‘What about their aunt, Kenny? She ain’t exactly Snow White.’
Kenny clenched his teeth and said sarcastically in a high voice: ‘Oh, are we frightened of women as well as children now then? Shall I run home and get me old Mum to sort it all out for me? Eh? Shall I, Micky? Or how about me and you make some jam sandwiches and go for a nice picnic in Victoria Park, and when we come back all the naughty boys might be indoors having a bath and eating their tea! Bollocks to Briony Cavanagh! . Bollocks to all the Cavanaghs! Go out and get them and bring them here to me. I have a few words to say to them that might just frighten the little fuckers enough to make them leave me and mine alone.’
Michael Money nodded his head furiously and backed out of the room. As he looked around the crowded offices of Riley and Co. in Bethnal Green, at men, some too old to be villains really, some far too young, at the caches of guns and other paraphernalia garnered over the years, he felt a feeling of foreboding. Young the Cavanagh twins were, but frightened? Not a chance. Especially not Boysie. Boysie was a bona fide nutter, that was well known. Now he had the task, the frightening task, of telling them that Kenneth Riley Esquire wanted to see them. He didn’t know at that time who he was the more scared of, the Rileys or the Cavanaghs.
He soon found out.
Boysie and Danny had been up since seven. They had as usual eaten a large breakfast cooked by a very subdued Cissy who had heard the news and was torn between a natural hatred of violence and shock at thinking her twins were even capable of it. But as the meal had worn on their usual bantering had won her over and she consoled herself with the fact that the boys must have been driven to such a desperate act. Finally, by the time she had washed up their plates and made them another pot of tea, the McNees were the undisputed villains of the piece in her mind.
By eight-thirty Bernadette and Granny Moll were also at the house with Auntie Rosie in tow.
Molly, to everyone’s shock, was absolutely made up over what the boys had done. Briony sat and listened in amazement as her mother hugged them and kissed them and told them they were good sensible boys who knew what they wanted and went after it. Her mother’s easy acceptance of it all shocked Briony and Bernie to the core. Watching the boys’ performance, and Briony was honest enough to admit it was a performance, she felt a grudging respect for them even though they had shot a man. Mariah was exactly right in what she had said: they did play her and their aunts and their granny. The twins were what you wanted them to be, even when you knew darned well they weren’t! They still kept up the illusion of being her boys, her good boys.
Only the boys were now men, dangerous men, and the worst part of it all was that she still loved them with every ounce of her being. No matter what they did.
Rosalee was sitting on a chair and Boysie was helping her drink her tea. The gentleness of him as he wiped her chin with his clean white handkerchief and kissed her wet lips made Briony’s heart ring with love. Danny brought her another cushion and placed it at the small of her back, making sure she was comfortable.
Molly watched them with Rosalee and felt her heart swell with pride. These were men to be proud of - unlike her husband who had allowed life to get the better of him, who had sold his daughters off for the price of a drink and a good meal, these two here would always look after their own. The women who got them wouldn’t scratch in the dirt for a living, wouldn’t have to rifle through pockets in the dark, feared of waking the drunken tyrant in the bed beside her, to salvage a few shillings of their wages. Oh, no. These were men who’d bedeck their women in finery, would provide for their children, and love and respect their women. After all, weren’t they brought up by a houseful of women? Even Briony, the bastard of hell as Molly sometimes still thought of her, had made sure the boys respected women and had given them an insight and knowledge into women’s lives.
Oh, they were good boys, good men, and if they shot the legs off that scut McNee, who really cared? He was a dirty torturer, could do things with a pair of pliers that would make the Borgias sick to their stomachs. Now her boys would become the Barons of the East End and the streets would be safe and she could carry on holding up her head with pride.
The twins, for their part, accepted their granny’s adulation as they had always done: with wide smiles and plenty of hugs. Briony, watching, was impressed in spite of herself. Eileen’s boys would go far all right.
It was just a case of whether they went too far.
Kenny Riley was waiting for Michael Money to arrive back with the twins. All day he had been thinking about what they had had the temerity to do. As he had looked around him at his crew, as he thought of the main men who worked for him, the earlier rage had worn off slightly and he was suddenly left wondering if maybe the Cavanaghs would indeed become a force to be reckoned with. With hindsight he remembered they were closely linked to Tommy Lane, one-time Baron and an old favourite of their aunt’s. Tommy, still a bachelor for all his womanising, was not a fool, and the boys would get plenty of support there. Also there was Marcus Dowling who worked for Briony and was a hard man himself. Briony Cavanagh was a hard case too. It was said years before that she was in on the disappearance and murder of Willy Bolger, Ronnie Olds and one of his minders. She and Mariah Jurgens were both shrewd enough to woo the right people, and they not only courted villains like Tommy Lane but also befriended high court judges and members of parliament, to name but a few.
By lunchtime he was beginning to sweat and regretting his earlier impulsive behaviour. He should have had the twins gunned down and then made his peace with the families. That was the usual way of the East End. Once they were dead there was nothing anyone could do. The McNee brothers wanted vengeance, his own brothers wanted vengeance, he wanted vengeance. But it was vengeance with a bitter taste. He had seen the worry in Michael Money’s face and Michael wasn’t easily scared.
Neither was he, for that matter, but the motley crew outside, much depleted by the war, seemed to him all of a sudden like a Darby and Joan club. Old lags and young tearaways were all he had now. Fuck the war! It had been hard in that department. Some of the best minders had joined up and died, while less patriotic counterparts like himself had gone on the trot and sat the fighting out from pub basements and other such places, building an empire that was now there for the taking by people like the Cavana
g
h twins.
He lit himself a Lucky Strike and pulled on it deeply. Life was a bastard sometimes, it really was.
Michael had tracked the twins down to their aunt’s house and sat just down the road from it in his Ford Deluxe station wagon, waiting for them to emerge. He loved Manor Park, it was a very desirable area. He approved of Briony Cavanagh’s house, which must be worth all of twenty thousand pounds. In fact, this was the sort of life he thought he could get used to.
Michael Money was clever and he knew it. He had had no formal education to speak of, but he’d had the education of the pavements and the streets, which to his mind was all he needed. He was debating whether to make an alliance with the Cavanaghs and help wipe out the Rileys when the twins pulled out of the driveway in an Aston Martin.
Turning on his engine he decided to follow them, until he plucked up the courage to put his money where his mouth was and make a decision on whether to try and take them to Kenny or try and do a deal. He realised almost immediately they were going to Bethnal Green.
Boysie was humming in the car, enjoying the ease with which they travelled. They passed a police car and Boysie, being Boysie, waved at the occupants.
‘How do you think The Aunt took last night, Boysie?’ Danny’s voice was worried.
‘All right. She’s a game old bird, she knows the score.’
Danny turned a comer and looked over his shoulder. ‘We’re being followed by Michael Money in his stupid fucking car with the wood all over it.’ His voice was disgusted.
‘Let him follow, he’ll know the score soon enough. They all will, The Aunt included. Don’t worry about her, Danny. She’s shrewd and she’s crooked, like us. She’ll come round once today’s over and all this is finished once and for all.’
Danny carried on driving while Boysie made sure he had everything they needed for the final part of their exercise.
Briony went to the house in Hyde Park where she knew she would find Mariah. As she walked into the offices behind the main part of the house, Mariah raised her head and the two women locked eyes.
‘Hello, Mariah. I’ve ordered us coffee.’ Briony’s voice was normal. It was her way of saying sorry and Mariah knew this.
‘Great, I could do with a cup. We had a good night last night in all the houses. I had the receipts brought over this morning and I’ve been going through them.’
They chatted about business until they had their coffee in front of them, then Mariah spoke.
‘What happened with the boys?’
Briony smiled brightly, too brightly.
‘Not a lot. They shot McNee all right, today they’re going after the Rileys and the Moneys. But apart from that they’re great.’
‘I’m sorry, Briony.’
‘What for? They’re nearly twenty-one, old enough to look after themselves now. I mean to say, if you’re big enough to shoot a known lunatic with a sawn-off shotgun, you’re old enough for anything, ain’t you?’ It ended in a question and Mariah went round the desk and put her arm around her friend’s shoulders.
‘Do you think they can handle it?’
Briony nodded. ‘Oh, they can handle it, all right. I think that’s the trouble.’
‘Come on, drink your coffee. Like you say, they seem to know what they’re about.’
Briony sipped the coffee and put the cup back in the saucer with a clatter.
‘You know what really bothers me about it all? What Eileen would have thought. She entrusted them boys to me, on her death bed. “Look after my boys”, those were her words. I feel that if she could see them now, she’d be disappointed. You knew our Eileen. She hated any skulduggery. She was straight as a die. You know, I see her in them sometimes, the movement of their heads or an expression when I talk to them. She wouldn’t have allowed them a free rein like I did. She would have chastised them more. Seen to it they kept up their schoolwork. I protected them from so much...’
She put her hand up to her brow and leant her elbow on the desk. ‘I don’t know what to think now. In a way I expected something like this, I think. Only not so soon. I wanted to hand the clubs over to them, the night clubs, and I wanted to expand the other businesses. I wanted them legit, you see. Now they’ve taken matters into their own hands and I can’t do a thing. Only sit back and help them if I can.’
Mariah poured a large scotch and gave it to her. ‘You did your best, girl, you can’t do no more than that. Some people have it built into them. That’s what I think, anyway. Look at them American boys, what’s their names, who committed that murder back in the twenties? Leopold and Loeb, that’s it. They were sons of millionaires and they went off the straight and narrow. All you can do now, as you say, is let them get on with it and pick up the pieces if it goes wrong.’
Boysie and Danny slowed the car down as they approached the headquarters of the Rileys. They had taken over a vacant house in Shoreditch after it had been bomb damaged and now they ran their various businesses from there. Kenneth Riley himself still lived in Bethnal Green.
Michael Money watched aghast as he saw Boysie get out of the Aston Martin in broad daylight and pull the pin from an American issue hand grenade. As he threw it through the window of the building, Michael put his hands up to his face.
The Aston Martin sped away and Michael Money sat in shock and disbelief as the building and surrounding area was rocked by the explosion. Then he turned on his ignition and drove home to tell his brothers the news.
The King was dead, long live the Cavanaghs.
Liselle loved to hear her mother sing. As she sat in the recording studio and watched Kerry talking to the musicians, explaining what particular beat she wanted and whether any musician could have a solo, Liselle always felt proud.
She asked politely, as always, if any of the technicians wanted a coffee and then went in search of a cup for herself. The technicians always said no. She guessed, rightly, that like her mother they preferred a drop of the hard stuff but she asked anyway. It was good manners. Her mother had already topped herself up with a few large vodkas provided by her current amour, Victor Sanderson. Liselle didn’t particularly like him, but he owned Badger Records now and had taken more than a shine to Kerry Cavanagh, one of his star artists.
Where her mother’s love life, or more correctly sex life, was concerned, Liselle stood back. Her mother had always gravitated from man to man, never staying with any of them longer than five minutes. Her temper when in drink generally put them off. But this didn’t seem to deter Victor, which was one thing in his favour with Liselle. As she walked out of the studios in Abbey Road and went over to the coffee shop opposite, she bumped into a big black man.
‘I’m sorry, I didn’t see you there.’
The man touched his cap and walked on. Liselle forgot about him and carried on over the road to get her coffee.
She didn’t see the black man get into a large black Roadster just down the road and carry on watching her from there.
Kerry began to sing. Everything was quiet, as if a funeral was about to take place, and as she sang the opening bars of her song, Victor Sanderson sighed with contentment.
This was talent on a grand scale.
Kerry still sang the blues with a deep throaty voice, but had emerged with a sound all of her own over the last twenty years. She was up there now among the greats and her voice was a guaranteed seller. When people thought of singers, great singers, they thought of Ella, of Billie, and of Kerry Cavanagh. Her voice had wafted through dusty dance halls and expensive night spots all through the war, and she had emerged bigger than ever. Now Victor Sanderson was going to see that she didn’t go the way of Billie Holiday and her counterparts. He was going to watch her like a hawk, an investment that would make him more money than he dreamed of. On top of all that, though secondary to it, she was a great looker, and great in bed when she was sober enough. It was no hardship to him, looking out for her.