Austerity Street

by Belinda Bennett

  ‘Princess likes you,’ she yawned. ‘Princess likes me.’

  ‘Here, let’s put a jumper on,’ Justine whispered, knowing layers were the only thing that would shield them from the cold. ‘Cuddle up with mummy.’

  A full belly, the warmth of her mother’s loving arms and the excitement of a day that included a treat from Mr Patel’s shop eventually sent Millie to sleep. Justine lifted Millie’s limp body from her lap and put her to bed, careful to ensure every action was measured and silent so as not to wake her sleeping angel.

  She’d waited all afternoon to check the news. She wanted to know if there had been any further updates about the body taken out of the flat downstairs. Had murder been ruled out or confirmed? Or was it still too early to say?

  The text on the TV screen ran to two whole pages. ‘Pensioner’s death sparks burglary probe,’ the headline said. Justine read on…

  Police in Islington say a woman found dead in her home yesterday morning hadn’t been seen for more than a month.

  Detectives believe retired shop worker Joan Smith, who was 82, probably died shortly after she was last seen at Whitmore House, known locally as The Farm.

  While they are still waiting for post mortem results, an initial examination has suggested widow Mrs Smith died of natural causes.

  Rumours that Mrs Smith was the victim of a violent crime have been quashed.

  A police spokesman said: ‘While there is no indication that Mrs Smith was the victim of any kind of assault, we have found evidence that suggests a person or persons had frequented her home following her death.’

  Mrs Smith lived in a ground floor flat and was known to have a heart condition.

  Police are appealing for information from anyone who may have recently seen a person or persons entering the address.

  The spokesman added: ‘At this stage, we are not certain if Mrs Smith’s home was repeatedly burgled following her death or if it was being used for some other purpose.

  ‘What we do know is that anyone who entered the premises would have been acutely aware of Mrs Smith’s demise and we can only speculate at this stage as to why it was that they did not report her death.’

  Forensic investigations continue at the flat which remains cordoned off.

  Anyone who may have seen something suspicious in the vicinity of 3 Whitmore House between December 24 and January 28 is urged to call Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111.

  The thought of someone creeping about a flat where the occupant was dead made Justine’s skin crawl. She was more determined than ever to get Millie away from The Farm. A blistering desire to escape the poverty and depravity that seeped from every crevice of the tower was now firmly burnt into her psyche. All she had to do was figure out a way to escape.

  Third Floor - Number 40

  ‘I haven’t got time, Love.’ A rugged hand shooed away a steaming plate of fish fingers and chips. The tantalisingly tasty-smelling dish had been shoved under Paul Jackson’s nose with the promise of bread and butter to follow just a fraction too late.

  ‘You’ve got to eat something, Paul.’

  ‘Linda, I’ve got less than thirty minutes to be washed, dressed and down the bookies. If I’m not there for six o’clock, they’ll be giving me my cards. I can’t afford to lose that job. Put it in the microwave. I’ll heat it up when I get back later.’

  It didn’t matter how many times he told her, Linda never dished the tea up on time. Juggling three part-time jobs and a wife who was remarkable only for her shortcomings was no mean feat.

  ‘Well, if you’re sure…’

  Paul shook his bald head in sheer frustration. ‘What have I just told you? Of course I’m sure.’

  ‘All right. It will be waiting for you when you get home, Love. Enjoy your shift.’

  What planet is that woman on? Enjoy your shift? Of course I am not going to bloody enjoy my shift. Why would I? It’s a crap job, for crap pay and at a crap time of the day. It’s only the likes of me, someone who’s desperate for the money, that would stick it.

  Paul stuffed his feet into a pair of loafers and wriggled them about until they felt comfortable. He wasn’t looking forward to the fifteen-minute hike to the precinct and knew the soapy water he was about to splash on his face before going out the door wouldn’t make him feel any more enthused about the next four hours.

  ‘Are you off already?’ Linda neatly folded a tea towel she had picked up in Poundland earlier in the day and hung it over the back of a chair. ‘There you go,’ she said, planting a soppy kiss on his cheek. ‘There’ll be another one waiting for you when you get home.’

  Paul rolled his eyes as he walked away from her. I bloody hope not - I’ll be knackered.

  The job at the bookies was the worst. Not because he didn’t like taking money off people who couldn’t afford to lose it. He was used to seeing grown men cry after blowing an entire week’s wages on a bet that yielded nothing but a lighter wallet. Not even because it paid the meagre minimum wage. He hated it because it was bolted on to two other similarly low-paid jobs and started when most people were settling down for the night. He was forcing himself back out the door when the only thing his body craved was rest.

  In the four months he had been there, he’d seen three people get the sack. The petty rules and the way they were strictly enforced sickened him. If he could afford to, he would tell Grayson’s to stick their job where the sun doesn’t shine. But the rising cost of living and a mountain of debt meant he had no choice but to put up and shut up.

  He couldn’t remember the name of the lad who was told to get his coat and go. That first sacking happened just two hours after he started working at Grayson’s.

  ‘Hold the fort while I have a ciggie,’ the lad had said. ‘I haven’t had a break since two o’clock.’

  Paul wasn’t to know that smoking breaks were strictly taboo. He was happy to do a colleague a favour. Besides, they’d only seen two punters all night. It was later pointed out, in writing, that any breaks had to be taken inside the premises for security reasons, and there were no exceptions. Apparently, the rules were made ‘crystal clear’ in every contract of employment. It was hard luck for the lad that an area manager happened to stop by and catch him puffing like a train in the back yard behind the shop.

  The instant dismissal struck Paul as harsh. A month later, the lad’s replacement, Trey, didn’t last a week. After ’phoning in sick on his third day, he was told not to bother coming back. He’d been battling a heavy cold since day one. His throat was so sore, he could barely speak. Bad luck had cost him a living. Paul wondered, more than once, how the job centre had reacted to the circumstances surrounding his unemployment.

  The third sacking was the most outrageous. To this day, Paul couldn’t fathom how Grayson’s had got away with it. It concerned Debbie, a smartly turned out, middle-aged woman who, by all accounts, had been the rock of that particular Grayson’s branch for more than five years. She copped it after a terror attack shut down central London, leaving her stranded in a pod on the London Eye. The company said it wasn’t a good enough reason to ‘let herself and her colleagues down’ - even though the incident made the national news and she had her London Eye ticket to prove she had been at the attraction when gunmen opened fire on tourists. She was lucky not to have been killed.

  It wouldn’t surprise Paul to find Grayson’s in hot water at an employment tribunal over that one.

  Only a Tory government could let workers be exploited by ruthless penny pinchers who seemed to delight in extracting levels of service that far exceeded the paltry rewards. That’s what Paul thought. It was under the Conservatives’ watch that the industry he loved suffered blow after blow, until it was forced to its knees. A steel worker from the day he left school to the day he collected his redundancy cheque at the unflattering age of fifty-four, he’d never again experience the pride he felt every time he clocked in. He’d never earn the same money either.

  Now it was a struggle just to pay the rent. Gone wer
e his chunky gold cuff links and matching chain, flash car, golf club membership and any sense of self-worth. Holidays abroad were as much a distant memory as Linda. Poverty had changed her beyond recognition. She was half the woman she used to be. All he had to look forward to was a long, hard crawl to retirement. He doubted he’d make it.

  ‘That’s what they want, isn’t it?’ he remembered saying. ‘They want us, members of the lower classes, to work ourselves into an early grave and suffer nothing but misery along the way.’

  Linda didn’t have a clue what he was talking about. She wouldn’t. Ever since the breakdown, she seemed to be in her own little world; oblivious to the harsh realities of their new life. A move to London held so much promise but delivered nothing. They would have been better off staying up North, Paul thought. At least there, full-time jobs, although not known to grow on trees, were attainable - if you were determined enough.

  If he’d stuck it out, he could be working in a builder’s yard, or labouring. He wouldn’t have turned his nose up at anything, so long as it offered decent hours and he got weekends off. As it was, he was flitting between three jobs six days a week. On Sundays, his one day off, he did little more than sleep.

  The only thing he could be thankful for was that all three jobs came with set hours. There was no messing about and he knew exactly how much he’d be bringing home each month. His biggest gripe, apart from the exploitative pay, was the Government’s determination to tax him to the hilt for having more than one job. Were they so out of touch in Whitehall that they hadn’t noticed the scarcity of full-time jobs? He, and probably millions like him, worked more than one job out of necessity, not choice.

  As a bakery assistant, his day started at 6am sharp. After three hours at the coalface of artisan bread, it was a half-hour journey home. Then he could sit down for a quick cuppa before hot-footing it down to the car wash on George Street. By the time his four-hour shift finished there, he had just over an hour to get some tea inside him before heading back out the door to the bookies.

  If it wasn’t for the bank loan that he could comfortably afford in his previous life, they’d get by with a bit to spare for a few little extras. On the money he was bringing in now, it was crippling them. Linda hadn’t worked since she left school and, despite their hardships, still hadn’t managed to grasp life was never going to be the same again.

  The biting wind that accompanied a bitter chill sent shivers down Paul’s aching spine. His stinging, chapped lips cracked as the freezing air whipped away any traces of moisture. Part of him wanted to give up. To turn around and go home to bed. Only the thought of the consequences kept him walking towards the precinct.

  ‘All right, mate?’

  Paul nodded. He hadn’t seen David Turner in yonks. Not since the day he clocked bailiffs helping council officials dump his belonging in a skip. The poor sod’s entire life appeared to have been bagged up in black plastic and thrown away. For a full two days before the skip was carted off on the back of a low-loader, a gaping hole in one of the bags exposed a reminder of happier times.

  ‘Don’t they look good together?’ Linda had remarked, pointing to the photograph that retained its place in a white, leather-bound wedding album.

  Paul had declined to respond. Fat good a photo is when your missus has cheated on you more times than she’s dished up dinner. To him, it had been a reminder of how lucky he had been to find Linda. Yes, she had her problems, but her loyalty had remained steadfast through thick and thin. It had sustained him through the trauma of redundancy and, even though she sometimes drove him to distraction, he still loved her.

  The sight of David Turner shuffling along a darkened street, seemingly with nowhere to go, made him quicken his pace. At least we’ve still got a roof over our heads.

  Tenth Floor - Number 93

  ‘Hide the gear - it’s the police!’

  ‘What the fuck do they want?’ Carole-Anne Bennett snatched up the drug-related paraphernalia that littered the top of a badly stained coffee table and rushed to the bathroom. ‘What’s going on, John?’ she called out as she pulled the flush.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he shouted back, miffed that thirty quid’s worth of skunk weed was on its way to the sewer before he’d rolled his first joint of the day. It would have seen him all right for a good twenty-four hours, probably more - if Carole-Anne could be persuaded to keep her sticky little fingers to herself. He’d been hoping to turn a gram of the reeking cannabis into a quick tenner.

  ‘Let me see,’ she said, wedging herself between the stick-thin excuse of a boyfriend, who pimped her out every time he was short of readies, and a pair of nicotine-stained net curtains. ‘They’re going door-to-door. We’re next,’ she whispered. ‘I’d better get dressed.’

  ‘What’s going on?’ Davey rubbed tired, red-rimmed eyes. When the commotion was over, he was determined to slope off before John collared him. He’d crawl back into bed and no doubt stay there, cocooned in his own little world, detached from reality, for the rest of the day. He hadn’t succumbed to a wink of sleep for days. Not since the night he clapped eyes on Joan Smith’s revolting corpse. Now, every time he so much as blinked he saw her grey face, with the graphic look of terror glazed across her open eyes, staring back at him.

  ‘Don’t even think about it,’ John warned, the moment Davey’s eyes strayed to a loaf of bread he could see poking out from under the sofa. ‘It’s mine.’

  ‘I wasn’t…’

  ‘You wouldn’t dare,’ John interrupted. ‘How many times have I told you, you’re old enough to fend for yourself? It’s high time you stopped freeloading off your mother and stood on your own two feet.’

  ‘I’m thirteen,’ Davey whispered, not caring if the words reached John’s ears or not. He was certain the brute wouldn’t retaliate with the cops about to rattle the letterbox. In any case, John was the real freeloader.

  Davey figured the waster had less than a month left in his life, if his mother’s track record with men was anything to go by. In his entire thirteen years on the planet, he couldn’t remember her staying with anyone for longer than six months. Besides, now John had been sanctioned by the dole office, all he could bring in was knock-off crap and drugs he ponced of defenceless ten-year-olds used as runners by gangs.

  ‘Whatever,’ John muttered, sparking up a dog end.

  ‘Police. Can you open the door?’ The rap on hard wood wasn’t as subtle as a tap on the letterbox.

  ‘I’ll go,’ said Carole-Anne, tugging a tight-fitting pullover down to meet her ripped jeans.

  ‘Tell ’em to piss off,’ John told her as she creaked open the front door, careful not to take a chunky-linked chain off its catch.

  ‘What do you want?’ she asked, pressing her face to the gap.

  A uniformed officer, accompanied by a woman in plain clothes carrying a clipboard, looked her straight in the eye. ‘Can you open the door, Love? We need to speak to you about an incident on the ground floor.’

  ‘I don’t know anything,’ she said, stray wisps of parched, ginger-blonde hair partially impairing her vision.

  ‘Cast your mind back over the past few weeks,’ the officer urged. ‘Can you recall seeing anyone going into or coming out of Number 3?’

  ‘No, I don’t. I’m sorry, I can’t help.’ She slammed the door shut in the officer’s face. She had been deliberately distant. If she came across as uncaring, so what? She didn’t have time for the police.

  ‘What was all that about?’

  ‘I don’t know, John. The stiff they found in her bed on the ground floor, I think.’

  Davey’s cheeks burned.

  ‘What’s up with you, boy?’ John’s mane of matted black hair shifted to one side, revealing a faded tattoo of a scorpion on his neck, as he tilted his head.

  ‘Nothing.’ Davey shrugged his shoulders before retreating to his room. He grabbed a denim jacket he got for Christmas when he was ten, knowing full well it was too small to button up, and forced his feet into the onl
y pair of trainers he owned. He had to see Jacob.

  ‘You don’t think your lad knows something about that old dear?’ John had never seen the youth move so quick. He was out of the flat less than five minutes after his mother shut the door on the police.

  ‘Davey? No, he’s a good boy. More’s the pity.’ Carole-Anne flopped onto the sofa, ready to sit out a triple bill of The Jeremy Kyle Show while the egg yolk she hoped would soften her over-bleached locks absorbed into split ends under a tightly-wrapped towel. It encompassed her entire head, rising to a point above her crown and made her look more like a Smurf than 35-year-old female.

  ‘Nah,’ John told her, shaking his head. ‘Come on. Get up.’ He grabbed hold of one her arms and tugged her off the sofa. ‘You can’t be sitting round here all day when we’re on our asses. We’re skint.’

  ‘Not today, John. I’m not in the mood,’ Carole-Anne protested. She ducked before his raised hand had the chance to make contact with her face.

  ‘You’ll do as you’re told,’ he shouted after her, his eyes glued to her every step as she tip-toed her way to the bathroom.

  When she was leaning over the bath, pouring ice-cold water over her head, she vowed to kick him out. I’m sick of this. It’s my bloody flat. Who’s he to tell me what to do? This is the last time I do him any favours.

  He wasn’t the first man to turn her out, but he sure as hell was going to be the last.

  ‘What’s up?’ Jacob was surprised to see Davey out and about so early in the morning, especially on a weekend.

  ‘We need to talk.’ He was careful to keep his voice down, anxious not to be overheard.

  Jacob nodded. ‘I’ll get my coat.’ When he emerged into the corridor, Davey steered him towards a stairwell to their left.

  ‘Not in here,’ he whispered. ‘The old bill are everywhere.’

  Jacob didn’t have to ask what Davey wanted to talk about. It was obvious. He wanted to talk about it too because, if he didn’t, he feared he may go mad. He couldn’t bottle up something like the distressing sight of Joan Smith’s body and forget about it. He’d never be able to erase it from his memory. Although, he knew, he would have to try.