Faceless (45 page)

Her voice went on and on once more.

Mickey listened once more with half an ear and wished his mother would just dry up and blow away.

‘I am warning you now, boy. You tell your lady love that she is out and you tell her today. I have had enough of the lot of you.’

‘But where will she go, Mum?’

Mary rolled her eyes to the ceiling in an exaggerated manner.

‘What do I care? Just give her the bad news. I want her out and that’s the end of it. If you had half a brain you’d have given her the elbow long ago.’

His mother had spoken. That was that.

Mickey felt almost relieved if he was honest.

Patrick was euphoric. He had never felt so good in all his life.

Blood being what it was, he was still finding dark brown stains all over his body. He knew he needed to get showered and changed so was making his way to the gym in Spitalfields. Afterwards he’d have a large brandy and a joint to calm himself down.

He felt absolutely fantastic. Like he had been reborn. So good was the feeling that he didn’t even see the colour change at the traffic lights ahead. He heard an insistent honking coming from behind him and glanced into his mirror.

It was three blokes in a white Transit. He smiled to himself before he stuck up two fingers in a blatant act of aggression. He was daring them to do something about it, and hoped they decided they were going to. He was running on adrenaline and it felt good.

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The lights were on red again. They all had to wait once more for them to change.

He saw a large man get out of the driver’s side of the Transit. He was heavy, more fat than muscle, a forty-five-year-old skinhead. Patrick could see the blue and red of his tattoos even from this distance. He watched as the man ambled towards him, his heavy body encased in a white sleeveless T-shirt and baggy jeans covered in paint splatters.

Patrick could just see this man in his local pub, a pint in one grubby hand and his big flabby mouth going. He obviously thought he was hard. He had to think that or he would not have bothered to get out of the Transit in the first place. Thought he was a diamond geezer, a bit of a face. Well, he and his mates were about to get the shock of their stupid pointless little lives. Patrick was up for it. More than up for it.

More to the point, he wanted it. Wanted the man to force his hand. Wanted to take this bastard down, quickly and efficiently and violently. He was grinning with the knowledge that he had the upper hand. He had a machete, he had a hammer, and he had something none of these blokes would ever have: the fucking bottle actually to kill someone. These were ice creams, local bullyboys. Well, they could fuck off. He was ready, he was willing and he was more than able. As the man walked towards him he was practically giggling.

Patrick opened the car door just as the other man got to the driver’s side window. The man looked into a pair of piercing blue eyes in a black face and that in itself threw him. He opened his mouth to speak, displaying yellowing teeth and a thickly coated white tongue.

But Patrick got in first.

He opened his coat and let the man see his bloodstained machete, then he said in a low voice, ‘Do you really want some of this, mate? Do you want your old woman to know you were beheaded at a set of fucking traffic lights because you were an impatient cunt?’

The man, a decorator from Canning Town called Stevie Bowler, looked once more into those piercing blue eyes and saw a man who was ready to kill over nothing. It speedily occurred to him that his own natural aggression was more than matched by this black man in the BMW. He weighed up the pros and cons of taking the man on and decided against it. This was a man on the edge and it showed.

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From his belligerent stance to his practically daring Stevie to damage him, this man wanted a tear up far more than he did. Stevie was just being a hard man in front of his mates. This bloke was a hard man, that was the difference. He had no one else with him yet he was willing to break open heads for what was, in fact, nothing at all.

A fucking machete! He couldn’t believe it. And this bloke was ready to use it, wanted to use it. He was more than up for it. You could see it in his eyes. This should have been a war of words, a few fucks flying about and maybe a slight fracas. But this bloke was ready to kill over something that was childish and stupid and Stevie wanted none of it.

It occurred to him that he was as bad, getting out of the Transit in the first place. What the fuck was he trying to prove? He had a nice little wife and nice kids and this bloke was willing to extinguish his life without a second’s thought over something so trivial it should never have mattered to either of them.

Stevie’s eyes were glued to the machete. It had recently been used, he could see that much for himself. He stepped back slowly. Turning, he made his way back to the Transit van. It was the brownish stains on the machete that had been the deciding factor. It was very obviously blood, and more than likely human blood. Well, it was not going to be his blood, he was determined on that.

He got into his Transit and they drove away after a few moments. He had never felt so relieved in his life. His friends, asking what the fuck had occurred and getting no information whatsoever, wondered what was going on. But Stevie’s face stopped them from enquiring. They guessed it was a heavy situation and it quietened them all.

As they turned towards the Becton flyover a radio news announcement stated that four men had died in a bloodbath, all killed with machetes. Police were looking for two black men and a white man with bleached blond hair.

Stevie pulled over and jumped from the white Transit. He brought up his lunch - three pints of beer and a cheese roll he had eaten not an hour before. His friends were still unaware of what he had seen and exactly what had happened, and he was not about to tell them.

All he knew was that he had had a very lucky escape, and the knowledge left him almost faint with relief. He suddenly realised what mindless violence really meant, and that he had nearly become the latest statistic because of his own foolishness and arrogance.

It was a sobering afternoon.

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Tiffany was dying and she knew it. Her kidneys were packing up and her liver was so badly damaged it was not functioning. Her face and body were bloated and they had put her on life support. Marie held her daughter’s hand and wondered at a God Who allowed something like this to happen. Hadn’t her daughter had enough thrown at her in her short life without this? Dying like an animal, used and abused and finally thrown away like rubbish. The fact that Patrick had put her daughter in a rubbish bin had been the hardest fact of all to take. Her lovely child degraded even further as she lay dying amongst the filth. How had God allowed that to happen to this beautiful girl? Where was He when she was being beaten and raped? How did God distinguish between those He would give to and those He would take from? Marie hated Him at this moment in time because she needed Him and knew He was not going to help her. No one would help her or her child.

But still she prayed, prayed as she had never prayed in her life. Even when she had been awaiting the verdict from the jury she had not prayed as she was praying now. She looked at her child, the daughter she had abandoned without realising just how much she had loved her. Drugs had been everything to her then as they had become to the dying girl before her. Two wasted lives.

What was the attraction really? What made someone put a chemical before everything and everyone? The belief that getting so out of it you couldn’t repeat your own name made problems disappear was outdated and, worse than that, it was a cop out. Her daughter had left real life behind just as Marie had. Tiffany had opted for the pretend world of drugs, dingy night clubs and the scum of the earth. Just like Marie. Why had she allowed history to repeat itself, why hadn’t she tried to get out sooner? Fought the courts for contact with her children? She had thought she was doing the best for them by getting out of their lives, when all she was really doing was giving her daughter to a man who preyed expressly on young girls without family or anyone who cared. Patrick had taken her child as he had taken her, and this was the result: Tiffany dead at nineteen, her body and mind ravaged by crack and a series of beatings that would have killed most people already. Even the doctors were amazed she had hung on so long.

She could not have a transplant because her body would not take the anaesthetic. Also, being a crack addict, she would not be considered a worthy donee.

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Her daughter’s beautiful hair had been ripped from her head, and her face was a black mass of bruises. Her whole body was broken, another victim of Patrick Connor’s evil. She had a perfect boot print across her face. But the police would not be able to pin it on him, he was far too clever for that. He wasn’t going away for the likes of Tiffany. She was old news by now as far as he was concerned, Marie knew that.

Patrick took people and he used them. When they were no good to him any more, he destroyed them without a second’s thought.

Tiffany had slipped into a coma. As she held her daughter’s hand Marie wished her to a better place. Wanted her somewhere where no one could ever hurt her again. She pictured green fields and bright sunshine for her child. She hoped to God that was what she got wherever she was going. Marie prayed it would be somewhere warm and beautiful, somewhere Tiffany could laugh and relax and be a normal young girl. ‘Please let her find peace and happiness,’ she prayed. God Himself knew there had been little enough of it in her life up to now.

Marie wished she could go with her, be there with her to keep her company, keep her safe. But she had promised her daughter she would try and take on Anastasia, and that was a promise she was determined to keep. She was a different person now from the girl she had been when she had murdered Bethany and Caroline. She was clean, was decent. Even taking on Mikey had ultimately been for her daughter. She had gained a valuable friend there when in fact all she had wanted was a nutter to take on Patrick for her. Mikey had been with her through all this heartbreak. Another man would have run a mile.

Now she was going to fight for her granddaughter, would not let her get lost in the system which seemed to breed girls like poor Tiffany, fodder for pimps and drug dealers. She would fight for the child and maybe she would redeem herself through Anastasia. Make up for all her past mistakes with her daughter’s child. It was the least she could do.

But first she had a date with Patrick Connor. In fact she was quite looking forward to it. She wanted to see his face when she told him what she thought of him. As she made him suffer as he had made her child suffer. Wanted him to know it was Marie Carter who was going to take him out of the ball game. Violence solved nothing, she knew. But this time it would make her feel a whole lot better.

First, though, she had to watch over her child as she took her last

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breath. Watch her son’s heart break as he lost his sister, knowing that it was his own father who had brought Tiffany to this.

It was a tragic, terrible mess and she was responsible for the lot of it But this time she was after revenge and she was determined she was going to get it. Patrick Connor did not know what was going to hit him. Neither did her so-called friend Carole Halter who had given Marie’s child up to him for five lousy grand. But then money was her God. Marie had been the same once herself.

Now it was payback time for them all.

Mikey was at home, pacing the room like a parody of a man waiting for his child to be born. The men with him could feel his anger. It was in his eyes, in his body language.

‘What have you found out?’

Old Billy spoke. He was an old friend ofMikey’s and always had first talk because of that fact. The others knew their long friendship gave Billy first call on everything. He was the only person ever to have openly disagreed with Mikey and still lived to tell the tale. Consequently, he was well-respected and liked. A powerful man, with a bull neck and sparse hair, he was also easygoing and funny.

‘Connor done Rasta Malcolm today. It was definitely him from the word on the street. Cut him up with a machete. Ironic, really, since that was always Malcolm’s weapon of choice, as we all know. Done him in his house with his little boy upstairs. Also done three of his blokes. Surprise attack, I’d say. Well-executed and neatly done. Filth are all over the place but Connor will walk away as usual. Obviously he wants Malcolm’s pitches, businesses and henchmen. He will get them and all if we ain’t careful.’

Mikey looked disgusted.

‘He done him with his little kid in the house?’

The men could hear the absolute horror in Mikey’s voice.

‘That is what we are dealing with now, boys. It’s pure fucking laziness. Get to people through their kids. The piece of shit cunt! Give me back the old days when we just spanked the perpetrator of our troubles and left the families out of it.’

Mikey shook his head in disbelief.

‘Well, I want him done and that is that. Get his movements and then we swoop.’

Billy looked puzzled and said, ‘What for, Mikey? That’s not our turf, it’s nothing to do with us. Why stick our neck out over the coons? They want to fight one another - what is it to us?’

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Mikey was expecting this question and knew only Billy would have the front to ask it.

‘One, I liked Rasta Malcolm, I was dealing with him years ago when he first come over from the Big J. He was a sound geezer and he knew his place. He kept out of other people’s business and he’d lend a helping hand if one was needed. One hard fuck, I tell you, but he never tried to take what was someone else’s. He kept to his own turf and I respected him for that. Two, I have a private score to settle with that ponce Connor. He is a cancer and I want him dead. Three, he picked on a kid, has a penchant for picking on kids, and four, he is a pimp and I fucking hate pimps. They are carrion and they are scum.’