The Driver (8 page)

Snapped out of her romantic reverie by the kettle clicking off, Katya made the coffees and carried them through to the living room. Handing Elena’s and Tasha’s to them, she took her own and Hanna’s through to the bedroom. Hanna was in bed with the quilt pulled over her head. Leaving her cup on the bedside table, Katya undressed and headed into the bathroom for a shower.

Standing beneath the water, she reached for the soap and rubbed it listlessly over her body. It would barely skim the surface, because God alone could reach the parts of her that
really
needed cleansing. But since it was becoming increasingly obvious that
He
had abandoned her, it would have to do.

Next door, Chrissie had locked herself in the bedroom. The dog had leapt up at her when she’d walked back in and she’d kicked out at it to punish it for making a mess. It had immediately bared its teeth, forcing her to run for her life. So now she was pacing the floor, pressing redial on her mobile.

It was almost an hour before Eddie answered.

‘Where the flaming hell are you?’ Chrissie launched into him. ‘You said you were only going to be half an hour, you lying swine! I’ve been up all night waiting for you.’

‘Something came up,’ Eddie said unconcernedly. ‘What’s up?’

‘What’s
up
?’ she squawked. ‘Your flaming dog, that’s what! It’s crapped all over the place, and I stood in it – with my
bare feet
!’ Gasping with indignation when she heard him laugh and relate what she’d just told him to whoever he was with, she said, ‘It’s not funny, you dickhead. The vicious little bastard’s got me trapped in the bedroom!’

‘Give it a kick,’ Eddie suggested, still chuckling.

‘The only one who’ll be getting a kick is
you
if you don’t get home and sort it out,’ Chrissie snarled, deciding not to mention that kicking it was what had got her into this mess in the first place. ‘And you’d best be quick, ’cos I’ve already had to deal with your tarts. And I don’t see why I should have to lose sleep over them when I didn’t even want them here in the first place.’

‘Thought you said you hadn’t been to bed,’ Eddie reminded her.

‘Don’t take the piss,’ Chrissie retorted icily. ‘I don’t have to do your dirty work, you know.’

‘Yeah, whatever,’ Eddie said dismissively. Then, ‘How much?’

It was a random-sounding question and most people wouldn’t have had a clue what he meant by it. But Chrissie did, and it infuriated her that, after everything she’d said,
that
was all he was bothered about.

‘Six-forty,’ she lied, her voice thick with resentment.

‘Take fifty,’ he said, his tone giving nothing away so she didn’t know if he thought it was an acceptable amount or not. ‘And go get some girl stuff.’

Making a strangled screaming sound when he disconnected the call without another word, Chrissie threw the phone down onto the bed and herself down after it. No doubt whoever he was with would assume that he’d just told her to go out and treat herself, but he’d actually been telling her to go shopping for the whores – as if she didn’t hate them enough already. But
he
certainly wouldn’t waste his precious time shopping, and he refused to let
them
do it, because he reckoned they would take the piss and spend his money on crap. So it was left to Chrissie. And after the hiding he’d given her for threatening to grass them up to the immigration people that time she’d learned that it was easier to do as she was told where they were concerned.

She just wished they would hurry up and pay Eddie back. They were the ones who’d been desperate to come over here and they couldn’t have thought he was paying their fares out of the goodness of his heart. It was a business arrangement and he’d upheld his side of it. But they weren’t even
trying
to uphold theirs; always making excuses about why they hadn’t made as much as they should have, and lying that there weren’t enough punters when everyone knew that town was crawling with the bastards at night.

Still, like everything else he toyed with Eddie would tire of them eventually. And when that day came Chrissie would take great delight in turfing their skanky arses out. Until then, she would carry on taking her revenge where she could get it.

She only ever did little, sly things, because there was a very fine line with Eddie and if you crossed it you usually regretted it. The bitches were so terrified of him that they’d never dared complain about the times when she’d ‘forgotten’ to buy them sanitary towels or toilet roll, or when she’d given them nothing but beans and Spam for a whole week. But then, they had come from a country where she imagined they probably picked shit off the rubbish dump for dinner, so what did they care?

Today she’d held back eighty quid from their money. She didn’t usually get a chance to get her hands on it, because this was the one area that Eddie maintained complete control over. But it was his own fault for staying out and giving her the opportunity. And if the bitches tried to say that they’d brought back more, it would be their word against hers – and Eddie would believe her every time.

Cheered by the thought of a nice new dress, or maybe a pair of shoes to compensate for her disturbed sleep, she got up off the bed now and, braving the dog, went to take a shower.

Eddie switched his phone off after the call. Watching him out of the corner of his eye, Clive said, ‘Missus after money again?’ Smirking when Eddie nodded, he said, ‘Mine’s the same. And it don’t help that her sister’s gone and shacked up with that loaded cunt. All I ever hear these days is
Chantelle’s fella’s got her this, Chantelle’s fella’s got her that
. Does my bleedin’ box in.’

Amused by Clive’s camp imitation of his wife. Eddie glanced over the seat at the two lap dancers snuggled up together in the back. Chrissie had been spot on about him being cagey because he was in the company of someone who didn’t know about his girls, although it hadn’t even crossed her mind that it might possibly be a female – or two. But she could blame Clive’s wife Letty, not him, because it wouldn’t have happened if Letty hadn’t abandoned Clive and pissed off to Lanzarote for a hen week. And Eddie was way too good of a mate to abandon him in his hour of need, so he’d had no choice but to go along when Clive had invited the tarts back to his for a party last night.

And what a party it had been. Eddie couldn’t remember the last time he’d necked so much coke and downed so much cognac, and his poor dick had never worked so hard in its life. He was absolutely knackered now, with the mother of all hangovers, so there was no way he was tagging along while Clive dropped the tarts back in Bury. He was just getting a lift over to his boy Kenny’s to pick up his money, and then he was going home to his bed for a well-deserved rest.

When Clive pulled up at the corner of a row of terraced houses in Moss Side, Eddie got out and strolled down the alley. Letting himself into one of the small backyards, he smiled when Kenny’s mum answered the door.

‘Morning, darlin’. He up yet?’

‘He’s still in his pit,’ she told him, stepping back to let him in. ‘Go straight up, love.’

Eddie took the stairs two at a time and crept down the landing. Pressing his ear against Kenny’s door, he grinned when he heard a faint snoring sound. Then he hammered his fist on the wood, yelling, ‘Get your hands where I can see them, you little prick – you’re busted!’

Kenny was out of bed and halfway out of the window when Eddie pushed the door open a second later. ‘Fucking hell, man,’ he croaked when he realised who it was. ‘What d’y do that for?’

‘Just keeping you on your toes, matey,’ Eddie said, laughing at the sight of Kenny’s bare arse. ‘Ain’t warm out there – best watch nothing drops off.’

Kenny climbed back inside and snatched his crumpled jeans off the floor. Pulling them on, he reached under his mattress and took out a cloth money-bag.

Scowling now, Eddie snatched it out of his hand. ‘See, that’s what I’m talking about. You would have fucked off and left this, wouldn’t you?’

‘I was asleep,’ Kenny muttered, as if that made any difference.

‘Well, strap it round your fucking cock if you’re going to do any naked flits in future,’ Eddie warned him. ‘’Cos I’m telling you now, if you let the pigs waltz off with my money you’re dead.’ Looking into the bag now, he stared at Kenny accusingly. ‘Where’s the rest?’

‘Aw, come on, man, don’t be making out like you think I’ve been dipping into it,’ Kenny moaned. ‘I’m not like Tommy.’

‘No, ’cos
you
can still feed yourself,’ Eddie said, grinning again as he headed for the door.

He went back downstairs, taking a couple of twenties out of his pocket on the way. Popping his head around the parlour door, he tossed them onto the couch beside Kenny’s mum.

‘I’m off, sweetheart. Get yourself a little something with that, eh?’

‘Oh, no, love, you can’t keep giving me money,’ she protested, scooping them up and flapping them at him. ‘Here, take it back.’

Winking, Eddie closed the door and let himself out. She always tried to give it back but they both knew she didn’t mean it. Anyway, it made him feel good to bung her a few quid because the poor cow reminded him of one of those women in those old black and white films who spent their lives scraping by – and trying to make out like they weren’t complaining about it. She was so far back in the dark ages that she didn’t even have a flat-screen TV.

But that was for her son to sort, not Eddie. He might be soft-hearted but he wasn’t running a fucking soup kitchen.

The lap dancers had woken up by the time he got back into the car and they spent the next ten minutes desperately trying to flirt a repeat of last night’s drugs fest out of him. Ignoring them, Eddie told Clive to drop him a couple of hundred yards back and on the opposite side from the flats when they reached Ardwick, in case they clocked where he was going and got any funny ideas about coming looking for him.

Eddie waited until the car was out of sight, then crossed over and slipped through a broken section of fence. Bypassing his own block, he headed down behind the other blocks to the red one at the far end.

The stench hit him as soon as he opened Patsy’s front door. It was always rank in there, but after sitting in the car surrounded by the tarts’ perfume it seemed way worse than usual, and for a moment he wondered if he was about to find her dead.

Patsy was sprawled across the couch when he pushed the living-room door open. Approaching her with caution, he was relieved to see the flickering movement behind her parchment-thin eyelids.

‘Wha’?’ she croaked, snapping her eyes open when he shook her.

Wiping his hand on his jeans, Eddie felt a shudder of revulsion ripple through him. Patsy was twenty-four but she could easily have passed for fifty with her body turning to skin and bone, and her cheeks sinking into the hollows where her teeth had started to disintegrate. And the smell was coming from her, he realised, trying not to inhale the rank odours of urine, BO and vomit.

‘Jeezus,’ he muttered, giving her a look that would have made any normal woman crawl away in shame. ‘Have you seen the state of yourself?’

Grinning up at him as if he’d just complimented her, Patsy said, ‘Hiya, Ed. I’ve been waiting for you.’ Licking her lips now, she sat up and put her hands between her knees like an excited child.

Eddie knew exactly what she was waiting for but she wasn’t getting klish until he was good and ready to give it to her. Leaving her, he went into the bedroom. The baby was lying in its cot on the far side. Roused by the harsh light spilling out of the bare bulb when Eddie flicked the switch, it made a pathetic mewling noise that lacked energy and conviction, as if it had already given up hope that anybody would respond.

Sickened by the sound, Eddie squatted down at the foot of the cot and shoved his hand under the heap of clothes and dirty nappies that were stuffed beneath it. Glancing through the bars as he peeled the damp carpet back and dislodged the loose floorboard, he frowned when he saw how clearly the veins were showing through the see-through skin of the baby’s head.

‘When did you last feed the kid?’ he demanded when he’d pulled his case out and gone back to the living room.

The look of confusion that flickered across Patsy’s face told him exactly what he’d suspected: that she’d forgotten she even
had
a baby, never mind remembered to feed it. He wondered if she’d even been into the bedroom in the three days since he’d last been here, or if she’d been sleeping, waking, pissing, sweating, and sleeping again right here with her beloved crack pipe.

‘You’d better get a grip,’ he warned her, sitting down and unlocking the case. ‘It’ll die if you’re not careful.’

‘I’ll see to it in a minute,’ she replied offhandedly, licking her lips again as she eyed the little white rocks inside the numerous clear plastic bags in the case.

‘
Now
,’ Eddie ordered her, lifting his gun out and pointing it at the wall. He wasn’t going to use it – he just liked the feel of it in his hand.

The thought of her baby dying hadn’t registered as important with her but the sight of the gun brought Patsy to her feet in an instant. Scared that he was going to shoot her, she stumbled through to the kitchen and scooped a bottle out from under the slime-coated dishes in the sink. Tipping out the clotted gunk inside, she gave it a quick rinse before spooning some powdered milk into it and topping it up with warm tap water.

‘Done it,’ she declared, rushing back to show Eddie.

‘So give it to the fucking kid,’ he told her exasperatedly.

Patsy darted out and came back with the baby clutched in her skinny arms. Watching as she stuck the teat into its mouth, Eddie wrinkled his nose at the smell of shit and sour milk. But at least it was getting fed, so it wouldn’t die just yet. And that was his main concern, because he could really do without the hassle of trying to find a new stash-house as convenient as this one.

He pocketed the drugs now and replaced the gun before relocking the case. Then, tossing three of the bags onto the table, he said, ‘Make it last, ’cos there’s no more till Friday.’