The Business (22 page)

Jordanna waited patiently in the kitchen, the freezing cold of the floor tiles making her shiver, until her mummy finally crawled out to her. She was bleeding from her nose and her mouth, and she looked like a ghost lady. As she looked at her little daughter she grinned, and the blood and the snot that was mingling together made her look even scarier.

‘Good girl, Jorge. You are a good girl.’ Taking the gun from the child, Imelda pulled herself up from the floor and, walking back into the front room, she pointed the gun at Lance.

 

Lance sighed in annoyance. He was still attempting to recover their stash, still trying to salvage their score. His physical attack on Imelda meant nothing to him, he saw it as her punishment, as something she had deserved. He certainly didn’t see it as anything serious, as anything the child might find frightening, might see as threatening not only to her, but also to her mother. Lance was angry, angry and uncaring. He had no interest in the woman he had beaten, or the child who had witnessed it.

‘Oh, give it a fucking rest, Mel. Like that fucking thing’s loaded and, even if it was, you ain’t got the fucking guts to shoot anyone. You are a fucking drama queen.’

As he spoke the last two words Imelda pulled the trigger, the sound was so loud in the quiet of the room that she actually jumped with fright.

Lance was lying back on her sofa, and half of his head seemed to be gone. In fact, Imelda was in total shock at what she had done. She had wanted to shoot him so badly, and she had done just that. Her temper was such that she had shot him without any thought for the consequences of her actions. She saw him lying on the chair and she knew he was dead. She was glad he was dead. She was pleased that he had paid the ultimate price for his disrespect of her, for his arrogance. Then she heard her neighbours calling out to each other, and she realised that a gunshot was bound to get their attention. She knew that she had to use her head, had to find a way out of this situation. She wiped the gun clean with a cloth, and holding it carefully she went back out to the kitchen and placed the gun once more in the child’s hands. ‘Look after that for your mummy, yeah?’ Then she manipulated her daughter’s little fingers so her fingerprints were on the trigger and on the handle. She made sure that they were everywhere.

The gun had fired easily, without any need for her to really squeeze the trigger. The gun was so well looked after that anyone could have fired it.

She scrubbed her hands with bleach while waiting for the police to arrive. As anticipated, she did not have to wait very long.

Jordanna held onto the gun as her mother had requested, she always did what Mummy said, it made her life so much easier. She was still clutching the gun to her chest when the police came crashing through the front door.

Chapter Ten

Jordanna was quiet; as always she was waiting to see how the land lay before she made the mistake of opening up her little heart and allowing any kind of reaction to the manufactured affection of her new foster parents. Unknown to her, her nanny Mary was still trying to get custody of her, but until her mother was either bailed out, or sentenced to a prison term, she was in the care of the Baker family.

Emily Baker was a nice lady, she went to church regularly, and she tried as hard as she could to think the best of people but sometimes, she had to admit, she found that very difficult. As a person of faith, she sometimes found the world around her very hard to comprehend and, even though she knew it was wrong, she could not stop herself from judging people and finding the majority of them wanting.

Her local vicar was a very easy-going type of man, and she knew that he felt she was severely critical of the people around her. But she could not help it.

Like this little girl with her big blue eyes and her thick blond hair, who was absolutely beautiful. She looked like the children in adverts. Perfect in every way, and yet this child was suspected of a murder, was suspected of picking up a gun and shooting her mother’s lover. It was scandalous. And, also, Emily Baker had to admit, quite exciting.

Unable to produce any children herself, she had persuaded her husband that they should foster, to give poor unfortunate children a few weeks, or months of happiness, show them what a real home should be.

Unfortunately, she had not allowed for the hard work that most of the children who were taken into care actually needed. They were often broken both mentally and physically, were fractured somehow, and they were usually very quiet and unable to respond to her immediate loving advances.

In fact, she got the distinct impression that, more often than not, they did not even
like
her very much. She had tried, and she had tried again. But she had never understood how hard it was for these kids to bond with people, how cynical they had become because of their upbringings, their environments, and how distrusting they
had
to be to survive.

Emily Baker knew that the children had often been the recipients of terrible treatment, neglected or uncared for, even abused. Yet she still could never forgive them for their ungratefulness, for their refusal to respond to her overtures of friendship. It had not occurred to her that the children she was asked to care for had never had a healthy relationship with an adult before, that they were expecting to be treated with contempt, to have their personal wants disregarded as a matter of course. She didn’t realise that it might take time to gain their trust and their affection.

Emily Baker saw them as evil little sods who threw her kindness back in her face, and who saw their aim in life as making as much mess as possible. That was again seen by her as another kick in the teeth, another insult from these children who, she felt, were far beneath her, and who still felt the need to go against her every directive.

She hated to see her perfect home messed up by them, hated watching as her well-cooked food was eaten as fast as possible without any appreciation whatsoever for the time she had invested in its creation.

She knew that her husband did not want any of these children for the long term, did not want to adopt, and had only agreed to the fostering because it would bring in a few extra pounds and keep her occupied while he was at work.

She still felt that she should be achieving something though, but what that might be, she was not sure of. She had assumed that the children she was asked to care for would be eternally grateful for the opportunity to experience such a nice, clean house, and such a nice set of parents. After all, these children were mostly produced by people who had nothing more going for them than the fact that they
could
produce children. They seemed to produce them regularly, and at an alarming rate. She had watched and learnt over the years, and she had accepted that the children who came into her orbit were already without any kind of hope or any kind of expectation for the future.

Jordanna watched the woman’s every move, and knew that the woman was also watching her every move. She knew that this heavy-set lady with her cross-looking mouth and tired eyes was not exactly overjoyed at her presence.

She wanted her nana, her nana Mary was the only person in her world who really cared about her, who really loved her. Her nana Louise did, but she was often absent from her life, sometimes for months on end; she knew that her mother hated her even more than she hated nana Mary. She also knew that unlike nana Mary, nana Louise was much easier to frighten off. It was hard for Jordanna to comprehend the politics and the intricate relationships of her mother and the people on the outside of their world; she was never sure who was actually classed as socially acceptable at any given time.

So, she did what she had found was always her best bet, she watched and she waited, and she kept as low a profile as possible until she could gauge the temperaments of the people around her.

It was these self-defence mechanisms of Jordanna’s that were now making Emily Baker so annoyed with her. She was not experienced enough to understand how damaged this lovely little girl actually was. So consequently she took the child’s natural reticence as a personal affront, felt that her offers of love and caring were unwanted and, worst of all, unneeded. She had not yet worked out that it was not about her and her dreams and wants, it was about the children she was taking into her home.

So little Jordanna, at two years and eight months old, had inadvertently been thrown from the proverbial frying pan into the heart of a roaring fire.

 

Imelda was still trying to convince anyone who would listen that Lance had been the love of her life, that he had attacked her in a jealous rage, and that her daughter had inadvertently shot him by accident, determined to protect her mummy. It sounded like shit even to her ears. But it was all she had to use. She knew that the Filth could not prove her part in Lance’s demise, no matter how much they might suspect her involvement.

All they knew for sure was that he was
dead
, and no one knew what exactly had happened except herself and her little daughter. And her little daughter, as usual, had nothing to say to anyone. Imelda had already briefed Jordanna on how important it was to keep her mouth
shut
. Jordanna was a fucking pain anyway. She didn’t have the brains of a wood louse and, at the end of the day, she was hardly what anyone would class a great conversationalist.

Imelda knew that she might get a tug for having a gun in the house, a gun she had assured the police had been Lance’s, but she knew that whatever she might be sentenced to for possession of a firearm, it would be fuck all in comparison to a murder charge.

She could quite easily cry with laughter, but she knew she would be much better off if she didn’t succumb to that at this particular moment in time. But every time she thought of Lance’s face when she pulled the trigger, she felt an awful urge to laugh out loud. He had not believed that she was capable of shooting him but, as she had found out alongside him, she fucking well was.

As he had sat there, smug and bursting with self-assurance, happily assuming that a nice big fix, paid for with
her
money, would be enough to bring her to heel, make her toe the fucking line, she had felt such a rage and a hatred for him. She knew that not only did Jimmy Bailey think she was a fucking loser, a fucking skagheaded idiot, even a piece of shite like Lance saw himself as far superior to her.

It had been a learning curve all right, seeing him as he really was, finally understanding that he was just using her and her flat, even her money, without having the decency to at least pretend that he respected her and everything she was providing. He had the fucking brass neck to laugh at her, to treat
her
like a fucking dolt, a fucking
imbecile
. Well, she had finally had the last laugh, and it felt good.

She was finished with people using her, imposing on her good nature, making her feel that she was second-rate, even though they were depending on her to supply them with whatever they needed.

Imelda was absolutely mortified at the abuse she had been shown by Lance for her generosity of spirit, and for her faith in people in general. No matter how much she wanted to believe that the people she mixed with were honest and true, it was always proven to be nothing more than a sham, a terrible pretence. Imelda was really getting into her part now: she was the wronged woman, the fool in love.

She was also in dire need of something of a chemical nature and she needed it soon. The methadone she had been given by the police doctor had ensured that she remained more or less lucid. But she would need something a bit more powerful than that shite to get her over the next few days.

As long as Jordanna kept her trap shut she should be home and dry and, even if the girl did spill the beans, who would take the word of a child anyway? Imelda was in a win-win situation.

Still, she was tired, and she was aching, and she hoped that the doctor was as liberal with his sleeping pills as he was with the methadone.

To have asked where her daughter had been taken had not even occurred to her, and that fact was not lost on the policemen concerned. She had not once expressed any interest in the child’s welfare or whereabouts since she had been taken into custody. A child that apparently she worshipped and adored, and yet whose date of birth had somehow escaped her memory for the time being.

Imelda Dooley was as guilty as a monk in a brothel, but the police could not prove it. She was well known as a junkie and a troublemaker; she had a reputation for violent and aggressive behaviour, and she was an accident that had been waiting to happen for years. She was already seen as a major influence in two other murders. Her own father, and the father of her child, had both died because of her.

But, even knowing all that, with only a small, silent child as a witness they knew they could prove nothing against her. That the murder victim was Lance Bradford was not helping matters either. If his rap sheet was read out at the trial, there would be a good chance that Imelda Dooley might be put forward for a commendation of some sort. He had been nicked for everything from burglary to attempted rape and he was not exactly what they would term a sympathetic victim. He was the child of wealthy parents, who had indulged him all his life, and who had created a monster that they had finally unleashed on to an unsuspecting world when he had become too much for them to handle. He had been afforded every opportunity, and he had still chosen to spend his life on the needle.

But even with that, the police strongly suspected that Imelda Dooley had shot him in cold blood, that she had murdered him without a second’s thought. Even the bruises and cuts she had accumulated did not move them in any way. Imelda Dooley was known as being capable of causing the Lord himself to lash out at her. She was not a battered wife, or a victim of any kind. She was not even seen by them in any way other than as a predatory junkie. The wounds she had could have been delivered by anybody; after all, she seemed to make people want to smack her one.