Blood Sister: A thrilling and gritty crime drama (8 page)

When John turned his head to order her another drink, she used her pinkie to pull down the zip on the front of her cat suit to give John a better view of her kitty-kats. She might not have learned much in school but she was a keen student of the male of the species. She knew that they thought with their dicks and that created all kinds of opportunities for a woman with her head screwed on. When John turned back she was proved right. He tried to avoid her noticing where his gaze kept resting, but she noticed anyway.

‘Tell me, Dee, do you enjoy working here?’

She flicked her hair over one shoulder. ‘If you’re asking do I want to be serving drinks for the rest of my days, I think you know the answer to that. Why do you want to know?’ She was giggling and girly, a stark contrast to the street fighter she’d been earlier. ‘You going to offer me a step up in the world?’ If there was one thing Dee had learned it was that sometimes you needed to push a person in the right direction. Plant that seed to allow it to grow.

‘I might be able to help you out. No promises mind, but I don’t like women under my protection coming to grief right under my nose.’

She wrinkled her own nose; not too much though, she didn’t want to look ugly. ‘I’m not into ending up on my back if that’s what you’re offering.’

He smiled as he pulled out a pen and then pushed his drink napkin in front of her.

‘Write your number down and I’ll be in touch.’

She knew what that meant – he was going to spend a couple of days checking her out.

‘I might have just the right position for you.’

As Dee wrote her number down she considered with relish the position she really had her eye on. And as John was to discover, what Dee Clark wanted, Dee Clark always got.

Nine

Nuts enjoyed showing off at the wheel of his Merc, honking pedestrians and shooting lights. When he was out of the West End, he asked Jen where they were going.

She answered with a slight hesitation. ‘The Essex Lane Estate in Mile End. Do you know it?’

‘No.’

‘You might have heard of it as The Devil’s Estate . . .’

‘No, I don’t know it as that either. Bad is it?’

Jen fidgeted in the passenger seat. She was always uncomfortable trying to explain life on The Devil. It made her feel like some green alien living on another planet. ‘No worse than a lot of other places. You must know Whitechapel Road? Drive there and I’ll direct you. Where do you live anyway?’

‘I told you, I live in a company duplex down on the river. I’m saving for a deposit on a place of my own. You can be the guest of honour at my house warming. My clients like a bit of glamour.’

He wasn’t giving up but he wasn’t being very helpful about himself either. When Jen asked him the whereabouts of his gaff all she got was, ‘Oh you know, down on the river. It’s a warehouse conversion, porterage, the works. Lovely balcony overlooking the Thames, you know.’

‘Yeah, I know. But whereabouts? Wapping or The Island is it?’

He became even vaguer. ‘Round there, yeah.’

Jen gave up on grilling him and decided to enjoy her ride instead. It was certainly a change from waiting for a night bus with London’s crazies after an evening out with a young lad, even if she hadn’t actually had a proper evening out with this one. As he zoomed through East London she began to warm to him. He was definitely dodgy but he seemed to be doing it well. As her mum had once told her, there were two types of men: the dodgy failures and the dodgy successes. It was only as the castle-like outline of The Devil’s Estate came into view that she noticed, in the rear of the car, a scattering of crystal specks on the leather seat in the rear and then, above that, a plastic sheet that had been sellotaped to the quarter light.

‘What happened to your motor?’

He looked over his shoulder. ‘Oh that? I went to visit some mates in Hackney and some kids broke into it looking for the usual pickings to nick. And stupid me, I’d left a few sheets in the glove compartment – my bad. That’s the trouble with the East End; it’s full of criminals—’

‘Why haven’t you had it repaired then?’ Jen couldn’t keep the suspicion out of her voice.

Nuts wasn’t fazed. ‘I haven’t had time. No one’s gonna break in it now, are they? Anything worth having would be gone. I’ll take it down the shop next week.’ He looked at her and added, ‘It’ll all be cushty when I come to pick you up for our first date.’

Jen turned and looked down. There were still shattered lumps of glass lying on the mats below the seats. She said nothing for the rest of the journey. She didn’t mind a little patter and a few fibs to grease the wheels but this boy seemed to think she’d fallen off a Christmas tree, and that was taking it too far. He didn’t seem to notice her silence though, and kept up a constant barrage of saucy chat and barely disguised nudge-nudge-wink-wink along with boasts about how he was going to skyrocket to the top.

When he drove on to her estate, the first thing they saw – to Jen’s shame – was a load of cops swarming outside and in a ground-floor flat in one of the low-rise blocks. She didn’t need to be told that it was a drugs bust; that was the third one in that building this year. Five years ago, the whispers were that same flat was a knocking shop. No one was out gawping along the balconies or other blocks; this was the usual usual; everyone had seen it all before.

Nuts didn’t seem fazed by any of it. As he drove the car away from the drama he performed a wheel spin for her on a patch of gravel and knocked over a few bollards as an encore before stopping in front of her block. He rejected out of hand the idea that she could manage her way to her front door. ‘No way, babe; you ain’t going up to that flat on your own. This estate is a zoo and you need a lion tamer as an escort. You know what I mean?’

When they reached her front door, she thanked him for a lovely evening out and the lift home but Nuts didn’t seem to notice the sarcasm. He put his arm over the doorframe to stop her going in. ‘I’m busy tomorrow and Monday – shall we say I pick you up Tuesday about seven-thirty?’

Cheeky bugger.

‘We can say that but’s it’s not going to happen.’

‘Wednesday then?’

She grinned at him. ‘You’re not getting it are you? You deal drugs with nightclub bouncers, you steal cars and you don’t even know where your riverside apartment is? You’re trouble, mate. I’ve got enough of that on the home front and don’t need any more.’

Nuts sighed but his smile didn’t falter. ‘OK, it’s confession time. Just to show you I’m on the level: I arranged to get some hooky tickets for a gig for the guy in the club. He needed them and I knew where to get them. OK, strictly speaking, it’s probably not legit but if you want to call the Bill, I’ll say it’s a fair cop and take my punishment like a man. As for the motor.’ He raised his hand to show a set of keys that he’d put his finger through. ‘You don’t put a window through on a car when you’ve got these, do you? Of course I could have nicked them but then the broken window wouldn’t have been necessary. As for my flat, play your cards right and you’ll be seeing that soon enough. My bedroom ceiling has a very nice shade of primrose for a start. Now, what about Tuesday?’

He had an answer for everything. But boys like him always did. ‘And there’s another thing. You told me you didn’t know this estate. How come you knew how to drive here without any directions once we got past Whitechapel, and know it’s a zoo?’

He leaned into her face as he had at the club and whispered, ‘Now you’re getting desperate. You told me you lived in Mile End and I know my way there. Once you’re in Mile End, this estate sticks out like a baguette on a day-trip to Calais. Of course I knew how to find it then. Come on – give me a chance. I’m not going to weave a web of porkies, only to look a total prat a couple of weeks later, am I?’

She hesitated before saying, ‘I’m sorry, Nuts. You’re a nice fella but I just want a proper life – a quiet one – and a guy like you is too much of a risk for me.’

He drew back slightly. ‘I’ll be here on Tuesday, seven-thirty on the dot. Of course you don’t have to answer the door.’

They were interrupted by shouting and screaming on the stairwell. Nuts was alarmed when two struggling figures emerged onto the landing.

He turned back to Jen. ‘You’d better get inside your flat, treacle. Those two looby-loos look like a right pair.’

Jen’s heart sank. ‘Those two looby-loos, as you put it, are my mum and sister.’

Nuts decided to leave Jen to it. He passed by as Babs strong-armed Tiffany into the flat. Jen followed her family inside, and the front door banged behind them. Tiffany marched off to her bedroom slamming the door. Babs attempted to follow, then cursed under her breath, suspecting that Tiffany had done her old trick of jamming her bed up against the door. No way was she getting inside.

‘I’ll kick this door in if you don’t come out, my girl,’ she shouted, hammering on the door.

‘Leave it, Mum,’ Jen said, sighing as she triple-locked the front door. ‘Talk to her in the morning; it’s a waste of time now. Was she down the cemetery?’

Her mother sounded exhausted, but still had some fight in her. ‘I thought you were supposed to be keeping an eagle eye on her for me?’

Jen shrugged her shoulders. ‘She had a row with a bouncer and then flounced off. What do you want me to do?’ She didn’t finish by saying, ‘I told you so . . .’ But then she never did. Her mum was already hurting and she didn’t want her words to add any new wounds. Babs slumped into an armchair in the sitting room. Jen fetched a bottle of brandy from the sideboard, poured a stiff one into a glass and passed it over. ‘What was she up to in the cemetery?’

Her mother took a large gulp. ‘She was hanging around with a girl.’

Jen was amused. ‘A girl? Well, that’s something; at least she won’t be telling you she’s got a bun in the oven in a couple of months’ time.’

Babs tutted furiously. ‘It’s not bloody funny. The girl was Stacey Ingram. I pretended I didn’t know who she was and Tiffany clammed up when I asked about her.’

‘Stacey Ingram?’ Jen didn’t see the funny side of it anymore. ‘Why would she be hanging around with her; we don’t talk to that lot, do we?’

Her mum took another slug. ‘Exactly. The thing is, I bumped into Ma Ingram earlier and we had words. Stacey and your sister must have a habit of hanging about together because the Satanic old bitch was moaning off about it.’

Jen shook her head. ‘Well, you know what Tiffany’s like. Stacey will probably end up as her BFF – anything to wind up the rest of us.’ She topped up her drink and became curious. ‘Mum, why is it we don’t get on with the Ingrams?’

‘Because they’re a bunch of bastards, that’s why.’ When Babs saw the look on her daughter’s face, she took another sip and went on. ‘Oh, I dunno. I think it was something to do with your dad . . .’

‘Our dad . . . ?’

So rarely was Stanley Miller’s name mentioned in the flat that Jen was quite shocked to hear him mentioned twice in one day. First of all, when Bex had been fishing for info and now it seemed he was to blame for the feud with the Ingrams. Her strongest memory of him wasn’t a face – she’d been too young to remember that – but a smell. Old Spice, his aftershave of choice. It was a hazy memory of him leaning over her bed, clouding her in a delicious aroma – Bay Rum jumbled up with fruits and spices. A dad who’d smelt good but who was, from all accounts, a right bastard. As a little girl, when she’d asked her mum where Daddy was, she’d been told that he was ‘away’ or sometimes that he’d ‘gone to heaven’. Eventually, she accepted it. When she’d become a teenager, she’d taken a renewed interest in her father but any questions to her mother about him were met with, ‘I dunno . . . Can’t remember . . . Who cares?’ When she put the same questions to relatives, she was told, ‘Don’t worry about him . . . Be grateful he’s gone . . . Bad business.’

No one talked. After her husband’s mysterious departure, Babs had seen various other guys from time to time but she never seemed to have any luck with men. But then, women on The Devil’s Estate rarely did.

Jen attempted to sound offhand as she tried to lure her mother into a chat about Stanley Miller. ‘Why would our old man have got into a ruck with the Ingrams?’

But her mum made it clear she wasn’t taking the bait, and smartly changed the subject. ‘Who was that lad who brought you home?’

‘Some spiv I met in Soho,’ Jen replied, giving Babs a cold stare, which said, You’ll tell me one day.

‘He seemed like a nice enough boy . . .’ Babs suddenly remembered what she’d seen downstairs and cheered up. ‘Eh – was that his fancy motor parked outside? Here! Look at you!’

‘Possibly. I think he thieved it actually.’

‘He must have liked you to drive on to this estate with a car like that. He’ll have been lucky if he got downstairs and found it wasn’t on bricks. Hope you’re seeing him again?’

‘No. He’s not my type.’

Her mum’s brief moment of cheer disappeared. Jen was only eighteen but her mum took an obsessive interest in her love life. She was happy as Larry when her daughter dated and hit the bottle when she split with someone, which wasn’t usually long after. There would be pointed reminders that nice blokes don’t grow on trees and that she wasn’t Princess Di. It took a while for Jen to realise that her mother was trying to compensate for her own disastrous love life through her oldest daughter’s. Perhaps that was why Jen was so determined to avoid her mum’s mistakes and all those other women lumbered with dead-beat blokes.

Babs’ disappointment shone through. ‘You never give a boy an even break, do you?’

Ten

‘Will your wife be happy about you buying another woman clothes?’ Dee Clark asked coyly, reaching for a wad of cash on her boss’s desk, first thing Monday morning.

John’s office was much classier than Dee had expected – cushioned carpet; plush chairs around a desk topped with smoky-green glass; Chesterfield sofa backed against a wall filled with framed, signed, black-and-white photos of John grinning with celebs.

He’d called her up yesterday and asked her to pop in for a chat, which had made her ecstatic, knowing that all the calls he’d put in about her had come back with a massive thumbs-up. She didn’t blame him for calling around; a man in his position had to make sure he wasn’t inviting trouble into his house. Loyalty, keeping your mouth shut and knowing when to look the other way were key assets in the world John inhabited. Dee had no doubt that when he got on the blower, people said she ticked all three. But she was still worried about the type of job he was going to offer her.