Looking for Trouble (21 page)

Up the final stairs to the dim corridor. The stairs cracked and squeaked as I climbed them.

It took a while to rouse her. Plenty of banging produced an irritated ‘Alright!’ from within.

She’d bleached her hair, cut it too. Before, it’d hung limp and mousy; now it was dried-out, a peculiar colour like egg-yolk. Seeing me, she made a swift movement to shut the door. I shoved back.

‘I just want to talk, Leanne.’

‘You’re off your fucking head, coming here.’ We were both still straining away at the door. I could tell I was stronger but I didn’t want to use force to get in.

‘Oh, come on,’ I said.

“S your funeral.’ She let go suddenly and moved back. I lurched forward but regained my balance. Caught a smirk on her face. She wore an outsize black T-shirt, proclaiming something was Naff-naff. She looked tired, older than her thirteen years.

The room stank of dustbin. It was a tip. The green cover had gone from the sofa, revealing tan plastic. Someone had slashed it and gouts of foam stuck out like fungus. Beer cans, take-away trays and papers, cigarette ends littered the carpet and formed little heaps at either end of the sofa and over round the sink. Several of JB’s pictures had fallen off the wall and lay curling on the floor.

On the mattress in the far corner, I could see someone sleeping. A crown of brown hair above the sleeping bag.

‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Should we talk somewhere else?’

‘Nah. They won’t be up for hours yet.’

Now she’d said it, I could see there were two people, but just one head visible.

‘Are they friends of...?’

‘Can’t keep your fucking nose out, can you? What’ve you come here for?’

I moved over to the table by the windows, pulled out a chair and sat down. I didn’t want a stand-up fight. Leanne leant against the sink.

‘What did Smiley say?’ I asked.

‘I told you, right; he just wanted to know if you’d been round asking questions and that.’ She crossed to the sofa, rummaged in a bag and came back with her cigarettes. She pulled one out and lit it.

‘Did he know my name?’

‘Dunno.’ She inhaled deeply.

‘Well, think about it. When he asked about me, did he describe me or what?’

She sighed and shifted her weight.

‘It’s important to me – I don’t know how much he knows about me. How he found out about me, anything.’

‘He didn’t say your name; just summat like, has anyone been round asking questions, a bird, let him know.’

‘What did you say?’

‘Well, I’m not going to tell him to piss off, am I? Said I’d let him know, if you came.’

A bluebottle landed on the table and began stroking away at a blob of congealed tomato sauce.

‘You going to tell him I came today?’

She shrugged, sucked on her cigarette and cleared her throat.

‘Depends,’ she coughed. ‘If I think he’ll find out, I’d best tell him anyway. I’ve got to watch out for myself, right.’

‘Did he tell you to ring me?’

‘What?’

‘Why did you ring me? Did he tell you to do that too?’

‘No, he fucking didn’t.’ Realisation dawned on her face. ‘You thought I was doing it for him, to frighten you off? I don’t work for him, you know, right. Well clear, I stay well clear. He wants me to – and I’m not talking about telephone work, neither.’ Leanne stopped abruptly; she’d said more than she’d wanted to.

‘I had to find out whether it was you warning me, or him threatening.’

‘Same difference, isn’t it, really?’ She dropped the cigarette into a styrofoam cup. It hissed. The bluebottle flew a lazy circle back to its breakfast,

‘Is Smiley dealing drugs?’

Her face closed in on itself, pinched. ‘I dunno. I don’t know anything about him.’ Wary now.

‘Cut the crap, Leanne. We both know he’s a pimp, we both know he’s done time, that he got carved up for grassing on his mates. You know if he’s involved in any other business?’

‘I mind my own; you ought to, an’ all. He’s bad news.’

‘Where can I find him?’

‘What?’ She was aghast.

‘If I can’t find out any other way, I’ll have to go straight to him.’

‘Yer cracked. He’d kill you. You haven’t got a clue, have you?’

‘Why are you protecting him?’

‘I’m not. I’m looking out for myself, right.’ She leant forward, yelling at me. ‘JB’s dead, Derek’s dead; you think I’m going to have a slack mouth?’

‘Who’s Derek?’

She averted her face, stared at the windows. There was no view out there; they were encrusted with decades of grime.

‘Just a mate of mine.’

‘He knew Smiley?’

She nodded, addressed the windows as she talked. ‘He did a bit of running around for him, got paid in kind. He couldn’t see it was doing his head in. Said it made him feel good. There’s not much makes you feel good round here.’

My eyes flicked to her bare arms; no sign of tracks, bruises. She noticed.

‘People smoke it nowadays. Don’t you watch the documentaries on telly?’ She gave a short laugh.

‘What happened to Derek?’

‘They fished him out of the Mersey, didn’t they...’

‘This last week? The paper said it was to do with the drug gangs.’

‘Don’t know what they said that for. Load of crap.’

‘What do you think happened?’

‘How should I know? He was a good mate, Derek. We was in care together. He always...’ Emotion got the better of her and her mouth formed a small o shape. She breathed slowly. I watched the bluebottle for a minute or so.

Leanne lit another cigarette.

‘Do you think Smiley had anything to do with it?’

She shrugged. Feigned indifference. ‘He kept giving him the stuff. It was just a matter of time.’

I sensed she was hiding again. From me, or the truth that she feared?

One of the bodies stirred and turned, pulling the cover from the other. A young boy; grubby T-shirt and shorts. Leanne’s age or maybe a bit older. And this was home. Did his mother know where he was?

Leanne walked over and tugged the cover over him again. ‘You better go.’ She flashed me a look of defiance.

‘You shouldn’t have come, anyway.’

I got the message. Stood up and pulled a tenner from my purse. Handed it over. She took it with the same sullen look. I kept my other hand firmly on my purse.

‘I found out where Martin’s staying,’ I said.

‘I don’t want to know.’

At the door, I turned back. ‘Leanne, thanks for the warning.’ I glanced at the room, the rubbish. ‘If there’s anything I can do...’

Her shrug said it all.

As I picked my way back through chunks of plaster and broken furniture, I thought back to when I was thirteen. I longed to be sixteen and grown up. I could never get enough to eat. I played in the school netball team. My friend and I whispered about periods, neither of us having experienced them yet, and both had a crush on our history teacher. We had uncontrollable giggling fits and invented our own secret code.

What had changed? Were there kids like Leanne around back then, surviving on the edge, underage and worldly-wise? Or were they a new breed, emerging from the weakened Welfare State at a time when hope and help were measured in terms of cost-effectiveness?

I paused at the fence. Peeped through to make sure all was quiet, before swinging aside the loose section and clambering through. Leanne might tell Smiley; she might not. At least I could be vigilant.

What was Smiley worried about? That I knew something about his involvement in JB’s ‘overdose’? JB was dead and buried. Three weeks had passed since his death. Without witnesses, evidence or even a motive, I wasn’t in any position to pursue it, even if I wanted to.

Perhaps he thought that JB had passed on information to me before he’d been silenced and Smiley was anxious to know if I was acting on it. Something to do with drugs? But what? Surely it’d be common knowledge on the streets that Smiley was supplying? How did Martin Hobbs fit into the picture? Had the two things got mixed up? Whilst looking for leads on Martin, had JB stumbled on something else?

I kept coming back to the missing hours between JB’s phone call, when he’d sounded chirpy and relaxed, about to go off asking round the clubs, and the following afternoon, when Leanne had seen Smiley hurrying away from the squat and had found JB dead. In those few hours he’d found out something serious enough to invite murder. Maybe I needed to retrace his footsteps – go round the clubs asking about him. I shuddered. Who wants to step into dead men’s shoes?

On the way to the car, I used a call-box to ring Nina Zaleski. Still no reply. My mole had gone AWOL.

My stomach was growling. It knew it was lunchtime.

I queued in a town centre sandwich bar and bought a cheese and chutney barmcake and a piece of flapjack. I ate in the car. The barmcake was middle-of-the-road but the flapjack was wicked; hundred per cent syrup, tacky as toffee. Great exercise for the old jaw muscles.

It took only ten minutes to get to Longsight. The industrial estate I wanted crouched behind the back of a large redbrick mill, surrounded by waste-ground. Some attempt at landscaping had been made, with mounds of grass here and there and the odd sickly sapling in its little cage. There were ten identical units – breeze block and corrugated iron. Unit 9 was Kincoma Products. I sat in the car for a few minutes. Somebody was in; the mesh security screen was ajar, though there were no other cars parked in front.

I rang the bell. The woman who answered was in her mid-twenties. She had a neat, triangular face and permed hair. She wore a tan cotton-knit short-sleeved top and an orange mini skirt with orange slingbacks. She had a gold cross round her neck.

‘Is it about the heating?’ she had a rich Irish accent.

‘No,’ I said. ‘Market Research.’

‘You want to talk to me?’ She raised her eyebrows.

‘Whoever’s here.’

‘I’m on my own right now, but if I’ll do...’ She didn’t ask for identification. I followed her. Her heels made a slapping sound on the concrete floor. ‘I thought you was the heating. It’s frigging perishing in here. I rang ‘em first thing.’

She was right. Inside, there was no hint of the warm weather. We were in a vast corrugated box. Dexion shelving supported racks of cardboard boxes. A narrow aisle ran down the centre of the building. The plastic corrugated skylights let in some daylight, but not enough to lift the gloom. She led me to a partitioned room, reception-cum-kitchen.

‘Sit down.’ She nodded at a scuffed bucket seat. ‘You’ll have a drink?’

‘Tea, please.’

She filled an electric kettle, spooned instant tea into matching red mugs. ‘I’ve had to have the oven on, try and thaw out a bit. It’s not just me. The stock needs to be kept at a reasonable temperature. Doesn’t like extremes, apparently.’

‘What sort of thing?’

‘Tapes, computer software, video training programmes. All high tech. Moderate temperatures, keep the dust down. Sugar?’

I shook my head. She handed me a mug, sat on another of the plastic seats – red to match the mugs, no doubt – and cradled her own drink. I got out my notepad and pen.

‘What’s this research, then?’

‘I’m doing a profile of small businesses; work patterns, effects of the recession, that sort of thing.’ Pretty vague, but she didn’t seem bothered.

‘Fire away.’

‘You deal in videos?’

‘A little bit. They’re training things, most of ‘em. But that’s only a little part, really. I’d say ninety per cent of the business was the computer software stuff.’

‘And how many staff work here?’

‘Well, just me,’

I marked my paper. ‘What sort of market are you catering for?’

She screwed up her nose. ‘I don’t know, really.’

‘Entertainment, adults only, educational?’

She burst out laughing. ‘They’re not that sort of video – good God, I wish they were. Give us something to watch when it’s slack. Look, I’ll show you.’ She went out of a door at the end of the long narrow kitchen and re-emerged with a couple of magazines. Computer magazines. She pointed out a couple of the small ads for training packages and software. The titles didn’t even use words I’d heard of. They certainly weren’t the porno movies I’d been expecting. That didn’t mean that everything here was all it seemed but, judging by her mirth, I reckoned this was all she knew about the business.

‘It’s mail order, see.’ She pointed to the advert. ‘I get these in and send the stock out by post. Everything’s entered on a computer and it tells me when to re-order stuff.’

‘So how about the recession; have there been any lay-offs, redundancies, short-time?’

‘Hell, no. There’s only me here, anyway.’

‘But it’s not your business?’

She snorted and kicked up her feet. ‘You kidding, or what? The boss comes in most days to check things out. He deals with the suppliers, any changes to the ads and that. I’m just the office girl. If he sacked me, he’d have to do all the work himself and I don’t think he’d be over the moon about that.’