The Business (50 page)

Jordanna knew that her granny was telling her the truth of the situation. She had already let her mother poison her life, and this pregnancy was the result of that. She had gone into a spiral of drink, drugs and casual sex until, finally, she had been left for dead in the gutter, beaten and used. She had allowed her mother’s hatred and evilness to overtake her and become, for a while, the very person she had once loved and then, eventually, despised. When Imelda had humiliated her and laughed at her in front of her friends and when the stories had once more started to emerge about her childhood, she had suddenly believed that, no matter what she did, or what she achieved, she would never really be anything more than Imelda Dooley’s daughter.

Now Jordanna knew it was time to take control of her own life. She hoped this child would help her to find the good in life, hoped that it would help her to find some kind of peace inside herself. A child was born with the knack of unconditional love, she had first-hand knowledge of that, and she knew she needed someone to love, someone who was capable of loving her back, no matter what. Her mother had never returned her love, and, in the end, she had killed it. She hoped that this child would be healthy and happy, because she needed it to wipe away the sadness she felt inside herself.

 

Kenny was like a tightly coiled spring; he was ready to explode at any minute of the day or night. As much as he had thought he was on the ball where life was concerned, his sister’s dilemma had made him realise that he had no personal knowledge of the real world. Not when it pertained to women anyway.

He now understood that experience was of paramount importance in the world he inhabited. It was why old lags were still on the payroll well past their sell-by dates, and why the likes of Basil needed youngsters like him. He had the nous of his peer group and Basil had the experience to use it to its full advantage.

That his sister, his Jordanna, had been out and about with geezers of somewhat dubious characters was bad enough, but that they had to have known who she was, had known that she was his sister, was beyond his belief. He might only be young and on the first rung of the ladder, but he was already known well enough to garner respect. He was a
fighter
, and he knew that was what gave him the edge over his contemporaries. He was already working for some real Faces, and they were pleased as Punch with him and how he conducted himself. He was confident enough in his ability as a tear-up merchant to happily go up against anyone at all. Maybe not Roy Shaw, but then who would be that fucking suicidal? But anyone else, anyone who wasn’t a professional fighter, he would happily take on in a second.

So this drama with his sister was even more outrageous than it should have been. He felt it showed him in a bad light, it made him look like he was of a negligent nature. And he should have had his eye on the ball; if he had done that, then Jordanna would have been shown the error of her ways long before it had gone too far.

Poor Basil was in the same boat as him. Although Basil did insist that she had taken herself away from her manor and had not given anyone she met her family history so, in fairness, he blamed Imelda for that, as was his right. After all, it made sense that she would not want her relationship with her mother broadcast to all and sundry. The association had never enhanced her life up till then, and that was not going to change at any time in the near future, he was sure.

Jordanna had systematically dropped all her friends and all her usual pursuits, and Kenny had not even taken the time to wonder why. He had been heart-sorry for what had happened to her, but he did not feel the same way as Jordanna about their mother. She did not affect him so much, and he understood now that was because, unlike Jordanna, he had never known her. She was a fucking fleeting memory, she meant nothing to him.

Kenny felt that his sister being found nearly dead, used and battered in the gutter, was something that needed to be addressed, and addressed sooner rather than later. It reflected badly on him, and that bothered him. It was personal now. This was not just about his sister’s fucking predicament. It was about his pride.

So that was why he had been so busy the last few months. Jordanna had been found in Ilford, she had been dumped in the gutter just off Green Lane. The road itself was private and quiet, used only by the residents who lived nearby. It was not somewhere that was ever really busy, so it seemed logical to him that Jordanna had actually been left there to die. Another few hours and that is exactly what would have happened. He also knew that, whoever had dumped her had wanted her demise, had known that if she lived to tell the tale then her story would have guaranteed their complete annihilation.

He knew that she had fooled them, telling them she was staying at a friend’s house, and that she was going away for a few days. He had not even cared enough to ask her about anything, but then he had trusted her. He had no reason not to.

His granny had an inkling that Jordanna was not right, he knew that, as she seemed to think that telling him about her worries now would somehow help the situation. If she had told him about her worries at the start, he would have sorted it out then and there.

But, in his heart of hearts, he knew that he had just assumed that she was OK. He had believed that she was safe and sound. He also knew that he had failed her, that, after the run-in with Imelda, she had changed drastically, almost overnight. He should have kept his eye on the ball, and he hadn’t. He had been so busy making a name for himself that he had neglected to take care of the main business, the business that should have come before anything else, should have taken priority over everything else. The family and their welfare.

But he had snooped and he had finagled and he had passed out large sums of wonga, along with threats of violence and torture, so he could ensure that the people involved would be discreet about him, and about his enquiries.

Finally, he had collated all the stories he had been told, and through sheer hard graft, even more threats, and some promises of future business dealings, he had finally found out where Jordanna had been on that fateful night. And, more importantly, who had seen fit to take such a personal interest in her. She had refused to talk to the Old Bill, and he had agreed with her decision about that much anyway. He knew Jordanna was not that sure of the circumstances herself, and she did not want what had happened to her to become another talking point when her name was mentioned. He understood that, as his gran had.

Now though, after a lot of money, and a lot of terrorising, he was outside a terraced house in Vauxhall. The tenants were two brothers from Grenada who thought they were Yardies because they had sold a bit of puff, and bought a gun from a fucking schoolboy in a pub on the Old Kent Road.

Well, they were about to get smashed all over their own back Yardie, and Kenny was already feeling a deep sense of satisfaction as he contemplated his revenge. He knew they were the prime culprits, and as he saw the two minders Basil had promised him pull up in a dark-coloured Range Rover, he rubbed his hands together with gleeful anticipation. He loved a fight, always had. He loved the rush of adrenaline beforehand, the excitement that overwhelmed him as he contemplated his enemy’s total fucking destruction at his hands.

It suddenly occurred to him that his sister’s baby would, in all likelihood, be black;
well
, that didn’t bother him at all. He had no feelings about anything like that.

What did bother him, though, was that the child would also be fatherless; it seemed that in the Dooley family that was now a common trait. It was starting to feel like none of them was going to be blessed with a father worth their fucking salt. Well, this pair would not be fathering any more children in the near future, not if he had anything to do with it anyway.

He was raring to go now, and motioning to the two men standing idly by, he kicked the front door in. He strode into the house, his anger physical in its immensity, and shouted at the top of his voice with an affability that made his friendliness seem almost believable, ‘I’ll have a consonant please, Carol.’

The men accompanying him were still laughing about his entrance years later. It was yet another story that would be told about the Dooley family. As far as his minders knew, the men inside the house had tried to have Kenny over for a few quid. Afterwards, they had both privately felt he had gone overboard with the amount of violence he had used. A lesson was one thing, leaving the two men almost dead was something else entirely. Kenny knew that his liberal use of knuckle dusters, mixed with breaking open the men’s heads with a length of lead piping, would eventually become just another story about him and his colossal temper. And it would be used in the future to explain why he was not a man to be crossed.

That was what Kenny hinted, he wanted his reputation to be such that no one of his age or generation would feel the urge or the nerve needed to try and usurp him from his chosen position in life. He felt his hatred for the two men overwhelm him, knew that it was this ability to hate so viciously that gave him his almost superhuman strength, gave him the edge in many respects.

He knew he was going to be talked about a lot after this little debacle, and that was exactly what he was depending on. This was Kenny Boy’s way of cancelling out the negative stories that had haunted his poor sister since she had been a baby, and he was going to spend his life creating newer, more interesting stories for people to tell about them all. He would also make sure that if anyone talked about his sister out of his earshot, he would not be best pleased. Careless talk cost lives.

The two men with him were going to talk anyway, so why not give them something to talk about? If he used his loaf properly, the new stories would far outweigh the old ones.

He was a man now and he had to protect his family. He could never again let them be hurt or used. It was down to him to make sure they were safe. Safe from harm and safe from hurt and, more to the point, safe from the truth.

 

Imelda heard about Kenny Boy’s latest stunt through the grapevine. By the time it was relayed to her, the two men he had taken on had seen their reps exaggerated out of all proportion; they were now a real pair of titans, top-of-the-range Yard boys with a house full of shotguns and a fridge full of Red Stripe. Stories always got stretched in the telling and this one was no different. Imelda smiled as she listened to her son’s latest escapade, she was proud of him, liked that her son had already made a name for himself. Reflected glory and all that, she was not averse to it.

Imelda wondered, as she often did lately, who Kenny Boy’s father could have been. She knew the children didn’t have anything to do with their paternal grandparents any more; as the years had gone on her mother had seen to that. She guessed that Mary was jealous of the children being near other people. In fact, Louise Parks had met a man through David Driscoll and had moved to Spain, though she still kept in contact with Jordanna. But Imelda knew nothing about that, she only listened to bad gossip, never the good.

As her friend, a fellow brass, finished the story about Kenny Boy for the second time, Imelda opened her arms wide as if she had already heard the story long before, and laughed as she said, ‘That’s my boy.’

Danielle Clunes laughed with her. Danny, as she was affectionately known, was very tall, extremely thin, and she wore heavy make-up and even heavier jewellery.

Imelda called her Big Bird behind her back; as she often wore yellow dresses the name was quite apt. She had a lovely nature, though, and was well liked by her fellow brasses and the regular punters alike.

‘So, Mel, I bet you can’t believe you are going to be a granny at last, can you?’

Imelda was unaware of her daughter’s condition, and guessed that it would have been hidden from her until Jordanna’s condition could not be denied. That no one had seemed fit to enlighten her annoyed her. After all, she was the grandmother, she had a
right
to know about it.

She recovered her equilibrium within seconds. ‘Well, Jordanna wanted it kept quiet, so what can you do?’

Danny smiled, but she was not fooled. She could see it had been news to Imelda, that her daughter and son had not seen fit to inform her. And why would they? She was hardly mother of the year, everyone knew that. But she would play the game.

‘What would you prefer, Mel, a grandson, or a granddaughter? ’

Imelda shrugged. ‘Couldn’t give a fuck, to be honest. It ain’t like I am going to be babysitting is it?’

They both laughed at the truth of that statement.

Imelda turned away from Danny then, grateful for an excuse to leave that conversation behind and walked towards a battered Renault that had pulled up at the kerb. She knew the man, he was a regular, all oily hair and ointments. He was also the proud possessor of a repeat prescription for sleeping pills, which he gave to her every month for a freebie. She leant provocatively into the open window as always. ‘Hello, George, you got anything nice for me?’

George nodded, the grin as wide as ever, the stench of his aftershave hanging on the night air. It never quite masked the stench of Germolene mixed with Deep Heat, treatment for his so-called bad back.

She slipped into his passenger seat, and he gave her the pills almost immediately. ‘Look, Mel, if it’s all right with you, love, we’ll keep this on the once a month basis from now on. There’s a new girl, she’s only twenty and very athletic, if you know what I mean? So, in future, I’ll be going to her for me twice weeklies.’

Imelda nodded and, placing the pills in her handbag, she felt the first fingers of fear that all brasses eventually experienced as they started to understand that they were going over the hill. For someone like her, who was already about as low as she could go, the knowledge that she was being overlooked by such as Georgie Boy was a real learning curve. She had known that her volume of punters had been steadily decreasing of late, but she had assured herself that her regulars were the real bread and butter anyway. Once they deserted her though, she was finished.