by Emmy Ellis
She’d had a bath and now sat in the kitchen, sipping coffee, a white towelling dressing gown around her, one that had hung in the wardrobe. It smelt as though it had been dry cleaned. For the past hour, she’d been scribbling things down in a pad, remembering her time at Lime’s—if that was even his house. It could be anybody’s.
The sound of the front door opening jarred her senses, and she sat there, her breath catching, staring, wondering who was coming in. It might be Lime… One of his men could have seen the twins going out and waited, then broke in.
Footsteps in the foyer.
Her heartbeat accelerating.
More footsteps.
Her skin going cold.
George and Greg entered, and she relaxed, letting out a sigh of relief, feeling silly for getting worked up. She should know they wouldn’t leave her here alone if it wasn’t safe.
“What’s the matter?” George asked, his eyebrows raised. “You look like you’re crapping yourself.”
“I thought…I wondered if it was him.”
George shook his head. “Nah, all the windows are reinforced, bulletproof, the alarm was set before we left, and you can’t get in here without a code. Sorry, I should have told you this before we went out.”
She remembered the keypad at Lime’s house and shuddered. “Do all your type have security like that?” They must do, especially if there was a turf war going on and they needed to be cautious.
“Wouldn’t you?” Greg put the car keys on the side.
She supposed she would lock herself up tight if she did the same as them for a living. How they didn’t shit themselves all the time she had no idea. She’d be a nervous wreck. “I hope you don’t mind, but I found a pad and pen in the drawer in the living room sideboard. Been writing things down. You know, to jog my memory.”
“Good idea.” Greg moved to the coffee machine and stuck a cup under the spout. He prodded a button. “Did you remember anything else?”
“Hmm. I forced myself to think outside of how I was feeling at the time, like, all the stuff I saw while crapping myself. I got lucky. Out the back of his kitchen, at the bottom of the garden, there were fields, a few trees like a border on the land farther back, then a housing estate behind them in the distance.”
George plonked himself beside her and ruffled her hair. “So he could live in the sticks. Make me one of those, will you, Greg.” He nodded at the coffee machine.
“I’m not a fucking skivvy.” Greg brought his own over to give to George then returned to make another. “Do you want one, Beth?”
“No, ta.”
He continued. “We’ll get Google Maps up in the office in a bit, then you can try to work out where his place is. Like we said before, we’ll take you out later as well.” The machine spluttered, and he took his cup away.
“Yeah, we’ll find him ourselves,” George said. “Relying on our blokes to earwig is bringing us jack shit. Lime must have told his people to be more wary than usual.”
Beth agreed. Lime hadn’t struck her as the sort not to cover all bases. She dreaded the time she’d have to meet him and report her findings. Maybe they should talk about that now. At least then it wouldn’t be swirling in her head. Like Gran used to say, a problem shared is a problem halved.
“What should I say to him when he wants an update?” she asked. “I mean, he’s wanting to get to you without you knowing, as in, ambush you or something.” She didn’t want the twins hurt. Funny how she’d always thought they were nasty, yet they’d shown her how kind they could be by taking her in like this, believing her. She wouldn’t judge books by their covers in future.
“We’ll have a think about it,” George said, “but whatever you tell him, it’ll be bullshit. You just need to make out you overheard us talking. He’ll swallow that more than you saying we’ve taken you into our confidence. No offense, but if we did, not knowing you very well, we’d be plonkers.”
“So how come you trust me? Aren’t you being plonkers already?”
He laughed. “Nah, because if you fuck us about, you’ll be the one regretting it, not us. We don’t hurt women, but there are other ways to cause havoc.”
She imagined there was. Like they’d make sure Debbie turfed her off the corner and she wasn’t allowed to work on any others. They’d spread word she was trouble. She’d have to move away from London in order to work, and that meant Gran would be left on her own until Beth could travel to see her.
“I won’t shit on you,” she said.
“Smart move.” George smiled.
Beth sighed inwardly. She’d better get practising how to lie and come off as telling the truth, because if she didn’t, Lime would spot it, and then she’d be right in the shit.
Chapter Twenty
Harry arrived at the warehouse, a tad early, but that wasn’t a bad thing. The Brothers didn’t like tardiness, and he’d go down in their good books for this. Brownie points never hurt anyone, did they, and the more he collected, the more chance he had of becoming their right-hand man, someone they couldn’t do without.
He stayed in his car, as their BMW wasn’t parked up yet. A scroll on his phone wouldn’t go amiss while he waited, so he accessed Facebook and, for old time’s sake, had a look on Mickey’s page.
There wasn’t much on it, Mickey hadn’t posted very often, but his profile picture was of him, his cover photo a black-and-white image of the London skyline, and his profession was down as ‘market trader’. Harry laughed at that, recalling their antics, how they’d got on each other’s nerves while they’d been holed up in the safe house after Mickey’s leg had been broken. How they’d plotted to kill Cardigan, Harry getting a gun, Sid Dempsey their go-between. Mickey panicking that it’d all go tits up and they’d get caught for shooting Cardigan.
Harry missed the silly bastard.
He sighed and switched to Debbie’s page. She’d updated her status half an hour ago.
Work tonight. Again! No rest for the wicked.
She had an emoji of a devil at the end, and he frowned. She rarely posted either, sometimes went weeks with no word, so for her to randomly say about work didn’t seem right. It wasn’t like she generally talked about what she did on social media, she could hardly advertise the girls and what they really did. He’d spied on her a lot, waiting for some snippet to give him a clue, when all it had taken was a conversation with her to find out what he’d wanted.
He moved down the page. A meme last month, some poem or other about losing the love of your life, a soul mate, blah, blah, fucking blah. He’d rolled his eyes when she’d put it up and did it again now. She was always bloody banging on about Cardigan like he was God, which got a bit grating if he were honest.
Below that was a funny meme with Kermit the Frog staring out of a window holding a cup of tea, the caption: SOMETIMES I WONDER WHY I’M HERE, THEN I REMEMBER I HAVE CHOCOLATE IN THE FRIDGE.
Then below that post she’d typed:
Sometimes, I could just curl up on the sofa instead of going to work.
Another devil face. He stared at the date it was posted. It rang a bell, and he racked his brain to work out what it was. Why did things elude you sometimes, hovering at the back of your mind or on the tip of your tongue? He tapped the steering wheel, almost grasping the significance, but it drifted away again.
Instead, he looked around the car park. And there it was, popping into his head, the last day he’d seen Mickey. As she didn’t usually go on about work or anything else much, why on the day Mickey went missing, and why tonight?
Was she one of the ‘few’ Fiona had mentioned? Maybe she worked for The Brothers on the quiet and she’d turn up to help them out with killing whoever was on tonight’s agenda. That’d be a side to her he wouldn’t have imagined, tottering in on her heels, a mallet in hand to bash someone’s brains in.
He chuckled and stuffed his phone away.
A car engine rumbled, and he turned to the right. Headlight beams sliced through the darkness, going right in hi
s eyes, and he held his hand to his forehead to shield them, although it didn’t make a blind bit of difference. The steel gates stood either side in the brightness—Harry had left them open so The Brothers could drive straight in. He had a padlock key, see, that was how much they trusted him. He was definitely on the up and up.
“Ever fucking heard of using low beams?” he muttered and got out of his car, blipping the locks and sliding the bunch of keys in his pocket. His stomach grumbled—he hadn’t bothered eating yet. He was saving the macaroni cheese and garlic bread slices for afterwards, his celebration dinner.
The black BMW swerved in next to him, and Greg nodded at him from the passenger seat while unclipping his seat belt. The lights doused, the engine quieted, and Harry was left with headlight residue every time he blinked.
The Brothers exited and, not even saying good evening, headed for the warehouse.
“What about locking the gates?” Harry tagged along behind them.
They ignored him, didn’t seem in the best of moods, and him opening his gob any more could mean they’d tell him to fuck off, go home, then he’d lose the two grand.
Maybe whoever they were killing was arriving by car, then they’d probably send Harry out to lock the gates.
One of them opened the door using the keypad on the wall, and the twins disappeared inside. Harry joined them, frowning at the light not being on yet, then the door closed behind him, and he got the first inkling something was wrong.
“Stop fucking about,” he said. “You know I don’t like the dark when it’s that black you can’t see your hand in front of your fa—”
A palm slapped over his mouth, and he was yanked backwards against a chest.
“Shut up,” Greg said.
Harry didn’t struggle, not yet. They could be pulling his leg here, doing this for shits and giggles. They were an odd pair, found weird stuff funny. But if they planned to do something nasty to him, with Greg holding him, it meant George would be administering his brand of anger. He was the worst of the two, and a little birdie had told Harry that George had been seeing a therapist to help curb his desire to torture people. He was still a mean bastard, though, so the therapist was doing a crap job.
“You’re in trouble,” Greg said, his disembodied voice so weird in the darkness.
Harry struggled now, but it was pointless. Greg clamped a hand around his middle and pinned him in place. Harry kicked back a couple of times but only connected with air. The light snapped on, then George stood right in front of him, his menacing eyes shitting Harry up. They were so…piercing.
“Now then, we’ve got to do this tonight because, well, we’re worried you’re going to have a slip of the tongue at some point. Best to nip it in the bud, take away the threat of it. I can’t be doing with worrying about you running your mouth off. That sort of thing keeps me up at night, and I rather like my kip, know what I mean?”
Harry managed a nod of sorts.
George stroked his chin. “We gave you a chance, and for a while there, your lips were zipped. Shame you couldn’t keep it up. We’d begun to think we had someone we could trust. Seems we don’t.” He smiled like they were old mates, but his looks were always deceptive.
A slip of the tongue? What were they on about? He tried to ask them, but Greg’s hand was so tight on his face he couldn’t move his lips. Breathing through his nose while panicking was a chore an’ all, and if his heart beat any faster, he’d get pains in his chest.
“See, if you hadn’t gone poking about in Debbie’s business, we wouldn’t be here,” George went on. He picked a thumbnail, head bent, like Harry wasn’t important enough to make eye contact with. “If you’d have just minded your own, the next hour or so wouldn’t be happening. You know how it works, how we work. Seen it enough times, haven’t you. We don’t let people take the piss, and I’m afraid you’ve been found out for doing just that.”
Debbie? What business was that? Fucking hell, she must have grassed on him, made out he was being pushy with her when he’d tried to get info. Harry had already told them what he’d been talking to her about, and they hadn’t seemed that bothered, so what was the bleedin’ problem? Why couldn’t he poke about and ask around to see if anyone knew what had happened to Mickey? Why did it need to be kept hush-hush? Because of the others Fiona had warned him about?
Just who the hell was involved in this?
“She’ll be here in a minute,” Greg said in his ear, sliding his arm up to curl it around Harry’s chest.
Harry knew what was coming with that move. He’d witnessed it many times.
George drew his fist back and punched him in the gut. The power behind it normally sent men flying backwards, but not Greg. He held them immobile. Harry couldn’t even bend over, gripped as he was, and a moan of pain made it into his mouth but couldn’t exit. His eyes watered, and through misty vision, he watched George walk into the middle of the warehouse, to ‘the chair’ positioned in front of ‘the table’.
Shit, they were going to force him to sit there. He was the body George had told him about on the phone earlier. He was the one being killed. Why, though? Just for asking Debbie a few poxy questions?
Greg dragged him over there and plonked him in the seat, holding him down with a meaty hand on each shoulder. George must be behind him, too, as Harry’s arms were drawn back, his wrists cuffed. They’d used a cable tie, he’d seen it on others before, and the plastic dug into his skin.
Harry grabbed his chance to speak now his mouth wasn’t covered. He glanced about to see whether George was still there, to appeal to the slither of goodness in him, but the bloke must be behind Greg now. At the table. Bollocks. Harry was so fucked if he couldn’t talk his way out of this.
“Look, what’s all this about, lads? What’s Debbie got to do with anything? I told you what I talked to her about. I was upfront, didn’t keep it to myself, and I could have, couldn’t I.”
No answer.
“If it’s me finding out about Mickey, I’m not going to do anything.” He stared ahead at the breeze-block wall, helpless, his mind shifting from one thing to another in his attempt to think of something to say that would make everything all right again.
Silence.
The air seemed prickly, full of menace, and now he was on the other side of the equation, the one in the chair, it didn’t seem so funny.
“Honestly, like I just said, I won’t be doing anything.”
“You already have,” Greg said.
Harry frowned, searching his brain to figure out what he’d done. He came up blank. “What? No I haven’t.”
“That’s not what Jack and Fiona had to say.”
Oh fuck. Shit. Jack must have rung them when he went through the door marked PRIVATE. He’d have told them Harry was asking questions, sniffing around. Sodding hell, if the landlords were dobbing him in, the Mickey business must be bad. Why the hell didn’t he just leave it? Why did he have to go shoving his nose in?
“Listen, I’ll keep out of it now, all right? I didn’t realise it was such a big deal trying to find out who killed my mate. Obviously, it is, and now I know that, I’ll butt out.”
“Too late.” Greg dug his fingertips into Harry’s shoulders. “You’ve got loose lips, we knew that when we caught you killing Cardigan, yet still we gave you a chance, took you on, because, let’s face it, you knew we would’ve killed him if you hadn’t. And now look what our kindness has come to. Here we are, ready to get you sorted.”
Harry needed a wee badly, and a shit as well if what Greg had said was true. Sorted. It could only mean one thing in this world. “Come on, there’s no need for that.” He hated sounding whiny, but this was his life in the balance here.
“There’s every need,” George said from somewhere.
Panic gripped Harry, and he thought of another tactic. It hadn’t worked when others had been in the chair, but it might for him. What did he have to lose? “I’ll fucking tell Debbie you two were going to off him,” he blurted.
“We’d like to see you try.” George laughed. “You won’t be saying a word, my old son, not with that in your gob. We’ll do the talking for you. Now shut the fuck up, that noise you’re making is getting on my nerves. You always did have too much to say for yourself.”
Harry couldn’t stop himself. It was like his body wasn’t his anymore. The noises were grunts and whimpers, well embarrassing, especially if these two were just winding him up to teach him a lesson—he had to hope they were testing him, and he’d gone and shown his sneaky side by saying he’d tell Debbie, so now they knew he was a snake. To add to the humiliation, he pissed himself, hot liquid seeping down his thighs.
How the hell was he going to get himself out of this?
Chapter Twenty-One
Debbie drove, singing along to Club Tropicana by Wham! It was partially keeping her mind off the coming meeting. If you could call it a meeting. It was a date with death, her and The Brothers getting rid of an unknown-to-her person who’d plagued her thoughts and dreams since Cardigan had been shot. The killer had always appeared as a shadow, no features, no mannerisms for her to cling to in order to work out who it was. A ghost who would soon become real.
Lavender would be telling anyone who asked that Debbie was in her room having a lie down and wasn’t to be disturbed. They were using a migraine as an excuse, but there shouldn’t be a problem. The other girls would believe Lavender and carry on with their shift, and so long as the punters were still allowed in to get their jollies, they probably wouldn’t even notice she was gone.