Perseverance Street (12 page)

‘Lily, it’s Auntie Dee.’

Lily had heard them come in but she was so subdued with narcotics that she took little notice. Dee leaned right over her, so her face was inches away from Lily’s ear.

‘Lily. It’s me, Auntie Dee. I’ve come to take you home.’

The sound of a friendly and familiar voice penetrated the drug-induced fog. She turned over. Dee was shocked at what she saw.

The radiant young woman she’d last seen, on Lily and Larry’s wedding day, had aged twenty years. Her face was drawn and pale, dark rings encircled her eyes, her hair was lifeless, her lips colourless, and she’d lost too much weight for a woman who’d been slender to start with. She looked up at Dee and tried to speak, but nothing came out. Dee took a couple of steps towards Freeman and held the knife at his throat.

‘Pre-med my arse! She’s drugged up to the eyeballs and you’re going to anaesthetise her and drill a hole though her skull. You’re a bloody monster. Bloody hell! Hitler should have had you working for him, you vile bastard! When
she comes round I’m going to ask her if you’ve been screwing her. If you have I’m going to kill you and you must know I don’t make idle threats!’

‘Apart from necessary examinations I haven’t touched her.’

‘Which means you’ve been feeling her up. What else, you low-life lizard?’

‘Nothing. I haven’t done anything … illegal to her.’

‘The operation’s cancelled. I’m taking her away with me.’

‘You can’t just take her away.’

Freeman’s voice was weak with fear. This woman was more than capable sticking her knife in him.

‘Why not?’

‘Because she has to be discharged and she’s not in a fit state to be discharged. When the drugs wear off she’ll become very depressed.’

‘I should think she will be depressed after what’s been done to her. Husband sent to his death, and two sons stolen from her, and what you’ve done to her. Do you know who’s got her baby?’

‘I don’t know. They don’t tell me these things.’

‘Well I’ll tell you, shall I? Her stuck-up bloody in-laws, that’s who. They had no time for the family when their son was alive, now they’ve decided they want her baby.’

It was something Dee had found out during her search for Lily. Lily had rolled over again. Dee tugged her shoulder.

‘Lily, I’m taking you with me.’

‘You can’t do this,’ Freeman protested.

‘Oh yes
I can, you bastard!’

Dee looked down at Lily and then out of the window at the moor outside. Was the mist lifting or was it just wishful thinking? She looked up at the watery sun that seemed to have a lot of work still to do to if the mist was to clear any time soon. Then she turned her attention to Freeman, glaring at him with gimlet eyes.

‘I’ve got a list of women you abused over the years. Got it from your darling wife just before I left here. I promised I’d do something about it to bring you to justice – another promise I failed to keep, with them banging me up in jail. God, she loathed you, did that wife of yours. It wouldn’t take much for the police to track these women down. Put all their evidence together and make your wife happy at last. Is she still alive?’

Freeman said nothing. Dee pressed the point of the knife into his groin. His mouth opened wide in shock.

‘I asked you a question.’

‘I’ve no idea,’ Freeman bleated, bending his body away from the knife. ‘I haven’t seen or heard of her since she left with all the money from the safe.’

Dee laughed out loud. ‘Robbed you, did she? Good for her. Didn’t know she had it in her.’

Lily was now sitting up and watching proceedings with some bemusement. All the anger left Dee as she sat beside her and put an arm round her. ‘You’re coming home with me, Lily. Then me and you are going to get your boys back. Do you understand what I’m saying?’

She felt Lily squeeze her in return, which brought a rare tear to Dee’s eye.

‘Can you stand up?’

Lily pushed
herself off the bed and stood quite still, as if waiting for further instructions.

‘She can walk well enough,’ muttered Freeman. ‘She walked here.’

‘I wasn’t talking to you, you creep! Where are her clothes?’

Freeman pointed to a pile of clothes on a chair in the corner of the room. Dee picked up the clothes, examined them and threw them to the floor.

‘Does she have any clothes other than these bloody rags? I don’t imagine she arrived dressed like this. Smart girl, our Lily.’

Freeman said nothing. Dee took him by his collar and dragged him to the door. ‘Right. You and me are going to take Lily down to your office. On the way there you’ll act as if all is in order, nothing for anyone to worry about. If you don’t, the person who’ll have the most to worry about is you. When we get there I want Lily to be brought the smartest change of clothes you have in this dump – her own, preferably. Plus a good, warm coat if she didn’t come in one.’

‘You can’t just take her off her medication like that, she’ll get massive withdrawal symptoms.’

‘You’d better hope she’s OK then …
Doctor
.’ Dee spat out the last word, ‘Because you’ll be fully responsible for her, having discharged her. What symptoms are we talking about?’

‘She may get a fever, and hallucinations. I don’t know. Everyone reacts differently to medication. Just give her aspirin to control her temperature and make her drink plenty of water to stop her dehydrating.’

‘How long
will this take?’

‘Two or three days, maybe longer, but she’s young and fit. She should come out of it OK.’

‘She
was
young and fit until you got hold of her, you evil bastard.’ She held her knife to his throat. ‘Jesus, I could slit your gizzard here and now … but I need you to sign a document that says she’s fit to be released back into the community. That’s what the court requires, and that’s what you’re going to do.’

‘Very well! I’ll sign the discharge. Then what?’ He held his hands up in complete surrender, trying to ease his neck away from the knife.

Dee held him in her contemptuous gaze for several uncomfortable seconds before deciding.

‘Then I will leave you to your perversions because part of this deal is that you inform the relevant authorities that Lily has been quite properly released.’

‘And what about this list that my wife gave you?’

Dee took a piece of paper from her pocket and held it up for Freeman to see. He recognised his wife’s handwriting – a list of maybe twenty names. Some he knew, most he’d forgotten.

‘You give me Lily’s discharge, I give you this and we leave you alone – providing you’re telling the truth about not screwing her.’

‘It’s the truth.’

Dee chose to believe him because the alternative was too vile to contemplate.

There were many faces at the windows as Dee led Lily out to her motorbike. The sidecar was open to the elements so Dee put her crash helmet on her charge, more
for warmth that safety. One of the nurses has brought her a choice of coats, one an army greatcoat which would have gone round Lily twice, but Dee selected it.

She helped Lily into the sidecar through the small door in the side and checked that she was sitting comfortably and safely. The army coat swallowed her to the extent that just a couple of inches of pale skin were to be seen beneath the crash helmet. Dee wrapped her scarf round her face and kicked the bike into action. Then she checked her pocket to ensure the discharge was there, gave a sweeping V sign to the watchers at the windows and took off into the mist, away from this place of danger to which the courts had sent Lily.

By the
time they’d reached Dee’s home in Shipley, near Bradford, the mist of the Pennine moors had given way to summer sunshine. This, coupled with a fever that Lily was developing, had her sweating profusely, despite sitting in an open sidecar with the wind blowing in her face. The crash helmet protected only her head. Goggles would have helped but Dee needed the one pair she had. Dee drew the machine to a halt in the short driveway of a pleasant-looking, three-bedroomed semi-detached in a smart, residential area and wasted no time in helping Lily out. She’d sacrificed safety for expediency on the way back and had driven flat out knowing that it was important to get Lily into bed. After that, all Dee could do was her best. She had no idea what drugs Lily had been on and even if she had it wouldn’t have helped.

What she did know was that it was important to keep Lily’s existence at her house a secret until she was sure the police weren’t looking for her. She’d give it a few days then ring that creep Freeman. Scare him into telling her exactly what the score was. If there was one thing Dee was good at, it was scaring the likes of Freeman.

Over the next forty-eight hours it was Dee who was scared. On
a couple of occasions she almost rang for an ambulance, once when Lily was hallucinating and once when she got violent shivers. Luckily both of these withdrawal symptoms went away before Dee took drastic action.

She gave Lily regular aspirin, the only drugs she had in the house, and made her drink plenty of water. She hadn’t needed Freeman to tell her that aspirin kept the temperature down, nor that drinking water warded off dehydration. However, she was reassured that Freeman had told her the truth in that respect, so maybe he’d told the truth in
another
respect.

Lily drank her water and took her tablets because she’d been indoctrinated into taking whatever tablets she was given. Over the first two days her body temperature dropped from 103 degrees down to ninety-nine. On day three her head began to clear and she ate a bowl of breakfast cereal. On day four she managed eggs and bacon; she also managed to talk a little and, gradually, Dee pieced together the story of how Lily had ended up in Ecclestone House Hospital – a place she didn’t remember much about, fortunately.

‘Hilda Musgrave and Vera something or other eh? I must have a quiet word with them.’

Lily wasn’t too good at remembering names as yet. She’d just had her breakfast and was sitting in an armchair having a cup of tea.

‘No, no, no you mustn’t.’

‘Why not?’

Lily gave it some thought. ‘Because they’re my neighbours.’

‘Not any
more they’re not. You can’t go back there. Not after what’s been in the papers about you. They’ve all but called you a child-killer.’

Lily remembered being called such a name by Vera and she burst into tears. ‘Auntie Dee, I want my baby. Where is he? Where’s Christopher?’

Dee hesitated before telling her. ‘He’s OK, love. He’s being looked after by his grandparents.’

‘What?’ It took Lily a few seconds to unravel the significance of this. ‘You mean Larry’s parents? But … they hate me, don’t they? They wanted nothing to do with us. How can they look after Christopher? They can’t possibly love him.’

‘We’ll get him back, Lily. You mark my words. But our first priority is to find Michael. Christopher’s safe enough where he is.’

‘Will I be able to go and see him?’

‘First things first. I need to be sure the police aren’t looking for you.’

‘Oh. Did I escape or something? How did I get here? Where am I by the way?’

‘You’re in my house in Shipley.’

‘
Your
house? It’s a nice house. Do you actually own it?’

‘Actually I do. No mortgage, nothing.’

‘Must have cost a bomb.’

‘Well, it was kind of a gift from a man called Johnnie Eccles. Both the house and the jewellery stalls. Although when Johnnie had them they were just tat stalls he used to launder money.’

‘Launder money?’

‘Yeah, it’s the
crook’s way of justifying his ill-gotten gains to the law. He pretends his stalls are making the money that comes from his other business.’

‘What other business?’

‘He was a fence – dealt in stolen goods. He even organised some of the blags and let the mugs do the thieving while he made most of the money. Never got his hands dirty, our Johnnie. He had me working for him for a while in another business.’

‘What as?’

‘That doesn’t matter.’

She didn’t want to tell Lily she’d been acting as a madam in a brothel. She took the job for the money but also to look after the girls, who would otherwise have been put under the care of a pimp.

‘It only lasted a year, but I made it my business to learn everything about his dodgy dealings. I took a good look at his crooked books and I knew exactly where he kept them. I knew most of his thieving associates and details of the jobs they’d pulled. Times, dates, places, everything. I figured at some stage he’d try and do the dirty on me and I had to be ready for him. The business he had me running was raided one day and he fitted me up to take the blame. Told the law it was nothing to do with him, it was all me. He’d set it up like that. For me it was the difference between a twenty-pound fine and three years inside.’

Lily was curious to know what sort of business this might have been, but chose not to press the matter. Dee continued:

‘I kept schtum about his dodgy businesses and was given bail. Then I rang him up and told him I had enough on
him to put him away for a ten stretch. He knew I could as well. I told him I wanted a grand to keep quiet. Promised to do my time like a good girl and keep him out of it. Silly sod fell for it. Absolutely scared to death of having to do bird.’

‘Bird?’

‘Jail time. Some people just aren’t cut out for it and Johnnie Eccles was one of them. He said he didn’t have a grand but he’d sign his house and his jewellery business over to me. What I didn’t tell him was that I’d done a deal with the law, who’d been after him for years.’

‘As soon as I got the deeds to his house and ownership of his jewellery business I shopped him to the police. I got his house and business. He got nine years.’

‘Weren’t you worried he’d come after you when he got out?’

‘He actually sent one knuckle dragger after me but I got word he was coming and I was ready for him. I hired a couple of heavies of my own to take care of him. Then I went to visit Johnnie in Wakefield nick and told him I’d put some money inside the prison to sort him out if he tried it again.’

‘And would you have done that?’