The Girl Who Broke the Rules

by Marnie Riches

  Sitting together on the back seat, Derek looked longingly through the tinted window at the club. His club. ‘They’re going to notice I’m gone,’ he said, pointing, as one of the girls, still wearing her jeans and fun-fur civvies, pulled open the front door and disappeared inside. ‘We open up in an hour. If you kill me, you’re going to have Dermot Robinson on your case.’

  Gera patted his hand. ‘Dermot Robinson is no interest to me. Drive, Tony,’ he told a brick shithouse at the wheel, who merely nodded in the rear view mirror.

  Tony had the biggest head Derek had ever seen on a man. Tony’s head was on steroids. The car pulled away.

  ‘Where we going?’ Derek asked, trying to take the lock off his phone. Maybe if he could ring Sharon and leave it ringing, they’d be able to track him with GPS or some shit. Find him before Gera got medieval on his arse.

  ‘You’re going to do a job for me,’ Gera said, sniffing hard and wiping a dribble of clear snot on the silk handkerchief in the top pocket of his overcoat. Put his arm around Derek. Where was the gun? Still pointing at his ribs. ‘My man, Rocco, he’s busy in Germany. I am…How you say? Short-staffed. You are…How you say? My puttana. My beach.’

  ‘Bitch.’

  ‘Chiudi il culo, Giuseppe!’ He pressed the barrel of the gun up against his lips. ‘Shh! You do the job, I pay you a thousand pounds. You don’t do the job, I think you know what will happen.’

  Derek touched the bruising around his eyes. Still fresh. Still livid purple from the beating he had taken outside the farmhouse.

  Gera threw his head back and laughed. ‘Hey Tony,’ he said to the driver. ‘Giuseppe, here thinks I gonna beat him up if he fucks with me.’

  Tony peered at Derek through the rear view mirror. Raised an eyebrow. ‘You be fucking wishing at the end I’d beaten you up, mate.’

  He hadn’t intended to cry, of course. Men didn’t cry. But Derek could not stem the salty flow from his tender, stinging eyes. He shook his head. Tried to speak clearly but could only stutter. ‘I- j-just want to go h-home, Mr Gera. I ain’t n-no gangster. I a-ain’t cut out for this, man. Promise I w-won’t tell no-one. Swear on m-my baby’s life.’

  ‘Ah, si. Tinesha, yes? Bellissima. Lovely girl. You must be very proud she’s at university in Cardiff, no?’

  His tears dried almost immediately. Derek felt the blood drain from his face, turning his lips to ice. In petrified silence, he stared at the Italian. ‘What I got to do?’

  CHAPTER 57

  Ramsgate, later

  In the semi-darkness of his hotel room, with the brown blackout curtains pulled – the only illumination coming from the bathroom light – van den Bergen wept.

  ‘Come here to me, bwoy! Why you cry for?’ George said in the same reassuring Jamaican patois Letitia had used on her when she had been a small child, waking from a bad dream. Rocking him back and forth on the bed, encircling him in her arms. Kissing his hair, so he’d know she was there for him and everything would be all right. Reassuring. ‘You’re fine. You’ve got to believe me. You’ve got to believe the doctors.’

  ‘I’m not,’ he said. ‘I won’t be.’

  ‘Ah, gi mi sponge fi go dry up sea. Letitia used to say that to me too. You know what that means?’

  He buried his head deeper into her chest.

  ‘Means you’re hard work, man. Come on, now. You’ve got to tell me what’s going on.’

  His lean body quaked against her chest as he sobbed silently. Presently, he spoke. ‘I thought it was over,’ he said. ‘I’ve been waiting for death for so long.’

  Holding his face between her hands, George looked directly into his grey eyes. ‘It was a panic attack, Paul. Not a stroke. Not a brain haemorrhage.’

  ‘They don’t know that,’ he said, chest heaving unevenly.

  She relinquished the grip on his face. Clasped his hands instead. ‘They do,’ she said. ‘The CT scan was clear. Your blood tests were normal. Your ECG was normal. We spent three hours in A&E to be told you’ve got bloody anxiety. Come on, Paul. Tell me why.’

  Van den Bergen blew his nose noisily on the tissues she handed to him. Downcast eyes focussed on her belly. ‘I’ve been depressed for months.’ He swallowed hard. ‘Work. Tamara. But mainly, the anniversary of my dad’s death…’

  George took his chin between her finger and thumb. Made him look at her. ‘That what set you off? The fact one of the victims had lung cancer?’

  He nodded. Tears welled afresh and poured silently onto his cheeks, following the course of the grooves either side of his mouth. ‘My dad was an arsehole but I loved him. I’m scared I’m going to turn into him. Every week, it’s been getting worse.’

  ‘When’s the anniversary?’

  ‘Today.’

  George sucked her teeth. ‘Why didn’t you say?’

  ‘Why would I? Who the hell wants to hear a middle-aged divorcé; a hypochondriac whingeing old bastard like me drone on about death? And spending night after night, unable to sleep and yet, barely being able to get out of bed in the morning when the alarm finally goes off. I’m just not myself. I’ve been doing mad things. I don’t know…’

  Running her fingertips over his knuckles, she clicked her tongue above the roof of her mouth. ‘Did you get into a fight?’

  He nodded.

  ‘Is what Marie said true?’

  In the dim light, he looked over towards the curtains. It was hard to see his expression clearly, but George felt sure it was one of weary resignation.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You beat up on a man in custody? Seriously?’

  Nodded. His lip started to buckle out of shape. The sharp line of his jaw was suddenly uncertain. ‘I’m a monster, George. A violent monster.’ Those melancholy grey eyes met hers, holding her gaze steadily for a minute or more, as if he were challenging her to find the good in him.

  How did she feel about his act of police brutality? Had it even been an uncharacteristic display, as she was inclined to believe? How much did she really know about this cop, twenty years her senior, who was addicted to prescription painkillers and whose self-esteem was clearly so low that he seemed deliberately to provoke everyone he met, apart from her, into disliking him intensely?

  ‘Why did you do it?’ she asked.

  He didn’t answer.

  ‘You’re not the type to go around, swinging punches for no reason. The guy must have provoked you in some way. Why, Paul?’

  ‘He looked like Karelse. I don’t know what came over me. Jealousy… I—’

  Van den Bergen stared into her eyes, unmoving, unblinking. George leaned forwards and kissed him on the lips. His mouth was unyielding. His body, as still as stone, though a raised eyebrow betrayed his surprise. She kissed him again. This time, his lips parted. His eyes closed. He started to kiss her back, tenderly at first. Blood rushed in her ears and she was aware of her own pulse racing. Felt his eyelashes flutter against her cheek. Then, his tongue seeking out hers, hungrily, like a starving man enjoying his first meal in a long, long time. Her fingers found the buttons on his shirt. She started to undo them, touching the hairs that curled above his collar bone with inquisitive fingers. Probing the hard sheet of muscle that covered his chest and the ridges of his sternum. His hands slid down to caress the sides of her breasts.

  Abruptly, he broke away. Panting. All trace of sadness in his face now gone.

  ‘Why d’you stop?’ She glanced down. Saw through his trousers that he was aroused. Felt the burn of anticipation between her own legs.

  ‘Are you sure about this?’ he asked.‘Fuck, yes,’ she said, throwing herself on top of him. Straddling his hips, feeling his hardness through her jeans. Pulling her T-shirt over her head and casting it onto the hotel room floor.

  He reached up behind her and unfastened her bra. Ran his fingers along the contours of her full breasts. Stroked the dark brown skin of her nipples.

  ‘Christ, you’re beautiful,’ he said.

  She caressed the hair on his navel, flicking open
the button of his trousers in one smooth manoeuvre. ‘Get them off.’

  With their clothes abandoned, as his long, practised fingers pleasured her, George appraised van den Bergen’s wiry naked body between her legs. Broad shoulders and strong-looking athletic arms. Taut abdominal muscles. The grey-white body hair the only real sign of his age.

  ‘You’re a fine-looking man, Paul van den Bergen.’ She was drunk on desire. ‘I’m going to fucking ruin you.’

  ‘Good. I’m going to make you come like you’ve never come before, Georgina McKenzie.’

  CHAPTER 58

  Soho, London, later

  Groaning, Sharon tried again to pull a pint of bitter. Flicked the switch back and forth, but only honey-coloured froth came out of the tap.

  ‘Derek!’ she shouted through the cavernous club, empty but for a couple of girls doing their nails and drinking coffee in the back. ‘I need you to change the barrel!’

  No response. Sharon put the spent glass down and wiped her sticky hands on a bar towel.

  ‘Where’s that pain in the arse got to?’ she asked her reflection in the mirrored wall that marked out her domain.

  She adjusted her elaborate head attire until it sat perfectly balanced above her face. ‘I’m a better artist than that Tracey Ermine with her skanky bed. Eat your heart out, skinny white gyal,’ she told herself. Though, not yet made-up, she looked tired, she knew. ‘Too much washing and ironing and cleaning for that lickle rarseclart, Patrice. Always bringing his dutty batty crease friends home, making a mess.’ Checked out her new dress – a crossover leopard print number from Primark. Turn this way. Turn that way. Suck her belly in. Stick her chest out. Made her tits and bum look great. She slapped her own behind. ‘Me gat plenty gravy on dem pork chop.’ Laughed at the thought. A slick of lipstick and some eyeliner and she’d be fine.

  ‘Derek!’ she bellowed.

  No Derek. She left her bar and ventured into the foyer.

  The two girls who had been getting ready in the back came out of their dressing room, strutting past her in their heels towards one of the stages. A rangy tattooed blonde and a Chinese girl who had the tiny, muscular body of a ballet dancer. Ready to twist and gyrate the night away in underwear trimmed with feathers and spangles.

  ‘All right, Shaz?’ the Chinese girl asked.

  ‘All right, Mae Ling? Cindy? You two seen Uncle Giuseppe on your travels?’

  Mae Ling shrugged. Cindy shook her head. ‘Nah. He was out front earlier with some short-arsed geezer in a fancy car. Nattering, like.’

  Sharon frowned. ‘Ta, girls,’ she said.

  Made her way down to the basement to check the barrel for herself. She hated the basement. It was creepy down there. Clickety clack in her Betty Boop heels on the old wooden stairs. Her feet were killing her. She needed to get those corns done. Only problem with carrying weight and doing a job that involved standing for hours was her knees and her feet were knackered.

  In the shitty glare of the basement light, she looked around and found the empty bitter barrel. Unhooked it and got splattered by the remnants of booze still lurking in the pipes. Cursed several times. Located the new barrel. Tried to move it. It wouldn’t budge, and her efforts were rewarded by a false nail flicking off and disappearing like a scuttling green cockroach behind the strong lager barrel.

  ‘I’m gonna swing for you when I find you, Derek de Falco, you selfish dick. Leaving a woman to do all the dirty work, as usual.’

  When the loud ring of a mobile phone broke the unsettling silence down there, Sharon jumped. Dionne Warwick, asking if she knew the way to San Jose. Automatically patted herself down, though her own phone was upstairs by the ice bucket. Moving closer to where the song resonated from. She knew that naff ringtone anywhere. It was Derek’s. She picked up the small white lozenge. Saw that there was an incoming call from Dermot Robinson. The Porn King.

  ‘Hello, Mr Robinson,’ Sharon said, holding Derek’s greasy phone close to her ear but not against her skin. Dirty bugger never washed his hands enough. Thumb prints on the screen made her skin prickle with distaste. ‘Sharon. Yes. Behind the bar. That’s right. I’m good, thanks. No, I ain’t seen him for about half an hour,’ she told the Porn King, who sounded disgruntled that his minion had not picked up. ‘Yeah, he was here when I arrived. No idea, love. Yes, this is his phone. He never normally goes nowhere without his phone, though. He can’t be far. He’ll turn up like a bad penny.’ She affected a friendly laugh, though Derek’s absence was anything but amusing. ‘He always does.’

  Back behind the bar, Sharon tried to work out the pin to unlock Derek’s keypad and enter the unsavoury world of Uncle Giuseppe. Tried multiple combinations. Birthdays that might mean something. To no avail. Not even Tinesha’s birthday yielded the phone’s secrets. ‘Bloody hell,’ she said, flinging it down next to the till. ‘I need our Patrice. I bet he’d be able to do it.’

  Derek, chatting with a small man next to a flashy car. Derek, with no means of communication on him, doing a disappearing act during his shift. Derek, who had had whatever sense he still possessed almost entirely beaten out of him only days earlier by one of them big Italian geezers. Things didn’t look promising. Sitting in her kitchen while she cleaned up his battered face, he had been petrified that the miniature Don Corleone of Soho would want him dead. Had Derek, a man prone to take the blind alleys in life, always the last to be in on the joke, always getting the wrong end of the shitty stick and managing to get himself beaten by it…had Derek Dickheaded de Falco finally been on the money?

  Her frustration and anxiety mounted quickly until she was breathless and distracted. Couldn’t get the bloody jammed optics working, now. Damn, damn, damn. When her own phone rang, she almost burst into tears. It was George, asking to swing by in the morning. Had the mystery Dutch policeman in tow.

  ‘’Course you can, darling.’ Because she was Aunty Sharon and Aunty Sharon was a fixer of things, she was careful to keep the panic out of her voice. ‘Didn’t realise you was back in the country already. Amsterdam boring? You come over and see your Aunty Sharon. I’ll bake.’

  On the other end, an oddly breathless-sounding George let slip she was staying the night in Ramsgate. A man’s voice in the background. Giggling and something that sounded like a slap. She didn’t have time for the girl’s frivolous bullshit. Not when Derek was missing.

  ‘Look, I got to get off the line, babe,’ she said. ‘Derek’s done one. He might be trying to get in touch.’ She was about to switch her niece’s voice off when something occurred to her. ‘Oh, before you go, there’s a certain someone been asking after you. Wanting face time, apparently. I’ve had text after text after text and I don’t want no more messages cluttering up my inbox, yeah? So, if you’re back in the country, if you want me to put my ear to the ground for gossip about some dead fellers, you gotta deal with this shit. D’you get me?’

  On the other end of the phone, George went quiet. Asked who the persistent texter was.

  ‘You ain’t gonna like this,’ Sharon said.

  CHAPTER 59

  Somewhere in Kent, an industrial estate, later

  ‘Right, you know what to do?’ Tony asked, looking over his shoulder.

  Derek nodded, wishing he was anywhere but in the back of that bloody car. Actually, scrub that. He was just relieved that he wasn’t dead, and that the pint-sized loon, Gera, had been dropped off at some big pile in Chislehurst.

  ‘Well?’ Tony glared at him. His head was so large; his brutish face so red and angry, Derek felt as though he were a small child getting a dressing down from a gargoyle or a demon or some biblical shit. ‘Come on, Uncle fucking Giuseppe.’

  ‘Okay, okay,’ he said, scratching at the underside of his chin with a shaking hand. Looking out at the abandoned and seemingly derelict industrial estate. He had been made to wear a black hood over his head for a good twenty minutes or so, but he had seen through the fabric – not quite opaque – that they had travelled some way along the M20. Square, blu
e signs flashing by overhead. The white triangles of oast-house roofs in the distance. Maybe they were near the entrance to the Channel Tunnel. Maybe not. He couldn’t be sure. ‘So, I go in and I pick up a package and I bring it back out to the car and I put it in the boot.’ It sounded easy enough. ‘Why don’t Mr Gera have you doing this? Why does he want me involved?’

  ‘I drive the car,’ Tony said, gripping the steering wheel with a giant hand, encased in the largest leather glove Derek had seen. What kind of shop even made gloves that size? They were murderer’s hands, of that, he was certain. ‘That’s my job. And I watch you to make sure you do your job.’ Pointing at him with his other giant leathery hand. Reminded Derek of the gorillas he’d seen at the zoo as a kid. Big fucking hands, those silverback gorillas. ‘Mr Gera’s obviously training you up. We’re like parts in an engine, right? All doing different bits. Your valves and your pistons and that. We all work to make the machine run smooth.’

  Tony checked his watch. ‘He’s expecting you. Go on. Don’t make no conversation. You ain’t there to make fucking friends. Am I making myself clear?’

  Shivering in his shirt, pointlessly wishing he’d had time to grab his coat and his phone, Derek got out of the car. Approached the industrial unit. Rusting corrugated iron shutters down over the door and a large opening at the front. Weeds growing up out of the cracked tarmac. Strappy twigs and shit growing out of the roof. As though nature was taking the place back.

  He rapped on the shutters.

  ‘Who is it?’ came a man’s voice from inside.

  ‘Giuseppe,’ Derek said, trying to sound confident but hearing a thin and weedy voice coming from his tight throat. ‘Mr Gera sent me for the pick-up.’

  The shutters on the door rolled up slowly. Derek stepped inside. He found himself in an empty space, lit overhead by fluorescent strip lighting. It looked as though it had once been a mechanic’s body shop and was now maybe used to park cars away from prying eyes. There was a pronounced smell of diesel in the air and a black slick on the concrete floor that could have been oil, by the looks. Tyre tread marks were a dead giveaway.