by Liza Cody
When Ramses catches a rat he spikes it with his yellow teeth. He grips it and crushes it till he breaks its back. He shakes it. He rattles its bones. He won’t let go till it’s dead three times over.
I had this idea about Carl and I could feel it between my teeth.
Carl beat Dawn to death.
I saw it in his eyes when he looked at me.
Carl killed Dawn. Crystal wanted me to do it to the man who did for Dawn.
Well, maybe I would. Only I wasn’t going to do it for Crystal. I wasn’t going to do it for Dawn. Or Bella. Not them. No way.
But I’d do it to Carl for me. Not for them. Not ’cos he killed Dawn. But for what he did to me. He took my life. See? All the shit – with the women and the gym – all the shit with Mr Deeds, all that started because Carl killed monkey face’s sister, and monkey face wouldn’t let go.
He took my life.
A life for a life. That’s justice. Everyone says so. An eye for an eye. A tooth for a tooth. A life for a life. It’s only right and proper.
Well, I’d let Carl keep his eyes. I’d let him keep his teeth – which is more than he let Dawn keep. But his life was mine because he’d taken mine.
No more body beautiful for Carl.
I was going to smash it. I’d wait for him. In a car. A Volvo would do the trick. It’s well made. I’d wait for him in a Volvo. I’d rev the motor till he noticed. Then, when he was looking at me, I’d run him down. I’d crush him up against a brick wall. And I’d look him bang in the eyes while I did it. The last thing he’d see would be my eyes looking at his eyes. And he’d know. He’d know it was me. And he’d know for why.
Then I’d get out the Volvo. And I’d walk away.
That was my idea. It filled me up, and I wasn’t hungry no more.
But first I had to find a Volvo to borrow. And before that I had to find Crystal.
Because, what if I couldn’t walk away? Who would feed Ramses and Lineker? If something went wrong, someone had to look after my dogs. And that someone had to be Crystal. She owed me.
It was Sunday. On a Sunday I don’t put the dogs in their pen. On a Sunday they roam free because no one comes to the yard to work.
I called them. ‘Ramses,’ I yelled. ‘Lineker! Come here yer bastards.’ And they came, all eager, tongues lolling out, because it was morning and time to be fed.
I fed them. I mixed up their meat and their biscuits, and I threw in a bit extra – just in case. And I gave them each a big Bonio biscuit to gnaw on. For a treat. Just in case.
‘Listen, you wossoks,’ I said, ‘don’t think I’m going soft. Don’t think you can take advantage. Right? But if Crystal comes instead of me, you watch out for her, see?’
They wouldn’t. Of course they wouldn’t. They’d make sausage meat of her unless she had the brains to feed them with a very long spoon.
‘You behave,’ I said. And Ramses snarled at me with his bass rumbling snarl because I was standing too close to him while he was eating.
‘All right,’ I said. ‘Have it your own way. This once. But you’ll miss me when I’m gone. See if you don’t.’
Then I left them.
Crystal would make Justin help. Justin knew a bit about dogs. He was too soft – I mean, hadn’t he made tea for Queenie in his own bowl? But he knew a bit. Together, him and Crystal would see my two were all right. Crystal owed me.
I was doing her dirty work for her. As usual. So she fucking owed me.
I went to her gaff. I knocked on the door. I waited. I knocked again. She didn’t come.
Don’t worry, I said to meself. She’s at the Premises. With Justin.
So I went down Mandala Street where I didn’t want to go because I hadn’t been there since the ruck when Stoat got sliced.
I went down Mandala Street and walked into the Premises.
Someone had tidied the gym. All the mats were in a neat pile in the corner. The kitchen was clean too. All in apple pie order.
I went to the bottom of the stairs and I yelled up.
‘Crystal,’ I yelled. ‘Justin!’
But there was no one there. The place felt dead and empty.
‘Crystal! Justin!’ I yelled. I knew there was no one in but I wanted to hear a living voice even if it was only me own.
‘Don’t shout,’ said The Enemy from behind me. More fool me – I wanted to hear a living voice, but I didn’t want to hear hers. Because, what do I hear when I hear her poxy voice? I hear, ‘Don’t do this, don’t do that, don’t hit, don’t shout, don’t, don’t, don’t.’ I hear the voice of screws, of social workers, of polizei. ‘Don’t,’ they say to everything worth doing.
Every time I want something, every time I want to get there first, make something of meself, every time I got me hand out to grab … ‘Don’t,’ they say.
‘Don’t you tell me “don’t”!’ I said.
‘Okay,’ said The Enemy. ‘Okay, okay. What’s the matter, Eva?’
‘What’s it to you?’ I said. ‘I’m looking for Crystal. I got business with Crystal. And it’s none of your business.’
‘I know,’ she said. ‘It’s all right.’
‘It ain’t all right,’ I said. ‘Where’s Crystal? I can’t do what I got to without she promises me to look after my dogs.’
‘I’m looking for Crystal too,’ The Enemy said.
‘Who cares?’
‘Wait!’ she said. ‘It’s important.’
‘To you’, I said.
‘To her,’ she said. ‘And it may be important to you too.’
‘Nothing’s important to me,’ I said. ‘It’s over. I got nothing to lose no more.’
‘That’s silly,’ she said. Her with her nice coat, nice shoes, nice car. Her with her own business premises, with her own name written on the door. Her with her own bank account, her partner, her secretary-bird. Her with her polizei ways.
We stood toe to toe in the little kitchen and I told her how much she knew. She didn’t listen.
‘I’ll make us a cup of tea,’ she said. ‘I don’t suppose Justin will mind. He’s a nice lad.’ She wasn’t listening to me. She never does.
‘You never fucking listen to me,’ I said.
‘Yes I do.’ She filled the kettle at the tap and put it on the stove. ‘Why do I bother with you, Eva?’ she said. ‘You’re rude and rough – you’re always stroppy. You shout at me. You blunder around like a rogue elephant with a burr up its backside. So why do I bother? What’s in it for me?’
‘Fucked if I know,’ I said. ‘You need muscle. I got muscle.’
‘True,’ she said. ‘You’re useful when you’re not in a terminal strop. But it’s more than that.’
‘What?’
‘Fucked if I know,’ she said. ‘Maybe, just once in a blue moon, it’s refreshing to see a woman who doesn’t pretend when she’s angry.’
‘I ain’t angry.’
‘Liar,’ said The Enemy, giving her evil polizei grin. ‘But whatever it is, Eva, don’t push it too far or too hard. Even I can lose patience.’
‘You can’t threaten me,’ I said.
‘I’m not trying to,’ she said. ‘I’m looking for Crystal. The police have arrested someone they think might be responsible for her sister’s death.’
‘What?’ I said. ‘WHAT? They nicked Carl?’ I didn’t know whether to howl or holler.
‘Who?’ The Enemy asked. ‘Carl?’
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘California Carl. You’d know him if you ever went to the wrestling. He’s the one with the gold knickers and the body beautiful. The one all the girls wee themselves for. He clattered Dawn.’
‘A wrestler?’ The Enemy said. And she stitched that pucker on her face. ‘Surely not. This is a little bloke – an out of work plasterer from Norwood.’
‘Gimme strength!’ I said. ‘Typical fuckin’ polizei! They nabbed the wrong bloke.’
‘Wait a minute,’ The Enemy said. And, knock me sideways, she made the tea. Everything in order. She warmed the pot. She st
uck teabags in – one, two, three – everything just so.
Then she hopped up so she was sitting on the draining board. She said, ‘Tell me about Carl.’
But I didn’t. I’d said too much already. I’d told her Carl bumped Dawn. So now, if I bumped Carl she’d know it was down to me. I’d broken me own golden rule – don’t say nothing. I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again – even a fish wouldn’t get itself caught if it kept its big trap shut.
I said, ‘You ain’t saying it was Stoat after all? Don’t tell me Crystal got it right?’ Because it’d give me a big laugh if Crystal and the polizei cocked up, and it was only me who knew about Carl.
‘Stoat?’ The Enemy said. She looked as if she was going to fall backwards into the kitchen sink.
Don’t you just love it when someone who thinks she knows the lot finds out how pigging stone ignorant she is? I do. I just love it.
‘Where’s this tea?’ I said. ‘I’m gasping.’
The Enemy said, ‘What the hell have you lot been up to?’
And I said, ‘Always the stupid questions.’ I said, ‘You always ask. You never tell. So why should anyone tell you anything? What’s it to you, anyway? What’s Crystal got to do with you?’
‘I thought you knew,’ she said. She poured some tea into two mugs and gave me one.
‘Crystal’s your mate,’ she said. ‘You’re the one who told her I was in security.’
‘I never.’
‘Yes you did. The night we came here and found Justin squatting. She came to see me the next night. It was at that other property. Remember? I was installing security locks and you came in shouting about junkies.’
‘Oh yeah,’ I said. And I did – vaguely.
‘She told me about her sister, and she said she was afraid the police wouldn’t do anything about it because her sister was on the game. She asked me if I knew anyone on the local force. She said no one was telling her anything.’
‘That figures,’ I said.
‘It does, actually,’ The Enemy said. ‘So I told Crystal I’d keep my ear to the ground for her. She said she was doing the same. She said she knew most of the other women and, if anyone was having any particular trouble with one of the customers, she’d hear about it.’
It made me feel very bitter. Because that was why Crystal got me doing self-defence classes. That was why she turned my gym into a knocking shop, and stuck her stall right outside. She wanted to keep her little monkey eye on everyone. She was using me as her patsy.
‘She had no right,’ I said, ‘getting me into it up to me neck.’
‘Self-defence lessons were a very good idea,’ The Enemy said.
‘Yeah?’ I said. ‘I thought so meself when I came up with it.’ I mean, why should monkey face get all the credit? It wasn’t as if she had any of the talent.
The Enemy drank her tea and looked at me over the rim of her mug.
‘But it went a bit too far, didn’t it?’ she said. ‘When you were actually staying here, protecting the women.’
‘I never!’ I said. ‘I never done that. Justin cooked me dinner, that’s all. And I nodded off in his armchair. I never knew the dirty slags was humping away in the same house.’
‘Didn’t you? Didn’t you really? I’d have thought something like that would be hard to miss.’
I could of stuffed her down the plughole and turned on the cold water to wash her away. Her and her dirty mind.
‘I was sleeping!’ I said. ‘I didn’t know nothing till Stef and Mandy started screaming. It wasn’t my fault. And Stoat’d never of got cut if Mandy hadn’t walloped him with her handbag.’
‘Ah,’ said The Enemy.
‘Ah, what?’ I said. ‘You don’t know crap from a carpet.’
‘How right you are.’
‘Yeah.’
‘Well,’ The Enemy said, ‘whatever you think, and whatever Crystal thinks, the police picked up a bloke early this morning. He and a friend had beaten up a prostitute and taken her money. She was pretty badly hurt, but she managed to identify him. He wasn’t cut or scarred in any way.’
‘So it ain’t Stoat. Half Stoat’s face fell off. Anyway he’s in that hospital.’
‘The bloke I’m talking about made a statement,’ she went on. ‘But later, he retracted it. The police don’t believe the retraction. They think he and his mate could be responsible for several attacks on prostitutes. Including the one on Dawn.’
‘Hah!’ I said. ‘Shows how much the polizei know.’
‘Okay, Eva,’ The Enemy said. ‘Fair exchange. I told you what I know. Now it’s your turn. You say Crystal thinks the man who killed her sister is this Stoat character? The one who got cut? Why?’
‘You’re simple,’ I said. ‘She’s a monkey wrench. That’s why. She gets an idea and it’s the wrong idea. But will she let go? No she fucking won’t. She’ll hang on and hang on till her little jaw gets cramp and still she won’t let go.’
‘Sounds like someone else I know,’ The Enemy said. ‘So who is Stoat?’
‘No one. Just another tart-raker wanting a percentage.’
‘And he got hurt?’ The Enemy said with that polizei gleam in her all-seeing peepers.
‘Dunno,’ I said. ‘Fell on a steak knife, I heard.’
‘Last night?’
‘Yeah.’
‘So that’s him out of the frame,’ The Enemy said. ‘We’d better tell Crystal before she does something silly.’
‘You tell her,’ I said. ‘I’ve had a belly-full of her.’
‘Okay,’ The Enemy said. ‘Now, what about Carl?’
I put my mug down. ‘I don’t know nothing,’ I said. ‘Except I got things to do.’ And I walked out the door.
‘Hey, Eva!’ The Enemy shouted. But I kept walking. And while I walked I laughed. Just for once in my life I got more out of The Enemy than she got out of me. So who’s got the brains now, I ask you. Me. That’s who.
The polizei was wrong as per usual.
Crystal was wrong.
The Enemy, Anna-know-it-all-Lee, actually knew as much as a fly on a tiger turd knows about a tiger.
The only one who really knew was me.
Chapter 24
I knew it was Carl, see. But I’d gone and said his name to The Enemy. And she wouldn’t forget. Which meant I couldn’t just go out and squash Carl without her putting two and two together. I had to wait. Which was a pity. When I get an idea I want to act straight away. But that Enemy’s a door slammed in my face. Always in the way. Always saying, ‘don’t.’
So I went to Hanif’s instead. I hadn’t had any shuteye. And I’d eaten all the food in the Static. Whatever happened, I had to get my rest and keep me strength up.
But when I was in Hanif’s, schlepping up and down the shelves, looking at the price of stuff, I remembered I didn’t have nothing to keep me strength up for. I remembered I was finished in the ring. I remembered I’d been fined my fight money, and there was no more where that came from.
I was back on scrag rations. But it’s sod’s law – as soon as you know you’re back in Hunger-town, you want an enormous blow out. I wanted steak and fries. I wanted chicken pie and mash. I wanted six gallons of ice cream and tinned peaches. I didn’t want to watch the pennies.
I was going to have to scratch around for more scratch if I wanted to live high like I had been doing. I almost went back to talk to The Enemy. I almost went back to tell her all about Stoat and Carl. Maybe she’d take me in as a partner and give me an office of me own with my name on the door – Eva Wylie, Security Expert. And I’d have my own secretary-bird to bring me tea at teatime. And regular wages. But I never went back. I don’t care how hard it is – I don’t gob to the polizei.
I bought a loaf of bread and a bit of bacon. That’s all. And a tin of spaghetti hoops to wash it down. And some chocolate to keep my blood sugar from dropping off the scale. The bare necessities. Then I went back home. Scratch-city, here I come.
But did I get there? Did I – cobble
rs! Did anything – even walking home with a bit of bacon – turn out how it ought?
I just about made it to my gate when a motor pulled up alongside – a silly little green Renault with woolly dice, skeletons and furry rabbits dangling from the windscreen. And I was just asking meself who’d have a prat motor like that, when Bella leaned out and yelled, ‘Hop in, Eva.’
‘Hop in and hop off yerself,’ I said. I never did like Bella.
‘Please yerself,’ Bella said. ‘I might’ve known you’d turn your back.’
And then a little kid leaned over the back seat and said, ‘Please, please, please. Mum’s doing her nut.’
‘Who’s this?’ I said.
‘My Elton,’ Bella said. ‘He’s a fan of yours, but he’s normal otherwise.’
‘Are you really the London Lassassin?’ Elton said.
I nearly said I wasn’t, no more. But you don’t like to disappoint the kiddies, do you? So I got in and sat with my knees under my chin. Trust Bella to pick a car that didn’t fit me.
‘We’re going to the hospital.’ She jammed the car in gear and lurched away from the kerb. It didn’t surprise me she was a crappy driver. I got whiplash, and little Elton got thrown in a heap on the back seat.
Bella said, ‘We got to hurry. The hospital’s letting that bastard out today.’
‘Who? Stoat?’
‘The one who, you know, with Stef.’ Bella glanced in her mirror to see if Elton was listening, which of course he was.
‘So what?’
‘Shut up and listen. Me and Elton went round to Justin’s, didn’t we, Elton? We was going to have a look at the puppies. Isn’t that right, Elton?’
‘Bang, bang,’ said Elton. He was playing with a Terminator toy, pretending he wasn’t all ears.
‘Justin’s out,’ I said. ‘I was looking for Crystal earlier.’
‘They are now,’ Bella said. ‘We caught them both on their way out.’ She was grinding along at forty miles an hour in second gear.
‘Listen, Eva,’ she said. ‘I know you don’t give a toss, but this is serious. Crys and Justin’s gone to meet Stoat. Crys thinks Stoat killed Dawnie.’
‘She’s a pillock,’ I said. ‘Carl killed Dawn. You and me both know that.’
