In the forty-eight hours since her father and brothers had walked out of the house, the world as she knew it had ended. Three people were dead, and her family had been left without the protection of her father’s name.
Her brothers were useless without their father to guide them, even she could see that much, and Jackie Martin, who up until now she had seen as almost her father’s equal, seemed to have visibly shrunk before her eyes.
Like her mother, he had aged dramatically over the last couple of days, and she knew that neither he, nor her mother, would ever regain their previous strength. It was as if, with his death, Gerald Dooley had drained the life-force out of his whole family.
As Imelda slipped up to her bedroom, away from the crushing grief that was tainting everything and everyone it came into contact with, she wondered once more at how well her mother had taken her husband’s death.
For the first time in her life she felt guilty, felt responsible. It was not a feeling she was used to and definitely not a feeling she ever wanted to experience again. She was the catalyst for everything that had happened, and she would admit that to herself in the dark hours of the night but, Imelda being Imelda, blamed all that had happened on the child she was carrying. A child that had been created without a second’s thought by two people who couldn’t even look after themselves, let alone a child, and whose existence was the cause of not only its father’s death, but of both its grandfathers too. It was a child of pain and suffering and she hated it.
As Imelda sat on the edge of bed she felt the urge to scream wash over her. She placed a hand firmly across her mouth, convinced that if she didn’t then she would start screaming and, once she started, she wasn’t sure she would ever be able to stop.
She bent over double then, her free arm hugging her own body, swallowing down the sobs that were fighting to get out. She felt a pain so acute inside her chest she honestly believed the child had finally taken the hint and packed up, ready to vacate her unwilling body. Instead though, she dropped onto the carpeted floor and, rocking backwards and forwards, she cried silent tears. Feeling them gush from her she felt the frustration and the rage building up once more as what she had done, what she had been the cause of, was played out in her mind’s eye all over again.
She had always sailed close to the wind, she was the first to admit that, and she had caused her fair share of trouble over the years. But never in her wildest dreams had she ever believed that something so heinous could have befallen her family over something she had done.
Her temper, as always, had been her downfall. Now it had brought the whole family down with her.
As she knelt there, she heard a high-pitched wailing and, for a few seconds, she wondered where it was coming from. It was only when her mother came into the room and pulled her roughly into her arms that she realised the sound was actually emanating from her. For the first time in years she enjoyed her mother’s strong embrace, didn’t try to shrug her off, or push her away. For once she didn’t act as if she was too old and too sophisticated for a mother’s love, a mother’s gesture of protection.
Instead, she hugged her back, grateful for the contact with another human being, grateful for her mother’s familiar smell, a mixture of cigarettes and Ajax toilet cleaner. She needed this woman’s support and love badly now. She had not felt this alone, had not felt this kind of abandonment before in her life.
As she cried on her mother’s shoulder, Imelda felt her face being touched, felt her mother pulling her face away from the folds of her clothes and, looking into her daughter’s empty eyes, she said softly, ‘If anything happens to this baby, Mel, I’ll hold you responsible, do you understand me? After all you’ve caused, you had better fucking make sure we have something to show for it. I know you, you have no fucking scruples, you’d flush it down the toilet without a second’s thought.’
Looking intently at the woman she had spurned and ridiculed for the best part of her life, Imelda saw something she had never seen before, had never even thought she would see. Her mother had finally been pushed too far. She knew that as she recognised, not only deep dislike in her mother’s wide-spaced blue eyes, but also a hardness that had never been there before.
Chapter Five
‘We can bury your father at last. The police are releasing his body tomorrow.’
Mary looked at her three children, the boys as always said nothing, they were like a rudderless ship. Drifting from one day to the next. Without their father telling them what to do and how to do it, they had no real sense between them. She was astounded at how dense they actually were, an original thought would die of fucking loneliness.
They now looked to her for their guidance, looked to her for work; she had been forced to pull herself out of her own tragedy to ensure that Jackie Martin gave them a living. And he wasn’t much better; without Gerald behind him he was about as much use as a chocolate teapot. It was a fucking joke, except she wasn’t laughing. She was doing her best to keep everything going. Money was needed now, more than ever. A lot of people had come through for them, and she was grateful, but those handouts were not going to last for ever. She had to get the boys back in proper work, and thereby get her cut from Jackie Martin, because she wouldn’t trust that ponce as far as she could throw him. He was a hanger-on by nature, a number two by chance; Gerald had never wanted anyone he thought might challenge him. Jackie Martin was not cut out for the top job, the mere thought of taking his rightful place terrified him. He was a bully, he liked the kudos of being Gerry Dooley’s partner, and he liked the fact that Gerry Dooley hadn’t wanted any more from him than that. Gerry had carried Jackie Martin for years, and that was no longer a secret in their world. That the partnership had suited her husband was known and understood. Gerry was a man who would never have relinquished his authority without a fight and he had made damned sure that he did not have a number two, who, at some point in their acquaintance, would suddenly decide he wanted to be the number one.
Jackie Martin had been quite happy to play second fiddle and Gerald had always acted as if they were both the decision makers. But without Gerald’s reputation, and without Gerald’s brainpower, Jackie Martin was fucked. He did not even know how much was coming in, he had trusted Gerald with everything, and that had suited them all until this had happened.
Now though, with her sons shown up for the retards they actually were, and Jackie Martin acting like he had never collected a debt, or delivered a threat before in his life, things were starting to look decidedly iffy. Mary knew that without her orchestrating their every move, they would all be destroyed and forgotten about in no time. She knew that she had to take over from her old man, and run the business from behind the scenes. She knew that more than a few of the people they dealt with would guess what was going on. After all, Jackie Martin had not exactly come up trumps since his partner’s demise. He seemed to have shrunk, physically shrunk. It was odd, but he had somehow lost his swagger, his usual bravado. He was a real disappointment to her. Even though Mary had not expected him to do a Joe Bugner, she
had
expected him to take on some of the day-to-day running of the business.
In fact, he had not even tried. She had sussed early on that it was nothing personal, it wasn’t because he was still mourning his best mate, or because he was planning his next move, it was because he didn’t have a fucking inkling about any of it. He was coasting, he was playing it all by ear. She had been saddened by his actions, but not really surprised; after all, her husband had confided in her many times over the years, had even respected her advice.
So, she was now the brains of the outfit, and she had to get her head around that fact. It was hard, it was soul-destroying, but it was a fact of life. She had bills to pay and a family to look after. Two huge sons who had good hearts but no initiative, they were nothing more than employees and, as much as she loved them, that was something she had to accept. She had to give Jackie Martin the benefit of the doubt and see that he carried on the business in her husband’s name. She could only try her best. She had always been a realist, and she had always been the power behind her husband’s throne. She’d long been convinced that her husband’s business had not been as difficult as he had made it out to be.
At the moment everything was going their way. As long as they all kept stumm, they were in with a chance. Her daughter, however, was dying to open that big trap of hers, and she knew it was taking all her willpower not to. In the last few months her daughter had gravitated from quiet submission, caused by her guilt, to her usual obstreperous self fighting to break out once more. Imelda had never had what might be termed a long-term outlook on life. She lived for the moment, and that was something that would never change. She was selfish, one of the most selfish people Mary had ever come across. And Imelda being Imelda, it seemed her naturally antagonistic personality was taking over once again. She felt that she had suffered enough, after all, in Imelda’s world, everything was about her, never anyone else. As far as Imelda was concerned, her father was dead, as was her baby’s father, and there was nothing anyone could do to bring them all back to life. Her attitude now was ‘Get over it.’
She had grieved briefly, then it was a matter of keeping the act up for a while. And she’d played her part to a T. In fact, Mary had been more than pleased with her daughter because she had helped with the police and the press. None of them had ever said that she had been raped, it had never been said out loud, but the inference was there all the same. Even the Filth had seen fit to understand how something of that magnitude might cause murders,
literally
.
Mary sighed in despair. Men were strange like that, even the most amenable of men was seen as a titan where their daughters were concerned. The mildest of men would be forgiven a murderous act if he was faced with a similar dilemma. Men, whether they liked it or not, were a bunch of fucking hypocrites. They would shag a table leg, fuck a hunchback if the fancy took them, then laugh about it with their mates. Forgetting, of course, that the girl involved was someone’s daughter, someone’s sister. Indeed, in a lot of cases, someone’s mother. Men just saw it all from a man’s point of view, and that meant that even though the majority knew that Imelda had been around the turf more times than a prize-winning greyhound, they still admired and understood Gerald Dooley’s reason for doing what he had. He was now a hero in many respects and, even though he was dead, and his family was destroyed beyond repair, even though everyone who knew him felt deep down in their boots that he was a fool, a mug, he had still done what he had done for the right reasons. Ergo, to all the men, bent and straight, he was now an urban hero. After all, Imelda was his baby and, no matter what the truth of it all might be, he had been murdered in the pursuit of his daughter’s rapist.
Everyone had given him a free ride because crimes against women were on the increase, in fact, all crime was on the up. It was a dangerous society now, and the advent of punk rock, and high unemployment was not helping matters. The Irish Catholics from the six northern Irish states had brought their grievances to mainland Britain and were determined to be heard and, amid all this chaos and political propaganda, Gerald Dooley had been given a swerve. Suddenly here was a man who was guilty of nothing more than trying to right his daughter’s wrong. If he had not died at Jason Parks’s hand, had not been stabbed through the heart, Gerry would have been put away for the foreseeable future, most people in the know were aware of that. But as the priest had pointed out to her, Gerald was dead, and dead men couldn’t talk. Gerald was suddenly a working-class hero. Amid the complete mayhem that constituted most of the lower-working-classes’ lives, Gerald Dooley was a man who had tried to take the law into his own hands. A man who had tried to right a terrible wrong. Most of the people in Britain had no real redress where the courts were concerned, and they knew it. People were fitted up at a whim by the police.
It didn’t matter how many times people watched rubbish like
The Sweeney
, the average person understood that, just because someone was a bit of a scallywag, that did not countenance fitting them up for a crime they had no hand in. If the Filth couldn’t gather enough evidence against a person they felt was guilty of a crime, then that was their fucking lookout. Fitting people up, like any other scam, had left the judicial system open to all kinds of illicit dealings. Bent Filth were nothing new, but bent Filth who were working the scams themselves were an entirely new entity. The Flying Squad, the Serious Crime Squad, and the average plod were suddenly seen in a new light. All that bad press, coupled with a government who did no more than pay lip-service to the problems that they had caused, didn’t help matters. Public morale was at an all-time low: it seemed that everyone was on the grab in some way.
So Gerald Dooley had only been doing what the police should have done: he had been taking care of his own, taking care of family business, and no one was shocked that he had not seen fit to bring the police into it. That he had taken the law into his own hands was not something people questioned. All they had to do was read the papers: every day, it seemed, the world they lived in, believed in, was shrinking beyond recognition. No one would badmouth Gerald Dooley and for that much, Mary would be eternally grateful. Because, like her husband before her, what people thought was of tantamount importance to her. As always, the East End had closed ranks, and the Old Bill had nothing to really go on and, on top of that, they had no real inclination to make this unfortunate set of circumstances more public than it already was. In short, they knew what had gone down and they couldn’t do anything about it.
Mary was also aware that her daughter was a scheming whore who, if she didn’t watch over her day and night, was capable of blowing the whole fucking shebang. That hardfaced bitch was already champing at the bit, was sick of having to play the victim. She was sick of being pregnant and was fed up with the police and their questions.