Charlie Stone was in shock. Harlan broke the bad news to him in the sitting room of the Essex house, with Nula there beside him. Harlan was visibly upset.
‘I was there. I saw it,’ said Harlan in a choked voice. His eyes were wet with emotion. ‘I’d just got out of the shower and he was talking, not making much sense. He was saying sometimes he didn’t know how to go on. Said he’d never really got over his brother dying like he did, all those years ago. That he felt overwhelmed. That he didn’t like the business any more but he didn’t know how he could tell you.’
Charlie, who had been standing, now sank down beside Nula on the couch. He was shaking his head, over and over.
‘Why didn’t he tell me, the silly bastard?’
‘You know Beezer. He would have felt he was letting you down. He was devoted to you. And I suppose no man wants to show weakness,’ said Harlan. ‘Not in our game, anyway.’
‘Go on with what you were saying,’ said Charlie with a deep, shuddering sigh.
‘Yeah. Well.’ Harlan sat down and looked at Charlie. ‘He just kept saying there was nothing to go on for. He’d never married, never had kids, he had nothing except the business, the manor, and he thought it all stank and he couldn’t stand living with it for another day.’
‘And what did you say?’ asked Charlie, gulping back a tear. His old mate! He’d had no clue Beezer felt this way. Sure, Beezer had black moods sometimes. Didn’t they all? And Col’s death! Charlie could still remember it, in all its awful detail. So had Beezer, obviously. But Charlie had never guessed that Col’s death had stayed with Beezer like that, tormented him, driven him finally to do something like this.
Harlan shrugged. His face looked pained; his voice was sombre. ‘I told him not to be stupid. To take a break somewhere, have a change. You wouldn’t mind. I’d explain to you for him, I told him that, there was no need for him even to face you with it.’
‘And . . .’ prompted Charlie.
‘He wouldn’t listen. He stood up and went over to the balcony doors and before I could even realize what he was about to do, he did it. He just . . . jumped.’
‘Christ!’ Charlie put a hand to his eyes. His shoulders shook.
Nula, her eyes fastened on Harlan the way you’d keep your eyes fastened on a cobra, said: ‘Nobody else saw it happen?’
Harlan shook his head. He looked like he too was ready to shed genuine tears over this. But Nula knew her ‘son’. She knew he was cold right to his heart but he could make all the right noises, appear to care when he didn’t give a single shit. So far as she knew, Harlan had always disliked Beezer intensely, always mocking him for being ‘behind the times’.
‘So only you saw it,’ she said.
Harlan nodded again. ‘Yes,’ he said.
Nula’s eyes were still fastened on him. She’d never once known Beezer to be cursed with what she herself suffered from: clinical depression. He wasn’t the type. But of course Harlan was being clever, claiming that Beezer had concealed his condition, as many men did. She thought this was pure bullshit. She thought, in fact, that if Harlan was the only witness to this event then he was lying through his teeth about what really happened.
What Nula thought was more likely was that Harlan had pushed Beezer to his death. And why would he do that? She knew why. It was because Beezer was Charlie’s man, not his. She’d seen the young thugs Harlan was starting to surround himself with – Ludo, Nipper and all the others. They were a different breed to Charlie’s old gang. They laughed over the pain of others, drove flashy motors, enjoyed a level of wealth and ease that very few of their age could even dream of. What she thought was that Harlan was busily getting rid of the old and supplanting it with the new. She knew how dangerous he was. She wondered if Charlie knew it too, or if he thought her warnings were just the demented ramblings of a madwoman.
‘I’m so bloody sorry,’ Harlan was saying.
Charlie was still sitting there with his head in his hands. Nula was still watching Harlan.
He was having a clear-out of the old guard. But she knew that if she warned Charlie about it, Charlie would laugh in her face, or get furious and tell her she was bloody crazy again.
‘It’s a sad business,’ said Harlan.
‘Yeah.’ Charlie straightened and scrubbed a hand over his wet, reddened face. ‘It is.’
‘But look,’ said Harlan, putting his hands together and looking intently at Charlie’s face. ‘We’ll give him a real East End send-off, yeah? Do it good and proper. He didn’t have family left, did he? So we’ll be his family. We’ll do this for him.’
A pale ghost of a smile passed over Charlie’s face.
‘Yeah. That’s what we’ll do,’ said Charlie.
Nula said nothing.
She just watched Harlan.