Everyone, Ruby and her family included, knew what their neighbours were up to, but the code of silence of the East End, one that had existed for generations, still stood. You didn’t grass up your own, no matter what they’d done. No police, or Feds as they were known to Ruby, were ever called. What happened in the streets around Star Lane was a world unto itself, and that’s the way most people liked it. Most people – except her mum and dad.
Ruby looked around the table in the small kitchen. Everyone she loved was there: her older brother Bobby, her mum Cathy now taking off her faded apron and sitting down to eat, and her dad Louie, who until now had been washing his hands at the sink. Their neat terraced Victorian house might be small, but it was home. And her dress might be second-hand, but they had everything they needed.
‘Louie, get yerself sat down and let me dish up yer dinner. You look done in.’ Cathy frowned. She worried incessantly about her husband, especially after the death of his father, Jim. It’d been Jim who’d taken in Ruby’s parents when Cathy fell pregnant. Cathy’s own parents had been quick to see the back of her.
Ruby smiled at her dad, her co-conspirator and ally.
Louie turned to wink at his daughter as he offered his plate up to her mum. ‘Don’t fuss, love, I’m fine,’ Louie said, waving away her concern.
Louie spent his days at the scrapyard on the Isle of Dogs, a few streets behind their house. It was a bustling place filled with stacked-up discarded cars, forklift trucks moving large machinery into piles, and workers and sellers haggling over the price of that day’s offerings. It was hard work and long hours for little pay, but Louie grew up around the site, dodging cranes and trucks and following his own dad around after school.
‘Darlin’ I’ve been workin’ on that scrapyard since I was fourteen, but it’s tough work. A man gets tired,’ Louie said, picking up his knife and fork and looking at Cathy expectantly.
‘I know, love, and your dad always said he’d wanted better for ya. He never wanted ya to leave school and earn a wage in such a place . . .’ Cathy started to say, but Louie cut in.
‘Look, babe, Dad brought me up on his own. We needed the money. I never regretted it, though sayin’ that, I nearly did today; it was a bad day, I’ll admit that.’
‘Why, Dad?’ asked Ruby as she cut up her sausages.
Louie glanced over at his wife, suddenly unsure if he should say what was on his mind. Cathy stopped dishing out Bobby’s food. ‘Go on,’ she said, eyebrows raised. Louie looked like he regretted mentioning it.
‘One of the cranes almost took out a pile of scrap. It ’appens. I’m fine and no one got hurt . . . It’s times like that I’m bloody sure ya need to make the most of your locksmith apprenticeship, ya won’t be followin’ in my footsteps, Bobby.’
‘Language!’ admonished his wife, but her face was worried rather than stern.
‘I’m fine,’ Louie said. ‘Now let’s eat, I’m starvin’. And anyway, all I ever wanted was to raise a good family and get a good wife, and I done that.’ He smiled at Ruby.
‘Somethin else did ’appen today,’ Louie swallowed his forkful of heavily salted potato and boiled peas, and leaned forward.
‘Not sure I want to hear this,’ Cathy said, sitting down and starting to eat. ‘Bobby, get yer elbows off the table. We might not ’ave cash to throw about but my kids will grow up with proper manners,’ she muttered.
‘I am grown up, Mum!’ Bobby beamed.
‘Go on, Dad,’ Ruby interjected, keeping the peace.
‘Well, somethin’ ’appened today that hasn’t ’appened for a long time. I got offered crooked work . . .’
The revelation prompted Ruby to glance over at Bobby, who was looking at their dad in surprise.
‘You said no, right, Dad?’ Bobby said, putting down his fork.
‘Course I did, son, but they were pretty insistent. These blokes I knew at school came in to the yard, drivin’ a right old banger of a van. I thought they looked shifty. I went to say hello and shake their ’ands, and they drew me over to the van, opened up the back doors and there it was . . .’
‘There what was?’ Ruby burst out. She was dying to know the answer.
Louie turned to look at his daughter. He could see the glint of fascination in her eyes. ‘It was a safe. They’d nicked it from a warehouse down the docks and wanted me to open it with my welding torch.’
‘I could’ve done that without the mess for a nice fee. Wouldn’t take more than a minute to crack a safe open,’ Bobby cut in, laughing.
It was clearly a joke, but Cathy frowned again. ‘Go on, love,’ she said to her husband.
‘That’s it. They offered me a small fortune to crack it. I told them I don’t do that kind of business. I said, “Everyone round ’ere knows I don’t do no crooked work, I leave that to the villains around our way.”’ At this point Louie frowned. ‘For a minute, I thought they weren’t goin’ to take no for an answer,’ he said.
Cathy’s face registered alarm. She understood what he meant. ‘Did they threaten ya?’ she asked.
‘I think they thought about it,’ Louie answered carefully. ‘Luckily there were a couple of the lads on site and they saw what was goin’ on and came over. But for a minute there . . .’
Ruby saw the briefest glimpse of fear on her dad’s face and guessed there was more to the story than Louie was letting on.
‘Anyway,’ he said with forced brightness, ‘everyone knows now, if they didn’t already, that
