Midnight on Lime Street (2 page)

Babs offered no reply.

‘Did you lose a shilling and find a penny, love?’

Babs continued to ignore her; Kate was from somewhere near Manchester, so she talked funny. There was no sign of Eve, and Eve was too big to hide behind anything less than a double-decker bus or
the Mersey ferry.

Babs crept down the hall to the office and pinned her ear to the door.

‘Don, she’ll do it, I promise you. What? No, no, don’t cry; we can’t leave you ill on your own, and we won’t. Look, slip me another five hundred and I’ll pass
it to her. I promise. I’m happy with the grand you gave me, but she needs an incentive, too, doesn’t she?’

Babs bit her lower lip; she mustn’t scream. The old bitch had sold her like some poor sod off a slave ship, or a sack of spuds. ‘No bugger owns me,’ she whispered.
‘I’m not for effing sale, Miss Eve Mellor.’

‘I’ll ring you back later, love. Eh? No, you won’t kill yourself, and of course I know she’s the love of your life. Yes, yes, I’m sure she knows that, too. Get
yourself a double Scotch and put the pills away. I mean it, lad. Any more of that talk and I’ll send an ambulance up to your house. Yes, I mean that, too.’

Babs heard the ping when the receiver hit the cradle. She dashed back upstairs, reclaimed her breath and sat at the pink dressing table. When Eve returned, Baby’s face was smothered in
Pond’s cream, which was just as well, since she was alight with temper and her cheeks were glowing.

Eve closed the bedroom door. ‘He’ll give you five hundred to show goodwill,’ she announced. ‘Five hundred in cash, girl. Now, what do you say to that? No, you’re
not interested?’

Babs shrugged – at least the boss was being honest for a change. ‘Tell him I want the five hundred and half of his half of the horse.’ She turned and faced the boss. ‘How
much did you sell me for? A grand? Two?’

‘That’s my business.’ Eve’s voice was dangerously soft.

‘It’s mine, too. Listen to me for a change. I don’t want to live in bloody Southport with Don unless he gives me a chance to win big on the National. Even then, I’ll
probably die of boredom. Have you seen what he does to me, eh? Shall I show you my bum after he’s hit it with his flaming long-handled shoe horn? My top half’s covered in love bites
because he gets mad when his personal equipment lets him down, which is nearly every blessed time. I have to use makeup on me body so the other guys won’t notice till it rubs off. If he does
get anywhere, he nearly drops dead with the shock of it. There’s not much fun in this job, but just one dirty old man? At least there’s a bit of variety round here. And me mates,
too.’

‘You’ll miss the girls, I know, but it won’t be forever.’

‘Then there’s his foot thing, sucking at me toes like a piglet stuck to its mother. That’s why he had a shoe shop, because he loves feet. He’s weird.’

Eve closed her eyes for a moment or two. ‘I bet you he’ll be gone by Christmas, poor old Donald.’

‘How much?’

‘What?’

‘How much will you bet? Stick your money where your mouth is. I’ll put my five hundred in the kitty if you’ll match it. With a thousand, I could buy meself a nice little semi
or me own flat, and not in stinking Southport, in Liverpool where there’s a bit of life.’ Babs stared hard at Eve. ‘Cat got your tongue, has it? Good, because it’ll make a
nice big meal for the cat and it will shut you up.’

The boss of the establishment took a step towards this damned cheeky young madam. ‘I don’t gamble,’ she hissed.

Babs delivered a hollow laugh. ‘This place proves you do, Eve. I can have the farm raided quicker than you can say knife, so don’t threaten me, you fat bitch.’ She was
surprising herself, because no one ever stood up to Eve. It was almost funny, since all three chins had fallen like collapsed layers in a badly baked sponge cake. ‘And shut your gob,
there’s a Kirkby bus coming,’ was her final suggestion.

Eve faltered. She wasn’t a falterer, and she was beginning to realize that Babs had grabbed the upper hand. But yes, there was an answer. ‘So you want Belle, Cynthia, Angela, Mo and
Judy in jail, do you? And young Sally, too? What about poor old Kate? Because she’d go down with the rest of the crew.’

Babs shrugged.

‘Are you evil enough to send the old woman you scarred to jail?’

‘Don’t forget yourself, Eve; you’re the queen of the rats, so you can help them all to jump ship, eh? Read my lips. I’ll lay five hundred quid that I can keep him alive
till Christmas.’

Eve blinked stupidly. ‘Look, you’ll be minted when he goes, girl. A grand’s going to look like small change. He owns property as well as half of Mad Murdoch. That’s the
horse.’

‘Is it mad?’

‘He was. Wouldn’t let any bugger near him, wouldn’t take a blanket, let alone a saddle, kicked everyone and upset all the other animals. Gordy Hourigan has him just about
halfway tamed. He’s famous in racing circles is Gordy Hourigan.’ She stared hard at Babs. She was a short girl with an hourglass figure and a pretty face, a face that was currently
concealed behind half a pot of cold cream. ‘All right, then. Kate can hold the money.’

‘Pull out and I’ll shop you,’ Babs advised. ‘And I’ll give the girls enough warning so they can scarper before the cops arrive. Oh, and you can drive me to
Southport a few times while I get used to all this. If I can’t stand him and his messing about, I’ll walk out and all bets will be off. OK?’

‘OK.’

‘And I can come back here?’

‘Yes.’

‘Will you train Sally for all the daddy-men?’

Eve nodded.

‘Does she know?’

‘Not yet.’

‘So the poor little cow will get this pink room? Well, good luck to her, because she’s going to need it. I’d best get this muck off me face before I turn into an oil
leak.’ Babs swivelled and faced the mirror once more.

Carrying the strong suspicion that she had just been dismissed, Eve crept out of the room. She’d never liked short women; what they lacked in height they made up for in the cheek
department, stretching their personalities as a form of compensation. Good things came in small packages? Yes, and so did poison. Barbara Schofield was possibly dangerous . . . yet she was lovable.
‘The daughter I never had,’ Eve mouthed.

Downstairs in the office, she phoned Donald Crawford yet again. ‘She’ll do it. She wants the five hundred and a quarter share in Mad Murdoch.’

‘Bloody hell, Eve. She doesn’t care about me, does she?’ he asked in a tone that managed to convey both grief and resignation. ‘I’d give her the world, but
she’d never love me, and why should she? Have you told her she can have other men as long as I can watch?’

Eve took a deep breath. ‘No, I haven’t. She may look young in her outfits except for her bust, but she’s an adult, Don. I’ll bring her to you, only you’re the one
who has to persuade her to stay. Any negotiating is down to you and her.’ She ended the call, stood up and walked to the window. While Don Crawford presented as a harmless old man, there was
something in him, an element that rang alarm bells in Eve’s experienced mind. She decided it was dementia, which rendered unpredictable all who suffered from it. Anyway, Babs was capable of
looking after herself, wasn’t she?

She stared out onto the flat, green nothingness of the Mersey plain. Kate O’Gorman, cook and housekeeper at the farm, often commented about the boring dump, as she termed it.
‘It’s bloody pancake land,’ she sometimes moaned. ‘No ups, no downs, just boring. In Bolton, we were surrounded by hills and fields. It were great.’ The girls would
often sing, ‘We’ll send you home again, Kathleen, to visit all the Woollybacks,’ in a poorly adapted version of an old Irish song. Anyone without a Scouse accent was dismissed as
a country bumpkin.

Eve nodded; Kate was right, because Meadowbank Farm sat on flat earth behind strategically placed conifers and thick bushes. It was safe, it was hidden and yes, it was dull. But a move nearer to
Liverpool was out of the question. The purchase of this house had been a deliberate act arising from the need for concealment. Leaving Kate in charge, Eve drove to and fro, there and back, the van
sometimes empty, often packed with men. She went to Liverpool and picked up clients at pre-arranged and constantly changing locations. She took them back as well – at least half a dozen trips
hither and yon most nights. This was the only way to run a secret brothel.

She sat in a chair by the window. ‘I’m getting a bit old for this,’ she mumbled, comforting herself with the knowledge that Don Crawford’s thousand quid would go a long
way towards paying off the mortgage. ‘Except if Miss Frilly Pants wins her bet,’ she added in a whisper. The job would have to continue unless she sold up, since a house of this age
required maintenance, and she was probably stuck with it. Anyway, who else would want to live in a farmhouse without land beyond its own admittedly large gardens? Perhaps it could be made into a
smallholding where vegetables might grow and a few hens could be kept – perhaps pigs and a goat, too. But it wasn’t everybody’s cup of tea.

Miss Frilly Pants. Ah yes, there was something in her, too, something with a red-hot temper, sharp reactions and a venomous tongue. Twice, she’d lost her rag here; twice, she’d been
removed and stuck in solitude up in one of the attics. On the first occasion, Baby Babs had smashed pots and had thrown a pan at poor Kate; then last year she’d kicked a bloke where it hurt
because he’d wanted stuff Babs didn’t allow – to this day, she refused to perform any act she considered radically unusual. ‘She’ll keep him alive till
Christmas,’ she whispered, ‘but God help him when it comes to Boxing Day, because she’ll have him breathing his last. God, I’ll miss her.’

An uneasiness crept through Eve’s large body; she should have thought things through. Donald Crawford and Barbara Schofield were each unstable and unpredictable. He was senile, and she was
without patience. It was down to the question of which one would crack first. If he made his baby girl into a cabaret act with himself as audience, he’d better hide all sharp knives first.
‘I’m in danger. If he kills or hurts her and gets arrested, he’ll tell the cops where he bought her, and if she’s caught for attacking him, she’ll blow me up without a
second thought. She’ll plead . . . oh, what is it? Mitigating circumstances? Undue provocation? Having been sold like an animal? Shit. What have I done?’

Kate knocked before entering the office. ‘Dinner’s ready,’ she announced, referring to the midday meal, a kind of breakfast-cum-lunch. ‘I’m going to ring the big
bell.’

‘Shut the door and sit down for a minute, Kate. I think I’ve been a fool.’

‘Never in this world,’ was the answer, delivered in the flattened, slower speech birthed in cotton towns. Although mills were gradually being silenced, messages were still mee-mawed,
as if fighting to be lip-read across the hot, sticky din of hell itself.

‘I’ve sold Baby to Don Crawford,’ Eve said.

Kate pursed her lips.

‘Did you hear me?’

Kate answered eventually. ‘I thought she were in a bit of a mood half an hour since. She threw no plates and pans, but she looked like a cornered cat ready to get its claws out for
sharpening.’ She paused for thought. ‘Can I talk straight, Evie?’

‘Course you can.’

The older woman sighed. ‘Look, lass, you’re my best mate in th’ ’ole world, and I love you like a daughter, only you don’t own nobody. Even if you were me daughter,
I wouldn’t own you. Think back. We were on the game for years, love, we never had no pimp, just our own little ’ouse in Dingle, and you saved like buggery to get this place. I were
never no good at saving, and you minded me when I retired. But even though we liked being together and looked after one another, we didn’t own each other, did we? It’s wrong to sell the
girl on. And if you were selling some working girl, she’s not the right one. In fact, she’s a wrong ’un from top to toe, and well you know it.’

Eve dropped her large head into plump hands.

‘I still ’ave the scar to prove it.’ Kate rubbed her forehead.

‘I know, Kate. But what I don’t know is how I undo it.’ She opened up about the bet, the horse and Baby’s attitude to the proposed move, her dislike for Southport, the
old man’s idea of watching her with other men. ‘She would object to that; I said the two of them have to negotiate terms. But do you remember the identical twins?’

Kate nodded.

‘One finished with her and went to the bathroom, and the other one took his place for round two. She nearly blasted the roof off with her yelling that night, frightened other clients
halfway to death screaming that she wanted paying twice. The second twin had a slight cast in one eye, and Missy spotted it right away. I’m not sure she’ll agree to perform with Donald
watching. She’s that sharp, she should be kept in a locked drawer or a toolbox.’

‘You’re going to need to put a stop to it, Evie.’

The big woman raised her head and shook it. ‘I can’t.’

‘Shall I talk to her, then?’

‘No. You never know which way she’ll jump, and she’s stronger than you. I’ve seen more flesh on a string bean, sweetheart, and you know she’s feisty at her best and
ruddy lethal at her worst. I must be losing my grip, Kate. Maybe it’s time for me to give up and turn myself into a bed and breakfast – we’re near enough to the main road between
Liverpool and Manchester.’

Kate shrugged. ‘You’d not clear ninety to a hundred and twenty a week at that lark. This is what you know, Evie; this is what we understand. Men need women, and they can’t
always get them. In fact, the government should be behind us, because I reckon we save a fair few girls from getting raped.’

Eve nodded. ‘An essential service. Try telling that to the bastards in charge. Yes, it’s time the world grew up, but that isn’t going to happen until I’m pushing up
daisies. Ring the bell, queen. And keep your ears open while they’re all eating, because I need to know what’s going on.’

‘I always keep tabs. You know that, Evie.’

Kate left the room, and a loud bell sounded three times. One long ring meant fire or cops, two shorts in succession meant an unexpected daytime client who had made his own way here, while three
shorts summoned the girls to table.