The Jump (62 page)

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‘If I hadn’t arrived in Sri fucking Lanka, the murdered person would have been you, love. When you get involved with big boys’ games, you have to take the big boys’ consequences. That’s why I never wanted you as my number two. If you cast your mind back, I tried to get someone else, but oh, no. Mrs Villain’s Wife wanted to be in on it all - and look where the fuck it’s got us, eh? You know what’s really your trouble, don’t you? You’re trying to blame everyone else for this lot except yourself. Well, you’re as much to blame as anyone. More so in fact, because you took on something you was ill-prepared for. Now someone’s dead. Big deal!

‘Don’t you realise that if anyone tries it on while the jump’s in motion, they’ll be shot at? Use your fucking loaf! You were there when we bought the hardware. Now you’re shitting it, and rightly so. You’d have more chance of pulling off the Second Coming, love, than stopping this jump. The only way to stop it would be to grass to the filth and the moment you did that, we’d all be out for your blood. Me included. Bear that in mind, Donna, and keep your trap shut and your arse behind closed doors until it’s all over. Right?

‘You’ve already caused one murder, I’m sure you don’t want to be the instrument of another, least of all your own! Jonnie H. would see you tortured and killed if you were the means of separating him from his wife and kids. And that would seem like heaven to what the others would cook up for you!’

Donna’s heart was in her boots. She stared out of the car window, fighting back tears of frustration and fear because she knew that what Alan said was true. She could no more grass up any of the men than she could take an active part in the jump.

She had started the ball rolling; now she could only wait patiently until it stopped.

And it would only stop with Georgio in Ireland.

Alan’s voice broke into her thoughts.

‘And what do you think Georgio’s going to say when he finds out that his brother’s dead, eh? And his hotel’s been razed to the ground? Talk yourself out of that one, Big mouth! Because he’ll find out all right, don’t worry yourself on that score.’

Donna still didn’t answer. Looking at her out of the corner of his eye, Alan felt a great sorrow for her. She was too naive for her own good. That had been the trouble from the very beginning.

Now he had to frighten her into keeping a low profile while he sorted out Georgio’s demise.

Because, now that Stephen Brunos was dead, they were all in big trouble.

The only hope he had was through Nick Carvello. Nick, whose

hatred of beasts was legendary. Only he could save the day.

For the first time in years Alan Cox was frightened, deeply afraid.

And all thanks to the woman sitting beside him. If he was a different kind of man, he reflected, he would have slapped her across the chops before now.

As he looked at her set face, he told himself there was a first time for everything.

Dolly heard the key in the lock and her body froze in terror. Ever since Paddy’s visit she had lived in mortal fear of him coming back after he found out she was lying.

Donna walked into the warmth of the house and Dolly’s tearful embrace.

‘Oh Donna, Donna! Am I pleased to see you, lovie!’

Donna pulled herself gently away.

‘Calm down, Dolly. I tried to ring from Sri Lanka but the phones out there are so erratic. You have to book the calls hours in advance. I’d have been home before I could have called, if you see what I mean.’ She tried to lighten the woman’s mood.

Dolly walked into the kitchen and put the kettle on with shaking hands.

There’s been trouble here, Donna. Paddy came over with Davey Jackson, looking for you. He … he threatened me, Donna. Paddy threatened me. He grabbed my hair …’

Her voice broke and Donna watched her dissolve into tears once more. She tried to comprehend what Dolly was telling her.

‘Paddy? Paddy attacked you?’

Dolly nodded in agitation. ‘He wanted to know where you were, Donna. And who you were with, like. I told him you’d gone to Liverpool with Alan Cox, I didn’t know what else to say. They wanted to know where he was and all. He was livid, Donna. Paddy looked capable of murder.’

Donna sank down on to a kitchen chair, her mind racing. What the hell had happened? It seemed the world was going mad. If she hadn’t gone out to Sri Lanka, none of the last few days’ events would have occurred. Alan was right to say that anyway. She had caused a lot of problems by rooting around and finding so much out. But what else could she have done? Little children were involved. Babies.

She had had to sort all that out, no woman could have left that to chance. No woman in the world.

Except a woman like Candy, she reminded herself. Except the women who sold their children off like so much din.

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Myra Hindley wasn’t as unique as people made out. There were many others like her, cold-blooded enough to harm a child, whether they did it purposely, with their own hands, or handed them over to someone else to harm. The child was still damaged, and at their instigation.

‘And Davey Jackson was with him, you say?’

Dolly nodded. ‘He tried to stop Paddy. In fairness to him, he did try to stop him, Donna.’

‘That was big of him, I must say! Pity he wasn’t so concerned for the children he employs!’

Dolly’s face screwed up in bewilderment. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘I’m talking about a brothel out in Sri Lanka. I am talking about pornographic pictures of children coming down phone lines from Asia to England. I am talking about taking the porn and putting it on to floppy discs and making the pictures into porno mags for paedophiles, sold all over the British Isles by mail order. I am talking about Georgio, Paddy, Davey, and all the others being involved in it. That, Dolly, is what I’m talking about. You were right all along.’

Dolly’s face dropped. ‘So it was Georgio then. He was behind it all.’

Donna nodded.

‘I had a feeling on me it was him,’ Dolly admitted shakily. ‘I don’t know why, but I just knew it. That’s big business. No wonder Paddy wanted to find out what was going on.’

‘It’s big business all right, and Georgio wanted to make it so big he stripped all the businesses here to do it. I must have been half-blind over the years, blind and deaf. Dolly, how could I have lived with a man all these years and not realised he was just scum. A piece of scum!’

Dolly sighed, her own fear forgotten now as she looked at the broken-hearted woman before her.

‘He wasn’t always scum, Donna. Georgio’s trouble was greed. He was always greedy - and greedy people do terrible things. Remember him years ago? Before the building business got big? He was a good man in them days.’

Donna snorted. ‘Was he? He was so good he was shagging anything that moved and wasn’t nailed down, that’s how good he was. Do you know how I feel, Dolly? Can you even guess what I’m feeling now? I find out that twenty years of my life were completely wasted on a piece of scum. A pile of shit. A Greek ponce! I feel as if everyone must have been laughing up their sleeves at me over the years. Stupid Donna, the idiot in the Mercedes. The well-dressed, well-spoken wife

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them of the biggest slag God ever put on the earth.

‘And do you know the worst of it all? she admitted bitterly. ‘I looked down on people like Carol Jackson. I thought she was common! Because I had my degree, I assumed I was far more intelligent than them. Yet Carol Jackson has more savvy, as she would call it, in her little finger than I have in my whole body! I’m a useless prat and Georgio used me for this jump, knowing that. Knowing I was silly enough to believe whatever he told me.

‘Oh, sod the tea,’ Donna decided. ‘Let’s get out the scotch, Dolly. There’s a lot more I still have to tell you.’

Carol Jackson watched Davey as she put the children’s tea on the table. He was gnawing at his thumbnail, always a sign of agitation, and she wondered what was bothering him.

‘Are you all right, Davey?’

He stared out of the window and ignored her.

‘Davey! I said, are you all right?’

He looked at her then, his blue eyes shadowed with fear, and Carol dropped to her knees by his chair.

‘What’s the matter, Davey? You haven’t been right for a while. Is there something wrong? Can I help you with it? Is there anything I can do?’

Davey looked down into his wife’s face. Her blonde hair was as usual backcombed into a tangle, her make-up expertly overdone. One of her false eyelashes had come unstuck in the corner and it gave her eyes an oddly pleasing appearance. As if she was oriental. Her lipstick was gone, but the pencil outline remained.

He saw her as she had been on their wedding day, belly nearly down to her knees but her face alight with happiness. For over twenty years she had stood beside him. He knew that if she had even an inkling as to what he was involved in, really involved in, she would be disgusted. As he was disgusted. And for the first time ever, he wondered what he would do if he lost her. Really lost her. For so long she had wanted him, had made all the running. All their married life he had been virtually single. She had been the married one for them both.

He wondered how he would feel if she wasn’t there, waiting for him to come home, waiting with his meals, waiting to listen to him. He wondered what it would be like to open a drawer and not find any clean underclothes, socks or shirts miraculously folded up there by his wife’s hands. He wondered how he would feel if he had to visit his children at weekends instead of playing the bigtime father as and when it suited him. Normally Christmas and birthdays.

He wondered what Carol’s reaction would be to hearing what he was involved in from a third party.

But he knew the answer to that one. She would pick up the bread-knife and stab him through the heart.

Carol was a child-lover; she was decent in her own way. She would never countenance paedophiles or their merchandise. She thought that the floppy discs had grown women on them, and even then she hadn’t been too happy about it.

If she knew there were children on them, that the children were being abused to satisfy his greed and a pervert’s lust …

His eyes went to the bread-knife on the table again. Carol would be capable of murder.

But worse than the thought of her anger, was the thought of her contempt. Her complete disgust and hatred for him, because he knew that was exactly what she would feel. He felt that way himself.

It was Georgio again. He always went along with Georgio and Georgio had got him involved with talk of riches and all they could bring. The children would be used anyway, he’d maintained. Whether it was by them or by someone else. It was different out there,’acceptable even. He had told Davey that in China the old men slept with young children because it was considered lucky. It was. supposed to bring back their virility.

To Georgio it had all been one big joke, nothing to worry about, and Davey had believed him. As he’d always believed him. Georgio had smoothtalked him into it all, and now with every day that passed he felt the noose tightening around his neck. He was getting in deeper and deeper and didn’t know how to get out.

‘Have you seen anything of Donna, or heard from her?’ he asked quietly.

Carol shook her head. ‘Why are you so worried about Donna, love? Is she in trouble?’

He saw the worry in her eyes, the concern written all over her face. Carol had never really liked Donna over the years, yet she had rallied round for her when Georgio had been put away.

How could he have wanted Donna, or any woman, when he had all he really needed right here? Inside his home, the mother of his children, his wife. His Carol, whom he had never, ever appreciated.

She would stand by him through prison, debt, anything. Except what he was involved in now. If she knew about that, she would drop him like so much dirty laundry. Why did you have to be on the verge of losing someone before you realised how much they meant to you?

‘Oh, Carol darlin’, I love you more than you’ll ever know, more than you could even guess.’

She looked at Davey as if she had never seen him before. In all their years together, never once had he spoken to her like that. Not even in the dead of night when he took her body. Never once had he offered an insight into his mind, except when he was in prison. Then he loved her in his letters. Wrote her poems, and told her he couldn’t live without her.

But never had he spoken the words out loud before, and they caught her offguard and made her want to cry.

Because she knew that, to speak them, Davey had to be in big trouble.

?

Donna told Dolly everything, leaving out only the fact that she had slept with Alan Cox.

Dolly had listened in shocked silence, and when Donna told her about Stephen Brunos, she shook her head sadly and said, ‘Poor Maeve. It’ll break her heart.’

It was while they were talking over what could be done, what should be done, that the knock came on Donna’s front door.

Dolly stood up, her arms and legs trembling. ‘Jesus! It might be Big Paddy back again!’

Donna stood by the kitchen door, her heart in her mouth. But it was only Carol Jackson calling through the letter box. Sighing with relief, Donna opened the front door to her.

Carol walked into the house, bringing with her the smell of Estee Lauder and her own sound common sense.

She looked at Donna and said seriously: ‘I want to know where you disappeared to, what you’re up to, and finally, what it’s got to do with my old man.’

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Chapter Forty-One

Donna stared into Carol’s strained face and felt her heart go out to the woman. Knowing Carol as she did, Donna was aware that the knowledge she had inside her could wreck Carol’s life - because here was a decent woman who would never, ever countenance what Georgio, Paddy and her husband were doing.

‘I think you’d better come into the kitchen and have a large drink, Carol.’

Carol looked fearfully at Donna’s tired face, the dark smudges under her eyes and the hard edge to her lips, and instinctively knew that what she was about to hear would only hurt her.

‘Do I need a large drink then, to hear what you’ve got to say?’

Donna walked towards the kitchen and said over her shoulder, ‘Carol, love, you’ll need more than one drink before this day’s out, believe me when I tell you that.’

Carol sat nervously at the table, Dolly’s bowed head bothering her more than anything. If it upset Dolly then it was serious.

Donna seated herself and poured Carol a scotch. ‘Before I start, how much do you know about Georgio and Davey’s dealings in Sri Lanka?’

Carol felt her insides turning to ice water as Donna spoke.

‘I know enough,’ she said. The point is, how much do you know?’

At this point, Dolly looked over at Carol with distaste - a look Carol didn’t understand; was unsure how to take.

‘I expect you’ve found out it was porn, have you?’ she said defensively. ‘Well, my advice to you is to come down to the real world with everyone else, Donna. Porn is a part of our daily life, whether it’s a blue film or a page three girl. Soft porn never hurt anyone. So if you’re running round like a cat with a scalded arse over a bit of old bluey, I’m here to tell you that you’re wrong, Donna. Dead wrong.’

When Donna and Dolly still remained silent, Carol sighed heavily.

‘Listen, I know porn probably gives you the heebiejeebies, it does me to be honest, but it’s like Georgio said: if we don’t do it, someone else will. Whatever happens it’ll be made and we might as well be

making it. Can’t you see that? It’s just economics, sound economics.’ Donna sipped her scotch and looked into Carol’s heavily made-up face.

‘Have you ever seen any of the books or the contents of the floppy discs? Have you ever seen any of the so-called soft porn my husband and yours are peddling to all and sundry? Only I have, and believe me, Carol, it’s bloody disgusting.’

Carol spread her hands. ‘What are they, hardcore porn? Stag movies? Look - my sister used to make them for a living in the seventies. They’ve been around since the silent movies, love …’

Donna interrupted her. ‘The films and photographs aren’t of women, you fool, they’re of children! The hotel in Sri Lanka deals in children. Little ones, Carol, like your own kids. I’ve been there, seen it, done it, got the bloody T shirt, for Christ’s sake!

‘Stephen Brunos was out there,’ Donna said into the shocked silence, ‘sorting out the next shipment. That meant making sure the stuff went down the phone lines, to be retrieved this end and put on to disc after disc after disc. I found a projection table a while ago. It started in pounds, single pounds. Then it ran into millions. I thought it was just something Georgio was working out for the building business. It was the floppy discs, Carol. And Davey knows all about it, everything. So does Big Paddy.’

Carol couldn’t, wouldn’t believe what she was hearing. Her face was drained of colour; only her eyes were burning bright.

‘Not my Davey, no way! Georgio, yes, he’d sell his own little boy for a few quid but not my old man. No way. You’ve got this all wrong. No way, I tell you! The hotel in Sri Lanka is just that, a fucking hotel. I don’t know where you get your information from, lady—’

Donna interrupted her again. ‘I have just come back from Sri Lanka, Carol. Listen to me, woman! I know what I saw out there, all right? I know the score.’

Carol was still shaking her head.

‘You’re off your trolley. Davey was right in what he said. You’ve been like a fucking Jonah ever since Georgio got banged up, always sticking your nose into everything …’

Donna nodded. That’s why Paddy had to keep an eye on me, ain’t it? That’s why Davey kept an eye on me as well. To stop me finding out about this little lot.’

Carol bellowed. ‘What little lot? I’ve only your word for any of this. I’ve been with Davey for donkey’s years. He hates anything like that. Hates the nonces and the beasts …’ Her strident voice broke.

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Donna wiped a shaking hand across her forehead. ‘Show her the books Dolly.’

Dolly got up. Going to her large handbag, she removed the books and placed them in front of Carol.

Carol stared down through tear-filled eyes at the faces of the children. She shuddered.

‘This still doesn’t mean my Davey’s involved …’

Dolly said quietly, ‘Paddy and Davey turned up here to collect some boxes. I secretly took these out of the boxes before they arrived. Your Davey’s involved, all right. They all are. Scum, the whole lot of them.’

Carol looked down at the books once more. Leaning over the table, Donna turned the pages.

Carol stared at the children arrayed before her, saw the blank faces, the small bodies opened up to the camera, saw the huge hands of faceless men touching them, abusing them … and felt the bile rise inside her. All along, she had dreaded something like this. It had always been lurking in the back of her mind.

Georgio Brunos was capable of anything. Once he had talked about Thailand while visiting her house, had described to Davey how the women could be used. She had been in her kitchen listening. Unable to stop listening to the things Georgio was saying, was describing. She could Still hear Davey’s excited voice, egging him on for more details, more stories. And she could hear Georgio’s voice, getting louder as he described the brothels, the bar girls, the absolute abuse possible in a country where willing bodies were cheap.

She had gone to bed, half-ashamed at eavesdropping, half-ashamed at not saying anything. When Davey had gone out there to look at the proposed hotel sites with Georgio, she had known exactly what was on the agenda. But she hadn’t said anything, because if she had voiced an opinion, she would have had to admit it was true, and that was the last thing she wanted. Once she admitted that, Davey and she would be .over. Her marriage would be over. It was over now, she realised. It had been over from the moment she had walked into this house.

‘Do you know something, Donna? Inside, I knew about all this. I even knew when I was driving over here, only I didn’t admit it openly. It was more a subconscious thought. But there all the same. I just couldn’t admit to myself that Davey was involved in it. Oh, Georgio being involved don’t surprise me. He always was a slag. Always. He even tried it on with me when I was pregnant with Jamie. Said pregnant women turned him on.’

She saw the look of horror on Donna’s face and sighed.

‘You know something, Donna? I thought I was blinkered where Davey was concerned. But you with Georgio … Jesus wept, you were blind as a fucking bat!’

Because she was hurting so much she wanted someone else to hurt, too. Wanted Donna, the person who had blown her world wide open, to hurt more than she did.

‘Do you know what makes all this worse? Georgio’s got a child himself, a son.’

Dolly shook her head in disbelief.

‘Be quiet now, Carol. Leave it. This isn’t the time or the place …’

‘Oh fuck off, Dolly! Still protecting your Golden Boy, are you? She has a right to know. Once he’s out that’s where he’s going. Shall I tell you something else, Donna? You turned up there once, at Parkhurst, and she was there too, going in for a visit with the child. She’d come all the way from Marbella with Georgio junior. You even spoke to her. Davey told me. He said Georgio nearly fainted when you walked in instead of her.

‘He’s going to leave you high and dry, love. That’s why he wanted the house sold. He wanted it all, everything, and he would have left you with nothing!

‘Even you, Dolly, his surrogate mother, were going to be fucked off out of it. He is evil, evil - and he has brought my old man as low as him. He was in this with Harry and Bunty. Oh, you may well look surprised. Why do you think Harry come up trumps the night you was turned over, eh? Loyalty to Georgio, my arse! He couldn’t drop you lot quick enough when Georgio got the capture, and this is why, love. These little children are their road to riches. Untold riches, as my Davey put it. The dirty, weasel-faced, little bastardi’

Donna stared down at her hands in distress. Of all the things she had found out, the fact that Georgio had a child, a living child, was the worst of all. In her mind’s eye she could see the tall blonde girl with the handsome dark-eyed child. As Donna walked into the prison, the girl had walked out. Donna had admired the child. She felt a scream spiralling up inside her, and fought bravely to keep it inside her head, not let it come barrelling out into the faces of the two women before her.

‘What a mess, eh? What a godawful dirty mess.’ Donna was amazed that her voice sounded so normal, when inside she was screaming.

Screaming at the injustice of a God who allowed Georgio to beget a child and left her barren. Allowed things like child prostitution to flourish, to be easily available to debauched men. Who allowed her to

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love someone, to trust someone who was a nothing. A dirty filthy NOTHING.

The thought of Georgio’s hands on her made her want to gag. The knowledge that she had lain in bed longing for his touch made her insides rise up as her mind rebelled.

Carol, her anger spent, sorry now for what she had said, grasped Donna’s hand in hers and said softly, ‘What we have to decide now is what we are going to do?’

Donna’s face finally crumpled, her strength finally gave out and the three women cried together.

Each betrayed in her own way, each reliant on the others now to make something good come out of it all.

Wiping her eyes, Donna said in a voice stronger than she would have believed possible: ‘What we do now is blow this thing wide open.’

Georgio stood in the rec room watching a game of pool. Big Ricky was playing the new man on the Wing, Alfie Heartland. He was a well-known face in Parkhurst and other maximum security nicks; he was respected, handsome and violent. An armed robber, Alfie was now doing a fifteen for a raid on a local building society where he had pistol-whipped a have-a-go artist. Alfie was known for his sense of humour and his knowledge of horses. An avid gambler, he had already sorted himself a screw to put his bets on, and had established a book.

As Georgio watched them play, he saw Beavis and Butthead having a conversation in a corner. They were supposed to be playing cards but were deep in conversation, and Georgio noticed that they looked over at him now and again.

Nervous already, because of the jump planned for the next day, he began to feel paranoid. They knew a lot about him, and if they opened their mouths he could find himself in big trouble. He sauntered over to their table and sat with them for a few moments. No one noticed, everyone was too busy watching either TV or the game of pool. Only Sadie observed this and she kept an eye on Georgio from her chair by the TV, her face set in a frown. Georgio spoke to the men, then stood up and stretched languidly before going back to the pool table.

Sadie watched him for a few more seconds then slipped from the room unobtrusively.

Georgio didn’t see her go.

Alan Cox sat in his office nursing a brandy and smoking a cigar. All

he wanted to do was crawl away somewhere and come back in forty-eight hours, when it would all be over. But he knew he couldn’t do that. He knew he was too involved with Donna Brunos to do that. If it hadn’t been for her, he told himself, he would have blind-eyed the whole bleedin’ affair. Then he shrugged mentally, telling himself that was a lie.

He was blaming her because he was involved, and he wanted a scapegoat. Donna, with her airs and graces, her clean-living good looks, was perfect for the part.

What was really bothering him was the fact that he’d thought he knew Georgio Brunos, when he hadn’t. He hadn’t even scratched the surface.

He recalled Georgio as he had been when they were young, when Pa Brunos had taken them boxing. Once they had gone their separate ways, they had both changed. But the boyhood friendship had lasted. Look at what Georgio had done for him when he had been put away …

Now, Stephen was dead, Georgio was for the out… and Alan had to try and prevent it.

The knock on his door disturbed his thinking and he said loudly: ‘Enter!’

The door opened and he was amazed to see Donna walk into the room.

‘Hello, Alan.’

He looked at her as if she had just appeared out of a glass bottle. ‘Donna?’ It was a question and she smiled slightly as she took a seat opposite him.

‘Surprised to see me, are you? Well, I had to come. Carol Jackson knows everything now, and thanks to her, so do I. It wasn’t just Georgio and Davey and Paddy involved, it was also Harry and that horse-faced bitch he’s married to. Donald Lewis was ripped off and he hasn’t an inkling why. He thinks Stephen is just a greedy bastard. Carol has told us all she knows. She also told me that Jojo O’Neil and Jack Coyne are in this up to their armpits, and that Georgio got Jojo a hiding from Nick Carvello to teach him a lesson because he was getting greedy. The more I find out, the more involved it gets and the more I hate Georgio Brunos. But then I expect you guessed most of this, or even knew about it?’

Alan blinked for a few seconds as if digesting what she’d said, and Donna, looking at him, felt the full masculine force of him, and the memory of him unclothed rose up in her mind. As if reading her mind, he reddened. A flush crept up from his neck and enveloped his handsome face.

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Donna noticed he was the first to look away and felt a momentary euphoria. She was growing up at last. She was a woman in her own right. And, she added to herself, not before time.

‘Yes, I had guessed most of what you said, Donna, but something I don’t understand is why, if Paddy was involved in everything, he was not to know about the jump? There’s skulduggery everywhere we look, and your husband seems to be the main instigator of it all.’