Saving Billie (23 page)

‘That'd be right,' I said to him. ‘What about your mob?'

‘Greens.'

I didn't hear anything more about Rhys Thomas and for a while I watched out for bow-legged men with attitude, but I didn't really expect to run into him. If he was smart he'd be far, far away, but given Clement's connections there was a good chance that he was dead and buried.

I thought that was it, filed the contracts, my notes on the case, the photos I'd taken outside Lou's apartment block and Sharon's sketch, and got on with other things, but Sharon turned up at my office one day out of the blue. She was in her overalls and sneakers so she wasn't there to take me to lunch at the Mixing Pot. I sat her down and brewed some coffee.

She tasted it and pulled a face. ‘That's terrible,' she said.

‘I can't make good coffee,' I admitted. ‘It's always bitter. Other people use my gear and it turns out fine, but I can't do it.'

‘Have you got anyone yet, Cliff? You know—a significant other?'

‘No, not really. You?'

‘Might have. We'll see, but I came to tell you about Billie. She rang me and said she wanted to see me. She's in Newcastle. I thought what the hell, good place, be a change, so I drove up there.'

‘When was this?'

‘Two days ago. Of course, she wanted the rest of the money but that wasn't why she wanted to see me. I mean, I could've sent her a cheque. So I went to her flat—nice place in the heart of the city. She looked pretty good— tarty as hell, but that's Billie. She told me she was working in a high-class brothel. Drove me round a bit in her Celica, although she lost her licence a few years ago. Secondhand car but pretty good. She showed me the brothel, looked all right as such places go—not that I'd know.

‘But she was as nervous and edgy as anything. I thought it was the speed or the smack, but she swore she was off everything except a little coke sometimes to help her through the night. She was smoking something fierce but she always did, from the age of, I dunno, ten?

‘Okay, so we go back to her flat and she opens a bottle of wine. I give her a cheque for the rest of the money—after what I paid you and a few of my expenses. She hardly looks at it and then it comes out. I bet you can guess.'

‘Sammy,' I said.

‘Right. She wants him back. I mean, there she is, hooking in Newcastle, using coke, probably up to here in debt and she wants her kid.'

‘What did you do?'

‘Well, I thought about it for like, a tenth of a second. But then I thought back to all the crap we'd been through—you getting bashed and seeing two people get killed, and the threats to me and Sarah—and we still didn't know what they all wanted from her.'

I nodded. ‘Pissed me off for a while, but I've got used to untidy endings.'

‘I'm not. I sort of strung her along and asked her why she was so afraid of the cops. Remember that?'

‘Yes.'

‘She hemmed and hawed and didn't want to tell me but I had her over a barrel, so she did. She killed Eddie.'

‘Jesus. Did she say how?'

‘She said she got him drunk and pushed him down some steps. She said he'd found out about Sammy and was calling her a mongrel bitch with a mongrel kid. She'd had enough and did for him. Didn't mean to kill him, she said, but she reckoned crippled'd do.'

‘Rings true, doesn't it? Eddie was a real piece of shit.'

‘Yeah.' Sharon drank some more of the coffee, as bad as it was. I could see that she needed to go on and that she hadn't got to the hardest part yet. I waited.

‘So I let her think that had got her some points and I asked her about what Eddie had told her about that guy who'd skipped. All the stuff you told me about—where he is and that.'

‘And?'

‘She laughed her head off. She said she didn't know a fucking thing about it. Zip, zilch. Funniest fucking thing in the world. She let that Kramer woman think she knew something. Just big-noting herself, and hoping she might get something out of it in some way. That's what started all this off and she didn't give a stuff. She's a moral zero, Cliff, my own sister.'

There was nothing to say. I sat there and a silence seemed to fill the room, although the traffic noise from King Street must still have been coming through. But that's the way it is in some moments, when the weight of what's being said just kind of hits the mute button.

Sharon sucked in a breath. ‘Know what I did? I'd prepared myself for this. I had a photo of Sammy, taken a fair while after Billie had last seen him. Since I'd found him the place where he'd be looked after. Here it is.'

She reached into her pocket and pulled out a polaroid photo. It showed an adolescent boy, clearly the same person as in the earlier photograph I'd seen. He'd grown, gained confidence, and looked ready to take the next steps.

I nodded and handed it back.

‘I was cruel,' Sharon said. ‘I showed her the picture. She tried to snatch it from me. Screamed, tried to scratch. I held on to it and I decked her.'

Sharon, crying now, quietly, not out of control, went on through her sobs: ‘She was on her knees, pleading . . .'

‘What did you say?'

The sobs stopped and she lifted her head. ‘I said no.'