‘Willy, as we are going to be stuck here together for a while, can we lay down some ground rules?’
The other man grinned. ‘All right, Pat, I’ll button me mutton, no danger.’ He held his arms up in supplication. ‘But look at them!’
‘I know, they’re all woofters. But can we let it go now, please?’
Willy was quiet while Pat sipped at his brandy.
‘My cousin Laurie’s fighting tonight, over in Rettenden. Fancy it, Pat? I mean, it’s only local faces, no one important. He’s in with a right chance, fighting a Yugoslavian bloke. Right hard nut to crack by all accounts.’
Pat shook his head. ‘You go, take your bird. Have a night out. Just be careful.’
Willy grinned. ‘Maureen likes a bit of a fight, bless her.’
‘From what I’ve heard she could take the Yugoslavian on herself.’
‘She’s a right handful,’ Willy agreed proudly. ‘Makes Mike Tyson seem like a pussy cat. But she’s got a heart of gold. Do anything for you, like.’
Pat nodded. He was not looking forward to meeting Maureen. He had heard enough about her to last him a lifetime. But something Willy had said struck a chord. Maureen would do anything for him, including lie for him. On oath if necessary. Which was more than Kate would do for him, Patrick thought bitterly. She
had
to change her mind. Christ, the club was
legal
. She had no call to punish him over it. But in his heart he knew it wasn’t the legality or otherwise of the premises that had galled her. It was because it was a dump that she’d hated it.
If he was honest, he agreed with her about the clientele, the workforce, the whole ethos of the place. But it made money, good money.
Legal
money. And that had been his only reason for owning it. The women he employed certainly didn’t attract him.
Now the club, and the man who’d run it for him, were the cause of all his current misfortunes. Even he could see that much. He had a mad Russian after him, his bird was gone and he was living in a fucking drum in
Ilford
.
Life certainly had a way of kicking you in the nuts, as his first wife. Renée would point out at every available opportunity. God paid back debts without money was another gem of hers.
Still, he reasoned, once Terry Harwick had arranged a meet, he could get it all sorted out. Then he could concentrate on winning back Kate. Getting her back in the fold. Back home where she belonged.
Maureen was a tubby woman in her early forties. Much taken with tight clothes, she had four catalogues on the go at any given time and the same number of empty flats to have the stuff delivered to. She made a bare living selling the stuff on but it was enough for her. It certainly beat kiting, for which she had served a three-year sentence.
Back on the street, older, a little wiser and a lot more battered, she had set her sights on Willy Gabney and had got him as she knew she would. She liked Willy. He treated her well and cared for her in his own way. Her children were grown up now. She was a grandmother three times over. A fact that pleased her one minute and depressed her the next.
Her youngest boy Duane was still at home. Not the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree, he was nineteen now and working on a building site. He was off her hands and that suited Maureen. She could have a bit of a life of her own these days, and thanks to Willy Gabney that was exactly what she was doing.
When she saw him pull up outside her flat in Dagenham, she rushed out to meet him, tripping towards his car on impossibly high heels. She got into the BMW with difficulty and Willy laughed at the expanse of leg she was showing as she tried to get comfortable. She was well padded, old Maureen, and that was just what he liked. She was a proper handful and he wouldn’t have her any different.
‘Bleeding hell, Willy, it’s like trying to sit on a skateboard!’
He grinned and they screeched away from the kerb. Maureen hoped her neighbours could see her. Give them something to talk about.
‘You look nice, love. Smashing.’
She preened herself. ‘Got to make the effort. Where’s the bundle taking place?’
‘Over in Rettenden, a big barn on Solly Campbell’s place. He always has a nice fight, him. Plenty of booze and a good atmosphere. Should be a top night. I’m having a monkey on me cousin. If I win I’ll treat you, OK?’
She smiled happily.
Willy would treat her anyway. He always did. A couple of bar a week at least was pushed into her hot little hand. He was kind, was Willy. Kind and caring in his own way. His reputation as an enforcer was well earned, she knew, yet with women he was a diamond geezer. A real nice bloke. Ugly, she admitted, but she wasn’t exactly Rita Hayworth herself so that evened it out. The days of a handsome boatrace giving her the eye were long gone and if she was honest she was glad.
At her time of life, she wanted a nice man with a few bob and no real complications. Willy Gabney didn’t even have the usual baggage as he had never married or fathered any children that he knew of. He had seemed to share Pat Kelly’s daughter with him if all he said was true. It was certainly the case that he and Kelly went back years.
All this was part of Willy’s charm really. He was the big dependable man she had been looking for all her life. And if he wasn’t exactly Rudolph Valentino she remembered the old adage: you don’t look at the mantelpiece when you’re stoking the fire.
All the way to Rettenden they laughed and joked. Maureen liked him more every time she saw him. Even Duane liked him, and that was a plus. He was normally funny about her
amours
, though she was honest enough to admit that there had been more than a few of them over the years. A few too many for Duane, anyway.
She shrugged the dark thoughts away. She had Willy now and that was enough for her. More than enough. Plus he wasn’t bad in the kip, so all in all she had fallen rather pleasantly on her feet.
Long may it last.
Lenny Parkes was a small man with a big personality.
An habitual offender, he happily divided his time between home with his wife Trisha and their two children, Mary and Ian, or inside a top-security prison with his mates. All in all he was a contented con. Gutted if he got a capture, but with the frame of mind that allowed him to do long bird with a smile and a cheery wave.
Providing no one upset him, of course.
His only real hatred was the police. He saw them as the enemy, as taught to Lenny by his father and his father before him. Lenny’s real pride and joy was his eleven-year-old daughter Mary, an ugly girl who wore too much make-up, and had a fat body and the eyes of a much older woman.
She was what he had made her, albeit without realising it. Mary tried to be what she thought her father liked in his women: sluttish, fast-mouthed and sexually able, or so she thought. She dressed too old, picked up sassy sound-bites from TV and tried to come across as a streetwise woman.
She was a deeply disturbed child who put on an act most of the time. She lied constantly, caused trouble for her friends, was a nightmare for her teachers and all in all was heartily disliked.
Her mother saw through her like a pane of glass and there was a long-established rivalry there from when Mary was a small child. Her father’s absences made the girl vulnerable and when he wasn’t about, her mother tried to make up for Lenny’s spoiling of their daughter by giving her a harsh crash course in perspective. Trisha knew she was wasting her time, though.
Mary gravitated towards the dirt of society as her father did. She was comfortable with people no one else would want to be with. It was behaviour learned from a father who took her to slum pubs and working men’s clubs and let her sit in with what she thought were real men. Just like her dad.
Consequently, Lenny thought Mary was great, while everyone else, including his cronies, secretly bemoaned the fact that she was a pain in the arse with her frequent interruptions of their conversation and thin veneer of sophistication which made her look far more whorish than either she or her besotted father realised.
Ian, two years older and a nice boy, was overlooked in favour of Lenny’s little girl.
As Trisha opened the front door to the police, Lenny and his precious baby were on the sofa, cosily watching
Alien
together.
When DI Kate Burrows walked into the front room Lenny closed his eyes in annoyance.
‘If there have been any robberies today, Miss Burrows, I had nothing to do with them. I was at the hospital having blood tests for suspected diabetes.’
Kate smiled gently. ‘I have come to speak to your daughter who I’m surprised to see is still up at this late hour.’ It was a quarter to one in the morning.
Lenny’s face darkened even as Mary’s face paled.
Trisha Parkes was on to her daughter immediately. ‘Have you been thieving again, you little mare?’
Mary, realising that she was in over her head, did her little girl lost look and hoped for the best. ‘No, Mum, of course not! Bloody hell.’ Her voice trembled and she tried to calm herself down.
‘What’s she supposed to have done?’ Lenny’s voice was harsh. He turned off the sound to the TV and stood up and looked at Kate and her retinue belligerently.
She stared back at the man before her, deliberately keeping him waiting before she answered. She saw the anger welling up inside him and smiled inwardly.
‘Mary was babysitting at a flat today when she should have been at school. The flat belonged to Kerry Alston. I am sure you have heard of her.’
‘What’s this got to do with Mary then?’ Trisha’s voice was scared as if she knew what was coming. Shoplifters didn’t get routed at one o’clock in the morning. This was serious.
‘Kerry’s youngest child is missing. It seems she left the children with Mary as usual so your daughter was the last person to see the kids. I have a responsible adult at the police station if neither of you wants to make the trek, but Mary’s coming with us.’
Lenny screwed up his eyes in disbelief. ‘You’re bringing her in?’
‘Got it in one, Lenny. This is serious. A child is missing and your daughter is a witness. We have to bring her in, take a statement and then see what develops from there.’
Even Mary picked up the seriousness of what was being said and the first cold fingers of fear touched the back of her neck. She started to whine, ‘I never did nothing! I was only helping because Kerry is so wicked to them!
I
am the only person who helps them. She don’t feed them properly or nothing.’
She looked at her shell-shocked father and said hysterically, ‘She beats them up, Dad, and I have to go round and make sure they’re OK.’
Lenny looked at his little daughter. Her make-up was smeared and her roots were coming through. Suddenly he saw her as the policewoman saw her. As others saw her. As her own mother saw her. And he felt a sickness inside him. What had Trisha said to him only that very morning? ‘She’ll be pushing a pram before her fourteenth birthday and we’ll have you to thank for that one, Lenny.’
There had been another row over her at breakfast. As usual she didn’t want to go to school. They’d had the whole gamut. Belly ache, feeling sick, etc. In the end she had slammed out of the house leaving the air blue and her mother fit to be tied. Lenny had found it amusing as usual. Now he saw that she was in trouble, real trouble, and she was scared. For the first time in ages Mary was acting like a child. The spoiled child he had created.
‘Get your coat and wash your face. Now!’ His voice was loud and Mary rushed from the room to do as she was told.
‘Has anyone any idea where the child could be?’ Mary’s mother asked, obviously concerned.
Kate shook her head sadly. She liked Trisha who’d had a hard life and tried to make it as easy as she could for her kids though she knew she was fighting a losing battle. Especially with her daughter.
She also guessed that Lenny didn’t know the half of it and that gave Kate the edge so far as Mary was concerned. She had already been warned that the girl was an habitual liar, willing to grass anyone and everyone to get the blame shifted from herself. At eleven she was also an accomplished shoplifter and a regular truant from the local school.
‘How long has the little mite been missing?’ Trisha’s voice was sad.
‘We aren’t sure, Mrs Parkes. But we understand that the mother, Kerry, went out and left her children with your daughter all afternoon. What time did she get in tonight?’
Before Trisha could open her mouth Lenny butted in, ‘You ask her when you get down the Bill shop, OK?’
Ten minutes later a chastened Mary was put in the police car with her mother. As Lenny walked to his car, Kate stopped him.
‘I counted eight Special Brew cans in your lounge. Surely you aren’t going to drive?’
He sighed heavily. ‘Fuck you,
Ms Burrows
. Not content with hassling me, you start on my family. Is that official new Old Bill policy, eh?’
She looked deep into his eyes. ‘Every second that passes is vital for the missing child. We have search parties out, we are combing the area with teams of officers. Now, that little girl is just two years old. Your daughter was the last person to see her and until we find out what happened, she might even be a suspect. Do you realise how serious this is,
Mr Parkes
? A two year old is missing and no one, including the mother, has any idea where she is. If the child turns up safe and well, I’ll be happy. But if she doesn’t, I’ll want answers and I’ll want them soon. Do you understand me?’
Lenny looked into her eyes and felt the first stirring of fear. Not for the missing Mercedes, but for his beloved daughter. All his wife’s wise words came back to him as he phoned a cab to take him to the police station.
Kerry was silent in her holding cell. She had not even asked where Alisha was, assuming she had gone to her grandmother’s house.