His own . . . The way he smirked when he said it . . . something inside Frankie flared right up.
‘You know he doesn’t fucking own you, right?’ he said.
Jack’s smile faded. ‘It’s just an expression.’
‘Fine.’
But it wasn’t fine. Nothing like fucking fine. Not for Jack and not for him either. He remembered his promise to Riley, the favour he’d one day have to pay him back. But only if Riley delivered. Only if the fucker gave him something on that witness. And he’d come up with sweet FA yet.
‘Anyhow,’ said Jack, ‘the way I see it, I’m safer off in here than out there on the streets, the way things are going . . .’
‘You mean Riley’s boy?’ The dealer. The one found dead with the knickers in his mouth. Hamilton couldn’t have sent out a harder message to Riley if he’d tried. God only knew what reply he’d get back.
‘No, not just him,’ Jack said. He looked downcast. ‘I mean Mickey.’
‘Mickey Flynn?’
‘You not heard?’
No. Not a peep. Nothing in the papers. ‘What happened? When?’
‘Late last night . . . he got done over. One of the screws told Stan this morning.’
‘How bad?’
‘He’s in St Mary’s now. They reckon he’s going lose his left eye.’
‘Jesus . . . They know who done it?’
‘The Hamiltons.’
‘But why?’ Mickey might be officially affiliated to Riley, but he’d not exactly been exclusive, had he? He’d been drinking with one of Hamilton’s boys when Frankie had gone round and collared him in The Toucan.
There was no love lost between Frankie and that little weasel, but shit, was this because of him? Because Hamilton had found out Frankie had gone there to see him the morning Jack was nicked? Because he’d worked out that meant he might have known something about who’d killed Dougie’s girl? Or might even have been somehow involved in it himself?
Not good. Mickey was a pussy. He’d coughed up everything he knew to Frankie after he’d just slammed him up against a wall. What the fuck else would he have spilled when someone like Hamilton got hold of him? He’d have told him what he’d told Frankie. About the speed. He’d have told him about Mo.
‘Word is it’s not just any old fucking Hamilton who did him either,’ Jack said.
‘The old man himself?’ Frankie could see it. Some goon – some nasty fucker like Shank – holding skinny little Mickey down, while Terrence set about him with a wrench.
‘Nah.’ Jack still looked revolted, because Mickey was his mate. But he looked excited too, buzzing, as if keeping this titbit to himself was too much to bear. ‘Dougie,’ he said.
Seriously? Not that Dougie didn’t have the nerve for it. Frankie had seen that. The fucker was fearless. But that had been right when it had been raw, when he’d just found out about her, when he’d clearly been out of his mind.
‘At least that’s what they’re saying in here,’ Jack said.
‘But he’s a lawyer.’
‘A lawyer with a knife.’
Frankie remembered him again outside the club. Had Dougie been carrying then? Was it only them being in broad daylight that had stopped him pulling a blade on him? Or was this something new? Was Dougie someone new? Had all this terrible shit that had happened turned him into somebody else? Someone much more like his old man?
‘Has he been arrested?’
Jack laughed. ‘Has he fuck. What? You think Mickey grassed to the pigs? He’s not stupid. Well, not that stupid anyway, the poor prick. The way I heard it, whatever he told them . . . maybe how he’d been with me the day she got killed . . . and whatever else . . . and after, what I heard he got told was that if he ever showed his face west of fucking Bristol again, he’d have it cut right off. Who knows why they didn’t kill him. Maybe some fucker he knew spoke up for him. Wasn’t the fact he worked for Riley, though . . . Dougie didn’t give a shit . . .’
Meaning the cops’ worst fears had already come true. A turf war. But not just about territory and market share. Personal. About revenge. Tit-for-tat. About the Hamiltons running roughshod over anyone who got in their way. And Riley likewise.
‘I meant what I said about Stan Lomax,’ he said. ‘You keep him well close.’
‘I hear you,’ Jack said.
It wasn’t just Jack who should watch his back. The old man’s pistol. Frankie pictured it there in his mattress. The Hamiltons might have another crack at him as well. He’d still not even loaded it. Wasn’t even sure that ammunition inside the box still worked.
‘There’s something else,’ said Frankie. He felt his heartbeat spike.
‘What?’
‘This . . .’ He took a passport-sized, black-and-white newspaper clipping from his jacket. A photo of a girl. He put it down on the table. ‘You recognise her?’
Jack picked it up, his eyes narrowing.
‘I don’t know . . . there’s something . . . but . . .’
‘It was taken a while ago. Her hair . . .’ Frankie remembered Tara lying there dead on the kitchen floor. ‘Her hair would have been cut short more recently . . .’
Jack was still staring. He held the photo now in both hands.
‘Yeah, I think I . . .’
‘Go on.’
‘I don’t know when, but I think I . . . you know, with her . . . but I just can’t . . . who the fuck is she, Frankie?’
‘Tara,’ he said. ‘Tara Stevens.’
Jack shook his head and put the photo back down, but his eyes wouldn’t leave it alone.
Frankie told him, ‘You might have known her as Star.’
‘Christ,’ Jack said. ‘It was her, wasn’t it? Who I was with that night. I remember now. Round at Stav’s. I remember heading out with her down Notting Hill to get wasted . . . but . . .’
‘And then?’ Come on, you wanker. Remember.
‘I think . . . I think we—’
‘Yeah?’ Frankie wanted to shake it out of him. ‘Come on. Go on.’
Jack looked up. ‘I think we went back . . . back to mine . . . I think we ended up partying there . . .’
Partying. A fucking euphemism. For getting off their knockers. For fucking each other blind.
‘You sure about that?’
‘Yeah. I mean, I think . . .’
‘For how long? All night?’ While Susan Tilley was being killed?
Jack’s expression crumpled. ‘I dunno.’ He pinched the clipping tight between his forefingers and thumbs, like he could somehow wring the answer out of it. ‘I’m not sure . . . the rest of it . . . it’s all still a blur . . .’ His eyes flashed at Frankie. ‘Where is she? Can she help? Have you found her?’
‘I did,’ Frankie said, ‘and maybe she could’ve . . . but I was too late . . .’
He took out another piece of paper from his pocket: page five of today’s Daily Mail. He smoothed it out on the table beside the snapshot. It detailed Tara’s death, how she’d been found surrounded by petals in her kitchen. The empty square in the article was where he’d cut her photo from. He’d not wanted Jack to see the article first. Had wanted him to make up his own mind if he’d ever seen her before.
Tears welled up in Jack’s eyes. All his earlier Mr-fucking-Cool was gone. ‘Whoever did this . . . whoever did this to me . . . whoever put me here . . . they did that to her . . .’
‘I know.’
‘And now she’s gone,’ he said. ‘And without her say-so, we can’t prove shit, can we? Without her, I’m fucked. I’m gonna be stuck in here for the rest of my life.’
‘No. Don’t give up,’ Frankie said. ‘There’s still the old lady. She might still put the finger on somebody else.’ The old lady and the witness. If Riley ever came through.
Jack’s lip curled. ‘And if she doesn’t?’
‘Then we’ll just keep trying, won’t we? We’ll do whatever it takes.’
And not just the old lady and Riley. Keira too. With Star now dead, maybe if Keira did kno
w something more about that night, she’d be prepared to talk. Maybe she’d even be frightened enough to want whoever was doing this stopped. And women confided in each other, didn’t they? Star might have told Keira something else, something that could help. Making Keira Frankie’s next port of call.
Time to track her down again and really turn the screw.
37
Frankie waited until it was dark before heading over to Portobello Road. Neither Stav or anyone working for him would be conscious much before then.
The same motley crew of junkies and low-lifes were in the basement as before. The same smell of death. The same Russian heavy stood guarding the stairs. Part of the fucking brickwork.
‘Remember me? I came round the other night,’ Frankie said.
‘I remember.’
Frankie moved towards the door. The Russian didn’t step aside.
‘Stav said not to let you in.’
‘He did?’
The heavy just chewed his gum.
‘And why’s that?’ Frankie asked.
The heavy shrugged. Kept chewing. His fist stayed locked round the same heavy South African baton-torch as before.
‘I’m looking for Keira,’ said Frankie. ‘She here?’
The Russian shook his head. Was he lying? His eyes gave nothing away.
‘Do. You. Know. Where. She. Is?’
The Russian smiled. ‘The morgue.’
‘You what?’
‘Dead.’
‘No,’ said Frankie. This dumb fucker was confused. ‘Not Star. I mean, Keira. The other girl. Her friend.’
‘Dead.’
‘Keira’s dead?’
‘Both dead.’
Frankie mouth ran dry. ‘But . . . but how?’
‘Drowned. In the river. This morning. By Hammersmith.’ He said it like it was a suburb of Moscow.
‘But she can’t have . . . just fucking drowned.’
Another shrug. ‘Junkies OD all the time.’
Frankie couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Or seeing. This wanker. He was grinning. Frankie’s hands balled into fists. But what was the point? This guy was a psychopath. He didn’t give a shit. He’d probably enjoy getting hit. He’d enjoy caving Frankie’s head in with that torch even more.
Frankie shut himself inside the phone booth on Ladbroke Grove. It smelt of piss and its grimy windows were a gallery of call girls advertising their wares. Jesus. Keira was dead? Was it true? Why wouldn’t it be? That prick had no reason to lie.
He took out Sharon’s work card and dialled her number that was on it. The receiver stank of someone else’s breath and he held it at an angle away from his mouth as he counted the rings. Eight, nine, ten . . . Just fucking be in. Fucking pick up.
‘Yeah?’ a voice answered. Not Sharon’s, some bloke’s.
Frankie felt a prickle of . . . what? Surprise? Curiosity? Jealousy? It was half ten. Could be anyone. A friend. A relative. But it wasn’t, was it? It was him. Her boyfriend.
‘Is Sharon there?’
‘Er, yeah. Sure. Who’s calling?’
‘A colleague.’
A lie. A stupid one. She was sure to have introduced him to some of the people she worked with. But he lucked out. The bloke – Nathan Witherspoon, wasn’t that his sodding name? – didn’t even ask.
‘Janey,’ he called out.
Janey? Who the fuck was Janey? Shit. Had he dialled the wrong number? But no. He couldn’t have. He’d just said clear as day it was Sharon he wanted to talk to.
‘Someone for you,’ shouted the bloke. ‘A colleague.’
The way he said the word . . . it was obvious he’d found it odd after all. Frankie cringed. Idiot. He should have hung up the second he’d answered. A crackle on the line. The receiver changing hands.
‘Hello,’ Sharon said. ‘Who is it?’
‘Frankie.’
‘Oh, right . . . Er, hi, Dave,’ she said.
‘We need to meet.’
‘Oh, I thought we’d talked about that already. I thought we’d agreed it wouldn’t be necessary. At all.’
Nathan was still there then. Still listening.
‘It’s important,’ he said. ‘I swear. I wouldn’t have rung if it wasn’t. I need to see you. Now. And I’m sober, all right? Not like when I called you the other night.’
Silence. He pictured her face.
‘OK.’
‘The same place as before’ he said. ‘The Starlight.’ Where they’d first talked. Down the road from Jack’s flat.
‘Fine. The incident room. I’ll see you there in half an hour.’
Was Nathan in the room with her? Or was she watching the doorway, wary in case he returned? He pictured where her phone was in the hall. Where her bed was too. And the front door.
He hung up. Waved down a cab. Told the driver to take him over to Warren Street. What the fuck did it all mean? What that heavy had said. Had Keira really OD’d? Somehow fucking drowned? Just like that? Out of the blue? Jesus, yes, it was possible. And shit, the cash he’d given her, she could have even spent that on whatever it was that had topped her. Or not. Or she hadn’t bloody OD’d at all. Because that made sense too. Because if Tara had been killed, then why not Keira too? Or, fuck, was he just out of his depth? Because he couldn’t make any sense of it at all.
He stared out the cab’s window, feeling sick. They were cutting through Bayswater now, getting closer to her, to Sharon. So he was back then? Her fella. From wherever the hell he’d been . . . oh, yeah . . . Hong Kong. Meaning what? That if things hadn’t already broken down good and proper between Frankie and her, then they would have done now. Forget her. Forget you and her. You’re not going to see her about you. This is about Jack.
She was already waiting in the Starlight by the time he got there. Same table they’d sat at before. No other customers. She’d already ordered him a coffee. Milk, three sugars. She’d already half-finished hers.
‘So what’s with the Janey thing?’ he said, sitting down.
An ice-breaker. Her face stayed hard as rock.
‘It’s my middle name, if you must know,’ she said.
‘What’s wrong with Sharon?’
‘Nothing. He just . . . Nathan . . . he doesn’t like it. He thinks it’s . . . It doesn’t matter what he thinks,’ she said. ‘Listen. Why am I here?’ She still hadn’t taken off her coat.
‘That girl you told me about . . . Star . . .’
Her eyebrows darted up. ‘I told you about?’
So she still thought it was him who’d put in that anonymous call to tell the cops that Star’s DNA might prove a match to the condom from Jack’s flat. Thought, but couldn’t prove.
He didn’t bite. ‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘that’s right. When you came round to mine.’
‘What about her?’ she said wearily.
Carefully does it. He had to pretend he’d spoken to Keira after Star had been found dead. Or Sharon would know he’d been lying when he’d denied knowing who Star was when she’d accused him of making that anonymous call.
‘After you told me Star . . . Tara’s name,’ he said. ‘I asked around. About who she might work for.’
‘You’ve got no right. That’s our job. Not yours.’
‘Yeah, well I done it anyway.’
‘Stav Christoforou,’ said Sharon. ‘That’s who you’re about to tell me she worked for.’
‘That’s right.’
‘We ask questions too.’
‘Yeah? Well I asked about who she hung out with as well. Who her friends were.’
‘And?’
‘And I found someone. Her best mate.’
Sharon shook her head. Her lips made a thin red line as she sipped at her coffee.
‘What?’ said Frankie. ‘Girls like her don’t have any friends?’
‘I’m not saying that.’
‘Then what are you saying?’
‘That girls like her – and whoever they hang out with – will sometimes say anything if it will get them wh
at they’re after. Like money, or attention, or drugs . . .’
‘So?’
‘So if you’re about to tell me that you’ve turned up some lead on who killed Tara Stevens and how this might prove your brother’s innocence, all on the say-so of someone claiming to be Tara’s best mate, then you’ll have to forgive me if I take it with a pinch of salt.’
‘You take it with as much salt as you like, but this friend of Tara’s I spoke to . . . what she told me was that Tara Stevens did go off with my brother that night . . .’
Sharon stared hard into the steam rising up off her coffee, her brow knitted in concentration.
‘They got a match,’ she said.
‘For what?’
‘The condom. The two sets of DNA . . . they matched Tara’s and your brother’s . . . And other tests they’ve done, on the semen, it proves they had intercourse that night.’
Bloody hell. He’d only gone and done it. He’d only gone and got the bloody cops to bloody well check it out, thanks to that call he’d put in. He nearly punched the fucking air.
‘But that—’
‘No,’ Sharon cut him off. ‘It still doesn’t prove he didn’t kill Susan Tilley. Even within the time frame that new information has given us, it’s still possible for your brother to have gone out to her grandmother’s house. Without Tara Stevens actually giving him an alibi, which she no longer can. Unless . . .’
‘Unless?’
‘What time did this friend of Tara’s say your brother met up with Tara?’
‘A few hours before Susan Tilley was killed.’
‘So not at the same time?’
‘No, but near enough at least to cast some doubt on where my brother might have been that night around that time.’
‘And it’s something she’ll swear to, is it? This friend?’
‘No.’
‘No?’ Sharon flared. ‘Then why are we even—’
‘Because she’s dead.’ He let it sink in. ‘They fished her out of the river by Hammersmith this morning. She OD’d. At least that’s what I’ve been told.’
‘Was she a drug user?’
‘Yeah.’
‘A prostitute?’
Frankie nodded. ‘Another one of Stav’s girls. But that doesn’t mean she OD’d . . . I mean, don’t you find it a bit fucking suspicious? That two girls – one who was with Jack at some point that night, and the other one who knew she was – are now both bloody dead?’
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