Faces (69 page)

 

‘Danny, calm yourself, son.’

Danny Boy could feel his mother’s fear and it annoyed him. She was his mother, for crying out loud; she was the last person who should feel any worry where he was concerned. That history had shown her different didn’t concern him at that time because, as always, he was rewriting the past as he went along. It was a knack he had, he had inherited it from his father, though Ange knew she would never point that out to him.

‘Is Jonjo in or not?’

Ange nodded and, pushing at her eldest son roughly, she cried, ‘Will you sit down and let me get him? He’s in the shower.’

Danny was taken aback at her actions and, as always, his anger left just as quickly as it had arrived and putting his hands up in mock terror, he said, ‘All right, Mum, relax! I’ll go up to him.’

As he sprinted up the stairs he called out, ‘Make a cup of Rosie will you?’

Jonjo was on the landing waiting for him, and Danny Boy grinned at him, deliberately not seeing the livid bruising all over his body from their last encounter.

‘All right, Jonjo? I need a few words.’

Jonjo followed him into his bedroom, closing the door behind him. Danny looked around the cluttered room and grinned. ‘Fucking hell, all you need are a few Janet Jackson posters on the wall and it could be a fucking teenager’s room.’

Danny sat on the bed heavily, the mattress straining under his colossal weight. ‘Ain’t you got any fucking shame, living with your mum like a little kid?’

Jonjo stood very still and listened very quietly to his brother’s harangue. He knew it was pointless answering him in any way as it would just make things worse. He waited until Danny Boy had run out of steam, then he sat down gently on the small stool at the dressing table and said respectfully, ‘What can I do for you, Danny Boy?’

Danny was gratified at his brother’s whole attitude; this was what he craved, this was what he needed. Unconditional respect, people understanding that he was the man in control, it was what he was good at. What he needed as a salve for all the humiliation he had suffered as a kid, from the scruffy clothes to the home haircuts.

Danny loved the way people moved out of his way, how they looked at him with a mixture of curiosity and fear and how their respect was already a given. He even needed it from his own family, in fact he needed it more from them than he did strangers.

‘What can
you
do for
me
? Well, that’s a fucking funny thing for you to be asking, don’t you think? When, like everyone else you wouldn’t even be in this poxy little bedroom unless I allowed it.’

Danny Boy wiped a hand across his face slowly, before saying in a gentler voice, ‘But you can help me, bruv, so wonders truly will never cease. Have you seen or heard from Marsh at all?’

Jonjo dropped his head on to his chest, he was biting his lip to stop himself from laughing in triumph. Then, sighing gently, he said sincerely, ‘Nah. I ain’t. But has Michael not said anything to you about him?’

He was gratified at Danny Boy’s look of shock and, if he wasn’t mistaken, a glimmer of fear was now in his eyes. ‘What do you mean? Why would Michael mention him?’

Jonjo stood up then, his whole body stretched out to its fullest. His face, if not exactly arrogant, was certainly devoid of its usual subservience. ‘I heard last night that he was on the North Pole Road with Michael and Arnold. I would have assumed they would have mentioned that.’

Danny was digesting this information, and Jonjo looked on with what he felt was well-deserved pleasure at his elder brother’s obvious confusion. For once, Danny Boy was not in possession of all the facts, and it gratified Jonjo no end to be the one who finally knew something this big, bullying bastard didn’t.

‘Who told you that?’

Jonjo shrugged. ‘Micky Johns. He was in there scoring, he knew Marsh because he’d had a run-in with him before.’

‘And he was definitely with Arnold and Michael?’

Jonjo didn’t answer him for a few seconds, enjoying seeing his brother so perplexed. So out of the loop, so baffled by his words and what they might mean to him. Danny Boy though, was not in any mood to wait for answers; he was on him in a flash and, grabbing him round the throat, he literally picked him up off the floor as he bellowed, ‘Answer me, you useless cunt! Was he with Michael?
My
Michael?’

Jonjo was nodding now, so furiously he could feel the muscles in his neck straining with the tension. Danny Boy threw him on to the floor as if he weighed nothing; as if he was no more than a small child. An annoying child at that. Stepping over him he left the room, slamming the door behind him.

Jonjo sat up, rubbing his neck where Danny Boy had grabbed him, knowing it was nothing to what he had done to him in the past. Jonjo was laughing though, gently chuckling to himself at his brother’s misfortune, when the door sprang open again and Danny Boy was there once more, laying into him with fists and feet. All the time screaming at him, ‘Fucking laugh at me, would you? Laugh at me, you fucking lairy little cunt? Funny, am I? Humorous? An object of ridicule? I’ll kill ya. You fucking treacherous bastard, I’ll fucking kill ya . . .’

Danny was out of control, and the last thing Jonjo remembered was his mother trying to drag Danny Boy off of him, her voice high and blurred with her tears as she took the full force of her son’s anger. ‘Leave him, stop it, Danny Boy. You’ll kill him.’ She was lying across her younger son now, her body had already taken a few blows, and Danny Boy looked down at her, knew she would take a hammering if necessary, and attempted to master his phenomenal anger. Tried to calm himself down.

‘Get up. Get up, Mum . . .’

She shook her head. ‘No.
You
get out of here. I want
you
out of here . . . Out of this house . . .’

Danny laughed at her front then. At her ridiculous demands. ‘But it’s
my
house, ain’t it, Mum?’

Ange looked up at the son she had worshipped and loathed in equal measure over the years and she said loudly, ‘Then you can
stick
your house right up your arse. I don’t want it any more. If it means I have to dance to your fucking tune for the rest of me days, I’d rather be homeless, Danny Boy . . . I’d rather be on the streets.’

Danny could see the hate for him in her eyes, watched warily as she pulled herself up from the floor with difficulty, needing to use the edge of the bed as leverage. He saw how old she had become overnight and the distress in her face as she said, honestly and humbly, ‘I can’t do this any more, Danny Boy. You’re a fucking maniac, a fucking looney tunes. I did the best I could for all of you, for all me kids. But you, Danny, I lied for you, lied to everyone, the Filth, the school, the priest, and I never cared about any of that until now. But this is the final straw, son. This is the one that broke this donkey’s back. I know you better than you know yourself. I know you’re a fucking bully, that you even torture that poor woman who married you, and I know you bully everyone in your orbit, me included, because no one has any importance in your life except you. Well, it all stops now. Today.’

Ange was sobbing, her heart was aching with the knowledge that this man who she had loved with all her heart, was never going to change. He would only get worse, and she knew that she couldn’t let him do this any more. She couldn’t take the fear and the terror of wondering what he was going to do next any more.

She sank down on to the stool, her shoulders trembling with the strength of her sobs, her eyes running with salty tears that mingled with her snot. She covered her face with her hands and moaned in deep pain. The sound was so distressing and so valid, that, for the first time in years, Danny Boy took a mental step back from it.

Danny Boy was watching her; he had never seen her like this before. His mother telling him to go, telling him she didn’t want him, had hit him like a blast from a sawn-off shotgun. He put a tentative hand out, tried to touch her shoulder, but she knocked it away with all the force she could muster.

‘Get away. Don’t you touch me. I know all about you, even poor Michael’s had enough of you. Carole told me about your upset . . . Wondered if I knew anything about it. But I tell you something, when I heard, I was pleased he had seen the light where you were concerned. You’re like a disease, Danny Boy, a fucking plague, and I can’t be a part of it any more. I don’t want to be.’ She wiped her eyes, and knelt by her younger son, feeling for a pulse.

‘You took me fucking money though, didn’t ya? Used me when it suited ya . . .’

Ange waved him away from her, shaking her head at his words. ‘You crippled your own father and you know what he said to me once? You might have crippled his body. But
you
always have had a crippled mind, and he was right. You’re not normal, for all your church-going and your fucking confessions you are tainted and in turn you taint everything and everyone you touch. Now, fuck off out of here, and don’t let me clap eyes on you again.’

Danny belted her across the mouth with the back of his hand and watched as the force of it sent her sprawling across the bedroom floor. Her lip split and already swelling, she lay there for a few seconds, looking at him with tired eyes. ‘The hand that strikes a parent will wither and die. Well, you’re dead to me now, Danny Boy. Dead as a fucking doornail. So, get out, and leave me in peace.’

Danny left the room then, dazed by her anger, at her words. And he knew that if he stayed, he would hurt her, really hurt her. He knew that the blow he had delivered would haunt him for the rest of his life, but she had asked for it. Had pushed him to the limit. They all had at some point. What a fucking family to be lumbered with; from his father right the way through the card, liars and deceivers all of them. As he left the house, he saw the neighbours all out on their front steps and he held his head up as he walked to his car. The shame of his situation was burning into him like a cancer, and added to his already unstable fury; it stoked a fire that could only be quenched by somebody’s death, and he knew exactly who that somebody was going to be.

 

Arnold and Michael were at a warehouse in Dalston. They were nervous but accepting of what they were going to have to do. It was the lesser of the two evils and they both knew that.

Jeremy Marsh was staring at them sightlessly from underneath the tape they had placed over his eyes the night before. He was very still; he was dead and he stank like a polecat. Both men knew that, though neither of them wanted to mention it just yet. It was a lot to take on board; he had obviously choked on either his own vomit or internal bleeding from the kicking they had given him the night before. Either way, it had saved them a job. All they needed to work out now was where they were going to dump his two-faced, scheming carcass.

As they looked at the dead man, his head almost covered with insulating tape, they knew they had burned their boats. The warehouse was full of clothes and handbags, they were all Jekyll and Hydes, snides. From Prada bags to Gucci shoes. Dior dresses to Wrangler jeans. If it was coveted by the masses, it was in this warehouse. The Jekyll market was worth millions in the right hands, and they distributed to every marketplace and every council-house trader in the land. Somewhere along the line, they collected a piece of that pie, and it was a really massive pie. Now they didn’t even know how much of their profits were already common knowledge in the police department. How much was being skimmed off by them, how much Danny Boy might be paying to keep them on his side. To make sure he was still the main man, no matter what, and that was without all the information he was passing on. Passing on to make sure no one could ever oust him. It was sickening, the mere thought of it was untenable. Yet it was a reality and they both knew that.

As they looked down on the inert form of Marsh, Arnold said inquisitively and without any rancour, ‘How did the fucker get away with this for so long? I mean, not being funny or anything, but I have to ask you, Michael. Did you never even suss once that he might not be legitimately on the rob? That there might be some kind of fucking con going on?’

Michael sighed and, sitting on a nearby crate, he said honestly, ‘I did a couple of times, things didn’t always add up. But you knew him, would you ever have believed he could do something like that? And I honestly believe now, after all this, that if he ever did have a capture, he would not have lasted five minutes in nick, and I think he knew that. Had always known it. Danny Boy could not have stood the day-to-day of prison; the fucking boredom and the sameness. Danny wasn’t cut out for the downside of our lifestyle; he would do anything to avoid all that. Nick itself would have destroyed him; the regime, the people, the fucking humiliation of it would have been too much for him.’

Arnold nodded, as if in agreement. ‘You sound like you understand why he tucked everyone up. You stand to lose more than anybody if this goes tits up. You were his fucking partner, you know as much, or more than, him about the day-to-day of your businesses.’

‘I know that, more than you realise. But, for the same token, all I am saying is that, in a funny way, I understand him, and I know him better than anyone.’

Arnold laughed then. Sarcastically. ‘You didn’t know him that fucking well, face it, look at where we are now. Look at what he fucking caused with his
worrying
about getting a tug. Didn’t mind everyone else getting a fucking tug though, did he?’

Michael held his head in his hands and, almost growling with annoyance, he snapped, ‘I never said I agreed with his fucking behaviour, did I? All I said was I
understand
it because I understand
him
, how he thinks, how he feels.’

Arnold was annoyed now, felt that maybe Michael was still capable of taking Danny Boy’s side in all this. He pushed his face towards his as he spat at him, ‘Yeah, I understand him and all; he
thinks
we’re all cunts, and
feels
we’re beneath his fucking notice.’