It was a dream come true all right.
Then, as Mrs Boysie Cavanagh, she could do what the hell she liked. No worrying about playing her records loud and at all hours, no worrying about what time she was in. No more hassles from her mum and dad, she would be a respectable married woman.
Briony and Tommy were visiting Mariah. She now lived in aged splendour in a small but expensive ground-floor flat in Hampstead. She was surrounded by rock musicians, models and other well-off but unconventional folk, and loved every second of it. Her face, still plastered with make-up, looked garish, the thick green eyeshadow and painted red lips emphasising each of the considerable creases on her face. She held large, loud parties, and the twins and all the children doted on her. She was especially close to Delia, Bernadette’s younger daughter. Rebecca was married to an accountant and living in Brighton, an old married woman years before her time. Delia on the other hand was full of life, unconventional, and generally preferred by everyone, Bernadette and Marcus included. Bernie often wondered aloud how the hell they had got Rebecca, so prim, proper, and tight-lipped.
Molly always said Rebecca was like Eileen, she didn’t need the excitement of the world like all the others, she was a respectable girl. Everyone rolled their eyes when Molly started her ramblings but her great age guaranteed she was listened to respectfully.
Briony sipped her drink and looked with pleasure around her friend’s small garden. The young couple above Mariah had their windows open and the sound of heavy rock music was blaring. Mariah, to the amusement of Briony and Tommy, was tapping her foot in time.
‘So how’s the Berwick these days?’
Briony sipped her glass of white wine and sighed. ‘The twins have done well with it. It’s mainly a gambling place really, the girls are all dispersed around London and the home counties. They’re raking the money in, though.’
Mariah laughed.
‘Good, that’s what I like to hear. As long as they don’t forget their old Auntie Mariah and her ten per cent of the profits!’
Tommy laughed.
‘As if they could ever forget that! Have you heard Boysie’s getting married?’
‘No! What, Boysie? The most eligible bachelor in town! Who to?’
Briony answered her. ‘To a young, very young, lady called Suzannah Rankins. She’s only twenty-one but seems like a really nice kid. The big do’s in June. Boysie can’t wait.’
‘I bet he can’t if she’s that young! Horny old devil. How’s Danny Boy taking it?’
‘Better than we expected, to be honest. I thought there would be hell to pay. I mean, they were both confirmed bachelors, but Boysie’s besotted with this little girl, and I for one am heartily pleased. He wants children, a nice house, the whole works.’
‘Not before time either. Him and Danny are so close, too close at times.’ Mariah nodded to herself. ‘He was always a strange one, Daniel. Very deep.’
Briony put down her glass of wine with a bang on the ornamental ironwork table and said tartly, ‘Well, there’s no law against that, is there?’
Mariah sat up in her chair and laughed.
‘You’ll never change, Briony Cavanagh, not while there’s a hole in your arse! Them boys are grown men, big grown men, they don’t need you looking out for them, they’re quite capable of looking out for themselves. And stop seeing bloody slights everywhere. It’s getting harder and harder to talk to you lately! It’s your bleeding age catching up with you!’
Briony shook her head and sighed. ‘I’m sorry, Mariah.’
‘So you blinking well should be. Now let’s change the subject. How’s all the other houses going along?’
Tommy launched into a long conversation with Mariah about the different houses and Briony sat quietly, watching the two of them talking, her mind troubled.
The boys were once more getting too big for themselves and it worried her. She had had word off the street that the Cavanaghs’ days were numbered. They were being watched, being monitored by the tax man, and they still were flying dangerously close to the wind. They thought they were indestructible. Well, she knew from experience that no one was indestructible. No one.
The worst of it was there was absolutely nothing she could do about it.
Tommy’s voice brought her back to the present. ‘What? sorry, Tommy love, I was miles away.’
‘We’d better make a move if we’re to get to Kerry’s in time for tea.’
‘Oh, yes, I forgot we were due there.’
As they said their goodbyes and walked out to their car, Briony saw as if for the first time the stooping of Tommy’s shoulders and the hair that was now all grey. As he held the car door open for her she wondered when he had got so old-looking, and why she hadn’t noticed it before.
Doreen Rankins was beside herself with pleasure at having Boysie Cavanagh inside her house. Every time she thought of his Rolls-Royce outside her front door she felt a thrill inside her eighteen-hour girdle.
‘Have another sandwich, Boysie.’ She said his name timidly, shyly.
He took another cucumber sandwich and bit into it. ‘Best sandwiches I’ve had in yonks, Mrs Rankins.’
Doreen patted her newly permed and treated hair and giggled like a schoolgirl.
‘Oh, call me Doreen. We don’t stand on ceremony in this house.’
Suzy raised disbelieving eyebrows at her mother’s complete change of character. But Boysie had that effect on people.
‘We’re over the moon at your news, Boysie. Our little girl has made us very happy, hasn’t she, Frank?’
Doreen looked at her large silent husband with an expression of desperation on her face.
Frank nodded. ‘Oh, yes, son. We’re over the moon.’
Boysie grinned and winked at Doreen saucily before taking another slice of walnut cake.
‘May I be so bold as to ask for another cup of your excellent tea, Mrs ... I mean, Doreen?’
‘Of course you can. We went to Spain last year, and they have a saying there: “My casa your casa”. Something like that. It means ...’
‘My house is your house.’
‘Oh, Suzy, isn’t he clever? Imagine knowing Spanish.’
Boysie and Suzy laughed.
He liked the old bird Doreen, she was all right. The father was a bit weird, a bit too quiet. But as long as they had no objection to the wedding, he wasn’t bothered.
‘We’re booking St Vincent’s for the wedding, Doreen, my Aunty Briony is seeing to that for me. She’ll be in contact soon, so you can decide along with Suzy what you want. I hope you won’t be offended, Mr Rankins, but I would like to insist from the start that I shall be paying for the wedding, and there will be no expense spared.’
Suzy watched her father’s face. It looked almost pleasant now. He absolutely hated spending money. His favourite saying was: ‘A penny earned is a penny saved.’
Frank Rankins leant forward in his seat and picked up his pipe.
‘Please, son, call me Frank,’ he said happily.
An hour later Boysie was at Suzy’s front door kissing her goodbye before going off for an evening of business.
‘Well, that went all right, love.’
‘Oh, Boysie, I can’t wait!’
He kissed her cool clean lips and grinned. ‘Neither can I, love. Neither can I!’
Chapter Forty-two
Jimmy Sellars woke up feeling drained. He had been tripping for most of the previous day, but now he’d come down with a vengeance, from the feeling of paranoia to the quick ‘rushes’ that kept making his heart beat a violent tattoo in his chest. He could hear Delia’s soft breathing beside him and Faith’s low crying coming through the thin wall from the bedroom next door. It was the crying that had woken him. He gritted his teeth. The kid got on his nerves. This whole set up got on his nerves.
Leaning off the mattress that was on the floor, he picked up half a joint from the overflowing ashtray and lit it, taking the cannabis deep into his lungs and holding it there for a good while before letting it out slowly. He felt the rush hit his brain and tried to relax.
He let his eyes roam around the room, settling for split seconds on the posters and paintings all around. He looked at his favourite poster, a back view of a girl dressed in a short white tennis dress, holding a racquet in one hand. With the other she scratched a perfectly tanned buttock. She had no underwear on. Feeling himself getting hard, he allowed his usual sexual scenario to run through his head. The girl turned to face him and lifted the front of the dress, giving him the come on.
He turned over in bed and looked at Delia. Her breasts were spilling out of the covers in the early-afternoon light, the stretch marks visible, blue-grey. He felt his erection deflate and wished he was still tripping. He could handle Delia then. Sexually he couldn’t bear her any more. He wondered briefly why he’d ever taken up with her. Since the birth of Faith she was a pain in the arse. Correction, he told himself, she had always been a pain in the arse. But she had been good in the sense she’d had money. She’d always had money. And with Purple Hearts going at £60 a thousand in Piccadilly, she had supplied him the capital to start his own business.
Now they lived in the council tower block, and she didn’t take money from her family any more. She relied on him to keep her and the kid. That was the most annoying thing of all. All that lovely money going to waste, and that crying bastard in the other room.
He glanced at his watch. It was just after one-fifteen and that bitch was still asleep. The kid should have been fed hours ago, no wonder she was crying. Sometimes the child went to bed at five after only being up three or four hours. He elbowed Delia in her ribs none too gently and she woke with a start.
‘What was that for?’ Her eyes were ringed with mascara and kohl pencil, her hair a mass of backcombed knots.
‘Get up and see to the fucking kid, will ya? It ain’t been fed for ages.’
Delia turned on to her back and let out a long breath. ‘Give us a toke first.’
Jimmy passed the roach to her and as she pulled on it she burned her fingers. Jumping up in bed, she flicked the red hot flakes off her chest.
‘Serves you right, you fat bitch. Now make me a cuppa and get that kid sorted out.’
Delia got out of the bed, her large cumbersome body heavy with the LSD and cannabis of the night before. Jimmy closed his eyes so he wouldn’t have to look at her.
Delia pulled on a dressing gown, none too clean, and he heard her bare feet padding out of the bedroom.
Jimmy waited, tense in the bed. He heard the short slap and the child’s heartrending cry. Leaping off the mattress, he stamped into the child’s bedroom. Faith was standing up in the cot that was too small for her, a red handprint on her cheek. Her nose was running snot and her eyes were obliterated by tears.
He grabbed hold of Delia’s hair and slapped her across the face three times, back-handed slaps that sent her head this way and that with the force of the blows. Holding her chin in one big grubby hand, he pressed his face close to hers.
‘One of these days, Delia, I’m gonna tell your precious family about the way you treat that kid. I’ll tell them all about your little act, good old Delia, mother of the year. Now feed the child, for fuck’s sake, and let me get some peace. I’ve work to do this afternoon.’
She looked into the long-haired, bearded face before her and bit her lip to stop the tears.
She knew what his work was this afternoon, what it was nearly every afternoon. Hanging around the ’Dilly trying to look like he was somebody, selling a bit of this, trying a bit of that, and ending up in bed with some little tart in a cheesecloth top with no bra.
Gathering up all the spittle she could in her drug-coated mouth, she spat into his face.
Then the fight really started.
Detective Inspector Limmington was sitting in the offices of the Home Secretary. His hands were nervously picking at bits of lint, real or imagined, on his good black suit, which last saw the light at his son’s funeral. His only son had died during National Service, one of those freak accidents that mean nothing to anyone but the victim’s parents and the people who witness it.
A woman of indeterminate age smiled at him from behind a large desk and said, ‘You can go in now.’
Harry Limmington walked through the doorway to the right of him and closed the door quietly. The large man behind the desk offered him a seat and Harry sat down, listening to him finish his telephone call.
‘OK ... Yes ... OK then, I’ll be there at about eight-thirty ... Yes, usual place, the Lords’ Bar.’
He broke the connection and smiled widely at the tall, grey-haired man before him. Standing up he held out a large hand, not a gentleman’s hand, more a workman’s. That first impression stayed with Limmington.
‘Sorry to keep you, old chap, a bit of urgent business. Now, can I offer you a drink? Coffee, tea, something stronger?’
Limmington smiled. ‘Tea would be good, thanks, sir.’
The man pressed a button on his telephone and said: ‘Tea please, Miss Pritchard, for two.’
Limmington wondered how often he had tea for one when he had appointments. The man in front of him, despite all his good-humoured camaraderie, looked capable of it. For that reason Limmington was glad he was on the right side of him. He’d seen him on television countless times and now he was with him, was even more aware of the power that emanated from him.
They chatted about nothing ’til the tea was served to them, a weak brew in paper-thin cups that Limmington was not sure he really wanted to hold. Then, when Miss Pritchard shut the door, the man before him grinned.
‘You want the Cavanaghs, I want the Cavanaghs. I think we could help one another there.’
Limmington raised one eyebrow and sipped his tea to give himself more time before answering. All the time he was thinking, Why pick on a DI? Why me? He could smell a dead dog before it was stinking.