The Good Life (7 page)

‘It ain’t that funny, Johnny, she nearly removed them from the sac. Fucking painful, I can tell you.’

‘Well, Cain, you knew she was a spirited girl. That’s why you had that great big expensive wedding, remember?’

Though Johnny Mac was laughing as he spoke, there was a note of censure in his voice and Cain asked him outright, ‘Do you think I’m being a mug, Johnny?’

Johnny thought for a few moments before he answered his friend. ‘Truth be told, Cain, I like Jenny. She’s a lovely young girl − emphasis on the young − but you have a wife and a little boy. You know and I know that once Caroline gets the bit between her teeth she will move heaven and earth to find out the truth. All I am saying is, are you willing to take the flak? More to the point, is Jenny worth the trouble she is going to cause? It’s your funeral, mate. But think on this. You’ve got a lovely home, a lovely wife and a great little kid. That will all be up the Swanee if Caroline ever finds out the truth.’

Cain knew his friend was speaking sense. He needed to cool it with Jenny for the sake of marital harmony − and his nuts. But it was proving harder than he had thought it would be. The more he saw of Jenny the more he cared about her. When he was with her nothing else really mattered.

Johnny Mac watched the conflicting emotion crossing his friend’s face and felt a second’s sorrow for him. He was a man in love all right − the most dangerous emotion in the world.

Cain Moran had put the hard word on Eileen and, as much as she would have liked to brag about her daughter’s boyfriend, she knew it was a no-no. Cain would launch her into outer space, and in a way she understood that; after all, he was a married man. But it was hard not to have even a little show-off.

Cain was shrewd enough to compensate her for her silence with good hard cash. Money spoke louder than words in Eileen Riley’s life. Now, as she looked at her daughter all upset and flustered, she said gently, ‘Look, love, you have to see it from his point of view. He’s a married man, and that wife of his is hard as nails, by all accounts. All he is saying is, let the dust settle for a bit.’

Jenny nodded. ‘I know, Mum, but it’s been a while now and I really do care about him.’

Eileen rolled her eyes in annoyance. Young love! If she knew anything about it, it wasn’t love that was keeping Cain Moran in the picture, it was her daughter’s obvious attractions. Not that she would say that to her Jenny, of course; she was still living in cloud cuckoo land, where the fairies sang sweetly and men left their wives and children for young girls.

‘If you really care you will do as he asks, love. You have your whole life in front of you.’

Jenny made herself a coffee and took it to her bedroom. She sat in front of her makeshift dressing table and looked at her reflection in the old mirror. She missed Cain with a vengeance; she physically ached with sorrow at not seeing him. Every day she got up and went to work in that stupid office that didn’t really need a secretary, then she came home, ate her tea and waited by the phone all night in case he called. It wasn’t a life, it was just an existence.

But if this is what it took to have a few hours with Cain, then she knew she would accept that. She would be seventeen in one week. She hoped she would see him on her birthday. That was all she wanted − just to see him, even if only for an hour. As wrong as it was to want him − a married man with a little boy − she couldn’t help herself. Young Jenny had discovered not only love, but also the powerful emotion of lust. She yearned for Cain Moran with her entire being.

Micky Two Fags was not about to give in to the inevitable without a fight. His club in Southend was his pride and joy, and there was no way he was giving it up without at least a show of defiance. He had bought the premises in 1974. It had been a rundown shithole, but after nearly six years of hard graft it was finally a success.

He had thought long and hard about what options were open to him and he had come up with only one: he had to enlist other club owners before the same thing happened to them. His was the biggest in terms of money and prestige, so he needed to see to the next one on the list and that was owned by a man called Jimmy Banks, otherwise known as Jimmy Boy.

Jimmy was a headcase and that was exactly what was needed to go up against someone like Cain Moran. Word on the street was that Jimmy Boy Banks had taken out an Iranian drug dealer single-handedly. Jimmy Boy dealt in skag which was now a very lucrative business for clubs. You couldn’t move nowadays for stoners. It was pathetic − Micky blamed the punk rock movements and hippie parents. He wouldn’t tolerate it on his premises – it was too dangerous. The last thing anyone needed was a dead kid in the toilets on a busy Saturday night. No, that business was for the pubs, the shittier pubs anyway. It was a mug’s game as far as he was concerned − for the dealers
and
the junkies. He did a great business with the softer recreational drugs, and now that cunt Cain Moran wanted to just walk in and take it from him. Fucking scandalous, that’s what it was, and he would fight him as best he could.

The trouble was, Cain Moran was a man to be reckoned with; nothing moved in the South East without his express say-so. He had Filth, judges and local politicians on his payroll, so he had plenty of clout. No one could take that away from him and he was to be applauded for his acumen. But this . . . this was a step too fucking far, and Micky instinctively knew he wouldn’t be the only one thinking along those lines. This was an out-and-out piss-take.

As Jimmy Boy Banks walked into his office Micky Platt felt that in his darkest moment there was still a glimmer of hope.

‘Listen to me, Cain Moran, I am your fucking
wife
. Remember the vows we made in front of the priest? Well, I took them seriously even if you didn’t, you filthy rotten slag.’

Cain rolled his eyes at the ceiling. ‘Always with the drama, aren’t you, Caroline? Can’t have a row, it’s got to be a knock-down, all-out fight. Then you wonder why I play away. It’s nice sometimes not to have to watch every fucking word that comes out of my mouth.’

Caroline laughed sarcastically. ‘Oh, really? Well, fucking
fuck
you
. I’m amazed they can even hold a conversation. From what I’ve heard they are just on the left side of duelling banjos. Walk them about on leads, do you, your fucking dogs?’

Cain Moran really wanted to slap his wife across the mouth, but he wouldn’t. Didn’t stop him feeling like it, though.

Caroline was near to tears now. ‘I swallow a lot with you, and you know I do. But if you have a regular bird I will not tolerate it, do you hear me? I will
not
allow you to humiliate me like that. I still have some fucking pride. I’ll never forget what you put me through when I’d just had little Michael. Some bleached-blonde trollop had the gall – the fucking gall – to knock on my front door shouting the odds. In front of my mother and all!’

Cain knew he was fucked to argue with that; he had definitely been in the wrong with that one. She had seemed so quiet. Who fucking knew, eh? Lovely looking girl, though, no doubt about that.

‘Here we go, bringing up ancient history as usual. I said I was sorry, for fuck’s sake.’

Caroline really lost her rag now as she screamed, ‘Ancient history? We have only been married five years, Cain.’ She was sobbing and he went to her, holding her tightly to him.

‘Look, Caroline, I admit I’m a fucking nightmare, but I don’t mean the half of it. You know what I’m like. If it’s on a plate . . . I’m only human, darling.’

She looked into his handsome face. She loved this man as if her life depended on it and, in a way, it did. She was completely helpless without him in many respects. She had lived through the humiliation of lipstick marks on his dick of all places and the smell of another woman’s perfume on him. She had been prepared to swallow that for the main prize: he was her husband and those girls had never truly meant anything to him. They were no competition because he always came home to her and Michael. She had had to resign herself to the fact her husband couldn’t be faithful if his life depended on it.

Cain was like a big kid, always wanting the new toy. But this time it felt different –
he
was different. Whoever this bitch was, she was a threat. Caroline’s world was crumbling and she didn’t know how to make it right again. She pushed him away from her and walked into the kitchen.

She had never refused him sex, had never questioned him in any way until now. And for what? To be treated like nothing, like a nobody by the man she loved more than her own life. He genuinely couldn’t see how much she was hurting, and that was the hardest thing to accept.

She was shaking with anger and upset, but the fact that he didn’t follow her into the kitchen spoke volumes.

‘Honestly, Jimmy, you’ll be next. He wants all the big clubs in the South East under the Cain Moran banner. Fucking outrageous. If he gets what he wants we are fucked. He will control everything.’

Jimmy Boy Banks was not a big man, but what he lacked in size he made up for in plain and simple lunacy. At fifteen he had been put away for manslaughter when everyone, including the Old Bill, had known it was murder. The man he had stabbed fifty-four times had been a local Face who had taken up with Jimmy Boy’s mum. Jimmy’s mum had been a beauty in her day and she had always attracted men who were not exactly the whole ticket. She thrived on violence and rough sex and she had found it with a man called Reg Pointer. Reg had tortured her son for six months before he had retaliated. It was six months longer than anyone else would ever be given.

Jimmy had done his time in Borstal and come out hating the world. He had carved himself a good reputation and a good living and there was no way that Cain Moran was going to walk in and take it from him – not without a fight.

Micky Two Fags had gone to the right man, there was no mistaking that. Jimmy Banks had been so up in arms he even frightened the man who had come to him for help – and that wasn’t an easy thing to do.

Jimmy Boy looked at Micky and said dangerously, ‘I’ll sort this if it’s the last thing I do.’

The first thing that Jimmy Banks did was call a council of war. He knew he was going to need all the help he could get if he was going to bring Cain Moran down.

There were five men at the meeting in Jimmy’s offices in Barking. Jimmy was there, as was Micky Two Fags, also Richie Jakobs and a huge black guy called Elvis Munro. To complete the line-up was a small dapper man of indeterminate age who went by the name of Denny Gunn. No one knew if that was his real surname or if he’d acquired it because he’d provided guns to whoever wanted them since the 1940s. No one cared any more; he was a quiet man but he could come by anything in the line of firearms or explosives. Also rumoured to be in with the IRA, his reputation was guaranteed.

Everyone except Richie owned lucrative nightclubs and all of them were determined to hang on to their property. Richie was there because he had kicked the whole thing off and now he needed to extricate himself from his skulduggery by helping the men involved understand exactly what Cain Moran was after and why.

Richie knew he needed these brownie points badly; he had, after all, been the brains behind the whole thing. Consequently the men were wary of him. As was their right – even he had to concede that much. In effect, he had been the catalyst for this – him and his miraculous brain.

Now he was at panic stations in case they turned on him like Cain Moran had. It still rankled that he had made him such a wonderful proposition and Cain had taken it, then fucked him over like he was nothing, promising him a good drink for his efforts.

‘So you think we’re going to be able to talk him out of it? We all know Cain Moran is like a dog with a bone when he decides he wants something.’ Elvis Munro liked Cain Moran, and he was sensible enough to know that if Cain Moran was determined in this endeavour that nothing – short of death – was going to prevent him achieving it.

The men in the room nodded at Elvis’s wise words. Elvis was an anomaly in their world. Everyone treated him as an equal, and that was unusual as most races kept as far apart as possible within their own particular haunts in London. Brixton and Tulse Hill were where the Jamaicans hung out and dealt their particular trades.

Elvis had crossed the barrier because he was such an astute individual, and he always made sure he kept on the good side of everyone he dealt with. Coupled with the fact that there was not a man in London who could take him in a fight – and he was known to bear a grudge – he had carved out a very lucrative and respected career for himself. He had the one thing all good villains needed – the likeability factor. It was a requisite that few people cultivated. You couldn’t dislike Elvis and he would have been mortified if he thought you didn’t like him. He prided himself on being a nice bloke and the voice of reason, unless you upset him, of course, and then his good intentions went out the window, resulting in all-out war.

He liked Cain Moran because he was a good bloke but also because his best friend, Johnny Mac, was another Jamaican. It was a very unusual combination and yet it worked for them. Probably because of their shared upbringings with brasses for mothers. Birds of a feather, as the old saying went.

Elvis was the one person here who was not only needed, but also the Achilles heel. Jimmy Banks had known that, but he had taken a chance on appealing to Elvis’s better nature, otherwise known as his earning capacity.

Micky Two Fags was almost beside himself with excitement; he had been right to go to Jimmy Banks. Jimmy had the creds that he himself lacked in as much as Jimmy could keep a lid on his temper if needs be, whereas Micky was a loose cannon. Plus, Jimmy Boy had the gift of the gab and that was essential in these types of fraught situations.

Micky said seriously, ‘Look, Elvis, we all know Cain is a fucking charmer, but he is after our livelihood, for fuck’s sake. Everything we built up and strived for he wants on a fucking plate. That’s fucking abominable! Who does that cunt think he is?’