The Graft (21 page)

She smiled widely at Gino and Lenny, who chucked her under the chin. She crowed with happiness.

‘She’s her daddy’s little darling.’

Gino followed the tall young man into the sitting room. The place was like something from a magazine, it was beautiful, and this was what made Gino nervous. This was a room from the TV screen, not the council estate he had grown up on. He was always frightened he would dirty the carpet or break wind. It was impossibly clean in here and that did not sit well in his world. His mum was clean but this place was clinical, like a hospital waiting room.

Lenny’s girlfriend was a tall blonde called Harriet, Harry for short, and she was very middle-class and very good-looking. She looked like a film star, or at least Gino thought she did.

Lenny was tall, thin and had blond hair shaved in a number one crop. He dressed well and he chain smoked. Unlike most of the dealers round about he never touched his own stuff. Didn’t take drugs period. For him this was just a stepping stone to a better life, and he ran his business with an eye to maximum security and profit.

Lenny was considered a diamond geezer and played up to that. He had a thick rasping cockney accent and joked constantly. Unfortunately the jokes often held a barb. He could get you anything you wanted for money up front. He could also get you killed if you tried to tuck him up.

At least that was what was said on the estate.

‘How much tonight?’

‘Half an ounce.’

‘You are pushing the boat out, ain’t you? What, you having a party?’

Lenny laughed at his own wit.

’Are you on it, Gino? Tell me the truth.’

He shook his head.

‘ ’Course not; it’s a mug’s game.’

Lenny laughed once more.

‘Glad to hear it. Keep away from heroin. It steals your soul, boy, and you never really get it back. You dealing this on then?’

Gino shook his head violently in denial.

‘Nah . . . no. It’s for Jude Hatcher.’

Lenny was gratified by the boy’s discomfort. He liked to frighten them young and then they kept the feeling for the rest of their lives. If this boy didn’t dabble Lenny would take him on full-time, but he was sure Gino was on the periphery of H and if that was the case Lenny wanted nothing to do with him. He could wait, he was patient, he had to be. In his game you watched and waited for your opportunities to arrive. You never went looking for them. But this kid had the makings of a half-decent dealer, so if he didn’t succumb Lenny would give him a trial.

‘Tell her to be careful, Gino. This is good gear and after the shit she’s been jacking up it’s liable to kill her.’

Lenny laughed once more.

‘Still, if it does, she can visit her scumbag son in hell, can’t she?’

Sonny had had a run in with Lenny just before he had been killed. Gino had no idea what it was over but he did know that Sonny had taken it very personally. He stared at the dealer warily. Gino knew that if he was selling on he would be given the hard word from Lenny who would want to cultivate his customers for himself. No one dealt on this estate without Lenny’s express say-so.

‘Forewarned is forearmed, Gino, my little son. Remember that, won’t you?’

He nodded and handed over the money.

Two minutes later he was outside once more and breathing in huge lungfuls of cold night air.

He rushed back to Jude’s. She would be eagerly awaiting him and tonight he too wanted to try the brown.

It was time to experience life. As Jude said, you never knew when your time would be up so you might as well enjoy it while it lasted. And he was only going to try it the once anyway, just to see what all the shouting was about.

 
‘Come on, Tyrell, you can’t sit in here on your own again.’

‘Yes, I can. I can do what I like, I’m all grown up now.’

Louis Clarke laughed out loud. He was as blond as Tyrell was dark and they had been friends since they were little kids. Louis was a ducker and diver. He was handsome, a womaniser, and also the most loyal person Tyrell had ever known.

He had come to Sonny Boy’s funeral with his brothers. Even though Sonny had tucked him up in the past, had stolen from his home, Louis had still marked the boy’s passing with a beautiful wreath. Tyrell knew the gesture was more for himself than for his dead son but he appreciated it just the same.

‘You’ve had a hard few months and things like this, well, they take their toll, don’t they? Why don’t you go home and talk to Sally, eh? She’s in bits, I bet.’

Tyrell popped open two cans of Red Stripe and handed one to his friend as he sat back down. He was barefoot and all he had on was a pair of track suit bottoms. He would never have slobbed out like this at home, Sal would have had heart failure. It was a revelation being here, really. He could sit around, eat what he liked, and even eat while watching TV. He had actually had fish and chips smothered in salt and vinegar and the stench had made him laugh out loud. In fact, he was looking forward to the boys coming to visit. He would show them how to enjoy a Saturday afternoon properly for once in their lives.

Live dangerously, boys, drop a few crumbs on the carpet, go mad!

He felt the urge to laugh again at his thoughts.

‘Tyrell, are you listening to me?’

‘Sorry, Lou, I was just thinking how much I’m enjoying being on me own, you know. I can’t get over how much I love me own company.’

‘You fucking love yourself period, Hatcher! I must admit, though, I thought you would be worried about this business with Sal but you look well considering all that’s happened.’

‘I feel like I’ve been let out of school, to be honest. I need this time on me own, need to work things through in me own mind. But fuck all that anyway. Now you’re here, I want to ask you a favour.’

’Anything, mate, you name it.’

Tyrell knew that Louis was a true friend. He was honest, loyal and loved Tyrell like a brother. He was the only person he would ask this favour of, and yet he wondered if Louis would say no.

Tyrell took a deep breath. He was fingering his dreads which Louis knew was always a sign that he was agitated.

‘This is going to sound so fucking mad . . .’

Louis laughed then. Picking up the remainder of the joint, he relit it and puffed deeply.

‘You’ve sounded madder over the years.’

Tyrell smiled, but he didn’t laugh which would normally have been his response. This was serious and Louis suddenly picked up on that fact.

‘I want to know what happened to my Sonny Boy.’

Louis looked at him quizzically. His amazing blue eyes had always been his best feature. All his emotions were mirrored in their depths. Tyrell looked into them and hoped his friend would understand what he was going to ask. More importantly, that he would understand why Tyrell was asking him and nobody else.

‘But you know what happened to Sonny Boy, everyone does,’ Louis told him.

His voice was sad now and Tyrell knew his friend thought he had finally lost the plot. Not only had he left his wonderful wife and gone to live on his own, but he was smoking dope, drinking Red Stripe, and on top of all that growing paranoid about his son’s murder. No, he had to stop thinking of it as a murder. Maybe his friend had a point after all. Maybe he was losing it.

‘Look, Tyrell, it was a terrible thing to happen to anyone, but you said yourself that you would have done the same thing as that Leary bloke . . .’

Tyrell interrupted him.

‘I don’t mean Leary, I mean who was behind my boy being there in the first place? My Sonny, God love him, was small-time, a hustler. He wouldn’t have robbed a drum of that calibre: had enough trouble getting into a council flat. You’ve only got to look at his track record, he never actually broke into most places, just nicked stuff while he was there visiting. That place had a state-of-the-art alarm system, the works. There was no fucking way Sonny was behind it, he could not have done it on his own. And I’ll tell you something else, the filth must have sussed that out and all. I mean, think about it logically. He was a kid, a big kid. He could never have devised something like that on his todd, he had to have had help. And another thing - the gun. Where would Sonny have got a fucking semi-automatic from?’

Louis didn’t want to point out that a semi-automatic gun these days was practically a fashion accessory for a lot of young men.

Instead he tried to talk his friend down.

‘Look, man, you’re grieving . . .’

‘ ’Course I’m grieving, but that is neither here nor there. Listen to me and think about what I am saying logically.’

Louis was quiet again. He didn’t know what to do or what to say to his friend. But he tried once more to reason with him.

‘Sonny died tragically young. You have to let him go . . .’

Tyrell was shouting now. He didn’t need platitudes, he needed someone to listen to what he was saying.

‘Did you hear what I just said? Do you think that my Sonny, who could barely tie his own shoelaces, could fucking mastermind a burglary of that calibre? Haven’t you listened to one fucking word I have said here? Louis, look at me, I ain’t a fucking daydreamer, I am a realist, and I know that there was some other skulduggery afoot that night. Where would Sonny have unloaded the stuff from that kind of drum? Where would he even get the idea to rob it in the first place? Think about it. It was not his kind of scene, he didn’t have the savvy for the fuckery he got himself into. Why would he have gone big-time thieving? No, there was an agenda at work here and it was not my Sonny’s. My boy died through someone else’s greed. Can you see where I am coming from now?’

Louis could and wished to Christ he couldn’t because he knew that his friend had never had any illusions about his son. He’d seen Sonny Boy exactly as the rest of the world saw him, and had still loved and adored him. Jude was the real culprit here. Most of Sonny’s misdemeanours led back to her and her habit.

‘So who do you think was part of the show?’

Louis was alert now to the consequences of his reply and Tyrell knew from that statement that his oldest friend was going to stand by his side no matter what.

‘Do you think Jude was in on it?’

Tyrell smirked.

‘Nah, never in a million years, but someone knows who he was dealing with. Sonny has to have told someone. If Jude knew anything she would have told me, not the filth. She would definitely have talked to me about it. That is why I have to find out the score otherwise I will never sleep peacefully another night in my bed.’

Louis thought about what his friend had said then asked: ‘So where do we start?’

Tyrell smiled then, his first real smile for weeks.

‘I knew I could rely on you, Lou.’

Louis shrugged, embarrassed by his friend’s gratitude.

‘ ’Course you can, you’d do the same for me.’

But he was worried inside because like the rest of his mates he thought that Sonny Hatcher had finally fucked off the wrong person and paid the ultimate price. End of story. But how could he say so to Tyrell?

’Anything you need I will always be there, you know that.’ It was what his friend wanted to hear.

 
Lance Walker was in agony, and he wondered when Nick would come back and see him. He thought he would tell him anything he wanted to know now.

It had been over a week and he was still lying on the cold floor, he was still trussed up and he was slowly going out of his mind.

He was in dire pain, his shoulders felt as if they had been pulled from their sockets and his mouth was cracked and dry, the thirst was far worse than the hunger. Twice he had had a bucket of icy cold water thrown over him and he had lapped it up off the dirty floor with glee. Now, though, he had been reduced to licking the walls clean of damp and the mission it had taken him to roll over there had left him shaken and in agony.

The only light at the end of the tunnel was that Nick had always come alone, and that meant he had not told the other members of the syndicate what he knew.

Nick wanted the poke for himself, and Lance could not quibble with that because it was for that very reason he was lying here in the first place.

Nick was clever all right, and Lance had underestimated him. Not a mistake he would make again.

His face was so swollen he had trouble breathing, and the cold of the concrete floor had seeped into his bones.

Nick was a force, and he should have remembered that. Nick was also too clever to ever have anything come back to his front door, he should have remembered that as well.

The stench of where he had soiled himself was now so bad that he wanted to vomit, and his clothes were stuck to his skin from the faeces and urine. Even in his anger, he had to admit to himself that he would have done the same if he had been in Nick’s position. But that didn’t make Lance feel any better.

He became more determined than ever not to tell Nick Leary what he wanted to know.

 
Tammy was alone for once and actually enjoying herself. She was sorting through swatches of material for her new bedroom. She had decided to redecorate the upstairs of her house even though it was only nine months since it had been done last. The fact that she had trashed it in a temper with Nick made it a necessity. When Tammy let rip it was a sight to behold. Before and after the event.