by Linda Regan
But now it had gone one stage further. Chantelle was really worried.
It was Friday night, best night of the week for trade. She would carry on as usual. What else could she do? She was dressed and ready in a red PVC mini-skirt and a black basque with red ribbon threaded through, so her brown breasts and the edge of her nipples were on display. A black leatherette bomber jacket hung over her shoulders. She checked that the tops of her lacy black hold-up stockings were visible below her hemline – always good for trade. The outfit had to be chosen for luring punters, her best friend Luanne had told her, not for comfort. Luanne was experienced; she had been whoring for Yo-Yo for a long time. She only smoked grass, but that cost too, and Luanne had a twelve-year-old sister who needed to be fed and clothed and kept out of trouble. Luanne and her sister Alysha lived on the thirteenth floor of the Sparrow block. They had no mother, only a father who only came home to sleep off his drunkenness, and was, in Luanne’s words, just another liability. Luanne was a little older than Chantelle, and had also grown up on the estate. She taught Chantelle how to jump in a car; if it was blow job, which mostly they were, she could be in and out without removing anything if she dressed right. Or if you had to do the full business, and you had knickers tied at either side with ribbon, you just pulled the ribbon free and off came the lacies, straight into your pocket. Afterwards you were out of the car and into the alleyway, wipe yourself clean with the packet of baby wipes you carried in your pocket, and on went the lacies again for the next punter. And on the odd occasion while the punter was smoothing the rubber down his mostly pathetic and withering dick for an up-the-arse job, Luanne had taught her to make a mad dash for it. It filled her with such self-loathing. Mostly you were quicker than the punters and out of the car before they’d even put the rancid thing away. Some tried to catch her, but no one ever succeeded. She had the speed of a cheetah when it counted, and could outrun any of the fat bastards with their smelly cocks. The punters had to pay up front and they deserved to be ripped off. And they were hardly going to report her to the police. What would they say? Excuse me, officer, I’ve just been kerb-crawling and the bitch of a whore did a runner after I paid her to let me give her one up the arse! Yeah, right!
She stood in front of the mirror and let herself think about the time she and Jason lost their virginity to each other. They had fumbled nervously, without much tenderness at first because it was all so clumsy, but there was a connection between them, and it had grown. But that was just a memory now. She’d heard he was out, but what was the point of contacting him? She was so ashamed of what she had become, yet she knew she wouldn’t be able to stop.
She stared at her disillusioned face, and picked up the cheap perfume from the ledge. She was about to spray herself with it, to stave off the stink of the men that she had to shag before the night was over, when the doorbell sounded. The perfume shot out of her hand as fear hit her heart. Was that Yo-Yo, demanding money? He held her responsible for Aunt Haley disposing of his stash. His rules were if you lost gear, you paid three times its street value, and that was one hell of a lot of fucking. She’d given him all her earnings two days back, for the debt she owed for her own stuff and the interest on it, so she didn’t have any money. That meant she was going to get a beating. The last time Aunt Haley took the drugs she was hiding, and she couldn’t pay what he demanded, he had beaten her first with a strap and then with his huge fists. It put her out of action for five days, and for the first two she couldn’t see out of either eye.
The urgent ringing was followed by loud banging on the door.
The sound of the shower still running was doing Gran Sals’s nerves in. She’d put the tracksuit through the washing machine, but there were still traces of blood on it. She’d scrubbed the marks with the floor brush too, then covered the stains with all the salt she had in the house. No one knew more about removing bloodstains than she did, what with her grandson’s track record.
What if she was as nervous as this when the Feds came knocking, as she knew they would? Any crime around the area and Jason would be hauled out, whether or not the lad had been anywhere near the trouble. Tonight was different, though; he was covered in blood when he came in. Christ, that bloody Aviary estate, and that tart of a girlfriend of his! Hadn’t she told him over and over to take his opportunity and get out of here? He’d never had a thing in his life, and now the boy had a chance. Over her own dead body would Haley Gulati or that slag Chantelle prevent him taking up this scholarship. She didn’t care, she’d had her life. That was the real reason she had moved off the Aviary; everyone thought it was because she was afraid of the Brotherhood, but she laughed out loud at that; she wasn’t afraid of any of them scumbags. She was Sally Young, and Sally Young ran from no one. She’d moved to get Jason away from that crime-infested estate, and give the lad a fresh start when he came out; but he had done it himself. With a bit of help from his social worker, he had earned a bloody dancing scholarship. She was so proud of him, and she would fight tooth and nail to help him make the most of it.
Her first reaction when he came in earlier, covered in all that blood, was that he had been stabbed. When she realized it wasn’t his blood, all she felt was relief. She checked his clothes before washing them; there was no knife there, so he hadn’t been carrying. She asked no questions, just made him go straight into the shower before the police came sniffing. She’d tell them they weren’t welcome in her house, and they’d have to get a search warrant if they wanted to come in. That would buy the boy enough time to get the hell out of there.
Sals had a reputation for having a mouth on her. She called a spade a spade and cared nothing for what people thought of her; that was how she was, and at well over the half-century mark she wasn’t going to change. Besides, she had the right to say what she thought. She paid her own way through life, always had done. She’d never drawn the Social, not like some of the useless, idle buggers on these estates, and she’d never been in trouble with the police. She’d kept her elderly parents, taking extra cleaning jobs as the bills got bigger, and taken care of her daughter through her endless drug addiction, as well as the illegitimate son the daughter had brought her.
But Jason had been the pearl in the sea of heartache for her. All her life she had worked like a slave, hardly daring to dream of having her own stall in East Lane Market, and not having to clean other people’s stinking lavs and kitchens for a few measly quid. And Jason had made it happen for her. It was thanks to him that she now had her own china stall. She knew well enough he’d acquired it with his ill-gotten gains, but the boy had learned better eventually, and paid a hard price, in and out of young offenders’ and prison for years.
Each time he’d gone down he had given her money to look after herself, to make sure she was OK while he served his time. Each time she had told him no, she wouldn’t accept a market stall paid for by criminal activities. She only took the wad when he swore to her on his mother’s spirit that all the thieving and drug-pushing and guns were a thing of the past. And now he had got that scholarship to dancing school she could finally forgive him for all the terrible things he had done. She started her oddment china stall in East Lane Market, and she had never been happier. Now it was his turn to have something.
She gulped down a large mouthful of the scalding tea she had made to calm her nerves, nearly burning the roof of her mouth. The thought passed through her mind that there could be drops of blood somewhere outside, leading to the flat. The police dogs would come sniffing, and if they found blood she’d be arrested as an accessory to whatever they came after Jason for. But she would face that if she had to. Right now Jason had to get out, and her job was to make sure he did. She’d lost his mother before the tiny skeleton of a woman had celebrated her twenty-fifth birthday. It was no wonder he’d turned bad, he’d had it rotten hard as a nipper. Anyway, what could they pin on her, even if there was blood leading to her flat? It didn’t mean she’d done anything, and if she said Jason wasn’t there and she hadn’t
seen him for days, what could they do?
The water finally stopped running, and Jason’s frightened face poked out of the door. He was wearing only a towel, and his black mass of hair stood away from his head. He had a funny face, but he wasn’t a bad lad, not really.
‘Get a move on,’ she told him. ‘Those sirens never stop round here. Get dressed and get out. Make your way up west and stay there. I’ll say I’ve not seen you.’
She pressed a wad of cash into his hands. ‘This is from my stall, so it’s yours really. You’ll need it. I can earn it again.’
Before he had time to answer, she spoke again, her tone urgent. ‘Hurry up. I’m packing for market soon and you can’t be here tomorrow.’
THREE
No one on the Aviary Estate welcomed the Feds. If the residents themselves weren’t connected to crime, they were frightened of Brotherhood repercussions if they were seen talking to them. In the past, police presence around this estate had started riots.
But though the residents spoke to the Feds as little as possible and asked them no questions, curiosity still ran high. As soon as the police descended on the estate, the walkways on each block quickly filled with inquisitive tenants, keen to find out who was being arrested today or if there was any information they could sell on to make a crafty few quid.
The police, in their turn, were as nervous as any other workers who had to enter this estate. But they had to be seen to be fearless; their brief was never to enter the area without full body armour and back-up vans loaded with riot-shields and gas. No one had forgotten the Brixton riots twenty years ago, and no police wanted that again. But they were all fully aware that if anything did erupt, this was the likeliest place.
Over the years officers had been involved in many a melée around here. The most recent shooting, of PC Elvin, wasn’t fatal, but it had put the police firmly on their guard. It was believed that a member of the Brotherhood had shot PC Elvin in front of witnesses, but no witness had come forward, leaving the police in no doubt that the residents feared the Brotherhood more than the Feds.
The Brotherhood crew came in all hues, but skin colour aside they were all pretty similar: all violent bullies, all into pit bull dogs, and all with the same tattoo on their forearms in the shape of a knife with the letters BB across it. They wore bandanas over their faces, and identical dark sweatshirts with hoods covering their heads, so no one could ever be clear which of them was the culprit.
Only Stuart ‘Yo-Yo’ Reilly looked different. It was common knowledge that Reilly gave the orders and enjoyed watching torture and violence, but he only grubbed his own hands when counting the money their criminal activities acquired.
The police officer who had been shot had lived and made a full recovery, but remembered nothing of the incident. For the moment, a Brotherhood member had got away with attempted murder yet again. But now the police were more determined than ever to bring this gang down. They wanted justice for PC Elvin, and they also wanted to win back the trust and respect that was long gone on this estate, and make it a safe place for the innocent families that lived there.
Tonight that seemed a long way off. A suspected murder had been called in. They arrived on the estate in bullet-proof vests and body armour, with sniffer dogs straining at the leash.
It was now ten-thirty on Friday evening, and kids, some as young as five or six, others perhaps fourteen, were cycling up and down, getting as near to the murder scene as they could.
DS Stephanie Green and DI Georgia Johnson were fully aware that the kids were paid by the older gang members, to keep them informed of what was going on and what the Feds were up to. These kids knew only too well how to play the innocent and get what they wanted.
The area around the back of Sparrow block had been cordoned off, and was guarded by uniformed police. A white tent had been erected to preserve the body, and a full team of forensic officers, dressed from head to toe in blue plastic overalls, fought the rain and wind as they scraped every spot of blood and picked up every loose thread of cotton, cigarette butt and dirt from a shoe-print for yards around the place where the woman had been stabbed to death.
‘Stay away from that cordon,’ a gangly detective shouted to a small black boy with a running nose and a bicycle too big for his short, thin, grubby legs. The kid was trying to get a closer look before the final peg was hammered into the base of the tent.
‘Who’s dead, mate?’ the boy called.
‘That’s what we’re trying to find out,’ came the reply. ‘And I’m not your mate. You can call me Detective Constable Peacock.’
Another cyclist drew up beside the skinny kid: a black girl with chin-length plaited corn-row hair and a pretty face. ‘He looks more like a penguin than a peacock,’ she giggled. The pair turned their bikes and rode off in another direction.
DS Stephanie and DI Georgia Johnson knew from bitter experience that it was a bad idea to park anywhere near the estate. CID officers’ private cars always finished up with scratches down their paintwork. They had parked a few streets away, and were heading for the crime scene on foot. Kids milled around them as they walked.
Georgia looked up, studying the dozen or so run-down high-rise blocks. The murder had taken place around the back of the second along the street. A new, low-rise area was being built adjacent to the high-rises, and Georgia noticed an empty derelict block next to it.
‘Those derelicts are only yards away from where the murder happened,’ she said to Stephanie, pointing to the cordon which stretched from the corner of the Sparrow block to the edge of the alley.
Stephanie’s gaze followed Georgia’s pointing finger. ‘I was just thinking the same, guv. I’ll send a uniform team into them to search. If anyone was hanging around in there at the time of the murder, they couldn’t have missed hearing or seeing something.’
‘Unless they were the ones doing it,’ Georgia suggested. ‘It’s Brotherhood territory. It’ll be their crime.’ She shook her head. ‘We’d bloody better get a result on this one.’
Normally this amount of police presence would have acted as an incitement: buckets of water or urine emptied from high balconies, bricks, stones, and sticks hurled down, anything to let the Feds know they weren’t welcome. Some of the residents had learned that a perk of living in a high-rise was tossing anything they liked at the police on the ground; it was almost impossible for the Feds to work out which floor it came from. It had almost become a battle of wills. Officers on the ground who got soaked by flying urine often set off to run up ten flights of stairs, while others stood by the lift, thinking they could catch the offender if they tried to escape that way. But it was invariably to no avail; either the culprit scarpered up the fire escape and hid in one of the many alcoves on the roof, or they crossed the roof and went down by another route. Or, if they made it to the bottom of one of the other fire exits, they headed across the estate to the famous tunnel at the back of the new low-rise. This was a favourite with kids, who could wriggle inside the tunnel, knowing the space was too small for the Feds to get in and get them.
For now all was quiet, bar the kids riding around on bicycles, trying to suss information to sell on to the Elders. Word had gone round and residents were still leaning over their balconies to watch, but so far no one had said they had seen or heard anything.
Stephanie and Georgia were heading past the Wren block toward the Sparrow. ‘Judging by this silence,’ Stephanie said quietly, ‘they’re not as anti police presence as usual tonight.’
‘Give it time,’ Georgia said flatly.
Stephanie shook her head. ‘I’d say they are not happy about this murder. My guess is, it’s a well-liked resident.’
Georgia nodded agreement. ‘Someone’s mother, or wife, or sister?’ she said, looking up at the sea of people leaning over the thirteen walkway railings, waiting and wondering. ‘Maybe even a rival gang member’s mother?’
Stephanie pointed to a couple of phone booths on the corner, by the third block. ‘Where the 999
call came from?’ she suggested. ‘They said it was phone box.’
‘Most likely,’ Georgia agreed. ‘If it’s working.’
They had reached the Sparrow, and Stephanie asked one of the forensic team to take a look at the phone booths and see if they could lift any DNA.
‘Interesting that they didn’t call from a domestic phone, or withhold a number on a mobile,’ Georgia said.
‘Isn’t it just?’ Stephanie instructed trainee Detective Constable Hank Peacock to widen the police cordon to include the phone boxes. Georgia hid a smile as she saw him blush before he went off.
‘Who wouldn’t be carrying a mobile? And why?’ Stephanie mused.
‘An older resident who doesn’t use one, and is afraid to give their name?’ Georgia flicked her eyes in the direction of Hank Peacock, then back at Stephanie. She liked to keep up with the station gossip, and knew Stephanie’s reputation for bedding the male detectives was well deserved. Stephanie grinned and shook her head. ‘No way, José. He’s much too young.’
They reached the phone box, and Georgia slipped on her blue forensic gloves before lifting the first receiver. ‘I’m pleased to hear it,’ she teased her sergeant.
She dialled a number and nodded her head. ‘Withheld number on the last call,’ she said. ‘This is the booth the call came from.’ She stepped aside to allow the two forensic officers to get in.
‘Whoever called it in, they want to stay anonymous,’ Trainee DC Peacock said.
Georgia exchanged amused glances with Stephanie. Talk about stating the obvious.
‘I’m just surprised the phone is working,’ Stephanie commented.
The uniformed officers finished cordoning the area around the two payphones. A group of youths on bicycles began to circle the area like a pack of wolves. Stephanie stepped towards them. The one in front had long skinny legs and a parka at least seven sizes too big. ‘Have you been around here all night?’ she asked.
