Brothers

By Shirley Winwood and Jacqui Pappin

Two young boys Tommy and Billy come from extremely poor and unloved background, and the eldest of the two, Tommy, feels totally responsible for his younger brother, Billy.
Tommy decides to take matters into his own hands regarding supporting Billy and himself, which takes them on a journey of death, misery, and being on the run from the policehis dreams of making everything right for them both is just too much for him.
Their mother believes that she is providing them with a home and food and thats where her responsibilities end. Does she care what they do or where they go? Now the police are knocking on her door, and some of the news she receives has her roaring with laughter, which isnt anything to laugh at.
Billy, who loves his brother unconditionally, will follow him anywhere. He is his hero, and he knows that Tommy will always look after him, but things have gone wrong, and now he is very scared, and even his brother doesnt seem to be able to handle their situation.
When everything comes to an end, someone has to pay the price and the price is very high.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trafford Publishing
• Release date: May 8, 2013
• ISBN: 9781466990760

Shirley Winwood

If you like books that cover poverty, hard times mixed with a little suspense and a murder here and there, mixed in with a bit of humor, then you will enjoy this writer.

Book preview

© Copyright 2013 Shirley Winwood.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written prior permission of the author.

Cover Illustration by Jacqui Pappin

ISBN: 978-1-4669-9077-7 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4669-9076-0 (e)

Trafford rev. 04/22/2013

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CONTENTS

BILLY

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Chapter 56

Chapter 57

Chapter 58

Chapter 59

Chapter 60

Chapter 61

Chapter 62

Chapter 63

Chapter 64

Chapter 65

Chapter 66

Chapter 67

Chapter 68

Chapter 69

Chapter 70

Chapter 71

Chapter 72

Chapter 73

Chapter 74

Chapter 75

Chapter 76

Chapter 77

Chapter 78

Chapter 79

Chapter 80

Chapter 81

Chapter 82

Chapter 83

Chapter 84

Chapter 85

Chapter 86

Chapter 87

Chapter 88

Chapter 89

Chapter 90

Chapter 91

Chapter 92

Chapter 93

Chapter 94

Chapter 95

Chapter 96

Chapter 97

TOMMY

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

BILLY

BOOK ONE

Chapter 1

Tommy screamed at his younger brother, ‘shoot him, shoot him in the head, pull the fucking trigger Billy, NOW! I can’t, I can’t’, Billy’s hand was shaking and the gun was heavy, if he had pulled the trigger he more than likely would have shot his own brother. Tommy carried on screaming at him and the old man just sat and watched them both in total shock, ‘these little bastard’s are going to kill me’, as the realisation seeped into his brain he felt the warmth of his own urine spread down his legs, ‘they’re going to kill me, I’m going to die’.

Tommy ripped the gun from his brother’s hand and pointed directly at the old man’s head and said in an evil tone, ‘night, night granddad’ and he pulled the trigger. The old man’s body lurched back and toppled over, the blood was dark red and spreading around his head. Billy was beside himself, he was crying and shouting at his older brother, ‘What did yer do that for, you’ve killed him Tommy, what are we going to do, they’ll lock us up’. ‘For Christ sakes Billy, will you just shut the fuck up, you’re doing me head in’.

‘Tommy he’s dead, why was he here, he shouldn’t have been here, we’ve been watching this place for weeks, why was he here, he should have been at the pub’. Well, he ain’t going to no bleeding pub now is he’, says Tommy.

They had been watching the old man for a couple of weeks and as old people, he had a routing whereby every evening 6.30pm he would leave his hall light and lounge light on and the TV would be playing in the background, so anyone coming to the house would think there was someone home. This was the height of his security. However, he didn’t reckon to two boys aged ten and fourteen years old to be something to worry about, how wrong he was. ‘Why was he still at home, Tommy’ cried Billy. ‘Jesus, will you shut up, I don’t know and I don’t care’.

Tommy was busy going through the old man’s pockets, ‘make yourself useful and go through the draws’. Billy started ransacking the drawers and didn’t have a clue as to what he was looking for, and with the tears and snot running down his face he couldn’t see either.

At the back of the sideboard Billy found a box. Still crying he opened it and his eyes went as big as golf balls. ‘Tommy, Tommy look at this’. It was crammed with screwed up notes five, ten’s, twenties and fifty pound notes. The boys started throwing the money up in the air and whooping with glee, Billy had forgotten the terrible deed they had just committed.

‘And that makes seventy five so all in all we have two thousand four hundred and seventy five quid, not bad going, hey’? Billy looked back to where the old man lay and he could feel the terror beginning to build up inside him, ‘can we go now Tommy’? ‘Yeah, I think we got what we came for’. Billy was thinking differently, ‘we got more than we came for’ and a fleeting memory ran through his head at the look of surprise not only on the old man’s face, but on his and Tommy’s.

It was 7pm and the old man was getting his coat ready for the off, he had fallen asleep in front of the telly that afternoon, something he never did and he chided himself for it. He was 82 years old and he prided himself that he had a good routine and he never slept during the day. He would prepare his evening meal everyday at 4.30pm and by 5.30pm to 6pm the plates and pots would be washed and stacked away. He would then go and wash his face, comb his hair and at 6.30pm he would leave for his local ‘The Hair and Hounds’. He would have three pints and maybe the odd whiskey if someone else brought it for him and dead on 9.30pm he would say his goodbyes and he would be on his way back home.

This was his routine. For years people in the pub could set their watches by old Ted Donnelly, so when he didn’t pitch that Friday night, the talk was ‘old Ted’s late tonight, not like him, hey? Well he’s getting on, isn’t he’? But no one was going to leave their drink or the pub to see if he was ok. Instead they spoke of him expecting him to walk through the door as he normally did, with a nod to the barman who would be already pulling Ted’s first pint of the night. He was a bit of a joke to the regulars as he was a regular as clockwork; he even had his own seat by the bar which nobody would use. If a stranger came in and sat on Ted’s bar stool he was told, ‘don’t get comfy, the old fella that sit’s there he’ll shift you just now’.

So when the two brothers crept around the back of Ted’s house and climbed through his kitchen window, which Ted always left open for his cat to climb in and out of, it’s not clear as to who was the most surprised, but one thing for sure is that Billy didn’t know that his brother had a gun and the gun was long and heavy, with a funny looking barrel at the end of it. The words on the gun were foreign and Billy couldn’t understand them. He wasn’t even sure if it was real, he looked up to his brother who was his hero and Tommy played it that way for him. He would never let his little brother know how he really felt because that would spoil it.

The old man was sat tying his shoe laces getting ready for the off, when he looked up and saw the two boys. ‘What the bloody hell do you think you’re doing in my house, hey’? He was just about to get up and go for them when Tommy pulled the gun from out of his trouser; Billy’s eyes nearly fell out of his head. ‘Tommy you’ve got a gun’ he blurted. ‘No shit, hey! Always said you were a smart lad’.

Ted’s eyes also bulged, this was not good, two young lads and a gun, ‘where’s the money? I don’t have any money’ said the old man. ‘I don’t, I think you’ve come to the wrong house young fella, they’ll not find any money here’. ‘Oh no! Well, you seem to have enough to go out to the pub every night so hand it over’. Ted protesting that he had no money was making Tommy very angry and his brother was getting very nervous, especially looking at Tommy with the gun in his hand. ‘Now stop being a silly old fucker and give me the MONEY’!!! Tommy screamed at him.

Tommy shoved the gun in Billy’s hand, ‘hold this on him while I search him’. As he gave Billy the gun, Ted saw it as an opportunity to jump up, but before he could, Tommy pushed him back down in his chair and turned to Billy and screamed to him, ‘shoot him, shoot him, shoot him in the head, pull the fucking trigger Billy’.

Chapter 2

The house where Ted lived was not in the best part of Manchester and some of the houses in his street had been empty for years and were boarded up. Ted had lived there all his life. It had been his mother’s home and he had married and settled there with his wife Peggy. They had one child, a daughter called Maggie.

Ted’s wife died when the girl was only twelve and things went from bad to worse. She was a spoilt, selfish ungrateful kid and by the time she was fifteen she was gone, and that was fifteen years ago. He’d never seen her since nor did he care, she was rotten to the very core.

He blamed his wife for the way Maggie behaved. His wife, Peggy, gave her everything. It got to the point where the girl would go into her mother’s purse when she wasn’t in the room and she felt nothing lifting a twenty pound or even a fifty pound note. Of course her mother missed it but she said nothing, so Ted never knew.

Maggie never stole from her dad until her mother died and her supply of ready cash had been taken from her, so it was into the old man’s wallet. At first he thought, ‘I’m going mad; I could have sworn I had this or that’. He really questioned his own sanity never thinking that it was his own daughter, all those years you would have thought butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth.

All those years Peggy kept secrets from him about the money, boys, drugs, drink and their daughter’s foul mouth, all at the age of twelve. He didn’t know this girl at all. It would appear that what caused her death had a lot to do with his daughter, and the story was that Peggy was getting all upset with her daughter for carrying on behind the back of the house with a fifteen year lout from the estate.

Peggy screamed at her daughter, ‘you filthy little whore’! Her daughter had her knickers around her ankles and she and the boy were grunting like animals. ‘‘Get off her, you pig’, she shouted, ‘fuck off you stupid old cow’, said the lad. She lunged at them both to rip them apart only to be pushed very violently by the lad. She hit the wall with such a thud and what followed was an enormous pain in her chest.

Peggy was lying on the ground grabbing at her chest and the next thing she was dead all in a matter of minutes. The boy looked at the girl’s mum and he thought ‘fuck me; I’ve killed the old bat’. Little did he realise she was a heart attack waiting to happen.

He ran off leaving Maggie with her knickers’ down screaming at the top of her lungs. She wasn’t screaming because of the love for her mother, she was screaming because she also thought her boyfriend had killed her. As the people came out and saw the carry all knowing what Maggie was like, the older ones knew that the dead woman more than likely had a heart attack. She was hugely over weight with a heart that was struggling to beat on a daily basis.

At first Maggie thought it would be easy with her mother out of the way, but she was sadly mistaken. ‘You want money for what’, her dad bellowed at her. ‘You don’t need money as you’re not going anywhere’. The shock of his discipline had her in knots. It was a cancer growing and gnawing inside her. She realised how little her father knew about her life, she couldn’t take it; it was like being a prisoner.

Why could it not have been him that died instead of her mum? God life is just so unfair and he is so mean, he wouldn’t give her any money and that was when the stealing began, which also spread to shoplifting and if she had to she would even nick of her own mates.

At the age of fifteen she left. She packed her few belongings and went. He never saw her again and he never wanted to. He never reported her missing to the police as she had left him a nice little message with spray paint all around the house, telling him how she hated him and that she was never coming back. He was so shocked when he saw the bright red bile language sprayed everywhere, walls furniture nothing was left unmarked, the little bitch, well he was well rid.

Maggie never looked back. In fact, Maggie didn’t even look to the future, and she lived her life day by day and entered into the best way to earn money; on her back. She made a decent whack, but then she was young and she still had her looks, which weren’t that great as she was also on the plump side. However, she would work with the looks she had which she never thought would leave her.

Chapter 3

The two brothers were itching to spend some of the money, Tommy wanted a leather jacket and Billy wanted a gameboy. Tommy thought the jacket would give him the look; the look that said’ beware, watch this lad he’s a hard nut’.

‘Tommy’, Billy said after they had counted their ill gotten gains for the umpteenth time, ‘when can we spend it Tommy, and where are we going to hide it, we have to have somewhere safe’. ‘We’ll hide it at home’. ‘At home, we can’t hide it there Tommy, Mum will find it’. ‘God Billy, do you never see what is going on around you, she does fuck all, she never goes in our room and we have never seen her in the back yard. You could hide stuff under her nose and she wouldn’t see’. ‘Oh yeah’, said Billy, ‘so where you going to hide it then’?

Tommy knew just the place; their back yard was its own tip and still had an outside lav that didn’t work with heaps of rubbish, broken bikes, shopping trolleys it was just one filthy mess that had been there long before they were. Tommy was right; his mum never went into the back yard, so the money was to be hidden in the overhead cistern of the old toilet and then packed with newspapers; it was a perfect hiding place. The boys not being too big could just squeeze through the door that was jammed solid. ‘It’s a great hiding place Tommy, yer dead clever you are’! chuckled Billy.

Unfortunately he wasn’t that clever because he bought himself the leather jacket and he bought Billy the gameboy that he wanted, which was a lot easier to hide than the jacket. Tommy being so cock sure thought he could just waltz past his mum and she wouldn’t notice, well didn’t he get a shock?

She hauled him by the neck, ‘what the bloody hell are you wearing’. She had smelt the newness of the leather before she saw the jacket, it smelt wonderful and it jerked her memory back to when her mum had bought her, her first leather coat. ‘You’ve been nicking again you little bastard’, she screamed sending spittle all over him, ‘geroff us you silly cow, I didn’t steal it, honest I didn’t’. ‘Well how comes you have a brand spanking new leather jacket that I can smell the leather from a mile off’? ‘I didn’t nick it mum I swear, Billy tell her, go on tell her’. Billy didn’t know what to say other than; ‘he’s telling the truth mum, he didn’t nick it’. ‘Okay then clever clogs, where did he get if from then, shut your gob Tommy I’d like to hear Billy tell me’.

Tommy’s eyes were dancing in his head not knowing what Billy was going to say, ‘He picked it up at the arcade, mum. This lad left it on the back of a game and we weren’t going to tell him, so Tommy picked it up and we walked out. It was his loss mum, he shouldn’t have left it. If Tommy hadn’t have picked it up someone else would and that’s the truth’. Tommy was amazed, it was a better story than he would have told and his mother fell for it hook line and sinker.

Now she was looking to sell it, it’ll give her some extra cash for bingo. ‘You’re not having it mum, I found it and I’m keeping it. I’ve got nothing and yer buy us nothing so you’re not selling it’. She slapped him so hard across the face that both his ears were ringing.

She sold the jacket and there was no point in buying another one. Billy was so upset for his brother he knew that he really wanted that jacket and one day he would buy him one, and no one but no one would take it away from him.

Chapter 4

Back at the Hare and Hounds Ted hadn’t been seen for a couple of days and they all knew that something was wrong. The landlord organised one of his pot men to call and see if Ted was ok. They knew where he lived as he had been in that same house for what like seemed forever.

The pot man’s name was Jack and he said that he would call on his way back to the pub that afternoon. ‘I might be a bit late if he keeps me talking you know how he can go on’, knowing he was taking full advantage of the situation and never one to miss an opportunity. Well Jack got more than he bargained for and didn’t return to work that day or the next.

When Jack got to the old man’s house he knocked on the door, no answer. He looked through the letter box and couldn’t see anything; a cat was winding itself in and around his legs crying. Jack then moved to the windows, peering through he couldn’t see any movement; he went to the end of the street and round the back of the terraced houses. ‘What a fucking mess’ he said to himself, ‘Christ and the stink Jesus how does the old guy manage to live here’.

The row of sad looking half boarded up houses should have been demolished years ago, but somehow someone screwed up and they were still standing. There were twelve houses in the little street and more than half were boarded up and the stench was over powering, a foul stench of decay the like you get from a dying building.

As Jack worked his way to the back of Ted’s house he saw that the kitchen window was open, he looked through the window and he couldn’t see anything. ‘Ted, Ted’ he shouted, ‘are you in there Ted’, no answer. He knocked hard on the back door, still nothing. He tried the handle of the door and it opened. The cat followed him in and it ran crying into the kitchen and headed straight for its bowl. Jack knew the cat was hungry which gave him a bad feeling.

He ventured towards the lounge and that’s when his blood turned to ice and he immediately threw up, there before him was the twisted, bloated body of Ted in a dried up pool of blood with flies all around him. The smell was so over powering and the sight was so gruesome, Jack had never in his life seen a dead body before and he was shaking with shock unable to think.

Jack couldn’t remember anyone’s phone number, he didn’t know who to phone, ‘Think straight’ he said to himself, ‘think straight for Christ’s sake’. He ran round to the front of the house, his heart was pounding so hard in his chest he thought he was having a full on heart attack. The street was totally deserted, fucking typical he thought, after a couple of deep breaths Jack managed to gather his senses and phoned the emergency services.

The woman who took his call sounded totally bored, she gave him the choice of three services like a robot, police, fire or ambulance, he shouted into the phone, ‘police and ambulance’ and then he said ‘actually I don’t think he needs the ambulance’. ‘Sir, you either do or you don’t want the ambulance service which is it to be’? He replied in a quite sad tone, ‘well does an ambulance still comes if the person is dead’? ‘Sir are you reporting that someone is dead’? ‘To right I am lady, as dead as a fucking door nail’.

Jack was still outside the house waiting for the police to arrive, it took them twenty minutes. ‘Fucking good job he’s not dying’, he thought to himself, ‘length of time it taken this lot to respond, you could die waiting’ and there was no way he was going to step a foot back into that house, no matter what.

The police wanted to know why he was there and what his connection with the deceased was. Jack told them everything he could and then he threw up again. He thought the police were stupid, he saw the hole in the man’s head and he knew he had been shot, but they wouldn’t tell him that.

He needed a drink and he wanted to go home, he wanted to have a bath which he thought was very strange but subconsciously he needed to wash the smell of death off him. He felt like it was clinging to him and his need to cleanse himself was strong. He saw all the missed calls from his boss, he knew he was looking for him but he didn’t want to speak to anyone, well not yet anyway.

Jack phoned his boss later in the day after he got back from the police station; he was drained from the shock and all the questions that just went on and on. The coppers were like a dog with a bone repeating question after question until they were satisfied. He phoned his boss when he got home and told him all that had happened, ‘bloody hell mate, that must have been a right shock for yer, but who’d want to shoot an ole fella like Ted’? Jack said, ‘well someone did and I’ll tell you this; it was most probably the first day that he didn’t pitch up at the pub because he’d been dead for a few days’. ‘Shit I bet it was’ replied Ted’s boss.

Chapter 5

Tommy and Billy had aroused their mum’s suspicion; she watched them out of the corner of her eye. These two little bleeders are up to something and whatever it is; it’s in the back yard. She was quite pleased with herself, she had a good nose for scam’s and lies, well of course it was second nature to her, it was how she lived her life.

She was thirty one years old, over weight with greasy lank brown hair, she was not particular about her own hygiene and she smelt of sour cheese and fags. She worked on the game but it was getting to the point that she wasn’t getting any punters, which was not surprising considering the state she was in.

The only time she could guarantee a punter was after closing time. It was amazing how the drink took her from being ugly too not bad looking, in other words, they were that drunk that they drunk her pretty. Sometimes the men couldn’t remember if it was a dream or not.

Anyhow, she made a few bob over the weekends. Now, one must understand that she wasn’t doing this for her boys; she was doing this for extra money for fags, booze and bingo. She had her family allowance and she bought the shopping and paid the rent out of that, mind you shopping was only