Blood Secrets_A gripping crime thriller with killer twists

by Dreda Say Mitchell

  42

  ‘I’m afraid it’s not possible to see Mr Scott,’ the receptionist told Babs.

  The young woman, who wasn’t the same receptionist that Babs had met the other day, wasn’t rude but there was something about the way she held her body that told Babs not to try it on.

  Talk about trying, she’d been calling Kieran non-stop but he wasn’t answering his phone so she’d gone for route one and headed straight down to his offices.

  Babs tried again. ‘Look luv, all you’ve got to do is bell him upstairs and mention my name, he knows me.’

  The receptionist smiled this time, almost cracking her face. ‘I’m sorry Mrs Miller, you can’t just walk in off the streets and ask to see our CEO, it doesn’t work like that. Now, I wish you a good day.’

  ‘Does this look like a good day to ya?’ Babs carefully placed the hand grenade on the desk.

  Fair play to the girl, she didn’t panic. As calm as you please she picked up her phone and pressed a number.

  ‘Mr Scott, a lady has arrived in reception asking to speak you. She’s also put an explosive device on my desk. It looks like it’s disarmed. She says her name is Babs Miller.’ After a few words at the other end of the line, she looked over at Babs. ‘There’s a security camera behind me Mrs Miller. Could you take a couple of steps back and wave at it.’

  Babs did as she was told. Well nearly. Instead of waving she gave the thumbs up sign.

  ‘You can go up Mrs Miller.’ Babs set off for the security gates but the woman called her back and pointed at her desk. ‘I think you’ve forgotten something.’

  Babs could’ve slapped her forehead: the grenade, of course.

  Kieran was waiting for her outside his suite on the top floor. Babs thought he’d be pissed at her for turning up like a bad penny, but his face was creased with worry.

  ‘What do you think you’re playing at? Waving a pineapple at my staff?’ Seeing the confusion on her face he elaborated,’ A fucking hand grenade. Why didn’t you get on the blower to me?’

  ‘I tried, you weren’t answering,’ Babs belted back. Then drew breath. ‘Any chance you’ve got anything I can wet my lips with?’

  A few minutes later they were on opposite sides of his desk, Babs nursing a small glass of sloe gin. She licked the liqueur from her bottom lip and started her story.

  ‘This,’ she placed the grenade on the desk, ‘arrived at my gaff in a cake box.’

  They both stared at it as though it was a third person in the room and they were waiting for it to give an accounting of itself.

  Kieran reached for it and almost made Babs’ ticker give out when he threw it from hand to hand like a ball. ‘Fucking hell! Be careful Kieran, for fuck’s sake!’

  ‘Relax Babs, there ain’t no detonator in it. You could play tennis with this and it wouldn’t go off.’ He held it up. ‘See?’

  It had an empty space down the middle. That’s odd. She frowned. Babs could’ve bet her life there’d been something in that space when it had arrived. But then again she’d been in such a state trying to protect Little Bea no doubt her eyes had been playing tricks on her. Plus, it was Kieran who knew about these things which is why she’d come.

  He sighed and put the grenade down. ‘Pearl was it?’

  ‘Gotta be.’

  She placed the note on the table, his way up so he could read it. ‘First of all she steals my gold and now she has the brass to accuse me of taking it. The nerve! Then she tries to blow me up.’ Her voice shook with fear and unleashed anger. ‘Little Bea was right there. My own granddaughter. What if one of the kids had got to it first?’

  Kieran raised his gaze from the note to stare intently at her. ‘Come on, you know better than that, it’s just a warning. Just trying to scare the piss out of ya. You know how it works - bullets through the letterbox, a boom device in a cake box, an RPG fired through the window of an empty house, it’s all pretty standard stuff.’

  Babs took offence and got miffed. ‘Nice to see you being so relaxed about it. Since you know the ins and the outs perhaps you can suggest what I do now?’

  Kieran shrugged. ‘Well, you could go to the Bill o’ course, tell them.’

  Babs was tempted to slap him one. ‘Oh yeah, I can just picture the scene: ‘Excuse me officer, me and a mate have been hiding the gold from that blag last year and now it’s done a Houdini. Now my mate is trying to blow me to smithereens coz she thinks I double-crossed her. Can you find it in your heart to help me?’ Have you gone soft in the head mate or something?’

  Thoroughly narked off, Babs grabbed the grenade and note and put them in her bag. She got up so quickly the chair rocked back on its legs. ‘Thanks for sweet FA,’ she bit out and headed for the door.

  His voice stopped her. ‘You could deliver a counter warning—‘

  She twisted around, eyes blazing. ‘Oh yeah, like knock on her door and when she opens it stick my thumb on my nose, waggle my fingers and go ‘naar, naar, na naar naar?’’

  He eased to his feet and walked over to her. ‘Why don’t you arrange to meet your old mate Pearl on neutral ground and get this sorted before it all gets out of hand?’

  Babs was outraged. ‘I tried that and it didn’t work out …’ Her voice wobbled thinking about Dee and that daddy-come-lately Neville.

  ‘What happened?’ he asked softly.

  She filled him in on the reappearance of Dee’s dad in her life and his connection to Pearl.

  ‘Negotiate with Pearl? Never! She tried to blow me fucking up. Are you going to help me out here or not? With this counter warning?’

  Kieran shook his head as he shoved his hands in his trouser pockets. ‘Look, I’ve already told ya, I don’t want sod all to do with it. I’m a model citizen me. I help old dears across the road, I could pretty much join the Sally Army.’

  Babs folded her arms. ‘Yeah, you’re so respectable that your receptionist doesn’t blink when I put a grenade on her desk.’

  ‘Well, obviously my key employees are aware of my past, that goes without saying and clearly I need the right bird on my front desk.’ He smiled slightly. ‘Canny girl she is. You know how important loyalty is to me.’

  Babs struck. ‘That’s touching. Now how about you show some loyalty to me?’

  She took a step towards him and pinched his cheek with affection as if he was a naughty boy. ‘I’ve wanted to do that since I shut the door in your face last year.’ Her hand dropped to her side. ‘You’ll always be my lad, no matter what. Now you’ve gotta decide - will I always be your second mum, no matter what? Coz let me tell you Kieran I’m in a right, tight spot here,’ her voice became husky, ‘and I don’t know what to do.’

  They stared at each other, a reversal of the first time they’d met in the washhouse all those years ago, with Babs doing the rescuing back then.

  Kieran looked shame-faced. ‘Alright, I’ll make some calls and see what I can do but it’ll just be a counter warning mind. And you’ll need some security—‘

  ‘Wha’cha mean? Like a bodyguard?’

  He shook his head. ‘More like someone to mind the fort back at your flat. Keep an eye on who’s coming and going.’

  Babs left satisfied. Not only was Kieran a man of his word, she also knew once he got involved, he wouldn’t be able to back out. For the first time in ages her face broke into a smile.

  Her boy had finally come back to her.

  43

  ‘Do you know what the penalty for mutiny on the high seas is, my dear?’ the Commander casually asked his granddaughter.

  Flo knew telling her granddad that she was no longer willing to help him get the gold back wasn’t going to be a walk in the park.

  She sat in the drawing room of the Commander’s villa in Notting Hill, surrounded by mementoes of his naval career including the model ships he made. And while it was a long time since he’d captained a ship, he treated everything in life as if he was still on the bridge giving orders. His eyes were flashing, his face so white with glacial a
nger it looked like the Titanic’s iceberg.

  Flo sighed. ‘No, I don’t.’

  The Commander stood up and poured a large glass of rum from a decanter. ‘You hang from the highest yardarm in the Royal Navy, that’s the reward for mutiny!’

  Flo ran her fingers through her long blonde hair and said quietly, ‘I don’t think they hang people for that anymore.’

  The rum in his glass looked like a rough sea because his hand was shaking with fury. ‘No, that’s right, they don’t!’ He took a slug from his glass. ‘No wonder the country’s going to the dogs!’

  He paced the room. ‘I suppose you’ve been got at by that family, have you? Is that it? They’ve filled your head with a lot of silly nonsense and lower class sob stories to get you on their side?’ The Commander always referred to the Millers as ‘that family’ rather than by their name, although he had some other, rather more fruity and naval words for them too.

  ‘No, that’s not it. It’s just I’m starting to think Mummy Babs is right. That gold is cursed. It’s caused murder and mayhem wherever it’s gone. I don’t want anything to do with it anymore’

  The Commander was shocked. ‘Mummy what?’

  Shit! She hadn’t meant that to slip out. ‘I mean Babs Miller.’

  She jumped when the Commander threw his glass into the fireplace where it shattered into pieces. Her granddad didn’t lose his rag often but when he did it was time to take cover from the incoming storm.

  ‘Mummy? You’re referring to that cockney fishwife, that East End oik, that Al Capone in petticoats, as your mother now are you? You think that family is your own family now? My word, it’s worse than I thought.’

  But Flo didn’t take cover. She clenched her fists. ‘Yeah, that’s right – mum! Coz she’s been more of a mother to me than that your daughter, that spineless bitch with paintbrushes up her rear end who hates me.’ She screeched with all the pent up emotion she’d been carrying since a child. ‘Hates the very sight of me because I look like my father.’

  Flo shook. If she was shouting the odds about home truths she was taking it all the way. ‘And while we’re on the subject of crime, perhaps you’d like to tell me how you came by that gold in the first place? Because you’ve never let on about that, have you Commander?’

  He seemed to wither slightly and avoided her eyes. ‘It was come by perfectly legally, I have all the paperwork.’

  ‘Yeah, I’ll bet you do. That’s why you got John Black to hide it up in that villains vault. Talking of which, how did you come to be an ol’ mucker of a Face like John Black in the first place?’

  The Commander looked unsteady on his feet. Flo loathed what she was doing to the one person who had loved her with all he had her whole life. But now was the time for the truth to have its way.

  ‘You meet a lot of different kinds of people in the navy,’ he replied, ‘and anyway…that’s none of your concern my girl.’

  Flo folded her arms in triumph. ‘That gold was bent from the off—’

  ‘The off?’ His mouth rippled in distaste. ‘How many times have I told you to stop using that awful, gutter slang?’

  She ignored him. ‘Admit it! You nicked it! So tell me then, what would Admiral Nelson up on his column have made of one his officers being a common thief? He’d have hung you from the yardarm! Because that’s what you are bruv, a common thief with a posher accent!’

  The Commander took a deep breath and walked over to fetch himself another glass of rum but his hand wasn’t shaking anymore. He turned to face his granddaughter. ‘That gold was for you, you know that. It was to be your inheritance. I wanted to leave something for my darling Florence.’

  The anger drained out of her. ‘I know gramps. But I don’t need it, nor do you. You’ve got money coming out of your ears. A house in the country and one in New York. We don’t need the trouble this gold is bringing. Please let it go.’

  He retook his seat next to the ship model he’d been making. ‘You really want me to forget about it?’

  Flo eagerly sat down at the table. ‘More precious than gold is that I’ve found the family I’ve always wanted. I can’t explain it. I’ve searched for such a long time to find the place I really belong. And I think I’ve found it.’

  The Commander was silent. Then he picked up the glue and a piece of the model ship. He bent to do his work as he gently said, ‘Well, you’d better tell me all about this new family of yours.’

  She was about to plunge on when she remembered something. ‘Oh yeah, this old biddy, calls herself Pearlie—‘

  The Commander stiffened. ‘Pearl?’ His voice sounded so strange Flo got worried about him. ‘Pearl Hennessey?’

  ‘Don’t know her last name.’ Flo peered at his paling face. ‘Do you know her?’

  He took a long swallow of his rum, the skin around his mouth strained. ‘Never heard of her before in my life. Now come on, tell me all about the Millers.’

  Flo didn’t believe him but she knew when to leave off.

  In a happy, eager voice she dived in. ‘Let’s start with nutter Tiffany who’s always spitting her dummy out…’

  When Babs got indoors the first thing that caught her eye was a jacket she’d never seen in her life on the coat rail. A Puffa jacket, black, bulked out with enough lagging to do the trick in a padded cell. Her body stiffened with fear. After the grenade she wasn’t taking any chances. Babs searched quickly for a makeshift weapon to do some serious damage. Problem was she couldn’t find anything. Silently she cursed a blue streak. She did a double take; on the floor was a sports bag with a carrier full of lager cans sitting on top. And from the sitting room came a voice she knew all too well:

  ‘Just think Tiff, it ain’t been that long since I was giving you a kicking in that scuzzy squat!’

  What the heck was she doing here? In a panic, Babs chucked her handbag down and threw the door open to find her youngest sitting on the sofa while Knox sat opposite. They were drinking from a bottle of duty free brandy.

  ‘What the hell are you doing here?’

  The big woman drained her glass. ‘Well, that’s a nice way to welcome your new security detail, I must say me ol’ mucker.’

  ‘Security detail?’

  Knox put her glass down, none too gently, on the table. ‘My little brother gave me a tinkle and told me to get tooled up, get my arse over to Babs’ and take care of business. And he’ll sort out any expenses.’

  Babs couldn’t believe her ears as she dropped, stunned, into an armchair. As much as she appreciated what this woman had done for her while they were banged up she didn’t want her anywhere near her life on the outside.

  ‘Kieran never said he was sending you.’

  Knox sent her a cold, hard stare that had made prisoners tremble and run for their hated cells. ‘You’d prefer someone else? You got a problem with me parking my good self on your sofa?’

  Babs took one look at her clenched fist and carefully answered, ‘’Course I ain’t.’ She had enough trouble on her hands without Knox doing a moody. ‘If Kieran had told me it was you I’d have made sure the kettle was on.’

  Knox’s fingers unrolled and she grinned as she settled back. She turned to Tiffany. ‘Bet your old mam here never told you I was her eyes and ears back doing bird, eh? Saved her neck a time or two I can tell ya.’

  Tiff gave her mum a sly smile that made Babs want to box her ears. ‘Nah, she never said a word. Told me she fought all her battles herself. Had the other girls quaking in their boots when they knew she was coming.’

  If only they knew, Babs thought. None of her family or Knox knew what she’d had to do while on remand in the first prison she’d been locked up in before Kieran had sorted out protection for her. And it wasn’t pretty.

  Knox threw her head back and barked with laughter. ‘As if! There was this one time—‘

  Babs smartly cut in, ‘How was it you happened to give my Tiff here the kicking of a lifetime?’

  Knox’s merriment drained away. ‘That wa
s business with another boss. Confidential, you get my drift? Which is what it’s gonna be between me, you and Kieran.’ She stood up and cracked her knuckles. ‘Now then, put your feet up and don’t worry about a thing. As you’ll remember from the slammer, no one manages argy-bargy better than your old mate Knox!’

  44

  Courtney held on tight to the glass of water as she awaited her fate in the headmistress’ PA’s office. Her tummy rumbled and flipped over threatening to make her chunder again. She bit the inside of her mouth managing to hold it down.

  Her defiance had long gone replaced by a feeling of doom. Mrs Elliot, the headmistress, had given her the bollocking of a lifetime and told her to wait outside her office while she called her family. There was only one way this was going to go – being expelled. Other girls at the school had parents who knew all the tricks when it came to defending their kids against the Elliots of this world. But her family only had one – deck the bastard. She knew when her Nanna Babs turned up there’d be a cry of, ‘You calling my grandkid a liar? I’ll show you what it’s like, you stuck up witch,’ and then Babs would pile in with her fists flying.

  It didn’t bare thinking about and was only going to end one way; expulsion for her while her grandmother was dragged out by half a dozen coppers.

  Courtney’s head sank when there was a knock at the door. Had to be Nanna Babs. Only when the door opened, it wasn’t. It was her Aunts Tiffany and Florence. She did a double take at the way they were kitted out.

  Flo wore a tweed, skirt suit, a headscarf tied under her chin, sensible shoes, gloves and string of pearls round her neck. She looked like she’d just come from inspecting her horses in the stables, proper Country Life. Tiffany, meanwhile, was following a pace behind in a black business suit with a briefcase. Her hedgehog hair was slicked down to hide the shaved sides. She winked at Courtney as she went by.

  Mrs Elliot’s PA stood up behind her desk her expression pinched obviously disconcerted with the way the newcomers had bowled into her office.