Eight
On the dance floor at the Alley Club, there was a stand-off. The security detail couldn’t get the waitress to listen to reason. An attempt to nab her had gone wrong when the three heavies had unwisely tried to manhandle her. One had received a kick to the family jewels, which put him out of the fight; a second was nursing a one-inch stab wound to his arm that she’d inflicted with a small knife, drawn in a single action from her kitten heels. Now the woman was backed into a corner of the dance floor, short blade in one hand, a broken beer bottle in the other, and it was clear she was happy to use either or both. The three security guys stood well back debating what to do next.
The music had stopped; some punters had slipped away while others had gathered close – like they were at a movie premiere – to see what happened next. There was a buzz and hum against the backdrop of silence. And one person seemed to be loving up the mayhem: the waitress in the scarlet cat suit.
The security boys were uncertain. The boss had a strict rule – no aggro and anyone who had the front to cause it was to be dumped outside. But he had another strict rule: he didn’t want any violence doled out to the idiot. That way there was never a need for an ambulance or the Bill to come calling. Dust-ups were bad for business. If word got out that you weren’t safe, the showbiz luvvies stopped coming; they were a bit delicate when it came to anything that might mess up their good looks. John chose his staff to reflect his policy. All his men were six foot plus and looked like adverts for the upmarket gay gyms in the area.
They all knew that they were in a tricky situation. Even in her heels, the silly cow wasn’t much more than five-eight – tall for a woman, but still small compared to the six plus of all the security staff – and apart from her hips, legs and tits, there didn’t seem to be much flesh on her. It was pretty obvious what John was going to make of their failure to deal with her; bottle or no bottle, blade or no blade.
‘Come on, love,’ the head of security said, ‘You don’t want to be pissing the boss off.’ She raised the jagged-edged broken bottle, kissed her teeth long and hard, and pointed it at him. ‘I’ve got a brighter idea. Why don’t you tell the DJ to switch the music back on; you and your pussy boys go for a walk and then I’ll leave when I’m good and ready. How about that?’
The guy was about to start at her again but shrank back when he realised that the boss had made an appearance. John wore an expensive dark suit, an open-necked shirt and stacked heels which still left him shorter than the woman with the knife. He pushed his way through the bouncers. ‘What the hell’s going on? Why’s the music stopped?’ He noticed the man clutching his arm. ‘What happened to you?’
‘Just a scratch boss. We’ve had some trouble.’
All eyes turned towards the woman and John followed their gaze until he realised who the argy-bargy was coming from. He’d seen her around; what man wouldn’t notice such a stunning piece of womanhood? He looked at his boys and then gestured towards her with his hand, as if to say, ‘What her? A waitress? She’s the trouble? Give me a bloody break.’
He called out to the DJ, ‘Oi – get spinning some tunes.’ Then to the guests, ‘Come on, start dancing, drinking and copping off. It’s Saturday night!’ And then to his security, ‘Right, you lot, hop it; I’ll deal with you later . . .’
The lights dimmed, DJ Jazzy Jeff and The Fresh Prince’s ‘Boom! Shake The Room’ blasted across the dance floor and the fight’s audience drifted away. John walked up to the woman who was still clutching her weapons. As he approached she hitched the bottle level with his face. He raised his hands and smiled. ‘OK, OK, there’s no need to jump out of your pram. I don’t usually appreciate my waitresses behaving like they own the place, but I suspect something’s gone on here that I need to know about. So why don’t you put that down and let me get you a glass of something sparkling and sweet, and then you can tell me what’s twisted you all out of shape.’
She didn’t put down the bottle, but said, ‘I know I shouldn’t have done it, Mister Black, but I don’t turn up for work to be dissed. You get me?’
‘What’s your name, love?’
For a few moments the woman kept up her fighter’s glare before it melted into a smile that switched her face from murderous to a hundred watt glow. ‘Dee.’
As she put the bottle on a table and slipped the knife back into her kitten boot, John wondered out loud, ‘Really? Is Dee short for Demon, or Devil?’
‘That’s for me to know and you . . .’ She teasingly raised her sleek, black eyebrows.
He led her across to the bar, which was now returning to normal, while she explained how the rumble had kicked off. They passed her victim, sprawled on a sofa with a hanky clasped across his nose, getting some first aid from his mates. As Dee finished her story about the backside fondling, John nodded and took prompt action. He walked over to where the guy was lying. ‘Fuck off out of my club. I won’t have people touching up ladies in my place, especially ladies who work for me. If I ever see you here again, you’ll have more than a busted hooter to worry about.’
When he rejoined Dee, he told her, ‘That must have been some slap you gave that bloke. A very nice job; I’m impressed. How did you cut his face?’
‘With these.’ Dee waved her four, large, chunky rings. ‘I never leave home without them.’
Smart girl, John thought. Rings could do a lethal bit of damage to a face and there was no law against wearing them. His security crew could take a lesson or two from her. She was a bit of alright this black girl and he wasn’t talking about her street smarts. He could well understand why the guy she’d decked had wanted to cop a feel of her rear end. He led Dee to the VIP lounge, ordered her his most expensive champagne and they got chatting.
While John gave it the big ‘I Am’ about his club, twenty-one-year-old Dee sized him up instead of listening. Despite the receding hairline and wrinkles around his eyes, she almost licked her lips; umm, yes, she liked what she saw. She lived in a cramped flat overlooking the murky water of Limehouse Basin in East London, which didn’t belong to her; she was minding it for a mate who was enjoying a few years at Her Majesty’s Pleasure. In that flat was her prized possession – her magazine collection. She had copies of Country Life from which she’d chosen the beautiful house she wanted to live in. She had copies of Vogue from which she’d chosen the clobber she wanted to wear. And she had various motoring mags from which she’d chosen the car she wanted to drive.
At school her teachers had told her that if you wanted to succeed in life you had to put the work in. But Dee knew that just didn’t float, not in the world she came from. She’d seen plenty of boys and girls from her gates graft away, day in, day out and end up on a road going nowhere, especially when they were her colour. She decided what she needed was a man who could provide for her instead, and she was ready to pay for the service. Dee knew all about John Black – well, as much as anyone was willing to tell her – and the only thing that needed knowing was he ran his own successful outfit and was unattached. So she set out finding a way to get close to him. But if you asked her if she had anything to do with the Alley Club waitress who had fallen over the stool and sprained her wrist, she’d tell you no. If you asked her if that waitress had fallen because Dee had stuck her foot out, her answer would be the same. How was she to know there’d be a vacancy when she turned up asking for a waiting job at the club the very next day?
When John turned his head to order her another drink, she used her pinkie to pull down the zip on the front of her cat suit to give John a better view of her kitty-kats. She might not have learned much in school but she was a keen student of the male of the species. She knew that they thought with their dicks and that created all kinds of opportunities for a woman with her head screwed on. When John turned back she was proved right. He tried to avoid her noticing where his gaze kept resting, but she noticed anyway.
‘Tell me, Dee, do you enjoy working here?’
She flicked her hair over one shoulder. ‘If you
’re asking do I want to be serving drinks for the rest of my days, I think you know the answer to that. Why do you want to know?’ She was giggling and girly, a stark contrast to the street fighter she’d been earlier. ‘You going to offer me a step up in the world?’ If there was one thing Dee had learned it was that sometimes you needed to push a person in the right direction. Plant that seed to allow it to grow.
‘I might be able to help you out. No promises mind, but I don’t like women under my protection coming to grief right under my nose.’
She wrinkled her own nose; not too much though, she didn’t want to look ugly. ‘I’m not into ending up on my back if that’s what you’re offering.’
He smiled as he pulled out a pen and then pushed his drink napkin in front of her.
‘Write your number down and I’ll be in touch.’
She knew what that meant – he was going to spend a couple of days checking her out.
‘I might have just the right position for you.’
As Dee wrote her number down she considered with relish the position she really had her eye on. And as John was to discover, what Dee Clark wanted, Dee Clark always got.
Nine
Nuts enjoyed showing off at the wheel of his Merc, honking pedestrians and shooting lights. When he was out of the West End, he asked Jen where they were going.
She answered with a slight hesitation. ‘The Essex Lane Estate in Mile End. Do you know it?’
‘No.’
‘You might have heard of it as The Devil’s Estate . . .’
‘No, I don’t know it as that either. Bad is it?’
Jen fidgeted in the passenger seat. She was always uncomfortable trying to explain life on The Devil. It made her feel like some green alien living on another planet. ‘No worse than a lot of other places. You must know Whitechapel Road? Drive there and I’ll direct you. Where do you live anyway?’
‘I told you, I live in a company duplex down on the river. I’m saving for a deposit on a place of my own. You can be the guest of honour at my house warming. My clients like a bit of glamour.’
He wasn’t giving up but he wasn’t being very helpful about himself either. When Jen asked him the whereabouts of his gaff all she got was, ‘Oh you know, down on the river. It’s a warehouse conversion, porterage, the works. Lovely balcony overlooking the Thames, you know.’
‘Yeah, I know. But whereabouts? Wapping or The Island is it?’
He became even vaguer. ‘Round there, yeah.’
Jen gave up on grilling him and decided to enjoy her ride instead. It was certainly a change from waiting for a night bus with London’s crazies after an evening out with a young lad, even if she hadn’t actually had a proper evening out with this one. As he zoomed through East London she began to warm to him. He was definitely dodgy but he seemed to be doing it well. As her mum had once told her, there were two types of men: the dodgy failures and the dodgy successes. It was only as the castle-like outline of The Devil’s Estate came into view that she noticed, in the rear of the car, a scattering of crystal specks on the leather seat in the rear and then, above that, a plastic sheet that had been sellotaped to the quarter light.
‘What happened to your motor?’
He looked over his shoulder. ‘Oh that? I went to visit some mates in Hackney and some kids broke into it looking for the usual pickings to nick. And stupid me, I’d left a few sheets in the glove compartment – my bad. That’s the trouble with the East End; it’s full of criminals—’
‘Why haven’t you had it repaired then?’ Jen couldn’t keep the suspicion out of her voice.
Nuts wasn’t fazed. ‘I haven’t had time. No one’s gonna break in it now, are they? Anything worth having would be gone. I’ll take it down the shop next week.’ He looked at her and added, ‘It’ll all be cushty when I come to pick you up for our first date.’
Jen turned and looked down. There were still shattered lumps of glass lying on the mats below the seats. She said nothing for the rest of the journey. She didn’t mind a little patter and a few fibs to grease the wheels but this boy seemed to think she’d fallen off a Christmas tree, and that was taking it too far. He didn’t seem to notice her silence though, and kept up a constant barrage of saucy chat and barely disguised nudge-nudge-wink-wink along with boasts about how he was going to skyrocket to the top.
When he drove on to her estate, the first thing they saw – to Jen’s shame – was a load of cops swarming outside and in a ground-floor flat in one of the low-rise blocks. She didn’t need to be told that it was a drugs bust; that was the third one in that building this year. Five years ago, the whispers were that same flat was a knocking shop. No one was out gawping along the balconies or other blocks; this was the usual usual; everyone had seen it all before.
Nuts didn’t seem fazed by any of it. As he drove the car away from the drama he performed a wheel spin for her on a patch of gravel and knocked over a few bollards as an encore before stopping in front of her block. He rejected out of hand the idea that she could manage her way to her front door. ‘No way, babe; you ain’t going up to that flat on your own. This estate is a zoo and you need a lion tamer as an escort. You know what I mean?’
When they reached her front door, she thanked him for a lovely evening out and the lift home but Nuts didn’t seem to notice the sarcasm. He put his arm over the doorframe to stop her going in. ‘I’m busy tomorrow and Monday – shall we say I pick you up Tuesday about seven-thirty?’
Cheeky bugger.
‘We can say that but’s it’s not going to happen.’
‘Wednesday then?’
She grinned at him. ‘You’re not getting it are you? You deal drugs with nightclub bouncers, you steal cars and you don’t even know where your riverside apartment is? You’re trouble, mate. I’ve got enough of that on the home front and don’t need any more.’
Nuts sighed but his smile didn’t falter. ‘OK, it’s confession time. Just to show you I’m on the level: I arranged to get some hooky tickets for a gig for the guy in the club. He needed them and I knew where to get them. OK, strictly speaking, it’s probably not legit but if you want to call the Bill, I’ll say it’s a fair cop and take my punishment like a man. As for the motor.’ He raised his hand to show a set of keys that he’d put his finger through. ‘You don’t put a window through on a car when you’ve got these, do you? Of course I could have nicked them but then the broken window wouldn’t have been necessary. As for my flat, play your cards right and you’ll be seeing that soon enough. My bedroom ceiling has a very nice shade of primrose for a start. Now, what about Tuesday?’
He had an answer for everything. But boys like him always did. ‘And there’s another thing. You told me you didn’t know this estate. How come you knew how to drive here without any directions once we got past Whitechapel, and know it’s a zoo?’
He leaned into her face as he had at the club and whispered, ‘Now you’re getting desperate. You told me you lived in Mile End and I know my way there. Once you’re in Mile End, this estate sticks out like a baguette on a day-trip to Calais. Of course I knew how to find it then. Come on – give me a chance. I’m not going to weave a web of porkies, only to look a total prat a couple of weeks later, am I?’
She hesitated before saying, ‘I’m sorry, Nuts. You’re a nice fella but I just want a proper life – a quiet one – and a guy like you is too much of a risk for me.’
He drew back slightly. ‘I’ll be here on Tuesday, seven-thirty on the dot. Of course you don’t have to answer the door.’
They were interrupted by shouting and screaming on the stairwell. Nuts was alarmed when two struggling figures emerged onto the landing.
He turned back to Jen. ‘You’d better get inside your flat, treacle. Those two looby-loos look like a right pair.’
Jen’s heart sank. ‘Those two looby-loos, as you put it, are my mum and sister.’
Nuts decided to leave Jen to it. He passed by as Babs strong-armed Tiffany into the flat. Jen followed her fam
ily inside, and the front door banged behind them. Tiffany marched off to her bedroom slamming the door. Babs attempted to follow, then cursed under her breath, suspecting that Tiffany had done her old trick of jamming her bed up against the door. No way was she getting inside.
‘I’ll kick this door in if you don’t come out, my girl,’ she shouted, hammering on the door.
‘Leave it, Mum,’ Jen said, sighing as she triple-locked the front door. ‘Talk to her in the morning; it’s a waste of time now. Was she down the cemetery?’
Her mother sounded exhausted, but still had some fight in her. ‘I thought you were supposed to be keeping an eagle eye on her for me?’
Jen shrugged her shoulders. ‘She had a row with a bouncer and then flounced off. What do you want me to do?’ She didn’t finish by saying, ‘I told you so . . .’ But then she never did. Her mum was already hurting and she didn’t want her words to add any new wounds. Babs slumped into an armchair in the sitting room. Jen fetched a bottle of brandy from the sideboard, poured a stiff one into a glass and passed it over. ‘What was she up to in the cemetery?’
Her mother took a large gulp. ‘She was hanging around with a girl.’
Jen was amused. ‘A girl? Well, that’s something; at least she won’t be telling you she’s got a bun in the oven in a couple of months’ time.’
Babs tutted furiously. ‘It’s not bloody funny. The girl was Stacey Ingram. I pretended I didn’t know who she was and Tiffany clammed up when I asked about her.’
‘Stacey Ingram?’ Jen didn’t see the funny side of it anymore. ‘Why would she be hanging around with her; we don’t talk to that lot, do we?’
Her mum took another slug. ‘Exactly. The thing is, I bumped into Ma Ingram earlier and we had words. Stacey and your sister must have a habit of hanging about together because the Satanic old bitch was moaning off about it.’
Jen shook her head. ‘Well, you know what Tiffany’s like. Stacey will probably end up as her BFF – anything to wind up the rest of us.’ She topped up her drink and became curious. ‘Mum, why is it we don’t get on with the Ingrams?’
Blood Sister: A thrilling and gritty crime drama Page 6
