Gangsters Wives (3 page)

‘Bastard,' said Sadie. But she knew it was true. The men they'd married treated their wives as property. Bought and paid for. And woe betide any of them who got out of line. Sadie knew that she was playing with fire when she played away from home. But she had long ago stopped considering the consequences.

Then there was lovely little Poppy. Just a shade over five foot tall, with coffee coloured skin from her mixed-race parents. Father a rudeboy from Jamaica, long time ago gone into the dark midnight, mother a reconstructed mod who got knocked up one night after a Bad Manners gig at the 101 Club in Clapham Junction. Mum and daughter lived together in a council flat in Bethnal Green. Poppy didn't guard
her
virginity at all. She gave it up one afternoon when she was thirteen to a slightly older boy, down where the rubbish was kept under the flats. Even now when she has sex she could still catch a whiff of the rotten garbage overflowing from the bins. They did it standing up. ‘Can't get pregnant if you do it like that,' he assured her, and she believed him. She still believed it a couple of years later when she fell pregnant. She didn't tell anyone for months, until one day during the last lesson at school she was doubled up with excruciating pain and began to bleed from her vagina. She was rushed to the Royal London Hospital A&E where the tiny, dead body was extracted from her womb and burned. She never saw the baby. Later, after her mum had been summoned from home, the attending doctor came to Poppy's bedside and explained that it had been touch and go whether Poppy lived. ‘You were losing a lot of blood,' he said. ‘Too much to survive, unless I did something drastic.'

The two women listened intently.

‘I had to perform an emergency sterilisation,' he continued. ‘I'm afraid you won't be able to have more children. I'm terribly sorry.'

Poppy didn't care. The short pregnancy had been a nightmare as far as she was concerned. Mum didn't say much. In fact, later she often wished that the same thing had happened to her. At least then she could have made a career, made some money, had a life. Not scratching from day to day in a thin-walled flat where every sound of the neighbour's lives could be heard through the partitions. But she would never say as much to Poppy, and felt guilty even thinking about it. She loved her, even though she was a wild girl.

Poppy didn't change much. She left school early and drifted from job to job. It wasn't that she was stupid. It just seemed that nothing much mattered except getting a couple of quid for spliff and CDs, and a few vodka and cokes at the weekends.

And then along came Joseph Barlow.

Tall, handsome, from the same Caribbean stock as her father whom she'd never known. His skin was the colour of chocolate, and the white teeth in his handsome face flashed each time he smiled, which he did often. His hair was sculpted in a high fade, and razored into strange, geometric patterns at the back of his head. He drove a black BMW with dark windows, carried a wad of cash big enough to choke a horse, dressed as if he'd just stepped out of the pages of
GQ
and wore just enough bling to be noticed without going over the top.

From the moment Poppy saw him holding court in a local pub, she was his. She didn't care that he was a gangster. If she was honest it made him all the more attractive.

They were married within a month and he paid the deposit on a luxury flat, just close enough to her mum's to keep in touch, but not close enough that she was always round.

Poppy had never been so happy. She quickly made friends with Sadie, Kate and Niki. They often lunched together, although Niki was a rare companion in the early days, before Connie relented and allowed her a little more freedom. Poppy loved it when they did. The four beautiful women out on the town together almost stopped the traffic, and they revelled in the attention they got. Those were happy times. Until one day, out of the blue Joseph told her he wanted kids. Lots of them. Poppy told him the truth about herself, and that was when things began to go wrong.

Their sex life, which had been so passionate that they used to fuck at least twice a day, began to dwindle. One day a helpful neighbour of her mum's told Poppy over a cup of tea that she'd seen Joseph with a young girl down at Sainsbury's, buying groceries. A young, pregnant girl. Poppy didn't believe a word. Joseph, food shopping? No chance. That was her job. But once the seeds of doubt had been sown, they soon began to grow into ugly weeds. She started noticing how often he was away from home lately, and how sex had become almost non-existent. So Poppy began to follow him. She borrowed a car from a friend and tagged after him in his Beemer. It didn't take many days before he turned up at a council flat in Bow, where a pretty black girl in the later stages of pregnancy met him at the door with a passionate kiss.

After that Poppy haunted the building. She saw the girl getting bigger every day, and later, she saw the pair of them coming back from hospital in Joseph's car, complete with baby carrier. She saw the way he proudly handled the child. Bastard, she thought, as his absences became longer. She checked his credit card receipts. Fortunes spent at Mothercare. Bastard, she thought again, getting angrier.

She turned to Sadie, her best friend amongst the girls. ‘
He's
a bastard,' said Sadie, ‘but that's men all over.'

Poppy's love, once so strong, turned to something else. Her love had been soured—poisoned by his betrayal. But she still played the part of the loving wife. Cooking Joseph's favourite curry goat with rice and peas, mixing his rum and cokes, laughing at his jokes, washing his dirty Calvins. But deep down the poison grew stronger as the love grew weaker. Poppy knew, as all women know who've been neglected by their men, that one day the worm would turn, and she would get her own back.

When Kate felt depressed she went shoplifting. Hoisting she called it. She'd done it all her life, and even though she could afford to buy almost anything she wanted, the thrill of nicking gave her the highs she desired in her life. Dolly had started her off when she was a kid. Dolly had been an expert shoplifter long before she married Johnny Wade, and it seemed to run in the family. Kate started as Dolly's shill when she was barely fifteen. She would cause a disturbance by faking illness, rolling about on the floor whilst Dolly got on with the business at hand. She knew that every eye in the shop would be on her, especially the men, if she showed off her knickers under a short skirt. Or else she'd walk out with the security button still attached to a garment, as Dolly did the same, and it was Kate's job to pretend she had accidentally stumbled past the security barrier as Dolly got away with the goods. It worked well. Kate always came over like butter wouldn't melt, charming both shop assistants and store detectives, and she and Dolly made quite a killing between them.

But on the whole Kate had preferred working solo. She'd visit Brent Cross or Lakeside and come home with CDs, DVDs and clothes. Anything that could be smuggled out in her handbag or up her tee-shirt.

Now as an adult, with Dolly gone, she concentrated on Oxford Street and Bond Street and the expensive boutiques between. She'd put her face on and act as if she could buy the store with her loose change, and in all the years she'd been doing it, although there'd been plenty of close calls and embarrassing moments, she'd never been nicked. She'd always managed to talk her way out of trouble, or pay up and look big. Or as a last resort, just do a runner.

That is, until one day in April that year, when everything started to unravel. Kate had assumed one of the disguises she used when on the hoist. Nothing spectacular. It was just a case of putting her hair up under a hat, wearing Prada spectacles (with clear glass instead of prescription lenses), and a Gucci trench coat with the collar up. She looked just right. A clone for her Mayfair sisters as she sauntered up and down South Molton Street, her big handbag over her shoulder and a mobile plugged into her ear. No one on the other end, but it helped allay shop assistants' fears as she nattered on to a dead line.

There was a silk blouse she fancied in one of the tiny shops, so she pointed to another item with the hand holding the phone, and as the girl behind the counter retrieved it, the blouse vanished into her bag. No security device on that one she noted. Some people were just too trusting. Herself included, as she didn't notice the handsome Asian man checking out the contents of the window behind her, and Kate into the bargain.

After declining the sweater the assistant showed her, Kate left and cut through towards Berkeley Square. All was well, or so she thought. It was then that she felt a tap on her shoulder. She turned and the Asian man was standing behind her, a smile on his face. ‘Hello,' he said. ‘I think you forgot something.'

Kate frowned. ‘What?' she asked.

‘To pay for that blouse in your bag.'

‘What blouse, and what's it got to do with you?' At times like these Kate could come over all imperious, like Victoria Beckham being asked for proof of identity.

‘Depends,' said the Asian man, as he reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and pulled out a leather case, which he opened to show his ID. ‘Detective Sergeant Ali S. Karim,' he said. ‘And you love, are nicked.'

Kate said nothing.

‘Want to take a walk?' said Ali.

‘I'll scream,' said Kate. ‘I'll tell people you attacked me. Tried to touch me.'

‘Leave it out darling,' said Ali. ‘See over there.'

Kate looked round and saw a squad car parked a few yards away on the other side of the road. The cops inside were clocking the pair.

‘One word from me, and you're inside that motor and on the way to the nick.'

Again, Kate said nothing in reply.

Ali had checked her out as he'd followed her from the shop. She was a beauty and no mistake, he thought. A bit rich for a copper's blood, but you never know. And he was off duty, although no copper ever was really. He didn't give a damn about an overpriced bit of
schmutter
being lifted from a shop run by a bunch of toffee-nosed white bitches who he knew would immediately assume he was on the rob if he ever went inside, simply because of the colour of his skin. Fuck ‘em, he thought.

‘On the other hand,' he went on. ‘Maybe we could just go for a cup of coffee and sort things out between ourselves.'

There was another moment of silence, and Kate went for the latter option. He was a good looking man, and the last thing she needed that morning was a trip down West End Central. Get him on his own, and she might just be able to talk her way out of trouble again.

‘Coffee, it is then,' she said after a moment, and as Ali took her arm she smiled at the two coppers in the squad car, who as one smiled back.

There was a cafe just round the corner. Old fashioned. It had been there since God was a boy, avoiding the influx of Starbucks and Caffé Nero, or whatever it was called. The plate glass window was steamed up, and a massive Gaggia machine hissed and spluttered behind the counter. Ali sat Kate down at a quiet table in the corner and ordered two cappuccinos. ‘A sticky bun?' he asked, but she ignored him and he grinned. Gotcha, he thought.