The Know (31 page)

Mandy explained the situation to her daughter who sounded frightened by recent events. Her mother quickly put her mind to rest.

‘They were nice enough lads, love. I don’t think your Harold would have had any truck with soots anyway, you know what he was like. And the big one, Earl . . . well, I tell you, girl, I wouldn’t kick him out of bed!’

The two women laughed and Earl rolled his eyes in embarrassment.

‘You’ve pulled anyway, Earl.’

He just shrugged.

‘Mum, you’re terrible.’

The two women laughed once more.

‘No, I mean it, he was lovely.’

Mandy laughed again.

‘That little Kira . . . do you think they’ll find her, Mum?’

‘Who knows, girl? I hope they do. Bless her little heart, she looks like Caitlin. All that blonde hair and those blue eyes.’

‘Poor little cow.’

‘And if those two Thompson bastards are involved! Well, I wouldn’t want to be them if the two blokes who came here tonight get hold of them.’

She didn’t say that Kira’s brother was blaming Leigh for not speaking up but it hung between them unspoken. Leigh changed the subject quickly.

‘You and Dad all right?’

‘Yeah, fine. How’s things your end?’

‘OK. We’re still in Pevensey Bay, catching the last of the summer. I’m going back on Sunday. They love it here, Mum, and so do I.’

‘How’s the caravan?’

‘It was a bit messy. Whoever you rented it to last time wasn’t too fussy, but I’ve spring cleaned it so don’t worry. By the way, I’ve replanted them terracotta pots outside for you.’

‘All right, love, thanks. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.’

‘Thanks, Mum. For everything. ’Bye.’

Leigh’s words were loaded and Mandy said sadly, ‘I love you, girl.’

But her daughter had gone.

Earl was already looking up Pevensey Bay in his
A to Z
.

‘Don’t bother, I’ve heard enough.’

‘We going there now?’

Jon Jon shook his head.

‘No, we are going to get ourselves an alibi.’

Earl shrugged.

‘Whatever.’

‘Do you want me to get the mother’s mobile number for you?’

Earl grinned.

‘Fuck off, Brewer!’

As they drove away Jon Jon said, ‘How could they have taken money, Earl, knowing they were letting them nonces go out to do it again? My little Kira . . .’

Earl slowed the car.

‘I know about Rowe and, believe me, he is one dangerous cunt. They were trying to protect their own. We all would in their position. And they’re right about the filth - how many addresses have we got off them over the last few months? He could have found Leigh through court transcripts or local court papers. Use your loaf, Jon Jon.’

‘But it’s not your little sister they went on to nonce, is it?’

‘My little sister looks like Ms Dynamite on amphetamines with twice the mouth. No nonce in their right mind would approach her.’

Jon Jon didn’t smile even though he had met Renee many times. She was thirteen going on twenty-nine.

‘And without being funny, Jon Jon, you don’t know for sure it was the Thompsons, do you?’

‘It was them all right.’

‘You think they would nonce your sister, knowing all about you?’

Jon Jon sighed.

‘Well, that makes no sense, does it, because they nonced a Rowe and Harold wasn’t exactly the nicest bank robber on the fucking block, was he?’

Earl nodded.

‘Point taken.’

Jon Jon started to roll a spliff as they drove along, something he had never done before in public.

‘Drive back! I forgot to do something,’ he ordered.

Earl turned the car round.

 
Mandy was watching a film and her husband was pouring them both large brandies. It had been an eventful night.

‘I feel bad, don’t you, Mandy?’

She nodded.

‘But how could we have known that was going to happen?’

She couldn’t bear the thought of them having anything to do with the disappearance of a child.

‘How much did Thompson give Leigh?’

‘Twenty-five grand.’

Her husband choked on his brandy with shock.

‘Fuck me! That was a good few quid, weren’t it? I didn’t realise it was that much.’

Mandy nodded.

‘He had an easy let off though, Mandy. I’ll be honest, I wondered for a while if she had made it all up. You know what our Leigh could be like . . .’

His wife interrupted him.

‘Not this time. And anyway, that was years ago when she was a kid.’

He sipped at his brandy before he said, ‘I never believed it, you know, Mandy, none of it.’

His wife turned in her chair to look at her husband properly, the film forgotten.

‘What are you saying?’

He shrugged, his large belly rippling with the movement.

‘I asked Caitlin and she said Leigh had told her what to say to people.’

‘
Of course
she told her what to say to people! You don’t want your own kid talking about God knows what to all and sundry. Your own fucking daughter and you still can’t believe a word she says.’

‘All right, keep your bleeding hair on. But be fair, Mandy, she has told a few pork pies over the years, ain’t she? I never saw anything untoward, that’s all I’m saying.’

‘So?’ Mandy snorted with anger. ‘You expected to see them do it in front of you, did you? Is that what you’re saying?’

‘All I’m saying is, when did either of them have the chance? Leigh wasn’t living there, was she? I mean, it was just visits over, and trips to the park with the kids and that . . .’

Mandy shook her head in consternation.

‘Why didn’t you tell that geezer that then? If you’re so sure they were innocent and your own daughter is a fucking bare-faced liar!’

‘Because she
is
me daughter, that’s why.’

That was when the paving slab came through the front-room window. Mandy and her husband watched helplessly as their car was trashed by an irate Jon Jon wielding a baseball bat.

‘Call the filth, go on! Oh, but you people don’t call the filth, do you? Not even for fucking child molesters and murderers,’ he yelled through the broken window.

They didn’t answer him.

There was nothing to say.

‘Happy now, are you, Mandy?’ her husband murmured.

She sat on the sofa and surveyed the state of her front room and cried. But like Jon Jon said, they didn’t call the police. They weren’t that stupid.

 
Joanie was awake as usual. She crept from her bed as quietly as possible so as not to disturb Paulie. In the kitchen she made herself a cup of tea and laced it heavily with Scotch. Mary Brannagh had brought the bottle over earlier in the day and as it was the only alcohol in the house she drank it gratefully.

Joanie took out her Tarot cards and shuffled them lazily, then she placed them on the table in front of her. She stared at the cards as if they were an enemy, which at this moment in time she felt they were. Night after night she had wanted to give a reading for her daughter, see what the cards told her. Since Mary had said Kira was with a dark-haired person it had caused Joanie to swing between hope and despair.

She already knew everyone thought Kira was dead. Now she was terrified of seeing it written in the cards. She gulped at the lukewarm tea, the Scotch reviving her even as she loathed the taste. Then, placing her head on the table, she started to cry again. It was a quiet sound, not the noisy sobbing she had given way to earlier. These were tears of fear and self-recrimination.

She should never have let Kira go out that day, but she’d had so much to do she had not been her usual vigilant self. Since the tear up with Monika poor Kira had been wandering around like a lost sheep unless she was over Tommy’s. But he had been out that day as well.

What on earth had Joanie been thinking of to let her go to the shops on her own? Was her baby cold and tired somewhere now? Did someone have her imprisoned? Was she trapped in a fridge, gasping for breath?

The possibilities were endless and Joanie knew it was doing her no good at all to speculate. She groaned, the sound startling in the quiet flat. Even the loud music that was par for the course on the estate was not blaring out tonight, perhaps in deference to her mourning.

Was that what she was doing? she wondered. Mourning her child?

Then she was vomiting, holding her hand over her mouth to stop the foul spray from spattering the kitchen. She staggered to the sink and retched until her sides ached.

Then she felt a hand softly stroking her back.

It was Paulie.

She retched again and he carried on stroking her back as he whispered words of comfort into her ear.

But Joanie didn’t really hear him.

All she was hearing was her little Kira calling out for her mummy, and her mummy wasn’t there.

Chapter Sixteen

Little Tommy was outside the flats talking to a crowd of women and men; the search for Kira was still going strong but three days on, the heart had gone out of it. Everyone, including the police, was now looking for a body.

Still, the search had brought everyone together in a way that no one had thought possible. They all had a common goal and that goal was a child called Kira Brewer. Journalists were still all over the place though the news cameras were gone thanks to a bomb exploding in central London. The estate was alive with expectation, and even though hope of finding Kira alive was waning, it was still exciting for the residents to be front-page news.

As they read out their own words quoted in the newspapers they didn’t find it at all incongruous that Kira’s disappearance had brought them all together. This was a community who knew each other’s lives intimately. They could see into each other’s homes. They knew each other’s families, everyone’s foibles, exactly who was on drugs and who wasn’t. Who was sleeping with whom; who was banged up and who had just got out. They knew the names and ages of each other’s children and grandchildren. They lived in each other’s pockets thanks to the way their homes had been designed. When the planners had built them in the sixties they had not allowed people any privacy. This estate had been built to house the overflow from the East End slums. It was old GLC and it looked it - crumbling buildings that were so long overdue for renovation they were only fit now to be pulled down and replaced.

But this place was their home and in their own ways they made the best they could of it. The council put them here and left them to their own devices. There were unwritten laws on how to behave in this neighbourhood.

Monika was nowhere to be seen. No one remarked on it until someone opened the
Sun
. There was a picture of her, all sad-faced and demure, along with the headline: ‘I was on the game with missing girl’s mother’.

The two-page article explained how she had met Joanie, what Kira was like, and how Joanie had worked the pavements and the parlours.

None of it was lies, but no one felt that Monika should have used Joanie’s personal business to line her own pockets, which was exactly what she had done. It was a betrayal so heinous to them that Monika would never be able to walk these streets again. Not without taking abuse from everyone around her anyway. This was a tight-knit community and she had overstepped the line.

‘The fucking bitch! Like poor Joanie ain’t got enough on her plate.’ This from a neighbour who had systematically rowed with Joanie over the years, usually about the kids, but that was forgotten in the face of this tragedy.

‘She’ll get her comeuppance. No one will give her the time of day after this.’

There was murmured agreement and finally everyone dispersed to go and buy their own copy of the paper and discuss its contents with other friends and family. Monika’s name would be dirt from now on.

Joanie was a lot of things but she had been a good mother, an exemplary one even, and this was remembered by everyone. She was liked and that was important to all the people in this neighbourhood. They looked after their own and would pay Monika back for this.

Little Tommy walked slowly back up to his flat. Inside he put the kettle on and made a mug of coffee. He had all the day’s papers and laid them out on the table to peruse them, his eyes lingering on the photograph of Kira.

‘My pretty little princess.’

He said the words out loud and looked around him as if expecting to see her there. The kettle finished boiling as there was a knock on his front door. He shuffled down the hallway to answer it.

His feet were swollen today. He had been walking so much the last few days that he was paying the price. He was so sad about what had happened it showed in his drooping face and whole demeanour as he opened the door.

 
Jeanette was already at the police station. She had been brought in for her assault on Karen Copes. Karen had not pressed charges, but they had kept Jeanette overnight to see a social worker. The girl was out of control and they all knew it but there was nothing anyone could do about it.