‘What’s your real name, son?’ He wasn’t that much older than her, but she needed to maintain the hierarchy of their different positions on John’s power ladder.
The kid was clearly embarrassed. ‘You know that everyone calls me Knobby.’
‘And how did you get that nickname?’
‘It’s just what John calls me.’ He looked even more embarrassed before admitting, ‘It’s short for knob head.’
‘Your real name, honey.’ She needed to keep him sweet.
His face got even redder. ‘It’s Leonard.’ When he saw the look on Dee’s face, he added, ‘I know. I prefer Knobby if I’m being honest.’
Dee hustled him over to a table. Once they were seated she made a real, slow drama of leaning forward so that her crop top with the bondage studs around the neck put some skin on display. It did the trick because the lad couldn’t take his baby blues off the top of her breasts. Poor boy looked hungry: obviously not getting a big enough portion indoors. ‘I shouldn’t be telling you this, but John asked me to wait around the corner and then to come in and double-check no one’s called the cops or are saying anything out of turn.’
Knobby got suspicious again. ‘Eh? No one in here is going to call the law, are they? If they did that they wouldn’t have any punters left.’
Dee had already discovered an effective way to shut this Doubting Thomas down. ‘You questioning John’s orders?’ His face went pale. ‘I don’t ever utter “why” when the boss tells me to do something. Word of advice, Knobby love, saying nothing about anything is a good policy where your boss is concerned.’
‘Leave it out, Mizz Dee, I don’t put my bugle where it don’t belong. The guv knows that; that’s why he chose me. He knows I keep this,’ he pointed to his mouth, ‘shut.’
‘So Mickey Ingram fucked out of the meeting with John?’ Dee asked. She was putting herself right in the shitter if this info was wrong.
Knobby looked puzzled again, then cocky. ‘You just told me not to say anything about nothing.’
He was smirking at her. The little prick. She needed to make him understand that he was dealing with his worst nightmare if he crossed her. Abruptly Dee stood up. She shook her head sadly at him. ‘I thought you were brighter than this. That’s what the boss says to me: “That boy is one clever spark.” Now I’m going to have to go back and tell him – right now – that he got it totally wrong, that you’re trying to mug him off—’
‘That ain’t true—’
‘That’s not what I’m hearing, Knobby.’ Dee sat back down again. ‘I’m in the loop. I wouldn’t know about Mickey Ingram and the Pied Piper, otherwise. Plus, you don’t seriously think John’s hired me just to keep the bouncers in order, do you? You couldn’t get a bit of fag paper between John and me.’
Knobby’s voice lowered. ‘Well, that’s certainly the rumour going round John’s crew. Word is, he’s lining you up to replace Chris as his right-hand man. I mean bird. Oops, woman.’
Dee’s glee knew no bounds, until Knobby added, ‘But I don’t believe it. Chris has been with him for aeons. They’re as thick as thieves – so to speak. Anyway, the boss came down here to have it out with Mickey Ingram. I mean, Mickey’s a nice enough bloke but he’s a bit out of his depth. You know what I mean? To cut a long one short, John let Mickey hire a bird to look after the documents for the shipment—’
‘Tiffany?’
His blue eyes nearly jumped out of his skull. ‘How did you know that?’
She gave him a lazy smile. ‘Told you, John tells me everything.’
‘Only now, word has got back that this girl’s a nipper and keeps having run-ins with the law and that she’s not the full ticket. If Mickey had admitted he’d made a mistake, it would all have been sweet, but instead he starts mouthing off about how John can’t come down to his manor, giving it large. So John squares up to him and then Mickey does a runner with his pathetic boys, which has pissed John right off, even more. I mean, if a bloke can’t look after himself, he’s no good to anyone, is he? Anyway, John gave him the old heave-ho.’
Dee wondered why Knobby was needed at the meeting. The boy was fit but he didn’t look handy. ‘So what did he ask you to come down here for then? You’re not on the muscle side of the ice operation are you?’ She still wasn’t sure what ‘ice’ meant, but she used it anyway to make Knobby think she knew what she was talking about.
Knobby’s nose was put out of joint by the slight, but he admitted, ‘John had a job for me, an address and that. He needs to fulfil the quota before the shipment goes next week. So he told me to come down. The thing is, the soddin’ tube workers are on strike and the job’s in Richmond so I don’t know how I’m supposed to get down there.’
‘Why don’t you drive? You brought your car didn’t you?’
He was baffled and maintained, ‘I said I’m on a job . . .’
Dee nodded. If there was one thing in life she had learned it was, when a door opens you jump through it. And this boy had flung one wide open for her. ‘What about I drive you down there?’ Then she had another thought. ‘Why didn’t John just give you the address in the club later?’
‘He’s got a date. Some bird has blown him out and he’s going down to her gaff to talk her round with flowers and choccies. I know he wouldn’t bother normally but I’ve heard he’s got the hots for her. Trish, I think her name is . . . Err – are you alright? You look a bit funny.’
With one sweep of her fist, Dee sent the drinks and the ashtray flying across the table to the bar-room floor. Knobby stood up in alarm. ‘Oi, take it easy bird . . .’
Dee grabbed him by the ear and yanked his head towards her. ‘Don’t call me bird, you little tosser. Now put your silly cap on and I’ll meet you outside.’
Once Knobby was gone Dee made a quick call on the payphone near the toilets.
‘Get your skates on; we’re ready to rock ’n’ roll.’
A nervous Jen stood outside the Alley Club in Soho. She was dressed very simply in a long, black, float away, daisy-print dress, low heels and a yin and yang necklace. She barely wore any make-up – just some eyeliner and sparkling lip gloss. She didn’t want to overdo it because she was here for one reason only: to find Nuts and sort out once and for all whether they should make a go of it. Her mum had become a needle stuck on a record called, ‘Give The Boy Another Bloody Chance’. As far as Babs was concerned, she should have taken his apology at face value. Plus, Madam Dominique said she should just go and get what she wanted. What if the poor bloke had really had the deal of a lifetime on? Jen had to admit that if she had something that important on in her life, she’d probably have acted the same. Still, she felt a tad silly because she had never in her eighteen years on this earth run around after any boy.
There was another problem – this was a members-only club and Jen wasn’t a member. But she already had a plan for that; she came from The Devil’s Estate after all, where telling a tale or two was an art form. She spotted a lone Joe approaching the club and went in for the kill, before he reached the entrance.
‘You alright, mate?’ she said with a big grin on her face.
He looked at her, puzzled. ‘Do I know you?’ His accent was uptown.
Jen came over, all big brown eyes and soft smile. ‘You could if I got inside the club.’
He grinned back at her. ‘You look like a nice enough girl. The only problem is, the type I want to know have got stubble and are packing a whack-a-do of a surprise in the trouser department.’
Jen’s face fell as her cheeks got red. ‘Sorry, mister.’
Dejected she started walking away but his voice made her stop. ‘I didn’t say that I wasn’t going to assist a damsel in distress.’
Jen couldn’t believe her luck. She wasn’t even going to have to flirt or show a bit of leg to get inside.
‘I’ll only do it on one condition,’ he continued.
Jen should’ve figured out there was going to be a catch; there always was. ‘What do you want?’
‘Tell me, why do you need to get inside?’
Jen stuck with the truth. ‘My boyfriend – at least I think he’s my fella – we’ve had a bit of a set to—’
‘He’s a paid-up member of the club and you want to make sure he’s keeping his love stick to himself.’
Jen grinned; she liked this guy. ‘Something like that.’
‘Come on then. But a word to the wise, my dear. If you catch him with his pants down, don’t make any trouble. The owner doesn’t like trouble.’
Jen remembered that’s exactly what Nuts had said when that black woman had kicked off inside the club. After the gentleman (and he was a gent, Jen decided; not many blokes would go out of their way to help a girl they didn’t know from Eve) had signed them in, Jen got down to the business of trying to find Nuts. Lulu’s heady lung power on Take That’s ‘Relight My Fire’ greeted her as she walked into the bar.
She spent the next five minutes searching, but couldn’t see him anywhere. Frustrated, she discreetly asked one of the waitresses if she’d seen him.
The other woman looked a bit put out. ‘I don’t know no Nuts.’ Before Jen could say anything, the waitress had gone about her business. Jen asked the same question of the bar staff but got the same guarded response. Funny that. The staff had seemed to know Nuts the night he’d taken her here. Oh well, there was nothing for it but to head back home. Well girl, Jen thought, as she headed for the exit, that was the end of your big romance. Her mum would probably pat her on the shoulder and tell her there were plenty of fish in the sea, but as far as Jen was concerned there was no fish like Nuts. She’d never seen a fish with gorgeous blue eyes like his.
As she stepped into the foyer, a group of men burst into the club.
‘Police! This is a raid. Everyone remain where you are.’
Only Jen remained rooted to the spot. She watched as chaos descended onto the club. People started running like they’d been caught short for the toilet. Only after she heard one too many toilets being flushed did Jen realise that punters must be trying to get rid of drugs. Other people fled out the back. Jen saw the posh guy who’d got her into the place jump the wall at the back, but a minute later he was being dragged back into the club. Five minutes later, the cops had restored order.
‘I’m not interested in what you’re shooting up your arms tonight,’ called out the cop in charge, ‘or who you’re shagging; all I want to know is, where is John Black?’
‘He ain’t here,’ the barman replied, with attitude and a load of lip.
The cop waltzed over as easy as you please to the barman, grabbed his head and slammed it against the bar. Jen and everyone else gasped. The barman’s head came up, blood streaming from his now broken nose.
The lead cop turned to one of his other men. ‘Did you see that, detective? That man tried to attack me.’
‘I did, sir.’
Jen wasn’t surprised by what she saw. You couldn’t live on The Devil and not hear the whispers about coppers who smacked you around to make sure you felt the full force of the law.
‘Anyone else,’ the cop continued, ‘who wants to piss on me and tell me that it’s raining while this search goes on, please feel free to step forward.’
Everyone, including Jen, shook their heads and then lowered their eyes to the ground. The search went on for a good twenty minutes, but the barman was right, John Black wasn’t in residence.
As they left Jen heard the brutal cop say to his second-in-command, ‘No matter, we’re rounding up all the other players.’
Who those other players were, Jen didn’t care. She scarpered out of there as soon as the filth was gone.
Twenty-Nine
Fit to do murder, Dee shook with anger as she drove Knobby down to Richmond-upon-Thames. She only just managed to resist the temptation to drive by Trish’s and see if John’s motor was there and, if not, to drop by and give her rival a little reminder of where she stood romantically with her very ex-boyfriend. Knobby meanwhile, because of his professional expertise in the field, was becoming increasingly alarmed at her driving. He began to warn her about red lights, overtaking, speeding and going in the wrong direction up one-way streets. That was until Dee warned him that if he didn’t shut his gob it wouldn’t be a crash he’d need to worry about but having his skull battered with a car jack. From then on, Knobby kept it shut.
In Richmond, she dropped him off a street away from what he described as the ‘target’ and then he asked her to hang around in case someone from the target was at home. He’d brought the tools of his trade with him from his BMW and, after picking them up from her boot, he pulled his cap low over his forehead and then set off down the rich, high-end avenue where he hoped to fulfil John’s quota.
Dee was still seething about her fiancé trying to two-time her with trashy Trish. But then she realised she had something even worse to worry about. In her rear-view mirror, she noticed a cop car creeping down the road. She sank low in her seat as it passed and watched as it went by. Its driver appeared to be looking for something. Dee didn’t give a flying F about knob head, but she was determined that her plan wasn’t going down the shitter because he got himself put in cuffs. She gently turned the ignition and without turning her lights on crawled around the corner into the road where her guy was meant to be at work.
She found him outside the door of a house peering through a letterbox with a torch. On the drive outside was a sports car. Dee pulled over and hurried up to where Knobby was trying to feed an extender into the hallway. She whispered, ‘You need to get a move on. Five-O are around.’
Poor Knobby nearly jumped out of his skin. He left the extender poking out of the house and hurried down the drive. There was no sign of the police. He ran back and hissed, ‘If you hadn’t been at the wheel like Evel Knievel on acid maybe they wouldn’t . . . Here, hold this.’
He passed her the torch and as Dee directed the beam through the letterbox, Knobby began manoeuvring the extender like a crane. Inside, on a mahogany table under a mirror, Dee could see a set of car keys. ‘Are you sure these people are out? Why are all the lights on?’
‘Yeah, they’re out. John’s got a network of snouts in the area – window cleaners, milkmen, those kinds of people, all over the place. You’d be surprised what people like that can find out over time, and how cheap they are to get information out of. They’d probably spy on their grannie if the price was right.’
Like a kid at a funfair full of bright lights and excitement, Knobby tried to catch the keys with a hook on the end of his extender, which shook like a fishing rod.
‘Easy!’ Knobby beamed as he reeled the keys in.
For a moment, Dee forgot about Trish and John and admired the keys that he held out for her inspection. She looked up and down the road in both directions and there still was no sign of the law. It looked like a successful job.
As he got into the sports car he was stealing Dee decided to ask him the question that had been plaguing her, even though it might make her sound like a first grade plonker. ‘What’s “ice” got to do with this?’
Knobby laughed. ‘I thought you knew what was what?’ Then, seeing the stormy look on her face that said she was probably going to thump him one if he didn’t answer her question, ‘It’s one we use in the trade, relieving people of their motors. ICE means In Car Entertainment.’
Of course. Dee nodded her head as she smiled. Clever name. But not clever that her fella was involved in such silly, low-rent stuff. She’d been furious down the cemetery in Mile End when she realised that sixteen-year-old Tiffany was hiding false paperwork for cars: nicked cars. John was a big Face and he was involved in silly little boy games. What was wrong with the man?
‘Where are you taking this bit of ice then?’ she asked looking at the sports car. ‘One of the docks? Tilbury? For the shipment?’
‘I wouldn’t know about that, Mizz Dee. I just collect the merchandise; I don’t do admin.’ He gave her one of the smiles that no doubt, Dee thought, melte
d many a female heart. ‘But yeah, to Tilbury. They ain’t got time to respray it but they’ll change the plates at a garage down there and file off the serial numbers and it’ll all be cute.’
‘John will be pleased. I think it best you don’t mention I gave you a lift.’
‘I told you, Mizz Dee, I don’t do admin.’
Dee decided she liked Knobby. She liked him a lot. He was obviously very nifty as a car thief, cool under fire and very loyal and because of that she didn’t want him getting caught up in the firestorm that was going to hit from her plans. Plus, maybe she and John could use him in the future.
‘Do you understand the phrase, ‘‘One good turn deserves another’’?’ she asked him.
Knobby looked confused, but nodded. Dee whispered and cautioned, ‘In that case, take my advice and make yourself scarce for a while after you drop that motor off. You get me?’
He was even more baffled. ‘No.’
‘You will soon . . .’
Since they seemed to be getting more friendly, Knobby whispered, ‘By the way, feel free to call me by my proper nickname in future, the one all my real mates call me.’ He came over a touch shy, as he added, ‘That’s if you want to, of course.’
Dee smiled. ‘Why not? I didn’t think you used Knobby on a day-to-day basis.’
‘Nah, course not. My mates all call me—’ but he never finished as a voice roared from one of the house’s upstairs windows, ‘Excuse me but what the hell do you think you’re doing?’ A man with a mane of bushy white hair leaned out of the window. ‘Darling, call the police!’
Dee loved the ‘excuse me’ but the guy didn’t appear to want to come downstairs to confront them. Knobby grinned at Dee; he seemed to be in no hurry. ‘What a bull-shitter. We’ve got ages before the Bill turn up.’
Blood Sister: A thrilling and gritty crime drama Page 18
