The Graft (42 page)

He had gone too far now and he knew it, but anger had got the better of him.

Nick looked into his old friend’s eyes and suddenly the anger left him. He started to cry then, cried openly, and seeing him Billy felt bitterly embarrassed, but it also told him how badly the night of Sonny Hatcher’s death had affected his friend.

‘I didn’t mean to kill him, see? I didn’t really want him dead, not really. I was just frightened, that’s all. Just frightened.’

Nick Leary sank down on to the sofa and with his head in his hands cried loudly, the noise echoing in the silence of the large, imposing house.

Of all the things Billy Clarke had expected, this was not one of them.

 
‘What you crying for, son?’

Tyrell’s voice was lower now, kinder. The boy was not making any noise and this was what scared Tyrell the most. He was just sitting there crying in complete silence.

Willy tapped him on the arm and motioned with his head for Tyrell to go to the kitchen. ‘Let me talk to him. I’ll burn him an armful, see if that straightens him out. His head’s fucked. Let me talk to him, eh? You’re scaring him and I think he doesn’t want to tell you what went on.’

Tyrell left the room, grateful for the boy’s advice. In the kitchen he relit his joint and puffed on it deeply, wondering how his life had come to this.

He had two rent boy runaways in his flat when he should be back at home in his nice house. But he knew that would never happen now. He would never go back there. Too much water had flowed under that particular bridge.

Yet it still seemed amazing to him that in a few short months everything in his life had changed for the worse. His eldest boy was dead and nothing would bring him back, Tyrell knew that, but he had to know what the boy was doing in Leary’s house that night. If he could only get the answer to that question he knew he could start to live again. It had to be because of someone else. Someone had to have sent that boy to his death and when he found out who . . .

Tyrell didn’t finish the thought. Instead he toked once more on the joint and wondered how long it would be before Willy calmed the boy down. He would sort out what he was going to do next when he found out the score there and not before.

It was like the old riddle: How did the man get out of the room with no windows and no doors? Well, the answer was: The same way he got in there.

Chapter Twenty-One

Billy was driving back to London, and as he drove was thinking about two men with no real understanding of the world they lived in. And he was wondering at the way Nicholas Leary, bad man personified, had crumpled over the death of a burglar. A creeper, the lowest of the low in their world, a gas meter bandit, a council house insurance man - call him what you wanted, the kid was just a thief. And yet it was a broken man he had just left, a broken man now reliant on a bit of gear and a pint of vodka to get him through the day. This was Nick Leary who had, according to urban legend, killed before. But that had been for a just cause in their world, and so was killing Sonny Hatcher. Fucking hell, even the filth thought he was in the right this time and how often did that happen?

Billy had also heard a rumour that Nick had recently taken out his own right-hand man, Gary Proctor, and knew there was more there than met the eye. There was something about Proctor he had never liked, he was far too slippery for Billy. Had too much to say for himself, had way too much front, but that front was usually backed up by Nick Leary.

Billy could only assume that Leary had had a business run in with his number one and it had resulted in the man’s demise. Quite rightly so. They couldn’t keep anyone around in their world who knew too much about them and their precarious business dealings and was starting to get antsy. That was the unwritten law. Nick had outed him fair and square, Billy should imagine.

So why was the death of a mere burglar taking over Leary’s life?

He could understand it from Tyrell’s point of view. Billy knew that there was nothing Tyrell could find out about his boy that would make what he’d done right, he just wanted to know what had caused him to be there in the first place.

And, he had to admit, Tyrell had a point.

Where did Sonny get the gun? Were the dogs at the house that night? How did that boy get past all the CCTV and everything else on there?

Billy himself would be hard pushed to creep up on Nick Leary and he had years of experience on Sonny Boy Hatcher. It would have had to be like a military operation, and from what he had heard about Tyrell’s boy he was not the sharpest knife in the fucking drawer. In fact, he was a bit of a div by all accounts. Followed the leader.

His own middle boy was like that, his Jason. He was a lovely kid and all that, but he had to take his socks off to count and his reading amounted to comic books and porn magazines. You allowed for it eventually. Everyone wanted to have the next Einstein. Unfortunately now and again you got the next Boris Johnson. If one of the other boys told his Jason to jump off a bridge, then jump off a bridge he would. You still loved kids like that, you just tried to look out for them more. Jason would work for his dad, that was a foregone conclusion. He was going to be a lump, so Billy would use the boy’s pluses. Jason would be a heavy, there was no shame in that in their world.

Now his eldest boy, Damien, he had the brains of a fucking dictator him, and Billy would see to it that he became a lawyer. The boy was up for it. He could argue his way out of anything and enjoy it while he was doing it. He would go far that one, and good luck to him and all. You could rob more money with a briefcase and an amiable personality, everyone knew that.

Now, though, after the visit to that house, he thought Tyrell had a point about Sonny’s being there in the first place, and despite himself even Billy wanted to know what the score was. This had Gary Proctor written all over it, but did Nick realise that? Because Proctor would need someone behind
him
. Like poor Sonny Hatcher he could never have dreamed this one up on his lonesome.

Yes, there was more here than met the eye, and Billy for one was intrigued. He would make sure that when they finally had the meet all the boys were there for it. He had a feeling that Terry’s personality disorder would come in distinctly handy at that meeting because if any two men were completely alike yet completely different it was Nick Leary and Tyrell Hatcher.

It was weird how similar they were emotionally while streets apart in every other way. That boy’s death had fucked up too many heads. The sooner it was all put to bed the better.

 
Jude was in her element. Gino was well able for what she asked of him. In fact, he was showing off. As she lay back on the sofa and waited for the rush she knew was coming, she was smiling.

Gino had gone out, got the money for some scran and come back like a conquering hero. She had made a point of letting him know how clever he was, how much she relied on him. He had preened and puffed himself up with pride.

Now he was burning the brown. He had an old tablespoon full of heroin and had added water gently, burning it from beneath. As it bubbled away Jude saw the glint in his eye as he contemplated what was to come.

He had the right personality for it, there was no doubt about that.

Her Sonny, on the other hand, had hated it all, yet he would move heaven and earth to get it for her. Now Gino, who loved it, would be scoring for both of them.

She had on a Pink Floyd album, Animals, and it was playing ‘Pigs on the Wing’. She loved this track, could listen to it over and over again. The flat was like a tip but she ignored it. It was all part of the game so far as she was concerned. Who was it who said life was too short to stuff a mushroom? Well, whoever it was had a point. Life was also too short to keep cleaning up, and going out and doing the same repetitive job day after day.

That was for mugs, as far as Jude was concerned.

The loud banging on the front door startled both of them and she pulled herself up from the sofa with difficulty.

‘Ignore it, Gino, they’ll go away soon enough.’

But seconds later the banging resumed.

Gino was too involved in what he was doing now to notice. As he gently pulled the liquid into a syringe the front door was kicked off its hinges. They heard the wood splitting and both jumped up in fright.

Jude was white-faced. Thinking it was Old Bill she automatically distanced herself from the boy and the loaded syringe.

‘Throw it all out of the window, you fucking moron!’

Her voice was high with fright and Gino, rooted to the spot with fear, stood there and watched in amazement as his mother and three of his uncles burst into the room.

 
His mother’s rooms were lovely. Nick had never really appreciated that until now, but then he rarely ventured into them. But in fairness to old Tammy they were out of this world, better than anything Mum had ever had in her whole life before. Not that she would ever admit that, though now they were like best mates maybe he was wrong about that as well.

The annexe was all done in cream and russet tones, and the picture window in her bedroom had heavy brocade curtains that would not have looked out of place in Buckingham Palace. She had done Mum proud, old Tams, and in fairness it must have been hard at the time because Angela Leary had ridden Tammy’s back from day one. All those years Nick had dreamed of a truce between them and now it had come about he wanted it back as it had been before. He looked in her wardrobes and saw with relief that some of Mum’s clothes were still there, so she must be thinking about coming back. He was annoyed with her but could not imagine his life without her in it.

Truth be told, he adored her. Always had and always would. He had protected her from his father and eventually taken over the mantle of caring for them all, so in a way he had taken on the role of husband in early life.

But what choice had he had? Should he have stood back and watched her being beaten to a pulp? Let his father demoralise and terrorise both him and his sister?

He had been seven when his father had first nonced him, and in that first act his father had ruined him as far as physical affection was concerned. He could only find solace now with faceless, uncaring people who used him as he used them. The guilt and the self-hatred was what he craved these days, that was the real turn on for him.

He had found peace, as the years had gone on, by bettering himself, by having a bigger house or a bigger car, having money had been a salve at one time. It had reassured him that he was
somebody
no matter what he felt inside. No matter how his mind tried to destroy all he had achieved, he knew, every time he looked around him, that he had made something of his life. The memory of what his father had put them all through was still vivid, like an open wound and he lived with it every day of his life. Yet the more he achieved the worse he felt inside, how had that come about?

He wished he knew what was going on in his head. All his years of working had left him able to harm someone, maim them and justify it to himself. Yet Sonny Hatcher had been his Achilles heel.

All the feelings that his father’s treatment of him had engendered could not hold a candle to the guilt he felt over that boy.

Every time his father had touched him the bile had risen inside him and he had wanted to vomit it all away once and for all. He had saved Hester, though. He had to remember that, cherish that fact, otherwise what was it all about? How would he be able to get through the days, let alone the nights, if it had all been for nothing?

His mother had not been herself since the turn out with Gary Proctor and he wondered if that was what was bothering her.

When she’d calmed down and he’d explained it to her, she would be all right once more. She knew him better than anyone and she had stood by him through all sorts. Not that anything had ever been proved, of course. Nick Leary was whiter than white and he intended to stay that way as well.

But his mother wasn’t stupid, she knew the score, and had decided long ago not to delve too deeply into his various dealings. The clubs were all legit, the building firm was straight, he had every right to live in his fuck-off house, had paid for it fair and square. He wasn’t afraid of a bit of hard graft, a bit of hard collar, and Mum knew it. Had actively encouraged it all his life.

Nick wasn’t going to live like his father, from hand to mouth, wondering where the money for the next drink was coming from. Was he fuck! He had given them all a good life and Mum knew it. She’d enjoyed the fruits of his labour so it was a bit late now to start being finicky.

Nick lifted the carpet up and laid it back gently. Her safe was under the floorboards and unless you knew where it was it would take forever to find it. He had had all the safes fitted by a little firm from Belfast, the thinking behind that being it would be too far to come and burgle him from there.

Now, though, Nick opened his mother’s safe with trepidation.

Inside there were a few photos and a mobile phone.

It was the phone that threw him.

It had recently been charged up, and had eleven missed calls logged on it. Picking up the photos he felt his heart catapult itself up into his mouth. He saw himself smiling away, could remember when the photo had been taken. He had been so happy that day.