Monster - Chp 1 & 2 from the forthcoming novel

Chapter One

December 2009

Reunited in heaven
They rest in peace
Whilst down in the hell fire
The Monster never sleeps.

At 11am on 3rd December 2009 Jenny Mack’s corpse was discovered by the cleaner at her mansion house in St John’s Wood, North London. She was 63 years old.

Lying naked, face down in the marble bath, her wrists slashed with a razor, Deborah let out a piercing scream.

On the black onyx floor tiles laid three empty blister packets of Diazepam and an empty bottle of Cristal champagne. Congealed blood splatters decorated the walls and ceiling. Blood was dripping from the antique crystal chandelier.

Terrified, Deborah fled from the room, bolted into Jenny’s bedroom next door
and frantically dialled 999.

Exactly three months earlier, Jenny had buried her daughter .The wealthy widow of notorious gangster, Johnny Mack, Jenny was prepared for her husband’s death but never in a million years did she expect to be burying her only child.

Johnny Mack

Johnny inhabited the murky east end underworld. Murder, extortion, thieving, money lending and prostitution were a way of life in the poverty stricken atmosphere of east London in the 1960s.
Ever since he was a teenager, Johnny had been in trouble with the law for shop lifting, possession of a knife, assault, selling dope and other minor misdemeanours. He once told Jenny that ‘He was a born criminal and craved crime like a vampire craved blood’. His father ran a grocer’s shop in Cheapside and his mother was a bar maid. His home life was turbulent and unhappy – his father had a violent temper and his mother was never around very much. He had a younger sister, Amy, whom he adored, but she died shortly after her seventh birthday. Tragically, she was knocked down by a car outside their house by a hit and run driver. His mother was totally devastated and had a nervous breakdown, whilst his father turned to the bottle and the beatings escalated. They lived in a poky terraced house in Whitechapel. Johnny was determined that when he grew up he would live in a house fit for a king!

From a young age, Johnny had been morbidly fascinated with gangsters and guns. He aspired to be like the Pirelli Brothers – Marco & Giovanni. In fact, his elder cousin Ruby dated the younger son of Franco Pirelli for a couple of years and Johnny met him several times at family get togethers. The Sicilian mobsters controlled much of Northern England whilst he was growing up.

And so it was that on the eve of his 19th birthday, Johnny’s gangster career kick started when he established the Mack Gang. Each of the other five members (all in their mid to late twenties) was carefully handpicked by Johnny for his particular expertise. Although Johnny was young, he was well known and respected in the criminal underworld and each of the chosen men was eager to be a part of his clan. Johnny made a formidable ring leader.

Irish Mick was chosen for his high speed driving manoeuvres as their getaway driver.
East End Dave for his breaking & entering plus alarm disabling skills.
Denny the Eastern European, a former boxer, was appointed as the gang’s enforcer and also the lookout for his sharp eyes, together with his beloved guard dog Jess, a German shepherd.
Indian Salim, an ex jaibird and immigrant from Madras, was selected, for his surveillance skills and ‘connections’
Finally, Jamaican Sam was handpicked for his brains and safe cracking experience.

The gang quickly became major league players. Likeable rogues, they schmoozed with the stars and patronised several well known kiddies charities. Playing a game of cat and mouse with the Met, they always managed to evade the law and even had several senior policemen on the payroll.

In 1968 the Macks pulled off Britain’s largest heist when they raided a private Arabian bank in Belgravia. After putting pressure on a witness to retract his statement (he had seen Johnny and the gang scarper out the bank into a waiting getaway car) the terrified man duly obliged. Consequently, the police never had enough evidence to charge them and the case was dropped.

With the proceeds of their million pound haul (minus a generous cut to the lads), Johnny bought a Gentlemen’s club in the West End plus several pubs and clubs in Manchester, Brighton and Southend. He also invested in a five star hotel and luxury villa complex in Marrakesh. He built a vast empire from scratch and became one of the richest, most notorious and dangerous men in Britain.

However, Johnny wasn’t flash with his wad and his ‘personal’ spending was pretty modest. His greatest extravagance was his Bentley which he bought in September 1969, as well as treating Jenny to a brand new customised pink mini, which was her pride and joy.

During his career (spanning nearly thirty years), Johnny pulled off over a hundred armed robberies in London, the Home Counties, and Scotland. He raided mansions and country piles, stealing jewellery, antiques and paintings worth millions. He had contacts in America and Europe, who sold the loot for him on commission. He also sold LSD as a nice little sideline, cashing in on the hippy culture of the 1960s.

Because of its hallucinatory properties, LSD was widely adopted by the hippies who claimed it led to higher states of consciousness and helped them search for religious enlightenment.
The Beatles' even wrote a song ('Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds') which allegedly describes the psychedelic effects of LSD.

“Picture yourself in a boat on a river with tangerine trees and marmalade sky,
Somebody calls you, you answer quite slowly, a girl with kaleidoscope eyes.
Cellophane flowers of yellow and green towering over your head.
Look for the girl with the sun in her eyes and she's gone.
Lucy in the Sky with diamonds..."

He had his fingers in all sorts of pies, including owning a house in Pimlico where ‘Johnny’s Angels’ (high class prostitutes) operated from. The girls were all slim, attractive blondes in their late teens to early 30s. They wore a ‘uniform’ for work which consisted of a miniscule white bikini and a pink feather boa draped round their neck. On their feet they wore matching pink platforms. The brothel ‘Madam’ was Johnny’s cousin, Linda, who looked after the girls. The punters were all vetted by Linda and, on the whole, were mainly divorced, middle aged men, who were all filthy rich and treated the ‘angels’ like gold dust, showering them with gifts and obscene cash tips.
 

Chapter 2

Jenny Mack

Three months earlier....

Her tears, like razor blades
slash her cheeks
in sync with the sleet
like knives,
stabbing the crispy autumn leaves
scattered round her feet.

“Sweet dreams Katie”, Jenny whispered, almost blinded by a waterfall of tears, as she gently dropped a sunflower (Katie’s favourite) onto her daughter’s coffin.

Suddenly, to her absolute amazement a tiny dazzling white feather fluttered from the grey sky and landed right in front of her. She stood flabbergasted for a few minutes, open mouthed, before momentarily regaining her composure and tenderly picking it up.

Heaven has gained another angel Jenny thought, smiling fleetingly.

Then BANG. It hit her like a sledgehammer. She should be the one who was dead. Not Jenny.- The past came flooding back with a vengeance, dredging up painful old memories that she had long since buried. Her legs felt like jelly and she began to shake. She clutched the feather tightly in her hand, almost drawing blood with her long French polished finger nails. Her face looked almost as white as the feather.

When Katie was a child , Jenny was diagnosed with breast cancer and Doctors had feared the worst. She had promised Katie at the time that if she died she would watch over her from heaven. Katie (who was a smart little kid) had asked Jenny how she would know that her mummy really was watching over her. Jenny had replied by telling Katie that she would pluck little white feathers from the angels’ wings and scatter them down to earth, where they would land at Katie’s feet.

Jenny was a spiritual personal and had always believed in heaven and angels. Her faith meant she wasn’t afraid of dying. The angel feathers would be tangible proof that mummy had kept her promise and that she really was in heaven keeping a vigil over her precious daughter. Her quick thinking had reassured Katie, much to her mother’s relief. And now, her daughter was reassuring her! Heaven and angels really did exist!

She cut a solitary figure, standing silently by the graveside remembering her beautiful daughter and reminiscing about the past. She only had her memories now. The words engraved on her daughter’s headstone summed up Jenny’s feelings perfectly: GONE TOO SOON. A mother shouldn’t have to bury her daughter.

Katie was the spitting image of her mother. Both had flawless good looks, gazelle limbs and platinum hair. However, much to Jenny’s disappointment, her daughter failed to follow in her glamorous footsteps. Jenny had been spotted by upcoming celebrity photographer Simon Fennell in the 1960s and she had done some quite lucrative modelling as a teenager until her mid 20s.

In contrast, Jenny’s childhood was far from glamorous. She grew up on a rough estate in Peckham. Her father was a bus driver and her mother worked as a pattern cutter and part time bar maid. Jenny left school at sixteen and was offered a job as an apprentice seamstress for a small fashion house near Bond Street. However, her life was to change forever the summer she left school in 1961 and she never looked back.

She was modelling at a beauty paegent whilst on holiday at Butlins with her family, when she caught the eye of celebrity snapper Simon Fennell. She was crowned Miss Butlins 1961 that summer and shortly afterwards Simon introduced her to Platinum modelling agency. She became one of the UK’s highest earning catwalk models and built up quite a nice little nest egg.

Back in the 1950s and 1960s Butlins offered the kind of escapism previously beyond the reach of most ordinary working class families. Jenny had fond memories of Butlins in Bognor with its 'luxury' chalets, indoor and outdoor swimming pools, tennis courts, entertainment for the kids, free funfair and on-site pubs. She and her twin brothers loved spending their summer holidays there. She remembered thinking that she would take her own kids to Butlins one day! Jenny had always wanted to get married and have a large family from a very young age.

Sadly, it wasn’t meant to be and Katie was her only child. Jenny couldn’t have any more children after her daughter was born and it broke her heart. But, she absolutely idolised her daughter and it was Katie who gave her the will to live when she lay hooked up to a life support machine in ITU, after major surgery to reconstruct her breasts, hanging on by a mere thread.. Johnny couldn’t hack it and it dealt their marriage a terrible blow. That was the year Johnny had begun his womanising and found solace at the bottom of an empty whisky bottle.

Jenny began her own affair with one of her husband’s henchmen, Irish Mick, the following year. When Johnny found out he put a bullet through his head and buried him in Ashdown Forest in Kent. His body was never discovered.

Suddenly, her thoughts were rudely interrupted as she heard car tyres crunching on the gravel driveway leading up to the cemetery gate. Time seemed to have stood still in memory lane but glancing at her Gucci watch, she was shocked to see that in the real world it was nearly 1pm. She had been standing by Katie’s grave for nearly 2 hours! She was frozen and shivering to death beneath her flimsy umbrella. Clutching the feather to her breast, Jenny looked up to the sky, where the sun was starting to peek through the thick lead clouds. . A faint rainbow shimmered hopefully against the sheet of slate and for a second she almost forgot her grief. Addressing Katie, she solemnly vowed that the Monster who took her away would pay. She would see to it personally.