Free Faces by Martina Cole Page A

came into the scrapyard at just after three twenty, early even for him. Louie Stein waved nonchalantly at the boy. Knowing he was a good friend of Danny’s he was now used to seeing him around the place. Michael was a nice lad, he had an analytical brain that would always earn him a living if he had the sense to turn his thoughts to such a thing. He was a natural robber, but a book robber rather than a bank robber, a difference that quickly became apparent to anyone who dealt with him. The boy could add up in his head faster than a calculator, and he liked the mathematics of everyday life, a bonus for anyone out to earn a wedge without the benefit of tax and insurance. Between them, he knew Danny and Michael would one day make a winning team. He hoped that, if and when that day arrived, the team they played for would be his. Danny, he knew, had the front needed to get on in their kind of business. Michael, on the other hand, had the acumen that should take him into an office but, because of his personality, would definitely bring him into the criminal fraternity at some point in his lifetime. He had the nous but not the staying power needed for the big wages. His idea of a pension fund would be an off-shore account and a flat that even his wife didn’t know about.
    These two young men were Louie’s lifeline to the real world; watching them grow up and helping them to mature was the only thing that stopped him eating one of the guns he rented out on a daily basis, or leaping into his own crusher. He was a natural depressive, and he knew that. But a man in his position needed a son to make his later years worthwhile. He was now looking at leaving his life’s work to one of his daughters’ husbands, while praying for a grandson in his spare time. To have a son and waste the opportunity was a crying shame, was criminal as far as he was concerned. He saw the serious look that passed over Danny’s face as Michael talked to him and decided that the matter of the boy’s father’s emergence once more into the world of the hoi polloi had been taken out of his hands. He was liking young Michael more every time he saw him.
     
    Wilfred was unsure what to do now he was confronted with only the mother of his prime antagonist. In fact, thanks to his own mother’s words of warning, this woman and her nervous coughing was making him feel, for the first time in years, that he might actually be in the wrong.
    His mother had pointed out that the attack with the axe was no more than she would have done herself for her own children. That a mother would protect her young because, with good fathers being few and far between, the only person a child could really count on was the woman who had grown them, birthed them and nurtured them. Now, here he was, confronting someone who, at any other time, he would feel honour-bound to help carry her shopping home.
    Angelica was terrified but casting around for a weapon of some kind. This man was not getting near her children without going through her first. She cursed her husband and his gambling once more; his weakness for the cards would always be his downfall. It was almost like praying, she had cursed him so often she could now do it while thinking of something completely different. This revelation disturbed her almost as much as it pleased her.
    Wilfred, however, was nonplussed. Now he was here, he wasn’t so sure that he could settle the score this way without retribution being heaped on his own family.
    Angelica sensed his indecision and said softly, ‘Go home, son, my husband isn’t worth all this trouble.’
    Wilfred was still standing in front of her, and she knew he was debating what course of action he should take now. Thanks to her husband and son, his world had been blown apart, a nuclear bomb couldn’t have done more damage.
    ‘Would you like a cup of tea, son?’
     
    ‘You sure me old man’s hit the pavement, Mike? Only I can’t see him coming back this way meself.’
    Mike