The Graft (22 page)

This, though, was her forte: decorating and making her home beautiful. It was as if she compensated for some inner emptiness by spending money. Which, of course, she knew deep inside, was exactly why she did it.

Nick’s mobile rang. The
Dam Busters
theme annoyed her and she rushed to answer it. Until now she had not realised he had even left it at home. He must have been in a hurry if he had forgotten his phone, he never left the house without it. When she had got back earlier than she had anticipated, her mother-in-law said he had gone out with Stevie Daly and Tammy had been intrigued.

Nick usually guarded that phone like it was worth a fortune, which she supposed it was to him with all the numbers he kept in it. Now she saw a chance to have a recce. It was flashing up Call and that alone alerted her suspicions. Normally, the caller’s name flashed up.

‘Hello?’

Silence.

Tammy looked at the phone in puzzlement. Putting it back to her ear she said once more, ‘Hello.’

The phone went dead in her hand.

The dirty filthy stinking bastard had a bird on the go, after all he had said to her, all the reassurances he had given her!

Well, she would not go through that again, the sleepless nights wondering where he was, the watching and waiting to see exactly what he got up to. No. She could not live like that again. It had nearly brought on a breakdown the last time. He had never admitted anything to her, but she knew. Her face screwed up with anger and pain, she threw the phone across the room.

The land line rang then and she rushed across the room to answer it.

‘Hello.’

Complete quiet again.

Tammy lost it.

She had been in this situation before. Well, it wasn’t going to happen again, not if she had anything to do with it.

‘Listen here, you fucking home-wrecking slut! When I find out who you are, I will rip your tits off . . .’

The line went dead and she sank to the floor, tears already forming in her eyes. It wasn’t so much the fact that he had a bird, she could have coped with that, it was the fact he was capable of having sex with someone else.

When he had not been near her for so very long.

She loved sex, and she loved her husband. If only the two could mix. It wasn’t a lot to ask, surely? Most of her friends laughed about how their husbands were always after it and they were always trying to put them off. And Tammy joined in the laughter, but it wasn’t funny. If Nick was batting away from home then it was serious. Especially if that person had his main mobile number.

He was like her. Normally he had their numbers and rang them. Well, this one must think she was in with a chance if she was daring to ring his home, the one he shared with his wife and children.

Now Nick was
dead
. She would cause so much upset over this that it would take more than a world cruise to placate her this time.

Yet still she cried from the pain, even as she planned how to get even.

As Tammy gazed at the pieces of material and the colour charts she wondered why the hell she bothered with any of it. Then, as usual, she dried her eyes, pulled herself together and started making her plans. Nick was going nowhere, whatever that slut on the other end of the line might think, and neither was she.

 
Gary Proctor was all smiles as he walked into the lock-up garage in Bow. His face lit up with genuine pleasure when he saw Stevie standing there.

‘Hello, mate, how’s it going?’

He assumed that Stevie was here getting a bit of graft put his way through Nick. A guaranteed few quid until he got properly back on his feet.

No one spoke to him and Gary was nonplussed for a few moments.

‘What’s the matter?’

Nick shook his head sadly at his one-time friend. Then Stevie took back his fist and slammed it with as much force as he could muster into Gary’s face. He hit the ground, winded by the blow. He scrambled up quickly, though, shock evident on his face. Gary could have a row, but he conceded that Stevie was the better man.

‘What the fuck is all that about?’

He seemed genuinely puzzled and for a split second Stevie wondered if he had the right man. But he didn’t question his instincts. Instead he bellowed, ‘You’re a fucking nonce! A nonsense who took my little nephew and tried to get up his arse . . .’

Gary’s eyes widened at the words. It was as if a thunder-bolt had struck him as he looked at Nick and realised he had had a capture, or a capture and a half as they would put it.

‘Listen here, Stevie, I don’t know what you have been told . . .’

Gary was babbling now, trying to talk his way out of it.

Stevie began the beating then, as if he couldn’t wait to get it over with. Gary went down swiftly under the rain of blows. As Nick watched he wondered what he should do. He knew it would be pointless trying to stop the beating, and he also knew that honour demanded it had to be of a vicious nature. When he saw Gary curl into a ball and cover his head he was relieved that he was not going to try and come back at Stevie and make it all worse for himself.

Suddenly there was blood everywhere, and it was then that he realised Stevie’s knuckle dusters were spiked. Stevie punched Gary in the head with such force he had to put his knee on the man’s shoulder to prise the duster out of the flesh.

Nick winced involuntarily, knowing it must hurt badly yet accepting that the punishment had to fit the crime and this was a crime of enormous proportions. There were gay men in their circle, openly gay men who still managed to keep their credibility. It was the child chasers who brought on this kind of wrath. In their world it was just not on, it was never tolerated, and that went for men who liked really young girls as well.

Well, for men who liked the girls a bit too young at any rate.

Gary’s crime also lay in the fact that he had forced the boy, because that again was never tolerated by their circle.

Stevie was trying to draw breath, his breathing heavy and ragged in the cold night air. Inside the lock-up blood had sprayed everywhere, even on to the ceiling.

Nick pulled him back by the arm.

‘Come on, mate, he’s had enough.’

‘No, he ain’t.’

Stevie was puffing and panting but still ready to finish the job properly.

Gary looked at his one-time friend.

‘Please, Nick . . . I’m warning you . . .’

The words were faint, hardly audible in the confines of the little garage.

Nick’s face went very still.

‘What you gonna do? Grass me up about me
business dealings
then?’ His voice was dangerously low.

Stevie was watching these proceedings with interest. There was something about Gary’s voice as he pleaded with his friend.

‘You know I wouldn’t do that . . .’

‘Well, what you going to do then? What you warning
me
about?’

It was the final insult and all three men knew it. Nick changed then. His whole body seemed to lengthen as he drew himself up to his considerable height.

‘You’d threaten me, you cunt? After all I done for you over the years? You fuck up and then you would try and nause up my business to stop yourself getting a fucking well-deserved kicking?’

He drew back his booted foot and kicked Gary in the mouth. The man’s head snapped back. His teeth were already hanging out when Nick launched himself on to him. Five minutes later it was Stevie who finally stopped the beating. By that time Gary Proctor was a lump of bloody meat. Stevie took his pulse.

‘He’s half-dead, Nick.’

Nick grinned and it looked eerie by the light of the Calor gas fire. He went to the corner of the garage and came back with a can of petrol which he proceeded to pour over Gary Proctor. The smell seemed to wake the victim up. He stirred, trying to turn himself over to see what was going on.

‘You are joking, Nick?’ Stevie murmured. There was fear in his voice.

Nick shook his head.

’Am I fuck! This is his drum not mine which is why I chose it for the venue. He can burn to hell in here, I don’t give a flying fuck. It was bad enough his nonceing, but to hear that he would try and fuck me up and all, try and drop me in it after what he did . . .’

He lit a match and dropped it on to the prone figure on the floor.

‘No one, and I mean
no one
, fucks with me, Stevie. And you of all people should remember that.’

The smell of burning flesh was overpowering. Stevie turned his eyes away from the sight of Gary writhing on the floor as the flames took hold. There was a muffled scream.

‘Come on, Stevie me old china, I need a drink. I have a feeling you need one and all,’ Nick said in a jocular voice.

They went outside and he locked up. The padlock was big and heavy and the door steel-clad but Gary’s screams were still audible on the still night air. They could see the leaping flames through the grimy windows. Nick looked at Stevie and shrugged.

‘Well, he won’t be nonceing for a while now, will he?’

In the car he chatted about everything under the sun except the demise of his oldest friend.

Stevie had always known that Nick could be a handful but he had forgotten just how vindictive he could be if crossed. Tonight was a lesson well learned, for all of them.

Chapter Eleven

Nick’s head was splitting. He wished he had not had to sit and sink so many drinks to steady Stevie’s nerves. In reality he had wanted to get home, find some peace and quiet in which to try and make sense of the night’s events. Instead he had come home to a wife like a raving lunatic and his mother frightened out of her life and hiding in her bedroom.

He really didn’t need any of it tonight. His life was like a soap opera lately, one crisis after another.

‘Tammy, please, it was probably a wrong number . . .’

She could hear the boredom in his voice and knew deep inside that she was pushing him too far, but she could not stop herself. It was as if a devil sat on her shoulder and spoon fed her the irritating words that seemed calculated to send her husband over the edge.

‘Don’t you dare try and bullshit me, mate . . .’

‘Did this mystery woman talk? No. Did their photograph miraculously appear on the handset? No. It could have been anyone, Tammy. You are a fucking nutter! You imagine birds all over the place and yet you know me better than anyone . . .’

Tammy wanted to believe him but she had tortured herself all night, whipping herself up into a frenzy of jealousy. There would be no reasoning with her now. She knew it better even than he did.

‘I bet you and her have a right laugh, don’t you? Does she know about us? About our so-called life together? Well, answer me then, you dirty stinking rat-shagging low life . . .’ Even as she screamed at him she wished in her heart that she could stop herself, but it was impossible.

Nick spoke quietly now through clenched teeth. She saw his hands clench into fists and felt a frisson of fear inside her.

‘I am warning you for the last time, Tammy, not tonight, love. I am not in the mood for your histrionics, OK?’

She could hear the dangerous note in his voice, knew that this was neither the time nor the place to persist, but unfortunately the devil was still driving her on. She poked one well-manicured finger into his face, fighting an urge to scratch the skin and provoke a real reaction. Because all she had ever wanted was a reaction from Nick. A fight was better than this indifference. Anything was better than this.

‘You know and I know that you are up to something. I know you of old and it’s all falling into place now. The late nights, the drinking, all the hanging round with so-called mates . . . and this from a man who if he missed a single episode of
Buffy
was depressed for the week! Well, I am warning you, Nick, you had better tell whoever she is to get on her fucking bike, because when I get me hands on her she won’t be capable of shagging anyone’s husband let alone mine!’

Nick continued to sip at his hot chocolate, trying to simmer down before he really lost it with her. He was still thinking about Gary Proctor and what he had said, still getting over the cheek of his threat. It just showed that you could trust no one at the end of the day.

All those years of friendship had meant nothing. Gary knew all about Nick’s businesses which was reason enough in itself to off him. But it was the principle of it, Nick told himself. Like Lance Walker, he was surrounded by traitors.

Tammy, aware that she did not have her husband’s attention, started shrieking once more. Listening to herself, she felt shame and humiliation. But he had reduced her to this and she didn’t think she would ever be able to forgive him for that.

He snapped himself back to the present and bellowed at her tiredly, ‘You are barking up the wrong tree, Tams. Now will you change the fucking record! At times I feel like having an affair just to give you something to moan about.’

His words shut her up as he knew they would. Food for thought was what silenced Tams. But she soon recovered.

‘So where were you tonight then? And what was Stevie Daly doing round here? Making up for lost time, I suppose. He was always out and about years ago - anything with a pulse him. Is that what you were doing tonight, eh? Borrowing him one of your trollops?’