Tom McGregor’s earliest memory was the sound of his father’s fists on bone, his mother screaming as she was dragged down the hall by her hair, and his elder sisters shielding him from the fallout. He was the same age as Marcus and Vinnie for part of the year, born in the East End in December 1966 to Dorothy and Stuart McGregor. He was their fourth child and first son, and over the next seven years they had another boy and then twin boys.
Stuart was a brutal, Glaswegian-born enforcer for hire, which meant he worked as a bouncer and as muscle for gangs who needed money collected or if they wanted to persuade clients that protection was worth paying for. He helped pimps establish new territory by persuading existing hookers to leave, and occasionally he boxed bare-knuckle fights for a purse. What he didn’t do was kill people, not for any price. If he went to jail, it was for more minor offences and never for very long. If he hadn’t had a fondness for drink and a gambling addiction, his family could have lived quite well off the money he earned.
Dorothy took in washing and ironing for people who couldn’t, or wouldn’t, do their own. Tom spent his early years playing among other people’s clothing, which was hanging on lines inside and outside the housing estate flat where they lived. He learned young to share – food, clothes, toys, his bed – and if someone had something he wanted for his family, he learned to take that as well. He was a stocky little boy, strong and fearless, and he could punch and kick almost before he could walk.
When he was four, Tom volunteered to be the one his father hit if he was angry. His older sisters cried when they got thrashed with Dad’s belt, and the younger ones were still babies. He knew what made his dad mad – if he was caught looking at a book, or if he made a sandwich without permission, or if the babies made too much noise. It might start differently, but it always ended the same way.
‘Come here, ya little shite!’
His dad dragged him across the room to the small wooden stool. Tom didn’t resist – it was better to get it over with quickly. Usually by now he could hear the belt being pulled off his father’s trousers, but today that sound was missing.
‘I’ve got a surprise for ya.’
One arm forced him down over the stool and he could see the pattern on the carpet. Once again he started counting the brown roses that intertwined with the green branches.
Thwack!
It was a different sound and it hurt a lot more. He swallowed the shock and the reaction that rose up in his throat. Tears sprang into his eyes, and he couldn’t see the flowers.
Thwack!
The second one wasn’t so bad, not such a surprise. If he tried very hard, his body wouldn’t jump much. Five roses and two branches.
Thwack!
After three blows his dad released his grip and Tom stood up. It was a piece of wood, about half a broom-handle length, round and heavy.
‘That should teach ya. Stay out of me way.’
His father stumbled off towards the door. ‘I’m going to the pub,’ he mumbled as he passed Dorothy, who was watching from just inside the doorway. As soon as the front door had slammed shut, she went to Tom and gave him a hug.
‘I don’t know why you’re always upsetting him. Would you like a cup of cocoa?’
Just before Tom’s fifth birthday his father had a windfall. It was a job that should have gone to someone else, but the usual muscle had been shot in the leg the night before, so Monty Joe rang Stuart one autumn morning and asked whether he could collect a debt.
‘Nothing to it. He owes £1000 and the debt’s three months overdue, so now its £5000. Rough him up, scare him, take something valuable as collateral, and give him twenty-four hours. Usual story.’
When Stuart got there, the door was open and the man was dead, shot in the back of the head, execution-style. The flat had been turned over, but he found a tin, wrapped in plastic and hidden in the toilet cistern. It contained £150 and a key. Stuart took the money, and was about to leave the key behind when he saw it had a card attached with a series of numbers written on it, so he took it, too. When he was far enough away, he called Monty and told him what had happened.
Monty was furious and took the £150. Stuart didn’t tell him about the key, and was about to bin it when instinct told him to check the numbers. They looked like a bank account number, so he started at his local Lloyds branch.
Three hours later he burst through his own front door.
‘Dot, ya in there?’
She looked up from the shirt on her ironing board in the kitchen. He didn’t sound angry, but you could never tell for sure.
‘In here, love.’
He was framed in the doorway, his muscles obvious under his shirt, a stupid grin on his face and a piece of paper in his hand.
‘Want some good news for a change?’ he asked.
She smiled at him, carefully. ‘Course.’
‘I found a key with numbers on a wee card. The bank told me it was a key to some box at a Morgenstern bank. All I needed were the numbers I had – one’s an account and the other’s some sort of ID thing.’
‘Sounds very posh. Have you had a look in the box?’
He nodded and walked towards her, still grinning.
‘What do ya think is in it?’ he asked.
She frowned. ‘I haven’t got a clue, Stuart. Stop playing games.’
He hugged her. ‘Money. Lots of bloody money.’
Stuart waited a sensible amount of time to see if anyone would talk about the missing money or if it might belong to someone he didn’t want to cross. But no one said a word on the street, in the pub, on the phone. He staked out the flat, but no one went near it, and Monty seemed none the wiser. So, eventually, Stuart withdrew the money and bought a nice house and started a collection of classic cars. Dorothy gave up doing other people’s washing. The children still went to Williams Street School, and Stuart insisted they went on the bus. Life was challenging and they had to learn that lesson at a tender age. He considered it his duty to teach them, and their new wealth didn’t alter that obligation.
Tom liked school. It gave him a chance to pass on the anger inside. When he was feeling frightened about going home, he bullied the weaker kids at school, and that made him feel braver. His three friends were Rory, Mikey and Marcus, and together they formed the WSS Gang. Whenever they passed Jimmy Richardson in the corridor, they glared at him, and he whimpered and tried not to cry. That was a fatal error around someone like Tom, and it took just seconds to decide that this kid was their first victim. Tom declared they would wait for Jimmy beside the shortcut he used across the back field and ambush him.
‘He deserves a beating,’ Tom announced and looked hard at the other boys.
‘Why?’ asked Marcus.
Marcus was unconvinced, and that annoyed Tom. He didn’t like being questioned on his patch.
‘He breathes – that’s bad enough. Think about it: either you’re with us or you’re not part of the gang anymore.’
Marcus had a certain status for Tom: he was Norman Lane’s son, and Tom’s dad had been very impressed when Tom had told him he was friends with Marcus. The last thing he wanted was to have to deliver on his threat to ban Marcus from the gang. As he saw his friend rounding the corner of the janitor’s shed, he knew everything would be all right. Marcus was on board.
Before he had time to react, a fist punched him square in the solar plexus. The pain radiated out in a sharp jolt, like an electric shock, and bent him over at the waist. Another fist appeared from nowhere, hurtling up towards his unprotected chin. The force sent him sprawling on the ground, and he hit his head, hard.
He heard Rory’s voice, full of panic, demanding to know why Marcus was doing that. He wanted the question answered, too, and he pulled himself to his feet, rubbing his aching jaw. Marcus stood, hands on hips, glaring at him, daring him to punch back. Then his best friend delivered the knock-out blow: the declaration of the change of leadership.
Marcus taught Tom everything he knew: how to punch more effectively and how to receive a punch, how to lie with a straight face, and how to kick someone when they were on the ground. Tom was a fast learner, and had a deceptive amount of strength in his small body. Rory and Mikey were their acolytes and did what they were told: gave up their superior sandwiches at lunchtime, shoplifted chocolate bars from the corner shop and retrieved balls when Tom and Marcus kicked them out of range.
Tom asked his mother if he could invite Marcus home to play. She said ‘yes, but not when your dad’s here’. He knew why and didn’t argue, because he had no desire for Marcus to see what his dad did. Marcus had undoubtedly seen the bruises but had never commented, and Tom felt sure that if he was thrashed, too, he would have said something. At a subconscious level, Tom had no desire to see his dad fawn over Norman Lane’s son, just like everyone else did.
The first few afternoons went well. Then one Saturday they were playing in the garage when they heard a murder being committed by two men on a third. Tom had never seen anything remotely like that, and his main concerns were that his dad never knew he had been there and that Marcus never knew that one of the men was Tom’s father. Something deep in his child consciousness told him that his father’s response would be more terrible than he could imagine. Marcus had seemed fascinated by the body and was happy to keep their secret, but he never accepted another invitation to visit.