by Martina Cole
It didn’t occur to him to share any of his knowledge with the police. This was personal, he wasn’t about to let them fuck it up for him. If they caught whoever it was they would just lock them up, and what good was that to Jon Jon? He wanted retribution, and he was going to get it. That was why he had not mentioned anything to his mother. ‘Sufficient to the time thereof.’ He knew his Bible, he read it often enough thanks to Sippy and his teachings. ‘An eye for an eye.’ Yeah, he’d take the fucker’s eyes out all right. The Bible gave good retribution, he liked the easiness of it. You fucked up, you paid the price. You covet my ox and I’ll stamp on your head. It was, after all, still the law of the street. Two thousand years later he felt the Bible had more relevance to people like him than all the clergy and politicians in the world.
‘Let me make you a sandwich, Mum, you must eat something.’
She shook her head.
‘You have one, I couldn’t eat a thing.’
He made her a sandwich anyway and tried to encourage her to eat it. Then he waited with her until Paulie came round to take over for the night. He had been a brick the last few days and Jon Jon knew his mother felt better when Paulie was around. He couldn’t leave her with anyone else because she wouldn’t take notice of anyone else.
Paulie kept her occupied. He had heard them having sex, and was glad. If it took her mind off what was going on, Jon Jon wouldn’t mind if she took men on by the dozen. And Paulie cared about her. He tried to act like he didn’t but it was clear for anyone to see who bothered to look. Jon Jon was sorry for them both really. In another life they would have settled down together and been happy.
He looked at Kira’s photo once more and prayed to God to bring her home. He didn’t hold out much hope that his prayers would be answered.
He left them a little later, his mother lying on the sofa and Paulie Martin waiting on her hand and foot.
It was a sight to see.
Jasper Copes and his friends were still searching for Kira. It was as if they were on a mission, Jasper feeling honour bound to help find Jeanette’s sister.
Sippy and his friends were all still looking as well, and the number of BMWs out on the streets had doubled over the last twenty-four hours as other friends of Jon Jon’s joined the search. The police were pleased with the turnout, giving them all designated areas to search, and for the first time ever they did as Old Bill asked.
The news crews loved it. Skinheads and Rastas working together with rude boys and casuals made for wonderful footage; everyone set their differences aside to look for the little girl. Kira Brewer had done more for race relations locally in a few short hours than any government could have accomplished in years.
But by now the searchers were aware that they were looking for a body as opposed to a living, breathing girl.
No one said that out loud, though.
When Sippy lit a joint while he helped search Victoria Park painstakingly the police didn’t bat an eyelid. Everyone was working together for a common goal. Nothing else mattered.
Clubbers had joined in, pubs emptied as the news had gone round. And outside Joanie’s flats people had laid flowers and messages of hope. But now time had run out and that was the hardest part for everyone concerned.
Leigh Rowe’s mother was a big woman with bleached blonde hair and a cigarette permanently dangling from her lip. When she heard the knock on her door she assumed it was kids. The ones where she lived were bastards and saw it as their aim in life to hassle the fuck out of everyone around them. Knock Down Ginger was practically the only game round these parts.
She opened the door in a short black lace dressing gown and a scowl, cigarette still hanging from her lip, and when she saw Earl and Jon Jon was not in the least fazed. It was twelve at night and she answered the door as if it was the early afternoon.
‘What?’
Her face was hard and closed.
Earl looked at Jon Jon and shrugged.
‘Well? Is this a social call or what?’
She removed the cigarette from her lip and flicked it expertly into the road.
‘Are you Mandy Costner?’
She looked Jon Jon over as if it was a rat standing on her doorstep.
‘Who wants to fucking know?’
Jon Jon had had enough of East End hard nuts. Pushing her back into the hallway he bellowed, ‘Me! I want to fucking know.’
Earl followed him into the house, laughing gently to himself.
‘Well, he ain’t in!’
She was trying to push them back outside. Jon Jon and Earl realised she thought they were debt collectors after her old man.
‘We ain’t here for money, we’re just trying to locate your daughter . . .’
She was panting with exertion now.
‘What do you want her for? Did that Harold send you? Only if he did, I don’t know where she is.’
The front room door opened and a big man with a bald head, large shoulders and an even larger belly stepped into the narrow hallway.
‘What the fuck is going on here?’
Jon Jon had had enough of it all.
‘Get back in there! Earl, shut the fucking door. And you . . .’ he pointed at the woman . . . ‘shut the fuck up and go in the lounge and let me get to the bastard point.’
They stared at him stupidly until Earl said gently, ‘Do what he says. He really ain’t in the mood for being fucked about.’
‘You come in my house and start ordering us about . . .’
The big man was annoyed and Earl and Jon Jon understood that. Jon Jon, however, had wasted enough time. He pushed and prodded both of them into the lounge. Earl followed him and turned the key. They knew now they were locked in here with two apparent madmen. It was all part of gaining the psychological advantage.
Inside the room the couple stared at them in trepidation. Jon Jon sighed heavily.
‘I’m not here on Harold’s behalf, though I do want to find your daughter.’
The man and woman looked at each other sceptically.
‘Is that right?’ Mandy’s voice was flat now, all fear gone. ‘And is that a pig flying over the top of the house?’
She lit another cigarette slowly, pulling in the smoke before she spoke once more. ‘It’s always to do with Harold. He beat the shit out of her and he enjoyed it. What that girl had to put up with . . .’
She pulled on the cigarette again.
‘I don’t care if you’ve got guns, you can shoot me and I still ain’t telling you fuck all. So you are wasting your time.’
It was her final word.
The man sat back in a chair by the fireside and started to roll a cigarette for himself.
‘She’s right, mate, my daughter had enough from him while he was on the out. We ain’t telling you nothing about her, no matter what.’
Jon Jon sat down on the sofa and said in his friendliest voice, ‘I swear, mate, I don’t even know Harold.’
‘What do you want then?’
The man licked the Rizla as he asked this. It was evident he was completely uninterested in the answer.
‘My sister is called Kira Brewer. She’s missing.’
He saw them exchange glances.
‘We’re sorry about it but what has that got to do with us?’
It was Mandy talking now and her voice was gentler.
Jon Jon took a deep breath before saying, ‘Your daughter accused a bloke of noncing her daughter Caitlin. Well, this same bloke, Little Tommy Thompson, used to look after my sister.’
They looked at one another again. The man barked at his wife, ‘Make a cup of tea, Mandy.’
She nodded and left the room, Earl following her. They weren’t stupid, no one was going anywhere on their Jacksy tonight.
‘So what have you got to say then?’
Jon Jon waited as the man eyed him up. He understood this caution. He had heard all about Harold Rowe and he was a nasty piece of work. Jon Jon knew he needed to gain their trust but all this piss-balling about
was starting to irritate him.
‘Caitlin was nine when she accused him. She used to go round there with the other kids, see. Leigh had taken up with the father, though what she saw in him I don’t know - he was as old as me! But after Harold I suppose anyone seemed a better bet. Cunt he was - broke her nose, her arm, punctured a lung once. Accused her of all sorts he did - jealous bastard. But Harold was also shrewd and when he got banged up it got worse. She had calls at all hours of the day and night, from so-called friends of his. You know the score. Keep the grass widow company - whether she wants it or not.’
Jon Jon nodded.
‘Anyway, he had a few quid this Joseph - compensation or something, I don’t know - and he was gonna take them all away. Then that all fell out of bed, don’t ask me why, and that’s when it came out about Caitlin. They didn’t go to plod or nothing. There was a few rows, I clumped the old man naturally. Then Leigh got a place and she went, and the Thompsons had to leave because it was too hot for them to stay.’
Jon Jon nodded.
‘So who exactly did she accuse?’
‘First the father and then the son, as I remember, and then it turned out they were both at it, see. What a fucking pair of scumbags, eh? And that fat geezer like butter wouldn’t melt, though I must admit I had me reservations about him from the off. Fucking dolls! What geezer plays with fucking dolls unless they’re a bit doolally tap?’ He pointed at his temple to emphasise what he said.
‘We never really got to the bottom of it. Leigh only told us the bare bones as and when she found out about it. Only natural really when you think about it. Who wants people to know their kids have been nonced?’
‘And where is she now?’
The man grinned.
‘Sorry, son, I ain’t telling you fuck all about her whereabouts. She had a right old time off Harold Rowe and I ain’t ever taking the chance of his finding her. He’d kill her - or get someone to do for her anyway. Sorry.’
Jon Jon understood; he would be protective of his own sister or daughter.
Mandy came back in with the teas and she was laughing; she and Earl had obviously got along fine.
‘What was this money Joseph was supposed to have?’
Jon Jon was wondering if it had come from child porn or some such skulduggery.
‘He gave our Leigh a wedge to stop her involving Old Bill and I told her to take it. I said, ‘‘You take it, girl, and fuck off out of it all.’’ And that’s what she did. Right or wrong, that’s what she did.’
Earl could see the logic but it was Jon Jon who hit the nail on the head when he said, ‘But if he was a nonce, why didn’t she stop him from being able to do it again? My sister is missing, maybe even dead, because your daughter didn’t tell anyone. She let him get away.’
Mandy had the grace to look ashamed but said unrepentantly, ‘You don’t know Harold. When Joseph offered her that money it was like a gift from God. She needed it to get shot of her husband once and for all.’
Jon Jon was appalled and it showed.
‘So she used her own daughter’s abuse to do that, did she?’
He shook his head in disgust.
‘Do you know something? People like you make me sick. If your daughter had taken this to the authorities, my sister might still be around.’
He could feel violent anger bubbling up inside him at the injustice of the situation.
‘We weren’t to know that, were we?’
‘If he did it once, chances were he would do it again or had done it before. You don’t do deals with people like that. She should have took the wedge and still tumbled him.’
Mandy was annoyed as well now and said caustically, ‘Well, she didn’t. How was she to know he’d go after someone else?’
Jon Jon bellowed: ‘He went after her girl so I think that might have given her a hint, don’t you? Or do you think your grand-daughter has the fucking edge on noncing? Once a nonce, always a fucking nonce. It’s like an illness, ain’t it?’
No one spoke.
Leigh’s father rolled another cigarette but his hands were shaking.
‘No one thought beyond getting her away from Harold and his family,’ he growled.
Mandy took up his words.
‘You don’t know what it was like - even we had to move away, that’s why we came over here. He had us hassled all the time: fucking dog shit through the letterbox, taxis at all times of the day and night, abuse when we walked the streets from his bleeding mother . . . another mad old hag, her. It was a living nightmare. My girl was like a fucking corpse - couldn’t eat, sleep. Even from prison he still controlled her life. He didn’t care about those girls, just used them to get to her. She took the money and run, and who can blame her?’
Jon Jon felt sick.
‘No one is blaming her for that, but she should have fingered the Thompsons.’
‘And involve the filth? Harold would have got her address easier from them than anywhere else. You should know that, son. Most of that lot would do anything for a drink, and what’s an address, eh? No, Harold would have seen my girl dead. We did what we thought was best at the time.’
Jon Jon laughed cynically.
‘Best for you anyway.’
He stood up.
‘Come on, Earl, this place is doing my head in.’
Jon Jon knew they’d get no more about Leigh’s whereabouts. Not by asking anyway. Outside they turned on the scanner they kept in the car and fiddled about with it until they heard Mandy’s voice speaking on a land line. They could have listened in on a mobile too. They had assumed she would let her daughter know what had occurred and they were right.
The scanner was a boon in their job. You could listen to anything: police radios, mobile phones and land lines, providing they had a walk-around phone which like most people these days Mandy clearly did.
Asylum seekers used these to listen in on cab firms’ wavelengths and nick their fares. They were a great little tool.
Mandy explained the situation to her daughter who sounded frightened by recent events. Her mother quickly put her mind to rest.
‘They were nice enough lads, love. I don’t think your Harold would have had any truck with soots anyway, you know what he was like. And the big one, Earl . . . well, I tell you, girl, I wouldn’t kick him out of bed!’
The two women laughed and Earl rolled his eyes in embarrassment.
‘You’ve pulled anyway, Earl.’
He just shrugged.
‘Mum, you’re terrible.’
The two women laughed once more.
‘No, I mean it, he was lovely.’
Mandy laughed again.
‘That little Kira . . . do you think they’ll find her, Mum?’
‘Who knows, girl? I hope they do. Bless her little heart, she looks like Caitlin. All that blonde hair and those blue eyes.’
‘Poor little cow.’
‘And if those two Thompson bastards are involved! Well, I wouldn’t want to be them if the two blokes who came here tonight get hold of them.’
She didn’t say that Kira’s brother was blaming Leigh for not speaking up but it hung between them unspoken. Leigh changed the subject quickly.
‘You and Dad all right?’
‘Yeah, fine. How’s things your end?’
‘OK. We’re still in Pevensey Bay, catching the last of the summer. I’m going back on Sunday. They love it here, Mum, and so do I.’
‘How’s the caravan?’
‘It was a bit messy. Whoever you rented it to last time wasn’t too fussy, but I’ve spring cleaned it so don’t worry. By the way, I’ve replanted them terracotta pots outside for you.’
‘All right, love, thanks. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.’
‘Thanks, Mum. For everything. ’Bye.’
Leigh’s words were loaded and Mandy said sadly, ‘I love you, girl.’
But her daughter had gone.
Earl was already looking up Pevensey Bay in his A to Z.
‘Don’t bothe
r, I’ve heard enough.’
‘We going there now?’
Jon Jon shook his head.
‘No, we are going to get ourselves an alibi.’