Authors: Helen Black
‘Whereas this case is just such fun!’ she said aloud.
She pulled her car over and got out. Was it her imagination or was it getting hotter as the night wore on?
It was past ten when Lilly entered the all-night café and ordered a can of Coke. She had walked half the length of Tye Cross in search of Angie, but the sticky night air was intolerable. She hoped Angie would head inside for a cool drink at some stage.
Lilly sat at the same table as last night, which afforded her a view of the street. Everything was still. Without a breeze the rubbish lay motionless on the pavement and in doorways. The girls leaned against walls or sat on the kerbs waiting for the few men who could be bothered to buy sex in the heat.
Lilly wondered what her own life would have been like had it not been for her mother’s determination that her only daughter would succeed. When her father walked out, leaving only his dirty washing and a mountain of debts, they had lost their home and moved to a council estate in Leeds city centre.
Why had he done that? Why had he left his daughter to live in a shit-hole? How could he sleep at night? He had put it and her out of his mind, that’s how. No wonder she had never seen him again.
Elsa, Lilly’s mother, was made of sterner stuff. She had taken one look at the decaying comprehensive only four minutes from the end of their new street and determined that Lilly would continue to attend St Mary’s, a small all-girls Catholic school run by the formidable Sister Joan. An eight o’clock start to catch two separate buses across town and the incidental fares did not discourage Elsa, who worked as a machinist in a textile factory and as an office cleaner in the evenings.
Lilly had raged against her mother’s decision and longed to mix with the local girls who smoked Embassy Regal and scrawled the names of their boyfriends on their bags. They didn’t care about trips to museums and ballet lessons on Saturday mornings. They didn’t have to do their homework, and if anyone had called them ‘council house scum’ they would have punched them in the mouth.
Immune to Lilly’s pleas, Elsa would not give in.
‘You’re a bright girl and I won’t give up on you.’
At the time, Lilly had not understood what motivated her mother to expose her to the uncharitable opinions of her classmates and their parents, but later she saw that Elsa had wanted more for her daughter than a life in the factories and worse. If Lilly was ridiculed for her shabby coat then so be it. A small price to pay for a better future.
On the morning Lilly left home to take up her place at Cambridge University, Elsa had pecked her daughter on the cheek as if she were going no further than the corner shop, but as Lilly climbed onto the train with her huge rucksack Elsa had let the tears come and shouted,
‘This is your chance, Lilly.’
Three days after Lilly graduated her mother died. Elsa’s work was finished and she needed to rest.
Lilly sighed. Elsa would have made a fantastic granny for Sam, with all the time in the world for stories and jigsaws. Lord knows what she would make of Lilly leaving him with every Tom, Dick and Harry so that she could sit in this Godforsaken place waiting for a prostitute. Maybe she would have understood what Lilly was trying to do. Maybe not.
‘I suppose you’re waiting on me.’
Lilly looked up and smiled at Angie.
Angie winced as she sat down and her tea sloshed into the saucer. ‘Shite.’
‘You okay?’ asked Lilly.
‘Got a rough one earlier,’ said Angie.
Lilly nodded but could only guess at the injuries suffered by the other woman.
‘Yesterday you said you knew Max Hardy.’
Angie lit a cigarette. ‘Aye. A waste of space if ever there was one.’
Lilly didn’t respond, letting Angie fill in the details.
‘A drug dealer and a pimp, making money from misery. The lowest of the low.’
Lilly showed her the photograph of Grace. ‘Did you know this woman?’
Angie nodded and shifted uncomfortably in her seat. Again, Lilly waited.
‘I worked with her in a massage parlour a while back, but the owner hiked up his cut so I left. Greedy bastard.’
‘Did you know she’d been killed?’ asked Lilly.
‘Aye. It’s a terrible shame,’ said Angie.
‘Were you surprised?’
Angie poured the spilled tea from the dirty saucer back into her cup. ‘It happens. Sometimes you get a headcase.’ She slurped a mouthful and continued. ‘She’d a habit as well so maybe she owed money to one of the dealers.’
‘She was clean when she died,’ said Lilly.
Angie raised her threadbare eyebrows. ‘Aye? She talked about it a lot, giving up the drugs. That’s why I liked her, I suppose, not like the others who’re only happy if they get a hit. She wanted to get away, make a new life.’
‘I should tell you, Angie, that I’m a solicitor. I have nothing to do with the police or social services. I represent one of Grace’s daughters,’ said Lilly.
Angie nodded as if she’d thought as much. ‘The one that drank the bleach? God love her, she was like a second mother to the little ones. I mean Grace was no angel, she talked about a new start but she was out of it a lot of the time. Sometimes the eldest would meet her to get some money for the kids’ tea before Grace blew the lot.’
Angie had confirmed what Lilly suspected from the start, that Kelsey had been integral in keeping the family together, but that simply strengthened her motive for killing Grace when she dismantled what Kelsey had fought to preserve.
‘Was Max Grace’s pimp?’ asked Lilly.
‘She said not, but there was something between them.’
‘Was he violent to her?’
Angie stretched for the ashtray, the movement making her scowl. She left it out of her reach and tapped her ash on the floor.
‘Only once as far as I know, and that was recent. She came to work black and blue after a real beating. I asked her who’d done it and she said Max, but that it was her fault. He found out she was trying to move away and got nasty, started smashing up her flat.’
‘Why?’ Lilly asked.
‘Didn’t want her to leave, I suppose. Grace told him she didn’t care what he thought about it and if he tried to stop her she’d shop him.’
‘For what?’
Angie shrugged and ground out her dog-end under her toe.
‘I just bloody well swept up,’ the owner shouted from behind his greasy counter.
With her back still to him, Angie gave him the finger. ‘Whatever it was must have been pretty serious cos Grace said he lost the plot and cleaned the floor with her face.’
‘Did she go to the police?’ Lilly asked.
‘Nah. The next I heard she’d put the kids in care.’
That dirty Russian motherfucker. What gave him the right to make threats?
Max felt as if his body were on fire as the fury coursed through him. He reached into his pocket for his knife. The blade felt smooth and cool in his palm. He’d show Eric what happened to those who crossed him.
He’d cut him like a pig if he ever tried it again.
Max breathed hard and reached into another pocket. The rock was wrapped in cling film and had a slight bluish tinge, like a fresh bruise. He rolled it between his thumb and his forefinger.
A few weeks before she died, Grace had told him to knock it on the head. ‘You think you can take it or leave it, but you can’t. It takes over.’
Another one who thought she could tell him what to do. But she learned the hard way that nothing and no one controlled Max Hardy.
The pipe was still hot when Max put it back into his pocket. The effects of the crack were already wearing off and he would happily have smoked another but he only ever carried one rock at a time. It was a golden rule, and discipline was easy for the strong-minded. Only the weak were out of control.
Through the windscreen of the BMW he saw one of Fat Eric’s girls leave the club and head over the road to the all-night café. She remained in the eye-line of the man on the door at all times. When she flicked her hair out of her eyes he could see it was Mandy.
He waited for a few minutes until she came out, clutching a sandwich half wrapped in a paper bag.
‘Hey, Mandy,’ he called.
The woman looked up and smiled but she didn’t approach the car.
‘Come here a second, baby,’ he said.
Mandy hesitated and glanced up at the silent observer on the door of the club. He had turned away momentarily to speak to a group of drunken young men trying to gain access to some pliant women.
She moved towards the car and bent her head towards Max. Her breath smelled of salty bacon. It made Max feel sick.
‘Someone was asking about me,’ he said.
It was a statement, not a question, which Mandy ignored.
‘Do you know who she was?’ Max asked.
‘Maybe,’ she said.
Max sighed and opened his glove compartment. Inside was a kilo of heroin measured out into clear plastic bags ready to be sold individually for £10. He pressed one into Mandy’s palm and closed her fingers around it.
Although not an addict, Mandy, like most of Eric’s girls, couldn’t resist an opportunity to numb her brain for just a few hours. Anticipating the small taste of freedom it offered, Mandy tucked the brown into the greasy paper bag.
‘I no idea who she is …’
Max kissed his teeth and considered breaking one of Mandy’s fingers.
‘… but she sitting right there.’
Max followed Mandy’s eye-line to the window of the all-night café, where an attractive redhead was getting up to leave.
She was one of those women who don’t try too hard. Who don’t need to.
Max was still appreciating the woman’s good looks when he followed her to her car.
The air from the open window fanned her face. Lilly held up her hair at the nape of her neck and felt the delicious chill as the wind caressed the dampness at her hairline.
She checked the mirror and tutted at the BMW that had been hanging on to her tailgate all the way from Tye Cross.
‘Do you want to sit in my lap?’ she muttered, and pressed the brake to force the driver to slow down and keep his distance.
When she arrived at the Clayhill Estate she sent a text to Jack asking him to meet her at number 58, and began the climb up the stairs, her legs heavy in the heat. The walkway up ahead was empty and silent and Lilly wished she’d arranged to meet Jack tomorrow. She’d been so desperate to prove Mrs Mitchell wrong she hadn’t considered how foolish it was to parade around the estate in the dark. Not long ago someone had been murdered here. She forced herself to turn her mind to the case.
Angie had confirmed that Grace was desperate to get away, but from what? The obvious answer was Max. She wanted to escape from him enough to make numerous applications for a housing transfer and even to threaten Max with the police when he discovered her plan. What was he doing to Grace that he hadn’t done a thousand times before? What was sufficiently bad to stand out in a life already heaped high with crap?
Behind her Lilly heard the sound of breaking glass as if a bottle had been smashed. She turned to the noise and caught sight of a figure darting into the shadows.
‘Is anyone there?’ Lilly’s voice was tight. ‘Jack, is that you?’
She peered into the gloom and tried to make sense of the shapes. She could see nothing but was sure she could hear someone panting.
‘I’m calling the police,’ said Lilly, and waved her mobile as if to prove her intentions.
A dark form inched towards her, the rasping louder. Lilly screamed and dropped her phone as it ran across her path, a tongue lolling in the heat.
A dog. A bloody dog. The estate was full of them, roaming from burger box to bin. Most were left to their own devices but well-loved. Just like the kids.
Lilly laughed at her own stupidity and nervousness. She was from an estate herself and knew that danger didn’t lurk in every corner. St George’s Estate, where she had grown up, had housed every cliché from burning tyres in the play area to the man at 37 who slid from an upstairs window onto the garage door below to evade the police. So regular was his unorthodox exit that Lilly couldn’t remember the door ever being closed.
The locals called the estate ‘The Dragon’, alluding as much to the heroin that was rife on its streets as to any connection to England’s patron saint. Rough it certainly was, yet Lilly had never come to harm aside from the odd wallop for going to the ‘posh’ school.
Her dad had been right, the south
was
making her soft.
She paused to catch her breath outside Grace’s flat and her thoughts returned to Kelsey. ‘If I find out what you’re up to, Max, I’ll find out why Grace had to die,’ she said to herself.
‘There ain’t nothing to find out, lady.’
Lilly spun round at the sound of the voice behind her. Too late she tried to push past the black man blocking her path. Instead he grabbed her shoulders and leaned into her.
‘Who are you?’ Lilly whispered, her shoulder blades pressed against the door.
As he continued to apply pressure the door gave way and Lilly fell backwards into the flat.
‘I’m your worst fucking nightmare.’
Jack reread Lilly’s text and deleted it. He was determined not to spend the next two hours analysing the six-word message for hidden meaning.
He’d tried to tell her that he couldn’t push this line of inquiry any more but she wouldn’t listen. She never did.
And now she wanted him over there. At this hour. Ridiculous. He went back to the cookery channel, where a gremlin of a presenter in strawberry-pink hot pants jumped up and down while ‘an internationally renowned’ chef called John Something-or-other attempted to make a tasty and nutritious meal for six out of a tin of tomatoes, a bag of frozen peas and a mango.
He switched channels and tried to interest himself in a rerun of
University Challenge
.
‘In Euripedes’
Hecuba
, who killed the Trojan Queen’s son, Polydorus, and threw his body into the sea?’
Hmmm.
Anyhow, Lilly only wanted to prove the old battle- axe at number 62 was lying, and bang on some more about Max Hardy. Frankly he could do without it. The Chief Super had explicitly said to keep resources to a minimum, which definitely ruled out overtime on a Sunday night.