Tainted Love: The gritty new thriller from the #1 bestseller

by Kimberley Chambers

  ‘Cami’s fine. Landed herself another decent part in a show. We’ll have to arrange something so you get to see her soon,’ Michael replied, slyly winking at Lee. Daniel would actually be seeing his little sister this evening as Bella had surprisingly agreed to her attending his homecoming party. Cami was bringing a friend, and they were being dropped off and picked up a couple of hours later by Bella’s usual driver.

  ‘How’s Beth, Lee? You got her up the spout yet?’

  ‘Beth’s fine and, nah, no pitter-patter of tiny feet any time soon. I’ve been busy at the club and Beth at the hospital, so we’re like ships that pass in the night at the moment,’ Lee replied, giving his father a warning look to keep his mouth shut. Daniel could be a real piss-taker at times and this was a delicate subject.

  Daniel started laughing.

  ‘What’s so funny?’ Lee asked.

  ‘I was thinking of the faces on Beth’s family when I did me best man speech. The story about them two old birds we pulled that Christmas was a classic.’

  Lee raised his eyebrows and shook his head in mock disbelief. The story was a classic, all right. The two rich old tarts they’d spent one Christmas shagging hadn’t informed them until Boxing Day evening that their husbands were in the nick for murder. Dan and Lee had never bolted from a house so fast in their lives, and Beth’s family hadn’t looked too impressed when Daniel told the story at the wedding. Thankfully, he’d left out the drug-taking part.

  ‘One day you’ll get married, bruv, and I swear I’ll pay you back for that.’

  Daniel chuckled. ‘Not a cat in hell’s chance.’

  ‘Antonio, Antonio! I’ve been calling you for the past five minutes. Has that music finally made you go deaf?’ an exasperated Bella asked, tapping on her son’s bedroom door. He kept the door locked, so entering without permission was a no-go.

  Antonio turned his music down. He was obsessed with the grunge scene, Nirvana in particular. Kurt Cobain was his all-time hero and even though his death was extremely sad, Antonio thought it was ultra-cool the way Kurt had chosen to end things. Not many men had the guts to blast their own brains out. ‘What’s up?’ he asked casually.

  ‘Your sister wants your opinion on her new outfit, and Vinny has been on the phone again asking why you haven’t rung him back yet.’

  Antonio opened the door, looking as bleary-eyed as Bella had known he would. He was permanently stoned and, as much as Bella had tried, she could not stop Antonio smoking whatever crap he smoked.

  ‘I’ll call Vinny back tomorrow. Where’s Cami?’ Antonio asked.

  ‘In the lounge. And while you speak with her, I demand to change your bedclothes. Juanita says you haven’t allowed her to change them for three whole weeks!’

  When Antonio staggered down the stairs, Bella entered his dope-stinking room. Her son was nineteen now and a total disappointment to her in more ways than one. Such a bright boy as a child, he had thrown his education away by pressing the self-destruct button. After he’d got himself expelled from two private schools for fighting and smoking weed, Bella had managed to get him into a third. Antonio had then deliberately flunked his exams because he had no wish to go to college or university, and had refused to do sod-all ever since.

  Bella blamed herself for the way her son had turned out, of course. For all Vinny’s faults, he had tried to be part of Antonio’s life. But Antonio had little time for either of them, apart from when he was after money. He was still close to her parents, especially her father, who he spoke to regularly on the phone. And he was a decent enough brother to Camila, although it did worry Bella that Cami was old enough now to know what he got up to in that bedroom of his. As for Michael, Antonio refused to be in the same room as him, let alone speak to the man who had once raised him.

  Bella sighed as she spotted a mound of dirty clothes under her son’s bed. He lived and died in washed-out-looking T-shirts and faded jeans. She could’ve understood him turning out to be a bum if she had taken up with other men, but after Michael’s departure all she had done was concentrate on her modelling agency and children. There had been the odd date, but Bella had never felt an attraction towards another man. They bored her, and as much as she hated to admit it, her heart would always belong to her ex. There was only one Michael Butler.

  Vinny Butler wasn’t in the best of moods. He knew all about Daniel’s homecoming bash and the thought of his mother getting glammed up to spend the evening at the club he and Roy had worked their balls off to buy in the first place grated on Vinny enormously. Even Ava and Little Vinny were going, the bloody traitors.

  ‘Penny for ’em,’ Carl said, helping himself to a Scotch before topping his boss’s glass up.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Penny for your thoughts.’

  Vinny forced a smile. Unlike Jay Boy, who’d sodded off back to Liverpool, Carl had stayed loyal to him over the years and was now his right-hand man at the club. ‘Family shit. You know how it is.’

  Carl tried not to laugh as a familiar face walked up behind Vinny and put his hands over his eyes. ‘Guess who or I’ll kill ya.’

  ‘Ed!’ Vinny exclaimed, leaping out his chair to give his pal a man-hug. ‘What you doing ’ere, mate?’

  Eddie winked at Carl. He’d rung the club earlier to check Vinny would be around and had told Carl not to mention he was on his way. ‘My good lady has taken the little ’uns to visit her friend, so I thought I might as well make the most of it. Been ages since we had a proper session. You up for it, or what?’

  Thinking how very apt the ‘You can choose your friends but not your family’ saying was, Vinny grinned. ‘You bet I am.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Roxanne huddled up to her friend Alex at the bus stop. It was bitterly cold, but both girls were excited about the evening ahead and knew how uncool it would be to turn up at the club in winter clothing. They would rather freeze to death than look undesirable, and seeing as they came from the north of England, the winter in London was mild in comparison.

  ‘There’d better be some fit lads there. Tracy said there isn’t many as a rule, but she reckons tonight will be different because it’s a private party to do with the owners,’ Alex said.

  ‘I’m not dating any more lads after Marty. I want a man and he has to be rich. No way can I stomach working for Stavros much longer and living in that dump,’ Roxanne stated boldly.

  The future had seemed so bright when Roxanne had left her parents’ home to run away with Marty Burns. Marty was the nineteen-year-old lead singer of Roxanne’s favourite local indie band, The Sharks. He’d certainly lived up to his band’s name when she’d surprised him by turning up after a gig and caught him in a comprising position with some slag of a groupie.

  Marty had grovelled and begged for her forgiveness. He’d insisted that the groupie was not in fact giving him a blow-job but had merely been rubbing his stomach because he had a belly ache, but Roxanne wasn’t stupid. She’d nicked Marty’s wallet before disappearing from his life, for good.

  London itself was full of sharks and Roxanne had been approached by pimps, perverts and all sorts of undesirables before she’d thankfully met Alex in a café in Camden Town. Alex had a job working in a hotel for a guy called Stavros, and Roxanne had jumped at the offer of cash-in-hand employment which also included a roof over her head.

  Neither the job or the accommodation turned out to be what Roxanne had hoped they would be. Stavros was a slave driver who obviously took advantage of runaways and young girls who’d come to London to seek their fortune. The hotel was dingy and seedy and Roxanne and Alex were made to graft continuously from six in the morning until six in the evening. Their duties included helping out in the kitchens, cleaning and being general dogsbodies all for a measly seventy-five quid a week, plus their awful accommodation.

  The daughter of wealthy parents, Roxanne had never seen anything quite so squalid as the living conditions she and Alex were forced to share. There was barely enough room to swing one of t
he many cockroaches they’d found, let alone a cat. The bathroom was shared, and out on the landing. It was always dirty and the girls would have to scrub furiously at the tidemarks before having a soak. They also chose to wee in a bucket of a night and empty it the next morning rather than use the scummy toilet and bump into any weirdos.

  ‘Perhaps they might need staff at this club? If we like the look of it, we could always ask. Tracy said both the lads that run it will be there tonight. That’s what the party’s for, the brother who has been released from prison,’ Alex informed her pal.

  Roxanne had never met Alex’s friend. Tracy had worked for Stavros and shared a room with Alex before she’d arrived in London. ‘Are the brothers single? How old are they?’ Roxanne enquired.

  Alex shrugged. She’d only received the letter from Tracy yesterday with a phone number where she could be contacted. ‘All Tracy said on the phone was that I could come to the party and it would be OK to bring a mate. I’ve got a feeling the owners might be villains. Tracy said everybody knows and respects them.’

  Roxanne grinned. She had no idea why, but she’d always had an obsession with the underworld and the East End of London. Back when her school friends were reading Charles Dickens, she’d had her head stuck in a book about the Krays or Jack the Ripper.

  ‘What you grinning at?’ Alex asked.

  ‘Not only is our bus coming, I’ve got a feeling tonight is going to be a good night. Don’t forget the golden rule, will you, pet.’

  Alex chuckled. Roxanne could be quite immature in some ways, yet had a very adult head on her in others. ‘Play hard to get.’

  Linking arms and laughing, the girls got on the bus.

  Daniel Butler feigned surprise when he was greeted by family, friends and the DJ playing ‘Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Old Oak Tree’. He’d guessed the moment his father and Lee had said they had to stop off at the club to pick something up that they’d organized a party for him.

  ‘Look at you! All muscle, ain’t he, Viv? Give your nan a hug then, boy,’ Queenie ordered.

  Daniel obliged then did the rounds, accepting all hugs, pats on the back and handshakes. Half a dozen of his and Lee’s old school pals from Barking were there, which was nice. There were lots of birds as well, some of whom Daniel didn’t recognize.

  It had been years since Queenie and Vivian had set foot inside the club. The trade there was at an all-time low, which was why Michael had invested in another business. Tonight, however, apart from the awful décor, was like old times. Michael had insisted on a singer as well as a DJ and it brought back plenty of memories, good ones and bad.

  ‘Oooh, I’ve gone cold, Queen. I just had a vision of my Lenny DJing on that stage and how he might look now,’ Vivian said.

  ‘That’s a sign. He’s here with us in spirit. I bet my Roy is an’ all. His pride and joy this club was. How time flies. Doesn’t seem all them years ago we came to the opening night, does it? We both had furs on and felt like royalty, remember?’

  ‘Course I do. I remember Kenny Jackson being the first ejected an’ all. Roy threw him out for being a drunken pest.’

  Queenie’s face clouded over. It was Kenny’s grandson Jake that had stabbed her Brenda to death. The police had never caught him, and even though Vinny had put a bounty on his head, nobody had a clue where he was.

  Knowing she’d hit a raw nerve, Vivian changed the subject. ‘Not heard you mention Tara and Tommy for a while. You heard from either of ’em?’

  ‘Nope. Not since their Christmas card,’ Queenie replied. Brenda’s kids thankfully hadn’t turned out to be alcoholics like their mother. Tara had met a lad on holiday in Spain a few years ago and had moved to Leeds to be with him; Tommy had followed her up there a few months later. Now Tara had become a mum, with a little girl Queenie had yet to set eyes on.

  ‘Don’t Camila look a picture, Queen? Look, over by the door with her mate. Such a beautiful child.’

  ‘Takes after her gran,’ Queenie chuckled. ‘I see that old bastard’s over there making himself busy. Shouldn’t be allowed round young girls, him.’

  Vivian looked at her sister in disbelief. ‘I know you hate Albie, but you can’t go around saying things like that, Queen. He might be a lot of things but he ain’t no kiddie-fiddler. You’ll cause a riot, people hear you say stuff like that.’

  ‘What people? I’m only bleedin’ talking to you. Always on the defensive these days when it comes to that old goat, you are. Don’t think I haven’t noticed it, because I have.’

  ‘You’re talking out your arsehole as usual,’ Vivian retaliated.

  Ava plonked herself on a chair. ‘What’s up with yous two? Not arguing, are you?’

  ‘Your nan’s having one of her senile moments, dear,’ Vivian replied.

  ‘And your aunt has had a sense-of-humour bypass,’ Queenie responded.

  ‘For goodness’ sake. You’re meant to be enjoying yourselves. It’s a bloody party,’ Ava reminded her warring relations.

  Queenie and Viv glared at one another one last time before laughing.

  ‘Tracy, meet Roxanne. Roxy meet Tracy,’ Alex said.

  Roxanne held out her right hand. ‘Lovely to meet you, Tracy. I’ve heard lots about you.’

  ‘Wow! You two even sound alike. You a Geordie as well?’ Tracy asked.

  ‘Whey-aye, pet,’ Roxanne laughed.

  ‘Roxy has taken your place at Stavros’s wonderful establishment, and your luxury room, Trace. I do hope you aren’t too jealous,’ Alex joked.

  ‘Poor you. Awful, isn’t it? Has Stavros tried to touch you up yet? He did me.’

  ‘If he touches me, I’ll stick this in him,’ Roxanne boasted, waving the flick-knife she carried in her bag.

  ‘Oooh, put that away. You don’t want to be flashing it about inside the club. The Butlers won’t be happy,’ Tracy warned, glancing at Alex in the hope she was going to keep her new friend under control.

  ‘Where’s the bar?’ Alex asked.

  ‘I’ll show you. Drinks are free, but don’t get too bladdered, will you? I really like my job here and I’d hate Lee to think I was taking liberties. It was Lee who told me to invite a couple of pals.’

  Thinking how boring Tracy was, Roxanne touched her hair and lipstick up before marching into the club area. ‘What’s this crap music? It’s not this singer all night, is it?’ she complained.

  ‘No. There’s a disco as well. Why did you have to bring her with you?’ Tracy hissed to Alex when Roxanne went to get the drinks.

  ‘Roxy’s OK, pet. She’s just showing off a bit, that’s all. I’ll make sure she behaves herself, I promise.’

  ‘You’d better,’ Tracy replied. Lee had given her the night off to enjoy herself and she rather wished she was back behind the bar now.

  Roxanne tapped a bloke in a suit on the back. ‘Excuse me. Can you pass me three drinks off that tray?’

  Daniel turned around and was immediately bowled over by the girl’s beauty. Back in the day, he’d had a thing for Pamela Anderson. The sight of her strutting about in swimwear was worth watching Baywatch for, and this bird reminded him of a young, dark-haired version of Pamela.

  ‘Cat got your tongue?’ Roxanne grinned. She had no idea who the bloke gawping at her was, but he was gorgeous.

  ‘You’re a cheeky one, you are. What’s your name?’

  Roxanne could feel her heart beating faster than usual. His piercing eyes and boyish grin were having an unusual effect on her. ‘Who wants to know?’ she managed to reply.

  ‘The owner of the club you’re stood in.’

  Roxanne put her hands on her hips. ‘I’m not underage, if that’s what you’re thinking. I am old enough to drink alcohol.’

  ‘Never said you wasn’t, did I? Got some attitude you have, ain’t ya?’

  ‘I prefer to call it personality. So, are you going to pass me those drinks, or not?’

  Daniel’s eyes twinkled. Her style suited her and that included the pierced tongue. She was wearing a tight
red dress that matched her bright lipstick, lots of dark eye make-up, black stilettos and a short leather jacket. Definitely a rock-chick, Daniel thought, deciding to wind her up some more. ‘You gotta say please and tell me your name before I even consider passing you those drinks.’

  ‘Don’t bother. I can reach them myself now.’

  Laughing at his brother’s astounded face, Lee slapped him on the back. ‘Finally, I think you’ve met a bird to silence you. Now that’s a fucking first.’

  A short distance from the club, Vinny Butler and Eddie Mitchell were on a pub crawl. It had been Vinny’s idea to have a drink in the Grave Maurice and the Blind Beggar, knowing word would get back to his family and hopefully spoil their evening.

  ‘Michael’s probably staring at the door as we speak, afraid we’re gonna bowl in,’ Vinny said bitterly. He’d tried to make things right with his brother over the years, but Michael had made it extremely clear that Vinny was no longer part of his life. Vinny truly couldn’t understand why his brother was still holding a grudge all these years later. It was such old news now.

  ‘It’s Michael’s loss, mate. Forget about him and move on,’ Eddie advised.

  ‘I have. But it still pisses me off that he now talks to Bella again and not me. Why am I the bad bastard in all this? Twenty years ago I had a one-night stand with a bird who was a complete stranger. Like I’d have gone anywhere near her, had I known who she was. I could understand him despising me if I’d knocked her off behind his back, but you know me, Ed, I’d never pull a stunt like that. Why can’t Michael let bygones be bygones?’

  ‘I dunno, Vin, but let’s not talk about brothers, eh? Reminds me of Paulie and Ronny.’

  ‘Sorry, mate. How’s Gina and the kids doing?’

  After spending years behind bars, Eddie Mitchell had found love again and remarried. Gina was the private detective he’d once hired to spy on his twins, and they now had two young children together, Rosie and Aaron. ‘Yeah, Gina’s good as gold and so are the little ’uns. I had another lead on Georgie and Harry last week, but it was a false alarm again. Breaks my heart every time I have to tell Frankie it isn’t them. I think in future I’ll tell her nothing until I actually have ’em in my grasp. That’s if they’re ever found,’ Eddie said miserably.