Wishing and Hoping (34 page)

Tony Brooks staggered from a pub in Bermondsey feeling too cocky for his own good. He'd done a runner from Babs and everything seemed OK on the manor; nobody had apprehended him. Now he was off back to the crummy flat he shared with Desdemona, but something was troubling him. Grogan. Marcie his daughter was meeting him. Everything would come out and he couldn't cope with that sober. Not at all!

The road he was walking down was lined with redbrick terraced houses. Most of them were in darkness. Some had an upstairs bedroom light on. One or two showed one downstairs too.

Not a sound broke the silence except for the odd mangy cat fighting with its neighbour.

The first inkling he had of trouble was when he heard the sound of a car, which skidded to a halt beside him.

There was no time to protest. Strong hands threw him into the back seat.

Not exactly a stranger to being picked up and bundled into the back of a car, Tony braced himself for whatever might come.

The woman was a complete surprise. At first it didn't sink in. She was gorgeous and expensively dressed. He could smell her perfume, saw the sparkle of exquisite diamonds around her throat and in her ears. She was wearing black satin evening gloves and a severe black dress that did wonders for her figure. Diamonds glinted from a bracelet worn over her right glove, an expensive watch over the other. He knew little about furs but guessed the pale blonde stole she was wearing cost a pretty packet.

At first he wondered who it was – and then it hit him.

‘Mary!' Her name caught in his throat. He couldn't believe what he was seeing. Was this really the woman who had deserted him all those years ago?

‘I used to be Mary. My name is now Samantha Kendal.'

The words didn't really sink in. His anger was rising. Where the bloody hell had she been? He'd been through hell. He'd almost been arrested for murder.

His anger burst out. ‘You bitch! You deserted me.'

‘You deserved to be deserted. You're a waster, Tony
Brooks. You were a waster when I was married to you and you're still one now. I'm not going to go into our history at this moment in time. Marcie needs our help. Now! What do you intend doing about it?'

‘Never mind about Marcie, Mary, where the fuck . . .?'

She slapped his face. ‘Don't call me that. I'm Sam, remember? Sam Kendal!'

Suddenly it sunk in. In the past Tony would have lashed out and caught her a heavy slap across the chops. But the name she had uttered burned deep into his brain. Sam Kendal. He'd heard rumours about her but, of course, never met her. Now he knew why. He also knew that Leo Kendal's missus was someone you didn't mess with.

For her part Sam eyed the man who she'd fallen in love with as a teenager. The best thing he had ever done was fathering Marcie. The worst thing was entrusting his innocent young wife to a man like Alan Taylor. How come grown men got to hero-worshipping other men simply because they threw them a few crumbs from their tables?

Alan had given Tony a job when he was outside prison and was often the cause of Tony ending up in prison.

‘You're frightened of Rafferty.'

He shook his head then paused. ‘Well, I was.' He looked up at her. ‘But what's Marcie going to say? It
was my fault for getting drunk, but honestly Ma–' He stopped himself in time from saying her old name. ‘Sam,' he corrected. ‘I didn't realise what they were up to at the time. I didn't put two and two together.'

Marcie's mother crossed her slim arms. A trio of gold rings gleamed on the third finger of her left hand: wedding ring, engagement ring, eternity ring. None of them had been given to her by him. They were all from Leo Kendal.

‘You never told Marcie I was still alive. It's likely she'll never forgive you for that either.'

‘I didn't know for sure did I? Does Marcie know?'

Sam nodded. ‘Only because Carla told her. Not you.'

Tony clenched his hands together and looked down at the floor. It was coming home to him that he was far from the best of fathers. He'd made a lot of mistakes in his life.

‘You always were a selfish bastard.'

He looked up at her when she said that, surprised at the bitterness in her voice and how it affected him.

‘I did love you,' he said. ‘There was never anybody else when you were around.'

‘If I'm meant to feel grateful in any way, forget it.' She heaved her shoulders in a deep sigh. ‘No matter. You've come at the right time. It's time for me to be reunited with my child –
and
to sort out this mess.'

‘You're going to tell her?'

It amused Marcie's mother to see the alarm on his face. ‘Don't worry. You won't get slammed up for bigamy though Christ knows you deserve it. I understand we were divorced on the grounds of desertion – me doing the desertion – not that I knew sod all about it at the time.'

The car came to a halt and Sam gestured to Tony that he should get out. ‘You can go.'

He looked her up and down before he did. ‘You always did look good in black.'

A sardonic smile momentarily lifted the corners of her lips. ‘That's what Leo would say if he could see me now. But he's gone and unfortunately you're still here.'

PADDY RAFFERTY HAD
the distinct impression that the police were watching him. He'd tried to catch them at it – told his ‘boys' to keep a lookout, but they hadn't come up with anything.

‘Just yer age, mate,' he'd muttered to himself.

It was then that he'd decided to warn Grogan and Co. to keep their mouths shut. He'd been livid when he'd heard that Gerry Grogan had been overheard in the pub boasting about the night he got into the Blue Genie for free. Irish thicko!

The fact that he was of Irish descent himself didn't come into it. His family had had the good sense to leave the Emerald Isle years ago. Emerald? Shit tip as far as he was concerned.

Everything should have gone relatively smoothly on the building site. He'd made sure to bribe the site foreman to keep the four men he wanted to see on site far later than anyone else.

‘I'll find something for them to do,' the foreman had said.

‘Ten quid for your trouble,' Rafferty had said to
him. Everyone had a price and most of them were cheap – that was Paddy's opinion.

He'd decided that the four of them were up for a slapping; Grogan for a more severe one than the others, the big-mouthed Mick!

In his opinion everything had gone smoothly enough except that he hadn't expected Grogan to run like a hare on heat. Percy the Perv – so called on account of his sexual inclinations towards anything on four legs – had pursued him for a few streets then finally lost him.

Paddy asked Percy whereabouts he'd lost sight of him.

‘Anywhere near a Catholic church?'

Percy thought about it.

Paddy had his doubts that Percy even knew what
any
church looked like. He very much doubted he'd ever been inside one. Percy was from Manchester not Ireland.

However, as it turned out his opinion was proved wrong.

‘Yeah. It had big doors and windows.'

It wasn't difficult to work out which church it was. Paddy recalled there being a church dedicated to the Sacred Heart hereabouts.

‘Let's go.'

Piling back into the car like a cartload of
overweight packages, they set off for the church, then parked outside to watch and to wait.

‘He's got to be in there,' said Paddy.

‘Shall we go in?' asked Percy.

Paddy shook his head. ‘No. He can't stay in there all night. He's got to come out some time or another.'

Half an hour later a taxi pulled up. A young woman who looked like a novice nun came rushing out. The young man with her was dressed in black. At first glance he looked like a priest. On second glance – too late for them to stop him getting into the car – they recognised Gerry Grogan.

‘Get after them! But quietly,' Paddy added. ‘We don't want to attract attention.'

‘But we want to catch him,' said his driver in a quizzical voice.

Paddy wanted to bash Brian, his driver, around the head. Instead he pointed out his biggest fear. ‘Has it occurred to you that he might be heading for the cop shop?'

‘Point taken, boss.'

Marcie was on an all-time high. She could barely breathe for excitement. Allegra was bringing Grogan here. All she had to do now was plan how to make the best use of his testimony. She'd thought of ringing the police but her father wouldn't like that. Although
he had to bear some guilt in this, he was still her father. She still had affection for him.

He sounded drunk when he eventually phoned her to apologise. ‘I did wrong, Marcie, but it wasn't me who put him up to it. That's what you need to find out.'

She agreed to follow his advice.

One after another she allowed cups of coffee to turn cold. How could she drink or eat at a time like this?

A soft knocking at the door preceded Allegra's entrance. ‘This is Gerry,' she said.

A man with a face sticky with dried blood came in behind her. The black clothes he was wearing were too small for him and looked as though they had belonged to a priest.

Allegra saw her looking. ‘Father Sullivan won't notice they're gone. He was snoring in the confessional when I left.'

The scene she painted was laughable and Marcie would have laughed if the occasion hadn't been so serious.

Gerry Grogan eyed her cautiously, his body from head to toe as stiff and unyielding as a rock. She guessed he was scared. From what she knew of Paddy Rafferty she too would be scared in his position. But deep down his fear was of no concern to her. All that mattered was proving Michael innocent.

‘Would you like a drink?'

Her voice sounded far away. She didn't really want to make him a drink. She wanted him to get on with what he had to say.

He shook his head. ‘No. Look. I don't want to hang around . . .' He looked over his shoulder at Allegra and the door behind her.

‘I want to know about the gun,' Marcie blurted. ‘Where did it come from?'

He eyed her warily like a wild animal caught in a car's headlights and about to leap for cover. ‘You have to know that I won't testify.'

Marcie controlled her anger and the need to hit out, to strangle the truth out of him. ‘Just tell me. Please. Tell me.'

The wary stare of a man afraid of his own shadow was how she would always remember Gerry Grogan.

‘Rafferty gave us money to go drinking and to get into conversation with a bloke that worked at this nightclub. He wanted us to persuade the man to take us back to the nightclub; to needle him somehow – call him a chicken if he said he couldn't do it.'

Marcie knew what he was going to say, but she asked the question anyway. ‘Who was this man?'

He described her father. ‘Tony, he said his name was.'

‘And the gun?'

‘I slipped it into the desk drawer just like I was told to.'

‘And you were paid to do this.'

He nodded. ‘Yes. But I can't testify,' he repeated in a sudden rush. ‘I have a few problems back in Ireland . . .'

The door through which Gerry Grogan had entered opened. This time it was Pete Henderson, Sally's policeman boyfriend, who entered.

‘Did you hear everything?' Marcie asked him, aware that her voice sounded as flat as molten lead.

‘Oh yes.'

It was all over so quickly. Grogan was arrested.

‘We'll probably do a deal over his offences in Ireland,' he told her. ‘We won't force him to go back as long as he co-operates.'

She thanked him.

Once they'd gone, Allegra eyed her worriedly. ‘It's your father, isn't it?'

She nodded. ‘There are times when I could quite happily kill him.'

RAFFERTY AND HIS
colleagues hadn't expected to be abducted. Keen to deal with Gerry Grogan and the knowledge he possessed, they hadn't noticed the sleek black limousine cruising behind them nor the one behind that.

‘Rafferty. The boss wants a word.'

Paddy Rafferty couldn't help the smug smirk. Like anybody who was anybody in London's underworld, he knew that Leo Kendal had snuffed it and fully expected someone else to now be in charge of his outfit. He certainly didn't expect to hear Sam Kendal referred to as the boss even though she'd been her husband's mouthpiece for years. Being an out and out chauvinist, he couldn't handle the fact that she was more than capable of running her husband's crime empire or that she was as hard as any man. And now that good old Leo had died, the poor woman would be easy to deal with. At least, that was what he'd thought.

On getting into the back seat of the car, she smiled at him and he felt strangely privileged. Christ, he thought, but she's one hell of a looker even though she's the wrong side of forty.

For a fleeting moment he wondered what his chances were on the sexual front. The poor bird must have been without attention for years, Leo being so old.

He smiled back at her, certain that he could do her as much good as she could him. He decided to make the first move.

‘Perhaps we could . . .'

She moved quickly. He felt a sharp pain in his arm.

‘Talk,' she said.

The look on her beautiful face was frightening, either that or it was the effect of the stuff she'd stuck into his vein.

‘What the hell . . .?' Raising his arm, he attempted to point to his car and the blokes who worked for him. They were still in his car. His arm felt like a ton weight.

She read his actions. ‘They're being taken care of.'

She meant every word of it. Samantha Kendal knew exactly what her own men were doing. Rafferty's men were getting the same kind of treatment as Rafferty – except for the driver that is.