Gangster Girl

by Dreda Say Mitchell

  ‘Like I said.’ Stella waved her hands in a carefree gesture. ‘Times were hard for a woman like me. I had to put bread in our mouths and that meant finding work—’

  ‘You mean,’ Daisy stammered, butting in. ‘You were a . . .’ She swallowed. ‘Sex worker?’

  Stella threw her head back and laughed. ‘Sex worker, eh? At least Frankie bought you up to have some manners.’ Her laughter stopped abruptly. ‘You want the truth, so here it is. I was a prostitute, a tom, on the game, call me what you like, but I was also a mum who was gonna make sure her kid was never kitted out in gear from the charity shop. I grew up in the gutter and there was no way I was gonna make you cut your teeth there as well.’

  ‘But surely—’

  ‘You wanted the truth, my girl. I could sit here and spin you a line about being a poor, innocent girl selling flowers in Covent Garden, but that ain’t how it was.’ She placed her manicured fingers over Daisy’s cold hand. ‘I love you and it don’t matter what I’ve done in this life, I always will.’

  But the life the other woman was placing before Daisy did matter. She snatched her hand back. Folded both her hands nervously in her lap. ‘If you felt so strongly about me why did you turn your back?’

  Stella eased back. ‘I wanted to see you, but Frankie wasn’t having none of it. Said as long as I was on the game the door was shut squarely in my face.’

  Daisy’s urgent words pushed her forward. ‘Why didn’t you come and get me once he died?’

  ‘I had problems of my own going on and it didn’t seem right to drag you into them. Plus I was a married woman, with two more kids to feed. So I waited and waited. Then the other day someone is telling me about how this solicitor called Charlie Hopkirk had gone to join the majority and that he had this really smart girl called Daisy Sullivan working for him. So I put two and two together and here we are now.’

  Daisy ran two of her fingers across her bottom lip, her mind still in a daze. Was she really sitting across from her mum? ‘This has all been such a shock. I’m going to need time . . .’

  ‘Ah, but that’s the problem Daisy, we don’t have time.’ For the first time Daisy saw a flare of solid steel enter the other woman’s eyes.

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Like I just said, you worked for Charlie Hopkirk, didn’t you?’

  ‘You know I did,’ Daisy answered, confused.

  ‘Me and good ol’ Charlie go back years. He was my first ever brief.’ She leant forward. Her voice lowered as if she were telling a secret. ‘Charlie was a favourite among my girls.’

  Daisy let out a shuddering gasp as she realised what Stella was implying. That Charlie visited a . . . Daisy shook her head. No way. Not Charlie. Not her mentor. He was a family man. The man she’d placed way up high on a pedestal.

  ‘I can see that you’re shocked at the idea that Charlie liked a bit of illicit tickle. His sort are my best customers, you need to have a fair bit of poke to afford my prices.’

  ‘I don’t believe you . . .’

  ‘Everyone’s got secrets dear. And Charlie’s got hold of one of mine. See, he’s got something that belongs to me and you’re the only one who can help me get it.’

  Daisy’s face sank. ‘Is that what this is about?’ Her voice was loud. People at the other tables turned to look at her. ‘You never came here to see me . . .’

  ‘Keep your voice down and don’t get your M&S drawers in a twist,’ Stella’s voice was totally controlled. ‘Let’s just say I’m killing two birds with one stone.’

  Killing. That’s exactly what Daisy felt this woman doing – killing her.

  Daisy half rose out of her seat.

  ‘Sit back down.’

  But Daisy just straightened to her full height.

  ‘Sit down, Daze – or do you want to explain away your family history to all those nobs you knock about with these days? Your old mum, a “sex worker”?’ Stella said softly. ‘And I bet they don’t know about good ol’ Frankie. That’s not a good career move is it? A big-time criminal on your birth certificate? Surely there’s rules against gangsters’ kids being lawyers, ain’t there?’

  ‘I am not ashamed of who my dad was,’ Daisy hissed.

  ‘Maybe not. But how are you going to feel if I waltz back into your office and start telling your la-di-da friends my life story?’

  Daisy wavered at the harsh realities thrown at her. She’d worked too long to let anyone spoil her future. She eased back down.

  ‘See? That wasn’t hard was it? Now, the thing is Charlie’s got a safe-deposit box,’ Stella swiftly started. ‘And I know you know where it is. Because a little bird saw you take something from Charlie’s office late last night.’ Her voice hardened. ‘I need that box.’

  It took Daisy two seconds to remember she was also Frankie Sullivan’s daughter. She lied like she’d never lied before. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ Daisy stared Stella straight back in the face.

  Stella shoved her angry face across the table. ‘Please, Daisy. Let’s not spoil things – you know what happens to kids who tell fibs don’t you? They get a smack. A big smack.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, but I tell you what I do know, I don’t ever want to clap eyes on you ever again.’ She grabbed her handbag off the back of the chair.

  ‘All you’ve gotta do is give me the details,’ Stella ground out as Daisy stood up.

  Daisy flung the strap of her handbag defiantly on to her shoulder. She stared at the woman she’d waited years to meet.

  ‘You might be my mum, God help me, but you can sod off.’

  She twisted around and marched towards the door and was soon disappearing into grey, moody, afternoon light.

  Daisy walked quickly as tears streamed down her face. Her gut tightened with tearful rage as she thought about the woman she’d just left behind. That was her mum? That evil witch? The woman she’d waited practically her whole life to meet? The sick shot up from her tummy. She covered her mouth. Quickly ran into a side street. Bent over and threw up. This couldn’t be happening. This was a total nightmare. What was she going to do? She needed help. Now.

  She straightened up and wiped her mouth with the back of her trembling hand. She pulled out her phone. Scrolled through the contacts list. Found Jackie’s number. Made the call. Pressed the phone to her ear. It rang. And rang. And rang. Where the hell was Jackie? In her shock she had forgotten that her adoptive mum was on holiday.

  ‘Bollocks,’ she let out as she cut the call and slammed the phone against her chest. Her mind whirled as she thought about who else she could call. Jerome? That thought made her feel even more sick. What would she say to him? ‘Oh, by the way, my dad was a gangster and my mum was a tart.’ Jerome was a definite no-goer.

  Who else? Who else? Who else?

  She leant on the wall and breathed easier as a name suddenly pinged on in her mind like a light bulb

  Misty. Of course.

  Misty would know what to do. Her finger ran down her contact list as she quickly moved back into the main street. The rush of a speeding engine sounded somewhere behind her. She took no notice as she found Misty’s number. Just as she was about to press it two arms like steel bands grabbed her around the waist. A hand clamped over her mouth pushing back her scream. The arms around her pressed painfully against her ribcage and lifted her off the ground. Legs kicking in front of her she was shoved face down inside a van. The door slammed as she scrambled on to her front. Terrified she watched as a young man crouched in front of her. He had a piano tattooed on the side of his neck. He smiled like he was about to coo to a baby in a pram.

  ‘Hello there, sweetheart. I’m your kid brother, Tommy.’

  Then his fist shot out and landed on her jaw.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Daisy slowly woke up to complete darkness. She couldn’t see a thing. No shadows. No lights. Nothing. Didn’t know where she was. She groaned, as pain suddenly burned across the lower half of her face.
The right side of her face felt like she’d smashed her head into a wall. She tasted the metallic flavour of blood inside her mouth. Her body tensed as the previous events ran through her mind like a mad movie. The van. The man with the tattoo. The punch. She tried to shout for help, but something large and round, like a ball, was jammed into her mouth holding her tongue back. That’s when she realised why she couldn’t see. There was a hood over her head.

  And the way her hair fell inside the hood and the sagging of her clothes and the pressure of blood in her head told her she was hanging upside down. She tried to move her legs, but they were secured, with something that felt like metal, maybe chains, to something else, perhaps a beam in the ceiling. Desperately she tried to move her hands, but they were wrenched behind her back by something cold, hard and round. Handcuffs.

  ‘She’s awake.’

  It was a male voice. Not too far away, but not close either. She cringed as footsteps beat against the floor. Then she heard a squeaky cranking noise. Her body jolted as she started to move downwards. She wriggled her body in her desperation to get away. Someone laughed. For him at least the day had turned out OK. The blood rushed to her face as her body continued to move down. And down. And down. Her head smashed into a wall of freezing water.

  The water clung with the heaviness of an ice-cold block against her face. The soaking hood clung, like a new skin, against her ears, her nose, her mouth. Shit, she couldn’t breathe. In panic she screamed, but the ball inside her mouth muffled her noise. The pressure of the water grew. The hood grew tighter. She tried to kick her legs, but the muscles only tightened and twitched. Tried to move her arms, but they bunched and bounced behind her. She gulped hard, fighting for a new supply of oxygen to fill her lungs. But there was none. No relief. Tears sprang to her eyes because she knew she was going to die. How long she was under she didn’t know but she could feel death clinging to her like the hood itself. Her body started shaking as her vision blurred.

  Suddenly she was pulled up and out. Desperately she tried to draw in new waves of oxygen through her nose.

  ‘Had enough?’

  She trembled as she heard the voice. Throaty. Husky. Her mum. Stella King. No way. Her mum wouldn’t do this to her? Try to murder her? Even the evil woman who’d paid her a visit must have her limits.

  ‘All you’ve gotta do, my girl, is hand over what you found out about the deposit box.’

  She wouldn’t do it. But then she thought back to the water. To the sensation of losing her grip on life. Losing touch with reality. Losing everything she’d ever dreamed of. She made her decision.

  Rapidly she nodded as more tears began to fall.

  ‘See? That wasn’t hard was it? Do you think I like doing this?’ Stella whispered huskily.

  But instead of being taken down she plummeted downwards again. This time she let out a muffled animal scream as she hit the water. She coughed as she shifted her head from side to side trying to get away from the hood. From the ball in her mouth. She wheezed as the hood and water tightened their grip around her nostrils. She fought for as long as she could. Then the other darkness came as she started to lose her grip on consciousness. As her eyelids fluttered down she was hauled back out.

  ‘That was just a reminder, not to forget.’

  The soaking hood was pulled from her dripping head. The ball gag unfastened at the back. She drew in air like a newborn babe. She squinted sharply as the electric light broke against her eyes. The first thing she saw was an elaborate claw bath, filled with clear cold water, underneath her. She ran her gaze over the rest of the room. She thought she’d be somewhere dark and dank, the type of place where gangsters took their victims to be tortured in the movies. But it wasn’t. The walls were white with a hint of lilac. On the wall opposite was a huge Moroccan-style mirror with alcoves that housed unlit candles on either side of it. The floor around the bath was stripped wooden boards painted white. Where the hell was she?

  Suddenly she felt big hands circle her ankles. Heard a clicking noise. One of her legs sprang free. She dangled one legged in the air. An arm cupped her back as her other leg was released. Before she could fall strong arms curved around her. She coughed as she pushed the wet strands of her hair from her face to look at who held her. She did a double take when she realised who had her in his arms.

  Her saviour from earlier on in the day.

  Ricky.

  ‘Meet the family, Daze. Family is important to people like us.’

  Daisy, who had been placed in a chair by Ricky, lifted her pale, freezing face at her mum’s words and stared at the other occupants of the room. Unlike her they were all standing. The tattooed man, the man claiming to be her brother, who had punched her lights out just after he introduced himself as Tommy. Another man, older, more muscular and beefy. They made eye contact. He was the first to look swiftly away. Her gaze darted onto Ricky, whose eyes had looked fiercely at her as he’d placed her in the chair as if warning her to say nothing about their earlier encounter. She’d kept her mouth well and truly shut. And, of course, her loving mother.

  Stella King moved towards her, her strong face set into a grim, deadly mask. Daisy cringed back in her chair as the other woman stopped in front of her.

  ‘That one over there,’ she pointed towards Tommy, ‘is your younger brother, Tommy. He loves playing the piano when he’s not breaking people’s necks; I’m afraid he doesn’t do requests.’ Tommy smiled at Daisy as his hand went inside his black leather jacket. He pulled out a large blade and waved it in greeting at her as if it were his hand. Daisy sharply looked away.

  ‘The man next to him is Billy, my right-hand man.’ Stella’s face glowed with a wide smile. ‘The sweetest bloke in the world. You wouldn’t believe it but he helps the lads at this boxing club. But what you got to understand is that his take on life was slightly altered after he did a ten-year stretch for killing his old man at the age of twelve. His old man throttled his mum to death. Now that’s what I like, a man who is loyal to a woman.’

  Daisy and Billy made eye contact, as they did earlier and again they looked swiftly away.

  Her eyes swung around to Ricky. ‘And this is . . . actually, who are you?’

  Ricky leant relaxed, arms folded against the wall. He grinned back at Stella. ‘I’m a dark, handsome stranger, Mrs King, the sort who steals the hearts of the maturer kind of woman.’

  Stella giggled like a teenager. ‘Saucy sod . . .’

  ‘Excuse me, Mum,’ Tommy warned. ‘He’s on my payroll, not yours. It was me that recruited him, not you. He’s fresh out of Belmarsh and I’m not paying him to play boy meets girl. Certainly not with my ol’ dear anyway.’

  ‘Knock it off, kid,’ Billy warned the same time he took a menacing step towards Tommy.

  Daisy watched the family ping pong, stunned out of her head. Was this really her long lost family? Murderers? Jailbirds? East-Enders meets One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest?

  ‘OK, that’s enough,’ Stella said calmly. ‘You know the rule, Tommy boy, no one comes into this outfit without my say-so.’

  Tommy puffed up his chest. ‘Well, I say-so.’ The tension tightened in the air. ‘Anyway all I need to know about Ricky is he’s handy with a shooter and defending my back without me having to ask.’

  Stella hitched her head back. ‘He ain’t proved dick to me.’

  ‘If it’s dick you’re after, Mrs King . . .’ Ricky cut in softly.

  Stella pierced him with her silver gaze. Then laughed.

  ‘Where am I?’ Daisy croaked, speaking for the first time.

  Stella turned her attention back to Daisy. ‘The Deadwood Hotel, Finsbury Park, it’s one of my palaces of varieties. You wouldn’t believe it but some men pay a load of money to be hung upside down and shoved head first into a bath of water. Near-death experiences really give some men the horn.’

  ‘You mean this is a knocking shop?’ Daisy squirmed on her chair as if there was something nasty on the seat.

  Tommy let out a boom
ing, bouncing laugh. Stella’s eyes blazed, not at him, but at Daisy.

  She grabbed Daisy’s upper arm, half dragged her out of the chair and spat, ‘Don’t play Lady Muck with me, Daze. Bad-mouthing your own flesh and blood? That’s not nice is it? Besides, everyone is recycling these days and that’s all my girls do, recycle their bodies.’

  Daisy rapidly nodded, seeing that the woman above her didn’t care for having her profession dissed. Stella shoved Daisy back in the chair. Stepped back, her right hand rubbing absently over her left breast. ‘Don’t upset me, Daze. I’m a traditionalist, people like me still bury people like you under concrete foundations. And there’s a load of scope for that with the Olympic village being built up in Stratford and all. You could bury the contents of an entire graveyard up there and no one would notice.’

  An image of being buried alive in concrete swept Daisy’s mind. A chill ran over her already cold body. She crossed her arms over her middle as she watched the anger slowly seep from her mother’s eyes.

  ‘Now, where is it?’

  Daisy knew what it was, the safe-deposit papers. ‘Back at my place.’

  ‘Go and get it and bring it back here.’ Stella turned swiftly around. Pointed at Ricky. ‘I want you to go with her. Take one of my motors parked around . . .’

  But before she could finish another voice cut in from the doorway, ‘Is this a private party?’

  Stella snarled loudly at the newcomer in the doorway and growled, ‘It’s not a private party but I don’t think it’s your kind of do, sweetheart – it’s a soft drinks only affair, if you know what I mean.’

  Jo-Jo King waltzed into the room, with tiny birdlike steps that fit her petite frame. Tommy shot off the wall, but Jo-Jo ignored him. She carried on walking towards her deeply unhappy mum. ‘Now is that any way to greet your daughter, Mummy dearest?’ She tipped up on tiptoes and planted a tiny kiss on her mother’s reddening cheek. ‘You told me not to darken your door again until I was clean. Well, I’m pleased to announce that I’m sparkling. Wanna check?’ She rolled back the sleeve of her blouse to display her bare arm. ‘You won’t find a fresh track mark on me.’ Her arm fell limply to her side. ‘Mind you, I still like a slug of something every now and—’