Blood Mother: Flesh and Blood Trilogy Book Two (Flesh and Blood series)

by Dreda Say Mitchell

  Stan went inside and walked over to the roulette tables. The club was spread over two floors and nearly pitch black. In theory that was to make it discreet, but really it meant that punters who weren’t in the know couldn’t see what was going on. As the owner liked to explain, his club attracted a very varied crowd; from West End gangsters to East End gangsters. But there were also hard-core gamblers, local workers who wanted a drink after hours, American tourists who couldn’t believe London shut up shop by eleven and posh blokes who liked a walk on the wild side.

  Stan found Jimmy not far from the roulette table, decked out like someone from the 1940s. Navy blue double-breasted suit, silk tie, high-waisted trousers with a spot-on crease held up by black suspenders and two-tone saddle shoes to polish off the look. And of course, a dark fedora hat worn at an angle.

  ‘Stanley. Thought I’d be seeing you,’ Jimmy said in a low, feminine voice. Jimmy was really a Jenny. Why she togged herself out in men’s clothes and wanted to be known as a fella, Stan had no idea. That’s what he liked about Soho – you could be who you wanted, no questions asked.

  ‘Where’s my guy?’

  ‘Right in front of you . . .’

  And so he was. Having abandoned blackjack, Lord Tilgate was now frittering away chips on the fixed roulette table. But Stan didn’t feel sorry for him. He was good for it.

  Stan went in for the kill. ‘Blimey! Lord Tilgate! Fancy meeting you here. Mind if I join you?’

  The honourable Jack Hampton, aka Lord Tilgate, had the reddened and slightly puffy skin of a man who liked a decent drink. He played the eccentric toff to the hilt with frayed cuffs and tweed trousers, a jacket that had seen better days, scuffed brogues and a trilby hat. If it hadn’t been for the fuck-off diamond ring on his finger he might have been a bus driver blowing his wages on a habit he couldn’t give up.

  Tilgate looked up, confused. ‘I’m so sorry, do I know you?’

  Stan kept smiling. ‘Yes, sir, of course you do. We met at Julie’s in Hampstead.’ Was her name Julie? Might as well have been. A month ago Stan had blagged his way into a cocktail party. After that it was simply a question of sniffing around and finding out who mattered and who didn’t. He soon discovered Tilgate mattered. At least his honourable title mattered . . . to Stan.

  ‘We’ve been planning to get together for a while.’ He was lying of course but he was in the right establishment for it. ‘To discuss some business. Let me refresh your memory – the name’s Stanley Miller.’

  ‘Ah yes – of course, I remember.’

  Stan cupped his hand over his mouth and whispered, ‘Try the low numbers on the red, Lord Tilgate. I think you’ll find them lucky . . .’

  Stan was right – he got a dirty look from Jimmy for his trouble. This cheered the peer up a lot. ‘So tell me, Mr Miller . . .’

  ‘Oh please – Stan.’

  ‘Stan. What line of business did you say you were in?’

  ‘Property’s my thing, your honour. I’ve got an extensive portfolio and I’m looking to take it up a gear. I understand you’ve got interests in that field yourself? I’d be interested in exploring some ideas . . . for our mutual benefit.’

  ‘You mean you need a peer of the realm to put on your headed notepaper to impress the easily impressed?’

  Stan was taken aback. He wasn’t used to being spoken to in such a frank manner by one of the country’s elite. In the East End, yes, but not by one of this crowd.

  ‘Seeing as you’ve put your cards on the table, I’ll lay mine out too. That’s exactly what I’m thinking. If you look east, you’ll notice something – whole tracts of East London are a complete desert. The docks are closed, the Krauts levelled entire areas and no one wants to live or work in what’s left except people without a choice – the poor. Did you know Wapping High Street once had a hundred and forty pubs? Now you’d be lucky to find a beer bottle lying in the gutter.’

  Stan’s voice grew excited as he carried on. ‘The East End is dying but one day it will rise again. If you buy parts of the corpse now there’s going to be a lot of money to be made when it comes to life. I’ve got a map of all the places people will have to buy if they want to develop out East. At the moment you can get them for a song. It helps that I have friendly arrangements with a number of council officials down that way. And I have associates who can smooth paths and iron out wrinkles.’

  Tilgate interrupted, his eyebrow raised. ‘You mean criminals.’

  Stan’s nose was put out of joint. ‘I doubt whether they’re any more criminal than your associates in the City. They’re probably a lot more honest about it.’

  Lord Tilgate pulled a face. ‘No offence, Stan, but I prefer not to get involved commercially with gentlemen who know how to play fixed roulette wheels.’

  Stan paused for thought. As any burglar knows, you can get in anywhere if you’re smart enough. It was just a question of finding an access point. A man’s usual weaknesses are sex and money but Tilgate had plenty of the latter, so it would have to be the former.

  As the chips piled up and the Scotch flowed, Tilgate seemed quite happy in Stan’s company. He offered to introduce him to some local characters. There were a number of tarts at the Threes and Stan knew them all. He needed to find out what the toff’s kink was.

  ‘I hear that Colette is very handy with a cane . . .’

  ‘I had enough of that at public school . . .’

  After a while, Stan decided that women weren’t his lordship’s thing and introduced him to some young men instead. When he twigged what Stan was up to, Tilgate told him, ‘I had enough of that at public school as well . . .’

  Stan was baffled. Every geezer has his own perversion but Lord Tilgate was coming over like one of the Mary Whitehouse brigade. It didn’t make sense. He seemed interested in Soho lowlife but showed no sign that he wanted to join in.

  ‘Where are you on cabaret, my lord? They do a very good floor show here.’

  The peer was swaying slightly, but said, ’Those places expect you to pay through the nose for a drink.’

  Stan chuckled. ‘No need to put your hand in your pocket when I’m around.’

  The floor show was in a back room. A small stage was lit by spotlights and revolving glitter balls. The scent of sexual tension was high in the air. A young woman called Luscious Lucy, dressed in a sparkling purple backless dress with a scarlet feather boa wrapped round her neck, was doing a sexy catwalk onto the stage. Lord Tilgate murmured, ‘Oh I see – strippers.’

  Blimey, mate – what were you expecting? Judy Garland?

  Stan gestured at the stripper to tell her to put a special effort in for his guest. Mid-way through her act, dress abandoned on the stage, she plonked her stilettoed foot on their table, peeled her stocking off and wrapped it around Lord Tilgate’s neck. She jiggled her tits for him and licked her finger and ran it down his cheek. Stan sat back in despair. His guy might as well have been listening to a speech on car parking in the House of Lords. Stan didn’t like admitting defeat but he had to face it: his effort to find a way to set up this bloke had ended in failure.

  But then he got a lucky break.

  Squeezing through the tables was an Italian guy, an enforcer for various local Faces. He’d brought a woman with him. She was very tall, very scantily dressed and very black. As she squeezed her bum past their table, Tilgate was transfixed. When she took a seat a few yards away, he strained to see her in the darkness and shuffled his chair around to get a better view. He was the proverbial rabbit in the headlights.

  Relieved, Stan whispered, ‘Nice-looking bird, eh?’ Lord Tilgate said nothing. ‘Do you like the coloured ladies, Lord Tilgate?’ The toff still said nothing. ‘Not that I’m sitting in judgement of course – I’ve always said we’re all equal.’

  Tilgate got back in the saddle of his high horse. ‘I don’t approve of race-mixing, Miller. That helped bring down the Roman Empire.’

  Roman Empire? What was the old duffer going on about? Stan only just stopped h
imself suggesting Tilgate dressed up in a fucking toga and put leaves on his head. ‘Of course, but it’s not the same thing. It’s more like sprinkling some on your cornflakes.’

  Tilgate ran his palms down his lapels. ‘It’s rather academic . . . I don’t meet many African ladies in my social circle.’

  Stan played out his hand. ‘Perhaps you should extend your social circle, my lord.’ He tipped his head closer. ‘I might be able to arrange it for Saturday night. Of course, there would be expenses involved.’

  Tilgate cleared his throat and looked around furtively before resting his eyes back on Stan, his voice low. ‘You have access to a lady at the darker end of the rainbow?’

  ‘I most certainly do.’

  Gotcha, you dirty old goat!

  It was time to organise another special up at the house in Mile End.

  Twenty-One

  ‘You’re one amazing chick, Cleo girl,’ Cricket leered on Friday after he rolled off her.

  Cleo wanted to spit in disgust, but knew she couldn’t. Cricket’s partner, Horner, was looking on with glazed eyes and a dirty smirk on his chops. God, she hated having to ‘entertain’ these two thugs. But getting to screw the fabulous Cleo was a perk of their job: evicting families on behalf of someone connected to the brothel. They always insisted on doing her one after the other, Horner liking her on top so he could maul her arse with his hands and Cricket wanting her beneath him so he was in charge. They were truly evil and she hated having to take care of their needs . . . but what could she do? She always put on a show for them in the executive suite, not her room. With a secret smile, she fixed her gaze on the far wall. She was going to have the last laugh one day.

  Horner got up, starting to undo his trousers. ‘That’s got me all horny again. Someone ring the bell because I’m getting ready to climb on board. Ding! Ding!’

  Not on your life, matey! He’d already had her once and that was his lot for the night. ‘I’m a bit busy tonight, my friends. I’ve got to see a man about a motor, you know what I mean?’

  Cleo got up without waiting for an answer, displaying the policewoman’s uniform she wore. For some reason they got a real rise from the get-up. They even insisted she say, ‘Hello! Hello!’ when they first came into the room. It turned her stomach. What was it with men? Her previous punter had got a hard-on from her pretending to be a headmistress, in a cardie buttoned all the way up, tweed skirt, black, flat shoes and fake pearls, giving him a bollocking for not handing in his homework and beating him silly on his arse. The client before him got his rocks off from her saying the times table out loud and he always hit cloud nine on the same sum – eight times six. Just as well, she always got that one muddled up.

  It was a million miles away from the life she’d grown up in. She’d been born in London after her family had come over from the Caribbean island of Grenada. They’d settled into the growing community of Grenadians and Trinidadians in Notting Hill. The place had been alive with parties and music but her family were hard-core church people. All Cleo had wanted was to be out there having fun, fun, fun, but her parents wouldn’t have it, especially her mum. She’d started sneaking out. When her mother had cottoned on, she’d begun bolting the door to stop her. Eventually it had come to a choice – Cleo either stayed under her parents’ roof and did what she was told, following the Lord’s word, or she was out in the cold with Satan. She’d chosen the good life. But it had soon turned twisted and dirty; anyone who said otherwise didn’t know what it felt like to have geezer after geezer on top of you night after night. Cleo wanted out. But even the specials she did on the sly weren’t bringing in enough cash to get her on her way.

  Once Cricket and Horner were gone she washed the muck and stink of them from her body, then popped on her silk floral dressing gown and sneaked downstairs for a soothing cuppa and some quiet time. She rarely touched the hard stuff, a leftover from the pastor’s fire and brimstone words during her childhood.

  In the kitchen she found Daffy at the small table, nursing a glass of sherry with her walking stick propped against her chair.

  ‘Cleo, honey,’ the other woman called out. ‘I hope those two mutton heads didn’t do anything too out of the way this time.’ Cleo really liked this woman. What she admired most of all was that she never poured glitter over the filth they lived in.

  Cleo didn’t answer, just popped the kettle on the hob to boil. She turned back around and asked, ‘Don’t you get tired of this? The dangly bits, the smell, the ones who want you to choke as they shove it down your throat?’

  Daffy pulled out an Embassy Gold cigarette and lit up. ‘I was fourteen when I started in this business.’ Cleo couldn’t keep the shock from her face. Her boss only had a few rules: the biggest being, no drugs, no kids. ‘The usual story – girl falls hard for an older man and before she knows it she’s giving his mates a good time too. Older man dies in a knife fight and girl has to walk the streets and look after herself. She gets bottled, punched, knifed, kicked, raped, breaks more bones than she realised she had.’ Cleo stood frozen stiff in horror, but Daffy’s gaze remained cool, like she was telling someone else’s story. ‘She gets hooked on morphine from this doctor client of hers until one day she’s so out of it she can’t service customers and her Maltese pimp chucks boiling water all down her leg.’

  Cleo put her hand over her mouth in horror. She’d always wondered how the other woman had ended up using a stick. She wasn’t surprised it involved some poxy man.

  ‘She must’ve passed out,’ Daffy resumed, ‘because she wakes up halfway to hell in a back alley somewhere.’ She pulled in a long drag of smoke. ‘Luckily this fine man finds her. Ah, George.’ She smiled like a young girl. ‘There was no side to him, he just wanted to take care of her burns. He wanted to take her to the ozzie, but she wouldn’t have it. No point going to the plod; most of them think a working girl ain’t worth the time of day.’

  She had that right. Cleo remembered one of her cousins going to the cop shop to report a crime, years back, and getting banged up instead.

  ‘She asked him to take her to this cathouse she knows. The madam there had been after her for a long time to join her girls. He was outraged, but did it when she insisted. The madam took a shine to her and showed her the ropes. The girl Sally Matheson died a long time ago and Dorothy was born. This is what I do, what I know. For now. If you want out, you know where the door is.’

  Cleo felt an overwhelming ache of sorrow. Poor Daffy. ‘Sometimes, I just want to go back home—’

  ‘Then do it,’ the older woman cut in, leaning forcefully towards her. ‘Sally didn’t have a home to go back to, but you do. By hook or by crook, use your time here to get what you want. You’re not a div like a lot of the others. You’ve got a brain. That’s why you’re involved in the specials with Pete and me. Pete’s brother—’

  Cleo lit up with curiosity. ‘Pete’s got a brother?’

  Daffy stubbed out her fag. ‘Oh yeah. I know him very well indeed. But I ain’t saying any more about him. I keep my snout in my business only, which is making sure this place runs like clockwork.’

  ‘Pete won’t like me going if I get the chance to bolt.’

  ‘Fuck that soak. He’ll forget about you when he’s got more minge stuffed in his face. He don’t own you.’ She leaned back. ‘Don’t let any man ever own you, my girl.’

  Sinful Simon, who specialised in both men and women, put his head around the door. ‘Cleo, you’ve a customer waiting and Pete’s on the dog and bone for ya.’

  Cleo rolled her eyes tiredly. She’d forgotten about the client, the one who liked her to call him Big Dong Dildo Daddy. She hadn’t even had time for a brew. As she left the room, she couldn’t forget Daffy’s words:

  ‘By hook or by crook, use your time here to get what you want.’

  She picked up the telephone receiver in the hall. ‘This will have to be quick, Pete, I’ve got a punter waiting.’

  ‘We need to get one of our specials ready tomorrow night.’r />
  ‘By hook or by crook, use your time here to get what you want.’

  ‘I’m up for that. But I want more dosh this time. Much more.’

  ‘I says to him, if you ever go with another scrubber behind my back again, I’ll shove my rolling pin so far up your jacksie you’re gonna need surgery to get it out.’

  Babs roared with laughter, along with the other women in the washhouse. Oh, she did love this place. It was like a club where all the women on the estate gathered not only to do laundry, but chat about their problems and have a good old giggle. Babs peered across at Kieran, who was chuckling away too as he helped her fold a sheet. The poor kid didn’t have much to laugh about, so Babs had taken him under her wing. He spent most evenings roaming around the estate on his Jack, but any time he saw Babs he’d help her carry her shopping and she’d tide him over with a soft drink and some nosh. He loved it when she read him a story, but when she asked him to read for her he’d just shake his head and say, ‘I like the sound of your voice, it’s right sweet.’

  Beryl got out her transistor, lengthened the aerial and turned the knob. The radio crackled for a bit until it found Radio Caroline and Chuck Berry’s naughty ‘My Ding-a-Ling’ belted into the room. All the women joined in with him.

  They stopped abruptly when the front door flew open and in barged a very angry-looking woman. Her long hair and make-up were a mess and her belly was huge with the baby she carried. Kieran’s mum, Lou Scott.

  Her eyes darted wildly around until they froze on Kieran. ‘Oi, you fucking little bleeder,’ she shouted, making Babs and the other women suck in their breath. ‘I thought I told you to ask Mrs Roberts for a coin for the lecky meter. I’ve been sitting in the dark like I’m renting a corner of hell.’