Martina Cole - Close

She still had not heard a word from Pat and she was getting more and more agitated by the minute. She checked her purse and realised that she had less than eight pounds to her name. If Pat was nicked, or worse, she had no access to his money at all. Her mother's voice came back to her and, as much as she hated to admit it, the old bitch was right. Pat should have set her straight in case he was nicked. She needed access to money, not just for his brief, but for the daily business of living with a young family and the expense that children brought with them. These were desperate times, and desperate times meant desperate measures.

A little voice, though, was telling her that she was entitled to his money anyway, she had eight fucking quid and a family to feed. Why didn't she have a stash? Why was she dependent on him for everything when she had a fucking growing family? More to the point, why hadn't Pat thought to make provision for them? Plan fucking B was what he always referred to when discussing work, it was for when Plan A fell out of bed. And here she was with nothing, not a Plan A, let alone a Plan B. Not a brass razoo to her bastard name. She was shaking with fear for him and fear for herself and her family. Anger kept her going. She was still cleaning up when her mother arrived, all brown teeth, lavender cologne and pretending a concern she was not capable of feeling.

She let Annie give the boys their breakfast because she had no heart to do anything except sit and feel her baby kicking as if it was reminding her that it was there. Another mouth to feed on eight poxy quid. Throughout the day young Pat stuck to her like shit to a blanket but Lance acted as if nothing was amiss.

Annie had the nous to keep her beak out and silence the questions that were hurling themselves around her head. The neighbours were vocal about the raid; speculation was rife as always and the dolt she called a daughter had not uttered one word about any of it. She could see that her daughter was not in the mood for a full and frank discussion of any description. Her daughter's plight affected her not one iota; she was there for no other reason than accruing some Brownie points. With them she could gain access to her Lance. Without that child her life was meaningless; her feelings for him were so strong she felt them as a physical force. She would endure anything to be near him, and do anything to keep others away from him.

Love was a strange emotion. It was something she had never felt before, or felt the need to express in any way. She saw herself in him, and that was enough to make her feel that finally her life was worth living.

Dwyer was trembling so much that he couldn't light his cigarette. Pat leaned over and struck a match, holding it out for him, watching him trying to inhale and make the cigarette work at last. His three attempts left them all embarrassed and the room was heavy with tension. Dwyer's breathing was loud, even to his own ears, and his actions were unnatural and overly dramatic. He looked what he was.

Patrick grinned at him in a friendly manner. 'You all right, mate? You on the gear as usual?'

Dwyer smiled then. His wrinkled face was suddenly familiar, his hangdog look back, he could have been a favourite uncle. Pat felt a smidgeon of sorrow for him. He was a product of circumstances, as they all were. The bloke Pat thought was filth was watching them nervously, but in fairness he was calm enough to get away with it. Patrick, however, was relaxed. Sitting back in the chair, he waited until Dwyer was puffing away on his Embassy before he spoke. 'Who are this lot? I think an introduction is on the cards, don't you?'

The suspect filth looked him in the face then and Pat smiled gently once more.

'We're friends of Freddie's…'

Pat pointed a finger at the suspect filth without looking at him directly, he was now leaning once more across the table staring into Freddie's eyes, but talking to the other man. 'Who gave you permission to address me, you cheeky cunt?'

Freddie was terrified again, this was not what was supposed to happen. Pat wasn't supposed to be like this, cocky and spoiling for a straightener. It was Pat who was supposed to be caught on the hop. Freddie was not geared up for this behaviour at all.

'You shut the fuck up until I speak to you directly, OK? You are a no-neck, a fucking ice-cream, a nothing.' The violence behind Pat's eyes was barely hidden, everyone was reminded of just how slippery he could be, especially when he thought he was being mugged-off.

Pat had a reputation and the people in the room had conveniently forgotten it because as a collective they had assumed they would be the stronger. Pat had just reminded them of how big a mistake an assumption could turn out to be.

The filth was unsure how to react to Brodie. He knew though that he had been tumbled. Pat snapped his head round to look at the man, his eyes were dead now, he was in work mode and anyone who really knew him would be seriously worried. Pat was capable of anything when he felt even remotely threatened, extreme violence was how he had attained his position in the first place. Tonight he was not going down without taking this lot with him, and they were now all aware of that. He planned ahead and he thought on his feet; he was ready for whatever these pieces of shit were intending to lay on him. So when he smiled once more it was with a chilling certainty that he would be the victor no matter what happened.

'Two fucking deaths and you are here with strangers, Fred, fucking strangers. Suspect strangers at that.' He looked at Dwyer again, his voice high with utter contempt, not only for them but for the situation they had all found themselves in.

'Have I got cunt tattooed on my fucking forehead or what?' Pat held his arms up in a gesture of supplication. It was overly dramatic, and it was also a warning that he was playing with them, enjoying the moment.

Dwyer puffed furiously on his cigarette, not even attempting to justify himself and, more to the point, not trying to even introduce his new-found friends. He knew it was over, he knew they were finished. His terror was now communicating itself to the other men in the room.

Patrick started to laugh. He could feel the power flowing into him, knew he had them on the hop. He was an unknown quantity, all they knew of him was his reputation, none of them had experienced him first-hand. Pat was more than a handful when the fancy took him, and the fancy was on him tonight, he could feel the menace inside him desperate to be unleashed. He was actually enjoying himself. He was willing to go away to avenge this fucking atrocity, and go away for a long time. This was an out-and-out fucking liberty of Olympian standards and, because of that, he was not going to swallow his knob. He wanted blood and retribution and he was determined to get it, no matter what the personal cost might be.

'I came here to try and make some kind of fucking sense out of the deliberate and wilful dereliction of your fucking duties. You had a tug and you fucking sold us down the river, you treacherous cunt. You are the cause of two good men being outed, and the most heinous crime of all is that none of you thought that I might have cottoned on, that you thought I was too thick to suss this lot out? Is this the best you could fucking do, the best you could come up with?'

He laughed once more, and pointed at Dwyer. 'Him? You relied on him? Fucking Freezing Freddie? And you are the so-called Sweeney Todd, the scourge of the criminal classes? Oh fuck off!'

There was no anger in his voice now, just righteous indignation, sarcasm and a smattering of honest disbelief. 'You're a fucking joke.'

The suspect filth was a big lad, he had broad shoulders, but the soft, pudgy body of a lazy man. Like most plain-clothes filth he had never really worked at anything since promotion; he relied on other people to make his cases for him. He was dependent on grasses like Dwyer and statements from the general public. In short, he chased rumours, gossip and idle chit-chat. His mentality was such that he actually thought that a man like Pat Brodie could be brought to book. Would roll over because they might have garnered some information that could put him away. He did not have the experience or intelligence to see that a man like Brodie would go down for a twenty-stretch without letting them hear one of his farts, let alone anything that would incriminate anyone else.