In the Blood

by Ruth Mancini

  ‘OK,’ I agree.

  I push my phone back into my pocket. I glance at Marie’s kitchen window and then, after a moment’s hesitation, I step over and tap on the glass of the flat next door. I hear the sound of movement inside and then the chain rattles and the door edges open.

  The woman peers at me, silently, from behind the door. She has white thinning hair and equally pale, papery skin that reveals the veins underneath.

  ‘Hello,’ I say. ‘I saw you watching me from the window. I’m a solicitor. I wondered if I might have a word with you?’

  ‘What about?’

  I lean forward. ‘About them next door,’ I say, my voice lowered, conspiratorially. I bob my head in the direction of Marie’s flat.

  ‘Oh, them. Are you from the council?’ she asks.

  She has a strong cockney accent, I notice. Her mouth makes involuntary movements as if she’s chewing something. A long hair protrudes from her chin.

  I hesitate. ‘I’m a solicitor,’ I say again.

  ‘Well, it’s about time. You’d better come inside.’

  I step into her narrow hallway, and follow her into the living room. The layout of the flat is the same as Ellie’s, but the paintwork is cracking and the wallpaper is peeling. There’s a musty, damp smell throughout.

  I take a seat in a threadbare tartan wingback armchair with a large white lace doily over the back.

  ‘What’s your name?’ she asks me.

  ‘I’m Sarah,’ I tell her. ‘What’s yours?’

  ‘Mrs Cooper,’ she says. She lowers herself down into the chair opposite me. She doesn’t offer me a cup of tea.

  ‘So, what’s the problem?’ I ask, deciding to let her lead the way. I am aware that I’m misleading her, slightly, as to who I am and the reason I’m here, but I’m hoping the end will justify the means.

  ‘Well, they’re so noisy,’ she complains. ‘It’s all the time. If it’s not shouting, it’s music. And if it’s not music, it’s children crying.’

  ‘They have children?’ I ask, knowing that they don’t.

  ‘Well, they don’t. She looks after other people’s children, doesn’t she?’

  ‘So, what sorts of noises do you hear?’

  ‘Well, you know. Shouting. Yelling. Her telling the kids to shut up.’

  ‘What about visitors?’ I ask. ‘Do many people come and go?’

  ‘Well, yes. All the time. Her fella, he smokes drugs and that in there and all sorts come knocking. I can smell it. It comes up through the pipes in my kitchen.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Really,’ she says. ‘And it ain’t nice.’

  ‘So, do you know whose children she looks after?’

  ‘I don’t know. Just people on the estate. She used to look after the little boy two doors down, before he got taken into care. Poor little lad.’

  I lean forward. ‘Why do you say that? Poor little lad?’

  ‘Well, he was always crying. They would leave him with that woman and they’d go off down the pub and come home drunk.’

  My breath stops in my chest. ‘What woman?’

  Mrs Cooper blinks at me for a moment and her mouth starts chewing away furiously, her nose twitching up and down. ‘Well, that woman with the blue scarf. She don’t come round no more, not since the kid got taken away, but whenever I saw her, I always used to think to myself, “Oh my gawd, here we go.”’

  ‘What do you mean? Why?’

  ‘Well, like I say, the baby was always howling.’

  ‘While they were gone?’

  ‘Yes. While they were gone.’

  ‘What did it sound like? Was it... sudden, loud crying, or... or grizzling?’

  ‘It was both. And then them two, they’d come home and start arguing.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘Well, I don’t know, do I? But whenever she came round, they always came back from the pub in a worse state than usual. And that’s when they make the most noise. He smacks her about,’ she adds. ‘Her fella.’

  I nod.

  She points a bony finger at me. ‘I remember you now, you came that time before, didn’t you, when they were having an almighty ding-dong.’

  ‘I did,’ I agree. ‘You’ve a good memory for faces.’

  ‘Oh, there’s nothing wrong with my memory,’ she says. ‘There’s something wrong with my old ticker though and all of this noise and whatnot don’t help.’

  She makes a ball of her fist and taps at her chest, before heaving herself up out of her chair.

  ‘Just listen to my knees,’ she adds as the chair creaks its response.

  I smile. ‘I think that was the chair that was creaking.’

  She frowns at me. ‘I’m an old woman,’ she says. ‘Everything’s creaking.’

  ‘I’m sure,’ I agree. ‘It can’t be easy.’

  ‘It’s not.’

  She walks over to the sideboard, opens a drawer and takes out a packet of boiled sweets. She unwraps one and puts it into her mouth. As an afterthought, she offers me one. I shake my head.

  ‘So what are you going to do about it?’ she asks, with her mouth full.

  ‘About what?’

  ‘The noise.’

  ‘Well, I’ll be sure to pass on your concerns,’ I tell her, truthfully. ‘I’ll make a report.’

  ‘And what will happen after that? I’ve been phoning the council for weeks, you know, and nobody ever listens.’

  ‘Well, I think someone will sit up and listen this time,’ I tell her. ‘Trust me, I’ll make sure they do.’

  *

  As I leave, Marie steps out from the flat next door. I give her what I hope is a fearsome stare and then turn to walk down the balcony towards the steps.

  ‘Wait!’ she calls after me.

  I turn round.

  ‘What were you doing in there?’ she asks. ‘What’s she said?’

  I walk back towards her. ‘How much did she pay you, Marie?’

  ‘What?’ Marie puts her hands on her hips and faces me indignantly, but she looks frightened.

  ‘How much did she pay you?’ I repeat. ‘Finn’s grandmother. To keep quiet.’

  Marie opens and shuts her mouth, then opens it again. ‘She didn’t. She...’

  I look her in the eye. ‘Don’t give me your bullshit, Marie. I know. I know everything. So how much was it worth to you to keep your mouth shut and let Ellie get locked up for something she hasn’t done?’

  Marie looks at me for a moment, her mouth falling open again.

  ‘It wasn’t like that,’ she says.

  I shake my head. ‘And Finn. That poor little boy! Do you want to think about what you’ve done to him?’

  ‘Nothing! I ain’t done nothing!’

  ‘She nearly killed him!’ I yell. ‘She nearly killed him, Marie. And then you just stand by and watch while they take him away from Ellie and give him back to her!’

  Marie stands, helplessly, on the balcony, looking at me. ‘What are you going to do?’ she asks.

  Good question. I don’t actually know. I have what the police would term ‘intelligence’, but I still don’t have the hard evidence I need of any wrongdoing on Marie’s part. Marie doesn’t know that, of course, but I don’t think there’s much prospect of getting Mrs Cooper and her dodgy ticker onto the witness stand. Even if I could, Carmel would make mincemeat of her. She’d be easily discredited as an unreliable witness who’s simply frustrated with ‘them next door’ and their noise. As for the mystery woman who’s been visiting the baby... well, that could be anyone, couldn’t it?

  No. If Will and I are going to nail this, we need Marie, herself – we need her on the witness stand.

  ‘What do you think I’m going to do?’ I bluff. ‘If you think I’m going to stand by and let you look after another child, ever again, you are seriously mistaken.’

  ‘It wasn’t my fault!’ Marie protests, her eyes filling with tears. ‘It was her! It was all her! You don’t know what she’s like!’

  She
glances round. Mrs Cooper is back in the kitchen, with the net curtain pushed back, watching us both.

  Marie steps back and pushes her front door open. ‘Please,’ she begs me. ‘Don’t report me. I need that qualification. I need this childminding job. Come in. I’ll tell you everything you want to know.’

  I glance at Mrs Cooper and give her a nod, before stepping forward and following Marie into her flat. Mrs Cooper nods back at me as she drops the curtain down, satisfied, no doubt, that I’ve taken her seriously, that I’m now putting my promise into action and investigating her complaint.

  Marie’s flat smells heavily of cigarette smoke. She walks up the hallway and into the living room, where she flops down onto a voluminous sofa, picks up a pack of Royals from the coffee table, slides one out and lights it.

  ‘Could you open a window?’ I suggest.

  Marie nods and stands up. She walks over to the door to the Juliet balcony at the rear of the flats and slides it open a little.

  ‘She’s a complete cow,’ Marie says, shaking her head. ‘She’s a bitch, that Eleanor. She was blackmailing me.’

  ‘How? How did you get involved with her?’

  ‘Well, she just turned up one day, didn’t she? El had gone off to work and put Finn with me. I saw her knocking on El’s door and I stuck my head out. El had told me all about Finn’s dad and that, that he came from a posh family. I knew straight away who she was. I knew she was Finn’s granny.’

  ‘So what happened next?’

  ‘Well, I’d run out of fags,’ she says. ‘I needed to get some more. Finn was all settled, fast asleep, he was, in the bedroom. I didn’t want to wake him. I’d just been trying to decide what to do. First off, I rang Darren to see if he could go and get me a pack, but he weren’t answering. I knew he’d be down the Camby Arms, having a good time, and I was riled with him. There was me, working hard, trying to earn money for us, for our future. It felt as though he didn’t give a shit about me. I was upset. I needed a fag.’

  Marie pauses and takes a puff of her cigarette.

  ‘And then,’ she continues, ‘just as I was trying to decide how I was going to get myself some smokes, I saw her walk past and knock on El’s door, and I thought to myself, “What the hell, he’s her grandkid. She’s obviously here to see him. She ain’t gonna mind me asking her to watch him for twenty minutes while I pop out and get a packet of fags.” It ain’t easy doing stuff like that when you’ve got a small kid, you know?’

  I do. I do, indeed, know.

  ‘So,’ Marie continues, ‘I go out, and I say to her, are you looking for El? She’s gone to work, but your grandkid is in here with me, if you want to see him.’

  ‘And what did she say?’

  ‘Well, she looked a bit surprised, at first. But then she says, “Thank you,”’ Marie puts on an upper-class accent, ‘“that would be very nice,” she says. “I don’t get to see him quite as often as I’d like.”

  ‘So in she comes and out I go. I went down to the Costcutter, but it was shut and so I had to go to the pub. When I got there, Darren was in there with that Tanya Small, drooling over her and dissing me in front of everyone off the estate. We had an almighty bust-up and then I got my fags and went back.

  ‘I’d been quite a bit longer than I said I was going to be, but Eleanor was really nice about it. She said she didn’t mind at all, that she’d just been watching Finn sleeping, and how happy it made her. She then told me how hard it was to get to spend time with him, that El wouldn’t let her see him very much. I believed her. I knew El didn’t have much time for her, but I couldn’t see why, to be honest. It felt as though El was being unfair to her. She seemed so nice, and it was her grandkid after all.’

  Marie’s phone bleeps. She stands up and wrestles it out of her pocket. She looks at it and puts it down on the table.

  ‘She asked me if she could come by and visit Finn again next time I had him,’ she continues. ‘I knew I was going behind El’s back a bit, but I couldn’t see the harm. Plus, I was really upset about Darren and Tanya. She asked me what was wrong and so I told her; I had to talk to someone. And then she said, “Look, I’m in no rush to get away. Why don’t you go back down the pub and sort it out with him?” She opened her handbag and she gave me a fifty-pound note. She said, “Buy him a drink and talk it through. Take your time. This can be our secret, can’t it? You get to make things up with your boyfriend and I get to see my grandson. Everybody’s happy, and Ellis need never know.”’

  She stubs her cigarette out. ‘I know now that I should never have done it,’ she says, ‘I should never have left Finn with her, but I had to get back down the Camby Arms and confront him, Darren. It was eating me up inside.’

  ‘So it became a regular thing, is that what you’re saying?’

  Marie takes a second cigarette out of the packet and lights it. Without asking her, I stand up and open the sliding window a little wider. A welcome blast of fresh cold air enters. I pointedly take a seat in an armchair nearer to the door.

  Marie nods. She takes one large puff of her cigarette and stubs it out.

  ‘And did she pay you each time?’ I ask.

  ‘Yeah. I couldn’t see any harm in it. We were doing her a favour, and she could afford it, after all. Darren loved the extra money. We sorted things out between us, and he said it was a right result, managing to get paid by El and by her, too. It meant I could go with him when he went out, keep an eye on him, like. I didn’t trust him at the end of the day, not with women, not with the aggro he was getting into, the drugs and fights and shit that goes on this estate. I know it was wrong, but it worked, for me. I was getting really good money for the first time in my life. I mean, it wasn’t like mega-bucks or anything. But it meant that I could afford to pay my rent and my bills and still have some left over.

  ‘El was earning ten times what she was paying me and I knew she could afford it. And that rich bitch was loaded, so it was no skin off her nose. El kept saying as to how she was saving up and that she was going to get her and Finn off the estate, and I knew when she did that she’d find a proper nanny and that would be it. I knew it weren’t going to be a forever thing and I thought I’d take it while I could.’

  ‘So how did it work? She’d just knock on the door every time Ellie went to work?’

  ‘Not every time, just sometimes. We arranged it so that she would call me when she wanted to come and I would tell her if El was working and if Finn was with me.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘She would come round and give us fifty quid to piss off down the pub for a couple of hours. It was a no-brainer, if I’m honest. Who’s gonna say no to that?’

  ‘And when you got home? How was Finn?’

  ‘He was asleep. He always seemed fine. I had no reason to worry about what she got up to. She was his gran, wasn’t she? I thought she loved him. I thought she cared.’

  ‘And now? What do you think now?’

  Marie says, bitterly, ‘I think she’s a fucking bitch who has stitched us up, that’s what I think.’ She sighs heavily and scratches her left shoulder with the opposite hand. ‘The first time El got arrested for all the bruises and the burns and that, we weren’t sure what had happened. We didn’t honestly know if it was El that had done it. I didn’t suspect for a minute that it was her – Eleanor. And it certainly weren’t me. And then there was Finn. I mean, he climbed on the furniture and stuff all the time, and fell off, and there was one time when I took him on the bus up to the Oval. We were going to Kennington Park. The bus stopped suddenly with a great big jerk, just as we were getting off, and we both went over, Finn and me. I had a massive bruise on my leg and I noticed, a couple of days later, that Finn had one on his arm and one on his knee. But I was shocked when they said he’d been burned. I know I smoke in the house and I shouldn’t, but I swear that was nothing to do with me. El said it was impetigo and that the bruises were an accident. That’s what she told me her solicitor said. She’s a good mate, is El; she never once pointed
the finger at me. But then when Finn got really ill and was taken to hospital, that was when I got really scared.’

  ‘So what happened?’

  ‘Well, she was here, wasn’t she – Eleanor? El got a last-minute call out to work, so I called Eleanor over and me and Darren went out. I think we went to the Camby Arms first off; I remember it was afternoon when we left, because it was still light. But there was a party on the estate that night, and everyone was going. I called Eleanor and she said that was OK, that she could stay with Finn overnight. It was a bit of a wild party; I woke up on the living-room floor. Darren was gone, I didn’t know where. So, I called Eleanor and told her I was coming home. When I got back, Finn was asleep. She said he’d been fine, but within about half an hour of her leaving, he woke up and I could see that he weren’t right. He was really pale and floppy, and he was just staring right at me, but it was like he couldn’t see me. I called El straight away and she came home.

  ‘Darren was really angry after El got arrested. He’d been up to something dodgy that night, something to do with some shipment of drugs, and so he didn’t have an alibi. He called Eleanor and told her that she’d stitched us up, and that he wasn’t going to prison for her.’

  ‘And what did she say?’

  ‘She went mental right back at him. But really mental, I mean. She went crazy. He had her on speakerphone and I could hear everything she said.’

  ‘What? What did she say?’

  ‘Well, she just twisted everything and turned it back on us, basically. She started going off on one at Darren, telling him he was nothing but a drug dealer and a loser. She said that if her grandson died, then she would make sure we both went to prison for life. She said we weren’t fit to lick her boots, all sorts of stuff like that. Then she said that if either of us mentioned it again, to anyone, she’d call the police and she’d see to it that they locked us both up and threw away the key. She said that, if she was us, she would stay right out of it and walk away while we still could.’

  ‘And that’s what you did?’

  ‘Well, yeah.’ Marie’s face reddens. ‘But you have to understand what she’s like. It’s like... if you are giving her what she wants, like in the beginning, when I let her see Finn, she’s as nice as they come. But if you cross her, it’s like she’s going to destroy you, annihilate you. I was scared, and so was Darren. She said she knew people in high places, judges and doctors and that, people “who could make things happen”.’