Come Clean (1989) by Bill James Page A

ever of getting the three of them unchaperoned and together. Look, it got to work, got to.’
    ‘We can’t get close to even one of them usually,’ Macey said. ‘Lay-waste’s car, it’s like Reagan’s for protection, you ask me. And anyone getting close
that he don’t like the look of, Lay-waste’s liable to start blasting away like D-Day. But three together, and no retaliation – it’s beautiful, no other word.’
    ‘So maybe four,’ Loxton said. ‘Three, plus one. That’s a grief, too, you’re right, Phil, but to get them three, I got to be willing to make sacrifices, no way out
of that. Daphne, she’s not a bad old piece, but she’ve had a very nice and comfortable run, fat of the land for years, and the thing is, she’s one of them, nobody can get away
from that.’
    ‘Leo didn’t have enough venom on his own to produce them two sons,’ Macey said. ‘Not even Leo. She helped. She’s more than just a pretty old face.’
    Loxton spoke sadly: ‘Justin – I don’t understand why he had to go extreme and consider talking like that. He didn’t even know Daphne. A fact, didn’t know her at
all. Me, I know her, known her for years. Daphne, me, Leo all at Marl View school the same time, not friends, but the same time. Leo always said he never touched her until they was properly
married. Well, it’s possible. Things was different then, even for someone like Leo. Lived close, the three of us. Great old teacher at the school, Miss Binns, who did a lot for us, tried to
keep me and Leo straight, really stuck her neck out. Lovely old duck, really. I still send her a Christmas card with something inside. It didn’t work too good, what she tried for Leo and me,
things went a bit adrift, what with taking and driving away and the fighting, but she never gave up. Nice. Anyway, that’s how far back it goes, so I know Daphne real good and none of us wants
her to get any damage, of course not, but she could be slap in the way for them couple of seconds, that’s the truth of it.’
    ‘I like that about the teacher, that’s real genuine, Benny, and heartfelt, on the side of education, which got to be good, but, like you said, Benny, the truth can be tough,’
Macey replied, ‘and Daphne could catch one, yes.’
    ‘The thing about Leo, he’s the only opposition left. It used to be different when Tenderness Mellick was operating, and Wrighty, and You-know-who. Well, it was what you’d call
a community, a working community, a business community, say like the City of London or Hatton Garden and jewellers.’
    ‘Right,’ Macey said.
    ‘Them days, things could be spread out, and people kept to their own corner,’ Loxton went on. ‘There wasn’t none of this eyeball to eyeball, because we were all too busy
not just watching one another, but two or three or more. Then along comes this thinker, Harpur, and The One Above, Desmond Iles, him with the horns, and suddenly people are disappearing, and now
it’s just the two of us, Leo and me, and it’s a question, who gets the power, who’s in control – like after World War Three, only Russia and the States left. One got to see
the other off, and the one who goes first and best takes everything.’
    ‘Polarities,’ Norman said. He pulled a folded copy of the
Daily Telegraph
from his pocket. ‘Did you see this interview with Ronnie Kray, the old London operator, inside
now, Benny? He says he had thirty years for killing a couple of villains,’ Norman began to read from the paper: ‘“We had to kill them or they would have killed us, I don’t
think we were evil. There is nothing evil about protecting your own life. It was the same as being a soldier in the war.” That’s the sort of thinking, isn’t it, Benny?’
    Loxton did not greatly enjoy the comparison with a Kray, especially the one in a loony jail, but Norman had a point. ‘There used to be room for four or five of us operating on this patch.
Now there’s not even room for two,