The Graft (55 page)

Jude, to her, had always been the lost sheep. Well, now, finally, she had been found and nothing or no one could ever hurt her again.

 
The shadows on his bedroom wall had lengthened when Peter Rudde heard the sound of a key in his lock. He felt his bowels loosen immediately. The pain had subsided a little but he was aware that it would soon be returning and it would be far worse than anything that had gone before.

The men walked into his bedroom and, in the dimness, he saw their changed clothes and hyper stances. He knew they had taken care of Nick.

He closed his eyes on the thought of what Nick had gone through; he knew he was due more of the same.

Billy and Tyrell laughed as they held up a length of rope and some handcuffs. ‘You are going out like a sex-game Peter, me old mucker, and all your photos of little boys are going to be left out for your colleagues to find. Now, I wonder what they will make of that?’

His photographs were of bondage and when he knew that they had found them his fear was tenfold.

It took them twenty minutes to hang him from the butcher’s hook they had screwed into the bedroom ceiling, and another five minutes of pulling on his legs and choking him before they were finally convinced he was dead.

It was Terry who decided to finish the job by pulling down his trousers and shoving a shard of broken glass inside his rectum. He stood back to admire his handiwork, the laughter as usual not far from the surface. He started singing Lou Reed’s ‘Hanging Around’ and even Tyrell laughed.

‘Well, this cunt has certainly had a walk on the fucking wild side tonight, eh lads?’

They left the flat, locking up carefully behind them.

They didn’t want him found just yet. Popping the keys back through the letterbox, they made their way back to the van they had purloined to transport Nick Leary in comfort to one of his building sites.

When Tyrell finally got home he had managed to get a takeaway for himself and Willy Lomax. Roadside cheese-burgers and chips, but it would have to do, the smell had made him realise that he was starving.

Giving the food to Willy to set out on plates, he smiled at the boy and said, ‘Build a kinger, son, eh. I am going to have a shower.’

In the shower, he scrubbed his body clean of the night’s events. As he put his head under the shower the clean hot water mixed with the tears he knew he had to shed for his child. The child he had never really looked out for, not properly, not as he should have.

He felt like a new man now. Felt that he had at last got retribution for what had happened to his son.

Dressing himself in jeans and a T-shirt he went into the lounge and wolfed down the cheeseburger and chips like a man starved for weeks. Cracking open a can of Red Stripe he swallowed it quickly. The meal was over in five minutes.

Willy watched him surreptitiously, afraid of this new man he was seeing. Tyrell had anger washing out of every pore, even in repose his face looked harder than before. He was frightened of him now, seriously frightened, and he didn’t know why. Tyrell glanced at Willy as he lit a joint and, seeing the boy’s face, he put the joint back in the ashtray and said quietly, ‘You OK?’

Willy Lomax barely nodded. This was the man he had come to know and love. Not the man who had walked in smelling faintly of blood and sweat and with wild, red-rimmed eyes.

‘Hey, little man, what’s wrong?’

Tyrell remembered that Willy had probably seen the man go over the balcony and he sighed inwardly. Without this kid he would never have found out the truth of the situation his son had found himself in. Was he grateful? He didn’t know. What he did know, however, was that this boy looked whiter than ever, looked ill. He was ill, he had HIV, for Christ’s sake.

‘Do you need a doctor, little man?’

Once more Willy shook his head.

’Are you frightened?’

He didn’t answer.

’Are you frightened of me?’

Willy nodded then, his eyes like flying saucers.

‘Oh shit, Willy, you ain’t got to be scared of me, mate.’

His voice was so soft, so caring that it was the undoing of the young man sitting alone and frightened on the comfortable sofa. He burst into tears. It had been so stressful, all his life it had been so stressful, and he wasn’t able for it any more. He was going soft and he knew it.

Tyrell went to him and put a strong arm gently across his shoulders, frightened of making contact like that with the boy, frightened it would be misconstrued. But Willy grabbed the arm as if it was a lifeline and sobbed like he had never sobbed before. He cried for his own life, for Tyrell’s life and for all the boys and girls he had met over the years trapped in the same kind of world as his. He cried for his mother whom he had loved so much and who had never wanted him from the moment of his conception.

Tyrell held him while he cried and gently rubbed his back, making low, hushing sounds to try to calm him.

Finally, spent, Willy looked up into Tyrell’s face and said, ‘Thanks, mate, thanks for looking out for me.’

Tyrell pulled the red head to him and hugged him tightly, as he hugged his own boys, as he had hugged Sonny all that time ago.

‘Thank
you
, little man, for helping me out like you have. Now, come on, let me make you a nice hot chocolate, eh? I know it’s your favourite and I will even watch the Cramp twins if it will cheer you up, OK?’

Willy smiled then, a sad little smile that broke Tyrell’s heart.

‘I wish you’d been my dad.’

Tyrell ruffled his hair, he didn’t know what to say. After the brutality of the last few hours this boy was like a breath of fresh air.

‘So do I, son, so do I.’

He was surprised to find that he meant it.

 
Tammy lay back in the Jacuzzi and sipped at her gin and tonic.

She had always liked room service and the little waiter had been a dream boat. The hotel was expensive, and so it should be. She needed pampering at the moment. But even she knew she had to be as good as gold for a while. She wondered, once more, where her husband might be and how the upshot of everything was going to affect her.

Poor Angela, what a way to go, murdered by her own son.

She looked down at her body and, for once, she didn’t criticise herself. She wasn’t bothered about any of it any more. She had other things on her mind.

She would pick the boys up from school tomorrow. She would not, could not, stay in that big lump of a house on her Jack Jones. She knew that much. In fact, she decided she might get herself a live-in housekeeper.

They could all swim and just chill out. She would organise herself. She wasn’t stupid, was she? In fact, she had a feeling that once this was all over her real life might just begin.

She closed her eyes and tried to blot out, once more, the sight of her husband as he stabbed his mother in the back.

It was funny, she had used that expression so many times over the years and now he had actually stabbed someone in the back. Her husband was a nonce, a bona fide, card-carrying fucking child-chaser. What the fuck would she do if that all came out?

What would her so-called mates say? In reality, she realised that she didn’t really care.

After the events of today it seemed to put everything into perspective. The strangest thing of all was she also felt liberated. As if her possessive love for her husband had never existed.

 
Nick had always been a big strong lad, had prided himself on his strength. As he lay in a water-filled hole, dug for a cement footing, he regained consciousness. It took a monumental effort for him to drag himself to his knees, but he did it. The pain was like white fire threading its way through every part of his body and his mind was jumbled, confused. He was acting on the instinct for survival that every man has inside them regardless of race, colour or creed.

It wasn’t enough though. Dropping forward on to his face he landed in the watery mud and that was how he finally died. His last thought was of a photo of him and his mother smiling together as he collected a football medal. The photo had stood in his mother’s bedroom for years.

 
Willy was asleep at last and Tyrell tucked him in so he would be nice and warm. Going into his bedroom, he sat on the bed and put his head in his hands to steady his shaking.

It was shock and he knew that. He was in shock at all that had happened, not only today but over the last few months.

Jude was dead, Rudde had told him that, actually expecting him to be grateful. He knew his mother would take it hard but he couldn’t do anything about that, could he? She had always seen a different Jude to everyone else, as he had done himself for a while. He hoped sincerely that Jude had found some kind of peace. She had never known true peace, not like others had. Jude’s life had been one drama after another and he hoped that now she could finally sleep properly. She had been so beautiful once, especially when she had been carrying Sonny Boy, and he was sorry that her son and her husband had never been enough for her.

Now he had two broken marriages behind him because he knew that, no matter what, he would never go back to Sally again.

A bomb had exploded in his life and that bomb’s name had been Jude. The reverberations of that bang had caused ructions for nearly twenty years and now it was all over and he hoped that, finally, they might find some calm and some peace. Especially poor Jude, and his handsome Sonny Boy.

Once more, he cried.

Epilogue

Tyrell looked good and Sally could not help noticing it while she sat with his mother. She did it frequently these days, but only because Tyrell spent so much time there. She also observed how close he was to his sons.

Why had she never valued that before? Appreciated that fact for what it was, instead of finding fault with him all the time. Why had Jude and Sonny Boy always seemed to loom so much larger in her life than the good man she’d actually been married to?

Now Jude was dead, as well as her Sonny Boy, the victim of her own greed. She had finally scored a decent armful and it had killed her. Too late, though, to have been any good to Sally. If only she had known what was going to happen, she could just have waited for them both to disappear, and by now she would be his sole love. But she had not done that. Instead she had tried to make him choose and in the end he had chosen, but it had not been her.

Tyrell walked purposefully out into the kitchen. Even his walk was different. Everything about him was different these days.

The boys had noticed it too.

They didn’t talk to her like they had once before. They still treated her as their mother, were still
respectful
to her, still
loved
her. But now all their private thoughts were kept for their father.

Sally followed her husband out to the kitchen, ignoring her mother-in-law’s warning look. Verbena had advised her to stop throwing herself at him, said he needed time to heal. But Sally couldn’t do that, it was not in her make-up.

He was expecting her. She knew that because he was already facing her, leaning against the cheap worktop and smiling that strange smile he seemed to have developed in the last few months.

It was as if he was there all right, but also as far away from her as he had ever been, all at the same time. She just couldn’t get close to him at all, and that saddened her.

‘What do you want to talk about this time, Sal?’

His tone was neutral, but loaded with insinuation. She had the grace to feel embarrassed. She could hear her sons’ chatter coming from the lounge, knew they were talking once more about their brother because that was what happened frequently nowadays. Their grandmother was keeping his memory alive for them, making sure Sonny was never forgotten. The place was like a shrine to him and Jude.

Sally smiled and tried her hardest to look non-confrontational, whatever that meant. It was something she had read in a women’s magazine and since she wanted her marriage back on track she was willing to try it. Willing to do anything. She wanted this man back where he belonged: in her house and in her bed. No matter what it took or what the personal cost might be to her pride, she wanted to make it all as it had been before.

Tyrell folded his arms across his chest and said quietly, ‘Come on, Sal, I ain’t got all day.’

He had been expecting this, she saw that now. Had brought her after him so she would not have to hunt for another excuse to be out here with him. Something she had done a lot lately. Was she that transparent?

‘Come on, the boys want to get going,’ Tyrell pressed her.

She looked humble, contrite. He could see the pain behind her eyes, and still it didn’t move him.

‘Please, Tyrell, please come home.’

It was the nearest Sally had ever come to begging and they both knew that.

He looked at her but didn’t answer.

She saw the heavy dreads that framed his face, saw the sadness in his brown eyes, saw how the weight had dropped from him, leaving him even leaner. More attractive, more sexy than he had ever been to her.

Why was it you never knew what you had till it was gone from you? Until you had driven it away?

And in her heart she already knew she had driven this man away when with a few kind words she could have kept him by her side for the rest of her life.

He had changed beyond all recognition. It was there in his face. This was still Tyrell but a different one, a harder, more complex man. All of a sudden she knew it was pointless trying to talk him round, his mind was made up and she would never be able to change it.