Goodnight Lady (80 page)

With that, Bernadette made to leave. Delia’s voice stayed her.

‘I’m sorry, Mum. Truly, I’m sorry about everything, about Jimmy, about Faithey ...’

Bernadette turned at the door and looked back at her. They stared into one another’s eyes for long moments before Bernadette answered.

‘Save your sorry for when you really mean it. Sorry’s an easy word to say, but that don’t automatically get you forgiveness. That’s like respect. You have to earn it. And judging by the way you live, it’ll take you bloody years!’

With that she left the little flat and shut the door behind her. As she walked down the stinking staircase, strewn with used condoms and old chippy papers, dirty syringes and circulars, she held her breath. Then she walked out into the weak sunshine and breathed in deep gulps of fresh air to cleanse her herself.

Briony looked around the room with keen eyes. Since the shock of Boysie’s death had worn off, her survival instinct had come to the fore. She wasn’t interested in Daniel any more, felt he had had all the help she could give him. She was more interested in protecting the rest of the family. Her mother for a start.

Molly sat hunched in a seat by the fire, a large hot rum in her hand. Every so often she wiped away a tear with a crumpled tissue, shaking her head as if in wonderment. Every so often she would read the newspaper accounts of her grandsons’ lives. Even with one of them dead and the other locked away awaiting trial for murder, she still enjoyed reading about them.

Bernadette was white-faced and quiet. Her two nephews had been a big part of her life. She would miss them genuinely and acutely. Briony loved Bernie for this fact.

Delia was not there, conspicuous by her absence, as was Suzy, Boysie’s wife, who was too busy selling her story to anyone who would pay for it: MY LIFE WITH GANGLAND MURDERER.

Scheming little bitch! She’d better not bother to attend Boysie’s funeral because, baby or no baby, Briony would take great pleasure in slapping her face for her.

Kerry sat alone on a small stool, hands around a glass of vodka, her face bereft of make-up and expression. Liselle sat beside her, kneeling on the floor, sad and quiet.

The men, Marcus and Tommy, were closeted in Bernadette’s kitchen. The daily woman and the cook had not turned up for work, which surprised no one. Photographers and reporters were camped outside on the pavement like vultures.

Mariah had turned up dressed in her loudest clothes and plastered with make-up and had stood out on Bemadette’s drive for a full twenty minutes while they took photos and she answered questions. ,

‘No,’ she had said, ‘I can’t believe any of the things the papers are saying about the twins. They were hard-working businessmen who gave a great deal of money to charity.’

One reporter had asked cheekily if it was true she had been a celebrated prostitute in her day. Mariah had answered him just as cheekily.

‘If you’ve got five crisp new twenty-pound notes, son, you can find out!’

This had gone out on the nine o’clock news to the merriment of the whole East End population.

The Cavanagh trial was going to be big business for the newspapers and television. The twins had somehow captured the imagination of the whole country, and the newspaper headline GOODNIGHT LADY was everywhere Briony looked. Her past was dragged up and embroidered so she looked like some kind of monster. Even Joshua O’Malley had been found and had sold his story to the News
of the
World
, saying how his sons were brought up by Briony Cavanagh because she had threatened to kill him unless he gave them over to her. This had caused another sensation. Briony was made to look like Lucrezia Borgia.

The photograph taken outside St Vincent’s on the day of the twins’ christening all those years ago appeared regularly in the papers, Jonathan la Billiere, herself and all the family smiling out at the world. Who would have thought then that those two innocent little children would one day cause all this?

The worst thought of all, though, was the thought of Benedict reading it all. Reading about her being a madam, a whoremaster. The papers made her sound so hard, so evil, even though many of her girls had in fact come forward to say that she had looked after them extremely well. That story did not appear. It wasn’t what the papers wanted to hear.

Stories about Berwick Manor before the war, when it had been frequented by politicians and other well-known people, were appearing in the papers every day. Hints of scandals involving government ministers and diplomats were given prominence. Most of the stories held a grain of truth, but they were written primarily to shock, to sell newspapers. They were written for people who wanted to believe it all; wanted to believe that the rich, the famous, and the people in charge of their country ran around naked with young girls beside a warm swimming pool. One paper had even hinted at an international scandal involving the Russians, like the Profumo scandal earlier in the decade.

There was an awful lot Briony could have said, but she didn’t. It would help no one.

 

Daniel was being treated like visiting royalty in Wormwood Scrubs. Even the screws deferred to him, made conversation with him, and called him ‘Mr Cavanagh’. He had a man to do his slopping out, a man to deliver his meals to him, he even had his own cell.

This treatment soothed him. He was on remand and once the trial was over, was convinced he would be a free man.

He felt a shadow pass over his face and looked up from the letter he was reading.

A tall man stood before him. He was thin to the point of emaciation.

‘I wondered if you fancied a bit of company?’ The voice was high, a thin falsetto.

Daniel looked at the man for a few seconds, unable to believe the utter neck of the obviously homosexual individual before him.

‘If I was so hard up for company, mate, that I had to resort to you, I’d fucking top meself !’ He got up from his bed angrily as the man ran from the cell in blind panic.

Back in his own cell Bernard Campion, better known as Gloria, sat on his bunk shaking. His cell mate and long-time confidante Ian Snelling, known as Pearl to his friends, shook his head in annoyance.

‘I told you not to go, didn’t I?’

‘Well, you can’t blame a girl for trying!’

Gloria sat daydreaming of what it would have been like to have had the protection of Daniel Cavanagh. In this place it was as good as money in the bank.

Daniel couldn’t calm himself after Gloria’s visit and put the letter to one side.

A bloody shirtlifter coming on to him! The more he thought about it, the more it annoyed him.

Lying there in the six by eight cell, the silly encounter began to grow out of proportion in his mind. He began to see it as an affront to him as a man of means and position. He was Daniel Cavanagh. He and his brother were the undisputed Kings of London, the Big Boys. They were the two most feared individuals since Jack the Ripper, and that long streak of paralysed piss thought he would make out with him! The more he thought about it, the bigger the insult became in his mind.

Finally, he got up and walked from his cell. He marched along the landing kicking open cell doors and looking for the tall thin man who had not only invaded his personal space, but had also insulted his very manhood.

He found Gloria and Pearl sitting on their bunks. Gloria’s face shone hopefully at the sight of him, convinced he had changed his mind about the offer. This was soon proved wrong as Daniel dragged the screaming man from the cell and began to belabour him with a long leather belt, used with the buckle end for maximum effect.

Men came out of their cells to watch the drama being enacted. It broke up the day, added a charge to the sameness of their existence.

Later on the screws reported that Bernard Campion had been taken to the prison hospital after falling down the stairs from the top landing.

Such was life on remand at Wormwood Scrubs. It suited Daniel Cavanagh right down to the ground. It was just what he needed after his brother’s death and his own arrest. Somewhere he could still be the main man. Could sit out his time given the respect he deserved and expected, until such time as he was let loose on the world once more.

 

Limmington had taken the statements made by Heidi Thompkins to the Home Secretary himself. He wanted this done properly, without any mistakes whatsoever. The Home Secretary gave him the go ahead to arrest Briony Cavanagh and Thomas Lane for two murders. Heidi Thompkins was going to swear in a court of law that she was at the house where Bolger died and that she saw Briony Cavanagh and Thomas Lane put the gun to his head. She was going to swear also that she had been present when they had discussed the murder of Ronald Olds, how Tommy Lane had ripped his belly open with a double-bladed boning knife. As long as he kept her away from the Cavanaghs, off the drink, and promised her a good few pounds, she was as sweet as a nut.

Limmington stood now, in full view of the photographers and reporters, outside Bernadette Dowling’s house, the warrant for their arrest clutched firmly in his hand.

Cissy, with eyes red and swollen from crying, let him in. He walked into the drawing room with two officers, and was amazed by the number of people he saw.

Briony stood up and greeted him with a nod. ‘What can I do for you, Mr Limmington?’

He was struck by the sadness in her husky voice. In the wake of her nephew’s death she seemed to have aged considerably, and looking at her, so tiny, so diminished in her grief, he felt a moment’s shame at what he was about to do.

Willy Bolger had been nothing but a dealer in porn and child prostitution, not exactly a pillar of the community. But Limmington’s deep-rooted desire to take this women off the streets overrode the moment of compunction.

‘Miss Briony Cavanagh and Mr Thomas Lane, I have a warrant here for your arrests...’

Briony’s eyes widened. She heard Tommy’s voice as if from a distance.

‘What the bleeding hell are you arresting us for?’

‘For the murders of William Bolger and Ronald Olds.’

Tommy laughed outright. ‘Fuck me, couldn’t you go back no further? Why don’t you chuck in the murder of Abel and all while you’re about it!’

Limmington smiled. ‘If you’d both like to accompany me to the station?’

Tommy shot out his arm and grabbed him.

Two DCs grabbed him in his turn, expertly forcing his arms behind his back.

Briony sighed.

‘Come on, Tommy, we’ll be home before the day’s over: She looked at Limmington with hooded eyes.

‘I’ve never heard so much old bollocks in all my life. You’re living in a fantasy world, Mr Limmington, and you’ll find out soon enough what happens to people who annoy me. I’ll sue you and the police force for every last halfpenny you possess. I hope for your sake you’re ready to take us on, because I can tell you now, we’ll have cast-iron alibis.’

Limmington watched her warily as she went out to the hallway for her coat.

‘I have everything I need, Miss Cavanagh.’

Briony faced him and smiled.

‘Shall I tell you something, Mr Limmington? A lot of people have tried to get one over on me, an awful lot. But I’m still here.’

Limmington smiled back.

‘Yes, but for how much longer?’

Before Briony could answer, Molly was shouting her head off.

‘You fuckers of hell! You dirty bastards! My grandson’s not cold and you’re haunting the rest of me family.’

Bernadette took her mother in her arms and gave her a kiss.

‘We’ll be home before you can say knife!’

Limmington watched the scene and said in a low voice: ‘Would that be double-bladed boning knife by any chance?’

 

James McQuiddan was supposed to be the best as far as barristers went. Or so Briony had been told. She sat in chambers with Tommy as the man argued their case for bail.

McQuiddan was enormous. Even the man’s hands were huge, and he had an undeniably menacing presence.

The Judge, Mr Justice Melrose Deakins, listened to McQuiddan’s lightly accented Scottish voice attentively.

‘Your Honour, we have here two people of the highest repute. And yet today they stand accused of two murders committed over forty years ago.

‘One of the so-called murder victims is in fact on public record as having committed suicide. How can you not grant these two people bail? Briony Cavanagh is an esteemed member of her community, she has been an active charity fundraiser, a businesswoman widely respected. Thomas Lane is similarly regarded. Neither has ever been in trouble with the police. How my learned friend here can oppose bail...’

‘Mr McQuiddan, I have listened to you with interest, and all I can say to you is, Miss Cavanagh and Mr Lane, pillars of the community, fundraising charity workers and otherwise exemplary citizens notwithstanding, are here charged with murder, not traffic offences. Murder is a heinous crime, and not one to be taken lightly. In view of the gravity of the charges, I have no alternative but to refuse them bail.’

Briony’s face dropped, and Tommy closed his eyes tightly.

McQuiddan shook his head dramatically and stood up once more, his black robes billowing around him.

‘Your Honour, I really must protest...’

Mr Justice Deakins held up one scrawny hand for silence. ‘I think we have heard quite enough protesting from you for one day, Mr McQuiddan.’

Outside, when the news was broken, DI Limmington smiled and chalked the first round up to himself.

 

Briony walked into Holloway Prison in a daze. She had been so sure she was going to get bail, the decision of the judge had shocked her to the core. As she sat in the prison van between two policewomen she felt a plummeting inside herself. The bang of the steel doors behind her as she entered through the side door of the prison reverberated in her head.