by Emmy Ellis
“That’s the bit that’s confusing me. They went on about purple hair and Orchid, but that was it.”
“Do you know who they are?”
She shook her head. “No, they had London accents. I’m from Birmingham, but I disguise how I really speak. If it’s to do with that lot, they must have sent those three here.”
Greg sat beside her. “Right, let’s get some facts straight. You live in one of our places, so there’s no spending footprint—unless you use a debit or credit card, you haven’t been found through that.”
“I don’t. Cash every time.”
“Fine. They knew your purple hair colour and where you work—they were watching last night and saw you come in. Why didn’t they get you then? Why didn’t they clock your face?”
“Come on. At first glance they wouldn’t recognise her tonight because of the blonde,” George said. “And if they weren’t paying that much attention… Debbie said the main bloke seemed distracted, panicked.”
“Okay.” Greg nodded and stared at Orchid. “If they’re after you, why didn’t they find you before you had one of our flats? Your name would have been on everything then. I assume you’ve got a bank account?”
“No.”
“Where do you keep your money then?” Greg asked.
“In a safe.”
He sighed. “So, who knows where you are? Who from Birmingham?”
“Only my brother, Will, but he doesn’t know where exactly, just that I’m in London. I’m not in regular contact with him, thought it best I keep away from him.”
“A good sort, this Will?” George asked.
“The best.” Her eyes misted.
“He’s in with this gang, yes?”
“Hmm.”
“What if they put pressure on him? How would he react to that? Like, would he feel forced to tell them where you are, no matter how much he cares about you?”
She gasped and stared at the carpet. “I’d like to think not, but…”
“When did you last hear from him?” George had a bloody good idea where this conversation would end up.
“In the middle of the night, a couple of days ago. He said Mum had been threatened but didn’t mention what with, just that they wanted to know where I was. Well, Benny Chadworth wants to know. He’s the ringleader.”
“That makes no sense,” Greg said. “You’ve been down here for years. Why now?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. I asked Deb for a week off. I was going to go up there, talk to Benny, tell him I hadn’t breathed a word.”
“Stupid, if you ask me,” George told her. “Walking back into the lion’s den is never a good idea.”
“I realise that now.” She wiped a tear that fell. “But I panicked. I couldn’t care less if they hurt my mum, she’s a fucking cow, but I wanted them to lay off Will—before they pushed him for answers, not after.”
George thought of his deceased mother and how he’d feel if she’d been threatened. Well, she had been, and he knew how he’d felt. Murderous. How come Orchid didn’t feel the same way?
“So you don’t give a toss about your old dear?” he asked.
“No. She can rot in Hell for all I care.”
“Then let her rot, let them do whatever to her.” George had since revisited his ‘no killing or hurting women’ rule, and if Orchid didn’t give a fuck about her, there had to be a good reason. Probably because she’d forced her child into a gang as a nipper.
“But my brother, he doesn’t deserve any shit,” Orchid said.
“What about other family members?”
“I have two other brothers, older than us. Trev and Len. They’re as bad as Mum, Benny, and Anthony.”
“Who the sodding hell is Anthony?” Greg asked.
“Another gang member.”
“So get Will out of it, get him down here. We’ll look after him.” George did a mental calculation on the empty flats they had. There was one by Orchid’s. “He can be your next-door neighbour and work for us. If he’s a hard bastard…we can always do with those.”
“I doubt he’d leave,” she said. “He’s too scared to.”
Now for the bit George didn’t like, but it had to be said. “Could that text have been sent on purpose, to flush you out of hiding?”
She stood abruptly, hands clenched into fists by her sides. “No! He’d never do that to me.”
“Or maybe,” Greg said, “it was sent so they could pinpoint where you are. Does this gang have the police on their side? A copper who could check the mast to see where the message ended up?”
“Oh God…” She sank back onto the bed. “They’re not that kind of gang, not that clever.”
“When you knew them,” George said. “Things change.” He paused, staring at Greg, then diverted his gaze to Orchid. “Looks to me like your brother set you up, love. Now then, what are we going to do about it?”
Chapter Four
Will hated his life, especially since Rebecca had run off. That had brought untold shit, everyone panicking that she’d grass them up. But time was a great healer, or so the saying went, and things had calmed down for a while after her departure, although Benny asked Will every now and then if he’d heard from her—he wasn’t going to let her stay away indefinitely.
Will hadn’t told him she’d absconded to London.
Benny had got it into his head that Rebecca had told someone all about them, hence barging into their house in the middle of the night and threatening Mum.
“If you don’t find out where she is, I’ll fucking have you,” he’d said.
Mum had wheedled it out of Will, about London, and passed the info on, even though she’d promised she wouldn’t. Why had he fallen or her trick—again? Did he think she’d changed, the blossoming optimism spreading through him that she’d finally do the right thing by her kids?
Once he knew Benny was aware, Will was sick to his stomach about eventually dobbing Rebecca in—and that was what it amounted to. Benny had applied extra pressure on him, and two weeks after the threat to Mum, Anthony had disappeared, and Will had texted Rebecca to tell her about it in the hope she’d come home.
So far, she hadn’t arrived, nor had she responded to his message. He’d purposely left it vague, just that Mum had been threatened, and he supposed that was a mistake. Rebecca wouldn’t give a toss about their mother. And maybe she’d switched her phone number and hadn’t received the text at all.
Will pushed up off the latest new sofa in the house he’d lived in all his life. Mum got them on tick at DFS, and every time she’d paid up, she ordered a new one. She liked to think of herself a someone, although in reality she was nothing but a thug with her blackened heart and mean ways.
In the hallway, he shrugged his thin trackie jacket on. He had to get out, walk off the fear, the guilt. No way would he normally have intentionally let slip where his sister was, but things had got too hairy, and he’d caved.
He always was the weak link. Mum always had been able to force him to talk. All right, it had taken her three years to get it out of him, but she’d got what she wanted in the end.
“Where are you fucking going?” she asked from the kitchen doorway, her hip propped against it, her long brown bob recently dyed at the posh hairdresser’s in town, banishing the grey that told everyone she wasn’t as young as she liked to make out. Her eyebrows had been done an’ all, arched perfectly, tinted, no silver strands in sight.
He wouldn’t be telling her she looked permanently surprised.
Will sighed. He hated her yet loved her, which was odd, considering how she treated him. He’d never understood his unbreakable tie to her, how she could hurt him, say and do whatever she liked, and he was still there, living under her roof. Maybe he didn’t want to leave now in case Rebecca came home. Maybe he didn’t trust what would happen to her if she turned up and he wasn’t there. So why was he going out, leaving her at the mercy of Mum if she did arrive?
“I need some air.” He bent over to slip his
boots on, the ones with the steel toecaps. They were new and needed breaking in for later.
She folded her arms beneath her fake boobs, something she’d recently acquired after a big payout, having the op between jobs so it gave them time to heal. She wasn’t growing older gracefully. Her clothes, ‘mutton dressed as lamb’ Nan would have said, left nothing to the imagination, skimpy efforts, probably to keep Benny coming to her bed.
“What, at nigh on midnight? And make sure that’s all you’re going out for.” She walked away, her tight leather trousers squeaking with each step.
Yeah, mutton.
He knew what she hadn’t said: Make sure you’re not going to ring that daughter of mine and let anything slip, warn her Benny’s still searching. What was there to let slip, though? He knew fuck all except for Benny being nasty to Mum that time.
As he tied the laces into a bow, he wished his life had one, shiny and red, his world a perfectly wrapped gift, but it was more like one of those presents you got at Christmas that you didn’t like and had to pretend you did. A fake smile, a “Thanks, it’s great!”, and all the while you asked yourself: Do they even know me to have bought that?
Will detested working for the gang, always had, his dream of being a doctor long gone. Mum had allowed him to go to college so she could still get the Child Benefit, but after that, no university for him, he had to work for Benny, robbing. No, she didn’t know him at all, and neither did his two brothers, Benny, or Anthony come to that. Rebecca did, though. She’d had dreams once, too, dashed like his.
Was she realising them now? Had she gone to uni to become a nurse? They’d planned, as kids, to work in the same hospital, caring for people. Instead, they upset them, stole their things, and when Mrs Didders—
He shifted his thoughts. That had been a bad time—or one of them—and no good would come of rolling it around in his head again. It never changed the outcome, nor did it assuage the guilt, even though he hadn’t had a hand in it. Guilty by association, that was what he was.
He walked out and closed the door, surveying Justice Road in the darkness, and wasn’t the street name a shitshow, a mockery of what went on in Mum’s place, in Anthony’s and Benny’s—no justice there at all. A long sigh, and he headed for the end where Mrs Didders’ house stood, and around the corner towards The Flying Scotsman. He could do with a beer if the pub wasn’t shut, but even if it was he wouldn’t bother—they had a job on in the early hours, and the no-alcohol rule was firmly in place, what with the mess that had happened when Trev, one of his elder brothers, had shown up pissed as a fart, bodging shit.
They’d almost got caught.
Summer was a bit of a beast this year, the air too hot, Will’s skin clammy with sweat, so he took his jacket off and tied it around his waist with the sleeves. He should have brought a bottle of water with him, but his need to get out of the house had trumped common sense, his other need to contact Rebecca too strong to ignore. He’d phone her—knew her number off by heart so it wasn’t stored on his mobile, her first and only message deleted—and warn her that if she did come home, Benny would be waiting. At least if she had an idea of what she’d face, she’d be better prepared.
It was a risk, though, doing that. If Benny found out…
As if Will’s thought conjured the man, Benny drew up alongside him in his Volkswagen Golf, the green of the paintwork a weird yellow from the ochre streetlight close by. Will’s stomach cramped, and he released a hitched breath. What did Benny want? Their job was at three a.m., but Will would be home well before then, ready. Had Mum told Benny he’d fucked off and Benny had come to cart him back where they could keep an eye on him?
The passenger-side window slid down, and Benny leant across, one hand on the empty seat, the other gripping the steering wheel. Half of his face was the same odd colour of the car, the other in shadow. Light played on his grey beard, one he kept neatly trimmed, and he must have recently put some of that oil shit on, because it glimmered.
“Get in,” Benny ordered.
Like Will had a choice of ignoring the command. He opened the door and slipped inside, Benny’s hand sliding away to join its twin on the wheel, positioned at twelve o’clock. Will closed the door and drew the seat belt across, nerves scattering.
Benny drove off. “We need a chat.”
If ever he said that, it meant one of them had fucked up. This had to be regarding Rebecca, but Will had his story straight. He had to keep her safe, to make up for letting Mum know where she was—and keep himself safe. He didn’t fancy a fist in his face—or something more sinister.
“Okay.” What else could he say?
“We’ll have it at a place I recently bought.”
“Right.”
The journey to the outskirts was made in silence, Will worrying about what Benny would say, what he might ask him to do. If Will had done something wrong, he’d get a right old telling off, Benny whipping his flick knife out and placing it at Will’s neck. That had failed to bother Will as much as it had the first few times Benny had done it, but it still had the ability to send his knees weak, his mind rooting out the familiar question: Will the blade cut me this time?
The shape of a house came into view, the backdrop the moon lighting up some white clouds in front of it, and the roof with a dip in the middle. A wonky chimney stood proudly at one end, four pipe-like things on top. An old house then, probably purchased for a low price. Benny did that, his legitimate business, a cover for the seedier things he did behind the scenes—a property developer, he called himself, but Will thought of him more as a fixer-upper, or, to be truthful about it, someone who stood by watching while a team of grafters did all the hard work.
Benny turned onto a track that led straight to the building, the headlights picking out features, much like a torch on a face: the top windows as eyes, a porch and front door the nose, the mouth a row of overgrown bushes that obscured the lower sills. Dilapidated was the word for it, a tired old place that would look good once the builders had been in. God knew what it was like inside, but Will would bet he’d see it in a minute.
Benny parked and got out, Will following him to the leaning porch. The weathered door, which he’d spied prior to the high beams going off, had perhaps once been a vibrant royal blue but now resembled grey mixed with the more powdery hue of a summer sky, one that had been clear and hazy earlier, Will staring it and wondering if Rebecca saw the same thing. People the world over were connected by the sky, weren’t they. Everyone had the same sun, moon, and stars.
“In here.” Benny stuck a key in the lock, turning it and giving the stiff door a bit of a kick. He entered and flicked a switch, and the bare bulb in the hallway came on.
Will stepped in and stared around. Wallpaper from a bygone decade peeled in places, some geometric gaudy yellow stuff that pointed to the seventies with a firm retro finger—Will should know, he loved films based around then. All the doors, dark mahogany with nine square inserts, had a cocaine-like line of dust on the bottom of each panel. The place had a neglected air, one that screamed of abandonment, people running in the middle of the night, never to return, the bailiffs after their arses.
Benny closed the door. “Got this cheap because the bloke who it belonged to popped his clogs, didn’t he. Wasn’t found for ten years, can you believe that? No one gave a sodding shit about him enough to check where he was in all that time. The bills were paid like clockwork from his bank account, so nothing to tip anyone off that he was rotting his backside off in the bedroom. As you can see, he lived in squalor, yet he was loaded, apparently.” He gave one of his weird, on-the-wonk smiles and walked off towards the door at the end.
Did that speech contain a veiled threat? Was he saying the same could happen to Will and no one would give a shit? Would he be left to rot somewhere?
Fucking hell.
Will trailed him and ended up in a kitchen, the light from the hallway seeping in only enough to give a glimpse of ancient pine cupboards with a film of old cooking gre
ase on them. A Welsh dresser still displayed plates, held up by the little once-white arms of plastic holders, the plates themselves white with blue pictures painted on them.
“Wedgewood,” Benny said. “Worth a few bob. I paid extra for those. Some nephew, twice removed or whatever, was eventually found living in Australia, and he flogged the gaff.”
Will didn’t need to know this bollocks, but it wasn’t like he could tell Benny to shut up and get on with the real reason why they were there, was it. “Nice.”
“Anyway, we’re not here to discuss this dump.”
So why did you then?
Benny switched on a small strip light beneath a wall cupboard, and the illumination dredged up a load of filth and dust from out of the previous shadows. Was that a crusty baked bean beside the cooker? It could be a little pebble, he supposed, what with it being close to grey, but bloody hell, this place was gross.
“Where’s Rebecca?” Benny asked. “I mean really, where is she? I know it’s London—and that’s another thing. How come you’ve not long said she went there—how come you kept it to yourself?”
This was where Will’s story came into play. “I didn’t know until the day I told Mum. Rebecca hadn’t contacted me in years, then out of the blue, she said she’d started a new life in London and she hoped I was okay, and sorry for taking so long to let me know.”
“See, since you said, I’ve had fellas down there looking for her. A fortnight, and they’ve been everywhere. It’s a big place, so there are a few men in different areas. Got to be careful there, they have these weird estates where people rule over them. Did you know that?”
“No.”
“Neither did I until my main contact said, and it gave me the idea of doing the same here. I’ll run this town, let alone a bloody estate.” Benny laughed, his long teeth hanging out. “I kind of already do when you think about it. People know me, they’re scared of me. Won’t take much persuasion to get them to pay me protection money.”