The Front

by Mandasue Heller

  ‘No, I’m sorry, I haven’t got a clue,’ she told him. ‘None of our mates have seen her, either.’

  ‘What about this boyfriend she got herself at the blues?’

  Alison blushed. ‘I don’t kn-know him,’ she stuttered, flicking a worried glance at the door. ‘Linda met him a couple of weeks ago, but I don’t know him.’

  ‘Where were you?’

  ‘At the R-Reno,’ Alison stammered in a tiny voice.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Ged said gently. ‘I’m not here to get you into trouble. I just need to know about this boy so I can find Linda before something happens to her.’

  Alison nodded. ‘If I knew anything I’d tell you – honest I would. But I only ever saw the guy once. That night, when he took your Linda home.’

  ‘Back to her house? Did you go with them?’

  Alison blushed again and looked down at her nails. She didn’t want to grass, but Linda’s dad didn’t look the sort to let things drop. He was staring at her now, waiting for her answer, and the longer she left it, the more obvious it would be that she was covering something up.

  ‘No,’ she whispered. ‘She didn’t want to me to. She said she was going back to his flat, and would I be all right getting a taxi back. She went off in his car.’

  Ged didn’t like what he was hearing. ‘She went back to his flat?’ he demanded ‘And he had a car? How old was he?’

  Alison shrugged nervously. ‘I don’t know? Thirty – thirty-five?’

  Ged clenched his fists. ‘What was his name?’ he asked through gritted teeth. ‘This bloke – what was his name?’

  Alison edged back in her seat, shocked by the white-lipped livid expression on his face. ‘I-I don’t know. Simon, I think. No, Simeon! That’s it.’

  ‘And what does he look like?’

  ‘I hardly saw him.’ Alison was near to tears now. ‘Only for a m-minute when she told me she was going. He was standing by the door, waiting for her.’

  ‘So what did he look like?’ Ged demanded. ‘Big? Small? Fat? Thin? Black? White?’

  ‘Well, he was big. Muscly, kind of. And he was black, and bald.’

  Ged nodded, scowling. ‘And where does he live?’

  Alison was shaking in earnest now, her voice jerky and high with fright. ‘I don’t know, Mr Grant. Honest I don’t! All I know is it’s in that big block of flats in Moss Side behind the fire station.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  Alison nodded. ‘Positive. Linda pointed it out to me last week when we were on the bus going to school.’

  ‘But you don’t know the number? Come on, Alison – think! It’s important. She might be in trouble.’

  ‘No. She never said. It must be somewhere near the top, though, ’cos she pointed up.’

  Ged pushed his chair back and stood up. Looking down on the frightened girl, he forced himself to smile. ‘Thanks for your help, love. I’ll see myself out.’

  Ged sat in his car outside Alison’s house, mulling over what he’d learned. It was a shock to find out that his little girl had willingly gone off with a bloke she’d only just met – at a blues, of all places! He’d never dreamed she was the kind of girl to get into that kind of scene. She wasn’t even sixteen yet. What the hell was she doing going off with a man old enough to be her father? Jeezus!

  And what the hell kind of man picked up a girl that young? What kind of sick, perverted bastard?

  Throwing the car into gear, Ged pulled away from the kerb, seething with a white-hot rage. If Linda was staying with this child-molesting piece of scum, there was going to be murder! He’d castrate the filthy bastard when he got his hands on him!

  Before he knew it, he’d arrived at the flats Alison had mentioned. For an hour he sat, just staring at the door, watching the comings and goings – hoping to see Linda. He even played with the idea of going across to the door and ringing every bell on the off chance that at least one would answer and that, once inside, he’d be able to knock on every door until he found her.

  But, much as he’d have liked to do just that, a small voice of reason told him this would only alert whoever Linda was with that he was looking for them. It would be far better to wait until it was dark. Then he could get in, do what he had to do, and get out again without being seen. A lot more sensible than walking in in broad daylight and setting himself up to get busted.

  Having decided this, he began to pull out of the car park. Then, just as he was about to turn onto the road, he looked in his rear-view and saw a man coming out of the flats. He slowed to a crawl, racking his brains to remember where he’d seen him before. Then it came to him. It was the bloke who’d stopped him and Sam the other night when they’d been coming out of Mal’s. The one who’d been looking for Millie.

  Winding his window down, he reversed back, coming alongside the man as he unlocked his own car door. ‘Excuse me, mate,’ he called.

  Max looked up with a frown.

  ‘I don’t suppose you remember me,’ Ged said, ‘but I met you the other night, in Hulme. You were looking for a bloke called Millie, and me and my mate told you where to look.’

  Max narrowed his eyes. He remembered the meeting, although he wouldn’t have recognized Ged because it had been dark that night. Now, in the fading afternoon light, he looked like a Babylon.

  ‘Wha’ you want?’ he grunted suspiciously.

  Ged nodded towards the flats. ‘You came out of there just now. Maybe you can help me out? I’m looking for a bloke who lives here. His name’s Simeon? Oh, and he might have a young blonde girl called Linda staying with him?’

  ‘Why you want him?’ Max demanded, his suspicion growing stronger by the minute. ‘What’s it to you?’

  Ged frowned. ‘I’ve got my reasons. Do you know him or don’t you? It’s a simple enough question, man!’

  ‘Raas!’ Max snarled. ‘Who the fuck you talking to like that, eh? Axing all kind of t’ing that ain’t none of your raas bizzness! Cha!’

  ‘I’m only asking,’ Ged snapped back at him. ‘No need to have a shit fit! Fucking hell!’ he went on incredulously. ‘That’s what you were doing the first time I saw you! What’s the bleedin’ difference?’

  Max drew himself up to his full height and put his hand inside his jacket. His eyes swivelled every which way as he advanced on Ged, muttering: ‘No one talks to me like that, muthafucka!’ Pulling the gun out, he pointed it at Ged’s face from the cover of his jacket.

  ‘Shit!’ Ged hissed, holding his hands up as he edged away from the window. ‘Shit, man! Look, just forget it, yeah? There’s no need for this! All right?’

  He took his wallet out then and held it open so that Max could see the hefty wad of notes. ‘Here, man—take it. Just put the gun away, yeah?’

  ‘Raas!’ Max growled. ‘You think I’m a fucking mugger? I look like a fucking mugger to you?’ He jabbed the gun through the window. ‘All you white cunts are the same! Muthafuckin’ bastards!’

  ‘No . . . Look – I’m sorry, all right?’ Ged gulped as Max became more agitated. ‘Shit! I don’t believe this!’

  Max kissed his teeth. ‘Pussy claat! Gimme that!’ Snatching the wallet, he waved the gun under Ged’s nose, growling, ‘I see you round here axing questions again, I’ll blow your fucking raas brains out. Now mooove . . .’

  Max sneered as he watched Ged tear out of the car park, then looked down at the wallet in his hand with disgust. Mugger! He’d never mugged anyone in his fucking life!

  Flipping it open, he looked again at the bulky wad of notes inside. It wasn’t exactly how he’d planned it, but this would make up for some of the money he’d lost when Stevo did a runner.

  As he stared at the notes, he spotted the tiny marks. His heart skipped a beat. No way! It couldn’t be!

  Ripping the top note out, he peered at it closely. It bloody was! The marks were there in each of the Queen’s eyes.

  Leaping into his car, he pulled the rest of the notes out and scrutinized them. Some were clean, but the rest were marke
d. He separated them into two piles on the seat beside him. There was forty-five quid in the clean pile; one hundred and seventy in the marked.

  Reinserting just a few of the marked notes into the wallet, he pocketed the rest and got back out of the car. If he was going to take this to The Man, he sure as hell wasn’t losing it all again!

  Ged drove to Mal’s flat in a fury. That thieving bastard’s face would be indelibly marked on his memory, and when he saw him again, he’d make him regret the day he did what he’d just done.

  No one had ever pulled a gun on him before. It had totally freaked him out. But now the shock was wearing off, he felt like turning his car around and hunting the cunt down. And when he found him, he’d rip his head off and stamp all over the hole!

  Mal and Lee were up in arms when Ged stormed in and told them what had happened.

  ‘Why didn’t you pan his bleedin’ face in?’ Mal said. ‘I’d have battered the fuck out of him!’

  ‘Bit hard when you’re stuck inside a car with a gun in your fucking face!’ Ged snarled back at him. He slammed his fist down onto his knee. ‘But I’ll kill him when I get my hands on him, man! I swear I will!’

  ‘Who was it?’ Lee asked. ‘Did you know him?’

  ‘Yeah!’ Ged spat. ‘That’s why I stopped him in the first place. He stopped me and Sam when we were leaving here the other night and asked where that smack dealer, Millie, lived. Then the cheeky bastard’s got the nerve to pull a gun on me for asking him where this Simeon lives!’

  ‘You say he was looking for Millie?’ Mal asked, narrowing his eyes. ‘Well, that’ll be it, won’t it? He’ll be a bleedin’ junkie! And you know what they’re like, man. Head cases!’

  Ged shook his head. ‘No, he wasn’t a junkie. He was too smart looking. And his car was a top-of-the-range BM.’

  ‘Probably nicked it,’ Mal snorted. ‘Like he nicked your wallet. Cunt! So, what you gonna do about it?’

  Ged shrugged, pursing his mouth furiously. ‘I don’t care about the wallet – there was only about two hundred in it anyway. It’s him sticking that gun in my face I’m pissed off about!’

  They discussed the mugging for a while. Then they got onto Ged’s reasons for going to that block of flats in the first place, and why he was so eager to find Simeon. They were shocked when they heard about Linda. They’d known her since she was born, and had never imagined she’d go off the rails like this.

  ‘You want to go and drag her out of there, give her a good hiding and lock her in her bedroom,’ Mal suggested. ‘And batter the fuck out of the guy for messing about with her while you’re at it!’

  ‘ ’S right!’ Lee added indignantly. ‘The guy wants locking up! Bleedin’ pervert!’

  ‘What do you think I was there for?’ Ged snapped, flicking a disbelieving glance at Lee for making that statement in the light of everything Ged had heard him say about schoolgirls. ‘I was planning to find out which flat he lives in,’ he went on. ‘And if she was in there, I was gonna break his door down and get her out!’

  ‘So what’s stopping us?’ Mal asked. ‘Let’s get down there!’

  Ged shook his head. ‘No. I’d already decided to leave it till it got dark. I think that’ll be better – especially now.’

  ‘Right, then,’ Mal said. ‘We’ll go when it’s dark.’

  ‘Eh!’ Lee jumped up, fired by a sudden revelation. ‘You don’t suppose it was him, do you? That Simeon you’re looking for?’

  ‘No.’ Ged shook his head. ‘Linda’s friend told me he was bald, but this bloke’s got dreads.’

  ‘I bet he knows him, though.’ Mal arched a knowing eyebrow. ‘Why else would he go psycho like that? He must have been covering for the guy.’

  ‘Whatever . . .’ Ged rolled his head on his neck. ‘I can’t do anything about it right now, so there’s no use winding myself up, is there?’

  ‘Just so long as we sort this Simeon creep out when we find him!’ Mal said. ‘Poncey cunt he must be and all, with a name like that!’

  ‘Oh, believe me,’ Ged said. ‘I intend to. And the thieving bastard who took my wallet! Now, how’s about one of you makes me a brew while I let Caroline know what’s happened?’

  ‘Yeah, I reckon we could all do with one,’ Mal said, pushing himself to his feet. ‘Here you go, mate.’ He handed his stash tin to Ged. ‘Make yourself a spliff, eh? And don’t worry about Linda. We’ll find her – together, mate!’

  Ged looked up at him gratefully. Of them all, Mal was the last one he’d expected to show genuine concern. But here he was, doing exactly that – and, looking at his face, Ged knew without a doubt that he was genuine.

  ‘Thanks, Mal,’ he said. ‘I really appreciate that.’

  Mal shrugged modestly. ‘What are mates for, eh?’

  19

  Max held the wallet out towards The Man. The Man snatched it and threw it open, pulling the notes out and riffling through them.

  ‘How did he come to have this?’ he growled angrily. ‘That’s sixty quid of my fucking money! How come?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Max said – glad he’d decided to replace just a bit of the money as he watched it disappear into The Man’s pocket. ‘I didn’t exactly get to ask him.’

  ‘And how come he gave it to you?’

  ‘Like I said.’ Max shrugged. ‘He pissed me off axing questions about you, so I pulled my gun on him!’ He laughed nastily. ‘And the pussy turn yellow and give me his wallet!’

  ‘It’s not funny!’ The Man bellowed. ‘Who was he? And why was he asking about me? What exactly did he say?’

  ‘Just that he was looking for you. That he knew you lived in these flats . . . And that you might have a young girl called Linda with you!’

  ‘How did he know that?’ The Man barked. ‘Who’s been chatting my business?’

  ‘And how come he stopped you?’ Jake interrupted, a suspicious gleam in his eye.

  Max rounded on him furiously. ‘How the fuck do I know?’

  ‘So you’re saying he just got lucky?’ Jake snorted. ‘Yeah, right!’

  ‘Nah, hang about!’ Max said. ‘He stopped me ’cos I stopped him the other night! I axed him where to find that Millie!’ He sat back, smiling smugly. ‘So you can stop your insinuations, Jake. Trying to make out like I’m a fucking informer, or something!’

  ‘Hang on, hang on!’ The Man cut in. ‘So you seen him the other night? You asked him where this Millie lived, and he told you, yeah?’

  Max nodded. ‘Yeah. Well, roughly. Didn’t know the number, though, so I had to ax someone else when I got over there.’

  The Man’s face darkened. ‘Bit of a coincidence, isn’t it? You talk to him just before you give Millie a going-over, then the man comes looking for me? Knows my name – and even mentions that slag Linda. Something ain’t right with this!’ He shook his head, pursing his mouth. ‘Nah! It’s wrong!’

  ‘You sure he wasn’t Babylon?’ said Jake.

  Max shrugged, slumping down in the chair. ‘That’s what I thought when I first saw him, but I don’t think so.’

  ‘And what makes you so sure?’ The Man asked.

  Max grinned. ‘Well, I never seen a Babylon give up ’im wallet before!’

  Jake shook his head and wandered over to the window. Max could be such a dickhead. This man sure as hell sounded like a Babylon. And it was too much of a coincidence that he just happened to have been hanging about when Max went looking for the dealer who supposedly had the money, and now he was here asking about The Man. People walked in and out of these flats all day long – how come he hadn’t stopped anyone else? How come he’d chosen Max?

  ‘What car was he in?’ The Man asked.

  ‘Ford,’ Max told him with the true sneer of a BMW driver. ‘Dark blue. Pretty old.’

  ‘MNE plate?’ Jake asked.

  ‘I didn’t notice,’ Max admitted.

  ‘All the undercovers in Moss Side use dark Escorts and Cortinas, and they all got MNE plates,’ Jake said. He turned to The M
an. ‘If I was you, I’d start wondering if the Babylon haven’t been watching you.’

  ‘You think?’ The Man asked quietly. Jake shrugged and went back to looking out of the window.

  The Man looked down at his hands. This was definitely too much of a coincidence. In all the time he’d been dealing with Pasha, he’d never been fingered. Yes, the police had been getting a bit more active on the scene lately, but they’d never connected him to anything, had never tried to bust him. Even when they did that mass raid a month before Pasha copped it, they hadn’t set foot near him or Pasha. But now, ever since that money had turned up with Max’s boy, Stevo, things were starting to happen. It wasn’t good.

  In light of this more pressing matter, it slipped his mind that Max had also been asked about the girl.

  ‘I don’t like this,’ he said to Max a minute later. ‘It’s too close. Seems to me this guy gave you my money knowing you’d bring it straight to me.’

  ‘What good would that do?’ Max asked.

  ‘Could be a set-up,’ The Man said grimly. ‘If Stevo and his boy Millie had already been gripped by the Babylon and had the money taken off them, that would explain why they didn’t have none of it when you went looking. And if that Millie one was warned not to say anything, that’s why he wouldn’t give it up when you put the arm on him. They probably figured whoever it belonged to would go looking for it, and held onto it to use as a trap. What we’ve got to do is figure out what’s really going down here, and make sure we don’t get fucked up.’

  ‘It’s a bit late for that,’ Jake muttered darkly. ‘Seems like it’s already started.’

  ‘Well, they ain’t got nutt’n on me,’ The Man snapped. ‘Even if they have got the money, there’s nothing to say it’s mine. No one knew about the marks except us in this room.’ He looked at Max hard. ‘You didn’t tell no one, did you?’

  ‘Course I didn’t!’ Max protested. ‘I’m not that stupid!’

  ‘Well, the only other one who knew was Pasha – and he’s not telling no one nothing!’