Maura's Game (43 page)

Kenny nodded.

“They understand that. Be fair, they ain’t fucked no one up, have they?”

“Not yet, no. Though Tommy would tell you a different story, I suspect.”

“Where is Tommy?”

Vic tapped his nose, and winked.

“Keep that out. You’ll hear soon enough. I might even push Benny Ryan out of the headlines.”

Kenny had that sinking feeling again.

Radon “Coco’ Chatmore was surprised and not a little intimidated to see Benny on his doorstep. The fright was exacerbated by the fact that Benny was holding up Dezzy Haseem by his turban, a very badly beaten and obviously unconscious Dezzy Haseem. Benny threw the boy on top of Radon who dropped to the floor under the dead weight of his friend and business partner.

“Hello, cunt. Fucked up any more of your mates lately?”

Radon was trying to pull himself up off the floor when Benny caught him with a heavy kick to the stomach.

“Me and you need to have a little chat, Coco, and guess what?” He grinned.

“I ain’t got any Super Glue.”

Benny saw the man’s relief and taking something out of his coat, said happily: “But look what I found in Casha’s car.”

He was holding up an industrial stapler.

“The only question now is whether I should staple your eyes open or shut. What do you think?”

He was seriously asking for Radon’s opinion as if the answer was the most important thing in the world to him. Dezzy was groaning. It was only then that Radon noticed his eyelids had been stapled open and the eyeballs themselves had dried out and were looking horribly sore.

“What are you doing, Benny? We’re your friends, yeah?”

Benny grinned once more, his handsome face positively beaming with camaraderie mixed in with a lethal dose of psychotic malice.

“Not any more, Radon. Not any more, you two-faced wanker. You are filth to me, you are the shit on my shoes, and you are going to die in extreme pain with your last sight being me stapling your fucking eyes shut!”

He was laughing again.

Radon saw Dezzy stirring once more. He was moaning and Benny quickly bent down and put a staple into his forehead.

“Handy tool this, eh? Can’t wait to get started, can you?”

Benny forced Radon to drag Dezzy through to the lounge. When he saw Radon’s girlfriend of the moment, Shamilla, sitting there, he said happily, “Hello there, Sham, and how are you, love?”

She stared at Radon as he dragged the beaten and stapled Dezzy into the room and then she said, “I was just going, actually.”

Benny tutted.

“Oh, were you? Got an appointment then?”

She nodded, relief written all over her face.

He leant forward and bellowed into her face, “You’re going nowhere, slag. Now make me a sandwich and a pot of tea. Strong and sweet, just how I like it.”

Shamilla burst into tears and he dragged her through to the kitchen by her little T-shirt with “Hard Bird’ emblazoned across the breasts. He smiled at her once more.

“There now, don’t make me a crosspatch, Sham, you’ll only regret it. Make the tea and don’t even attempt to aggravate me because then I will kick you all over the fucking place, OK?”

She nodded.

“Good girl. You know it makes sense.”

She could hear him whistling as he tied Radon to a chair and made the tea as fast as she could. There was trouble brewing and she wanted no part of it. Absolutely no part of it at all. But she had a feeling she was stuck here for the duration. She opened the fridge and started to make the sandwiches Benny had asked for. If he wanted her to dance naked round the room she would do it, and anyway, she told herself, it wouldn’t be the first time she had been required to do something like that.

She walked into the lounge with the tea just in time to see Radon get his left eye stapled shut. His scream of pain and fear made her drop the cup of tea on the floor, scalding her legs in the process. Luckily this made Benny laugh. Taking the kettle of boiling water from the kitchen, he threw the contents into Radon’s face.

As she heard his screams and saw him trying to break his bonds Shamilla felt faint. Benny was mad, everyone knew that, but seeing him at work still came as a horrible shock.

Radon had told her stories about Benny and she had listened, laughed, and been impressed at her boyfriend’s association with a well-known head fuck Seeing him in action, though, it didn’t seem so funny or clever any more. Especially as she knew he would turn this violence on her without a second’s thought to gain whatever it was he wanted.

All she wanted was to be back in her mum’s house, sitting in the front room watching Emmerdale. She hurried out to make him more tea. She couldn’t look at her boiled boyfriend one second longer.

Benny stapled Radon’s other eye roughly and found it was surprisingly easy to ignore the man’s begging and pleading. He finished his work and pulled up a leather footstool. He sat on it and said seriously, “Now then, tell me all about Abul and you and Vic fucking dead man Joliff.”

Radon’s grotesque head and shoulders were shaking with shock. The tremors soon overtook his entire body and Benny sipped his tea and ate his sandwiches while he observed his old friend’s dilemma. At length he called Shamilla in and complimented her on the food.

“Lovely grub, Shamilla, but your mum and dad are in catering, ain’t they? Still got that nice little cafe in Islington, have they?”

She nodded, her eyes on poor Radon. This was what Benny loved, this complete power over another human being. He loved to create such fear, an emotion that was so acute it was almost tangible in the room. He could practically touch it in this girl’s eyes.

“Seen much of Abul lately?” he queried.

She shook her head.

“He rang, though, last night. Said he was delivering a parcel to Vic at Jack’s old barn. I don’t know what that meant, I only passed the message on.”

She was racking her brains for more information and Benny was smiling at her as he watched her desperately trying to tell him what he wanted to hear.

“Where does Radon keep his guns, love?”

“In the bedroom, in the back of the wardrobe. He has a false panel at the bottom…”

“Shut up, you stupid fucking bitch!”

Radon’s voice was high-pitched with pain. Benny slapped him hard, the boiled skin coming away on his hand. Shamilla felt sick at the sight of Benny wiping it off on Radon’s wet shirt.

“Let’s go up to the bedroom, Shamilla.”

She followed him eagerly. If he wanted a fuck she would give him the best ride of his life. Anything Benny Ryan wanted she was going to give him. This was about saving her own life now, and she was determined to do just that. She had things to do and people to see, and just because she’d been stupid enough to get involved with Coco Chatmore it did not have to mean her life was over.

At least she hoped that was true anyway.

Chapter Twenty-Three

“He will give you a time and a place. You know Vic, he has to keep everyone on their toes. Be the big fucking I Am.”

Kenny had gone straight round to brief Maura after leaving Vic. She was looking tired and drawn.

“Vic is the least of my problems at the moment, to be honest. Benny has left a trail of destruction all over the smoke as usual and we can’t find the bastard anywhere.”

Kenny was not really interested. Benny was Benny as far as he was concerned. A head case the local nut-nut.

“Vic wants a meet, Maws. He was holding out for you on your own but I told him that was a non-starter. He’s agreed I can be present and says he’ll tell you everything you want to know then.”

She nodded, resigned to the prospect.

“In exchange for his brother and the coke, I suppose?”

Ken looked her in the eye as he said, “His brother is part of it, yeah, but the coke’s probably more important. He understands why his brother was taken, though. As long as Justin is being treated OK he will swallow his knob over it. I get the impression his brother is not up on what Vic does so I’m assuming you lot have got fuck all from him?”

“You assume right. He’s uncomfortable but in no real danger.”

Kenny sighed.

“He ain’t dead then?”

Maura half-smiled.

“Not as far as I know, put it that way.”

He knew she was nearing the end of her tether and asked the question he had wanted to ask her for a while but had never had the guts to do so.

“What will you do if Tommy is dead?”

She shrugged.

“To be honest it’d probably solve a dilemma. He betrayed my family and they want him dead.”

He looked hard at her for any sign of what she was really feeling; as usual she was a closed book.

“And Benny?”

She shrugged again.

“I could iron him out, to be honest. I’m sick and tired of him. But I have to take some of the responsibility. I knew he wasn’t all the ticket years ago and should never have let him get to the stage he’s at. But I did and now we have to try and limit the damage.”

Kenny wanted to take her in his arms and hug her but he was not that brave. With Maura you waited until she made a move, and he ruefully accepted that he wasn’t the most gorgeous bloke on God’s earth. Even his own mother conceded he was not exactly the answer to a maiden’s prayer.

“How’s babes?”

He grinned now and it softened his scarred face.

“Fucking handsome. I just wish this was all over. Once it is, if we’re still standing then that’s me, Maws. Finished. Out of it. I’m too old for all this shit.”

She stared at him with her clear-eyed gaze and then she lit a cigarette. He watched as she drew the smoke deep into her lungs before blowing it out forcefully.

“That little girl’s been the making of you, Kenny. You, unlike me, have someone to care for, someone who needs you. Heady stuff. I wish it was me, Ken. Just normality, that would do me at the moment. Benny banged up, God forgive me for saying that, and me own house and a quiet life.”

He laughed.

“Not too fucking quiet. There’s still a bit of life left in us, surely?”

She smiled.

“Do you realise that thanks to Alicia you will stay young for years? You will always know what records are in the charts, know what fashions are in and what’s out. Watch TV programmes you would never have dreamt of watching on your own. She will keep you young in mind and heart. You can see her become the person she was meant to be, and you’ll be able to sit back and love her and be proud of her. Do you have any idea just how fucking lucky you really are?”

Her voice was desolate in its loneliness, her face open for once, and he could see yearning on it for what he had. For what most women and men took for granted.

“I have wasted my whole life,” Maura admitted painfully.

“I tried to help Carla and she kicked me in the teeth. Benny is mad, there is nothing but a trail of death and destruction wherever he goes. Is this all my efforts will amount to? Everything’s wrong, Kenny. It’s all gone bad. Even Marge is avoiding me like the plague because she’s shit scared of getting involved with Vic and his vendetta. But that’s kids again, isn’t it? She’s frightened for them, not for herself, and that is what is happening to you, and it can only be a good thing if it gets you out of this madness we mistake for a life.”

Kenny was so sorry for her. He knew she was right, that every word she had uttered was not only heartfelt but true. So true. He hugged her then, a gentle friend’s hug that she returned.

“This will be over soon, Maura, and then get out of it all, girl. Vic and his kind are like the poor, always with us. Well, let someone else deal with the lunacy they cause.”

Maura hung on to him as if she was drowning, as in truth she felt she was. She was caught up in something over her head and didn’t know how she was going to extricate herself and her family from any of it.

“I feel like my brain is going to explode with worry. Benny’s on the rampage and going to bring everyone down if we ain’t careful. He’s over the top, too far gone to reason with. The fact he ain’t even been in touch tells me all I need to know. He probably thinks he can make it all right. And that’s my fault! I kept on buying him out of trouble, and now I have bought us trouble that even Bill Gates would be hard pushed to pay his way out of Kenny could smell her perfume. She felt so soft against him and he hugged her close once more, enjoying the feel of her and enjoying, if he was honest, seeing her so vulnerable. He wanted to kiss her, taste her. See what she was like when she wasn’t being the boss lady. She looked up into his face and he was sure she felt the same about him. But that could just be wishful thinking. Lana had loved him in her own way. His ugly mug had never bothered her, she had seen through it to the man underneath. He hoped Maura Ryan could see that far too.

“What’s going on here then? You two secretly at it or what?”

Garry’s voice was hearty but puzzled and they jumped apart quickly.

“Don’t be so stupid, Garry, and stop creeping up on people.”

He could hear the anger in his sister’s voice and knew it was embarrassment that was making her so cross.

“Ooh, touchy. Where’s Mother?”

“On one of her marathon shopping expeditions as usual. She feels the urge to feed the five thousand regularly, you know that.”

Garry grinned.

“Handsome grub, though, in fairness to her.”

Maura sighed. Her brothers and their stomachs were of no interest to her at this moment in time. They would have gone to the Last Supper for the food and nothing else. It was all they thought about other than killing, maiming and dealing.

“Stay to dinner then, Gal, be my guest.”

“You are one miserable bitch, Maura, do you know that?”

“So I’ve been told. By the way, Vic is getting in touch in the next twenty-four hours.”

Garry digested this bit of information before smiling again.

“Are we killing him or what?”

Maura ran her hands through her hair and said testily, “Let’s see what he has to say first. I think you and I both know that there’s a story behind this and I for one am interested to hear it.”

“Same here.”

Garry had all but ignored Kenny. Now he looked at him for long seconds before saying, “Yeah. I expect you would be.”