'No call for you to swear at me, Ricky. I just gave it you, I didn't lose it.'
He had been so tired that evening. What he'd wanted was to be quiet at home. She'd cooked him a good spaghetti, with meat sauce, and had not burdened him with talk. He needed, that evening, to think through the implications of the instructions he'd given to the cousins. Both of them, they both come first.
Getting stuff into the gaols and into the City, two priorities to run together. Maybe Benji should run the gaols and maybe Charlie should aim himself at the City and the tossers there. Maybe he should bring in Enver Rahman and get his people to handle the distribution to a prison employee – whoever Benji could bend to carry the stuff inside – and maybe his people could sit in a sandwich bar in the City and trade stuff there. All to be worked out, all to be turned over in his mind… not the loss of a necklace.
'I'll find it.'
She turned to him. Didn't often see it, but there was a stubbornness in her eye. 'You should – what's a better time to start than now?'
'I'm thinking.'
'Thinking about where you lost it? Changed the sheets this morning, it's not there. Did you take it off and pocket it? No, you'd remember. What about the car, Davey's car? Ring him – tell him to look in the car for it.'
'No.' His mind raced.
'Why not?'
'It's too late.' He tried to recall when he had last noticed the necklace.
'Too late? It's not ten o'clock. What else has that idle ape got to do?'
'He's my cousin, and I'm not ringing him.' He thought he knew.
'I'll ring him.'
'You bloody won't.' It had bounced on his chest as he heaved himself up, into her, on the big bed in the Chelsea Harbour apartment, and her nipples had snagged the chain.
'I care about that present, even if you don't. Watch me.'
Joanne was up, going for the hall and the telephone.
He surged after her. Ricky caught her in the doorway.
For a fraction of time he felt himself threatened: she had the steel nail file still in her fist. With a short-arm punched blow, he hit the side of her face.
Had never done it before. He saw the shock in her eyes arid mouth, then the flush colouring her cheek.
He could not speak.
If she had cried out, if she had fought him and tried to slash his own face with the pointed file, he would have taken her in his arms and kissed her, told her he loved her, made excuses – pressure, problems, things he was sweating on. She did not. He saw contempt.
Quietly, as if it mattered to her that she did not wake Wayne, she went up the stairs.
The marriage had been thought by their families to forge an alliance. She lay on her back, dressed, in the spare room and stared up at the ceiling, her cheek tingling from the blow.
She had known him from school. She was taller than him then, and taller than him now. They were thrown together at school because the Smyth and the Capel breadwinners were away. Seemed natural for them to be close because their fathers were. In Brixton, the fathers shared a cell. In Wandsworth, the fathers were on the same landing. In Pentonville, the fathers had been in adjacent cells. Her father was a snatch man, his a driver. While the fathers tramped the exercise yard, together, the children were in a school playground.
Lying in the darkness, Joanne felt her cheek and her teeth. Nothing broken but there would be a bruise, big and rich, in the morning.
The first boy she had kissed had been Ricky Capel, tongues in mouths and him with smoother face skin than hers. The first boy she had had sex with had been Ricky Capel, her showing him what to do in her bed when their mothers were gone visiting. They had left school together, not a qualification between them, the only ones in their year who were not encouraged by the teachers to make something of themselves. She hadn't gone out with him when he'd been on the streets for thieving, but he'd talked about it with her and she'd told him where he was wrong and where he was right, and he'd listened. Natural that they'd be married. They were inseparable. Soulmates. His mother and her mother would have liked a church and a white dress. They'd done a register office, and then a reception down at the British Legion. 'I don't want nothing flash,' Ricky had said. 'I don't want nothing that draws attention. Just the Smyths and the Capels and the cousins.' The alliance her father had hankered after had not happened. Ricky had said her family were crap, couldn't keep their mouths shut, were losers. She had moved into Bevin Close, next door to his mum and dad and his grandfather. She was distanced now from her own clan, did not confide in them – would not tell them that he had hit her face.
No tears, only the anger. She heard him pace below.
She would not go down the stairs and tell him that the loss of a bloody necklace mattered not a damn to her, and she knew he would not come after her.
She had been told by Sharon about the cat, had been told by Mikey about the arrest and the kicking of the detectives. Nothing surprised her now. She was a woman of intuition and intelligence. Might spend her days under the eye of her mother-in-law, keeping a house clean, cooking meals and not complaining if they were wasted because Ricky was not back when he'd said he would be, looking after her child, but she knew the weakness of her husband. Her own father had explained it years back: 'He'll go away, hazard of the job. He'll be put inside. Nobody stays out, not for ever. You got to put up with it, girl, like your mum did, like his. Actually, it'll be the making of him. A man who's not done bird isn't rounded off. Terrible pressure there is on any man the longer he stays out.
Once you've done it, realized you can handle it – well, then it's a cake walk.' She had watched the swell of his irritation, like that pressure built, because he had not been inside… They didn't talk about life any more.
He didn't bounce ideas at her, tell her what he was thinking, planning. They had nothing.
His grandfather liked to come next door, old Percy did. Old Percy was the only one in the Capel family that Joanne now had time for. Made her laugh. Used to tell his stories and she'd end up fit to bust with her sides in pain from the laughter: how he'd screwed up, how he'd cocked up. But two years back, old Percy had told a different story. No weeping, no sentiment, but told with a cold rancour that didn't sit easily on a grandfather's shoulders. Winnie had died in '93, and she'd gone to the funeral – not married yet to Ricky but regarded as family A bloody awful day, cold and wet, and a hell of a turn-out for her.
Two years back, on the anniversary, old Percy had called by. He'd have been driven that morning by Mikey to the cemetery and would have laid some flowers and had a quiet moment… Mikey had brought him back and old Percy must have made some excuse and come to see her. First he had talked about the girls who had fled abroad. Perhaps she'd encouraged him to talk, reckoned it was a therapy for him. No smiles that day, no laughter, only the story that had chilled her. He had done big bird, had done a war, and could tell a story. She had not known that a story could be so heavy with bitterness brought from a grave. 'You're the best thing that ever happened to him, love, not that he has the brain to know it. Don't know how you live with him. My Winnie couldn't stand the sight of him, reckoned the girls were right to get out – but she missed them. You heard about the cat? Yes? We were all frightened of him, what he might do… My Winnie was in hospital and sinking.
Ricky and I went to see her. Ricky was all smarms, all comforting. You could see it in her face, she loathed him. He went out to the car park for a fag – or maybe to do a deal on his mobile. She hadn't much strength left. She said to me, "We should have drowned him at birth. That's what we should have done, Percy, drowned the little bugger. Drowned…" Last thing she ever said. She turned away, she coughed, she was gone… All that hate in her when she moved on – not right, is it? To hate when you're dying. You watch him, love.' Told the story once, and she'd shut it away, had tried to obliterate i t… But Ricky had hit her.