Maura's Game (37 page)

Maura could see her mother’s eyes shining with the pleasure of being useful, wanted, and she loved her again. Sarah grinned at Leonie.

“Mind you, with nine children I spent me fecking life cooking. There was always something simmering on the stove. I loved it, though, I was so proud of me brood…”

As Maura listened to her mother she saw again the woman she had been before they hit the big time in the criminal stakes. She’d been content to take care of anyone then even if she didn’t know them. That was the Sarah Ryan Maura knew and loved. She hugged the little woman to her and said gaily, “She is eighty-seven, Leonie! Isn’t she marvelous?”

Sarah pushed her off roughly but she was laughing as she said, “No need to shout it from the rooftops.”

“You are a babe, Mrs. Ryan!”

Maura, Sarah and Leonie all laughed, and Garry, hearing them, was pleased. It was important that Leonie got on well with his family, especially Maura and his mother. If it all stayed as it was he was going to marry her. A big fuck-off church do, cake, the lot. He’d decided he was going to have the works.

He looked at the clock. It was nearly time for the meet. Jack was due at the house at two thirty. Garry hoped he told them exactly what they wanted to hear. If he didn’t, Garry was going to kill him.

He had had enough of all this piss-balling about.

Benny was sitting in a cell in Basildon police station. He couldn’t believe that this was happening to him. He sat on the hard bed and stared around him. He hated it: the smell, the graffiti and the sense of complete isolation he was feeling.

At least the family had made sure he was well treated; he had had a bottle of wine brought to him from a local restaurant and also a shot of Temazepam. The last thing they needed was for him to lose it completely. He was frightened of this happening himself. He knew he had pissed everyone off big time and was going to lie low for a while. He was getting off this charge, it was all practically sorted. He just had to swallow for a few days and that was that.

He settled himself on the narrow bed as best he could and contented himself with thinking of what he was going to do to Carol when he finally saw her. He could smell his own sweat and it made him feel uncomfortable but he forced himself to relax. He wondered how Abul was getting on without him. Benny had only been here a few hours and already he had had enough of it.

He tried the deep breathing techniques he had used as a boy to calm himself. They didn’t work but took his mind off his immediate predicament. He knew the meet with Jack Stern was happening tonight and wanted to be there so badly. He also knew that Tommy Rifkind was being hunted down and would have liked to have been the man who took him out.

He was getting more and more wound up.

It didn’t help that the drunk in the next cell had woken up and kept singing, “If You’re Happy and You Know It Clap Your Hands’.

All in all Benjamin Ryan was having a seriously shit night.

Tommy dumped his car in a lock-up near Knowsley and exchanged it for a beat-up Fiesta from his scrap yard As he looked around the yard he wondered if his dead son had left any impression here. He had seen a programme on Discovery about places being haunted by people who had died violent deaths, and his son’s death had been about as violent as it could get.

He tried to visualise Tommy B but couldn’t even remember what he’d looked like. He drove to Toxteth and parked in a quiet road. Locking the car, he walked for twenty minutes to his destination.

He crept up the main stairs of the low-rise block of flats and knocked gently on a scuffed front door. The place was filthy. It stank of stale cooking and rubbish bags. There was no answer. He knocked once more, harder this time.

Tuck off!”

He half-smiled to hear the voice.

Putting his hand through the letterbox, he was amazed to see that a key was still in place there on a piece of string. He put it in the lock but it didn’t fit. The sound of him trying to open the door brought the tenant of the property out into the hallway.

“Who is it?”

Lizzie’s voice was scared-sounding now.

“It’s me, Liz. Let me in, love.”

“Is that you, Tommy?”

“Open the fucking door, will you, Lizzie?”

The door opened and he walked into her flat. It was a long time since he had been inside the place but it felt the same as it always had. He shut the door, looking out first in case he had been followed or spotted.

“So it’s true then?”

He looked at her and held his arms wide in denial.

“What you on about?”

She sighed and, turning from him, went back into the little lounge and lay on the sofa. He followed her. The room was warm and cosy as it had always been. But it was untidy. She had never before had even one thing out of place in her home, it was one of the traits he had always liked about her. Still, he reminded himself, smack heads were not the tidiest of people.

He settled himself on the floor. She was listening to a Pink Floyd album, Dark Side of the Moon, and he strained to hear the guitar riff in one of the tracks.

“Turn it up, Lizzie, that’s a good track.”

She shook her head.

“I can’t.”

He laughed.

“What you on about?”

He was trying to humour her; he wanted to stay until the morning if possible. She sighed and wiped her hands across her sweating face.

“Me head’s aching, I jacked up a while ago and I feel like shit. But I like the sound when it’s on low, it makes me relax. Reminds me of when my Tommy boy was in his bedroom. He would play his music low and I would hear it through the wall.”

He heard once more the desolation in her voice and didn’t know what to say to her. Lizzie, however, didn’t seem to expect an answer.

Like most heroin addicts she was happy just to lie there quietly and go into herself.

“Make a cup pa Tommy. Do something useful seeing as how you’re here.”

He went out to the small and cluttered kitchen and put the kettle on. He got the mugs ready as he waited for the kettle to boil and looked around him sadly. It was like a tip. He had to wash up the mugs, they were rotten, and found a scourer under the sink to clean them with. The work surface itself was stained with tea and coffee and God knew what else. But he didn’t say anything. He would talk to her in the morning. Try and make her see sense.

He took the teas back into the lounge but she was asleep. He was glad, he didn’t know what to say to her anyway. He sat on the floor once more and sipped his tea. The album ended and he kept quiet in the ensuing silence. He could hear music coming from other flats and the sound of a dog barking on one of the balconies. He had forgotten just how noisy these places were, and knew how lucky he had been to be able to buy a nice big detached place with a few acres and a country outlook.

Suddenly she spoke to him and her voice, after the quiet, made him jump.

“What brings you here, Tommy? Aggravation?”

He was startled at her observation but denied it immediately.

“Don’t be so silly. It was seeing you tonight at Black George’s. I didn’t realise how badly you were feeling about Tommy B.”

She opened one eye and looked at him quizzically.

“That’s a first, Tommy Rifkind, you even noticing anything about a woman that wasn’t to do with nakedness, tits or sex in any other form.”

He closed his dark eyes and stifled the retort that had sprung to his lips; he couldn’t afford to fall out with this woman. Not until the morning anyway.

“Don’t be silly, Lizzie, I loved you.”

“Yeah, ‘course you did, Tommy. Like you loved your wife and your kids. Did you even know you had a new grand-daughter?”

He was surprised and she laughed at the expression on his face.

“Tommy’s girlfriend gave birth after he died. Sweet little thing she is the baby, I mean, not the girlfriend. That child, Leanna, is your worst nightmare, Tommy. You see, she’s black.”

He was stunned and through her drug-induced torpor she saw him swallowing deeply.

“Don’t worry, Tommy, we don’t want anything from you. The mother’s family has been great actually. Her mum and dad are really nice people and they’re letting her live with them and helping her as best they can. Family, see. Nothing like it, Tommy, and your family is nothing like a family, so hey, there you go.”

He sat on the floor and let her talk. It was easier with Lizzie to let her have her say.

“Did you know Gina came here? After Tommy B’s death?” She had his undivided attention now and smiled to see it.

“Nice woman, Gina. She was too fucking good for you, I can see that now. Even I was too good for you, Tommy Bifkind. I nearly died when I saw her on the step, but she said she’d come to offer her condolences and meant it. She came a few times more before she died. We talked, resolved a lot of things. I told her how bad I felt about our affair and she just smiled. Said that you were that type of man, needed new people all the time to keep your sense of self-worth. She said once people got close to you they found out what a shallow ponce you really were. Look at what you did to me.

Our child was dead and I knew you didn’t care either way. Because, you see, I knew you let him carry the can even though you were up to your neck in the plot against those southern wankers all along. Tommy B knew as well. He knew what you were and still he worshipped you all his life. That betrayal of your own boy was the worst thing you ever did.”

Tommy had his head in his hands now.

His Gina had actually come here and said those things about him? But that was the type of thing she would do, he knew. Try and make amends. He couldn’t even bear to think about what he’d done to Tommy B. “You’ve got it all wrong, Lizzie…”

She pulled herself up on to her elbows and screwed up her face as she shouted at him.

“Oh, fuck off, Tommy! Your bullshit doesn’t wash with me any more. The day our boy died I started to hate you, and I will always hate you. I wasted my whole fucking life on you, can’t you understand that? Don’t you realise what you did to me and my son?”

She could see utter confusion on the face of the man she had loved once with every ounce of her being. She had never spoken to him like this before, always striving to please him, hoping to lure him back. Well, never again. Her mobile rang and she answered it, saying a curt “OK’ before turning it off.

“Who was that?” Tommy was trying to change the subject and they both knew it.

“Bit late to be getting phone calls, isn’t it?”

He was feeling uneasy, and seeing the way she was looking at him understood in nanoseconds what had happened.

“How does it feel, Tommy?” she taunted him.

He was shaking his head in utter disbelief.

“You wouldn’t…”

She was laughing now.

“Wouldn’t I? Fucking try me, boy. There’s a price on your head, Tommy Rifkind, and that price is going to take my grand-daughter as far away from this place as she can go.”

He was standing now, unable to look at her and see the triumph on her face. He went to the window and peered out between the curtains. His heart sank as he saw who was standing out there.

“You cunt, “Lizzie.”

oen

He stood over her, fists raised, and she put her arms up to protect herself from the blows she knew were coming. But he didn’t have time to punish her. Lizzie was still laughing manic ally as she heard the flat’s front door opening. She’d left it unlocked in readiness. Tommy was frantically trying to open the balcony door, but it had been painted over many years ago and had never worked since.

He turned and saw Abul and two of the Ryans’ heavies standing in the room, and almost smiled.

“Here you are, all present and correct.”

Lizzie’s voice was stronger than he had ever heard it before, even with the skag rocketing through her veins. Jonas was standing behind the heavies and Tommy saw the half-smile on the boy’s cadaverous face.

“Come on, Tommy, we have a plane to catch.” Abul smiled at Lizzie and added pleasantly, “Someone will bring what you are due in a few days,

OK?”

She nodded happily.

Tommy spat in her face as he passed her.

“You treacherous whore!”

Lizzie laughed.

“Takes one to know one, Tommy.” She followed them from the little flat and shouted at the top of her voice, “Think of me, won’t you? Think of me and my boy when you die, you piece of shit!”

Abul smiled at Tommy and said straight-faced, “Have you upset the nice lady by any chance?”

Tommy looked at him in disdain and didn’t answer.

“Upsetting women seems to be your forte, doesn’t it, Mr. Rifkind?”

“Get fucked, you black bastard.”

Abul grinned.

“Takes one to know one, as the nice lady just pointed out.”

His two henchmen laughed.

Tommy was beyond speech. He didn’t say another word all the way to the private airstrip. He didn’t know the blokes with Abul and for now it was best to keep his own counsel.

Chapter Twenty

Sarah and Leonie were still in the kitchen chatting like old friends and Maura smiled at them as she came out to get another bowl of ice for the drinks. They were both tired but determined to make the most of their first meeting. Maura knew that for her mother, having a new member of the family to fuss over and tell stories to was an unexpected bonus.

Jack still had no idea Leonie was in the house and that suited them all, especially Leonie.

“OK, girls? There’s a spare room if you feel tired, Leonie.”

She shook her pretty head and grinned.

“I’m fine.”

“You’re flying,” Maura nearly answered, but didn’t. No wonder Garry liked her; she was the archetypal Garry bird, and Maura was even more surprised to find that she also liked her very much.

“Shall I make more sandwiches, Maws?”

Maura shook her head and smiled.

“There’s still plenty of grub in there, Mum, and we’re getting to the nub of the evening, if you see what I mean. Thanks anyway, they were lovely.”

Sarah thought that Maura looked drawn but didn’t say anything. She knew her daughter had a lot on her mind at the moment and once more set her own fears aside. She was back in the heart of her family and enjoying every second of it. In fact, Sarah had not been so happy in years.