Guns Of Brixton (12 page)

    The
beatings ceased for a while, but as the bruises and the memory of that night
faded from Thomas's body and mind, slowly and inevitably they started again.
But he never touched Mark again.

    One
Sunday night a year later, Mark faced his mother and told her that he couldn't
go on the way they were. 'He'll end up killing you, Mum,' he said. 'You know he
will. Why do you let him do it?'

    'No,'
she replied, unsteady on her feet from two days of drinking, her once pretty
face now ugly from the alcohol. 'He doesn't mean it. He loves me.'

    Mark
also learned that year that people saw and heard what they wanted to, and with
the best intentions in the world, some people refused to be helped.

    That
night he did pack a bag, leaving most of his possessions behind. As midnight
struck, he left the house for the last time and walked to all the way to John
Jenner's, through a light rain that helped disguise the tears that were running
down his face, the card he'd been given clutched tightly in his fist.

    That
night was one of the last times he ever saw his mother alive.

    Not
too far away from where Mark had eaten the breakfast that Chas had prepared for
him, another man was also considering his past and future. But he hadn't
enjoyed scrambled egg, bacon and mushrooms on a cheerful checked tablecloth in
a warm kitchen. Instead he'd eaten porridge and toast courtesy of Her Majesty
in a miserable dining room Inside Brixton prison. The same grim set of
buildings that John Jenner had checked from the Range Rover the previous day as
Mark had driven him down Brixton Hill on their way to lunch. After breakfast,
Jimmy Hunter sat in his chilly cell, looking out over a courtyard where the
clean mow was already a filthy grey. Everything around the prison soon took on
that colour whatever the weather, and Hunter had seen almost twenty years of
the seasons changing from one cell or another the length and breadth of the
country.

    At
first they'd moved him often, the authorities taking a grim pleasure In
shifting him from prison to prison. The Isle of Wight, Birmingham, Manchester,
Carlisle, Newcastle. The list was as long as the number of penal institutions
in the United Kingdom. Always at short notice. Sometimes in the dead of night
he'd be woken up by the screws, told to gather his few possessions, slung into
the back of a barred van and driven to his new home. But eventually the moves
had become less and less frequent. Times changed. Staff changed. And there were
other, more recent villains to be sorted.

    Not
that Jimmy had been totally forgotten. He was a cop killer after all.
A
mad dog shooter who had nearly died himself after being shot three times just
down the road from where he now sat.

    He
recognised a certain irony in that. The policemen who'd fired without
challenging him that morning in 1982 had wanted him dead. He knew that. It
stood to reason. He'd killed one of their own. One of his own if the truth be
known. At least he had been one of his own when Jimmy had run with John Jenner
and his mob. They'd never been nicked. That was how Billy Farrow could change
horses in midstream. There was no record of his crimes and misdemeanours. Jimmy
had thought that Jenner would use his knowledge of Billy against him, but
Jenner stayed loyal to his old mate. Mug. But when it was just between the two
of them that morning in Brixton market, Jimmy couldn't resist putting him away.
He could still see Farrow's hand raised as if to ward off the shot, but you
didn't ward off the contents of a shotgun cartridge loaded with double ought at
point blank range. The force of the shot had chopped off Farrow's hand at the
wrist before blowing a hole in his chest big enough for a cat to walk through.
He hadn't stood a chance.

    The
copper who'd shot Jimmy had knelt over him as he lay, bleeding in the gutter
next to the body of DC Billy Farrow and told him to die. He remembered the face
looming over him saying. 'Jimmy, you bastard. We've called an ambulance, but
it'll be too late. You're done for, you fucker.' Then he'd kicked him.

    But
that copper had been wrong. Even with three holes in him, Jimmy Hunter had
refused to roll over and let his life slip away. One bullet had gone straight
through his left thigh, exiting out of his leg without touching bone. Another
had gone through his shoulder, smashing his collar bone as it went. That shoulder
still ached on cold mornings like this. The third was the worst. The one that
should have ended his life. A gutshot by a bullet that had run around inside
him and had to be dug out by a stream of surgeons at King's College Hospital.
He still had the scar. A second belly button about three inches to the right of
the original.

    Twenty
years, he thought. Twenty years, and now his release date was- in sight. By the
spring he'd be out. Full sentence served. Jimmy had been up in front of several
parole boards over the years, but his attitude and his behaviour inside had
always resulted in a knock back. But now there was nothing they could do to
prevent his freedom as long as he kept his nose clean. But then, a few months
inside was still a long sentence. Prison time wasn't like time outside. An hour
could seem like a day behind bars. A day like a year, as the second hand on his
battered alarm clock slowed in front of his eyes and he could hardly see
movement of it at all. Outside time could fly by unnoticed. Like those early
days with Marje, when her dad had forbidden her to see her bad boy boyfriend.
Those minutes they'd managed to snatch together when their love was new had
flown by.

    He
still thought of Marje a lot, although she was two years dead. He'd been in
Belmarsh then, down Woolwich way, and the funeral had been in Norwood cemetery.
Jimmy Hunter wasn't a sentimental man. Never had been much, and what sentiment
he'd held on to had been leeched by his time in jail. But Marje had been a good
wife. It was him that had let her down. What woman could be expected to wait
the twenty years the judge at the Bailey had given to Jimmy Hunter? She'd loved
Jimmy and she'd loved the son and daughter he'd given her. In the early years
of his sentence she'd followed his wagon from prison to prison, spending what
little money he'd left her on train fares to see him. She brought their
children with her. Dragging the bewildered boy and girl from town to town, from
visiting room to soulless visiting room.

    Then one
day she'd come alone. She'd told him they wouldn't be coming any more. Told him
she'd met someone else. A quiet man. An honest man who was prepared to give all
three a new life. He received the divorce papers in prison and signed them in
his own blood. At first he'd sworn vengeance, but as the years passed it had
seemed less important, although he often wondered how the children had grown.
He'd never even known the name that Marje had taken, and whether the children
had taken it too, although nothing was ever mentioned about formal adoption. He
imagined it was because, then, he'd have to know the identity of the man who'd
stolen his family. But as his sentence shortened he became determined to find
them upon his release. He didn't really know why. It had been a surprise when
the governor at Belmarsh had summoned him for an interview and told him that
his son had phoned with the information that his former wife was dead. There
was no other message, and his request to attend the funeral was denied.

    It was
almost ten as he lay on his bunk thinking. Time for his coffee. Where was that
fucking Terry the Poof? He'd been getting slack lately. Spent too much time on
the landing whispering to his 'ginger' mates and comparing tattoos. If he was
giving it out to anyone else there'd be trouble. Or if he was back on the
smack.

    That
was the trouble with sex inside. Too many of these young kids who gave it up in
exchange for being looked after by just one con were hooked on class A. And
there weren't enough needles to go round. Or condoms, for that matter. Billy
had long ago given up penetrative sex with his ladyboys. He'd seen too many
hard cons gone skeletal with AIDS to risk that. And besides, he was no
shirtlifter. But a man had needs, and twenty years without a woman was a hard
thing to bear. He laughed to himself at his little joke. It had taken him a
long time before he'd started using boys. Years. The first one had been a
cellmate at Strangeways. Not that the boy should've been there anyway. It was a
hard man's jail. That joke again. Jimmy had been in the fifth year of his
sentence when he'd been moved there from Swansea. The kid had been pissing
himself at the thought of sharing a cell with a lifer. Jimmy ignored him at
first, even when the kid offered to slop out for him, make sure his clothes
were cleaned and ironed at the prison laundry where he worked and even change
his library books for him. But it was the night the boy everyone called Lucy
let his long hair down and put on full make up and a pair of white cotton
ladies knickers that changed Jimmy's life.

    At
first he laughed, then he got angry when he felt his penis harden at the sight
of Lucy on the cell floor doing calisthenics until his white body shone with
sweat. He grabbed the kid by the throat fully intending to beat the living
daylights out of him, but instead allowed him to rub at the hardness in Jimmy's
trousers, then release his cock and suck him off, all the time looking up at
him with his soulful brown eyes until he came. Jimmy was furious with himself
for allowing Lucy to smear his penis with lipstick and did give the boy a good
hiding. The same sort of hiding he gave him every time their tryst was
repeated, which was often.

    But
Lucy was long gone, as was Alphonse, a black boy from the Leeward Islands doing
time for mugging old ladies, Poppy, a scouser, and so many others. Jimmy had
all but forgotten their names. Terry the Poof was the latest, a car thief from
Reading who was going to be in big trouble if he didn't show up soon with Jimmy's
coffee in a china cup, not a thick mug. If he's out scoring, thought Jimmy,
I'll do for the little bastard.

    Not
that he hadn't tried drugs himself. On the out he'd just had a bit of smoke and
the occasional spot of speed. Who hadn't given that a go in the 60s and 70s?
But inside, over the years, it had been just about everything. Acid, smack,
coke and, recently, ecstasy. There were other more powerful drugs going the
rounds too - names like Ketamine, angel dust and horse trancs. Everything under
the sun and some that rarely saw the light of day. But Jimmy had packed it all
in a few years back. Too many casualties.

    And
soon he'd be free. Not a young man admittedly. The next biggun was 6-0. But he
was still fit. Still got some lead in his pencil, and when he got out, there
were some scores to settle.

    He
smiled at the thought, then his smile dropped.

    Where
the hell was that bloody coffee?

    Under
the muddy sky of that January day, there were a lot of people thinking about
the past and the present. Maybe it was the time of year, or maybe it was a
premonition of things to come. Up the road from Brixton prison, inside an
office in Streatham Police Station, Detective Sergeant Sean Pierce was at it
too. His computer was down, and he was kicking his heels waiting for It to
reboot, passing the time doodling the stick figure of a hanged man on his pad
and letting his mind wander. Twenty years, he thought. And now the bastard's
going to come out. And what will we all do then? Everything's a lie, he
thought. Even my sodding name. But he and his mother and sister had happily
taken it when Tom Pierce had asked Marjorie Hunter to marry him. Not everyone
would've done that. Not married a cop killer's wife and taken on his two brats.
And brats they'd certainly been, him and Linda. But then, who could blame them?
Years of being teased by their schoolmates for being the children of a murderer
had made them what they were.

    So
when Tom Pierce had come along and courted Sean and Linda's mother, they'd
almost bitten his hand off. Tom was steady, you see. Working for the gas board
at their offices in Croydon. A decent house and a decent car. Regular money and
even a Christmas bonus. A job for life he'd told them. He'd believed that and
so had they. But that had been the old days. After Tom had been pensioned off
at fifty-five as too old for the new technology, he'd barely lasted another
couple of years before dropping off his perch.

    And
then Marjorie had died. As much from a broken heart as cancer, Sean believed.
He hadn't thought she'd really loved Tom when they'd married, but sometimes
love can grow on the stoniest of ground.

    The
brother and sister had survived. Sean had joined the police under the name of
Pierce. Why not? It was his name. And he was honest, was Sean. Sometimes too
honest for his own good. It wasn't his fault his father had been a thief and a
murderer. This was his way of making up for James Hunter's bad deeds. And then
Linda had married Andy Spiers, another good man with a regular job, a decent
house and a decent wage. He'd worked for a multinational company on the sales
and marketing side. Then, on his way to a big meeting up north, the driver of a
highsided truck owned by another multinational had fallen asleep at the wheel
of his vehicle, swerved over to the overtaking lane and swatted the car, in
which Andy Spiers had been a passenger, then travelled through the central
reservation and head on into a Rover 75 saloon speeding towards them.' Only the
driver of the truck survived the multi-vehicle pileup that followed. Sixteen
dead all told. It had been headlines for a day, page five for two more, then
more or less forgotten after that. Linda had a pension _ from Andy's firm, his
life insurance, and mortgage protection had paid off the house. The truck
driver's firm had paid big compensation out of court, not wanting their company
name smeared all over the papers again. Financially she was secure. But
emotionally? Sean didn't know.