Wishing and Hoping (19 page)

‘It makes sense.'

‘But I won't.'

Carla's eyebrows shot up. They were thickly pencilled in black and presented an odd contrast to her peroxide blonde hair. She wasn't that surprised by Marcie's decision. Her mother would have reacted in a similar fashion. Neither of them were women
who could be pushed around. Still, she had to pretend she was otherwise.

She looked at Marcie in shocked disbelief. ‘You can't be telling me that you're going to keep it! How the hell would you manage? You've got this place to run. Besides that, you're a woman. Women don't do things like that.' She paused as though a sudden thought had struck her. ‘Well. Not many women anyway.'

‘I can do it. I can fight them. You see if I can't,' Marcie replied hotly.

Carla immediately regretted her comments and flinched at the prospect of having two of the same kind of women to deal with.

Sam Kendal had ordered her to find out the lay of the land and put a deal down on the table. Marcie must not be allowed to run a nightclub. It was better being run by other, more capable, hands. She hadn't expected Marcie to be so stubborn. On the other hand, she should have expected it given the similar traits of mother and daughter. Carla bit her bottom lip as she thought things through. What to say next?

Marcie was glaring at her, arms folded. ‘You just wait and see! All of you! I can be as tough as any of you. I can cope with them all. You just see if I don't. And don't look at me like that. Don't think that just because I'm blonde and look OK that I'll let a bloke
have his way. I won't. You just watch me, and remember this, Carla Casey, I am not a child!'

‘Nobody said you were,' Carla said soothingly in an effort to regain control of the situation.

‘Then why are you looking at me like that?'

Carla blinked.

Marcie dropped her arms. ‘You're thinking I look like her, aren't you? You're comparing me to my mother!' Marcie heard a pounding in her ears and realised her heart was racing.

Carla nodded. This was a very delicate situation and she had to handle it right. On the one hand, Sam Kendal wanted to help her daughter. On the other hand, she wanted it handled discreetly – at least until Leo had passed on. She'd built herself a new life that was worlds away from the woman she'd once been and she didn't want to hurt Leo if she could possibly help it.

Marcie was as quick as her mother to pick up on peoples' body language. She read Carla now. ‘She heard about Michael?'

Carla nodded again, though jerkily, as though reluctant to divulge the fact. She wasn't usually so hesitant about stating her reason for being there, but dealing with Marcie on behalf of her mother was always going to be awkward. ‘Is the judge still alive?' Marcie asked.

The question took Carla by surprise. ‘Yes,' she said
swiftly. The story she'd told Marcie was that following her mother's loss of memory, Mary Brooks had remarried an aged judge who was presently dying slowly of cancer. The judge knew nothing of his wife's past and finding out would kill him. That's why they could not meet – at least that was the excuse. The truth was a whole world away, but Carla could not divulge the details – not without the say so of Marcie's mother. She decided to lay it on the line from the other direction, warning her of what she was likely to be taking on.

‘Look, love. Paddy Rafferty is a shit of the highest order. You don't want to mess with him. Honest you don't.'

‘I won't let him have the Blue Genie,' Marcie responded defiantly.

‘Of course you won't – not if you can help it. But he won't
ask
you, love. He'll threaten you and your kids if you don't play ball. How can you cope with that?'

‘I will cope! Everyone treats me like a kid,' Marcie exclaimed. ‘Even Michael. I can run that place. I know I can. And I will. It was Michael's dream and I'll keep it alive – even though he thinks that I can't,' she added.

‘It's worth a try. If you really want to,' said Carla. ‘But not alone. You can't do it alone.'

‘Yes, I can!'

Carla laughed. ‘A young woman all alone; the sharks will be around love and they'll eat you for breakfast. After meeting Paddy Rafferty you must know that.'

‘I can handle him.'

‘Can you? Do you have the muscle he's got – and I mean meat on the hoof, love? Can you get an army of over-muscled numbskulls around you, intent on doing your bidding – for a price of course; there's always a price.'

Marcie thought of her father. He'd drifted in and out of the criminal underworld all his life. He was bound to know the right people. But then there was the other side of the coin. Valuable property being considered for redevelopment usually drew the attention of local politicians and professional people like architects, bankers and lawyers. That's where Jacob Solomon would come in. He could help her cope with that side of things; she knew he could.

Her mind was working overtime, planning things out for herself, but she wouldn't let Carla know that. Or her mother for that matter. Why should she? Even if she concentrated really hard, she just couldn't bring her mother's face to mind. Neither could she remember her touch or anything they'd ever done together. Determined to sort this out to her own advantage, her expression hardened. Throw the ball back into Carla's court.

‘So! What's the solution?'

Carla tugged at the dangling earring in her right ear and made a clicking sound out of the corner of her mouth. ‘It takes fire to fight fire. My suggestion is that you team up with someone as tough as Paddy Rafferty. Someone who Rafferty respects. That's my suggestion.'

Marcie eyed her sidelong as though somehow that would clarify what Carla Casey was all about. ‘And you know just the right criminal to fit the bill?'

Carla did a so-so motion with her head. ‘Like I said, you have to fight fire with fire.'

It amazed Carla to see how calmly Marcie was taking all this. Some unfortunate wives would be hysterical, crying that they couldn't cope and horrified at the prospect of throwing in their lot with a gangland boss, a well-respected gangland boss who could deal with the likes of Paddy Rafferty. Marcie Brooks – or rather Jones as she was now – had a lot of guts. It should come as no surprise of course, bearing in mind who her mother was. And far from being married to a judge, Mary Brooks had married the most powerful gangland boss in London.

‘I think you're right,' Marcie said thoughtfully, eyes downcast, then suddenly flashing wide. ‘So who do you have in mind?'

Marcie's look was so strong and so confrontational that at first Carla was taken aback. Then she said,
‘Leo Kendal. Rafferty wouldn't cross him. He's a right powerful bloke and guaranteed to scare the pants off scum like Paddy Rafferty.'

‘Do I get to meet him?'

‘No need. Leave it to me. I'll make all the arrangements and fill Jacob Solomon in on the details when the time comes. And don't worry, it'll be a loose partnership that can be settled once Michael is out of prison.'

‘You think he will be out of prison?'

Carla almost sobbed at the sudden brightness of Marcie's face. All the girl wanted – at least at this moment in time – was her husband lying in bed beside her.

‘Who knows? Don't worry,' she added on seeing the look of sudden alarm on Marcie's face, ‘it'll be a fair partnership and will give you a breathing space while the court case is going on. You'll be safe. I suppose you'd prefer to tell Michael yourself that you're going to run things. I presume he doesn't know you're going to disobey his orders. Will he be OK about that?'

Marcie tossed her head defiantly. ‘Of course he will be. He trusts me and knows I can handle myself.'

Carla nodded, though didn't look that convinced at how Michael would react. ‘It might be best if you didn't – not yet anyway – until we've sorted things out.'

Marcie nodded. ‘OK. We'll leave it at that. I won't tell him, not until there's some hope of him being freed.'

Deep down she'd been hoping for Carla to say that the old judge had died and her mother wanted to see her. If ever there was a mover and fixer in London, Carla was it. She moved in diverse circles and seemed to know everybody who was anybody. There was another thing preying on Marcie's mind that had made her wary of allowing Carla into her confidence.

‘By the way, how did you know I'd met Paddy Rafferty?'

The statuesque blonde paused in the doorway. It was obvious from her expression that she'd been caught off guard. Her face froze then thawed quickly.

‘You know how word gets round.'

Marcie wasn't fooled. She watched from the window as Carla left. At first the woman in the fur coat stood on the kerb and raised her hand as though hailing a cab. But it wasn't a cab that pulled up. It was the same black limousine she'd seen outside the prison. Mary Brooks was never far away. How long, Marcie wondered, before they met? How long before she could quell the bitter anger lurking in her heart?

IT WOULD BE
so easy to place a cushion over her husband's face and let him go, but Sam Kendal couldn't do that.

She watched him sleep, his breathing rasping like sandpaper over wood.

His lungs were shot away; their chronic condition a direct result of strong cigarettes and hard liquor.

Leo Kendal had lived life to the full and, until meeting her, had never married.

She'd been a lost soul when she'd met him, without a home, without a penny to her name – not that she'd known her real name. All she recalled was drifting into a life as a nightclub hostess where she'd attracted his attention. The nightclub was his and he'd started to take an interest in her.

Eventually he'd asked for her real name. By then her strong personality and good looks had got under his skin. She'd hesitated and dropped her eyes. That was when she'd admitted that she didn't know because she'd lost her memory.

‘I don't know. I picked the name Samantha from a TV programme.'

‘No name?'

He'd raised his eyebrows. It had been difficult to read the look on his face. She hadn't realised what she was seeing until much later when he'd offered to give her his name – in marriage. She realised then that she'd actually aroused the protective instinct in this grim, hard man. He liked her because she had a strong character as well as good looks. She'd told him the truth about herself – as far as she knew it. He told her the truth about himself, a cruel truth about a mother who had abandoned him, leaving him with a grandfather who'd taken a belt to his bare backside, had locked him in the cellar, had sent him out stealing, the money earned spent on beer and betting.

‘My grandfather worked on the docks. He used to bring stuff home from there – mostly bags of sugar and salt which he divided up and sold off.'

‘How long did that last?' she'd asked him.

‘Until I grew bigger than him.'

He'd told her how he'd finally grown bigger both physically and by reputation. The leather belt had come out one last time. Leo had beaten his grandfather into an inch of his life.

‘And then I picked up a sack of salt that he hadn't began dividing up and poured it over him. I rubbed it into the cuts. I took pleasure in doing that, the bastard. And then I left.'

From the very start he'd trusted her with his secrets
and with his business. As it turned out, he'd made a very wise move and had judged her well. She had a sharp business mind and was totally loyal to the man who'd given her his name even though he knew nothing about her.

He'd fallen ill just as her memory started to return. His lungs filled ever more with fluid and the cancer that was threatening his life. Still loyal to him, she had held back on telling him about her returning memory. By the same token, she had been unwilling to disclose the fact that she was still alive to her ex-husband, Tony. It had occurred to her to tell Tony, but facing her past was difficult. He wasn't the sort to believe in lost memories. From what she remembered of their past life, he would rant and rave and call her a liar. She couldn't face that. She didn't need to face that.

Only her daughter, Marcie, knew that she was alive, even if she didn't yet know the whole truth – and they hadn't yet met. That was another thing she couldn't bare to do just yet. The truth of the matter was that tough as she might appear to the outside world, when it came to facing her daughter, she was shit scared.

She had said to Carla, ‘Tell her I'm married to an old judge who's been good to me and that if I tell him about my former life, he'll be a goner. I can't do that to him. Tell her that. And also tell her not to divulge my secret to a soul.'

Carla had done her bidding and Marcie had stuck to her word.

Sam looked at her husband. Sensing her presence, his eyes flickered open.

She smiled at him and covered his hand with hers. ‘How are you, love?'

He gave her a weak smile. ‘Finished.' His voice was fragile.

‘Not yet,' she said softly.

‘Soon,' he responded.

She didn't argue. They'd always been honest with each other and would be now. ‘You know I'll take care of everything.'

His nod of assent was barely perceptible.

‘I've got a problem with Paddy Rafferty. Any objection if I deal him a heavy hand?'

The shaking of his head was as weak as his nod had been. She'd wanted that agreement, before he went, before she could cross old bridges and rebuild her life.

THE DOCTOR REMOVED
his spectacles. Rosa Brooks could tell by the way he paused before delivering his verdict that he was loath to do so. Although her eyes could not detect him rubbing at the bridge of his nose with one finger and thumb, she knew that was what he was doing. It would be bad and only confirm what she already knew.