Blood Sister: A thrilling and gritty crime drama (6 page)

‘Come on, we’re out of here,’ Nuts said alarmed and grabbed Jen’s palm in his. ‘John doesn’t like trouble in his club and that bird looks like proper trouble and no mistake.’

Six

‘Oi, Miller?’ the woman growled. ‘I want a word with you.’

There were only two reasons anyone walked around The Devil’s Estate after dark – either they were looking for trouble or they wanted to avoid it. As soon as Babs heard the voice, she knew she’d found trouble. She stopped walking down the slip road off the estate, that led to the cemetery, and stared hard at the middle-aged woman coming towards her in a right huff.

The woman was Melanie Ingram. She lived in a block on the other side of the estate – thank God – and looked like a reject from the 1980s: big shoulder pads, even bigger teased hair and huge, wild, gobstopper-sized eyes. This mad bitch saw herself as the Joan Collins of The Devil’s Estate. Christ almighty, Babs didn’t need this now. There had been bad blood between both families since Babs’ husband, Stanley, had been around. Really bad blood.

Babs stood with her arms folded while the other woman crossed over. They stared each other out for a few moments before Melanie snapped, ‘Keep your skank kid away from my girl or there’s going to be a blow up.’

This fat slapper didn’t scare Babs Miller. Her husband would have done, but he wasn’t around anymore. ‘Oh really? From what I hear, your daughter’s well trouble on her lonesome and don’t need no one else. Is it true that she’s got her own team of social workers now? That’s a shame, isn’t it?’

Melanie Ingram drew closer. ‘Whoever you’re hearing those fuck-off stories from, you want to tell them to shut their lying gob. But it’s gonna be true if she hangs around with your thieving, smacked-up kid. So you tell her straight from me, if she doesn’t stay away from our Stacey I’m going to come around your gaff and show her what it’s like. Do you understand?’

Babs tutted. ‘Hmm – the slacker the bird, the harder the patter. I’ll tell you what, sweetheart, any time you feel like coming around and showing anyone what it’s like, feel free. We’ve all got our problems and I fancy taking mine out on an old trout like yourself. By the way, how’s that old man of yours? Still popping home from time to time, well bladdered, and giving you a kicking, is he? Or is he too busy now with his much younger piece of snatch?’

Melanie Ingram shook with anger. She was so close now that Babs almost passed out from the stale beer fumes coming off her. ‘I mean it. Keep her away from my Stacey.’

‘Why don’t you get back on your broomstick and fly away?’

Bab stood her ground. She wasn’t going to bottle it. She wasn’t scared of this sorry excuse for a woman who’d been beaten left, right and centre by life. If she put one finger on Babs – one little touch – everyone would find out who put the name Devil in this estate: she would beat the living daylights out of her.

But she was saved from having to roll up her sleeves when Mel stomped off. In all the years they’d been scrapping, Babs and Mel had never actually come to blows; it was almost as if they had an unspoken agreement not to go there. And there were times when Babs realised how stupid their feud was; both women were in the same boat really, with two tearaway teens who kept head-butting life. But then again she and Melanie Ingram had a history. A bad history.

Babs shook off the past as she continued her journey to the cemetery. Her heart sank and her pace quickened when she saw two cop cars parked by the entrance. The police had unlocked the gate and were trying to manage the growing crowd of teenagers inside who wanted a ruck and were goading the boys in blue with insults from all sides:

‘Fuck off, we ain’t doing no harm.’

‘Why don’t you go and help some old dear cross the road.’

‘Do you want a drag on my spliff officer?’

When she drew close enough, Babs surveyed the crowd of youths. No sign of her daughter. She slipped past the police and grabbed the arm of a girl she recognised. ‘Have you seen my Tiffany?’

The kid shook her head. Babs gripped her arm more tightly and pleaded, ‘Help me out.’

The girl gestured with her thumb in the direction of the winding, shadowy paths that led deeper into the cemetery. ‘I think she went for a walk with someone.’

Babs tensed up. ‘What someone?’

The kid shrugged. ‘Dunno.’

Babs let the girl’s arm go and started trembling. Someone? Who could Tiff have gone off with? How many times had she warned the stupid girl not to come here at night; there might be pervs and kiddie fiddlers lurking in the bushes. Jesus, when was her girl ever going to learn?

She moved quickly down the rambling tracks that led past graves with white angels and harps mounted on top. Above her, the wind blew through the treetops. The voices and shouts behind her faded as she pressed on. She knew Tiffany would go mental when she discovered that her mum had come looking for her. She anticipated the scream – ‘I’m not a fucking kid’ – but knew too that she had no choice.

She grew scared at the shapes and shadows that the graves made in the darkness, and the rustling of the leaves. ‘Tiffany,’ she called out, for her own peace of mind as much as to find her child. Women were attacked in this place in the daylight, never mind at night. Her calls became shrill and desperate.

It was then that Babs spotted a dark figure running amongst the bushes and trees, dodging the gravestones and columns.

‘Tiffany?’

No answer. Babs set off in pursuit. It was obviously a youngster as she was easily outpacing the older woman, but when she tripped over a fallen piece of masonry with a squeal of pain, Babs got the chance to draw closer. The noise the kid made meant she was a girl. The kid rose up and turned to see who was chasing her. A gleam of moonlight fell on her face before she turned back and ran, disappearing into the gloom like the ghost of one of the resident stiffs.

Out of breath and wheezing, Babs retraced her steps back to the track. But this time, when she once again shouted Tiffany’s name, she got a surly response.

‘Over here, Mum.’

Her daughter sat on the stone rim of a grave, her face lit up from the lighter she was using to fire up a spliff, two empty bottles of vodka lying at her feet. ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know I’m a wicked girl and I’m in with a bad crowd. Don’t go on about it.’

‘You little bitch! I’m getting sick of you. Why aren’t you out clubbing with your sister?’

Although she couldn’t really see her features, it was obvious that Tiff was taken short by her mother’s response and she whined, ‘As soon as we got to Leicester Square, Jen told me to sod off. She was only making a load of noise about taking me anywhere; she only said so to make a fool out of you, Mum. And I was really up for a night out too.’

The moonlight showed the outline of a sulky pout on her daughter’s face. Babs snatched the spliff out of her hand. ‘You’re smoking grass now are you?’

‘It’s not weed.’ Tiffany’s voice was slurred and unsteady. ‘It’s dandelion leaves we find in the cemetery. We can’t afford the real gear, can we? So we tried them. I ain’t got no money. I ain’t got nothing.’

Babs couldn’t believe what she was hearing. ‘You mean to tell me you pick dandelions in this place and smoke them? Bloody hell! Dogs and God knows what else have probably done their business all over it and you’re smoking it.’

Babs grabbed her daughter by the scruff of her neck and dragged her upright. Tiffany didn’t resist; her limp body merely swayed in the wind. But it stiffened when her mum wanted to know who ‘we’ was.

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘You said “we”, didn’t you? Who’s the other girl?’

‘What other girl?’

Babs shook her by the collar, ‘The one who scarpered when I came up the path.’

‘No one.’ Tiffany was defensive and it was only when she was violently shaken by her mum a couple of times that she coughed up, ‘I dunno – some girl. I don’t know her.’

‘Why did she run away? Why would she be scared?’

Tiffany was on the edge of tears. ‘Maybe she thought you were the Plod or something, I don’t know . . . How the fuck do I know?’ Choking, she wailed, ‘Stop asking me questions all the time; you’re always asking me stupid questions.’

Babs frogmarched her daughter back through the cemetery, past the approving police who had finally managed to disperse the crowd, and then onto the streets.

Tiffany started grizzling. ‘Everyone hates me. There’s nothing to do around here. It’s shit living on The Devil . . .’ On and on she went, like a rainy bank holiday Monday. But Babs wasn’t listening; her mind was on other things. Why wouldn’t Tiffany admit she knew the girl in the cemetery and why had she been so defensive about it? What were they up to and why had the other girl bolted when she’d heard Babs’ voice? Even though she’d caught a glimpse of the girl’s face, she didn’t need to be Mystic Meg to suss who she was. Stacey Ingram.

Seven

‘How’s your kid?’ John Black asked his right-hand man, Christopher Keston. They stood by the window in John’s office, upstairs in the Alley Club. John had a receding hairline, a face that told it straight that he’d come up hard in life, and Paul Smith, stacked-heeled shoes, to give his five-five height a little lift.

‘The little man is doing great; he’s such a clever boy, you know?’

‘I like a clever boy. Shame that the slag we’ve got here isn’t one of them.’

They both looked down at the man lying on the floor choking because John had one of his stacked heels pressed hard against his windpipe. The man was making a horrible noise, but he didn’t dare move an inch because he knew what John Black was capable of doing. John pulled his foot off and the man sputtered, dragging in air. John moved over to his desk and picked something up. Then he was back crouching down near the man. Chris ripped the man’s shirt open. Two buttons burst free and rolled onto the wooden floor.

‘I’m sorry, Mr Black, it won’t happen again,’ he pleaded, knowing that something bad was about to happen.

John raised what he held in his hand – a long stapler – and waved it in front of his victim like a prize. Then he attached the opening of the stapler around the man’s right nipple and clicked down hard. The man closed his mouth tight as his body shook, sucking up the pain; he knew better than to scream in John Black’s club. John did the same to the other nipple. He threw the stapler on the floor, grabbed the man by the hair and dragged him to his feet.

He yanked his head backwards. ‘My money. I want my dosh. Do you understand? I don’t want to hear about the end of the month. I don’t want to know who hasn’t paid you yet or when you’ll be out of the red . . .’ He drew back his spare hand, clenched it and punched the guy in the face. His victim’s body vibrated briefly before, by way of an answer, he slumped slowly back onto the floor. John crouched down beside him and grabbed his hair again but more gently this time and turned the bloodied face in his direction. His voice was softer. ‘Am I making myself clear here? I mean, I’m not talking French am I?’ The response was a lolling nod.

John smiled. ‘Good.’

He picked up the phone and called reception. ‘Send a couple of cleaners up to my office, I’ve got some rubbish on the floor and I need it tidied up and thrown in the bin.’

Forty-year old John Black – real name Charlie Dalton – had used so many aliases in his time that he sometimes forgot what his real name was. For a while he’d used the moniker John Smith, because tracking someone down with that name was a real problem. Turned out it also meant that people he actually wanted to link up with couldn’t find him either. So he changed his name again, firstly to Chico Smith then Blanco Smith before finally settling on John Black. But he preferred to be known simply as ‘John’. When he was asked what his surname was he would say, ‘Haven’t got a clue; I’ve lost my birth certificate.’ And by that stage his reputation was such that no further questions were asked.

John’s main club was largely a hobby but it also served as a front for his various businesses, which he ran from his office upstairs. Running a private members’ club provided him with the perfect excuse for a heavy door that couldn’t be kicked in, and for a security detail that was supposed to keep order in his club, but which really kept friends and enemies alike away from his office. Any raid by the filth meant them elbowing their way past his guests in the bar downstairs which gave him plenty of warning, and the club gave him all the opportunities he needed to launder the proceeds of his various rackets. His business associates were always tickled pink to be admitted to his VIP lounge where he made sure there were always one or two people from the showbiz world hanging round. Like many men in his line of work he prized his connections to the famous and made sure they were always well looked after by his staff.

His club was originally called Tara’s after his first wife. When that marriage went tits up he renamed it Jessica’s after her replacement. When that one too ended in the divorce court, he changed the name yet again to ‘The Alley Club’. As he liked to tell his guests, ‘alley’ stood for ‘alimony’, the club being the only way he could afford to pay off the two lazy, greedy, gold digging, bitches who’d ruined his life. John didn’t have much in the way of principles but a point blank refusal ever to see the inside of a registry office again was one of them. He usually limited his various girlfriends to two nights a week in case they started to get funny ideas about commitment or family. If they got them anyway, he dumped them. As he liked to explain to baffled young men who worked for him, ‘If you’re with a dolly bird and she starts hanging around outside jewellers – walk fast and walk far – because she’s trouble. Especially if those jewellers are in spitting distance of Hatton Garden. Don’t look at me like that, mate; you’ll thank me for this nugget of advice later.’

His only regret was he had no young ’uns to pass his empire on to, or at least none he knew about or was willing to acknowledge. John wasn’t sentimental about men or women, in fact he didn’t like either, but he did dote on kids. That’s why he always took the time to ask his right-hand man about his son Nicky. Tragically, Chris had lost his wife to illness shortly after Nicky was born, six years back. John broke all his own rules to ensure that if Chris needed time with his boy, he got it.