She made sure to put the Krook on the steering wheel and locked the car doors before she left it. She knew that the professional car thieves of today could get around practically any security device, but it scared off the amateurs and encouraged any thief to seek out something easier. She looked over at the abandoned factory as she turned the corner. Beyond the high wire fence with scrolls of barbed wire along its top lay broken pallets and a forklift truck on its side. Weeds were growing through the cracks in the concrete. The factory buildings themselves were dark and forbidding, lit only by pale moonlight, the smashed windows leaving shapes in the remaining glass like mountain peaks or silhouettes resembling rabbit ears, running horses and birds in flight.
Further up the street, where there was even less light, she came to the broken playground. Immediately, she saw exactly what Jade meant. The place lay in shadow, in a small gap between two terraces, but she could see that it had once been a playground for young children. The frames for the swings were still there, as was the base for the seesaw, but there no swings and there was no seesaw. The roundabout had tumbled off its hub and lay at an angle like a crashed carousel, and the monkey puzzle was all twisted out of shape.
The house next door was condemned, the front door and all the windows boarded up. Gerry did as Jade had said and slid the board aside. It was a good thing she managed to stay slim, she thought, slipping through. For a split second she felt a surge of fear rush through her and wondered again if Jade was leading her into a trap. But the fear passed as quickly as it had started, leaving her tingling and wary, but determined. Jade had told her who Mimsy was; Jade was scared and needed help.
Gerry entered the house and called Jade’s name quietly. ‘I’m up here,’ came the familiar voice from the top of the stairs.
The house was pitch dark inside, and Gerry used her mobile phone to light her way. She remembered once as a child playing in some empty houses on the edge of the field across from where she lived, but that was usually in daylight. You had to be careful, she remembered, because the stairs were often rotten, the plaster crumbling and laths weakened. In the dark it was so much more difficult to avoid making a misstep.
‘Turn the light out,’ Jade called down.
Gerry put her mobile in her bag, but not before she had turned on the record function. She knew that she wouldn’t be able to remember everything Jade told her, and there was no way she could make notes in the dark. ‘Jade?’ she whispered. ‘Jade? Where are you?’
‘I’m up here. The stairs are safe. They creak a lot, but they’re safe.’
Gerry made her way carefully up the stairs, her night vision improving as she climbed. Jade was waiting for her at the top. ‘Someone might notice a light,’ she said. ‘There’s not supposed to be anybody here. You parked round the corner like I said, didn’t you?’
‘Yes.’
She led Gerry into what had most likely been one of the bedrooms. ‘We’ll have to sit on the floor unless you want to stand. It’s a bit dirty.’
Gerry sat cross-legged beside her, wondering not for the first time why the hell she had let herself be talked into doing this. But she soon had her answer.
‘I’m sorry about all this cloak-and-dagger stuff,’ Jade said, ‘but I’m really shit scared. They might be watching me. They know I was Mimsy’s best friend. I’m sure they don’t know about this place, though. And it’s not as much of a trap as it looks. There’s passages through the attics. You can get to nearly any house in the block and out the back if you hear anyone coming. Mimsy and me used to go exploring.’
‘Who are “they”?’
‘Did you bring that sarnie?’
Gerry felt around in her bag and brought out the package wrapped in foil. ‘Here,’ she said, handing it over.
Jade ripped off the foil and took a bite, then spoke with her mouth full. ‘What the fuck is this?’
‘It’s Brie and cucumber,’ Gerry said, feeling herself blush. ‘On sourdough bread. Sorry, it was all I had. There’s an apple, too.’
‘Thank heaven for small mercies. Brie and fucking cucumber? Sourdough?’ She continued to munch away on the sandwich despite the disgust and horror in her tone.
‘Who’s “they”?’ Gerry repeated, determined to regain control of the conversation.
‘You must know. Don’t you know?’
Gerry couldn’t see Jade’s expression but gathered from her reply that she was a little surprised by the question. ‘We have our suspicions,’ she said, ‘but as yet we haven’t had any confirmation that we’re right.’
‘Sunny and his mates,’ Jade went on. ‘There’s four of them: Sunny, Faisal, Ismail and Hassan. At least, they’re the ringleaders. There’s lots of others, all over the place, but those are the main ones here, the ones we knew. They’ve stopped now, though, now Mimsy’s dead. When she disappeared they told us to stay away, lie low and say nothing. Everyone’s gone to ground. I think they’re still keeping an eye on us, like I said, or they have people to do it for them. Tariq and his pals. That’s why I asked you to meet me here. I still have to be careful.’
‘Who’s “us”? How many of you are there?’
‘Seven.’ Jade sniffed.
Gerry could hear the sounds of an old empty house, sighs and creaks from tired woodwork. It smelled of urine, dust, crumbled plaster and rotten wood. ‘Why didn’t you talk to us before?’ she said. ‘Then Mimsy wouldn’t have had to die.’
‘I couldn’t. None of us could. After a while you just get to thinking there’s no way out. You give up. It’s easier to do what they say. But then Mimsy got killed and that changed things. She was my best friend,’ Jade said in a hushed and trembling voice. ‘And they killed her. We didn’t know they were going to do that. When it’s your best friend, you have to do something, don’t you?’
‘Who killed her, Jade?’
‘They did. The ones I just mentioned. Or their cousins.’
‘Why? You’d better explain it all.’
‘I don’t know why. Mimsy must have got upset about something they did or wanted to do. She had a temper. And there were . . . like certain things . . . things she just wouldn’t do. Sometimes you couldn’t reason with her. Mostly she was fine, but if something set her off she could be a real pain in the arse. Maybe she even threatened to talk or something. I don’t know.’
‘Someone gave her ketamine, Jade. That might have had something to do with it.’
‘Maybe. K can be nasty stuff. I don’t know. All I know is they did it.’
‘How did you get into all this?’
‘You wouldn’t understand,’ Jade said, with an edge of contempt in her tone. ‘You probably had a normal life – nice parents in a nice house who sent you to a nice school and gave you nice meals and nice clothes. It’s not like that for everyone, you know. They were kind, they gave us things, they made us feel like we belonged, told us we were pretty. We chilled with them. It was only later, when we’d gone too far, that things changed. Then there was no way out.’
‘How did it all start?’
‘Me and Mimsy met Sunny and Faisal down at the takeaway on a school lunchtime. Sunny’s the oldest. The ringleader, I suppose. He was friendly. He gave us a free pop and a slice of pizza each and we just, like, chatted. He seemed to understand. He fancied Mimsy, you could tell. No pressure. Not then. Just nice.’
‘What did he seem to understand?’
‘Us. How we felt about things. What a fuck-up our lives were. How nobody cared about us. How bored and alone we felt. All that stuff.’
‘How old were you then?’
‘Fourteen.’
‘And Sunny?’
‘He’s old, more than thirty.’
‘This happened when?’
‘Last summer. I can’t remember exactly when.’
So it had been going on for a year, Gerry thought. ‘What happened next?’
‘Nothing happened, not for a few weeks. We just hung out and talked. Faisal – he’s Sunny’s best friend, the c
ook – he was there most of the time, and sometimes Ismail from the minicabs or Hassan from the balti would drop by. We thought they were all our friends, like we’d found somewhere we belonged. We’d have a laugh and chill, get wasted and party.’
‘Didn’t you think it was a bit strange, these older men spending their time with you?’
‘I didn’t think about it that way at all. Not at first. It was just somewhere to go, someone we could talk to. Better than those fucking plonkers at school. I think Mimsy was the same. She was a bit nervous at first, but that changed as time went on. Look, I’m not stupid, really I’m not. I thought Faisal really liked me. He was nice. Sometimes we’d go up to Sunny’s flat and watch TV. They didn’t like to be seen too much with us out in the open. Sunny said it was because people wouldn’t understand with them being older and Pakis, like, even though they talk just like us. Sunny’s got one of those big flat-screen TVs with surround sound. It was fantastic. I never got to watch anything like that at home. I loved Strictly and he’d let me come down and watch it. X Factor and Britain’s Got Talent. I love those programmes. Movies, too. With popcorn. We’d have real drinks, too. Vodka and cider or something. That was when it happened.’
‘When you were drunk?’
‘I suppose so. I’d had a bit too much, and the next thing I knew Sunny and Mimsy disappeared in one of the bedrooms and Faisal was . . . we were . . . well, it was OK because it was Faisal and he seemed sweet. I know he was older and all that, but I suppose I thought of him as my boyfriend then. And he was a change from those spotty school kids who were always trying to grope me in the corridors. I mean, he really seemed to listen to me. And he made me laugh.’
‘Were you attending school at this time?’
‘Mostly. Yeah. I mean, I think Mimsy was excluded at the time, but even when she wasn’t we wagged it as often as not. But that’s where we found them.’
‘Who?’
‘The other girls. Me and Mimsy would just tell them what a fantastic time we were having and about all the treats and stuff. She could pick out the ones who’d be interested. The ones like me. The ones who were looking for something different. I don’t know how, but it was just like she had a nose for it. She wasn’t ever wrong. The men called her the Honey Monster because she lured other girls in for them. I think they paid her, and maybe it meant she didn’t have to . . . you know . . . do it so much. But it didn’t mean she was working for them, like, and happy with it. She didn’t have no choice by then. None of us did.’
‘It’s OK, Jade. I understand.’
‘It’s just that it sounds bad. I don’t want you blaming her or anything, even though she is dead.’
‘Don’t worry about that.’
‘So she brought new girls in. I’d help sometimes. It’s not as if there’s anything else to do around here except hang out at the shopping mall and get chatted up by schoolboys, or by older married blokes who ought to know better. One night Sunny said they were going to chill at his, and we could bring some of our friends if we wanted. Well, they weren’t close friends, or anything like that, just girls we knew at school or from the mall, girls like us, girls who didn’t really feel like they fitted in, that didn’t belong to any gang or clique. Mostly they were bullied and friendless and grateful to us just for talking to them.’
Lonely, vulnerable, Gerry thought. ‘I’ll need their names,’ she said.
‘There was Kirsty, Becca, Mel, Sue and Kath.’
‘Their real names?’
‘Yes. Only Becca’s short for Rebecca, and so on.’
‘Surnames?’
‘No idea. You can find out from school, though. Or the social. They’re all in care, or in foster homes. Will you take care of them? Will you make sure they’re all right? They’re all scared, too.’
‘We’ll do our best, Jade.’ Gerry was grateful for the recorder app on her mobile. Even thinking about what she was doing made her realise what an idiot she was. She could be jeopardising her career. They should be in an interview room at Eastvale, with DI Cabbot and Detective Superintendent Banks present. But would Jade say what she was saying now, here in the dark, in a brightly lit room with two intimidating adults throwing questions at her? Gerry doubted it. Sometimes you had to bend the rules a little to get a result. ‘What happened?’
‘Nothing. Nothing at all. We went up to the flat. They played music – our kind of music, you know, not that Middle Eastern shit – and we had lots to eat – Hassan runs the balti restaurant down the Strip, so he’d brought a whole bunch of food, too, so we had curries and stuff as well as pizza and kebabs and burgers, and lots to drink. Vodka, gin, whisky, cider. We danced. We talked. We laughed. We got kaylied. We got silly. Mel puked. That’s all. And nobody told us to shut up or fuck off or hit us or told us we were too fat or stupid. Faisal and me had already got together, like Mimsy and Sunny. Ismail hooked up with Becca that night. The girls enjoyed themselves so much they started hanging out with us, mostly at Sunny’s. He’s got the nicest flat. The biggest TV and the best music. The guys weren’t like creepy or anything, not like the lads at school. I mean, have you seen the lads around here? Most you could hope for from them was lager from a can down by the canal before they put their hand up your skirt. Sunny and his friends are older. Dead mature.’
‘And generous?’
‘Yeah, I suppose so. At first.’
‘But now you’re scared of them?’
‘Things change.’
‘Didn’t you think they were a bit old for you?’
‘Did you go out with kids your own age when you were young?’
It was the first time anyone had indicated that they felt that Gerry wasn’t young, and it was a strange feeling. Of course she would seem old to Jade. ‘No, she said. ‘I suppose not.’ She could have added that there wasn’t much choice at her boarding school, and that the choice wasn’t only limited in age but also in gender, unless you were foolhardy enough to go for a teacher. But she didn’t. Her first real boyfriend, when she was eighteen and at university, had been in his thirties. He had also been a junior lecturer, though at no time was he ever her teacher.
‘So how did things progress?’
‘They treated us good at first, like real ladies. They weren’t always groping and fumbling and grabbing your tits.’
‘But you did have sex?’
‘Oh, yeah. But it wasn’t, like, all the time.’
‘You enjoyed it?’
‘It was OK.’
Gerry thought she heard a sound from the next room and stiffened.
‘Rats,’ said Jade.
Gerry didn’t think she had ever seen a rat, not in the wild, so to speak. She certainly didn’t want to start now. ‘Was there any conflict between the men you were with and the local boys?’ she asked. ‘Albert Moffat, Paul Warner and the others? Weren’t they jealous?’
‘They didn’t know. I certainly never told any of them and I’m pretty sure Mimsy didn’t. They might have guessed, but I doubt it. We kept a low profile. And we didn’t really hang out with lads like Albert and Paul. They were older and they didn’t want anything to do with us. I mean, Albert’s Mimsy’s big brother and Paul’s even older than him, so we did see them sometimes in the mall or wherever. They never came down to the Strip. Not their sort of people. They don’t like foreigners. Maybe they were too thick to figure out what was happening. I certainly was.’
‘In what way?’
‘Do I have to spell it out?
‘Try, Jade. For me.’
Jade turned silent for a moment, then began hesitantly. ‘Well, it was all right at first, like, being Faisal’s girlfriend and all that. I thought he really liked me. He’d tell me I was pretty and stuff. Me! I mean, Mimsy was really sexy and all, but me?’
Gerry realised she had no idea what Jade looked like. All she knew was a husky whisper on the telephone and a silhouette in the dark sitting beside her now. She said nothing.
‘Sometimes I’d stay at his flat all night,’ Jade
went on. ‘He had a smaller place, like, next door to Sunny’s. It was a bit cramped and the wallpaper was peeling, but it was OK. It didn’t smell too bad. He even got me a mobile just so he could text me when I was at school and stuff. It was cool. Ismail owned the minicab office next door and we’d go everywhere in taxis, like real ladies. We even went as far as Newcastle once, for a party with some of their mates. Like they’d do anything for us.’
‘When did things start to change?’
‘Not long. Maybe a month or two since we’d known them. One night I went down and there was just Faisal. It was late, like, after the takeaway had closed. We went up to the flat and there were two other guys there. Faisal said they were cousins of his visiting from Dewsbury. They seemed nice enough. We had a few drinks, like, and I was getting pretty wasted, then Faisal sort of leaned over and said that Namal, that was one of his cousins, liked me. And I could see Namal looking at me and smiling and stuff. And Faisal said it would be nice if I could show him a good time.’
‘How did you react to that?’
‘I nearly fell off my fucking chair laughing, didn’t I?’
‘And what did Faisal say?’
‘He said it was OK, it was like a family thing. It was the way families did things where he was from and there was nothing wrong with it. They shared. It was a mark of respect. Everyone did it.’
‘Did you believe him?’
‘How could I know any different? Besides, I was well wasted. I’d been drinking vodka and taking phets. Then Faisal reminded me of all the stuff he’d given us and said it was just a little thing I could do for him, like returning a favour.’
‘So what happened?’
‘Namal and I went in the bedroom and . . . well . . . you know’ She paused for a few moments, being remarkably coy, Gerry thought, given her experiences. Gerry could hear her breathing. ‘It was all right at first. It didn’t hurt all that much.’
‘Then what, Jade?’
‘Then the other one, Kerim, he came in . . .’
When the Music's Over: The 23rd DCI Banks Mystery Page 32