Faceless (22 page)

The man’s voice was gentle and kind as he gave Kevin the drink.

‘My wife works at the hospital, Mr Carter. Your wife is very bad, you know.’

The wife?’

The shock was still setting in. Suddenly he realised that neither Lou nor his daughter were at the scene. He had assumed they were safe somewhere.

‘How’s me daughter Lucy?’

‘She’s fine. But your wife was in the house when they threw the petrol bomb and she is very badly burned. Let me take you to the hospital in my car. The police have been looking for you everywhere.’

Kevin had turned his phone off. He always did when he saw Marie. While they had been eating and chatting, someone had firebombed his home. And he knew who had done it as well. He knew exactly who had done it.

He knocked back the drink in one gulp.

‘Is she bad then?’

His voice was so low, Mr Patel had to strain to hear him.

‘Very bad. I was there when they attended to her in the ambulance. I went to the hospital with her.’

‘That was very good of you.’

The man nodded a dismissal. He would have done the same for

anyone.

‘I will take you to the hospital.’

Kevin shook his head and stood up.

‘No, that’s OK. I’m not ready yet to face Lou. This is all my fault, you see.’

He was rambling and Mr Patel shrugged at his wife.

‘Mr Carter, you don’t understand. Your wife is dying.’

‘Dying?’

Kevin sat back down. He felt as if the breath had been knocked from his body.

‘What - Lou, you mean?’

The man nodded again, his expressive brown eyes full of sympathy for the shattered man before him. They left the house minutes later but Kevin did not speak another word.

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Chapter Eleven

Malcolm and his cronies pulled up at the bottom of Leroy’s road in Swiss Cottage. They had followed Patrick’s BMW and now they were tooling up in case Leroy had a posse with him. He was capable of it, according to Patrick. The plan was for Pat to go in cold and see how the land lay. Leroy would not suspect him.

Before they had left the club Patrick had nipped into his office and grabbed a small cosh. He fingered the cold steel now as he walked up to Leroy’s flat and buzzed the intercom.

‘It’s me, Lee. Let me in, mate, it’s cold out here.’

Leroy answered him angrily.

‘Just the man I want to see.’

As he walked into Leroy’s flat Patrick received the full force of the other man’s displeasure.

‘You fucking tosser! You fucked me right up. Everyone knows you done Dickinson, and now, thanks to you, people think it’s me. I never touched Malcolm’s blood. I ain’t a fucking mental case.’

Patrick waited.

In a way he understood the man’s predicament. Who was he more frightened of, Patrick himself or Malcolm? It was hard on him and Patrick sympathised. But such was the life they lived and Leroy should have understood as much. If he had, he wouldn’t find himself in the position he was in now.

Now Patrick grinned, his face looking amiable, friendly even.

‘But, you see, he thinks you did. Now I think it was me who shot his boy’s face off, but I ain’t gonna say that, am I? So it looks like you have to be the fall guy, don’t it?’

He sounded so reasonable, so honest, that it was a shock when he removed the cosh from his pocket and crashed it into the other man’s face, breaking open his nose and mouth.

Leroy fell to the floor.

Patrick watched gleefully as Leroy tried to make his way to his

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desk where he had either a gun or some other weapon. He followed him, enjoying the other man’s helplessness. Then he cracked him over the head a few times, bursting the skull, but leaving Leroy just alive enough to keep Malcolm and his machete happy.

He trashed the place, made it look like there’d been a fight. Then he searched to make sure there was nothing he wanted before phoning Malcolm on his mobile and telling him the boy was ready to receive him.

There was no way Leroy was going to get up at any point, or be able to speak, so Patrick felt safe enough as he let them into the flat and told them how Leroy had attacked him when he’d remonstrated with him over what he had done to Malcolm.

He was the hero of the hour, and as Malcolm brought the machete down on his friend’s head Patrick wondered where he could purchase a really good one for his own use. He decided he liked Jamaican retribution, it was dramatic and bloody. The perfect weapon of fear.

He could also use this death to get back into Tiffany’s good books. He would tell her that Leroy had died for what he had done to her. Patrick felt she was getting too feisty by half. He used fear to control her but he also used psychology. A bit of guilt thrown in wouldn’t do her any harm either.

Nice then nasty. It worked with whores every time.

Kevin grasped Lucy’s hand but she shrugged him off.

‘Bit bloody late for all that now, Dad.’

Her voice had the same whine that her mother had perfected over the years and he closed his eyes against it. It grated on him.

‘Calm down, Luce …’

She shook her head in amazement.

‘Calm down? You want me to calm down? My mother is dying, my home is destroyed, and you want me to calm down?’

Kevin stared into his daughter’s face. It was tight with anger and like her mother before her showed no real interest in anyone but herself. Me, me, me, me. It was all he had ever heard. Along with I want, I think, I will.

Lucy watched his face, the changing expressions on it, and laughed nastily.

‘You really are a piece of work, do you know that? This is all your fault. Dad. Being the big I am for Marie by sorting out Karen Black has brought this on us. You would do anything for Marie, wouldn’t

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you? Even put me and me mother up for trouble. But as long as she’s all right …’

‘The Blacks kicked the shit out other …’

Lucy held her hand up as if warding off a blow.

‘They had reason to. Dad. She battered one of their family to death. It’s called taking care of your own. They’ve brought up Bethany’s kids, taken care of their family, see? You should try it some time.’

Kevin had had enough.

‘Like your mother and you took care ofMarie’s kids, you mean?’

Lucy narrowed her eyes. Trust him to bring all that up again. As if anyone would want anything that had come from her body.

‘That’s different and you know it.’

Kevin looked into his daughter’s face. It just missed being pretty because of the expression on it. She always looked hard done by and she really believed she was. That was the saddest part of it all. She could never enjoy anything because she was too frightened someone else was enjoying themselves a bit more than she was. Had a better car, house, cardigan, whatever.

‘How is it different, explain that to me? How was turning our backs on two defenceless little kids the right thing to do? What had they to do with what their mother had done? Tell me, come on, know all. Like your mother you can’t answer that question, can you? Like her, deep inside, you knew it was wrong. I knew, and I did nothing about it. But I wish I had. I should have put your fucking mother out the front door and brought those kids into my home where they belonged. But I did what she wanted because she is such a difficult woman. I opted for a quiet life as usual.

‘I wish I had fucked off years ago and left her. Any other man would have, and if you ain’t careful, Lucy, Mickey will leave you because you’re just like her. You have the same vindictive streak and the same jealous way she has. Your whole life will be a mixture of hatred and pain, just like hers. It’s what people like you two do to yourselves.’

One part of Lucy knew that her father was talking sense. But it hurt, the truth always hurt, and no one knew that like Lucy Carter.

She was also incensed that this thoughtless man, her own father, could destroy them all. See his wife badly burned and still feel in the right enough to talk badly of her. Coupled with her natural jealousy of her sister, she felt rage take her over. She shook her head sagely.

‘Well, now we know what you think, don’t we? I hope Mum does

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die so you can finally be shot of her. But you’ll always know you were the cause of her death, won’t you? Enjoy yourself. Dad, with your darling Marie. Everything has to be paid for in the end, remember that.’

Kevin stared at his daughter sadly.

‘You are your mother’s daughter all right, Lucy, no doubt about that. For all Marie’s done she is still basically a good person. A better person than you or your mother could ever be. you remember that.’

He turned back to the bed and saw that Louise’s eyes were open. She was listening to everything that was being said. Even in the midst of her pain she had the strength to look at him with a hatred so acute it was almost tangible.

‘Oh, Mum!’

Lucy looked at her mother and felt such sorrow for her that the tears flowed freely. For her to hear all that now was terrible. Lucy, not for the first time, wished she could keep her big mouth shut.

Kevin walked out of the room quickly. He couldn’t look at those accusing eyes any longer because it wasn’t fair. None of it was. He took the flak for everything and in trying to help had only made things worse. Well, this was just the catalyst he’d needed to take a stroll, and he would. He was out of it all now. Let them get on with it.

As he left the hospital he knew in his heart that Louise would survive. On sheer will-power she would-survive, and in surviving would make sure she destroyed them all. Especially her firstborn child, her eldest daughter. She hated Marie with a vengeance that was unnatural.

One thing he knew for sure: no matter what happened now, this marriage was over. Pity might have kept him in it this long, but not any more. Lou being Lou, she would make him pay somehow. And if that was the case, he would pay happily as long as he never had to look at her again.

Mickey Watson had followed him outside. As Kevin unlocked his van he saw his daughter’s fiance standing nearby, looking embarrassed.

‘What can I do for you, Mickey?’

‘What’s going to happen with Lou?’

Mickey’s big moon face was inscrutable.

Kevin shrugged. ‘Looks like your wife-to-be has already made up her mind about that. She’s just lumbered herself with her. Ask her

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what’s happening. Like her mother before her she knows everything so she should be able to answer that question.’

Mickey stood his ground.

‘She’s your wife.’

Kevin laughed gently.

‘That’s true, but there is such a thing as divorce, you know.’

‘You’d divorce Lou, the state she’s in?’

Mickey sounded amazed. In their circles you stood by your own through thick and thin or other people had something to say about it.

‘Like a fucking shot! Your wife-to-be saw to that. I have had the pair of them up to my back teeth. Now this, and I’m blamed as usual. Well, I have had enough. A bit of advice for you, Mickey, look long and hard at Louise because the old saying is true where her and Lucy are concerned. Lucy is her mother all over again, and God help her, she will never know a day’s real happiness. Consequently neither will you.’

Mickey watched him drive off. Half of him felt sorry for Louise, being left like that in the condition she was in. But another part of him knew that he would have done the same thing. She was a bastard of a woman.

Lou had taken Kevin and all but destroyed him over the years. Used him as a provider, a crutch for her ego, and the source of a wedding band to show off to the neighbours. In his heart of hearts Mickey didn’t blame him for taking the easy way out now. But he resented the fact that it left his fiancee, and that meant him as well, with Louise. Fit and well she was a handful, but if she survived this she was going to be a nightmare. He needed to consider his own position in this. As his mother said, the sins of the fathers and all that.

He wasn’t going to tie himself to someone who had to be at her mother’s beck and call for the rest of their married life. No, he needed to think long and hard about what he was going to do now. He wasn’t about to exchange one miserable mother for another. No way was that happening to him. Out of the two, he’d have his own any day of the week. And he had his own life to lead.

Karen Black was packing. They were all going to the caravan in Margate. She felt euphoric at her antics of earlier in the day. She would love to see the Carters’ faces when they saw what she had done to their house!

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fuck with people. He thought he was hard? Well, she would like to see him now. See him foraging for a few quid and a roof over his head.

She laughed delightedly.

She was away to Margate until the heat died down. It was the natural thing to do. Once the nine-days wonder was over she would slip back, a heroine and a meter-out of justice. This was important to her. She needed to feel that people respected her, and respect was best earned by threats and the ability to carry them out.

Kevin Carter would think twice before he messed with her again. The recollection of what he had done to her still rankled. Her workmates had seen her at her lowest ebb, humiliated and unable to fight back for once in her life. But she had paid him back one hundredfold for his little tantrum, and she knew that anyone with half a brain would swallow it and let things lie. After all, the next step from a fire bombing was actual physical harm. Kevin Carter knew that and would keep his head down and his mouth shut.

She only wished she could stay long enough to hear the talk in her local pub. She would be the topic of conversation for a long while after this little lot. Karen was shrewd enough to understand not all the talk would be praise, but she knew that her name would become synonymous with what she had done, what she had achieved, and others would treat her accordingly.

She would be able to say what she wanted to people, would enjoy drinks that she had not paid for and would also bask in the knowledge that everyone thought she was a bona fide nut case. Someone to be wary of, to watch closely in case you inadvertently brought her wrath down on your head.