Taking Liberties (Liberty Chapman)

by Helen Black

  ‘He’s the best. He knows all about this family, what a beautiful bunch of fuck-ups we are, and he married me anyway.’

  ‘So you are happy, then?’

  Crystal licked the moisture from her lips. ‘I’m a Greenwood. Does any of us do happy?’ Her mobile vibrated against the wooden slats of the table and she grabbed it to answer, putting it on speaker phone. ‘Jay? What do you know?’

  ‘I’m still waiting on Danny to call,’ Jay replied.

  Crystal groaned. ‘What’s he playing at? We can’t just sit around here much longer.’

  ‘He’s probably sleeping it off somewhere. Siesta and all that.’

  Liberty zoned out the rest of their conversation. Crystal’s endless bitching was annoying, but she was spot on: they couldn’t just wait around. There had to be something they could do. She imagined Frankie and Daisy arriving in London. What did they do? She turned her head towards the station. They’d have taken the tube from King’s Cross, wouldn’t they? But then what? Maybe someone met them. Maybe Brixton Dave was there when they arrived.

  Or maybe they’d had an address. Somewhere to meet him. How would they do that? Brixton was a big place and they wouldn’t have had the smallest clue where they were going. A pair of hopeless cases stumbling along Brixton Road. Liberty looked up the street as if she could actually see Daisy and Frankie. Then she did see something and it made her smile. She stood up and walked away from the table.

  ‘What the hell?’ Crystal shouted.

  Liberty pointed to the cab office just a few hundred yards away.

  The woman at the desk wore a diamanté pendant in the shape of a seahorse and a black net bow in her hair.

  ‘Were you working in here yesterday?’ Liberty asked.

  The woman narrowed her eyes. ‘Why?’

  ‘I’m looking for someone and I think he might have taken a taxi from here.’

  The woman sat back in her chair. ‘You police?’

  Liberty shook her head and scrolled through the photographs on her phone until she found the one of Frankie and herself taken at Jay’s house. She winced at the sight of them both. Herself grin-ning inanely, dead behind the eyes, Frankie corpse-white and sweating. ‘This is my brother.’ She held up her phone for the woman to see. ‘I really need to find him.’

  The woman checked out the photograph but said nothing. Liberty had anticipated this and extracted a twenty-pound note from her back pocket. She placed it on the desk, keeping her fingers on top of it. ‘If you were here yesterday, can you just tell me if he came in?’

  The woman stared at Liberty, but Liberty felt the note slide away from under her hand. ‘Yeah, I seen him,’ she said. ‘Him and some girl, right?’

  Liberty nodded.

  ‘We don’t usually take them kind if we can help it,’ said the woman.

  ‘Them kind?’

  The woman kissed her teeth. ‘Junkies. Too often they try to run off without paying. But things was quiet yesterday and the drivers was gettin’ vexed.’ She touched the bow in her hair. ‘Better when it rains and nobody wants to walk.’

  Carefully, Liberty pulled out another twenty-pound note and placed it in the same spot as before, this time applying more pressure with her fingertips. ‘I don’t suppose you could look up where the driver took them?’ Again, she felt a tug on the note, but she wasn’t about to let it go until she had what she wanted. The woman kissed her teeth once more and tapped on her computer. Then she scribbled on a receipt with a pencil.

  Liberty released the money and took the receipt. ‘It’s been a pleasure doing business with you.’

  Chapter 18

  April 1986

  Outside, you might get away without wearing a coat, but not here in the kitchen. We can see our breath.

  ‘Is this a castle?’ Crystal asks.

  ‘No,’ I tell her. ‘Just a big house.’

  ‘Is it haunted?’ Jay asks.

  I laugh, but I don’t know why. I didn’t sleep a wink the first week I was here, and not just because the mattress on my bed is lumpier than Mam’s mash. I smile at all three of them and ruffle Frankie’s hair as he picks at a brick of Geraldine’s homemade banana bread.

  The fact that I’ve finally got to see them is down to Snowy. She’s one of Geraldine’s mates. There’s a gang of ’em come over to Langton Manor every Tuesday night. They’re all dead posh but dead scruffy. They don’t seem to mind the cold, and laugh about how much worse it was when they were at Greenham Common.

  One night a woman with pink hair and yellow waterproof trousers asked me if I had brothers and sisters. When I told her I did but I’d not been allowed to see them for months she looked shocked and got me to tell the rest. Snowy, who’s the one that never takes her Benny hat off, said she knew some of the top brass at social services and would ‘make a nuisance’ of herself. Bingo, a contact visit.

  ‘I’ve got something for you lot,’ I tell the kids. They sit there, all excited, little white clouds puffing from their mouths. I go to the cupboard and pull out three Jelly Tots Easter eggs. Easter has been and gone, but none of us is going to mither about a detail like that.

  ‘We’re not meant to have chocolate,’ says Jay.

  ‘Which is why we’re gonna eat the whole bloody lot now and tell nobody,’ I say.

  Crystal mimes zipping up her mouth. I do the same and add in throwing the key over my shoulder for good measure.

  We open up the boxes and get stuck in. When everybody’s face is smeared brown, Jay wiggles his hand deep into the pocket of his jeans. ‘We got you something,’ he says. He goes a bit solemn as he tries to reach whatever it is in his pocket. At last he gives a little grunt and shows me.

  It’s a bangle. Gold. I take it from him and check the hallmark. Real gold. ‘Where did you get this, Jay?’

  ‘A shop.’ There’s no way he got this in a shop. Who would let an eight-year-old buy a gold bangle? And where would he get the money? ‘Don’t you like it?’

  ‘It’s lovely,’ I tell him. ‘But where’s the box?’

  ‘What box?’

  ‘The box it came in,’ I say. ‘Something as pretty as this must have come in a box to keep it safe.’

  ‘I lost it,’ says Jay.

  The phone rings. Geraldine keeps it on a table in the hallway at the foot of the stairs. When she answers it her voice comes booming into the kitchen. ‘Oh dear,’ she says. ‘Oh, Lord.’

  I panic. Is it the social worker? Or the kids’ foster-mother? Have they found out that Jay’s nicked the bangle? ‘Say nothing,’ I instruct him. ‘Do you hear me?’

  He nods and I shove it into my own pocket.

  When Geraldine comes into the kitchen, she looks serious. I mean, she never looks like she’s having a laugh, but this is worse than normal. ‘Lib, can I have a word?’ she asks. ‘In private?’ I follow her out of the kitchen and she closes the door. We stand by the bucket, half full of water. ‘No easy way to say this, Lib, so I’ll just come out with it, shall I?’

  I nod, but my heart is beating so fast and I want to tell her ‘No. Please don’t say Jay’s in trouble. That he’ll have to leave his placement. That I’ll have to leave this placement. That we’ll all have to start again somewhere else.’

  ‘It’s your dad,’ she says.

  ‘What about him?’

  She puts her finger into her ear and wiggles it about.

  ‘Is he okay?’ I ask.

  Geraldine puts a hand on my shoulder and I try not to think about the wax she must be smearing on my coat. ‘He wants to see you,’ she tells me.

  I breathe out. I already know this. He’s been banging on about it since he got nicked at the hospital.

  ‘Thing is, Lib, he’s got himself a decent solicitor and has made an application to the court,’ says Geraldine. ‘I’m afraid you’re going to have to speak to a judge.’

  Liberty raced across the road and narrowly missed getting splattered by a cycle rickshaw. When had they become a thing in England, never mind Brixton?


  ‘Where did you go running off to?’ Crystal asked.

  ‘Cab office.’

  ‘We don’t need a cab, Lib, we’ve got a frigging car,’ said Crystal. ‘And, anyway, where the hell are we meant to be going?’

  Liberty brandished the receipt, large childish handwriting scrawled across it.

  ‘You’re really starting to annoy me now,’ said Crystal.

  As they drove from the vibrancy of Brixton centre to the Goldfarm estate, it was as if they had crossed an invisible threshold. Few people were out on the streets, despite the warm weather, and those who were out and about had no Saturday amble to them, but strode purposefully. Occasional groups of boys sat on railings, all in black, hoods up, heads turned from the CCTV cameras mounted high on poles with anti-climb paint and spikes.

  ‘Has there been an apocalypse someone forgot to mention?’ Liberty asked.

  Crystal shook her head as she took in the boarded-up shops. ‘Christ knows what people round here do when they need a pint of milk.’

  The strange thing was that the area itself wasn’t run-down. The pavements were clean, the walls well-pointed and graffiti-free for the most part. A world away from Crosshills with its litter-strewn yards and dilapidated fences, recs full of kids at its grubby beating heart.

  ‘Maybe they’re all dairy-free,’ Liberty replied.

  They rounded a corner and found another group of boys sitting on the pavement, several bikes laid down beside them. The boys looked up at the Porsche, seemed puzzled, muttered to each other.

  The address on the receipt was up ahead. A block of flats, not high-rise but three floors. Neat white windows, blue panels. Patch of grass in front.

  ‘Now what?’ Crystal asked.

  ‘Let’s just take a minute,’ Liberty replied. ‘See if there’s anything to see.’

  Keeping the two women in sight had been relatively easy in the centre of Brixton. Lots of people, lots of noise. Even when Chapman and her sister had stopped for a drink, Sol had ducked into a shop doorway, able to keep eyes on them without being spotted himself. When they’d gone back to their car, his heart had begun to sink. He really was going to run out of petrol any second. He turned off the air-con, even though he was sweating, to preserve fuel. When the women drove to the Goldfarm estate, he groaned. Groups of youngsters on the street immediately clocked him. A couple flipped him the finger, more made their thumb and forefinger into the shape of a C. Telling him they knew exactly what he was: a cop and, of course, the other C-word. No doubt they’d be on their phones alerting their brethren to the appearance of an undie.

  Sol sighed. He didn’t give a shit about the drug deals going on round here, but the kids didn’t know that.

  When Chapman’s car pulled over, he did the same a few hundred yards away, hoping that the boys wouldn’t draw attention to him, relieved when they evaporated into an alleyway. He knew that this was pretty much the end of the line today. The car was running on fumes and would soon refuse to start. Getting stuck there with zero back-up was the last thing on his to-do list. He called Hassani. ‘You wet yourself yet?’

  ‘Very funny,’ she replied. ‘Where are you?’

  ‘The dark side of the moon.’ Someone whizzed past on a bike, so close he could hear the spokes whir. ‘The Goldfarm estate. What about you?’

  ‘I gave up on Jay. I think he must have died or something,’ said Hassani. ‘I went back to the pub you saw Chapman go in earlier.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And they don’t talk to the police.’

  Sol chuckled. ‘What did you expect?’

  ‘A bit of cooperation, maybe. A bit of community cohesion to keep people like the Greenwoods from running the place like the Wild West.’

  He laughed some more. ‘You’re assuming people are unhappy with the status quo.’

  ‘Yeah, well, they needn’t come crying to me when it’s their daughter getting her head kicked in, like Kyla and Daisy.’

  The passenger door of the Porsche opened and Chapman got out, bending to speak to her sister, who was still in the driver’s seat. ‘Gotta go,’ he told Hassani, and hung up.

  Chapman carried on speaking through the door. She was dressed down, in jeans and T-shirt, hair in a ponytail, sunglasses on top of her head, but she still carried herself with the assurance of someone used to being in control. Sol could imagine Crystal losing the plot, throwing a glass or a punch. When Chapman was angry with you, she would simmer and make you feel ridiculous. He couldn’t say which would be worse.

  At last Chapman closed the car door, leaving her sister inside. They were splitting up.

  Now what? It would be easier, and safer, to stay in his car and watch Crystal. The likelihood was that Chapman would be back soon. But he’d never been one for easy or safe, had he?

  Shafted. Royally, totally shafted. Frankie slumped in the corner of the room and felt tears sting his eyes. It was pathetic to cry, and what good would it do? He couldn’t help himself. This was sup-posed to be it, the deal that would set him up, make Crystal and Jay begin to trust him. Instead it had just confirmed all their views of him: an idiot, a waste of space, a liability.

  Daisy had tried to warn him. She’d said it didn’t feel right, but Frankie wouldn’t listen, would he? Not Frankie. In any storm he was the one trying to catch the lightning bolt. It had been a set-up from the start, and Frankie had walked right into it, trusting Brixton Dave because of a couple of weeks in the sun. Stupid, stupid, stupid. He’d opened himself up to this and, worse, he’d opened Daisy up to it because, truth be told, Jay and Crystal would probably get him out of this, but Daisy? Not a chance. Poor Daisy, who had just been trying to please Frankie, like the dog she was.

  Back in Marbella there’d been a girl, well, there’d been a lot of girls, but this one in particular had been around all the time, sniffing out what she wanted. Someone always ended up with her if they didn’t pull a decent bird. Frankie couldn’t remember her name. She was pretty but thin, with eyes dark in her sockets, up for whatever, even if whatever left her with bruises. One night he’d ended up lying next to her on a sun bed, smoking a fat one, trying to soften the come-down. He’d asked why she stayed out there. No friends and no family. Just Dave and his crew laughing at her, fucking her, hurting her. She’d told Frankie that she had no friends and family back home so she might as well let herself get ruined in the sun.

  Tears streamed down his cheeks now as he looked around the empty room. He dragged a breath through his snotty nose. What was that girl’s name? And what had happened to her?

  The grass was surprisingly lush under Liberty’s feet. No bald patches worn away by a thousand footballs or ruts from the endless push of buggies. She opened the gate in front of the flats and briefly looked over her shoulder to the Porsche, giving Crystal a wave. Sitting and watching had produced nothing useful so they’d agreed that one of them should do a walk-past of the flats.

  Liberty said that it should be her. If the people who had Frankie had done their homework they might recognize Crystal, but there was no way they could know about Liberty. Crystal had argued – didn’t she always? – but Liberty had won. As she reached the row of ground-floor doors and windows, she wondered if it wasn’t a hollow triumph. Yes, Frankie might be in one of these flats, but that would mean whoever had taken him would be in there too. Liberty’s blood pumped a little harder at the thought.

  The trick would be to walk with enough speed not to be mistaken for a snooper, while actually doing some snooping. She pressed a hand to her chest and set off. Unfortunately the first flat had blinds; the second had nets. Which was obvious, now she thought about it. Anyone with a ground-floor flat and an ounce of sense would put up something between themselves and potential nosy-parkers. She slowed her pace slightly as she passed, pricking her ears for any clues, and heard the sounds of a television and a baby crying. One window was open a crack, the smell of onions and garlic wafting through.

  When she reached the end of the row, Liberty was no
wiser than when she’d started. If Frankie was inside one of these flats, there was no way for her to discover that from the outside. She looked up to the first and second floors. Was there any point in going up there?

  A plume of white smoke rose above the block, carrying the scent of charred meat. Someone was having a barbecue round the back. Liberty stopped. That meant there were gardens round the back, or terraces. Doors might be open. She’d promised Crystal she wouldn’t move from her sight line, but she’d be quick, just a brief look-see. She pointed to where she was headed but couldn’t see Crystal’s reaction. Probably for the best.

  As she passed around the side of the end flat, the smell of sausages and burgers became stronger and her stomach rumbled. She was imagining the taste of ketchup when she caught sight of a figure in her peripheral vision. She snapped her head around, but whoever it was had darted away, making her scalp prickle. She retraced her steps, searching for a glimpse. No one. The street was empty, the muffled sound of the baby’s cries louder now.

  Liberty was nervous and her mind was playing tricks. She needed to do a swift check around the back, then return to Crystal so they could plan their next move. Her feet moved with a confidence she didn’t feel, and soon she was behind the flats, looking into a row of small gardens. The smoke from the barbecue billowed towards her, stinging her eyes. She stumbled through it, wafting it from her face.

  When she was upwind she could see that a number of flats had their back doors and windows open. The vantage-point was further away than at the front of the block, but she might catch a glimpse of something. Or at least narrow down which flats definitely did not contain her younger brother. She moved along until she was looking at the end flat. Unlike the others, the garden was overgrown, the paint on the door dirty and scuffed. She was considering how different it looked from the other flats, when the door opened and a young lad emerged, dressed in black, hood up. He closed the door behind him and jumped onto a bike that was leaning against the wall, then disappeared in a whir of spokes.