The Graft (27 page)

This flat was a revelation, it was so spotless and homely. Gino had a much better chance than his Sonny ever did in that respect. Deborah made them all coffee and Tyrell and Louis came and sat in her kitchen and waited with her until she was calm enough to speak. Tyrell knew just how she was feeling; he had felt the same sense of futility so many times during his life with Jude.

He didn’t have the heart to tell her that the feeling only got worse, never better.

‘What you just said about my Sonny . . . was it true?’

Deborah turned to face him, placing the mugs of coffee on the spotlessly clean table, her eyes still red from crying and her heart sore for the truth she was going to have to tell this man.

‘You really didn’t know?’

Tyrell shook his head hard, making his dreads move, and she saw what a good-looking man he was. Sonny had looked like him, lighter-skinned maybe but still like him.

‘Do I look like I knew?’

Deborah pulled out a chair and settled herself at the table, getting out her cigarettes and lighter and placing the ashtray near her so she could concentrate on the listening men and not have to move again.

‘It started when he was about fifteen, not regular then, but I was going to bingo one night and the toilets by the bus station are a known haunt for rent boys. Well, I saw Sonny Boy near there and waved at him like.’

She took a deep drag on her cigarette before shaking her head in sorrow and saying, ‘He was a nice kid, I never had a problem with him though there were plenty who did.’

Tyrell knew she was trying to tell him there was no malice involved here but he had already worked that one out for himself. One look at her boy and he understood what her row with Jude was all about.

‘Go on, Mrs White.’

She took another pull on her cigarette. Louis saw her hands were shaking and knew that Jude as usual had fucked up another two lives on her merry way to constant oblivion. He would lay money that this woman would never sleep easy another night for worrying about her son, and he would be the same if the boy he had just laid out was his. She knew Gino now had a shortened life expectancy. He would maybe father a child, have a few relationships, but the main relationship in his life would be with heroin. If Jude had got inside his head, that boy was lost.

‘The boys there, you can see what they are, bless them. Junkies, crack heads - well, it’s like anything really, ain’t it?’ Deborah shrugged. ‘You get used to it. At first it was shocking, you know? Seeing them there in their make-up with their funny walks. But eventually they were just part of the landscape. No one really took any notice after a while. But seeing Sonny Boy there . . . it really shocked me.’

She looked into Tyrell’s eyes.

‘I liked him, cooked him many a dinner here, the poor little fucker. But I told my Gino to keep away from him then. Nothing personal, we all knew how good he was with Jude. People admired Sonny for the way he took care of her. And you know the worst of it all? She was never worth it. The woman is fucking carrion!’

She lit another cigarette from the butt of her last one. Standing up, she said, ‘I’m going to check on my Gino then I’m having a drink. Do you want one?’

Tyrell nodded, knowing she wanted company.

‘The glasses are in the cabinet by the sink.’

She walked from the room, cigarette still held firmly in her hand. Louis got up, glad of something to do. He found it hard listening to this woman talking about Sonny being a rent boy so he could only guess how much harder it must be for Tyrell. Deborah came back into the room carrying a bottle of cheap Scotch and poured them all a generous measure.

‘Was he there much?’

Tyrell could hear the catch in his own voice, could hear the disbelief and the horror, had to swallow down the tears that were threatening to pour down his face. He had never known, never dreamed, that anything like that could have been the case. Why had no one ever told him?

But he knew why. They were too scared.

‘Not at first, but later he was there a lot. It was Gino who told me the score, see? I had banned him from seeing Sonny as I said. Didn’t want him involved in all that. You see it in the papers, you see it on TV, but we
live
it round here. This ain’t a Channel Four documentary showing how the other half live, we
are
the other half! We live that shit night and day. I might not be mother of the year, and I might live in a sink estate, but I do the best I can for my kids. Sonny was on a death wish, mate. I know you don’t want to hear it, but he was. She had a hold over him like I have never seen before, and that hold included my Gino. She offered them the chance to be bad boys, and living here, being part of this scummy place, they took it, grabbed the chance with both hands. It was an enticement they couldn’t resist.’

Deborah gulped at her drink.

‘Gino said Sonny Boy had no choice about it. If he didn’t go out on the make then Jude would and Sonny hated her out on the bash, she knew he did. She had had a couple of hidings in the past, and besides she wasn’t up to much any more. Didn’t get the punters like, especially the state she was in. So he went out with her blessing because that lazy whore couldn’t even get her arse in gear to shag for her own skag.’

Tyrell closed his eyes in distress.

Deborah started to cry again as she said plaintively: ‘What am I going to do now, eh? Now she’s given my boy a taste of nothing. Now he knows what all the shouting is about. He will want it, he’s stupid enough for skag. The thieving I could cope with, but not this. I will kill her. I swear to God I will swing for that whore, and I don’t care who knows it.’

Louis refilled her glass for her, knowing she would need to soften the edges today.

‘I’ll keep me eye on him, I promise. Jude won’t have him back there, Mrs White. I couldn’t help me own boy because I didn’t know enough, but I will help yours. I can’t say fairer than that,’ Tyrell told her.

She nodded. It was what she had hoped he’d say.

‘He loved you, Sonny Boy did, I know that much. He talked about you all the time.’

It was small comfort, but it was all she had to offer him.

 
Nick was at his club in Bermondsey, a small spieler frequented by known faces. The good thing was no one could get in without either being well known to the other members or else having enough firepower to give Tony Blair an excuse to invade.

The latter, though unlikely, had been tried over the years by better people than the PM, and the place was still standing and holding its own in an ever-changing world.

Stevie was nervous today and this fact was annoying Nick.

Anyone would think he had never done a bit of skulduggery in his life before and he had just come out after doing a big lump. Good job he didn’t have to deal with half of what Nick had to deal with on a daily basis. He was only trying to keep his head above water and the shit he had to deal with was astronomical. Now he had Stevie having a heart attack over a pile of shit. In fairness his old mate was still on licence so he had good reason to be bricking it, but Nick was not in the mood for babysitting.

His annoyance came over in his voice as he spoke sharply to his friend.

‘They can’t trace him back to us. They’ll think he was dealing out and had a capture of some kind. The usual for dealers who try and out too much stuff too quickly. The filth will think Gary had open wallet surgery. It happens all the time, bigger firms jumping on the little dealers. There’s no way it can come back to us, so stop fucking tarting out and have a drink, for fuck’s sake.’

Stevie could see the logic of what Nick was saying but it had all got too heavy for him. He had wanted to spank Gary Proctor, he didn’t deny that, hurt him badly, but death had not been on the agenda. He had already done a big lump, unlike Nick who had been lucky enough to live a charmed life. If he had done a bit of bird he might understand why Stevie was so reluctant to go back and do some more.

Not that he had any intention of pointing that fact out in the near future, of course.

‘Fucking arsehole bandit! I mean, what the fuck is all that about?’

A young redhead with slim legs and a suspiciously heavy chest came over and smiled at Stevie in a friendly way. Then, looking at Nick, she said in a broad Essex accent: ‘Got me wages?’

He laughed. He liked her, she was a good kid. Eighteen but looking twelve without make-up, she had been stripping since she was a fifteen-year-old runaway. He nodded to the girl behind the bar and she passed him an envelope.

‘Here you are, love, see you next week.’

She fluttered her eyelashes at him and he winked back at her but they both knew it was a game, he had no interest in her and she liked him all the more because of that. Men had been coming on to her since she had first gone into care as a rather pretty nine year old. She now knew better than women three times her age how to take care of herself.

She smiled at Stevie once more because Nick had assured her he might be up for it. She liked the faces, they normally gave good sex and were always generous. He was looking at her as if he was up for a good time.

Stevie was. He had been good for too long. His wife was a star and he appreciated her waiting for him, but she had the body of a forty year old and unfortunately for her he had dreamed for too many years about the bodies of twenty year olds. This little one was just his cup of tea, and far too good to knock back.

Life was too short for monogamy, he had learned that much in nick. As he started chatting to the girl, Nick grinned. Twenty minutes later they were standing at the other end of the bar and Nick was as far from Stevie’s mind as his wife and kids were.

The redhead was a good sort all right, she had done a sterling job of taking that miserable ponce off Nick’s hands. He knew Stevie had wanted to hurt Proctor, he had said as much, and Proctor had been hurt. Nick had done the main graft of the night, so what was Stevie worrying about? He had only given him a slap by their standards.

Nick liked Stevie but he was an old woman in some respects. Still, a lump could do that to a body. They either came out able to hold the world on their shoulders and better for the experience, or else they came out like Stevie, frightened of their own shadow.

But he had wanted Proctor sorted and he had been sorted, the same way that piece of thieving shit Lance Walker had been sorted.

End of fucking story.

 
Tyrell and Louis went back to Jude’s.

Louis felt for his friend, knowing that the utter humiliation was killing him. Louis had heard rumours about Sonny, everyone had. He was a one-boy crime wave and at first it had been seen as amusing. When he had started nicking off his own, though, it had ceased to be funny. It was only Tyrell’s standing in the community that had stopped the boy being given a good slap.

But Louis had never heard anything about him being a bender. He tried to imagine how he would feel in Tyrell’s shoes and couldn’t even get close. But then, he had always seen the boy differently from everyone else. It was what made him a good man. Tyrell had loved his son and Louis respected that.

As they walked inside the flat Jude was standing in the hallway as if waiting for them. One eye was black and her neck was already bruising. She looked like she had been given a good hiding, which of course was the case.

‘You cunt.’

Tyrell didn’t know who was more surprised at his words, Jude or himself. It was not a word he had ever used to her though he knew it was part of her everyday life like the squalor that surrounded her, the smell she gave off. She was barefoot and he could see the needle marks between her toes and the thread veins all over her ankles. He saw her through everyone else’s eyes and all the guilt he usually felt evaporated. In its place was a hatred that frightened him with its intensity.

He saw the shiftiness in her blue eyes that he had never dared to acknowledge before because then he’d have had to deal with the knowledge of what she was really like. He had always given her the benefit of the doubt, but no longer.

‘I’ve been called worse than that, Tyrell.’

He smirked at her and Jude felt the first real prickle of unease.

‘I bet you have.’

He took a joint from his jacket pocket and lit it with shaking hands. The smell of skunk was heavy and sweet as it battled with the other odours in the flat.

‘So he was flogging his arse, was he?’

She flicked her hair out of her eyes in a gesture of contempt.

‘ ’Course not. You know what they’re like round here, they talk shite.’

But the fear was there, in the minute tremor in her voice, and Tyrell knew he had her on the ropes. All he had to do was deliver the final knock-out punch.

So he did.

‘I believe Deborah, Jude.’

She had been banking on his not wanting to believe any of it, but as they looked into each other’s eyes he finally knew the truth of it.

Tyrell was a big man, a handsome man, his dreads gave him a dignity that was somehow lacking in the younger West Indian men. It wasn’t a fashion statement with Tyrell, it was who he was. He had a wide face, high cheekbones and slanting eyes. He had never appreciated just how good-looking he was, had never cared about anything like that.