Blood Sister: A thrilling and gritty crime drama

by Dreda Say Mitchell

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Dee added quickly, remembering the cops she’d seen earlier and she was proved right when a police car started coming down the avenue. It had no blue lights flashing or siren blaring but it was clearly looking for trouble. Knobby swung into action. ‘Go and get in your car, then wait five minutes and let me deal with this.’

  The bloke in the window upstairs was frantically signalling to the police by waving his arms and screaming, ‘They’re over here. Over here. Hold on! He’s stealing my car!’

  As Dee made her escape across front gardens, head down, she heard the ignition on the sports car start and Nuts revving the engine in a style which made it sound like a light plane on a runway. She turned to see him reverse down the drive, wheels spinning like propellers but instead of fleeing in the opposite direction, he turned to face the police and then, headlights full on, hand on the horn, he careered down the road towards them so they were forced to brake and veer violently to avoid a collision. Almost upon the cops as they mounted the pavement, Knobby brought the stolen car to a halt, wheels squealing. He leaned out of the window and beckoned with his hand at the shocked driver of the police car. ‘C’mon, boys! C’mon! What you got!!??’

  Cocky sod, Dee thought with maximum respect.

  With that he reversed the sports car again, did a three-point turn and mounted a grass verge, before taking off down the road at high speed, as the police set off in full pursuit. Dee crept through the gardens and returned to her own car. She waited until the rear lights of the two other vehicles had disappeared in the distance before starting her own motor and slipping away with her lights switched off. Only as she drove away did she realise she hadn’t found out what Knobby’s real nickname was. Probably ‘Ice Man’ she thought smiling.

  Dee knew there was something up at the Alley Club as soon as she got back because there was no music to welcome her when she stepped inside. There was smashed glass in the reception hall and staff were running around like headless chickens.

  ‘What’s been going on?’ Dee asked one of the security team.

  He gave her a dirty look. ‘The one night we needed you to be here.’

  Dee almost landed one on his chops to wipe away the smart-arse look he was giving her. ‘Don’t get in my face; just tell me what happened.’

  ‘The cops raided the club when John wasn’t here. Made a total mess of the place. John’s upstairs. He’s been looking for you everywhere and – by the looks of him – he’s not a happy bunny about you not being here to protect his club.’

  Thirty

  ‘John, you can’t be here,’ Dee insisted, as soon as she joined him inside his office upstairs.

  She stayed close to the door, her chest heaving, as her boss paced the office. This was a John she had never seen before. The angry heat coming off him was nuclear. His nostrils were flared, his face was growing so red she thought he was bound to do himself some damage.

  ‘Who gives the fucking filth the right to come into my place and stamp all over it with their jack boots?’ His voice shook the room. Dee didn’t even know if he could see her, he was spitting so much fire. And then he went crazy – picking up his chair and smashing it against the floor, toppling over the steel cabinet, and knocking the framed, celebrity portraits off the walls. Strangely enough, the only thing that he didn’t touch was his desk, and when Dee saw what was on it, fear ran through her blood, as it never had before. There, sitting pretty, were the phone-tapping wires Jimmy had installed in the club.

  Dee had to get the upper hand before things got out of control. She moved quickly towards John and placed her hand on his arm. She felt the burning heat of his flesh and realised she had made a mistake. He twisted her arm up against her back, making her cry out in pain, and then pushed her backwards onto the desk.

  She was done for. He’d either found out that she was behind the phone tapping or someone had been blabbing to John behind her back. Maybe Knobby had been caught by the cops and he’d grassed her up to the cops, or John, or both. Or had John caught up with Tiffany and heard about the black woman who’d followed her to the graveyard? Or, worst of all, had that slaggy, gold-digger Trish finally thrown open her door in floods of tears and told him about the visit she’d received from the wife impersonator – the menace who had the brass neck to involve a kid in her threats. Or was it a combination of all three?

  John lowered his head towards her. His face looked . . . he looked . . . Flippin’ hells bells, if this had been any other situation, Dee would have been turned on like hell. His breath was hot against her face. She wanted to jump him and do the dirty on the desk.

  ‘And where were you, Dee, when all this fuck-up was going on? I took you on as Head of Security to look out for my place—’

  ‘John listen—’

  ‘You better have a good—’

  ‘Fucking listen, will you,’ she screamed. ‘I had to meet my mother. Remember I told you she dumped me when I was a baby. Well, I just found her again.’ She looked pleadingly at him. ‘What did you want me to do? Tell her to fuck off?’ She let the emotion charge through her voice. ‘I couldn’t do that. No way.’

  The anger abruptly left him as he pulled her up and let go of her arm. ‘I’m sorry, Dee—’

  She shook her head. ‘I’m the one that should be on my knees here. What I don’t get is why the coppers would have done your place over tonight.’

  John shoved his fingers through his receding hair. ‘I found this lot.’ He pointed to the wires on the desk. The tone of his voice revealed nothing. Was he toying with her, cat and mouse style?

  ‘What is it?’ She knew her heart was racing like it was doing a circuit of Brands Hatch.

  ‘It’s a bug for a telephone. Someone, somewhere has been taping my calls. Right under my nose. Can you believe this?’

  ‘Have you spoken to Chris about it?’

  John shook his head. ‘He’s doing some bizz for me.’ Which meant Chris hadn’t grassed her up. Yet.

  John leaned forward and picked up a piece of the equipment. He inspected it before putting it down again. ‘I’ve got a mega problem, Dee. I’ve got a little wrinkle going on – an export wrinkle – and the shipment goes tonight. I’m as careful as you like on the phone but if the law are onto me, I’m fucked. Everything’s moving into place at this very moment. I’ve got Chris down there, sorting out the logistics and one of my boys picked up the final piece of the jigsaw tonight. It’s too late to stop now. And now this . . .’

  Dee let out a silent sigh of relief, and drew a silent breath of triumph. Now everything was in place for her own little wrinkle. She picked up the tape that was lying on the desk and shook her head. ‘It’s not the law, John. Look at it – it’s an amateur job. Like I said, I don’t know anything about this stuff but it doesn’t look like the gear they use in the movies. How did you find it?’

  ‘I rang Trish this morning and when I got the dial tone, I heard a recording of a call I made earlier in the background. So I called the phone people and they sent an engineer over this afternoon. He found it when he checked the line.’

  Dee winced twice, once for Trish and a second time for that rank amateur Jimmy Kite. She made a mental note to track him down, give him a kicking and get her money back. She looked her boss in the eye. ‘This is an inside job, John. Someone in this club has been keeping tabs on you.’

  He shook his head stunned. ‘Bollocks – no one in here would dare do that. My people are totally loyal.’

  Dee thought carefully before suggesting, ‘You know what the woman who brought me up said to me once? Never trust your best friend with your fella.’

  ‘What’s that got to do with anything?’

  She took a step closer to him. ‘I hate to say this, but maybe your backstabber is Chris.’

  ‘Fuck right off,’ he stormed, hands going up, like he didn’t know where to put them. ‘My Chris? My old mucker? What are you suggesting? You came in here to work for me yesterday, babe. Chris and me go way back. You�
��re bang out of order—’

  ‘Calm down, John, I’m not saying he was doing a badness. He might have been monitoring your calls as a precaution for security reasons, just to check nothing was being said out of turn. That’s all I’m suggesting.’

  John was still angry. ‘Well, keep your suggestions to yourself.’ But then he had a think before adding quietly, ‘He’s down in Essex anyway until the shipment goes and we’re keeping radio silence until then. When he gets back, I’ll ask him if he knows anything about it.’

  Dee grabbed his arms. ‘Think, John. You’ve had the Bill banging about in here and you’ve had someone tuning in on you. That’s why I told you not to tell me about your business—’

  ‘The walls have ears,’ he uttered softly, remembering her words.

  Dee let her hand caress his arms. ‘I’ve got a bad feeling, boss. Say something else happens? You can’t be here.’

  ‘And where the fuck am I going to go?’

  Dee tightened her fingers. ‘Somewhere where no one is going to find you.’

  Thirty-One

  ‘Tiff’s been arrested. I’m down West Central nick.

  I need you here with me.

  Mum’

  The handwritten note her mum had stuck on their front door told Jen that her troubles were far from over. Jen seethed. She was flat-out fed up with her poxy sister, always bringing heartache to their door. Sometimes she wished that the cops would just lock Tiff up and chuck away the key. Then Jen saw, in her mind, that copper viciously breaking the barman’s nose. Say something awful like that happened to her baby sis if she got banged up? No, she wasn’t going to allow that to happen, so she was going to have to go down to the cop shop and get this sorted out. But how was she going to get down there? It was gone midnight and the tube would be packing up for the night, so she couldn’t jump on a train. A cab wouldn’t come out this time of night to the estate; only trouble called out-of-hours from The Devil to make a quick getaway. She didn’t want to knock on the neighbours’ doors, begging for a ride, because this was private business and if there was one thing Babs hated it was the Millers being the talk of the town on the estate. But she needed to get a lift from somewhere.

  Jen opened the door and went straight to the phone. There was only one person she could ask. She started to dial.

  Knobby knew something bad was kicking off by the time he got home. As soon as he walked through the door a call had come through from the Alley that the Bill had tossed the place over and smashed up Frank’s face. But the tale got worse when he was told that the whisper was the cops were getting ready to take everyone down. Bollocks. That was one of the reasons he never used the moniker his mates called him, or his real name. If the cops were looking for a Knobby, they wouldn’t track him down. Well, not unless someone blabbed. But then the only three people who knew about his involvement in the shipment were the boss, Chris and Mizz Dee and he would bet his life that they’d never say a word. Turn grass and you might as well have a stamp tattooed on your head that read Snitch. Or someone would get to you first and carve it for you, with a wickedly sharp razor.

  No, he was safe. He had sweet FA to worry about. But that didn’t stop him pacing his flat like he was in a cage. Then the phone rang. He stopped pacing. What if it was the Bill? Course it ain’t dipstick; they don’t call, they just break your door down.

  On the third ring, he answered the phone.

  ‘What do you want . . . ?’ Then he stopped as he heard the person on the other end of the line. ‘Jen is that you?’

  ‘I know it’s late and all, but I need you to do me a big favour, Nuts.’

  Nuts and Jen reached West Central Police Station going on two in the morning. When he heard what she wanted him to do, he’d nearly fobbed her off again. Her sister was the reason he’d stopped seeing Jen. Then he’d seen Tiffany down the Pied Piper as he talked to John’s linkman Jeff, and he’d realised that Mickey Ingram’s bat-shit errand girl was Jen’s baby sister. He was pretty sure that Tiffany hadn’t seen him, but he couldn’t take the chance that she hadn’t clocked him and then gone blabbing about his real job to Jen. He’d taken a real risk sorting out Jen’s perv tutor and arranging a job for her with Madame Dominique, but he couldn’t just leave Jen stranded like that. All her dreams up in smoke because some dirty old geezer couldn’t keep his mitts to himself? No, that just wasn’t right. But after that he’d made himself hang back. If Jen found out what his real occupation was she might ditch him and he was not prepared for that to happen. He really liked her; she fit him to a T.

  ‘I really was going to give you a bell after my deal was over,’ he told her as they turned into the street near the nick. ‘In fact I was going to give you a buzz tomorrow.’

  ‘You don’t have to say that, Nuts. I’m a big girl. I can take being chucked.’

  ‘That’s where you’re wrong, Jen. I like you. Want to see loads more of you.’

  The car stopped a street away from the police station. ‘What are we doing stopping here?’ Jen asked surprised.

  ‘I don’t like cop shops, so if it’s all the same to you, I’ll wait here.’

  ‘What do you mean wait?’

  ‘Don’t think I’m just going to leave you and your mum to get home on some night bus with a deck full of pissheads. I ain’t that type of guy, Jen.’

  She smiled at him. ‘Thanks a bunch, but if I’m not back in a couple of hours you head off home.’

  And with that she was gone. But Nuts was going to wait here until daylight, if he had to. Although he was almost one hundred per cent sure Jen’s crackpot sister didn’t know about his involvement, he had to make sure she hadn’t chucked his name into the frame.

  Thirty-Two

  ‘My poor girl’s innocent,’ Babs Miller sniffled into her hanky. ‘She’s been led astray by that bad lot.’

  Tiffany slouched in the chair beside her mum. They were inside what the cop on the desk called ‘Interview Room 1’, but Tiffany had nicknamed it ‘The Grass Room’. That’s what the cops were expecting her to become – a snitch bitch. She’d been in these situations before. She was already fed up that her mum was sitting next to her as her appropriate adult, sobbing all over the shop. Tiffany wanted the whole thing to be over, like now! But she did tightly clasp a tissue in her hand; she was planning to do some major league boo-hooing of her own.

  The two cops who had dragged her down here waltzed in, set up their recording equipment and sat opposite her. They introduced themselves, using their first names. ‘Because we want to keep this nice and friendly, Tiffany,’ was the explanation she got. So that’s how PC Plod were going to play it – talk to her like she was a friggin’ five-year-old.

  It was James who did the talking. ‘We know you’re not to blame for the situation you’re in, Tiffany. We know you’ve been exploited and manipulated and we want to help you as much as we can. If you help us, we can help you. Does that sound fair to you?’

  It took all that Tiffany had to avoid saying, ‘Oh, fuck off . . .’ Instead she whispered, ‘Yeah.’

  James went on. ‘As you know, we found a quantity of cannabis on you when you were arrested—’

  ‘Yeah. That had nothing to do with Stacey, who you nicked me with.’ No way was she dragging Stacey into this mess. Stacey wasn’t supposed to be there, but when they’d bumped into each other and her best mate had offered her a tote, well, what was a girl like her to do? Turn down a great puff of draw? She would never have done it if she’d figured Stacey was going to be nabbed along with her.

  ‘You were with Stacey flamin’ Ingram,’ her mum growled. ‘I should clip you around the—’

  ‘Mrs Miller, please,’ James warned. Babs settled back in her chair and resumed sniffling into her tissue. James carried on. ‘Drugs possession is a very serious matter. But we might be able to help with that too, as long as you answer all our questions honestly. Does that sound reasonable to you?’

  Through gritted teeth she replied, ‘Don’t worry, James, I want
to make a clean breast of things.’

  James looked disappointed and Tiffany knew it was because he was hoping she’d hold out on them, so he could entrap her with his razor-sharp questioning. But she wasn’t going to give him the pleasure. When he got over his knock-back, James said, ‘That’s good. Now, are you OK? Can we get you a cup of tea or a glass of water?’

  Tiffany couldn’t help herself. ‘A vodka and coke would help the party go with a swing.’

  James’ smile vanished. ‘This isn’t a laughing matter, Tiffany. You’re in serious trouble and you need to understand that.’

  ‘Oh, I do, James. I apologise.’ She knew the tone of her voice was too close to piss-taking for comfort but the Plod let it go and began to unpack the outline of the case against her. It was clear the two boys in blue had the lot. They knew all about her visits to the Pied Piper and what she had collected there. They knew she was taking the envelopes to the cemetery and hiding them in a tomb. They knew what was in the envelopes and they even knew how much she’d been paid. She could see from their faces that they also knew what that meant – she was a bit part player, a tiny cog in the wheel. Tiffany also guessed they knew everything else, but were pretending they didn’t.

  ‘So tell us, Tiffany, who was it who first recruited you for this job?’

  Tiffany paused slightly, looking across at her mother, before saying, ‘A guy called Mickey Ingram . . .’

  Babs exploded in fury, jumping out of her seat. ‘You what? Mickey Ingram? I’ll fucking kill the bastard!’

  James indicated with his hand for Babs to sit down. ‘Mickey Ingram? Tell us about him.’

  Tiffany told them all about good ole Mickey – how he’d recruited her down at the Bad Moon; how he’d given her instructions to pick up stuff from the Pied Piper and how notification of the collections came from a runner on The Essex Lane Estate.