Last Rights (33 page)

From up above there was a grunt and then a woman’s muffled voice said something that made no sense to me at the time.

‘No, you.’

And then the gun moved away from my head. For a while I lay, unable to move, locked in to Frederick and a fear of what I might
find if I raised my head from his. But then I heard screaming so I had to move. But when I opened my eyes, I realised that
Opal Reynolds had gone.

Blatt was cradling his girl in his arms, her legs spread out almost obscenely across the grass. Clutching, clawing
almost at her chest, Opal Reynolds’s movements reminded me of Kevin Dooley’s on his last night on this earth. Looking at me,
or so I thought, she said, ‘I loved you.’

‘No, you never loved anyone. I loved Shlomo and you killed him. Showing off as usual, having a laugh with your dressing-up
clothes. You killed the man I loved!’

Ruby, one hand still clutching the butterfly hatpin she had thrust into her sister’s heart, put her other hand on my arm and
asked me if I was all right.

‘We need to get a doctor,’ I said. ‘For her.’

‘No.’

‘But . . .’

Ruby Reynolds looked at me with fury in her eyes. ‘You know,’ she said, ‘my little sister came to look after me when she turned
up at Princelet Street? Even talked about going out of London to hide me. Fed me some cock-and-bull story about how she found
me. I was grateful – she was so sympathetic about Shlomo. Then, suddenly, there’s Amber, she’s got her too now, and she tells
us both tonight about Shlomo and about Pearl’s husband. Said we had to face up to it together – like we did in the old days.
Christ! She waited all those days to tell me! Knowing what she’d done to me! I thought she’d changed. I hoped, I kidded myself.
But no more . . .’

The gun was on the grass now and I suppose I could’ve picked it up and used it to underwrite my argument. But I didn’t because
although Ruby Reynolds seemed content to watch her sister die slowly in front of her eyes she didn’t try to stop me when I
started to go off in search of help. I began walking out of there, past the weeping
nun, the man holding the dying young woman in his arms, bits of poor old Frederick trailing after me as I went.

‘You know, I should’ve done this twenty-two years ago,’ I heard Ruby say, ‘but you were a child then and I’m no natural killer,
even of grown-up people. I’m a good person!’

‘I know – which was why I got rid of that man who was hurting you!’ I heard her sister gasp. ‘I did it to save you!’

‘Shlomo never hurt me. That was just a story,’ Ruby replied, ‘a lie his son spread because he didn’t want us marrying. You
shouldn’t believe stories. But you wanted to believe it, didn’t you, Opal? It fitted in with what you wanted to do.’

‘Bring us all back tog—’

‘No! You wanted to bash his head in! Or did you try to stab him first but he got the better of you? You killed him knowing
what the coppers would think about me because of that past we’ve all created together. You wanted me to be a murderer just
like you!’

I turned in time to see Ruby bend down and pick something up off the ground. I knew what it was and began to move back slowly
towards the little group on the ground. Blatt, I knew, also had a gun.

‘No,’ Ruby said, as she held out the weapon in front of her, pointing it towards Opal’s chest. ‘No, it wasn’t about us or
Mum or anything other than you. Killing Harold was fun, wasn’t it? I saw you, remember?’

‘Ruby!’

‘Please don’t kill my child!’ Blatt, his revolver nowhere
in sight as far as I could see, wept pathetically. ‘Please, please, let us get a doctor.’

‘No!’

Sister Teresa ran forward and attempted to grab hold of Ruby’s arm, but she threw her off on to the grass.

‘You’re dying, Opal. You’re too dangerous to live. Mum and all of us made a big mistake when we protected you. We killed Harold,
too, in a way because of you. You’ve ruined our lives and now I will be a murderess just like you! So you get what you wanted,
as usual. But I don’t care. We all died a long time ago – the night you killed Neilson.’

‘Well, why should I have to live with it all on my own?’ Although shaky, her words were loud and, by the light of the first
streaks of dawn in the sky, I could see her face quite clearly. It looked much older than when I’d first seen it, white and
spattered with mud and blood. ‘Nothing was going to happen to you or to Pearl,’ she said. ‘I just wanted to frighten you,
to make you feel the way I had felt—’

‘You felt nothing!’ Ruby screamed.

I looked around to see whether anyone else was about, but no one was so I began to edge a little closer to Ruby.

‘Mum took the gallows for you!’ Ruby carried on. ‘You ain’t suffered! You did it because you’re a spoiled, selfish little
whore! Mum spoiled you, them people who adopted you spoiled you and you, ‘she pointed the gun at Blatt, ‘you who’ve kidded
yourself you’re her father—’

‘Ruby!’

‘No, Amber,’ she said. ‘Mum told us she was never sure.
It’s the truth and you know it! She could be anyone’s. She could’ve been Neilson’s. All we do know about her is that even
when she was tiny she was selfish and vain and spoiled, and we all made excuses and protected her. But she’s a monster.’

‘Ruby,’ Blatt began, ‘please—’

‘I’ll hang for her.’ Ruby held out the gun straight in front of her and said, ‘And for you too, Mr Blatt.’

‘No!’

‘I loved Shlomo. I belonged in Spitalfields. But you ruined all that – you and that thing you call your daughter. You can
go with her now – my present to you!’

And then, before I could even think, fire exploded out of the end of the pistol. Ruby shot Opal and Blatt behind her too,
three times in one go and then three more at closer range. The last time, she shot her sister straight in the face. I couldn’t
move. Christ, I kept on thinking, Christ, please help me!

But no one came. Not even Sister Teresa moved from where she was beside Ruby. She wasn’t crying any more, I noticed. Just
like a statue, a nun with a lowered head – you see monuments like that on some Catholic graves. She looked down at the two
corpses in front of her, totally and completely calm. It was so quiet that when dawn came I heard a little bit of birdsong.
I hadn’t heard that for ages.

‘You should go and get a copper if you can, Mr Hancock,’ Ruby said, after we’d all been motionless for a while.

‘Er, um, er . . .’

She smiled. ‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘I won’t go nowhere now.’

‘Ah . . .’

I looked her in the eyes and she added, ‘I meant what I said about being prepared to hang for her. I ain’t done nothing what
didn’t need doing here.’

‘But I thought you loved her,’ I heard the nun say through what sounded like an almost closed throat. ‘Ruby?’

‘I did. I wanted to,’ Ruby said. ‘But as soon as she told me about Shlomo, after all that time I’d spent pouring my heart
out to her for those few days, I hated her. My love for him was bigger than her, see. And at that moment I knew what I had
to do. I just needed to wait for the right time. Are you going to get a copper, then, Mr Hancock?’

‘Oh, er, y-yes, I, er…’

And so I left and about ten minutes later I returned with two coppers. Both the women were in exactly the same positions as
I’d left them. Not a hair had moved in my absence.

Even by wartime standards the coppers were horrified by what they saw in that churchyard, not to mention my own grisly appearance.

‘Blimey, H,’ said one of the older sergeants, Jack Webster, who knew me and the family a bit. ‘Fancy her trying to plant you!
An undertaker! Bloody funny in a way, though, ain’t it?’

And we laughed. Covered with bits of coffin plus stuff I didn’t want to think too hard about, stinking of the toilet,
my own mirth was hysterical to say the least. But it was funny in the way that really horrible things are – after the event.
Getting an undertaker to lie down in a grave! That Opal Reynolds had had some neck. The boys down at East Ham would be telling
that one to frighten the new lads for years.

Of course, both Sister Teresa and I had to give statements. Hers took longer than mine, she having more of a history with
her sisters, but I waited for her anyway. After all, she’d need somewhere to stay for a few days while the coppers made, as
Sergeant Webster had put it, ‘further enquiries’. One of the young constables went to the shop to let the Duchess and the
girls know I was all right. I knew they’d probably be worried by then especially with the telephones down yet again. I thought
about Hannah, too, and hoped that she’d got home from Paddington all right. She had to be worried about me. I’d have to go
and see her when I could. I needed to see her.

Once Sister Teresa was free to go, we were offered a lift home in one of the police cars. Looking and feeling the way I did,
I had no choice but to accept. Not that I would’ve chosen to walk after what I’d been through.

As soon as we were both in and settled, Sister Teresa said to me, ‘I’m so sorry, Mr Hancock. If I’d known it was Opal who
telephoned me, putting on a voice, I would never have come to you and got you involved. I never dreamed it was her. I thought
it was someone who’d found out what she’d done, what we all did that night Neilson died.’

‘You had to go to protect her?’ I said.

‘Yes. I knew whoever called meant to meet me at Praed Street. Anyone who thought us girls was in the park when Neilson died
couldn’t know anything about who really killed him. I knew that if I went to the flat and there was no one there, everything
was all right. That Opal killed Neilson is and always had been the only real secret here. But there she was and that was when
she told me and Ruby what she’d done. I did think you might go to the park, Mr Hancock, but I never thought you’d come up
to the flat. Why did you do that?’

‘Well, partly because the Serpentine is an ammunition dump,’ I said. Sister Teresa, obviously unaware of this fact, looked
sheepish. ‘And partly because I had this idea you girls might have been there when your father died. I wasn’t sure, of course,
but I knew that something wasn’t right because of the way you talked about that incident. You, Sister, were so keen for me
to believe your version of events about Neilson’s death that in the end I just couldn’t. There was too much fear from you,
Pearl and Ruby, too, and it was, strangely to me, centred around your mum and Neilson all the time. There had to be something
amiss.’

A really quite old-looking constable got into the driver’s seat and off we went.

‘So you went straight to the flat on Praed Street?’ I continued.

‘Yes.’

‘And Ruby was already there?’

‘Opal’d gone out to Spitalfields to get Ruby, as you know,’ Sister Teresa said. ‘Got her out using that note
supposed to be from you. She was outside when Ruby left, all dressed up again. Thought she was a boy at first, Ruby did, in
that get-up. Mr Blatt helped Opal all the way. Got her names, addresses, found out what Ruby and Pearl were like and what
they were doing. She watched them and you.’

‘I know,’ I said. ‘But I don’t think that Mr Blatt knew exactly what she was going to do with the information that he gave
her, do you?’

Sister Teresa shrugged. ‘No. But once she’d done it, of course, he must have twigged. Although whether he really knew or not
beforehand, none of us’ll find out now. She was his only child.’

‘If she was.’

‘Who can tell?’ For the first time in ages, the nun smiled softly, then shook her head sadly and said, ‘So many stories, Mr
Hancock. Who’s to know what might be true?’

I looked at her, frowning.

‘Mum told some right whoppers,’ Sister Teresa said. ‘Girls on the game do, they have to. Blokes want to hear some things,
don’t they? Begging your pardon, but men as go with such women like to hear they’re different and special and good,’ here
she lowered her voice to little above a whisper, lest the constable should hear, ‘at “it”, you know. Girls get into the habit
of lying to make men happy.’

I tried to smile but I think it came out as a sort of frozen death-mask. Yes, I knew what the good Sister was talking about
all right. I may not be typical, but I am a bloke. I know what goes on.

‘Blatt could’ve been Opal’s dad,’ Sister Teresa said. ‘But, then, her dad could’ve just as easily been that young Jewish bloke,
that gangster Mum was going with, the one she really fancied. Or it could’ve been Neilson. That’s a bad thought, isn’t it?
Meant she killed her own father. Meant he hated and abused his own daughter. I know she don’t – didn’t look like me, but .
. . Then again Mum was on the game, it could’ve been anyone.’ She looked me hard in the eyes and said, ‘I like to think we
don’t know and can’t tell who her father was.’

‘Why’s that?’

‘Because I don’t want to know anyone whose child can stab a bloke and smile. There’s bad blood somewhere in there.’

‘Is that what Opal did?’ I said. ‘She smiled?’

‘When we found her, she was giggling,’ the nun said, her face now quite old-looking in the thin autumn light. ‘Sticking the
hatpin in him, blood all over her, laughing.’

‘Yes, but—’

‘Oh, she knew what she was doing all right,’ Sister Teresa said. ‘You can say what you like about the unknowingness of kiddies
but . . . I’ve only ever seen real evil once and it was on my sister’s eight-year-old face.’

It was a minute or two before I took that in. For a nun to protect someone she knows, or claims to know, is evil seemed like
a nonsense to me and I said so.

‘It comes back to stories again, I suppose,’ Sister Teresa said. ‘Opal was Mum’s little angel. We all lied for her. Mum died
for her – we had to make her worthwhile if only for that. Her going to the Greens and having Blatt spend
all his money on her was to make her as near to perfect as a person could get. And I didn’t take holy orders because I wanted
to hide from the world, you know. Someone had to do penance for my sister. But you can’t make someone like that better whatever
you do, can you?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘You can’t.’

The car pulled up outside the shop and Sister Teresa said, ‘You know, when we all split up it was so we’d never talk, not
even among ourselves. Even when I knew that Pearl and Ruby might be in trouble, all I could think about was how we was going
to keep Opal’s secret through it all. It’s why I never wanted to get to know Pearl’s kid. Didn’t want to let nothing slip,
didn’t want to see something I might not like in her eyes. I mean, who knows where Opal got her character from? Maybe our
mum . . .’