Jen’s heart swelled. Nuts had not only got her a placement, he had sorted out that sicko. Jen leaned across and gave him a large smacker on his cheek. ‘That don’t mean I’m going out with you or nothing,’ she warned him playfully. ‘But if you call me soonish, I might be inclined to say yes.’
He grinned boyishly back, but then his face turned serious and he gently touched her arm. ‘Whatever you do, don’t ever ask Madam Dominique about her past. She’s been around. She didn’t get that lame leg playing marbles. You get me? Don’t mention her name to no one, not even your mum or sister; she’s a woman who likes to keep a low profile unless you’re one of her paying customers. She’s doing me a big time favour taking you on.’
Jen felt a wave of shame; she’d got Nuts totally wrong. Sure, he was a bit dodgy, but he was her dodgy. He was definitely a man whose arm she wanted to be seen on, so she linked her arm possessively into his as they made their way to his car.
Twenty-One
Tiffany headed straight for her tomb when she got to the cemetery. Most people got the willies being here, but Tiffany felt alive among the dead. They were about the only people who weren’t out to get her these days. She wept silently with relief as she walked along the path and through the undergrowth. There was no doubt about it, she was in it up to her neck, with no way out.
None of the regulars were at the gate, and there was no shouting or larking about tonight, which she was glad about. She was in a hurry to hide her envelope and get home. She quickly walked down the pathway towards the back of the cemetery, where the trees were thick and there were two huge tombs. As she walked she heard a noise behind her, like a twig snapping. She stopped and peered behind her but couldn’t see anyone. She resumed walking, but stopped again when she heard a rustling noise behind her.
‘Who’s there?’ she called out, the beat of her heart galloping. There was no reply, and she still couldn’t see anyone, but she knew from experience that seeing no one didn’t mean they weren’t there. Fear entered her bones. Every noise was an enemy.
‘Johnno and Bazza, is that you?’ Sometimes her friends got to playing silly games on each other, especially when they were liquored up. But she got no answer. It’s probably the wind, Tiffany thought, turning to check, then nearly jumped out of her skin when she saw the person in front of her.
‘Stacey, what the fuck? You frightened the fucking life out of me. How did you know I’d be down here? I thought you weren’t talking to me.’ (She didn’t add, And I understand why now.)
She sucked in a hard breath when she saw the cuts and bruises on her friend’s face; her dad had really beaten the stuffing out of her. Bastard! Tiffany had stayed away from her mate because she didn’t want her dad to go ballistic on her again. But she now knew that Mickey Ingram was playing a game. On the one hand he was shouting the odds about his daughter staying well away from the Millers while all the time he was employing the youngest Miller girl as his runner. Tiffany didn’t know what he was up to but it broke her heart to see her friend stuck in the middle of it.
Stacey gave her a grim smile. ‘You’re always down here, sooner or later.’
Tiffany noticed that she spoke slowly, not the type of slow-mo a voice had when it was boozed up, but something else. That something made Tiffany’s heart beat faster. ‘Stacey, you ain’t been doing that shit again?’ she asked furiously. And before her friend could answer she grabbed Stacey’s left arm.
She shook her head when she saw the needle marks dotting Stacey’s skin. Maximum disobedience was Tiffany’s calling card, but the one thing she would never do was go on the needle – especially after Tommy Lewis had OD’d during Mister Hampton’s biology class. But Stacey was a different story; she couldn’t seem to stay away from the stuff. Tiffany had talked to her until she was blue in the face and, for a time, Stacey had stayed away from the filthy gear. But now she was back on it. Tiffany could bet her life it was because of that nutter Mickey Ingram.
Tiffany grabbed tight to the other girl’s hand. ‘You’re going to end up as a smack bitch if you keep this up. You know what all those druggies look like, who go into number five in my block when it’s dark? A right mess, that’s what, willing to sell their mum for their next fix. That ain’t happening to you, Stace; not on my watch.’
‘But my life’s shit,’ Stacey cried with such hurt, Tiffany just wanted to hold her close.
‘You’ve got me.’
Stacey burst into tears, so Tiffany pulled her into her arms. And before she knew it she was kissing her best friend on the cheek, then at the corner near her mouth.
Stacey twisted away from her. ‘I’ve told you I ain’t into no lesbo-shaped malarkey.’
‘I know, I know,’ Tiffany said quickly, ‘nor am I. I just wanted you to feel better, that’s all.’ But the truth was, she had wanted to kiss Stacey. Desperately. She didn’t understand these feelings she was having, but she’d better make sure she kept her lips to herself next time, because Stacey wasn’t having none of it. Plus, what would everyone on The Devil say if they found out she liked snogging her best mate? She’d probably get duffed over for being worse than a weirdo.
‘Let’s get a bottle of voddy,’ Stacey said.
Tiffany was about to agree, but then she remembered the envelope. ‘I can’t. I’ve got to—’
‘You don’t like me anymore,’ Stacey wailed. ‘No one likes me anymore.’
Then she was running like a wounded, wild animal out of the cemetery. Tiffany wanted to follow her but knew she couldn’t; she needed to hide the envelope. Bollocks. She didn’t like leaving Stace in such a state. Right, she made up her mind, Mickey Ingram or no Mickey Ingram she was going to give her friend a bell when she’d finished up here.
Quickly she reached the largest of the crumbling, grey-white tombs. It had a chipped white angel on the top that stared down at anyone approaching. Tiffany bent down and carefully shifted the stone panel on its side. She pulled out her envelope and prepared to creep inside the structure to find the waterproof box where she hid her envelopes. But as she rested a hand on the angel’s foot, a hand coming out of the darkness gripped her wrist like a vice.
Twenty-Two
What John was hearing on the phone was making him mad, bad and liable to rip someone’s head clean off. He’d been in a sit-down with Chris about the business when the guy from the Pied Piper – Jeff – had called him up.
‘As you know our man from Bad Moon has got some slag running errands for you. Well, the little bitch was up here earlier, mouthing off about wanting to see you. So I took her upstairs for some acrobatics, made sure she understood what was what and told her to piss off with a flea in her ear. Just thought you ought to know.’
‘That’s your department,’ John fired back furiously. ‘I set you up so no one should even be mentioning my name. Got it?’
‘She didn’t say a dickie bird about your name to me. If she’s running your name all over the place she didn’t get it from me.’
Before John could answer, Chris mouthed, ‘What’s up?’
John placed his hand over the handset. ‘One of Mickey’s people is getting above her pay grade and making a lot of noise about wanting a nice, little chat with me. My guy down the Pied Piper swears blind he hasn’t given her my name—’
‘What about Mickey? He’s been known to have a loose tongue when he’s got a jar load in him.’
Mickey bloody Ingram, John thought. He’d only given him a squeeze into the operation because they went years back. In fact, Mickey was about one of the only people left around who knew his real name was Charlie Dalton. They’d come up together as ragamuffins on that rough, rat-infested hole of an estate in Bethnal Green, that the council had called ‘a model of modern housing’. If it was such a model, why didn’t anyone in the council live there? Mind you, it was two steps up from The Devil’s Estate in Mile End, a tube stop away on the central line.
Mickey had become a liability with his fists, punching out anyone who looked at him
the wrong way, including his missus, Mel. So John had cut him loose, until Mickey reappeared a few years back, swearing to anyone with an ear that he’d turned over a new leaf. John had taken him back in. Now he knew he’d made the right decision about getting shot of the twat. That’s the problem with remembering the good old days; it could lead to you falling flat on your face.
John returned to his phone conversation. ‘You saying that Mickey’s been blabbing?’
‘I ain’t saying nothing except what happened down here earlier.’
‘What did she want to see me about?’
‘I don’t know, boss. I mean, you don’t want to see the likes of her do you?’
John needed to find out what was going on. And if Mickey had started shooting his gob off he’d . . .
‘You prick. Get her back up there and find out what the problem is. If it’s serious, call me.’ John paused. ‘Second thoughts, leave it to me. It’s about time me and Mickey had a catch-up.’
John slammed the phone down and resumed talking business with Chris, but something other than Mickey Ingram’s death-wish runner was clearly on his mind. A few moments later, he realised what it was.
‘Where’s Dee? I’ve only just taken her on and she seems to think her toosh is working a part-time shift.’
Tiffany was too shocked to scream as she looked with a dazed expression at the brown hand gripping her wrist. She clocked that her assailant was a woman – the hand sported a full set of purple, jelly-polished acrylic nails and was blinged to the max with chunky rings. Usually she’d have cursed the woman back-to-front by this stage and dropped her with a solid one-two, but she couldn’t move. Everything was catching up with her – being hung out the window at the Pied Piper, seeing her best mate’s battered face, having someone grab her in the darkness. She just couldn’t move. She felt so shocked, she didn’t even have enough gas left in her engine to scream.
And she should be screaming blue murder because the woman who held her tight looked terrifying, togged out like some badass highwayman, a black hat pulled low over her head and a scarf loosely wrapped across her lower face. When the woman grabbed the envelope from her, that kick started Tiffany back into gear.
‘Oi,’ she growled, but the woman just pushed her down on the stone that surrounded the grave and sat herself down beside her.
Tiffany reached across to snatch the envelope. ‘Give that back to me.’
The woman stared back at her with lethal, dark eyes sending a chill through Tiffany. She’d seen those eyes somewhere before, but couldn’t, for the life of her, place where.
‘Shut. It.’
Tiffany shut up. This woman was what she and her mates called ‘fierce’ and that made Tiffany scared to hell. She’d met the type before. Fearless, they would take you down any way they could. Tiffany didn’t have it in her to get into a ruck. And why should she fight? Screw Mickey ‘fuck face’ Ingram.
They sat very close, but the woman hardly seemed to notice that Tiffany was still there. Instead she pulled out the contents of the envelope – a stack of paper. Tiffany was disappointed; she expected something a bit more lively to be honest, like a blade, or at least some leaf.
The woman flicked on a zippo lighter to help her read. She flipped through the papers and then started mumbling to herself, ‘I might have guessed . . . Bloody small time, small time . . . You can do better than this, John. Doesn’t he realise where the money is at these days?’ She paused, looking puzzled and murmured, ‘I still don’t get what this has got to do with ice.’
Tiffany didn’t have a clue what the woman was reading, or about anything to do with ice; it had been worth more than her life to look inside those envelopes.
Finally, her assailant turned to Tiffany and waved the papers at her. ‘How many of these have you got?’
Tiffany was burnt out and said nothing. The woman pulled off her hat and scarf and put them on the grave. There wasn’t much light from the moon or the streetlights that poked through the trees, but the glow from the zippo’s flame confirmed what Tiffany suspected when she’d glimpsed her hand earlier – the woman was black. But what was much worse was when she realised that this was the same woman who’d been eyeing her up at the Pied Piper. The woman must have followed her here. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.
‘Who are you?’ Remembering where she’d first clocked eyes on this woman she added, ‘I ain’t into no geezer bird stuff.’
The woman grinned. ‘Oh yeah? That isn’t what I saw when you were trying to suck your friend’s face off a minute ago.’
Tiffany’s face got hot with colour. Bloody hell, if this woman had seen her, maybe someone else had as well?
‘Don’t worry about who I am. You just tell me how many of these you’ve got. Actually, scratch that, start at the beginning. I want the full S.P. Names. What your instructions were. Who told you to do them. Don’t leave nuthin’ out.’
Was this woman having a laugh? Become a snitch? No, Tiffany might hate Mickey Ingram’s guts for the dog he was, but she couldn’t be telling anyone else about his business. Horrible things happened to a grass. Look what happened to Bill ‘metal head’ Williams, who’d once lived on the estate, after he opened his trap to the cops. His flat was burned to the ground, with him and his family inside. They’d only managed to escape by jumping from the second-floor window.
‘I don’t have to tell you dick,’ Tiffany said back, her words full of false swagger.
Tiffany yelped when the woman grabbed a fistful of her hair and pulled her close. ‘Look, I haven’t come all the way down here to this zombie hang-out to play games. You’d better . . .’ She drew the lighter close to Tiffany’s face; the flame swam and cast shadows over her face. ‘Fuck me.’ The woman loosened her grip. ‘How old are you?’
Tiffany was about to lie, but all the earlier exhaustion she’d felt came tumbling back in waves and suddenly she was done telling tales. ‘Sixteen.’
‘Kiss my arse,’ the woman let out in disgust. ‘What’s my man doing hiring kids of that age? I’ll have to put a stop to that for a start.’
Her man? What man? Tiffany thought. She couldn’t see this stunning bird being Mickey Ingram’s arm candy; that was like pairing Quasimodo with Janet Jackson. Tiffany suddenly clicked; she must be chatting about Mickey’s guv’nor. Now Tiffany got interested.
The woman let go of her hair and smiled. ‘What’s your name, babes?’
‘Tiffany.’
‘OK, listen up Tiff – can I call you Tiff? Let’s be mates, eh? I don’t want to cause you any trouble, OK?’ She sounded almost motherly. ‘But I need you to help me out here. Is that alright? If you do that, I’ll help you out . . .’ Then she stopped, raised her lighter and examined Tiffany’s face. ‘They roughed you up in the Pied Piper, didn’t they?’
Tiffany blushed with shame. ‘Yeah. My contact hung me out of the window because I asked to see the main man.’
The woman was horrified. ‘He hung you out of the window? A sixteen-year-old kid? What a bunch of bullies. Blokes who go around terrorising young girls are nobodies. You hear me, nobodies. What’s the name of the bloke who did that to you?’
Tiffany shrugged. ‘Dunno. He works there. He’s a real looker and knows it.’
‘First rule of business Tiffany is find out the names of the people you’re working with and working for – especially scum who put the frighteners on young girls.’
‘I know.’ Tiffany was thinking of what had happened to Stacey more than what had happened to herself. She’d come out of the womb being able to take punishment, but Stacey was sensitive, fragile, not able to defend herself against the muck life threw at her.
‘Who’s Mickey Ingram?’
Tiffany’s voice was flat and monotone and it seemed to her that someone else was doing the talking for her and that person seemed to be a small child. ‘He’s my friend Stacey’s dad.’ Her voice went thin and high. ‘He beat her up for talking to me. Our families don’t get on.’
The woman looked
like she was about to burst a blood vessel. ‘Men who go around beating on their kids deserve to have their hands chopped off.’ Then she looked puzzled. ‘But I thought it was Mickey who hired you to act as a runner? How’s that playing out if he’s in a slam-down with your family?’
For Dee it all fell into place. Hiring Tiffany had been a front. With a feud going on, Tiffany was the perfect cut-out for Mickey Ingram. If the Bill ever caught up with him, Tiffany became his deniability; all he had to say was there was no way he would be working with someone from a family he hated. And where did that leave this gullible kid? Smack bang in the middle, probably copping the lot for a crime she didn’t even understand.
Dee had nearly been caught in the wringer when she was fifteen, bang in lust with some lad who was getting her to deliver H around town. Her mates told her to watch her step, but she wouldn’t hear a bad word said about him. That was, until she walked in on him one day sexing the life out of that pole dancer from the Silk Club. She’d never pulled him up on it, and the tosser didn’t figure out she’d starting overloading his stash to a rival for a good few months, until she finished with him.
What was the world coming to when you could only do a bit of ducking and diving by using kids? Dee convinced herself that there was no way her John could have known about this. But then even if she found out he did she’d soon ship him into shape when he popped a ring on her finger.
Dee put her arm around Tiffany and squeezed her gently. ‘Listen, how would you like to get your own back on that wanker at the Pied Piper and on Mickey Ingram for trashing up your mate?’
‘You can do that?’ The girl looked so hopeful it tore at Dee’s heart.
Dee smiled. ‘Where there’s a will, sweetheart, there’s always a way. All you need to do is exactly what I say. My name’s Laverne and I’m going to be your friend. We’ll fix those people together.’
Dee knew she was taking one massive risk after another; this girl had a rep as an out-of-control nutter. But Dee had come this far already and she wasn’t going to stop now.
Blood Sister: A thrilling and gritty crime drama Page 14