The Know

by Martina Cole

  Earl shrugged.

  ‘Whatever.’

  ‘Do you want me to get the mother’s mobile number for you?’

  Earl grinned.

  ‘Fuck off, Brewer!’

  As they drove away Jon Jon said, ‘How could they have taken money, Earl, knowing they were letting them nonces go out to do it again? My little Kira . . .’

  Earl slowed the car.

  ‘I know about Rowe and, believe me, he is one dangerous cunt. They were trying to protect their own. We all would in their position. And they’re right about the filth - how many addresses have we got off them over the last few months? He could have found Leigh through court transcripts or local court papers. Use your loaf, Jon Jon.’

  ‘But it’s not your little sister they went on to nonce, is it?’

  ‘My little sister looks like Ms Dynamite on amphetamines with twice the mouth. No nonce in their right mind would approach her.’

  Jon Jon didn’t smile even though he had met Renee many times. She was thirteen going on twenty-nine.

  ‘And without being funny, Jon Jon, you don’t know for sure it was the Thompsons, do you?’

  ‘It was them all right.’

  ‘You think they would nonce your sister, knowing all about you?’

  Jon Jon sighed.

  ‘Well, that makes no sense, does it, because they nonced a Rowe and Harold wasn’t exactly the nicest bank robber on the fucking block, was he?’

  Earl nodded.

  ‘Point taken.’

  Jon Jon started to roll a spliff as they drove along, something he had never done before in public.

  ‘Drive back! I forgot to do something,’ he ordered.

  Earl turned the car round.

  Mandy was watching a film and her husband was pouring them both large brandies. It had been an eventful night.

  ‘I feel bad, don’t you, Mandy?’

  She nodded.

  ‘But how could we have known that was going to happen?’

  She couldn’t bear the thought of them having anything to do with the disappearance of a child.

  ‘How much did Thompson give Leigh?’

  ‘Twenty-five grand.’

  Her husband choked on his brandy with shock.

  ‘Fuck me! That was a good few quid, weren’t it? I didn’t realise it was that much.’

  Mandy nodded.

  ‘He had an easy let off though, Mandy. I’ll be honest, I wondered for a while if she had made it all up. You know what our Leigh could be like . . .’

  His wife interrupted him.

  ‘Not this time. And anyway, that was years ago when she was a kid.’

  He sipped at his brandy before he said, ‘I never believed it, you know, Mandy, none of it.’

  His wife turned in her chair to look at her husband properly, the film forgotten.

  ‘What are you saying?’

  He shrugged, his large belly rippling with the movement.

  ‘I asked Caitlin and she said Leigh had told her what to say to people.’

  ‘Of course she told her what to say to people! You don’t want your own kid talking about God knows what to all and sundry. Your own fucking daughter and you still can’t believe a word she says.’

  ‘All right, keep your bleeding hair on. But be fair, Mandy, she has told a few pork pies over the years, ain’t she? I never saw anything untoward, that’s all I’m saying.’

  ‘So?’ Mandy snorted with anger. ‘You expected to see them do it in front of you, did you? Is that what you’re saying?’

  ‘All I’m saying is, when did either of them have the chance? Leigh wasn’t living there, was she? I mean, it was just visits over, and trips to the park with the kids and that . . .’

  Mandy shook her head in consternation.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell that geezer that then? If you’re so sure they were innocent and your own daughter is a fucking bare-faced liar!’

  ‘Because she is me daughter, that’s why.’

  That was when the paving slab came through the front-room window. Mandy and her husband watched helplessly as their car was trashed by an irate Jon Jon wielding a baseball bat.

  ‘Call the filth, go on! Oh, but you people don’t call the filth, do you? Not even for fucking child molesters and murderers,’ he yelled through the broken window.

  They didn’t answer him.

  There was nothing to say.

  ‘Happy now, are you, Mandy?’ her husband murmured.

  She sat on the sofa and surveyed the state of her front room and cried. But like Jon Jon said, they didn’t call the police. They weren’t that stupid.

  Joanie was awake as usual. She crept from her bed as quietly as possible so as not to disturb Paulie. In the kitchen she made herself a cup of tea and laced it heavily with Scotch. Mary Brannagh had brought the bottle over earlier in the day and as it was the only alcohol in the house she drank it gratefully.

  Joanie took out her Tarot cards and shuffled them lazily, then she placed them on the table in front of her. She stared at the cards as if they were an enemy, which at this moment in time she felt they were. Night after night she had wanted to give a reading for her daughter, see what the cards told her. Since Mary had said Kira was with a dark-haired person it had caused Joanie to swing between hope and despair.

  She already knew everyone thought Kira was dead. Now she was terrified of seeing it written in the cards. She gulped at the lukewarm tea, the Scotch reviving her even as she loathed the taste. Then, placing her head on the table, she started to cry again. It was a quiet sound, not the noisy sobbing she had given way to earlier. These were tears of fear and self-recrimination.

  She should never have let Kira go out that day, but she’d had so much to do she had not been her usual vigilant self. Since the tear up with Monika poor Kira had been wandering around like a lost sheep unless she was over Tommy’s. But he had been out that day as well.

  What on earth had Joanie been thinking of to let her go to the shops on her own? Was her baby cold and tired somewhere now? Did someone have her imprisoned? Was she trapped in a fridge, gasping for breath?

  The possibilities were endless and Joanie knew it was doing her no good at all to speculate. She groaned, the sound startling in the quiet flat. Even the loud music that was par for the course on the estate was not blaring out tonight, perhaps in deference to her mourning.

  Was that what she was doing? she wondered. Mourning her child?

  Then she was vomiting, holding her hand over her mouth to stop the foul spray from spattering the kitchen. She staggered to the sink and retched until her sides ached.

  Then she felt a hand softly stroking her back.

  It was Paulie.

  She retched again and he carried on stroking her back as he whispered words of comfort into her ear.

  But Joanie didn’t really hear him.

  All she was hearing was her little Kira calling out for her mummy, and her mummy wasn’t there.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Little Tommy was outside the flats talking to a crowd of women and men; the search for Kira was still going strong but three days on, the heart had gone out of it. Everyone, including the police, was now looking for a body.

  Still, the search had brought everyone together in a way that no one had thought possible. They all had a common goal and that goal was a child called Kira Brewer. Journalists were still all over the place though the news cameras were gone thanks to a bomb exploding in central London. The estate was alive with expectation, and even though hope of finding Kira alive was waning, it was still exciting for the residents to be front-page news.

  As they read out their own words quoted in the newspapers they didn’t find it at all incongruous that Kira’s disappearance had brought them all together. This was a community who knew each other’s lives intimately. They could see into each other’s homes. They knew each other’s families, everyone’s foibles, exactly who was on drugs and who wasn’t. Who was sleeping with whom; who was banged up and
who had just got out. They knew the names and ages of each other’s children and grandchildren. They lived in each other’s pockets thanks to the way their homes had been designed. When the planners had built them in the sixties they had not allowed people any privacy. This estate had been built to house the overflow from the East End slums. It was old GLC and it looked it - crumbling buildings that were so long overdue for renovation they were only fit now to be pulled down and replaced.

  But this place was their home and in their own ways they made the best they could of it. The council put them here and left them to their own devices. There were unwritten laws on how to behave in this neighbourhood.

  Monika was nowhere to be seen. No one remarked on it until someone opened the Sun. There was a picture of her, all sad-faced and demure, along with the headline: ‘I was on the game with missing girl’s mother’.

  The two-page article explained how she had met Joanie, what Kira was like, and how Joanie had worked the pavements and the parlours.

  None of it was lies, but no one felt that Monika should have used Joanie’s personal business to line her own pockets, which was exactly what she had done. It was a betrayal so heinous to them that Monika would never be able to walk these streets again. Not without taking abuse from everyone around her anyway. This was a tight-knit community and she had overstepped the line.

  ‘The fucking bitch! Like poor Joanie ain’t got enough on her plate.’ This from a neighbour who had systematically rowed with Joanie over the years, usually about the kids, but that was forgotten in the face of this tragedy.

  ‘She’ll get her comeuppance. No one will give her the time of day after this.’

  There was murmured agreement and finally everyone dispersed to go and buy their own copy of the paper and discuss its contents with other friends and family. Monika’s name would be dirt from now on.

  Joanie was a lot of things but she had been a good mother, an exemplary one even, and this was remembered by everyone. She was liked and that was important to all the people in this neighbourhood. They looked after their own and would pay Monika back for this.

  Little Tommy walked slowly back up to his flat. Inside he put the kettle on and made a mug of coffee. He had all the day’s papers and laid them out on the table to peruse them, his eyes lingering on the photograph of Kira.

  ‘My pretty little princess.’

  He said the words out loud and looked around him as if expecting to see her there. The kettle finished boiling as there was a knock on his front door. He shuffled down the hallway to answer it.

  His feet were swollen today. He had been walking so much the last few days that he was paying the price. He was so sad about what had happened it showed in his drooping face and whole demeanour as he opened the door.

  Jeanette was already at the police station. She had been brought in for her assault on Karen Copes. Karen had not pressed charges, but they had kept Jeanette overnight to see a social worker. The girl was out of control and they all knew it but there was nothing anyone could do about it.

  Jeanette had told the social worker to go forth and multiply and the woman had left. After adding another note to her file. She was fourteen years old and living with an eighteen-year-old man who had criminal convictions. His mother was an alcoholic and between her and her son they had more form than the Mafia.

  Yet legally Jeanette was able to do what she wanted with her life and if that meant she decided to live with them then that was fine with everyone concerned. Even if Joanie had attempted to bring her home, it wouldn’t have been possible. The Children’s Charter had given her these rights and Jeanette used them in her own favour to do exactly what she wanted to do.

  Baxter marvelled at a girl who could still get herself into trouble when her own sister was probably lying murdered somewhere.

  He didn’t allow for the fact that she had been on the edge and Karen Copes had pushed her over it. All he saw was a tart, and to him Jeanette was as much of one as her mother. The family were all scum. Those pictures of a little child plastered in makeup had finally woken him up to what he was dealing with here. In his mind Kira Brewer had been part of the family business and he didn’t care how many times the Chief Constable rang him up, he would not change that opinion.

  ‘Did you take those pictures in to be developed?’ he asked now.

  Jeanette shook her head.

  ‘Nope. Why would I do that and not give me name and address? Use your loaf, you must know who brought them in.’

  Her voice indicated one of them was stupid and it certainly wasn’t her. She sighed heavily as if bored by his questions.

  ‘Look, like I said before, they were just a joke. I dressed her up and took a few photos of her, big fucking deal. No law against that, is there?’

  She sat back in the chair and he stared at her. From her short black skirt to her cropped top she was every inch the bullyboy’s girlfriend. Her hair was covered in some kind of shiny gel that made it look like it needed a good wash. Her little skinny legs were nicked with shaving cuts and her heavy shoes looked like clogs on her feet.

  She was covered in makeup: foundation and blusher caked on her skin; vivid colours on her eyes; bright pink lipstick that made her look all-knowing. Like the other girl had, like Kira Brewer looked in her photographs.

  Baxter despaired as he looked at Jeanette. If she wasn’t in the family business now, she soon would be. He had seen it over and over again, girls following their mothers on to the street. It was like a vocation with them.

  ‘So you admit to taking these photographs of your sister?’

  She nodded.

  ‘’Course I do. But what’s to admit? Like I said, there’s no law against taking photos, is there?’

  ‘These kind of photos there is.’

  He pointed at the pictures, practically stabbing them with his finger.

  Jeanette rolled her eyes to the ceiling.

  ‘You’re the one who thinks there’s something bad about them. It’s you that’s making them into something they ain’t. I took them to please Kira. She liked dressing up, and she liked makeup and clothes. All little girls do. Now can I go, please?’

  ‘Where was the film when you last saw it?’

  Jeanette thought for a moment.

  ‘In the bedroom, Kira’s bedroom. She must have taken it in to the shop, no one else had access to it. Now can I go, please?’

  She was dismissing him and he knew it. Her arrogance knew no bounds. It was as if it was in the water supply and all the youngsters hereabouts absorbed it at birth.

  But he had to let her go, there was nothing to charge her with.

  Tommy opened the door to Jon Jon and Earl.

  The smile on his face was replaced by an expression of terror when Jon Jon seized him by the scruff of the neck and battered him against the hall walls as he manhandled him into the lounge. He pushed him to the floor.

  ‘You know why we’re here, don’t you?’

  Tommy didn’t answer. He was still heaving from exertion but his eyes said he had a pretty good idea.

  ‘What did you do to my sister, you fucking nonce?’

  Jon Jon’s voice was low, no shouting, just pure intimidation. He kicked at the man a few times, feeling the softness of that flabby flesh against his boot. Just the feel of Tommy enraged him; he was convinced the fat useless bastard was laughing at him. As he looked into that moonlike face he felt it, felt the fat freak’s contempt.

  ‘You must have thought you’d got away with it, you and your fucking father! I know all about Caitlin, I saw her granny and she told me about you.’

  At the mention of the girl Tommy blanched.

  ‘It wasn’t true, Jon Jon, I swear! She was a liar, that girl. I never touched her.’

  Tommy was terrified and it showed.

  Jon Jon hauled him up with difficulty and spat into Tommy’s face.

  ‘I will kill you if you don’t tell me exactly what happened, do you hear me?’

  Earl watched th
en said quietly, ‘Do it, Jon Jon. Stab him up. Fucking take him out now.’

  Jon Jon half turned his head, listening to his friend. Then he saw that Tommy was out cold. He had passed out with fright.

  ‘Fear will do it every time.’

  Earl’s voice was all-knowing.

  Jon Jon went out into the kitchen. Seeing the kettle still steaming he turned it on again. When it had boiled once more he walked back into the lounge with it and poured it all over Tommy’s stomach and between his legs.