by Anna Smith
‘You better make sure you keep your trap shut, Mags,’ Jack said, grabbing her hair and pulling her head back. The lights from the street hit her eyes and Jack could see she was high as a kite.
‘I will, Jack. I will,’ she said. ‘Fuck, Jack. You’re hurting me.’
Her fear made him instantly hard and he pushed himself against her and pulled up her tiny leather skirt. Then he pushed her higher up against the wall and jerked her head around so she could see the inky river flowing below.
‘You’re going in there if you open your mouth about Tracy. Got it, bitch?’ Jack pulled her hair tight.
‘I won’t. Oh fuck, Jack. No way. I never even liked her. Don’t hurt me.’
With her free hand, she reached down between his legs and grabbed him, trying to open the zip of his trousers. ‘Come on. Just do it, Jack. You know you want to. I’ll never tell anyone. Never.’
Jack had turned her head back to face him. He looked at her scrawny neck, at her pale eyes ringed with heavy black make-up, and pushed her head downwards until she was kneeling, pulling at his trousers until she had him in her mouth. He groaned, while she did the only thing she was good for.
He watched the traffic move across the other side of the water, and the lights in the flats overlooking the river where people lived within the rules. He had been in a different world for so long, he could scarcely remember anything else.
Now, in his bed, the memory of the sordid encounter made Jack feel horny again. He turned his wife over to see if there was a flicker of interest, but she just let out a snore and pulled away from him.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Rosie had been waiting nearly twenty minutes and still no Mags. After her second cup of coffee in the cafe on Glasgow Green, she decided to take a walk around outside. It was freezing, the ground still hard and white with the frost from the morning, but at least it wasn’t raining. Something about the rain in this neck of the woods, with all the other forms of misery you saw of an afternoon, really put you in a black depression. But the watery sun was up there somewhere in the greyness, and Rosie was enjoying the walk and the sharp cold air. She was far enough away from the long stretch of road at the edge of the Green, where the hookers at the cheapest end of the market off London Road hung around during the day. Some of them were so out of their box on heroin they could barely stand up. But still the cars cruised the length of the road and back again, picking up one, sometimes two, girls at a time and dropping them off minutes later. Enough for one more hit, and the junkie boyfriends who pimped their girls would emerge from the shadows to take the cash.
Inside the tourist shop at the People’s Palace, just a short walk away, were books on Scottish life and history. Robust tales of strong, hard-working people who were the heart and soul of this great city. Rosie wondered who would tell the stories of the tragic girls who littered the streets – their miserable tales of self-destruction. Nobody wanted to hear those stories any more. But the police and some hookers, now that was a story worth telling.
As she stood waiting for Mags, Rosie was building up her own little guilt trip. She was using these girls too. Using them to get the scoop that every hack would kill for. But it was more than that for Rosie. Every one of the girls who hawked their bodies on these corners had been like Tracy Eadie at one time. Just a teenage kid staring out of a school snapshot, full of hopes and dreams. This story really would matter the day after it became chip-shop paper. This one might make a difference. She had to believe that . . .
It was Gemma she saw first, wrapped up in her red duffel coat, skipping alongside her mother, and looking for all the world like a normal, happy kid. She waved, and Rosie waved back. As they approached, Rosie saw that Mags looked even rougher than she had the day before. She was wearing the same clothes, the skimpy T-shirt leaving her naked midriff freezing in the chill.
‘Hi,’ Rosie smiled. ‘How you doing, Mags?’ She nodded to Gemma who smiled up at her with big, blue eyes. Rosie ruffled her hair.
‘I’m shattered,’ Mags said. ‘Totally fucked, man.’
Rosie glanced at Gemma who didn’t flinch at her mum’s language. She suggested they go inside for a coffee, and she gave Gemma money to go to the shop to buy sweets and a colouring book of Glasgow Green – the way it was in fairytales. Once the child was gone, she and Mags sat at a table near the window in the warmth of the Winter Gardens. The huge greenhouse building was filled with tropical plants from all over the world, and it was warm more to suit the plants than the customers. Tourists loved the Winter Gardens, but Rosie always felt a little claustrophobic among the giant plants that reminded her of The Day of The Triffids.
To Rosie’s surprise, Mags asked for tea this time, not a milkshake. But her hands were shaking so much that she spilled it when she tried to put it to her lips.
‘Fuckin’ hell.’ Mags wiped the table with a napkin. ‘I’m frazzled. Haven’t had a hit since six this morning. I can’t stay long, I need to get sorted.’ She sniffed. Junkies always had a permanent cold.
‘Okay,’ Rosie said. ‘Talk to me, Mags.’
Rosie reached into her pocket and brought out her dictaphone. She put it on the table and switched it on. She didn’t need to show Mags she was recording her, as the tape would still have picked up their voices from her pocket. But she wanted to be straight with the girl from the start. She was desperate to ask if she had the mobile phone with her, but decided it was better to get the story on tape first.
‘You’re fuckin’ jokin’.’ Mags’s reaction to the tape was predictable. ‘A tape recorder? No way, man. I’ll get fuckin’ done in.’
Rosie assured her that they would probably never use it. It was just for the lawyers, and if it ever came to the crunch and the story was told, the cops might fold if they knew the paper had a tape to back things up. Nonetheless, Rosie was resigned to doing without the tape, when, to her surprise, Mags decided to go along with it.
‘I got a dig last night,’ Mags said, sniffing and swallowing. ‘From one of the cops. Don’t know if you know him. Jack Prentice? I think that’s his name. He’s high up.’
Rosie tried not to react. She knew too well who DCI Prentice was. A bad bastard, according to Don. But him and Foxy came through the ranks together. That was why he’d been promoted to where he was. Used to be in the old vice squad.
‘He got me last night,’ Mags said. ‘When I was out workin’.’
‘Yeah?’ Rosie was intrigued that Prentice was arrogant enough to actually go out and duff up a hooker at a time like this. ‘What did he do?’
‘What did he do?’ Mags almost laughed at the question. ‘He fuckin’ threatened to drown me, that’s what. Had me nearly hangin’ over the wall into the Clyde. Said I’d get dumped in there if I opened my mouth about Tracy. I had to give him a blow-job to get him off me.’
Rosie looked at Mags’s face. She wasn’t much more than a kid. Mags managed to lift the cup this time. She was able to take a gulp of tea, then put it back down and lit a cigarette.
‘I’m tellin’ the truth, Rosie,’ she said. ‘I can show you where it was. Where it happened. I’ve gave Prentice more blow-jobs than I’ve had hot dinners.’ She laughed. ‘I shouldn’t say that, because that’s no right. I haven’t had a hot dinner in about six months.’ She laughed a phlegmy laugh and broke into a hacking cough.
Rosie shook her head and smiled at Mags’s black humour.
‘Mags.’ She leaned across the table. ‘Why don’t you start right now, and tell me everything. I know you don’t have a lot of time, but tell me how this all came about. You know, with the cops, and with Tracy Eadie.’ She sensed Mags was feeling anxious and knew she needed some heroin.
‘We can go and get you fixed up in a little while if you want,’ Rosie said. ‘I’ve got my car. I’ll take you, then we can go and talk some more. What do you think?’ Rosie knew Mags would agree, because there might be a few quid in it for her. If someone paid for her next hit, she wouldn’t have to go shoplifting in the afterno
on.
Mags looked at the tape recorder, then at Rosie. She drank another mouthful of tea and shifted in her seat.
‘Listen, Rosie,’ she said. ‘I’m rattlin’, man. Can we go and get fixed up first? I’ll be easier after that.’
Rosie looked at her. Mags’s leg was going like a piston, and the cigarette trembled in her nicotine-stained fingers.
‘No worries.’ Rosie put the tape recorder back in her pocket. ‘Let’s go. Just tell me where.’ She stood up. ‘But in and straight out, Mags. All right?’
‘I know.’
Rosie stayed in the car, Gemma in the back, anxiously watching the tenement close that Mags had just vanished into. She knew she shouldn’t be doing this. If McGuire found out she was out on her own, taking a junkie prostitute to score, he would hit the roof. After last year, when she nearly got herself killed in Northern Ireland by going off alone to a dangerous enclave for a meet with an IRA dissident, McGuire demanded to be kept posted about where she was at all times, if the story was at all dodgy. And this was certainly dodgy. She had driven to the red sandstone tenement a couple of streets off London Road where Mags said she could get herself sorted for the next few hours. Rosie was a little ashamed that she had even slipped her ten pounds to do it, but she kept assuring herself that it was a means to an end.
She turned round. Gemma was quietly colouring in the book, with bright green trees and birds flying around the sky. Not a hooker in sight in her little world. Rosie looked out of the window and watched the procession of junkies going in and out of the close. Waifs of girls and skinny boys with sunken eyes and hollow cheeks. They walked that bouncing walk that junkies do, their legs rubbery. They gibbered to each other as they made their way to wherever they were going, to get enough money to make their way back for more smack. Eventually Mags came out, sniffing and wiping her nose. She very quickly slipped into the car.
‘Let’s get out of here,’ she said. ‘I hate this place.’
Rosie watched as Mags leaned her head back, relaxed and calm. ‘What did you do?’ She whispered, so that Gemma wouldn’t hear.
‘I just smoked some smack,’ Mags said. ‘Just enough for a while. I’ve no jagged in about two years. I’m on a methadone programme, but it’s never enough. I’ll get somethin’ later. Let’s go into town.’ Her voice was slow.
They had to do a detour across the city because of roadworks, and drove past St George’s Cross, stopping at the traffic lights outside Rosie’s flat.
‘Do you live in a big house, Rosie?’ Gemma asked, suddenly sticking her head out of the window.
‘No,’ Rosie smiled. ‘Not big.’ She pointed to the building. ‘Actually, I live up there.’
‘Have you got a balcony?’
‘Yeah,’ Rosie said, realising she’d blundered by even hinting at where she lived when she had a hooker in the car. But Mags was looking out of the other window into the middle distance, not remotely interested.
They drove back down to Argyle Street and stopped outside a cafe under the Heileman’s Umbrella. They got out just as a train was thundering overhead. Gemma gasped, grabbing hold of Rosie’s hand.
‘It’s just the train, Gemma,’ Rosie reassured her, squeezing her hand.
‘What if it falls off ?’ Gemma said. ‘What if it falls off the rails,’ she said, pointing up.
‘It won’t,’ Rosie said. ‘It won’t fall off the rails,’ and felt the squeeze of the little fingers wrap around her hand.
In the cafe they ordered chips for Gemma and white rolls with sausage for themselves. Mags didn’t eat hers; she ordered a strawberry milkshake.
‘I need sweet things,’ she explained to Rosie, as though she was apologising. ‘It’s what you need.’
It was quiet in the cafe at that time of day and Rosie got Mags to start talking. She switched on the tape recorder, and watched the girl’s face as she told the story – in amazing detail for someone who must be out of her face most of the day. She asked her how she could remember so much.
‘I dunno. Sometimes you can really remember the most stupid details, yet other times you don’t know what day it is.’ She took sips from her milkshake and stroked the kid’s hair as she spoke.
Mags told her that she and another prostitute named Margo used to get pulled up by the cops nearly every night, and then one of them started asking for hand relief. Before the week was up they were doing a few cops most nights. Prentice was one of them and he was a real bastard sometimes, but he could also be quite nice as well. One time he gave Mags a tenner and dropped her off at her house.
It was a couple of months later that Prentice pulled her again and asked her if she wanted to go on a trip on his mate’s boat. She went, and took her pal Margo with her. There were three of them altogether, but she didn’t twig the other two were cops straight away as they were all doing cocaine in front of her. They had a good stash. She smiled and said that alone should have told her they were cops, because they always had the best dope. They all got out of their faces and the girls had sex with the three of them. Margo did two of them at once. She was nuts. The one with the dark hair, called Foxy, paid Mags and Margo an extra twenty quid to do a lesbian act, which they did from time to time for other punters anyway, so it was no big deal. It was only after the third time on the boat that they found out they were all cops. Even then, they didn’t know who Foxy was until, as she had said before, she saw him on the telly. She said the other guy’s name was Bill. He was a top man as well.
Rosie could barely believe her ears. How in the name of Christ would she ever be able to get this past the lawyers?
Mags stopped for a moment as Gemma shoved her book in front of her to show her the picture she’d been colouring in. She stroked the child’s hair again. ‘Brilliant, doll. That’s brilliant.’
‘So,’ Rosie said, gently. ‘Tell me about Tracy, Mags. How did all that come about.’
Mags started talking again. She said that Margo died of an overdose after jagging heroin for the first time in over a year. Mags didn’t go on the boat for a few weeks after that, but one night Prentice came to her again and asked who that wee girl was along the road standing in the doorway. Mags knew she was called Tracy and that she lived in a children’s home. She thought she was about fourteen, but she had seen her picking up punters night after night. And she’d told her that she was just turned sixteen. Some of the girls didn’t like young birds, because they were in big demand, but Mags had been friendly to her. Prentice gave her twenty quid and asked if he could get the girl to go on the boat. Just by herself this time. Mags didn’t think anything of it, because even though she had never been on her own with them, she wouldn’t have been worried if she had to go by herself. They were cops. It had always felt safe enough.
She didn’t tell him how young she thought Tracy was, or that she was from a children’s home.
When she told Tracy that she might get at least fifty quid and a bit of coke, she was up for it. That was the last time she saw her, getting into the car with Prentice months ago.
Mags went quiet and stared beyond Rosie and out into the street. Her cheeks were wet. ‘It’s my fault,’ she said. ‘If I didn’t get her into that, she would still be here. I should have said to Prentice she was only fourteen and maybe he wouldn’t have risked it. I shouldn’t have let her go on her own.’ She shook her head. ‘But I was that desperate for the money I didn’t care.’
Rosie handed her a flimsy napkin. She didn’t know what to say. She knew that sooner or later Tracy would have ended up like the rest of them. In a flat somewhere, surrounded by filth and squalor, jagging up or smoking. But at least she was at peace now, away from the horrors that took her into that world in the first place.
‘So,’ Mags said, ‘that’s the story. Well most of it.’
‘What do you mean most of it?’ Rosie finished her coffee.
Mags fidgeted around and lit up a cigarette. ‘Well, the word is that it’s no just cops,’ she said. ‘Since Tracy died, I’ve heard
the children’s home where she stayed was dodgy. Funny stuff goin’ on.’
Rosie leaned forward, making sure the tape was still running.
‘What do you mean, other people? What home?’
‘Woodbank. I don’t know exactly what goes on. Maybe it’s just shite.’ Mags shrugged. ‘But I heard it was judges and lawyers and people like that. I heard that the guy at the children’s home gives them boys and wee lassies.’
‘You can’t be serious, Mags. Kids? Jesus.’ Rosie’s disbelief was obvious.
‘I dunno.’ Mags looked at Rosie. ‘I only know what I did and who I was with. And I know Tracy. But I don’t know about anybody else for sure. But I heard that they get boys from the train station sometimes and they take them to some house in the country. It’s all posh people. Judges and stuff.’
‘Who told you this? Can I meet them?’
‘No.’ Mags shook her head emphatically. ‘I can’t trust none of the other girls. I can’t trust nobody. I could only trust Margo and she’s dead. I only knew Tracy a bit, and now she’s dead. I bring anyone else into this, then they might talk an’ I’ll be dead meat too.’
Rosie knew the chance of her ever using what Mags had just told her and getting it into the paper, was highly unlikely. One thing at a time, she decided. She needed to hear Tracy’s message on the mobile.
‘Okay,’ Rosie said. ‘Have a think about it. Right now the first thing is to work on the Tracy story.’ She stretched over and touched Mags’s hand. ‘What about the mobile? Have you got it with you?’
Mags went into her pocket and brought it out. Rosie watched as she punched in some numbers and stuck the phone to her ear. She listened to it, then nodded to Rosie.
‘That’s it,’ she said, calling it up again. ‘There’s some noise in the background, but you can hear Tracy’s voice.’ She handed over the phone.
Rosie immediately squeezed the tape recorder between her ear and the mobile to make sure it was recording, just in case she didn’t get a second chance to listen to it. Mags watched her. Rosie concentrated as she listened, and a chill ran through her.
