Friendless Lane

by Helen Black

  She stared at him for a second but he didn’t open his eyes, so she pushed the duvet back over his face. ‘Eat a decent breakfast.’

  [#]

  As soon as Lilly had dropped Alice at nursery, she snapped off Ravel’s Bolero and played Infinite by Eminem. Total classic. And boy, the lack of violins felt so good. As she sped through the country lanes, her mind turned to Gem and Kelsey, both their lives ruined before they’d got properly started.

  Jack had been right. Kelsey had taken Gem’s death pretty well. Lilly had been expecting what exactly? Not weeping and wailing, that would never be Kelsey’s style. What then? Anger, perhaps.

  Then again, Kelsey was tough, and Gem wasn’t family; Jack had been right on those counts too. At the end of the day, Kelsey and Gem were no more than a couple of working girls thrown together by circumstance and a shared liking for the crack pipe.

  Lilly parked the car and fought to shut the driver’s-side door, her hair swirling in the wind, rain battering her face. Of course she didn’t have an umbrella or a hood. That would be just too easy, wouldn’t it? She put her car keys between her teeth and tried to wrap her scarf around her head, but she didn’t get the end secured in time and it flew off, landing in a puddle. She reached over and picked it up with thumb and forefinger, holding it at arm’s length. The scarf was sodden, covered in mud and dead leaves.

  She looked up at the sky, and with perfect timing a thunderous cloud passed overhead and emptied on her with the malicious delight of a jealous deity. She broke into a run. Or something approaching it. Her boobs, arse and big feet made her spectacularly unathletic. At school, the other girls had called her ‘spac’. Jack, more kindly, said she was made for loving, not running.

  She was already out of breath when she careered to a halt at the bottom of the office steps. There in the doorway was a crouching figure, face hidden inside a hood.

  ‘Hello?’ Lilly called out.

  The figure looked up, and Kelsey’s sad face, the colour and texture of a paper bag, stared out.

  ‘What are you doing there?’ Lilly pushed past her and unlocked the door. ‘Come in out of this bloody rain.’

  Inside, she turned to Kelsey, panting. Kelsey had her eyes screwed up and was pointing at the scarf Lilly was still brandishing.

  ‘What the fuck even is that?’

  ‘Never mind.’

  Lilly sprinted to the kitchen and catapulted the scarf into the sink on top of a collection of dirty mugs. Rivulets of water ran down her face and her hair stuck to the back of her neck in clumps.

  ‘You need to get a brolly,’ said Kelsey. ‘Or a hood.’

  Lilly grabbed a sheet of kitchen roll. ‘Thank you for your insight, Hercule Poirot.’

  Kelsey took off her puffa and sank into a chair, wrapped her arms around herself and bent forward. Lilly felt a surge of pity and pulled up a chair next to her.

  ‘Are you okay?’

  Kelsey nodded at her knees and shivered. Lilly reached over and placed a hand on the young woman’s back. Through the too-thin-for-the-weather jumper, she could feel the ridge of Kelsey’s spine, like an insect’s. No protection against the stresses and strains of life. Certainly no protection against the life Kelsey Brand had to live, the life that had been thrown at her, no questions asked, no alternatives offered.

  ‘I know how close you were to Gem,’ said Lilly.

  Kelsey looked up. ‘It ain’t really that, Lilly. I mean, we were close, but you know how it is. You can’t get in too deep with no one. You have to watch out for yourself.’

  Lilly nodded. Self-preservation was the number-one skill for anyone who wanted to survive a life like Kelsey’s.

  ‘Thing is,’ Kelsey continued, ‘I’ve been thinking about my sisters.’ She rubbed a scab on the side of her nose. ‘I were thinking about them before Gem, but now it’s made everything clearer.’

  Lilly recalled the Brand sisters. She’d never met the younger three, but she’d seen a photograph of them all when their mother had been murdered. Four little girls with hair the colour of puddles, staring out with unsmiling eyes and chipped teeth.

  ‘I ain’t seen ’em in years,’ said Kelsey.

  ‘How come?’

  Kelsey shrugged. ‘They got put in foster care.’

  ‘I remember,’ said Lilly. ‘You went to the Bushes and they were put with a family in Bedford.’

  ‘They didn’t let me see them when I got arrested.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Lilly. ‘But after the case collapsed there was a contact order. I drafted it myself.’

  Kelsey’s eyes welled with tears. ‘I know, and I went to see them all the time at first …’ She looked down into her lap, a tear running down her cheek.

  ‘What happened?’ Lilly asked.

  Kelsey swiped at the tear with the heel of her hand. ‘A load of shit. I can’t remember most of it.’

  Lilly raised a sceptical eyebrow and the young woman let out a long sigh.

  ‘One week I didn’t have no money to get to the contact centre,’ she said. ‘I rang my key worker but she said she couldn’t help me, that I should apply to the hardship fund or whatever.’

  Lilly rolled her eyes. The hardship fund required a ton of paperwork and took weeks to come through. For the sake of a 70p bus fare!

  ‘Another time I couldn’t go ’cos I got banged up,’ said Kelsey. ‘I mean, I weren’t even charged or nothing, but the people at the centre were all “Why didn’t you let us know?” and I was all “How am I meant to do that from the nick, bitch?” I mean, it’s not like they give you a phone, is it?’ She shook her head in disbelief at the stupidity of some people. ‘After that, they were gunning for me. If I was even five minutes late, they had a go at me. Then one time I turned up and they weren’t there.’

  ‘The kids?’

  ‘Everybody. No kids, no social worker, nobody,’ said Kelsey. ‘And I’m shouting at the woman at the centre, which I know ain’t the brightest idea, but I was so upset.’ Her eyes glinted at the thought of it. ‘Then I get a letter saying contact’s suspended and I need to see a solicitor.’

  ‘Why didn’t you come and tell me?’ Lilly asked.

  Kelsey spoke to her feet. ‘I dunno. Embarrassed.’

  ‘Embarrassed?’ Lilly laughed. ‘This is me we’re talking about.’

  ‘I know,’ Kelsey replied. ‘But you and Jack did so much for me, getting me out of prison and all that, I didn’t want you to see how shit things were turning out.’

  Lilly took Kelsey’s hand. How could things have turned out any other way? Realistically, shit had always been on the cards. The kid had been without parents, without a home, self-harming, damaged, broken …

  ‘Thing is, there ain’t no one else,’ said Kelsey. ‘You saved me once and here you are again.’

  ‘Like the proverbial bad penny.’

  Kelsey smiled. ‘So can you help me, Lilly? Can you help me get contact with the kids?’

  Lilly thought about the application she would have to make to court. The applicant with an unreliable history at the contact centre, now a crack-addicted prostitute.

  ‘I know I ain’t exactly a model citizen,’ said Kelsey.

  They both laughed.

  ‘Let’s give it a try,’ said Lilly.

  Kelsey grinned, jumped to her feet and grabbed her coat.

  ‘You’re a bleedin’ star,’ she said. ‘You’ll convince ’em, I know you will.’

  Lilly held up her hands. ‘Hold on, I’m a lawyer, not a magician. It’ll have to go through all the usual channels, and it won’t be easy.’

  Kelsey pulled up her hood and opened the door. Cold air unfurled around her.

  ‘Come on, Lilly,’ she said. ‘You don’t like easy.’

  Lilly shook her head, wet tendrils of hair slapping her cheeks. She did like easy. She bloody loved easy. Why did people keep saying she didn’t? She thrust an application for legal aid at Kelsey.

  ‘Fill this in.’

  Kelsey nodded and stuffed it in
her pocket.

  ‘I mean it,’ said Lilly. ‘This isn’t a favour. I want to get paid!’

  Kelsey barked out a laugh and clattered down the steps into the rain. Then the door closed, leaving Lilly alone in reception, her damp clothes steaming gently.

  She had a new case.

  [#]

  The autopsy report was heavy.

  Every injury photographed, described and analysed. And Gemma Glass had sustained a lot of injuries.

  These days most police documents arrived electronically and were read on screen, but Jack liked to have a hard copy of an autopsy. He liked to feel it in his hands.

  Also, when possible, he liked the pathologist to talk him through it, especially if it was his old mate Phil Cheney.

  ‘Should have had an umbrella.’ Cheney nodded at Jack’s damp hair as he came out of his lab into the noiseless waiting area. ‘Or a hood.’

  ‘Thanks, Miss Marple.’

  ‘Not that you need to worry about your hair,’ said Cheney. ‘So thin these days it’ll dry in a second.’

  Jack didn’t rise to the bait. Instead he appraised the doctor with a cool eye. Cheney’s hair was now in dreadlocks, and each ear carried five or six piercings. The sleeves of his lab coat were pushed up to his elbows, revealing tattoos to his wrists. His last girlfriend had encouraged a more clean-cut appearance, so the return to the anarchist eco-warrior look told Jack all he needed to know.

  ‘Ditched you, has she?’

  ‘We’re on a break,’ said Cheney.

  ‘Of course you are.’

  ‘Do you want to talk about this case?’ asked Cheney. ‘Because some of us have work to do.’

  Jack chuckled and took a seat. Shaking his head, Cheney snapped off his latex gloves and sat next to him.

  ‘So what do we know?’ Jack asked. ‘Cause of death?’

  ‘Asphyxiation.’ Cheney tapped his Adam’s apple. ‘Outside pressure to the trachea.’

  ‘Strangled?’

  Cheney nodded. ‘If you look, you’ll see definite finger marks on her throat.’

  Jack rifled through the report to the relevant photograph. Cheney was right: there were livid purple marks on both sides of Gem’s neck.

  ‘Not the cut?’ He traced the slash across Gem’s throat with his finger.

  ‘Nasty, but not fatal,’ Cheney replied.

  Jack chose another photo and placed it on the low table in front of them.

  ‘What about this?’ He pointed to bruising around Gem’s eye. ‘Did this happen during the attack?’

  ‘Yup,’ said Cheney. ‘Plus the bruising to the upper torso, fractured ribs and missing teeth.’

  Jack gulped. Basically Gem had had the shit kicked out of her before she was killed. He pulled out another photograph, this time of the girl’s arms.

  ‘What about this?’ He tapped the marks around each wrist. ‘Was she tied up?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Cheney. ‘But the interesting thing is that whilst some of those wounds are fresh, others are a couple of days older and had started to scab.’

  ‘You’re saying she was tied up for a few days before she was murdered?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So whoever did this kept her prisoner?’

  Cheney cocked his head to one side. ‘You’re the one who decides what happened to her, Jack, but if you were to ask me if these ligatures are consistent with being restrained for several days ante-mortem, I’d have to say yes.’

  Jack took a deep breath. Working girls got themselves into scrapes all the time. No matter how many times they were reminded of the risks, no matter how many of their mates ended up in Accident and Emergency, if there was an extra tenner in it, they put themselves in harm’s way.

  But this felt different. This wasn’t a punter who’d cut up a bit rough. This was the deliberate taking and keeping of a girl before disposing of her.

  ‘Any interesting samples?’ he asked.

  Cheney nodded. ‘Fibres under the nails are synthetic. Maybe a mattress? And the trainers are the stuff of forensic wet dreams.’

  Jack shook his head. He’d like to think Cheney was joking, but he knew that the lab crew got their kicks in the strangest of ways.

  ‘There are deep treads.’ Cheney raised his foot and pointed to the sole of a disintegrating Croc, the toe held in place by a piece of gaffer tape. ‘Plenty of room for earth to find a home. Plus pieces of cinder.’

  ‘Cinder?’

  ‘Porous rock, a bit like lava stone. They use it on country roads to provide extra traction in bad weather,’ said Cheney. ‘And there are leaves that we’re trying to match up now. They’re definitely not something run-of-the-mill.’ When Jack failed to look excited, Cheney rolled his eyes. ‘It will help you identify the location where she was killed.’

  ‘The body was moved?’ Jack asked.

  ‘Yeah.’

  Jack thought about this for a second, then asked, ‘DNA? Any sign of our perp?’

  ‘Well,’ Cheney drew out the word like chewing gum wrapped around a finger, ‘I can’t say any of it belongs to the killer, but there are three sets of DNA on the body.’

  Jack’s eyes widened. ‘Three? You are shitting me?’

  Cheney held up the three middle fingers of his left hand. There was a silver ring on the index finger and the nail of the middle one was blackened as if it had been trapped in a door or a drawer.

  ‘What type?’ Jack asked.

  ‘Semen,’ Cheney replied. ‘And hair.’

  Jack couldn’t believe their luck. ‘You’ve checked the database?’

  ‘No, Jack, we didn’t bother,’ said Cheney, his tone dripping with sarcasm.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Jack. ‘So we still don’t know who our friends are?’

  ‘Sadly, you’ll have to do some detective work,’ said Cheney.

  ‘Ha bloody ha.’

  Cheney picked at the tape on his shoe. ‘What I can tell you is that all three are male, obviously, and of south Asian extraction.’

  ‘Shit.’

  ‘Shit, indeed.’

  The Chief Super was not going to like that.

  ‘I can also tell you that two of the three had similarities in their DNA profile,’ said Cheney.

  ‘What does that mean?’

  Cheney looked grim. ‘It means that two of your friends are related. That this was a family job.’

  [#]

  Lilly’s mother had never tired of repeating that family was the most important thing in life. Even at the end, when she hadn’t left the hospital for weeks, her chest heaving against the fibrous crap filling her lungs, she’d apologized a thousand times for not giving Lilly a sibling.

  ‘We tried for years.’ She took a breath from her oxygen cylinder. ‘I always wondered if that was why your dad buggered off. Every man wants a son, don’t they?’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Mam.’ Lilly fixed the mask on to Elsa’s face, pulling the strap around the back of her damp head. ‘I’m absolutely fine on my own.’

  And she had been, hadn’t she? Every decision had been taken with the minimum fuss. Oak-veneer coffin with high-gloss finish. Draped spray of red roses, carnations and seasonal foliage (no novelty shapes or chrysanthemums). ‘Abide with Me’ to kick off the proceedings. ‘The Old Rugged Cross’ playing as Elsa moved along the conveyor belt to meet the flames.

  Even the man from the Co-Op Funeral Service, in his nylon suit so shiny it could have doubled as high-visibility wear, had called her ‘a remarkable young lass’.

  All the same, Lilly was glad that Alice had Sam in her corner for when the inevitable happened. Then she cursed herself for the tacit assumption that it would be Alice who would need her brother. They would need each other, and they would have each other. As it should be.

  She sighed and headed down the office stairs. Next to the junk room she called her office was the storeroom. A very bleak place to which she seldom ventured. Windowless, airless, with damp crawling up the walls, it was where Lilly’s old cases came to die. She op
ened the door and coughed. The smell hit her. A cross between bottom-of-the-vegetable-tray potatoes and wet boots. She needed to do this ninja style; in and out, no hesitation. She certainly didn’t want to touch anything unnecessary.

  She dived in and headed for the nearest filing cabinet. Kelsey Brand was a ‘B’ and her old file should be in there. She tugged at the top drawer but it didn’t open more than an inch. She gave it another yank, to no avail.

  ‘Dammit,’ she shouted and wrenched with as much strength as she could muster.

  Nothing.

  The drawer was jammed. Something, probably the flap of a cardboard file, was pressing against the top. Whatever it was needed to be pressed flatter. Lilly tried to reach in with her hand, but couldn’t get it further than her knuckles.

  ‘Dammit.’

  She looked around for something to use, mentally discarding a broken calculator, a locked petty cash box whose key had been lost over a year ago and a DVD case containing forty-eight hours of CCTV footage. Finally her eyes alighted on a metal ruler. Perfect.

  She grabbed her tool and slid it flat into the small opening. Immediately she felt the ruler hit the obstruction. She prodded back and forth a few times to dislodge it, but no luck. She needed to try and flatten the offending file, but when she inserted the ruler as high as possible, so that it passed above the file, she couldn’t bring it down evenly because she was only holding one end.

  Perhaps she could press down and pull the drawer at the same time? Might that work?

  She wasn’t convinced, but the only other alternative was a trip to B&Q to hire a chainsaw.

  She brandished the ruler in her right hand and took a firm hold of the handle in her left. When the ruler once again passed above the blockage, she pulled with all her might. There was a slight give, but not enough.

  ‘Come on,’ she yelled.

  She needed to brace herself and use the advantage of her not inconsiderable weight, so she kicked off her boots, took one step back and pressed her left foot against the cabinet.

  ‘Heave,’ she shouted.

  As a kid, she had liked to watch World’s Strongest Man on the telly: fat blokes in vests attempting to pull cars by pieces of rope wrapped around their waists. The main battle was usually between the home champ Geoff Capes and a Norwegian mountain of a man called the Viking. Both would begin their challenge by spitting on their hands, and as the rope went taut there would be a collective cry from the audience watching in the mud and everyone at home would join in.