to cause a fight or to prevent one, depending how the other man decided to take it.

Paul Cross, much to Nick’s chagrin, decided he wanted a fight. Nick sighed as he planted his feet more firmly on the pavement. He could have a row, had
always
been able to have a row. It was what had got him where he was in life.

He had been the best fighter in his year as a teenager, and eventually the best fighter in his whole school. His skills were legendary where he came from and now, in his drink- and drug-fuelled state, he was quite looking forward to taking on this man who had probably never, in all his life, had a fight that wasn’t driven by anger. Well, Nick had fought without anger all his life, just to prove a point or to get a little bit further in his chosen profession. This prat would not know what the fuck had hit him.