The Girl Who Broke the Rules (31 page)

Back behind the bar, Sharon tried to work out the pin to unlock Derek’s keypad and enter the unsavoury world of Uncle Giuseppe. Tried multiple combinations. Birthdays that might mean something. To no avail. Not even Tinesha’s birthday yielded the phone’s secrets. ‘Bloody hell,’ she said, flinging it down next to the till. ‘I need our Patrice. I bet he’d be able to do it.’

Derek, chatting with a small man next to a flashy car. Derek, with no means of communication on him, doing a disappearing act during his shift. Derek, who had had whatever sense he still possessed almost entirely beaten out of him only days earlier by one of them big Italian geezers. Things didn’t look promising. Sitting in her kitchen while she cleaned up his battered face, he had been petrified that the miniature Don Corleone of Soho would want him dead. Had Derek, a man prone to take the blind alleys in life, always the last to be in on the joke, always getting the wrong end of the shitty stick and managing to get himself beaten by it…had Derek Dickheaded de Falco finally been on the money?

Her frustration and anxiety mounted quickly until she was breathless and distracted. Couldn’t get the bloody jammed optics working, now. Damn, damn, damn. When her own phone rang, she almost burst into tears. It was George, asking to swing by in the morning. Had the mystery Dutch policeman in tow.

‘’Course you can, darling.’ Because she was Aunty Sharon and Aunty Sharon was a fixer of things, she was careful to keep the panic out of her voice. ‘Didn’t realise you was back in the country already. Amsterdam boring? You come over and see your Aunty Sharon. I’ll bake.’

On the other end, an oddly breathless-sounding George let slip she was staying the night in Ramsgate. A man’s voice in the background. Giggling and something that sounded like a slap. She didn’t have time for the girl’s frivolous bullshit. Not when Derek was missing.

‘Look, I got to get off the line, babe,’ she said. ‘Derek’s done one. He might be trying to get in touch.’ She was about to switch her niece’s voice off when something occurred to her. ‘Oh, before you go, there’s a certain someone been asking after you. Wanting face time, apparently. I’ve had text after text after text and I don’t want no more messages cluttering up my inbox, yeah? So, if you’re back in the country, if you want me to put my ear to the ground for gossip about some dead fellers, you gotta deal with this shit. D’you get me?’

On the other end of the phone, George went quiet. Asked who the persistent texter was.

‘You ain’t gonna like this,’ Sharon said.

CHAPTER 59

Somewhere in Kent, an industrial estate, later

‘Right, you know what to do?’ Tony asked, looking over his shoulder.

Derek nodded, wishing he was anywhere but in the back of that bloody car. Actually, scrub that. He was just relieved that he wasn’t dead, and that the pint-sized loon, Gera, had been dropped off at some big pile in Chislehurst.

‘Well?’ Tony glared at him. His head was so large; his brutish face so red and angry, Derek felt as though he were a small child getting a dressing down from a gargoyle or a demon or some biblical shit. ‘Come on, Uncle fucking Giuseppe.’

‘Okay, okay,’ he said, scratching at the underside of his chin with a shaking hand. Looking out at the abandoned and seemingly derelict industrial estate. He had been made to wear a black hood over his head for a good twenty minutes or so, but he had seen through the fabric – not quite opaque – that they had travelled some way along the M20. Square, blue signs flashing by overhead. The white triangles of oast-house roofs in the distance. Maybe they were near the entrance to the Channel Tunnel. Maybe not. He couldn’t be sure. ‘So, I go in and I pick up a package and I bring it back out to the car and I put it in the boot.’ It sounded easy enough. ‘Why don’t Mr Gera have you doing this? Why does he want me involved?’

‘I drive the car,’ Tony said, gripping the steering wheel with a giant hand, encased in the largest leather glove Derek had seen. What kind of shop even made gloves that size? They were murderer’s hands, of that, he was certain. ‘That’s my job. And I watch you to make sure you do your job.’ Pointing at him with his other giant leathery hand. Reminded Derek of the gorillas he’d seen at the zoo as a kid. Big fucking hands, those silverback gorillas. ‘Mr Gera’s obviously training you up. We’re like parts in an engine, right? All doing different bits. Your valves and your pistons and that. We all work to make the machine run smooth.’

Tony checked his watch. ‘He’s expecting you. Go on. Don’t make no conversation. You ain’t there to make fucking friends. Am I making myself clear?’

Shivering in his shirt, pointlessly wishing he’d had time to grab his coat and his phone, Derek got out of the car. Approached the industrial unit. Rusting corrugated iron shutters down over the door and a large opening at the front. Weeds growing up out of the cracked tarmac. Strappy twigs and shit growing out of the roof. As though nature was taking the place back.

He rapped on the shutters.

‘Who is it?’ came a man’s voice from inside.

‘Giuseppe,’ Derek said, trying to sound confident but hearing a thin and weedy voice coming from his tight throat. ‘Mr Gera sent me for the pick-up.’

The shutters on the door rolled up slowly. Derek stepped inside. He found himself in an empty space, lit overhead by fluorescent strip lighting. It looked as though it had once been a mechanic’s body shop and was now maybe used to park cars away from prying eyes. There was a pronounced smell of diesel in the air and a black slick on the concrete floor that could have been oil, by the looks. Tyre tread marks were a dead giveaway.

The man that stood before him was nothing to look at. Reminded Derek of an insurance clerk or a bank teller – slicked-back hair, mid thirties maybe, glasses – except he wore a white doctor’s coat over a pair of jeans. The coat was stained with pale brown patches, as though it had been splattered with something dark that had failed to boil out on a bleach wash. Derek wrinkled his nose without being able to articulate why he found the man distasteful.

‘I’m Giuseppe,’ Derek said, holding out his hand.

‘I know. You already said that,’ the man said, keeping his own hands firmly in the pockets of his dirty white coat.

‘What’s your name, then?’

‘Dr Fucking Doolittle.’ The man gestured that Derek should follow through a red door to their right. ‘Come on.’

Beyond the red door, a shabby corridor with a flickering overhead light and scuffed grey walls led to a row of Perspex door flaps. It smelled different here. A strong odour of alcohol stung in Derek’s nostrils – but not the alcoholic smell of the club he was used to. It was the sort of smell he’d come across in hospitals when you had to rub your hands with that anti-bac shit every five minutes. But beyond that, there was a sickly, rotten whiff that caught the back of his throat. He’d once visited an abattoir to source cheap steak for the clubs. It had smelled similar there. Blood and shit and whatever else came out of a carcass. He looked again at Dr Doolittle’s stained coat and shuddered.

On the other side of the heavy Perspex flaps, what he saw surprised him. It was a brightly lit space that looked like an operating theatre.

‘Bloody hell,’ Derek said, looking at all the monitors, the tangle of wires and peculiar equipment that surrounded a black vinyl bed in the centre of the room. ‘When I thought I’d end up in hospital today, I didn’t expect this. What you up to in here, mate? Bupa forgot to pay the rent?’

Tony’s admonition that he should under no circumstances try to make conversation was long forgotten. The threat to Tinesha’s wellbeing but a vague notion. Derek was fascinated.

Dr Doolittle handed him what appeared to be a large cool box. A biohazard label on the side of it said there was something ropey inside that Derek didn’t really want to know about.

‘Don’t drop it,’ Doolittle said. ‘Precious cargo.’

But now, Derek wasn’t paying attention. On the other side of this strange medical set-up, he spied yet another set of Perspex flaps that marked the threshold to somewhere else. Leaving Dr Doolittle holding the cool box, he strode past, pushing through the flaps. Gasped when he saw the unconscious girl shackled to a gurney. An operating gown hitched up around her belly, exposing her groin. Skin almost as pale as snow, her blood draining into a container below through a plastic tube that was plugged into the crook of her arm via a fat needle.

‘Jesus!’ he cried. ‘What the fuck?!’ This looked
all
wrong. Fear seeped into his body as though he had taken bad whizz. Dizziness, heart palpitating wildly, sweating freely all at once. Paranoid.

At his side, Dr Doolittle in his shitty white coat was grinning. Pulling the girl’s gown down. Patting her hand, a smug little slicked-back haired shitbag.

‘Our girl’s got rare blood,’ he said. ‘Worth a lot of money to the right people.’ Winked, as though Derek knew what the hell he was talking about. ‘What’s up with your face? You got paternal instincts?’ He pointed to the girl. ‘You can have a go if you like. I won’t tell.’ Started to laugh. ‘She won’t fucking tell, that’s for sure.’

‘I know her,’ he said. Shit. He hadn’t meant to say that. It had slipped out. He had to keep schtum.

‘What do you mean, you know her?’ Dr Doolittle said, still grinning, though the amusement was gone from his eyes.

Keep your mouth shut, Derek
, he counselled himself.
That ain’t your daughter lying there.
But it was as if, after all the grubby, clandestine transactions he had been a party to and profited from, and all the young girls of Tinesha’s age and younger he had betrayed by allowing Gera to traffick them through the club, his conscience finally spoke for him, forcing the truth out of his treacherous, lying mouth. ‘She’s a porn actress. Works for my boss.’

For God’s sake! Why couldn’t he have just kept that to himself? Honesty was overrated.

‘Oh,’ Dr Doolittle said hesitantly; eyeing him suspiciously. ‘Well, I’m afraid this isn’t going to go well for you, then.’

CHAPTER 60

Ramsgate, seafront B&B, 28 January

She was smiling. She was chatty. She was all, ‘Morning, gorgeous. How are you feeling? Let’s do it again before breakfast.’ She was nothing short of wonderful. But as van den Bergen stood under a hot shower, washing the scent of his young lover from his tired body, he had never felt lower.

Rinsing the suds from under his foreskin, he considered the absence of moral rectitude in his having slept with somebody else’s girlfriend, who was not only currently his employee – making their union an utter abuse of his power – but who was some twenty years his junior.

‘Goddamn it!’ He punched the tiled wall. Banged his head against his fist. ‘What have I done? I’m such an idiot. I’ve ruined everything.’

‘Are you all right?’ George asked.

Through the steamy shower cubicle, he could see she was poking her head into the cramped hotel bathroom. Though they had spent the last twelve hours either making love or merely lying naked in each other’s arms, talking, he felt suddenly exposed. He covered his penis with his hands.

‘I’ll be out in a minute,’ he said.

Jesus. When he had already been a father at twenty-two, George would have been celebrating her second birthday. A toddler. A baby, really. It was preposterous. He looked down at the white hair on his chest and navel that ran all the way down to his saggy old bollocks. The skin around his knees starting to wrinkle. The firmness that his glutes had once enjoyed, now on the wane, giving way to a sorry, skinny pair of hairy buttocks that no beautiful young girl should ever see, let alone entertain as they bounced up and down between her firm, strong thighs.

His battered heart was heavy. His head sluggish. He felt as though he was maybe suffering from lead poisoning or something of that ilk. Wondered briefly if the water supply at work had been contaminated, perhaps by terrorists. It was always a possibility. He felt as woebegone as ever. And the spectre of his dead father seemed no less domineering in his mental landscape today, reminding him of his own mortality and fallibility, destroying any post-coital happiness he may have temporarily enjoyed overnight. He would have to let George down gently. It was for the best. He would only infect her life with sadness and discord and, ultimately, death.

Over breakfast, he had no appetite for the traditional English menu.

‘Aren’t you eating that sausage?’ George asked, talking with her mouth full and already half way through her own enormous greasy feast. Notably, two fried eggs sat on their own on a side plate, which she ate with clean cutlery. She had given the cook specific instructions on how to prepare the eggs, although van den Bergen knew she could barely make a cup of coffee herself. On her main plate, she had made a dam for her beans using two fried potato croquets that she informed him were hash browns. The beans were not allowed to touch anything else. It took her five minutes to cut every piece of fat from her bacon rashers, which she put on a napkin. She rejected her fried tomato, explaining that it was sloppy, messy food and therefore not clean. But everything else on the table seemed to pass muster. ‘This is glorious, man. I could eat a scabby horse after last night.’ She grinned, radiant even with a piece of toast hanging out the corner of her mouth. ‘We burned some calories, didn’t we?’

He nodded. Wanted to stroke her face. Touch her hair. Settled for holding her left hand as she snatched up his uneaten sausage with her right. Bit into it.

‘I can see you’re not going to eat this and I don’t mind having it because the beans ain’t touching it. And you get top marks for following the bean etiquette. But you got to eat, Paul. You’re too skinny at the moment, man. I mean, you’re well fit for an old guy, but you know. You were lucky I didn’t break you last night. So, you’re going to need to keep your energy up if you’re going to be with me because…’ She started to whisper behind her hand in what was almost a childish cartoon gesture. He had rarely seen this playful, relaxed side to her. ‘You give me the proper lady-horn. I’m so wet, I’m gonna need to be wearing incontinence knickers around you.’