'He's a grass…'
Phillip laughed then, a low sarcastic laugh. 'So I heard, before you actually – but then I would, wouldn't I? Considering I was entertaining half the local Filth at my gaff, seems only natural that might have come up in the general conversation, don't you think? You know me, Breda, why smash my way through half of London for what I want to know when I can find it out over a nice brandy in the comfort and safety of my own fucking home.'' He bellowed the last two words and Breda was almost brought from the floor with the force of his anger.
He pulled on his cigarette once more, physically calming himself down. 'You are a prize cunt, Breda, do you realise that? You're a laughing stock, but then you always have been. You only get what you get because I choose to let you have it. Blood is thicker than water and all that old fanny. But this, this fucking abomination, has changed everything. I always thought you acting like you do was a good front, local PR, kept the natives in check. But what did you go and do this time, you publicly hammered your own brother, denounced him as a grass – a fucking grass! An accusation anyone else would have had the sense to keep fucking quiet about, because accusations like that tend to be remembered. But not you, eh, Breda? You couldn't fucking use your loaf of bread just once. You should have brought that information to me, you should have had the sense to realise that it was something / needed to know, and / needed to decide what we were going to do about it. You see, you forgot the main rule of being a Murphy, and do you know what that rule is, Breda?'
She was incapable of answering him, the calmer he spoke the more the fear was growing inside her.
He grinned genially now. 'The main rule of being a Murphy is you don't shit without asking me first. You don't ever have an original thought without running it by me first. In short, Breda, you wait until / decide what you're going to do. It's pretty easy, /tell you what to do, and then you fucking do it.'
Breda was watching him warily, wondering what his next move was going to be. For the first time in her life it occurred to her that Phillip was quite capable of really hurting her, she also realised that it wouldn't bother him to have to do it. In fact, she felt he relished it, wanted the excuse. She was not about to give it to him. She watched as he poured them both a large Scotch, and when he held the glass out to her she moved towards him cautiously. As she opened her hand, the contents of her glass were thrown into her face, and she felt the burn as the neat whisky found its way into her eyes. Two seconds later she was laid across the kitchen table and a serious beating began. It started with slapping, a heavy forceful slapping that after a few seconds had already caused her lips to swell; she could feel the sheer strength of him as he held her down. But she knew the last thing she should do was struggle – that is what he wanted her to do. Phillip wanted an excuse to let rip, and she knew that once he got it she would be lucky to leave the room alive.
The quiet of the house gave the proceedings an almost surreal feel. When she felt his hand in her hair, and her body being dragged up off the table she didn't know whether to be relieved or not. The kick that sent her across the room was vicious, and when she collapsed on to the floor, she curled herself into a protective ball. She could hear him moving around, pouring himself another drink, smelt the smoke as he lit another cigarette. So taut were her nerves she even heard him pull the smoke gently into his lungs. The waiting was the worst, because she knew he wasn't finished with her. He hadn't even started. For all she had heard whispered of her brother, she never realised until now just what a dangerous fuck he really was. The more so because he had no real care for her. This was something he was enjoying and it occurred to her that he had been storing up this anger with her for a long time, it was her own foolishness that hadn't had the sense to understand that. She knew that everything she had ever done to aggravate this brother of hers had been taken onboard and filed away for the moment. She had played right into his hands with her antics over Jamsie.
She saw her own arrogance, heard herself as she talked the big talk, remembered with a terrible dread and fear the times she had spoken disrespectfully about Phillip to his contemporaries. She lay there, hands covering her head and terror enveloping her, finally understanding that everything in life has to be paid for, every time you hurt someone it came back to you at some point, and it bit you right on the arse. She thought of her own son, and wondered if she would see him grow to a man.
Breda finally understood that the world didn't start or finish with her, her wants and her needs. And, more importantly, she finally understood you could push certain people much too far.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Jamsie Murphy was in a bad way, but it was obvious to his mother that he would survive his injuries. As she had always said, no brain no pain, and that was her Jamsie all right. Her husband was refusing to sit in the room with him; as far as he was concerned it would be better if the boy did die, for he was dead to him already.
Veronica sat by her son's bed, listened to the monitors and the night sounds of the hospital ward and wondered what the hell had happened to her family for all this to come over them so suddenly. It had been bad enough with her Declan going away but that, at least, she could understand. He'd had a capture, he'd do his time and come back home none the worse for wear. But all this? Her Jamsie at death's door, her daughter responsible for it, and Phillip, her golden boy, capable of killing them all.
She was worried for Breda. Phillip was not a happy bunny. Oh, she saw his acting for what it was, she knew him better than he knew himself. That was the half the trouble. Phillip thought he had fooled her like he had everyone else, but he hadn't. Not that she had ever let on, of course, but she had guessed even when he was a child that the way her Phillip acted was not the norm. She had watched him struggle to fit into any kind of situation, he had no idea how to react to the most mundane things. She had seen then that he had a distinct lack of feelings; he loved in a way, but it was not love as most people understood it. Phillip loved what he possessed. It was his, he owned it, therefore he loved it. He had no empathy, had never had any.
She remembered years ago, when they were all small, a man had leapt off a local tower block. Other kids had seen the result and, in their own ways, had felt ill, shocked, everything you'd expect. Phillip had not even batted an eyelid – he had been fascinated more than anything. It had been then that she had started to watch him. She had seen him stick up for his brothers and sister, but more because they were his family than because he cared what happened to them. It was as if to disrespect them you were disrespecting him.
When the family's pet rabbit had died he had watched the others crying, and she knew he had tried his hardest to cry with them, but it just hadn't happened. It couldn't happen, because he didn't know how to care. It was as if he was missing something in that department. She had always thought him a strange child, even as a small baby he had not reacted like the others. Quiet, rarely crying and never smiling. He was always detached somehow, and she had done what many a mother before her had done; she had made excuses for him. She had rationalised his behaviour and made it seem normal. Told the school he had always been quiet, that he didn't understand that if you cut someone then they would bleed – it wasn't that he wanted to hurt the other child, it was just that he was fascinated at how things happened. He had always had an inordinate interest in blood and death. He had devoured horror books as a teen and she had seen that as somehow proving her right, he wasn't odd, he was just fascinated by the macabre. His teachers had questioned his behaviour; he had fought like the other boys but, unlike them, he had never known when to stop the fight, had always had to be pulled off the offender before he killed them – and she had no doubt that kill them he would should they provoke him enough. Phillip lived by a completely different set of moral and ethical codes. Codes that made sense only to him.