Hateland (44 page)

     Afterwards, we went for a drink in a pub near the huge Rover car plant. Neither of us said much. Jerry's eyes welled up with tears. I started to cry, went to the toilet, composed myself and went back to sit with him. That was it. We didn't mention our father again. We talked about work, our mother's health and the weather. Then, two hours after we'd met, he was gone.

     Some years earlier, I'd stolen a blank headstone, which I'd stored in my garage. I'd intended it for use on my own grave. Living the life I've led, a stolen headstone over my grave struck me as fitting and amusing. Headstones are ridiculously expensive, and I'd also been hoping to save my loved ones a few bob when the time came. I decided to use this headstone for my father's grave. I had it engraved with his dates and the words 'Patrick "Danny Boy" O'Mahoney. Rest in Peace.'

     Dealing with the dead was a lot easier than dealing with the living who happened to have a death wish. After yet another violent incident, my brother Paul was sectioned under the Mental Health Act.

     He was released some months later, on medication, but was now a registered lunatic, with card, T-shirt and free travel on the tube. He'd been a violent madman since his teens. Now it was official.

     He took to wearing army fatigues and cycling shorts. I'd see him very irregularly, but when we met he'd talk as if we'd only seen each other ten minutes earlier. Then he'd say something like, 'I can't hang around,' and he'd be off. He believed he'd successfully outwitted the doctors by pretending to be mad in order to get free travel on public transport and lighter sentences in court.

     I couldn't help but laugh whenever I met Paul. He told me he'd started stalking one of his carers. He'd say to me, 'Followed that fucking cunt again. Thinks I'm mad.'

     Until a few years ago, if you didn't know him, he could still give an impression of lucidity. He continued to form friendships with nutters from all over the world - former hangmen, South African mercenaries, ex-prisoners - cranks and weirdos just like himself. But, in the end, no one remained in contact with him for long. Stranded alone in a desert, he'd fall out with himself.

     Paul's couldn't-care-less attitude did bring him into contact with countless dubious individuals, some of whom worked for newspapers. I suppose to a stranger he could appear as a useful, though brainless, thug. But Paul has never been brainless. He used to exploit and use anyone he encountered, regardless of how untouchable they thought they might be. He got involved with a Russian mafia scam to find British husbands for eastern European 'dancers' and call girls. He 'married' one 'dancer' himself, for which he was paid three thousand pounds.

     Then, to make some more money, he went to the
News of the World
and gave the story to their legendary undercover reporter Mazher Mahmood. Mazher specialises in dressing up as an Arab sheikh to get famous people to do drug deals or betray secrets. His most famous scoop came when he fooled the Countess of Wessex into talking indiscreetly about the Royal Family. On 3 March 2002, with information supplied by Paul, Mazher exposed the 'mafia bosses' behind the marriage scam. However, for some reason, Paul felt misused by the one-time 'Reporter of the Year' and decided to get his own back.

     His chance came when Mazher asked him for help in exposing a story about two racist policemen. The officers worked at a station in London's West End. Apparently, they would arrest black people, then take bets on who'd be the first to get the prisoners to call them 'master' and beg for food. Mazher wanted Paul to wear a special denim jacket fitted with a hidden camera and voice recorder, so he could tape the officers boasting of their deeds. Paul agreed.

     Mazher met up with Paul in a cafe. He gave him the jacket to try on. Mazher boasted it was state of the art and worth about £30,000. Paul put it on - then ran off down the road with it.

     Mazher got my number and rang me. He sounded desperate. He begged me to help him get the jacket back. He said he'd have to go to the police if Paul didn't return it. I rang Paul, who said, 'I'm not giving that cunt anything. He ripped me off.'

     I said Mazher would have to go to the police. Paul said he didn't give a fuck. He'd already sold the jacket for five hundred pounds to some West Indians.

     I asked Paul if Mazher might be able to buy it back. Paul agreed to take him to the shop in Hackney where he'd fenced the jacket. Sadly, the trip wasn't successful. Mazher ended up being set upon by the West Indians. Paul was arrested for theft. He told the police that Mazher had been trying to expose two of their colleagues. He said he hadn't been prepared to help, because he felt the police did a wonderful job. Paul wasn't prosecuted and, so far as I know, Mazher never got his jacket back.

     I'd been worried for years by Paul's mental health. I'd also become worried by our mutual friend Ray's physical health. Over the years, he'd destroyed himself by drinking vast amounts of alcohol with Paul. When I saw him at the beginning of 2002, he looked horribly skinny He'd been fitted with a colostomy bag because of kidney trouble. Only a decade earlier, Ray had been a healthy, happy hooligan for his beloved Millwall. Now he looked desperately ill, like a man twice his age.

     In the spring of2002,1 flew to New York with my partner Emma and my son Vinney. On the flight home, I found myself overcome with a crushing sense of doom. I'd never before experienced anything like it. I told Emma and Vinney I thought something terrible had happened. I felt sure someone had died - either Paul or Ray. I'm not a believer in the supernatural, so I felt a bit uncomfortable in my new role as the reincarnation of Doris Stokes. However, as soon as we landed, I switched on my mobile to discover lots of messages. Adolf's was the first. He just told me to ring him urgently.

     I rang him straightaway without listening to the other messages. He said, 'Ray's dead.' Adolf had spoken to Ray's father, with whom Ray had been staying. On his last night, Ray had stretched out on the sofa to watch the football on telly. His father went to bed. In the morning, he got up to find Ray still on the sofa with the telly on. He realised his son was dead.

     I'd once been very close to Ray. His loss at such an early age - he was only 37 - hit me hard. I contacted Paul, whom I hadn't seen since the previous year when he'd refused to visit my father's grave. We arranged to go to Ray's funeral together with my brother Michael, who'd also known and liked Ray.

     I met Paul at King's Cross. His appearance shocked me. It wasn't just his cream trousers, which I suggested were unsuitable for a funeral. He was thin and gaunt and looked ten years older. Mentally, too, he was just shot to pieces. It was hard to get a coherent word out of him. Emma took a photo of us three brothers together. When I showed it later to my mother, she cried because she thought Paul looked so frail.

     I offered to buy Paul some black trousers, but he declined. We took a taxi to Dulwich, where Ray had been living with his partner Lorna and their children. I had to laugh at the name of the road - Marcus Garvey Mews, named after a black nationalist leader.

     The whole gang turned out for the funeral. Seeing them standing there together made Ray's death real for the first time. I couldn't speak. I tried talking to Ray's dad, but no words came out. He, too, was speechless. The poor man looked totally destroyed, totally. I felt for him throughout the day.

     It was strangely comforting when the hearse carrying Ray pulled up outside the house. He was back among the boys and his family. The Catholic church was already packed by the time we arrived. At the front near the altar stood four black women. Adolf asked if they were 'Martha Reeves and the Vandellas'. But no one was in the mood for humour.

     The service started. It was led by an Irish priest. Adolf didn't like the cut of his jib. He whispered to me that he looked like 'a red'. He began muttering about 'conspirators' in the ranks, but no one paid any attention.

     Several of Ray's black friends turned up. In truth, Ray had never been much of a Nazi. He just loved the excitement of anti-social behaviour. In fact, Adolf had viewed Ray with suspicion for some years. Among other things, he regarded Ray's skin as a trifle too sallow for him to be a kosher Aryan. Of course, Ray was as white as any of us; he just took a good suntan.

     This sort of conjecture isn't unusual for Adolf. Even your choice of holiday destination can arouse his suspicions about your 'true' racial origins or political leanings. Too many trips to 'unsound' countries (that is, most of the world) may lead to your inclusion in his mental list of those marked down for arrest, imprisonment, torture and possible execution when the National Socialists come to power.

     Adolf had begun hunting for proof of Ray's impure blood and believed he'd found it when he discovered Ray's father had been born in Canada. It's one of Adolf's fixed ideas that Canada is full of Jews. To make everything even more murky for Adolf, he was told that Ray's father, the son of British expatriates, had spent part of his childhood in India, where his father's work had taken him. This led Adolf to speculate that Ray might actually be a 'shopkeeper' (his favourite word for Asians).

     During the service, the congregation sang enthusiastically the stirring song 'Jerusalem', written by the poet William Blake around two centuries earlier in the heyday of the British Empire. I later discovered that the song is normally associated with the Church of England, not the Church of Rome. But even among Anglicans, there's been a controversy about whether 'Jerusalem' is really a hymn or merely a sort of national anthem. The song's last verse shook the church:

I will not cease from Mental Fight, 

Nor shall my Sword sleep in my hand, 

Till we have built Jerusalem, 

In England's green and pleasant Land.

Outside the church, Adolf said to me bitterly, 'Did you see that Provo bastard?'

     I said, 'Which Provo bastard?'

     'That so-called "priest", Father Fucking Fenian.'

     'What about him?'

     'He didn't sing along to "Jerusalem", the IRA scum. I watched him closely. His lips didn't move.'

     'Perhaps he didn't know the words.'

     'No, he did it deliberate. A coldly planned provocation. Fucking republican.'

     I couldn't see how a failure to sing 'Jerusalem' - even if that had indeed been the case - could be interpreted as support for the provisional wing of the Irish Republican Army. The priest had struck me as a very nice man who was about as likely to go on a rampage with Millwall fans as support the Provos. He'd conducted a moving service. The many normal members of the congregation would have been horrified to hear Adolf's rant, but they didn't know him like we did. If Ray had been around, he would have laughed. It was only fitting that Adolf behaved entirely in character for our friend's farewell.

     We drove to the crematorium. Lots of flowers had been made into blue-and-white footballs or Millwall shields. I stepped forward and laid my hand on his coffin. I said my goodbyes. All of a sudden, the sound of grinding hydraulic machinery snapped everyone out of their personal misery. Ray's coffin began slowly to disappear on its last, short journey. It was awful.

     As we left the crematorium, Ray's dad could speak to me for the first time. He said, 'He won't be getting in any more trouble, will he, Bernie?'

     I couldn't answer. We all went back to a club which Lorna had hired. Adolf stood on the table and asked everyone to raise their glasses in memory of our friend Ray. None of us will ever forget him. He was, as they say in south London, 'proper'.

     Later, we went to one of 'our' pubs, The Brockwell Tavern, near Ray's house. A couple of men sat down at a table near our group. Adolf soon became convinced they were Special Branch officers, there to keep us under surveillance. At first, we all laughed at him, but his paranoia became infectious. After several drinks, one of our group told the 'Special Branch' men that they'd been sussed. He ordered them to leave quietly and immediately - or be dealt with violently. The men denied vehemently they were police officers, but left hurriedly anyway, thus confirming Adolf's suspicions. We found out later that the men were in fact well-known regulars who had nothing to do with the police.

     As the evening wore on, Paul became convinced the barman was stealing money from us. I could see in his eyes that without my intervention the dispute would end in violence. I talked him into leaving the pub. I called a taxi, paid the driver to take him wherever he wanted and gave Paul a few quid on top. I haven't seen him since.

     Over the following months, he rang me to say he'd been evicted from his flat and was living on the streets. On Christmas Eve 2003, he rang me. I told him to meet me at Barnet tube station. I brought along three sets of new clothes and five hundred quid in cash. I wanted to take him home to my mother, who hadn't seen her four sons stand in the same room together for 20 years.

     At nine in the morning, Paul rang to say he was at the Embankment and would be with me in half an hour. I sat waiting for three hours. He never showed. Since then, he hasn't rung me - or anyone else in the family

     A few months ago, I got a call from Adolf. He said he'd found Paul lying in a sleeping bag at the Elephant and Castle in south London. He'd hardly recognised my brother, who'd grown a long beard and looked like a last-gasp wino. Adolf said he'd tried talking to him, but Paul hadn't appeared to recognise him. He'd just mumbled something incoherently to himself.

     Now, when I'm lying in bed, listening to the driving rain outside, I feel overcome with guilt, because I know Paul's out there. My conscience screams at me. Bernie, who's always tried to pick up the pieces and make things right, should get out of bed, drive to London, pick his brother up off the street and bring him to shelter.

     I'd do it now, if I could, but I know I can't help a man who won't help himself. I can't help a man who doesn't want my help. Like my uncle Bernie before him, Paul has simply given up on life. He's just waiting for his time to come. And that breaks my heart.