by Helen Black
‘Listen, Doctor,’ I say. ‘I know you mean well but the bloke was a kiddie-fiddler. We’re well shot. But Dad can’t know anything about this lot.’ I wave at the tray of notes on his desk. Buff-coloured envelopes with pages of card stuck inside. ‘Check what it says about him and you’ll see why.’
Dr Peters picks up an envelope with Mam’s name on the front and starts to read. He coughs. I presume he’s got to the bit about Mam getting battered. He doesn’t look at her when he speaks. ‘You’ve taken your husband back, Mrs Greenwood?’
‘He’s a changed man,’ Mam says.
Dr Peters frowns at the notes. I know what he’s thinking. If Dad’s changed, how come she needs an abortion on the QT? I catch Mam’s eye and nod at her. We talked about this last night. You can only get an abortion if you’re in danger from having the baby, either physical (apparently having a bloke who’ll hospitalize you when he finds out doesn’t count) or mental.
‘My head’s a mess,’ Mam blurts out, making the doctor look up from the notes. ‘I can’t sleep and I can’t stop crying.’
To make her point, Mam rubs her nose again but the tissue’s disinte-grating and bits fall into her lap, like purple dandruff.
Dr Peters’s face is hard to read. ‘By law you have to see two doctors.’
Bloody hellfire. We have to go through all this rigmarole again?
‘I’ll make an appointment on my way out,’ says Mam, and we both stand up.
‘In the meantime, I’d very much like you to meet with social services, Mrs Greenwood.’
We stop dead in our tracks. Social services. Round our way, folk like social services about as much as they like the police. Everybody knows how they work: first, some social worker comes round pretending to be all nice, telling you to call them Michelle, next thing the kids are in care.
‘Your husband is a violent man, Mrs Greenwood,’ says Dr Peters.
‘He’s changed,’ Mam says again.
‘So you say.’
‘He has.’ Mam’s voice goes up a notch. ‘Tell him, Lib. Tell him what your dad’s like since he got out of jail.’
I think about it. Since he got out he’s been mostly pissed. And when he’s not pissed he spends his time on the settee watching the telly.
Dr Peters puts up his hand as if what I might have to say on the matter doesn’t concern him. ‘I won’t be moved on this, Mrs Greenwood. You’ll get your abortion but I’m making a referral to social services.’
The tonic in the minibar wasn’t slimline but it would have to do. After the terrible day she’d had, Liberty would have drunk the gin neat and from a shoe if necessary. She couldn’t believe she’d been caught speeding. She already had six points on her licence. She’d have to go on one of those courses and spend two days in a room full of teenagers watching videos of fatal crashes on the motorway.
To top it all, she hadn’t even got to speak to Daisy Clarke.
Fuck it, she was going home first thing tomorrow and Ronald would just have to give the case to someone else. If she lost the callme.com takeover then so be it.
She sat on the edge of the bed, took a good glug of gin and tonic and checked the room-service menu. What were the chances that the chicken chasseur wouldn’t be out of a tin?
Her mobile rang. She didn’t recognize the number. ‘Hello. Liberty Chapman.’
A gravelly slurp of laughter came down the line.
‘Who is this?’ she snapped.
‘It’s me, Jay,’ her brother said. ‘Sorry, I just can’t get used to your new name.’
‘Hi.’ Liberty tried to sound cheerful. ‘What can I do for you?’
‘More a case of what I can do for you,’ he replied.
Liberty drained her glass.
‘That girl you wanted to talk to, Daisy Clarke, I’ve managed to get hold of her,’ he said.
‘Yeah?’
‘Turns out you just missed her, so I’ve set up a meet.’
Liberty sat up. ‘She agreed to see me?’
‘Course. Come round the Cherry at twelve tomorrow and she’ll be there,’ he said. ‘I’d have made it earlier but you know what these girls are like.’
‘No worries,’ Liberty replied. ‘And thanks.’
She gave the menu another once-over and decided she’d risk a club sandwich and fries. She poured a second gin and full fat tonic and smiled.
‘Carrot and coriander.’
Sol looked from his wife to the bowl of soup she had placed in front of him. Natasha had insisted he give up smoking and it looked as if she meant for him to give up eating too. Christ, he remembered when soup was a starter. ‘Lovely,’ he said, and took a spoonful. To be fair, it was tasty. It was just that he felt his main meal of the day should at least involve some chewing.
Natasha brought her own spoon to her rosebud lips. The soup formed barely an orange coating on the metal but his wife lapped it down. ‘Carrots are an excellent source of thiamine,’ she told Sol. ‘Important for the nervous system.’
The health-giving or harming properties of food was Natasha’s specialist subject. Her outlook on life had been what had first attracted Sol, her lifestyle an antidote to his own. It was as if it could cleanse him of all the problems that came with his job and clogged his system, like snake venom, poisoning him from the inside.
His first wife, Angie, said he was just a low-down cheating dog, like every other man thinking with his dick, but that wasn’t the truth. Or, at least, not the whole truth. Angie had been in the job, too, and she and Sol had been as toxic as each other, coming home from work their minds full of horrors they tried to erase with drinking, shouting, sex, then more drinking. Their marriage would have killed one if not both of them. Sol meeting Natasha had probably saved Angie as well as himself, not that his ex-wife would ever see it that way. Now, with Natasha’s diet imposed on him, Sol might live for ever.
He sighed. Eternal life wasn’t for everyone.
‘Something wrong, baby?’ Natasha asked.
He noticed her little frown. It wasn’t an annoyed frown but a sad one. He shouldn’t have sighed. Whatever his wife said, whatever she did, whatever she fed him, it all came from the same place: a good one. She loved him. It was as simple as that.
‘Not a thing,’ he answered, and finished his soup. He was clearing away their bowls when his mobile rang. ‘Connolly,’ he said.
‘That you, Sol?’ It was Daisy Clarke. Her voice edgy. ‘I need to talk to you.’
Sol’s pulse quickened. ‘You’ve heard something about Kyla?’
‘What?’ Daisy was irritated. ‘No.’
Sol’s almost empty stomach flooded with disappointment. ‘So what I can do for you?’
‘It’s about that punter I reported. Thing is, Sol, I don’t wanna go through with it,’ she said.
‘Come on, Daisy, you know the score,’ said Sol. ‘I’m not the officer in the case.’
‘Yeah, well, I tried to get hold of her, didn’t I?’ Daisy began to cry. ‘But the bitch won’t pick up her phone.’
Sol glanced at Natasha, who was carefully placing fruit on a platter for ‘pudding’. Two plums, a nectarine – was that what you called those smooth peachy things? – and six cherries. His belly growled. ‘Meet me at Scottish Tony’s?’ he asked.
Daisy sniffed. ‘All right.’
* * *
Scottish Tony’s was actually called the Carter Street Coffee Cup. Anthony and Aileen McEldry had bought it ten years previously, hoping to run a pleasant coffee and sandwich bar. Unfortunately, they had viewed the premises on a sunny Tuesday afternoon and agreed with the estate agent that there was a lot of potential. Of course, what they didn’t see, back on the InterCity to Glasgow, were the legions of working girls who came out to play on Carter Street as soon as the sun went down. To be fair, the McEldrys did end up with a thriving business on their hands. Just not in daylight hours.
‘Usual?’ Tony called from behind the counter.
Sol patted his stomach. ‘The missus would hav
e my guts for garters.’
‘Lucky for you she’s no here, then, eh?’
Sol slid into a seat with his back against the wall. There was an unwritten rule that no beef went down in Scottish Tony’s, but no cop liked to leave himself open in an area like Carter Street.
Two prostitutes were sitting at the table by the window. Sol didn’t know the first but he’d had a couple of dealings with the second. Her name was Jadine, and under her leather mini skirt and fishnets she had a cock and balls Sol would have been proud of. The word was, Jadine was saving to go to America for an operation to remove her tackle. Ten grand was a figure often bandied about, although the numbers changed depending on who was telling the story.
Tony came over and slid a plate in front of Sol. Two slices of plastic white bread book-ended a fried egg, two sausages and three rashers of streaky bacon. A heart attack in a sandwich. ‘You’ll be the death of me, Tony,’ Sol chuckled.
‘No a bad way to go, though, eh? Tony replied, passing him a bottle of brown sauce.
Daisy arrived in the doorway of the café. She clocked Sol, scowled and stomped across to him.
‘You want one of these?’ Tony asked her.
Daisy shook her head and slumped into the chair opposite Sol. She’d had a habit so long now, solid food was a thing of the past.
‘Drink?’ Tony asked.
‘Hot chocolate,’ Daisy replied. ‘With loads of that whippy cream.’
As they waited for Tony to make it, Sol carefully removed the top slice of bread from his sandwich and spread brown sauce across it. Then he replaced it and watched Daisy pick the scabs on her knuckles. A bead of blood rose to the surface of her skin and she sucked it.
When Tony brought over the hot chocolate she smiled weakly and began to spoon the swirl of aerosol cream into her mouth.
‘What’s up, then, Daisy?’ Sol asked.
‘It’s like I told you. I don’t want to go through with these charges,’ she replied.
‘Because?’
Daisy shrugged and took another mouthful of cream. ‘You know how it is, Sol. I was off my tits, got confused like.’
Sol reached across and tugged at Daisy’s collar to reveal the angry bite mark. ‘Nothing confusing about that.’
She batted his hand away. ‘I’m not going to court.’
Sol took a bite of his sandwich. The bacon was salty sweet, and the sausages had a little kick of pepper as the rich egg yolk coated them. He groaned in pleasure. ‘The CPS can get an order,’he said. ‘They can make you attend.’
The truth was that the CPS wouldn’t bother – prostitutes were hardly top priority and they made legendarily poor witnesses – because it was better for the end-of-year figures that a case be withdrawn than the defendant get a not-guilty.
‘I mean it, Sol.’ Daisy looked him right in the eyes. ‘I’m not giving evidence.’
‘What’s made you change your mind?’
Daisy shrugged.
‘Has the punter got to you?’ Sol asked.
‘He’s inside,’ she replied.
‘Someone on his behalf?’
Daisy stirred the hot chocolate, then licked the spoon. ‘Listen, Sol, I’ll do you a deal, all right? If you put in a word for me about this shite, I’ll do something for you. Something you’ll like.’
Sol frowned. There were coppers who accepted favours from the girls and boys of Carter Street. A blow-job here, a blind eye there. But he had never been that guy. Never.
‘What?’ Daisy asked. ‘What are you looking at me like that for?’ Suddenly she understood, laughed and pointed her spoon at him. ‘Fucking hell, Sol! Not that. I’m not being funny but you’re old enough to be my dad.’
Sol didn’t point out that Daisy regularly shagged men old enough to be her granddad for the price of a rock.
‘If you work this out for me, Sol, I’ll find out what happened to Kyla Anderson,’ she said.
A nerve at the base of Sol’s spine began to buzz. ‘I thought you didn’t know anything about that.’
‘I don’t,’ said Daisy. ‘Nobody does. Which is weird, don’t you think?’ Daisy held Sol’s gaze. ‘And what’s even weirder is that no one is even chatting about it.’
The buzz in Sol’s spine turned into a pulse. Gossip was the number-one hobby of choice among sex workers. In lives blighted by violent customers and doses of the clap, hearing that someone somewhere was worse off was golden. The absence of gossip was usually deliberate. A collective decision.
‘If no one’s talking how can you find anything out?’ Sol asked.
‘You leave that to me.’ Daisy fished into her pocket, pulled out a card and slid it across the table. ‘This is the policewoman who won’t answer my calls.’ She tapped the card with a dirty nail. ‘You sort her and I’ll sort the other.’
Liberty watched the younger woman suspiciously. She couldn’t keep still, shifting in her seat, chewing an already bloody cuticle, while endlessly checking her phone.
They were in Jay’s office and, although he’d cleared off his desk, there was now a pile of boxes stacked next to it each one bearing the words ‘Supertight Pocket Pussy’ with a picture of what looked like a silicone vagina.
‘Thank you for agreeing to see me, Miss Clarke,’ said Liberty.
‘Call me Daisy.’
‘That’s good of you, but I want you to know that you’re under no pressure to speak with me. If you want to leave at any time, you’re free to do so.’
Daisy flapped a hand to show that there was no problem.
‘I’ve got your statement here.’ Liberty had it laid out in front of her. ‘And I’d just like to ask a few questions, if I may?’
‘Don’t bother. It’s a load of old bollocks,’ said Daisy.
‘I’m sorry?’
Daisy laughed. ‘I were on a shedload of drugs, didn’t know what I was saying.’
Liberty pressed her lips together. Daisy’s agitation would certainly mark her out as an addict. And addicts got things wrong all the time, but there was no mistaking the black eye she was sporting.
As if reading Liberty’s mind, Daisy said, ‘It was someone else that did it. Another punter. I just got them mixed up.’
‘Are you prepared to tell this to the police?’ Liberty asked.
‘Already done it, love.’ Daisy scratched her cheek with ragged nails. ‘Last night.’ She pushed back her chair. ‘Look, can I go now?’
Liberty stood. ‘Absolutely.’ She held out her hand and Daisy touched it with her own, though she didn’t clasp. The skin of her palm was clammy. She withdrew it and checked her reflection in the huge mirror behind Liberty. She wrinkled her nose in disgust, then she was gone.
As Liberty cleared away her papers, Mel stuck her head around the door, lips painted bright red. ‘Everything all right?’ she asked.
‘Yes. She’s withdrawn her statement,’ Liberty replied.
‘Good result for you.’
Liberty frowned. It was indeed a good result, yet something about the whole episode didn’t feel right. It was all just a little too convenient. She followed Mel out of the office and into the main body of the club. The lights were on and the barman was washing down tables, the air ripe with bleach. Two girls arrived in jeans and T-shirts, chatting in a language she didn’t understand, presumably Lithuanian.
Mel tottered towards them in a pair of red patent mules that matched her lipstick. She leaned in to speak to the girls, who nodded and quickly disappeared through a side door. She eyed Liberty and fingered the coin at the end of her chain. ‘You don’t seem too happy, love.’
‘I’m just surprised,’ Liberty replied. ‘It’s quite a turnaround from Daisy.’
Mel let out a cackle. ‘These girls change their minds more often than their knickers. Working here’s like herding cats, I’m telling you. I’m as old as the hills and not a day goes by when this lot don’t surprise me.’ She put a bony finger on Liberty’s arm. ‘But if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s never to look a gif
t horse in the mouth.’
On her way back to the hotel, Liberty’s stomach growled as loudly as the Porsche, and a wave of hunger hit her, like a breaker on Blackpool sands. She pulled over near a baker’s, garnering the attention of a group of boys, all snap caps and spotty necks. She double-checked the car doors were locked and trudged past them.
Outside the shop two young women were arguing. One waved a jumbo sausage roll, like an outstretched finger, at the other, who was sweating inside a hoodie pulled tight over the drum of her pregnant belly. ‘I never said you was stupid.’ Flaky pastry flew through the air. ‘I said you was acting stupid.’
The pregnant girl bared urine-coloured teeth. ‘It’s the same thing.’
‘No, it’s not.’ The sausage roll made another arc through the air. ‘The one is saying you’re a stupid person, the other is saying you’ve done a stupid thing. There’s a difference, right?’ The girl turned to Liberty. ‘What are you staring at?’
‘I’m not,’ Liberty answered.
‘Yeah, you are.’ Flakes were caught in the girl’s nylon hair extensions. ‘You’re staring right at me.’
Liberty sighed.
‘You got something to say?’ The girl moved towards her, her unkneaded-dough body blocking the path. ‘I’m listening.’
‘I just want something to eat,’ Liberty said.
The girl threw her sausage roll at Liberty’s feet. It landed with a slap. ‘There you go.’
Liberty knew she should turn around and go back to her car. Hell, what was she even doing here? In London she never came into contact with people like this and their pay-day-loan lives. Her days simply didn’t include them. Yet here she was, back in the north for two minutes, and she was craving meat pasties and wanting to give some random idiot a smack round the face.
‘Aye-aye, what’s all this about?’
Liberty looked up and saw Raj in the baker’s doorway, an éclair poised at his mouth. ‘Chantal?’
The girl pouted at him.
‘You’re on bloody bail, lass,’ he said. ‘Think about that when you started a fight in the street, did you?’
‘She was looking at me funny, Raj,’ said the girl, bobbing her head at Liberty.