Father Patrick listened with a sympathetic ear as Queenie told him about Roy, Lenny and Molly’s demise. ‘That’s very tragic, Queenie. Let’s say a prayer for the three of them.’
Queenie squeezed the man’s arm. ‘No. You haven’t heard the half of it yet. This year has been a real bad ’un, hasn’t it, Viv? Three members of the family we’ve lost. Gone in a puff of smoke one after the other. One of ’em even got chopped into pieces, God rest his soul. Loved that boy, I did.’
His complexion whitening, Father Patrick urged Queenie not to gabble, and to start from the very beginning,
‘Well, I’ve already told you about Roy, Lenny and Molly. Molly was the last of those to die. Murdered in 1980 she was, bless her. Now I’ll tell you the story of everything that’s happened since …’
Autumn 1980
Whitechapel was a close-knit community, especially amongst the old school who had been born and bred there, and the brutal murder of the three-year-old child had left a bitter taste in everybody’s mouths.
Thankfully, the police had caught the killer. But with the murder still fresh in people’s minds, parents were much more vigilant than they had been, and many a child was not allowed to roam the streets as freely as they had before Molly Butler’s death.
Little Molly had been no ordinary child. She was the daughter of the infamous Vinny Butler. With Ronnie and Reggie Kray banged up, Vinny and his brothers now stood at the top of the East End’s criminal ladder, along with the Mitchells from Canning Town. On the day of the funeral service, the grounds around the church were mobbed with people who had come from far and wide to pay their respects. Most of the local English shopkeepers had shut down their businesses for the day, and even though villains from across the river usually steered well clear of the Butlers’ turf, Vinny recognized many faces from South London as the black limousine drove slowly through the crowds.
Molly’s final journey was a mournful yet stunning sight. Two white horses pulled a glass coach through the streets of Whitechapel, past the club that the Butler brothers owned, then on to the church. As the family filed in, bystanders bowed their heads and murmured their condolences to Vinny’s mother, Queenie, and her sister Viv, showing them the kind of reverence that had once been reserved for Violet and Rose Kray.
The service was extremely moving. There was barely a dry eye in the church when the pianist began to play the golden oldie, ‘You Are My Sunshine’. Shortly before her untimely death, little Molly had performed the song in a talent competition at a holiday camp in Eastbourne. With her angelic looks, blonde curls and bubbly personality she had received a standing ovation from the crowd and taken first prize.
The most poignant moment of the day though, was when fourteen-year-old Vinny Butler bravely stood at the front of the church and read out a poem he had written for his little sister.
‘I miss you more than words can say,
and blame myself every single day.
As your big brother I should have protected you more,
But I fell asleep and you walked out the door.
‘I hope that God will take good care of you,
and love you as much as your family do.
Life will never be the same without you, Molly,
and I hope you are playing in heaven with your favourite dolly.
‘That wicked boy who took you away,
will pay for his evil sins one day.
Until that time I want you to know,
that me, Dad, Nanny, Auntie Viv and Uncle Michael all loved you so.
‘Rest in peace my beautiful little sister, from your big brother, Vinny.’
When the emotional teenager returned to the pew to sit alongside his family members, not a single member of the congregation sensed anything was amiss. Why would they?
The only person inside that church who knew the police had arrested the wrong boy, leaving Molly’s killer still at large, was young Vinny Butler.
How did he know?
Because he was the one who had put his hands around his little sister’s neck and cold-bloodedly throttled the life out of her.
Queenie Butler poured herself a large sherry and sat on the pouffe in front of the fire. Her sons kept offering to buy her one of those gas fires that were now all the rage, but Queenie was totally opposed to the idea. There was nothing as homely as the sight and smell of a proper coal fire.
‘Bleedin’ nuisance,’ Queenie mumbled when her doorbell was pressed repeatedly. It couldn’t be Vivian. She only lived next-door-but-one, had her own key, and had just popped out to get some fish and chips.
‘You OK, Queen? I must say, that was a lovely send-off for your Molly, God rest her soul. Those beautiful white horses and the glass coach must have cost a fortune,’ Nosy Hilda pried.
‘Hilda, I’m not in the best of moods, love, and I certainly don’t wanna talk about the funeral. The amount of tragic deaths my family have suffered, it would’ve been cheaper for us to open up our own poxy parlour. Now is there anything else I can help you with?’
‘Well, the reason I knocked is, I just popped in the Grave Maurice. You know I like me odd glass of Guinness.’
‘Can you cut to the chase, please,’ Queenie snapped. She had never been one to suffer small talk with the neighbours. It bored the arse off her.
‘Your Brenda’s inebriated in the Maurice with some bloke, and Tara and Tommy are sat outside with a guy.’
‘Guy! What guy?’
‘A stuffed Guy, as in Fawkes. They’re being a bit rude, Queen, so I thought you should know. They aren’t asking for a penny for the Guy, they want a pound. Then when people won’t give them the money, they’re threatening to set your Vinny on to them. Well, Tara is anyway. I heard her say it to Mr Patel and old Mr Arthur.’
To say Queenie was livid was putting it mildly. She had always classed such behaviour as begging and had given her boys such a clump when she’d caught them sitting outside the train station doing the same when they were nippers.
Queenie grabbed her coat and front-door keys. Brenda was her only daughter; twenty-six years old now, but still the bane of Queenie’s life. The girl was an embarrassment, especially when she had alcohol inside her. She must have inherited an alcoholic gene from her father. That useless old bastard had spent more hours pissed in his lifetime than sober.
‘What you gonna do? You won’t tell Brenda it was me who told you, will ya? ’Cos I don’t want no trouble, Queen. I only knocked because I was worried about those kiddies.’
‘I’ll bastard well swing for her, Hilda, that’s what I’ll do,’ Queenie spat as she marched off down the road.
‘Oh, and before I forget, Queen, Lil got taken away in an ambulance earlier. Had a stroke, by all accounts. Big Stan told me she looked dead as they wheeled her out.’
‘Any more fucking joyful news?’ Queenie mumbled under her breath. Lil was in her nineties now, lived in the house between hers and Viv’s, and both had been dreading the old girl croaking it because they didn’t want new neighbours. Talk about it never rains but it pours.
Vinny Butler took off his tie and suit jacket and stared at his reflection in the mirror. With his six-foot-two frame, piercing green eyes and jet-black hair, Vinny had always been a striking-looking man. But since Molly had been so cruelly