Blood Sister: A thrilling and gritty crime drama (30 page)

Just as she was getting ready to lock up, she heard a car roar into the garage.

‘We’re shutting up,’ she shouted as she walked from the office back into the workroom. She stopped and whistled when she caught sight of the car. Fuck me, never seen one of them before. She’d only seen it in motor mags. A convertible Pirano FS. Sleek, slim, in classic black, this one was a limited production, which meant it was worth a mint. Now that’s the kind of car she wanted to be seen burning the road up in. The black woman wearing shades behind the wheel looked pretty sleek and slim too. Beside her, in the passenger seat, sat a sulky-looking white teen sporting a black baseball cap with ‘Missy Elliott’ written in white on the brim.

‘You’ll have to come back tomorrow.’

‘I don’t do tomorrows,’ the woman snapped back.

That voice . . . Tiffany stepped closer. She knew that voice. Where did she know it from? The woman grinned as she slid her long legs out of the car and pulled off her lilac-tinted Oakley vintage sunglasses.

‘Well, well, well,’ the woman said slowly, ‘if it isn’t the ghoul from the graveyard.’

Tiffany’s mouth fell open as she stared at a woman she hadn’t seen in ten years.

Forty

‘Get this man another pint,’ Kevin O’Connor yelled to the gathering of men, his arm slung around Nuts’ shoulder.

When Nuts came out of the Big House, Kev always made sure that he got the welcome home he deserved. His closest friend got the boys together and they took a trip to Sally’s, off Commercial Street. Sally’s was a clothing outlet in the daytime and the upstairs was a knocking shop come night. ‘Touch My Bum’ by the Cheeky Girls was playing on a large video screen on one wall, but it was the two naked women – one Asian, the other white – getting dirty with each other on a black, leather sofa, who were making Nuts salivate at the mouth. Now that’s the fireworks a bloke needs when he gets out of prison.

‘Bet you’re as hard as a rock,’ Kev shouted. ‘Can’t wait to get your nuts off.’ Then he laughed raucously. ‘Nuts. Get it?’

Kevin was spot on. Shagging Jen earlier had been like having his dick mangled; she was that dry. Her cunt had grown a set of teeth. That was no way to welcome your man back home. Jen was no fun anymore. He’d have to remind her who was boss. His pint of whiskey arrived and Nuts sipped as one of the other tarts in the room came over to him, wiggling her assets. She was all double-D plastic boobs and glitter, wearing only a metallic thong and a silver necklace with the name Monica across it. She was offering him sex on a plate, and he could smell it from here. Maybe he should bring Jen to Sally’s, to teach her a lesson or two about how to keep her man happy. He grabbed the tom’s arse as soon as she was over him and sucked hard on a raspberry ripple. Bloody hell, he couldn’t wait, he had to have her. They were soon bouncing, groaning and moaning while the boys watched and cheered him on. Yeah, this is what it felt like to be a man.

‘Come on, Nuts, come on Nuts . . .’ the men chanted to the tune of ‘Come On Eileen’.

Nuts let rip, blew his load, digging his nails into the woman’s super-soft arse. He hadn’t taken two breaths before the woman had been dragged off to do someone else.

‘Good lad.’ Kevin thumped him on the back as Nuts sorted his jeans out. ‘I want to thank you again for keeping your gob shut.’

‘I ain’t no grass, Kev.’

Kevin pulled out a spliff. ‘Yeah, but there are those who would have blabbed rather than do another stretch.’

‘Partners don’t do that kind of shit. When I was inside, one of the guys got a snitch tat across his forehead with a toothbrush shank for letting his tongue wander. The scumbag got what he deserved.’

Kevin let out a puff of smoke. ‘I got another job coming up. Good money—’

Nuts shook his head. ‘No can do. I promised Jen I’ll keep it clean. She says I’m out on my B-O-T-tom next time. My girls didn’t even look like they knew me, when I got home. Mind you, screwing Jen was like jacking off to “The Sound of Music”.’

Kevin laughed. ‘You down the job centre? That will be like Mother Teresa as one of Sally’s girls.’ He popped his hand in his pocket. ‘I’ve got one of these for you.’

Nuts looked at the mobile phone. ‘That’s our hotline,’ Kevin continued. ‘It’s pay-as-you-go.’

‘Kev, I can’t do it mate.’ But Nuts held tight to the phone. ‘If Jen finds out—’

‘But she doesn’t have to know,’ his friend whispered persuasively. He touched the side of his nose. ‘Strictly between me and you.’

He passed the spliff to Nuts who was soon puffing away. Nuts wasn’t looking forward to joining all the other Muppets looking for work at the job centre. All those forms, and the questions that nosey lot down there asked you. But still, he’d promised Jen he was going straight . . . Then all his thoughts disappeared as one of the girls knelt between his legs and started multi-tasking with her mouth and hands.

‘Sorry, but I can’t touch your motor,’ Tiffany said, arms stubbornly folded.

‘You what?’ Laverne’s eyes were brimming with fury. She pointed to her mouth. ‘Read my lips; you’ll bloody fix it if I have to shove your head in the engine and use your teeth to give it a new serial number.’

The threat was water off a duck’s back to someone like Tiffany. ‘No can do, lady, because you told me, point blank to my face, if I ever saw you again to keep walking. You remember, that whole ‘‘You don’t know me, I don’t know you’’ thing. We’ve got history, you may recall?’

Laverne looked nervously at the kid in the car, obviously to see if he’d heard, but he was hooked up to his earphones, nodding his head away, totally lost in a world of music on his portable CD player.

Now it was Laverne’s turn to fold her arms, one of her legs thrust out cockily to the side. ‘I could take my motor somewhere else.’

‘You can do that if you don’t want the job done properly. Decent garages are like decent men, around here.’

Instead of doing her nut, the other woman smiled as she pulled out a roll of notes like a magic wand. ‘Forget the history. You get my Marilyn spanking new again and this wonga’s straight in your pocket, no questions asked.’

Tiffany didn’t even blink at the name this woman had given her car. There were always punters coming in with idiotic names for their motors – Poppy, Alfred and the worst, the absolute worst, had been Mamma Mia.

‘What’s your real name?’ Tiffany asked. ‘You’re as much a Laverne as I am a Lavinia.’

The other woman squinted at her, her mouth tight. Then her lips relaxed. ‘It’s Dee.’

‘So how much you offering?’ Tiffany got back to business.

‘Five and two zeros. That’s if you get it done pronto.’

Tiffany was impressed with the money. She looked over at the damage on the car. ‘Someone key it?’

Dee’s eyes blazed. ‘Well, it didn’t scratch its own itch, did it? Now are you doing it or what?’

Tiffany got down to work, while the kid – who Dee told her was her son Nicky – stayed in the car. Tiffany didn’t even blink at the news that a white boy was her son; in the East End she’d got used to seeing all types of families. Dee sat on a high stool with her endless legs crossed at the ankles and a brew that Tiffany had made her in her hand. Tiffany got the job done in fifty minutes straight.

‘Strange job for a girl – being a grease monkey I mean.’

‘Didn’t have much choice,’ Tiffany explained, as she wiped her hands. ‘The judge dumped me here to do community service. I’ve tried some other things in the meantime. I did an evening course to get me into youth work with troubled teenagers but they threw me off – I was too rough with the boys on the placements they sent me on, apparently. Imagine that, eh? Too rough for the boys round here.’

Dee unlocked her legs, suddenly very interested in Tiffany’s career path. ‘Too rough?’

‘Yeah, I didn’t take no crap from the little bastards – so the course coordinator decided I wasn’t ‘‘sensitive’’ enough and he kicked me out. The prick.’

‘No crap, eh?’ Dee looked over at her car. Nicky had his feet up resting on the dashboard, no longer listening to his music, and was adjusting his cap in the rear-view mirror which he’d bent round for the purpose. Dee screamed, ‘Get your dirty trainers off my car!’

Nicky was unimpressed and without looking around sneered, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah.’

Dee turned back to Tiffany and explained in a hush tone, ‘My boy’s very delicate.’

Tiffany cocked an eyebrow. ‘Yeah, I can see that.’

After a think and some hesitation, Dee went on. ‘Did you get a certificate for this youth work thing you went on?’

‘Nope.’

‘Hmmm. But bits of paper don’t prove anything, do they?’ She paused and studied her son. Then both women looked at Nicky who was now adjusting his seat so it went right back, ready it seemed to take a nap.

Dee turned back to stare at Tiffany. ‘Alright, Tiffany, let’s be honest here – how do you fancy doing some freelance youth work?’ It was obvious what she had in mind. ‘The thing is right, we got my boy into one of them private schools, but they don’t get him. They can’t handle someone like my little Nicky. He’s too sensitive and artistic.’ Dee’s face got all dreamy. ‘He’s going to be a musician. When my boy plays the piano, he is killing it; it brings tears to your eyes. They’re all a bunch of posh bastards up there – stockbrokers, money people, you know the type. They say he’s anti-social. Yeah alright, he did whack that kid with a hockey stick, but you can’t let people take liberties, can you, babes? Before you know it they’ll be in his effing trousers. He only goes around using his fists because he’s so sensitive, so he over reacts, doesn’t he? I think that Beethoven was the same. OK, so he’s skipped a few classes, but he’s bored – he’s too clever for them.’

Tiffany suspected that when Dee’s son played the piano he was killing it a way his mum didn’t mean. Artistic? Sensitive? More like a trouble-making toerag, Tiffany thought. And I should know, I was one.

‘We’re not paying ten grand a term to hear that, are we? You know what I mean?’

Tiffany’s mouth did partly fall open at that. Ten Gs, to send some little bastard to school? She looked at Dee and started to take notice. The shades weren’t just sunglasses, they were vintage. The dress that showed skin top and bottom was no Top Shop off-the-peg rig. The foxy, huge hoop earrings were platinum, through and through. And the heels weren’t knock-off from down The Roman, but up West designer. Dee was living the type of life that Tiffany wanted. Desperately.

‘Oh yeah, I know what you mean. The school I went to didn’t get me,’ Tiffany quickly agreed. ‘Fobbed my old mum off with the same kind of bollocks. She kept telling them the only reason I flung chairs around was because they needed to have more lessons where I could use my hands. A bit of woodwork, some cooking. But did they listen to her? You know what they did once?’ Dee leaned in. ‘They banned her from school for four months, just because she tried to say my art teacher wasn’t any good – that’s why I was drawing on the walls. Alright, so she was a touch loud and leery, but what’s a mum to do when no one’s listening to her? I mean, come on, it’s parents who know their kids the best, right?’

Dee straightened up, popped off the stool and walked over to Tiffany. ‘You work here full or part time?’

‘PT,’ Tiffany lied.

‘Alright, I’ll tell you what I’ll do. You come up our place one evening and I’ll introduce you to my boy and you see if you can act as a good influence on him. I’ll be honest with you, babes, I’m at my wits’ end. He’s going through counsellors like a dose of salts. Now you, you would get him. You speak the same language. I’ll make it worth your while, don’t worry about that.’

Tiffany did smile then.
Oh yeah, you’ll make it worth my while alright.

A piercing sound like an air-raid siren abruptly cut across their conversation. Nicky was pressing the horn on his mum’s car and not letting go. Dee took out some more notes and, over the noise, shouted, ‘Here’s another onner on top, for the advice. Come around to mine in two weeks’ time, on Friday. Wish it could be sooner but we’re going for a little family break in Spain. Me and John will be ever so grateful.’

All Tiffany’s other thoughts dropped from her mind, replaced by the name ‘John’. Her mind skidded back to the past. Wasn’t John . . . ? She frowned, trying to recall his last name. Oh yeah, John Black. He was the geezer Laverne/Dee had instructed Tiffany to get out of the firing line with the Plod, at the cop shop.

‘Is
John
the same John who was involved in that malarkey—?’

Dee cut in, her features stern. ‘We don’t chat about our business in public,’ her considerable chest proudly puffed out, ‘but yeah, that’s my John.’

‘Does your old man know I was acting as a runner for Mickey Ingram?’

‘No, he doesn’t and I’d be grateful if you didn’t mention it. In fact, don’t mention anything to do with the old days; it ain’t just my boy who’s a bit sensitive.’ Almost guessing the next question Tiffany was going to ask, Dee added, ‘And don’t worry about Mickey Ingram. Once he got out, he found a new perch in Portugal with a new lady and two little ones.’

Tiffany anxiously rubbed her lips together; she needed to think. She’d been well out of the ‘other’ life for years and had no plans to go back. But Dee wasn’t asking her to start toting an AK47, she just wanted someone to put her kid straight. But the old Tiffany couldn’t help pressing the fast-forward button in her mind – if you get in with the family . . .

‘I’m in,’ she said simply, just as Nicky stopped his racket.

Dee’s lips spread in a satisfied smile. The women exchanged details and struck a price that left Tiffany grinning from ear to ear.

‘You still into girl-on-girl action?’ Dee asked.

‘What if I am?’ Tiffany answered defensively. Over the years she’d met many people, especially on The Devil, who just didn’t get her preference for women. But she didn’t hide what she was. She’d have one answer for any knockers – stuff you! She looked Dee straight in the eye, hoping she wasn’t going to have to say the same to her.

‘It will be good if you are, because I don’t want my Nicky hanging with some older bird who pushes her strawberry creams in his face. You get me?’