The Front (32 page)

       
‘Do you want another coffee?’ Caroline asked, breaking into his thoughts.

       
He nodded. ‘Yeah, please.’

       
Following her to the kitchen, he leaned against the door frame, watching as she filled the kettle. ‘So, who is this boyfriend?’ he asked.

       
She shrugged. ‘Your guess is as good as mine. She doesn’t tell me anything these days. And we were so close once,’ she added wistfully.

       
‘I know,’ he murmured softly. ‘I remember. I was a bit jealous, if I’m honest.’

       
Caroline turned and gave him a strange look. ‘Jealous? What of? You never said.’

       
He shrugged and grinned at her sheepishly. ‘I know. Sounds stupid now, but I was. I suppose it was the attention you gave her when I thought you had no time for me.’

       
‘More like you had none for me!’ she snorted softly. ‘You were never here. I was always competing with your friends. I just got fed up in the end.’

       
‘I don’t blame you,’ he said. ‘I was selfish, wasn’t I?’

       
‘Yes,’ she replied matter-of-factly. ‘You were.’

       
They lapsed into silence as they waited for the kettle to boil. Ged looked around the familiar kitchen, surprised to see the habitually cluttered surfaces now free of mess, and sparkling clean.

       
‘You got a cleaner, or something?’ he teased. ‘I don’t think I ever saw it like this before.’

       
‘Amazing how much you can get done when you’re not bogged down and depressed,’ she answered quietly. ‘It took a few months, but I got there in the end. Anyway, it’s done now, isn’t it?’ She handed him his coffee, her smile tight, and led the way back to the living room.

       
‘So where do we go from here?’ he asked.

       
‘Well, I suppose we could get on to Alison again,’ she said. ‘Find out what she knows about this boyfriend. She was at the blues with her, so she must have seen him.’

       
‘What did she say when you spoke to her yesterday?’

       
Caroline shrugged. ‘Not a lot. Only that she hasn’t seen her or spoken to her since Sunday. She was supposed to meet her on Monday but she never turned up.’

       
‘Okay. Give me her address. I’ll go and have a word with her.’

       
Ged finished his coffee and pushed himself to his feet. As Caroline wrote down Alison’s address, he took his wallet out and removed a bundle of notes. He handed these to her when she gave him the address.

       
She eyed the money guardedly. ‘What’s that for?’

       
‘Take it,’ Ged pushed it into her hand. ‘I owe you much more than this. Take it.’

       
She looked at him uncertainly. ‘Are you sure? It’s an awful lot.’

       
‘I’m sure,’ he insisted, folding his huge hands around her small ones. ‘Take it, please. And my apologies for everything I’ve put you through this past year.’

       
‘Thanks,’ she whispered, close to tears. ‘But it’s not all your fault. I did my fair share to muck things up.’

       
‘Let’s just forget all that now,’ he said. ‘Friends?’

       
‘Friends!’ she agreed, smiling properly for the first time since he’d arrived.

       
Ged felt the weight he’d been carrying for the past year lifting from his shoulders – and it felt good.

Alison was apprehensive when she answered the door to an enormous man with a very serious face and what her dad called a copper’s knock.

       
‘Can I help you?’ she asked.

       
‘Alison?’ Ged queried.

       
She nodded, eyeing him nervously.

       
‘I’m Linda’s dad,’ he told her. ‘Can I come in for a minute and have a word?’

       
Alison peered nervously at the living room door, afraid her mum might come out and hear something she shouldn’t.

       
‘Em – yeah, okay,’ she said at last. ‘Come in the kitchen.’

       
Opening the door wider to allow him to come in, she led him into the kitchen – praying he wasn’t going to blast her for whatever Linda had done.

       
‘You know why I’m here, don’t you?’ he asked when they were sitting at the kitchen table.

       
‘Yeah,’ she admitted, looking down. ‘Linda’s mum rang yesterday. Hasn’t she gone home yet?’

       
‘No, she hasn’t,’ he said gravely. ‘Now, I know you told her mum she never turned up on Monday, but I need to know if that was true. Was she here? Maybe there was something she didn’t want you to tell her mum? Something bad she thought she’d get into trouble for?’

       
Alison shook her head. ‘No. Honest, she never came.’

       
Ged looked at her from beneath lowered eyebrows, aware that he was making her squirm as he assessed whether or not to believe her. He decided he did.

       
‘I’ve not come to have a go at you,’ he said. ‘But I need to know what’s happened to her. Can you think of anywhere else she might have gone?’

       
‘No, I’m sorry, I haven’t got a clue,’ she told him. ‘None of our mates have seen her, either.’

       
‘What about this boyfriend she got herself at the blues?’

       
Alison blushed. ‘I don’t kn-know him,’ she stuttered, flicking a worried glance at the door. ‘Linda met him a couple of weeks ago, but I don’t know him.’

       
‘Where were you?’

       
‘At the R-Reno,’ Alison stammered in a tiny voice.

       
‘Don’t worry,’ Ged said gently. ‘I’m not here to get you into trouble. I just need to know about this boy so I can find Linda before something happens to her.’

       
Alison nodded. ‘If I knew anything I’d tell you – honest I would. But I only ever saw the guy once. That night, when he took your Linda home.’

       
‘Back to her house? Did you go with them?’

       
Alison blushed again and looked down at her nails. She didn’t want to grass, but Linda’s dad didn’t look the sort to let things drop. He was staring at her now, waiting for her answer, and the longer she left it, the more obvious it would be that she was covering something up.

       
‘No,’ she whispered. ‘She didn’t want to me to. She said she was going back to his flat, and would I be all right getting a taxi back. She went off in his car.’

       
Ged didn’t like what he was hearing. ‘She went back to his flat?’ he demanded ‘And he had a car? How old was he?’

       
Alison shrugged nervously. ‘I don’t know? Thirty – thirty-five?’

       
Ged clenched his fists. ‘What was his name?’ he asked through gritted teeth. ‘This bloke – what was his name?’

       
Alison edged back in her seat, shocked by the white-lipped livid expression on his face. ‘I-I don’t know. Simon, I think. No,
Simeon
! That’s it.’

       
‘And what does he look like?’

       
‘I hardly saw him.’ Alison was near to tears now. ‘Only for a m-minute when she told me she was going. He was standing by the door, waiting for her.’

       
‘So what did he look like?’ Ged demanded. ‘Big? Small? Fat? Thin? Black? White?’

       
‘Well, he was big. Muscly, kind of. And he was black, and bald.’

       
Ged nodded, scowling. ‘And where does he live?’

       
Alison was shaking in earnest now, her voice jerky and high with fright. ‘I don’t know, Mr Grant. Honest I don’t! All I know is it’s in that big block of flats in Moss Side behind the fire station.’

       
‘Are you sure?’

       
Alison nodded. ‘Positive. Linda pointed it out to me last week when we were on the bus going to school.’

       
‘But you don’t know the number? Come on, Alison – think! It’s important. She might be in trouble.’

       
‘No. She never said. It must be somewhere near the top, though, ’cos she pointed up.’

       
Ged pushed his chair back and stood up. Looking down on the frightened girl, he forced himself to smile. ‘Thanks for your help, love. I’ll see myself out.’

Ged sat in his car outside Alison’s house, mulling over what he’d learned. It was a shock to find out that his little girl had willingly gone off with a bloke she’d only just met – at a blues, of all places! He’d never dreamed she was the kind of girl to get into that kind of scene. She wasn’t even sixteen yet. What the hell was she doing going off with a man old enough to be her father? Jeezus!

       
And what the hell kind of man picked up a girl that young? What kind of sick, perverted bastard?

       
Throwing the car into gear, Ged pulled away from the kerb, seething with a white-hot rage. If Linda was staying with this child-molesting piece of scum, there was going to be murder! He’d castrate the filthy bastard when he got his hands on him!

       
Before he knew it, he’d arrived at the flats Alison had mentioned. For an hour he sat, just staring at the door, watching the comings and goings – hoping to see Linda. He even played with the idea of going across to the door and ringing every bell on the off chance that at least one would answer and that, once inside, he’d be able to knock on every door until he found her.

       
But, much as he’d have liked to do just that, a small voice of reason told him this would only alert whoever Linda was with that he was looking for them. It would be far better to wait until it was dark. Then he could get in, do what he had to do, and get out again without being seen. A lot more sensible than walking in in broad daylight and setting himself up to get busted.

       
Having decided this, he began to pull out of the car park. Then, just as he was about to turn onto the road, he looked in his rear-view and saw a man coming out of the flats. He slowed to a crawl, racking his brains to remember where he’d seen him before. Then it came to him. It was the bloke who’d stopped him and Sam the other night when they’d been coming out of Mal’s. The one who’d been looking for Millie.

       
Winding his window down, he reversed back, coming alongside the man as he unlocked his own car door. ‘Excuse me, mate,’ he called.

       
Max looked up with a frown.

       
‘I don’t suppose you remember me,’ Ged said, ‘but I met you the other night, in Hulme. You were looking for a bloke called Millie, and me and my mate told you where to look.’

       
Max narrowed his eyes. He remembered the meeting, although he wouldn’t have recognized Ged because it had been dark that night. Now, in the fading afternoon light, he looked like a Babylon.

       
‘Wha’ you want?’ he grunted suspiciously.

       
Ged nodded towards the flats. ‘You came out of there just now. Maybe you can help me out? I’m looking for a bloke who lives here. His name’s Simeon? Oh, and he might have a young blonde girl called Linda staying with him?’

       
‘Why you want him?’ Max demanded, his suspicion growing stronger by the minute. ‘What’s it to you?’

       
Ged frowned. ‘I’ve got my reasons. Do you know him or don’t you? It’s a simple enough question, man!’

       
‘Raas!’ Max snarled. ‘Who the fuck you talking to like that, eh? Axing all kind of t’ing that ain’t none of your raas bizzness! Cha!’

       
‘I’m only asking,’ Ged snapped back at him. ‘No need to have a shit fit! Fucking hell!’ he went on incredulously. ‘That’s what you were doing the first time I saw you! What’s the bleedin’ difference?’

       
Max drew himself up to his full height and put his hand inside his jacket. His eyes swivelled every which way as he advanced on Ged, muttering: ‘No one talks to me like that, muthafucka!’ Pulling the gun out, he pointed it at Ged’s face from the cover of his jacket.

       
‘Shit!’ Ged hissed, holding his hands up as he edged away from the window. ‘Shit, man! Look, just forget it, yeah? There’s no need for this! All right?’

       
He took his wallet out then and held it open so that Max could see the hefty wad of notes. ‘Here, man—take it. Just put the gun away, yeah?’

       
‘Raas!’ Max growled. ‘You think I’m a fucking mugger? I look like a fucking mugger to you?’ He jabbed the gun through the window. ‘All you white cunts are the same! Muthafuckin’ bastards!’

       
‘No . . . Look – I’m sorry, all right?’ Ged gulped as Max became more agitated. ‘Shit! I don’t believe this!’

       
Max kissed his teeth. ‘Pussy claat! Gimme that!’ Snatching the wallet, he waved the gun under Ged’s nose, growling, ‘I see you round here axing questions again, I’ll blow your fucking raas brains out. Now mooove  . . .’

Max sneered as he watched Ged tear out of the car park, then looked down at the wallet in his hand with disgust. Mugger! He’d never mugged anyone in his fucking life!

       
Flipping it open, he looked again at the bulky wad of notes inside. It wasn’t exactly how he’d planned it, but this would make up for some of the money he’d lost when Stevo did a runner.

       
As he stared at the notes, he spotted the tiny marks. His heart skipped a beat.
No way
! It couldn’t be!