Goodnight Lady (79 page)

‘Come on then, come on, you ponces. I dare you to come and take me.’

Then he laughed out loud, head back, teeth exposed.

‘Come on then, what’s the matter? Your mummies told you not to play with the naughty boys, did they?’

DI Canningfield shook his head in amazement. This boy was a lunatic. He should be put away where he belonged.

Boysie walked slowly down his drive, arms still up, fists still clenched.

‘Come on then ... What’s the fucking matter with you? You’ve got an audience, ain’t you? Show the public what hard nuts you are.’

Then he was running down the road, the police in hot pursuit. As he approached the end of it, he saw the road block. They had come prepared.

He swerved away and ran down a neighbour’s drive. She watched in fascination as he scaled her side entrance. He ran the hundred and fifty feet of her back garden, stepping through her ornamental pond, his trousers heavy now with water and dirt. He launched himself at her back fence, repeating the run through the garden backing on to it. He burst from this over a large wooden back gate and out into the street parallel to his own. As he ran full pelt down the street, he bounded out on to the main road, the men behind him shouting and hollering for him to stop.

Laughing once more, he catapulted himself on to the main road, where he was hit full on by a police car.

Boysie was seen by the policeman following him to rise about fifteen feet into the air before landing with a sickening thud on the pavement on the other side of the road. His head was bent to the right in a grotesquely unnatural position.

As the police all surrounded him he looked up at them. He opened his mouth to speak and a trickle of blood slid slowly down from his nose and into his open mouth.

He mouthed the word ‘Bastards’ before a shuddering passed through his body and he died. A young PC watched his legs twitching in the final throes of death and put his hand over his mouth to swallow the sickness engulfing him.

The DI pushed his way through the men and, smiling to himself, kicked Boysie Cavanagh as hard as he could in the stomach, lifting him off the pavement with the force of the blow.

The young PC watched his superior, silent and nauseated.

‘That’s one piece of shite removed from the face of the earth. Timpkins, get an ambulance.’

With that, the man walked back to the squad car and lit himself a cigarette.

Boysie Cavanagh lay on the cold pavement, dead but with a twisted smile on his face. It seemed even in death the Cavanaghs had got one over on them.

 

Daniel had not said a word since he had been told the news of his brother’s death.

Limmington, against all his instincts, actually felt sorry for him. Knowing how close they were, how they were together continually and had stuck by each other through thick and thin, he couldn’t help but feel sympathy for the large man before him.

‘Drink your tea, son ... Come on. It’ll do you good.’

Daniel looked at the tea and then at the old man before him. Picking up the paper cup, he stared at the hot liquid for a few seconds before he flung the entire contents into Limmington’s face. Limmington put up his hands instinctively, then Daniel was up and fighting. He grabbed hold of Limmington’s jacket, raining punches on the man’s face and head.

It was all over in seconds. The officer in the room raised the alarm and then five men were holding Daniel down, kneeling on him to contain him. His face was pressed against the coldness of the floor. Then, to the absolute amazement of the other men in the room, he began to cry, big bubbles of snot mingling with tears that seemed inexhaustible. His shoulders shuddered violently as he sobbed, mouthing his brother’s name over and over.

The enormity of death hit him with the force of a twenty-pound hammer. His Boysie, his other half, was gone. Gone, never to return. They had been together since birth, had shared, had planned, had dreamed together, with never any real thought for anyone but the other. It was all gone, Boysie was gone. Daniel wished he could have died with him.

Limmington straightened his clothes and knelt on the floor. He pushed back Daniel’s hair from his face and, taking a hankie from his pocket, wiped his face and nose.

‘Come on, son, calm yourself down. We’re very, very sorry.’

PC Dawson looked at Limmington and felt an enormous surge of respect.

‘Don’t bother putting this in any of the statements. He reacted as any of us would have under the same circumstances. I’ll ring for the quack, get him a shot. He ain’t in any condition to be questioned. What we have to say to him will keep.’

With that he stood up and left the room, his jacket still crumpled up and his eye beginning to swell.

Outside Briony and Tommy sat in the waiting room. Briony was cold inside. It was a strange feeling. As if something inside her had died along with Boysie.

Tommy held her gently, his arm around her shoulders protectively, his own face grey and mottled.

All Briony could see in her mind’s eye was two little scraps of humanity lying in the bed with their gentle mother. A mother who would have loved them to distraction, and done a damn’ sight better job of raising them than the woman to whom she had entrusted them.

Briony had identified Boysie’s remains, his wife being, in no condition to do the job herself. She had stood and stared down at the lifeless body of the man who had been a son to her. Who had been cared for and loved, oh yes, loved. She had always done that, even when they were at their worst.

But she had never really had any control over them, she knew that now. They had always gone their own way, their combined personalities and resources making that inevitable.

Now the upshot was one dead, one arrested for a bloody and senseless murder. Even with her own past, her own way of life, she could not find it in herself to condone, or indeed even understand, an act of such callousness and absolute lunacy as the twins had committed that night. They had barbarically murdered in cold blood, in front of witnesses, two men who were well known, albeit well disliked. To do something like that in public you had to be either mentally unstable or a lunatic of the first order. The twins, it seemed, had been both these things. Now Daniel at least would have to pay the price. She couldn’t hope to help him out of this.

Even if she had wanted to.

It was this that saddened her more than anything: she didn’t want to help Daniel. She guessed, shrewdly, that it had been his big idea to kill them in The Two Puddings in Stratford, in front of everyone. It had his mark of showmanship about it. Oh, that was Daniel’s way all right. It had been a calculated move by him, to guarantee total autonomy in the East End. To guarantee they would never be challenged again. Well, Boysie, God love him, was dead, Daniel had seen to that. Now Daniel would have to take the can.

It amazed her how they had even dreamt they could get away with it. It was 1969, not the days of the Wild West. Daniel’s exceptional brain should have made him aware of that, but he had a kink in his nature, brought about by God knows what, that made him think they were invincible. And they had been, until that final act of folly.

She pushed her face into Tommy’s coat, savouring the feel of him.

Limmington watched them as he passed through the front of the station. He mistook Briony’s demeanour for sorrow at their getting caught; sorrow at losing her boys. He couldn’t have been more wrong if he had tried.

It was sorrow all right, but sorrow tinged with guilt and wonderment. Like many a parent before her, she was wondering just where the hell she had gone wrong.

 

Liselle looked at the headline on the front page of the Daily Mirror and felt a tightness in her chest: BLOODBATH IN EAST END. She saw a picture of the twins with an airbrushed rip so the photograph was in two ragged pieces. Her eyes scanned the page.

 

Liselle closed her eyes tightly. She had heard nothing from her Aunt Briony about this, nothing at all. This fact hurt her, while at the same time she wondered uneasily how her mother would be affected by this catastrophe and the newspaper coverage of the family.

Liselle leafed through the paper with trembling hands. Sure enough, there were pictures of her mother, herself and all the family, taken by the local Barking
and
Dagenham
Post over the years.

Emblazoned across the top of the centre pages was a large headline reading: GOODNIGHT LADY.

Underneath was the story of Briony’s houses in London and Essex. A picture of Berwick Manor showed Briony and Kerry standing in the doorway, smiling. Liselle began to read again, taking in every word, her eyes seeking for her own name and her mother’s.

 

Liselle put her hands to her face. She wept as she looked at the photograph of $oysie, then, pulling herself together as best she could, she went to the telephone to ring her Auntie Bernadette. That’s where the family would be gathering. That’s where she and her mother would be expected to go.

As always, the Cavanaghs felt better when they were all together. It was as if their strength could ward off any trouble.

Only this time, it seemed to Liselle, the trouble was just too big, and too public.

 

Delia was lying in bed, her eyes red-rimmed from crying. The knock at her front door made her heart stop in her chest. She was straight, completely straight, which was why her mind was going over and over the events of her cousin’s death. She was reminded of Jimmy. It brought it all back.

She went to the front door and opened it, peering out through the gap allowed by her security chain. It was her mother. Taking the chain off she opened the door wide, allowing her mother in.

Bernadette walked in the tiny flat and her face screwed up with distaste at the stench. She hadn’t brought Delia up to live like this! To live like a bloody hippy! She bit back the words that were in her mouth and said instead: ‘You’ve heard about your cousins, I take it?’

Delia nodded, biting down on her lip to stop the tears.

‘Oh, stop the act, Delia, I ain’t in the mood!’ Bernadette’s voice was harsh and Delia fejtthe full force of her anger.

‘You’ve been knocking off a bloke called Dave, ain’t you?’

Delia watched her mother warily as she walked through to her tiny lounge. She watched her mother’s eyes scan the dirty room and felt a prickle of shame. The place was filthy.

‘What if I have?’ There was defiance in her tone now, brought on by humiliation at her mother’s obvious disgust for her living conditions.

‘Well, your dad had a call about him. As if we ain’t got enough bloody trouble on our plates as it is! It seems he’s an Old Bill, CID. That was clever of you, wasn’t it? But then, you always found trouble, Delia, didn’t you? Well, let me tell you something, girl, if my sister ever fmds out about the conversations you had with him about Jimmy’s murder, there’ll be another one done. Do you get my drift?’

Delia watched her mother’s eyes. They scanned her face with no glimmer of maternal sorrow at what her daughter, her beautiful talented daughter, had been reduced to. Gone was the loving smile that told Delia she would put up with her no matter what. Instead there was open animosity, and it frightened Delia.

‘I ... I’ve not said a word, Mum ... I swear!’

Bernadette poked her daughter in her ample breasts.

‘Shall I tell you something, Delia? You was always my baby. You. Not Becky, poor Becky, who was always second best. Remember how we all used to laugh at her, at her posh ways and her posh voice? We all knew Becky would chase respectability, and deep inside I was glad. But you, miss, you was my baby, the favourite. Not any more. Not after the turn out with Jimmy and little Faithey. You don’t care a penny piece for that little girl, I’m bringing her up for you. Your dad’s her dad, he dotes on her. She don’t even bother to ask where you are any more. And I
will
look after her, I promise you that, young lady.

‘But I want to get something clear here today. If you cause any more trouble to this family, Briony won’t be in it, mate.
I’ll
break your bleeding neck, snap it with me bare hands, I take oath on that. Because you’re a slut, a mouthy, dirty little slut! And I’m ashamed to admit I bore you.’

Delia stared at the floor, unable to meet her mother’s eyes. ‘You’d better take in what I’m telling you, girl, this is your last chance with me, I mean it. You get rid of that bloke. I don’t care if you destroy yourself, that’s up to you, but this family’s got enough on its plate without you causing more hag.’