I quickly told her all about Dee Dee’s visit – what he wanted us to do, what he said he’d do to us if we didn’t.
‘Do you know a girl called Bianca, by the way?’ I asked her.
‘Bianca Spencer?’
‘Yeah, she’s Royce’s girlfriend—’
‘She’s not his girlfriend,’ Jaydie scoffed. ‘She just likes to think she is. I don’t actually know her personally, but I know her type. She’s one of those good girls who like to hang around with bad boys. She’s not from the Slade, she lives up by the golf course somewhere. You know – nice house, good school, well-off parents. She’s the kind of idiot who thinks it’s exciting to hang out with gangsters.’
‘She works for Jakes and Mortimer,’ I said. ‘I’m pretty sure that’s how Dee Dee found out about Raisa’s compensation case.’
‘Ah, well, that explains it,’ Jaydie said knowingly. ‘Royce probably knew all along who she worked for. I expect he followed her around for a bit, then chatted her up at a pub or a club or something. He would have charmed the pants off of her, let her think he was in love with her, then got her to tell him everything she knew about the case. Unless he needs anything else from her, he’s probably already dumped her by now.’
‘Sounds like a nice guy,’ I said.
‘It’s what they do, Trav. They use people.’
‘They hurt them too.’
She looked at me. ‘What are you and your grandad going to do? I mean, are you going to do what Dee Dee wants?’
‘Not if we can help it. Courtney’s like family to us. If we let Dee Dee get away with what he did to her . . . well, you just can’t, can you? You’ve got to do something about it. The trouble is . . .’
‘He’s Dee Dee,’ Jaydie said.
‘Yeah,’ I sighed bitterly. ‘The all-powerful Dee Dee . . . Dee Dee the Invincible.’
‘What if he’s not so all-powerful?’ Jaydie said tentatively.
I just looked at her.
‘What if he’s got a secret weakness?’ she went on. ‘Something that, if it came out, could bring him down? If someone knew what that secret was, and they had proof of it, they’d have Dee Dee in the palm of their hand. It’d be a hell of a dangerous thing to do, and if it went wrong . . . well, I don’t even want to think about what Dee Dee would do.’ Jaydie leaned across the table and took hold of my hand. ‘Would you be willing to take that risk?’
‘I’m a tough guy, remember?’ I said, smiling at her. ‘I was born to take risks.’
‘This isn’t a joke, Trav,’ she said seriously. ‘If you go up against Dee Dee with what I’ve got on him, and for some reason it all backfires, you could end up getting very badly hurt. He might even want to shut you up permanently.’
‘All right,’ I said, looking her in the eye. ‘Why don’t you just tell me what you’ve got on him first, and then we can take it from there.’
She looked around the restaurant again, checking that no one could overhear us, then she leaned in closer and started telling me about Dee Dee’s secret.
32
It was just over a year ago when Jaydie and Mason had found out that Dee Dee was a police informant. It had happened purely by chance. They very rarely went out anywhere together as a family, but on this particular day they’d been with their mum to see a specialist at the hospital. She’d recently discovered a small lump in her throat, and because she was so worried about it, Jaydie and Mason had gone with her to get the results of her tests. Their mum didn’t have a car, but she’d borrowed one from a friend for the day, and they’d left it in a multistorey car park a few streets away from the hospital.
‘It turned out that Mum’s lump was nothing to worry about,’ Jaydie explained. ‘It was just a cyst, nothing cancerous or anything, so when we left the hospital we were all in a pretty good mood. It was kind of nice all being out together, and Mum was really relieved that she wasn’t going to die after all, so we were all kind of messing about and having a bit of fun. We’d stopped off at the Pound Shop on the way back to the car park, and me and Mase had bought these stupid little Disney masks, you know, like Donald Duck or Mickey Mouse or something. I can’t remember what they were. We were just acting like kids, you know? We still had the masks on when we got to the car park. The car was on the top level, and while we were waiting for the lift, Mason suddenly decided to have a bet with Mum that we could run up the stairs and get to the top quicker than the lift. She bet him 50p that we couldn’t, and we started racing up the stairs. It was when we got to the third floor that we saw Dee Dee. He was with an older guy in a suit, the two of them kind of half hidden away at the end of a little corridor off the stairwell. When Mason stopped suddenly and looked at them, Dee Dee glared at him and told him to eff off. Luckily for us we had our masks on, so Dee Dee didn’t recognise us. He probably thought we were just a couple of dumb kids. So anyway, we carried on running up the stairs, and when we got to the top, Mason told me that the guy talking to Dee Dee was a cop. He said his name was Bull, Detective Inspector Ronnie Bull—’
‘Ronnie Bull ?’ I blurted out.
‘Shh!’ Jaydie hissed, glancing around. ‘Keep your voice down.’
‘Sorry,’ I said quietly, leaning in closer to her. ‘Was Mason sure it was Bull?’
She nodded. ‘He was absolutely positive. He said that everyone on the estate knew Ronnie Bull, and they all knew he was the dirtiest cop in Barton.’ She gave me a quizzical look. ‘How do you know him?’
‘I don’t. My grandad told me about him. Bull was involved in the investigation into my mum and dad’s car crash.’
‘Really?’
‘Grandad said there were rumours that Bull will do almost anything for the right price.’
‘They’re not just rumours,’ Jaydie said. ‘There’s nothing Ronnie Bull won’t do. He takes bribes, he gets paid by criminals to tip them off if they’re being investigated. He raids drug dealers, steals their gear, then sells it on to other dealers. He plants evidence, fits people up . . . he’s just as much a crook as the bad guys he’s supposed to be catching.’
‘What do you think he was doing with Dee Dee?’
‘The only possible explanation that me and Mase could come up with was that Dee Dee and Bull have got some kind of deal going. Dee Dee passes on information to Bull about certain guys he wants taken out, and in return Bull makes sure that Dee Dee and his crew are left alone. Bull probably gets regular payments from Dee Dee too.’
‘Can you prove any of this?’
‘Well, Mason always keeps a close eye on what’s going on around the estate, and after that day he started watching and listening even more carefully. Now that he knew about Dee Dee and Bull, a lot of stuff began to make sense, and the more Mase thought about it, the more he began piecing it all together – like how it was that Dee Dee’s business deals rarely get busted, but the cops always seem to know in advance when his rivals are planning big operations. None of it’s done too obviously. The cops don’t always bust his rivals’ deals, and sometimes members of Dee Dee’s crew get caught and taken down, but they’re mostly pretty low-ranking guys. Even if anyone did suspect there was a grass on the estate, no one would ever think it was Dee Dee. Everyone hates the cops, but it’s a well-known fact that Dee Dee absolutely despises them. He’d never do a deal with a cop, not in a million years.’
‘Right,’ I said, ‘but Mason’s 100% sure that Dee Dee’s a grass.’
‘We both are.’
‘But, like I said, you don’t have any proof.’
She shook her head. ‘We talked about whether or not we should do anything about it, but in the end Mason decided it wasn’t worth the risk. Even if we could get proof – which neither of us could work out how to do anyway – what were we going to do with it?’
‘Give it to his rivals,’ I said. ‘They’d take him out.’
‘And where would that leave us? Even if Dee Dee himself was gone, most of his crew would still be around, and eventually they’d find out it was me and
Mase who’d shopped Dee Dee.’
‘Yeah, but surely they’d be grateful to you for revealing him as a grass.’
Jaydie shook her head. ‘Grassing someone up, even someone who’s a grass himself, is the worst thing you can do on the Slade. If it ever got out that me and Mase had stitched up Dee Dee, our lives – and Mum’s – wouldn’t be worth living.’
‘But if Dee Dee was gone, your mum wouldn’t have to keep working at the tanning salon, would she?’
‘No, she wouldn’t,’ Jaydie agreed. ‘But if you had the choice between doing a crap job to pay off your debts or having your entire family branded as outcasts and living in fear for the rest of their lives, which one would you choose?’
‘Right. . .’ I said, nodding slowly, beginning to get it now. ‘So you and Mason decided to just leave things as they were?’
‘I know it sounds like the wrong thing to do, but all Mason ever cares about is what’s best for me and Mum.’
‘There’s nothing wrong with that.’
Jaydie lowered her eyes, suddenly looking ashamed of herself. ‘He made me swear on my life that I’d never tell anyone what we know about Dee Dee.’
‘Hey,’ I said gently, ‘it’s all right. You don’t have to feel bad about it. It’s not always possible to keep your promises. Stuff happens, things change . . . you wouldn’t have told me unless you had a good reason.’
She slowly looked up. ‘But that’s the thing, Trav. I’m not even sure why I am telling you. I mean, it was just . . . I don’t know. I just keep thinking about Mum and Courtney and the state Mason’s got himself into, and it’s all because of Drew bloody Devon. I’m just so sick of it all. Sick of him. I don’t know why, but I just had to tell you . . .’ She sighed. ‘I suppose I was kind of hoping that once you knew the truth about Dee Dee, maybe you and me could work something out together.’ She looked at me. ‘What do you reckon, Trav? Are you willing to give it a go?’
I didn’t even have to think about it.
‘The first thing I need to know,’ I said, ‘is how Dee Dee and Bull get in touch with each other.’
33
‘Dee Dee’s incredibly careful about using phones,’ Jaydie told me. ‘He doesn’t own a mobile, and he’ll only use someone else’s if it’s absolutely necessary.’
‘So how does he communicate with anyone?’ I asked.
‘He uses his people. They make all his calls for him, and if anyone wants to get in touch with him, they have to go through them.’
‘But he can’t use his people to get in touch with Bull, can he?’
‘There’s a phone box on the Slade, not far from where he lives. It’s the only one on the whole estate that actually works, and basically it belongs to Dee Dee. Everyone knows it’s his, and if anyone else uses it or vandalises it or anything, they’re soon made aware of their mistake. Dee Dee has a network of kids whose only job is to keep an eye on the phone box all the time. If anyone goes near it, they let him know.’
‘And you think that’s how he contacts Bull?’
‘Well, most people assume he uses the phone box for arranging business deals, which he probably does, but me and Mase were thinking about it and we suddenly realised that it was kind of weird how he feels safe using the phone box when he’s so paranoid about using any other phones. Mason reckoned the only answer was that he uses the phone box to contact Bull.’
‘Because Bull’s got the resources to make absolutely sure that the phone box isn’t bugged,’ I said.
‘Exactly. And Dee Dee knows he can trust Bull to keep the phone box clean because it’s just as important for Bull to keep their deal secret as it is for Dee Dee.’
‘So if we want to get evidence of Dee Dee’s connection with Bull, we need to get access to the phone box . . .’ I paused for a moment, thinking about the practicalities. It wasn’t hard to work out what needed to be done. The tricky bit was figuring out how to actually do it. ‘The best way of doing it,’ I told Jaydie, ‘would be to put a voice-activated recorder into the phone box, and somehow get a tracker on Dee Dee. So when Dee Dee calls Bull we can record what they’re talking about, and if they set up a meeting we’ll know when and where it’s going to be. Even if they use some kind of code, we can follow Dee Dee with the tracker to the meeting. Then all we’ve got to do is take photos of them together, or even better video the meeting, with audio if possible, and we’ve got all the evidence we need.’
Jaydie smiled. ‘Simple as that.’
‘Yeah . . .’
‘What do we do once we’ve got the evidence?’
‘I think we need to concentrate on getting it first. That’s going to be hard enough as it is. We can work out what to do with it later.’
‘Right,’ Jaydie said. ‘So what’s your plan?’
The problem was, I didn’t actually have a plan. The idea itself was simple enough, but I just couldn’t think how to put it into action. There was certainly no way that I could get into the phone box to plant the voice-activated recorder without being spotted, and I definitely couldn’t go anywhere near Dee Dee myself, so I couldn’t plant the tracker on him either. When I asked Jaydie if she thought Mason could do it, she was adamant that he mustn’t know anything about what we were doing.
‘If he knew what we were planning,’ she said, ‘he’d have a fit. Honestly, Trav, he’d go ballistic. We can’t tell him anything about this, OK?’
‘All right,’ I agreed.
‘You promise?’
‘I promise.’
‘Cross your heart and hope to die?’
‘Yes,’ I sighed. ‘But I can’t see how else we’re going to do it.’
‘It seems pretty obvious to me.’
I frowned at her, not getting what she meant.
‘I can do it,’ she said simply.
‘You?’
‘Yeah, why not?’
I just looked at her, not sure what to say.
‘You think I’m not capable of doing it?’ she said.
‘No, it’s not that . . .’
‘What is it then? Is it because I’m just a little girly? You think I’ll get scared and start blubbing or something?’
‘Of course not. I just don’t want you to get hurt, that’s all.’
She grinned. ‘So you do care about me after all.’
‘Yeah,’ I said seriously. ‘I care about you.’
‘Really?’
‘Yeah . . . I mean, you know . . .’
She reached across the table and took hold of my hand. ‘I can do it, Trav. Trust me. I’m a Slade girl. I know how to look after myself. And besides, I wouldn’t be doing it on my own anyway. Dee Dee and Mason aren’t the only ones on the estate with a crew. I’ve got my own little posse of trusted friends.’ She smiled. ‘We might not be as big and tough as Dee Dee’s mob, but what we lack in numbers and size we make up for in brains and sneakiness.’ She squeezed my hand. ‘I can do this, Travis. I want to do it.’
‘All right,’ I said. ‘Let’s do it.’
I don’t know how long we sat there, working out how Jaydie and her friends were going to get the job done, but when I suddenly remembered that my phone was still turned off, and I turned it back on and found three missed calls from Grandad, I was surprised to realise that it was gone ten o’clock.
‘Where the hell are you?’ Grandad said when I called him back. ‘And why’s your phone been turned off? I’ve been trying to ring you for ages.’
‘Sorry, Grandad. I turned it off to save the battery and forgot to turn it back on again. Are you still at the hospital?’
‘Yes, and you need to get yourself down here as soon as possible.’
‘Why, what’s happened?’ I said quickly. ‘Is Courtney all right?’
‘She’s taken a turn for the worse, Trav. It’s kind of complicated . . . I’ll explain everything when you get here. Just get in a taxi right now, OK?’
‘I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.’
‘What’s happened?’ Jaydie asked as I h
ung up.
‘I’m not sure,’ I said, getting up. ‘Grandad just said that Courtney’s taken a turn for the worse. I have to get going right now.’
‘Yeah, of course.’
‘Will you be OK getting home?’
Yeah, don’t worry about me. Just go.’
‘I’ll call you in the morning.’
‘OK.’
I hurried downstairs and rushed out into the street. The taxi rank was just along the road. There was a cab waiting, and no one in the queue. I jumped in and told the driver to take me to the hospital.
‘You got enough money, kid?’ the driver said.
I took out a ten-pound note and showed it to him. ‘All right?’
He nodded, put the taxi into gear and got going.
34
Grandad was waiting for me outside Courtney’s room when I got there. He quickly told me that just over an hour ago Courtney had suddenly developed an intensely painful headache. The doctors had immediately rushed her off for X-rays and a cranial CT scan, and at the moment she was resting quietly in her room, no visitors allowed.
‘Their main concern was that she might have developed a blood clot in her brain,’ Grandad explained. ‘It can happen sometimes after a head injury. It’s basically internal bleeding between the skull and the brain, and it can be really serious, possibly even fatal.’
My heart sank, and I could feel my legs going weak.
‘It’s OK, Trav,’ Grandad said gently, guiding me over to a chair and sitting me down. ‘So far the results are negative. There’s no sign of blood-clotting on the X-rays, but they’re still waiting for the results from the CT scan, which apparently is a more reliable test. I spoke to Dr Adams about ten minutes ago, and although he won’t really tell me anything at the moment, I get the feeling that he’s cautiously optimistic.’
I let out a sigh of relief.
‘She’s not out of the woods yet though,’ Grandad went on, sitting down next to me. ‘Even if the CT results are negative, they’re going to want to keep her in for a while yet.’ He leaned back and ran his fingers through his hair. He looked exhausted, and I felt bad for not having been here when he needed me. Not that I could have done much to help, but at least I could have shared some of his worry and concern for Courtney.