The Take (18 page)

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Authors: Martina Cole

Tags: #Fiction, #Mystery & Detective, #General

BOOK: The Take
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They would have the best that could be offered to them, the best that could be bought. Not like this place. This place was concrete hate. It was what was wrong with the world they lived in, and the worst of it all was, in her own way, she loved it. It was all she knew. Yet it was everything she wanted to get away from.

She and Jimmy had already bought a house to live in, and she would only ever come back here to visit. It was a small, semi-detached place in Leytonstone. It had a lounge diner, it was decorated in browns and creams, and it was beautiful to her. It was also a bus ride away from her family, which was eventually the deciding factor.

She leaped off the bed. It was six a.m. and she felt as if she was a newborn, as if the world was waiting for her to become a whole person.

She was eighteen in three weeks. Before then she would be a married woman, and she would be the happiest girl alive.

Jimmy saw the girl beside him and groaned.

The night before was a complete blank, and he knew that was how this was meant to be. He had been drinking brandy and port, a lethal combination, and he felt as if someone had hit him over the head with a billiard ball in a sock. Even that scenario was not too off the wall, given the company he kept most nights.

The girl was young, he could see that much, and she was also snoring, which had woken him up. She sounded like one of the seven dwarfs and he grinned to himself. Trust him to end up with fucking Sleepy. Yet he knew if she woke and tried to strike up a conversation he would then have to change her name to Dopey.

He sat up and sighed. He felt terrible. His clothes were nowhere to be seen and the window was shut tightly, which was why the smell of sex was so overpowering in the tiny room.

He had woken up with a tom, and at a glance he couldn't see any condoms anywhere. He could be clapped up to the eyebrows on his wedding day, and no one would think it was funny other than Freddie.

He got out of bed and stepped gingerly on to the carpet. It had the tacky feel of a tom's carpet. Covered in everything that was disgusting, it had the stickiness of what was commonly known as crud, and it smelt of cigarettes and punters.

He felt as if twenty Paddies with hammers were knocking holes in his skull. It was only after he had spent five minutes trying to open the window that he realised it had been nailed shut.

He groaned. It followed that the door would be nailed shut as well. The heating in the house was full on, which accounted for the heat and the smell, and he would lay his next paycheque on Freddie already being home and dry and laughing his head off at the predicament he was now in.

This was Freddie's idea of a joke.

If it had happened to anyone but him Jimmy would have been the first person guffawing. As it was he couldn't just see the funny side. That Freddie had done it to him made him feel as always where Freddie was concerned — that there was an underlying nastiness behind it.

His only glimmer of hope was a used condom glistening in a green glass ashtray. He breathed a sigh of relief and then tried to escape.

Patricia had been woken at five thirty, by a phone call from one of her girls.

She walked into the house in Bayswater all sheepskin coat and Chloe perfume. The elder, a girl of thirty-five with a bad tit job and crooked teeth, was panicking, and Patricia had to talk her down for twenty minutes before she could ring round and locate Freddie.

She then walked into the bedroom of a black girl called Bernice. The girl was nineteen, looked thirty, and was one of the best earners they had ever had. Unfortunately, one of her regulars, a managing director of a multinational company, had chosen her bed to have a heart attack in an hour earlier. It was put down to amyl nitrate and Patricia thought that this was probably an accurate diagnosis.

He was over fifty, overweight and overdue a medical.

Bernice was calm, for which Patricia would be eternally grateful, and the other girls were keeping a low profile.

This had happened before and so they had a protocol.

She covered the man with a bright green sheet, and, pouring herself a coffee, she waited for Freddie and Jimmy to come and sort it all out with the minimum of fuss.

Freddie Senior was lying in the bed staring at the ceiling.

It was eight months since the attack and he had been out just once. That was only to have the stitches out. Now his wife was expecting him to go to young Jimmy's wedding, and he had no intention of going anywhere near the place.

Every time he tried to leave the house he felt hot air rushing to his head, he felt physically sick and he knew that if he stepped outside the door he would faint. He looked at his suit hanging on the back of the bedroom door and felt the familiar waves of nausea washing over him.

Maddie had great hopes for this wedding. She assumed he would go and everything would automatically be back to normal. Women were complete cunts when it suited them. She had caused all this and she was now trying to make out like it was nothing, that his son had only committed a misdemeanour. That it could all be put behind them.

He had been broken in the most public way possible and there was no way he could ever get even with the perpetrator. He fantasised about killing his son, but he knew he would never actually do it.

He could hear the familiar sounds of his wife in the kitchen. She didn't sleep either these days. He heard the kettle boiling, the cups rattling and, closing his eyes, he wished the biggest heart attack ever experienced on his wife of thirty-five years.

Anything, to get him out of this day.

Joseph Summers was over the moon, and even though his wife had stopped him having his first celebratory drink of the day the moment he had opened his eyes, he was still happy at the turn of events.

His daughter was about to marry the man of his dreams. The fact he was also the man of her dreams was just the icing on the cake. He would never have to do a day's collar again in his life, and no one could say a word. He was set, settled and he was about to begin a whole new way of life.

If only his other daughter had had the sense to marry a man like Jimmy instead of that useless prick she had settled for, how happy life would be. But he was shrewd and he knew that little Jimmy was one day going to be big Jimmy, and it was that day he would dream of until it came to pass. He had wanted to take Freddie out so many times, but he knew he would never have the guts. But if life had anything left to offer him, then it would be that he lived long enough to bury the bully his elder daughter had tied herself to.

His younger daughter brought him in a cup of tea and he smiled at her like a man who had won the pools and then found out his son-in-law had died.

Happy could not even begin to describe it.

This was the new order and it was not before time.

Freddie and Jimmy were tired, but they had to finish what they were doing. It was imperative that they made sure their tracks were covered.

As they carried the man out of the house they started laughing. Jimmy knew it wasn't funny, but Freddie's eyes as he looked at the inert form between them had made him crack up.

'When I saw he was dead it shit me right up. At least it got me out of that fucking room, though!'

Freddie laughed again. 'He's fucking dead all right. But what made me start laughing just now was remembering your face when I finally opened the bedroom door. You did not even hear us nailing it shut, you mad bastard.'

Jimmy grinned. 'Thanks to you I was out of me fucking box!'

'Too right.'

They laid the man in the boot of the taxi they had purloined. He stared up at them with a half smile and milky white eyes

Slamming the boot shut, Freddie smiled. 'I'll deal with this. You get yourself home and ready for the last walk. The condemned man, that's what you are today.'

Jimmy shrugged. 'No I ain't.'

He was serious and Freddie watched the boy's anger as it rose to the surface.

'I have the best little bird in the world, she is good and kind and decent. She would stand by me through anything and she is a little grafter.'

''Course she is, mate.'

It was said as if he had never heard such tripe in his life, and as he walked round to the driver's seat, Jimmy followed him and grabbed his arm.

As he pulled Freddie round towards him, he said quietly, but with enough menace to start a real argument, 'Don't mug her off, Freddie, she is everything to me. No one will ever take her place. She is my life, she is everything good that I have, and no one will ever talk about her without respect.'

It was a threat, it was a starting point for war. It was the most truthful thing he had ever said.

Freddie took a deep breath. Looking into Jimmy's eyes he saw real love, and it wasn't just for Maggie, it was for him. Jimmy was asking him not to ever make a crack about Maggie when she was his wife. He was asking him to afford her respect in every way possible, he was asking him to remember they were blood brothers, that they had ties that went beyond everything they had ever known.

Freddie was in a quandary. He knew that this was tantamount to mutiny, but he also understood where Jimmy was coming from. He loved the little whore, and she was a whore. He only had to sit it out and wait for her to blot her copybook, because she would. They all did in the end.

So he smiled and said gently, 'It was a joke, mate. You've got a little fucking blinder there. Ease up, boy, it's your fucking wedding day.'

Jimmy watched the way Freddie avoided his eyes, and in that moment he saw him properly for the first time in years.
Really
saw him. From his gold snide Rolex to his diamond signet ring. He saw the ragged nails on his hands and the stubble on his chin. The rough silk suit, and his hand-made shoes. Even with all the money he was earning he still looked dilapidated, he looked seedy and worst of all, he looked what he was.

A cheap hood.

They were a lot of things, but cheap hoods should not be one of them. They were the best you were going to get in their world and Jimmy had made a conscious effort to reflect that in his manners and his dress. Freddie, as always, just expected everything to come to him because of his attitude and his fearsome reputation. The drugs and the loans were just coming into their own. People who had never had the money before now wanted recreational puff, or cocaine. Speed was for the cheapos, the Giro generation. The new designer drugs were for the new generation of people who worked hard and played hard.

This new world was going to give Jimmy everything he had ever dreamed of or wanted, and he knew at that moment that this man, the man he loved more than any other, would always be his Achilles heel.

Their world was changing and they had to change with it.

Freddie was what Ozzy called a romancer, and Jimmy finally understood what that meant. He suddenly felt depressed, but he drove back to his mother's house and forced himself to get into the enjoyment of what was to be his wedding day.

Jackie was dressed in a blue Ossie Clark trouser suit that had walked out of Maison Riche in Ilford High Street hidden underneath a sheepskin coat, and had then made its way to her house at half the asking price. It had bell-bottom trousers and was hand-stitched. In baby-blue crepe, it was cut for a woman with large breasts and Jackie's spilled over the neckline and made her look sexier than she had in years.

The kids all looked lovely, dressed like little angels in their bridesmaid dresses, and Freddie was nowhere to be seen.

Jackie had already drunk a bottle of wine and it was only eleven o'clock in the morning. The car was picking them up in an hour and she was sorry now that she was so early for once. Normally she'd be late for everything, including her own wedding.

Baby Freddie was gurgling away and little Rox was helping hold his bottle of tea for him even though he was more than capable of holding it himself. He loved tea and Maggie, being the fussy bitch she was, had dropped off a new bottle the day before, one that didn't have tea stains inside it. Jackie smiled as she opened another bottle of cheap German wine. Wait until marvellous Maggie had a few fucking ankle biters, see how she got on then!

At the moment she was like all new brides, dreaming of her lovely home and her perfect kids. Well, she had news for her — they all dreamed of that. Reality unfortunately made you see the error of your ways. Marriage was like war, and if you were lucky you managed to win a few battles.

She had watched her sister the last few months, with her wedding lists and her swatches, and now she looked at the girls in their peach-coloured bridesmaid dresses and stifled the urge to laugh once more. Madame Modèle had been there at eight that morning and put all their hair up, and she had then decorated the French pleats with little peach-coloured flowers.

Jackie's own hair looked stunning and she was grateful for the woman's light touch.

She could not help feeling jealous because this was so different to her wedding. That had been a quick marriage when she had been five months pregnant because Freddie had not been sure it was what he wanted to do.

The humiliation still stung.

It was only the way Freddie had ridiculed all these arrangements that had made her feel better about it all. He had taken the piss from day one, and then when Maggie and Jimmy had bought the house he had slaughtered them.

Deep inside, however, she knew that it was not funny, in fact it was wonderful what they had achieved, considering their ages. But even though she knew that, her natural antagonism and feeling of inferiority stopped her enjoying what they had achieved with them. Her sister had eaten, shat and slept this wedding, and she had not even tried to help her, not really. She had taken her cue from Freddie as always, and even the bridesmaid dresses had only come about because the woman who was making them lived locally and had been happy to come to her house.

She was drunk now and she knew it. The world was suddenly taking on a rosy glow and the kids were looking at her with that look they had but she was determined that no one was going to piss on her firework today.

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