‘I told you, she has learning difficulties. She can’t barely write her own name, bless her. And computers are out of her fucking league. Look at her room, she’s nearly twelve and it’s like a four year old’s! Someone’s got her, took her off the street, and you lot are fucking around here!’
‘Stop it, Mum! Stop it. She could just be lost.’
Joanie looked at her son in incredulity.
‘The whole of this estate is out looking for her and you think she might still be lost? It wouldn’t surprise me if they found Lord fucking Lucan, they’ve looked so bloody hard! Everyone knows her so where the fuck is she? Where is my baby!’
She was pulling her hair and screaming now.
The WPC took Jon Jon aside and said, ‘I’m sorry, mate, but it’s time to call in a doctor.’
He nodded sadly. His mother’s fear was communicating itself to them all now.
Joanie was sedated at eight thirty-five in the morning. It took them over an hour to talk her into having the injection. Jon Jon was glad they had done it. The local news was carrying the story and the way it was worded there was no doubt in anyone’s mind that Kira Brewer was not coming home. There were even frogmen dragging the river.
He went into his own room and cried like a baby.
Paulie Martin watched the news in his girlfriend’s flat. She was young and pretty with thick blonde hair and pale blue eyes. She was slim to the point of emaciation but she had boobs to die for. She made him a mug of strong coffee and then joined him in the large leather chair as he watched the news.
‘Poor Joanie, eh?’
He nodded.
‘If anything’s happened to that child she’ll go off her head, she loves her so much.’
He nodded again, not at all happy with the way this girl was talking about Joanie. Joanie was his private friend. He wondered how much Jenny knew about the two of them, and how much she was trying to find out. He knew how whores gossiped.
‘She was so good to me when I had my abortion.’
Paulie’s ears pricked up at her words.
‘What abortion?’
He had one eye on the TV now and one on Jenny.
She laughed.
‘Don’t worry, it wasn’t yours! No stray Martins went AWOL.’
And none would in the future. She had just seen the last of him but he wasn’t about to tell her that.
‘I was pregnant last year, by me bloke. Anyway he didn’t want to know and neither did I to be honest. So I had it taken away, and the funny thing was I felt really bad afterwards, crying and all. Anyway, Joanie helped me out, explained about hormones and that.’
She looked sad for a few moments.
‘Joanie said she considered it when she found out about Kira but couldn’t do it. Said she loved the father too much and it was probably all she would ever get from him.’
Jenny laughed.
‘I don’t think he was exactly Mr Reliable, know what I mean? But she said she had been with him off and on for years.’
She got up, stretched then said innocently, ‘I like Joanie, I wish she was my mother. Those kids of hers are her world, and that youngest one . . .’
She sighed.
‘Well, if anything’s happened to her, it’ll kill Joanie, won’t it?’
‘Did she say who the father was?’
The girl shook her head.
‘Nah. I’m going for a bath. I might pop round later and see how she is. You can let yourself out.’
He nodded.
In his heart he had always wondered if Kira was his. It had kept him away from Joanie at the time because of Sylvia. If she’d thought he had fathered a child there would have been hell to pay and he had waited for Joanie to put the hard word on him. But she hadn’t and he had breathed a sigh of relief and picked up where he’d left off.
Now he shook his head thoughtfully. She would have told him, wouldn’t she? He’d thought it had been a punter, like the other kids’ dads. Some men picked up brass and lived off them for a few months then went back to their real lives.
Paulie didn’t put himself into that category, of course.
The picture of Kira was on the screen again. He remembered her laughing face; remembered her sitting on his lap as a toddler and smiling up at him. Remembered how much Joanie and the others had loved her. He saw her again with her bright eyes when he had cooked her breakfast a few weeks earlier. Remembered her concern when Joanie had been clumped by Todd McArthur.
She was a nice kid.
The picture on the screen was a school photograph and he had seen it many times in Joanie’s without really taking it in until now. He had known this child since she was a baby. He could see her in his mind’s eye, with the other two, helping to plan the fantasy dinner parties and laughing at her mother’s mad schemes.
Joanie was a good mother. He had always known that it was part of her attraction as far as he was concerned. Her house had been the antithesis of his own home.
The kids had always come first in his house, which meant they came before him. Sylvia had used them that way. Whereas in Joanie’s they had always come first, but he had joint first with them. Because the kids had liked him there for the simple reason he made their mother happy. They loved her so much they wanted what she wanted.
If Kira had been his, Joanie would have told him, surely?
But common sense was telling him she wouldn’t, because if she had, she would have lost him.
When Jenny got out of the bath he was still sitting in the chair and he had obviously been crying. He was also on the phone arranging a meet for eleven that morning. When she came out of the kitchen he was gone.
No goodbye, no nothing.
More to the point, no bloody money either! But that was Paulie Martin all over.
Chapter Twelve
DI Baxter looked at Joanie and felt a pity for her he didn’t know he had inside him. She had aged twenty years overnight; she was grey-faced and her eyes looked dead. But looking at her closely he saw the same terror he had seen in the eyes of every victim he had dealt with throughout his long career as a policeman.
He had never liked her, or any of her family for that matter, but even that natural antipathy couldn’t stop him feeling sorry for her now. She was already defeated; already the hope was draining from her. He could see it in her eyes, in her whole demeanour.
He had until now loathed them all, the Brewers. Joanie had given birth over the years to a one-family crime wave. Jon Jon was a drug-dealing violent waster, and Jeanette had been a pain in the arse since she’d first started shop-lifting. Her name was also a byword for running away. ‘Doing a Brewer’ was the local station joke. Only now it wasn’t funny at all. Jeanette had been a pain all right, but Joanie had never looked like this when her elder daughter had gone on the trot.
When he had first heard Kira’s name Baxter had assumed she was just another one ripe for trouble. How wrong could you be? It seemed this girl was not all the ticket and was taken care of devotedly by the whole family.
Now he felt a terrible sadness for Joanie and even for Jon Jon. He could see the devastation in their faces. Knew, without experiencing it, exactly what they were going through.
‘Will you be all right doing the appeal, Joanie?’
She nodded.
They were going national, hoping that someone had seen Kira. Or more to the point, hoping that if someone had her they would let her go. But he didn’t say that to Joanie, of course.
‘’Course I’ll be all right.’
She would do anything to help find her daughter.
‘Do you think someone might have taken her, Mr Baxter?’
He didn’t answer her question. Instead he said, ‘Let’s not speculate, Joanie, eh? You get yourself off, love.’
She looked at him sadly.
‘I appreciate all you’ve done. You know that, don’t you?’
He nodded, feeling worse than ever now.
As she left the room he saw the drooping of her shoulders and the
way she shuffled her feet as if she was an old woman already.
Baxter had had the Chief Constable on the phone and realised then that this was serious, more serious than anyone had first thought. The Chief had told him in no uncertain terms that this was a priority on a par with the Queen going on the missing list. He had wondered at first who Joanie was shagging to get a reaction like that from his boss but eventually assumed it was Paulie Martin who had rattled his cage.
Because it was a Brewer missing they had all assumed at first it was just another runaway. They had had so many of them with Jeanette that they had lost count - not that anyone was going to admit that up front. Now, though, Baxter was worried himself and also feeling guilty. If they had got out earlier maybe the child would have been found.
But it was a Brewer!
They were all streetwise. Always had been. Only it turned out this one was thick as two short planks. Just missed being in the mong house, but how was he supposed to know that?
If Jeanette and Jon Jon were anything to go by it would have been fair to assume she was on the bash with her mother. Or else shacked up with one of the local rogues, like the other sister was. Jeanette was already shagging for England with a local vagabond, causing no end of aggravation for the force. Jon Jon was in the frame for trying to maim the fucker, and that was without all the other people he had attacked over the years, his best mate Carty included. He had even had a tug the night his sister disappeared.
Jon Jon’s room had been an eye opener as well. It was just books, books and more books. Who would ever have thought that Jon Jon Brewer had a real brain rattling round in his head? Baxter already knew he was streetwise, but those books had been something else. Classics by Russian authors with names that were unpronounceable. One of the other blokes said that as they had gone through them they had seen Jon Jon had written things in the margins, his own thoughts on what he had read.
Now they would watch him more closely than ever because people who had real brains thought up good scams and Jon Jon was going to take this place over one day, Baxter would lay money on that. He was Paulie Martin’s blue-eyed boy. Well, brown-eyed, same difference. If he was also a contender for fucking Mastermind, what else was he capable of dreaming up?
Social Services were sending over the Brewers’ records this morning. Hopefully Baxter could save his own arse with what they contained. But whatever he told himself, however he publicly justified his actions, inside he felt guilty.
Kira Brewer looked like a nice little kid.
From what he had heard, she was a nice little kid.
But even if she had been a bastard in more than name only she should still have been given the courtesy of a full-scale police search as soon as she was reported missing.
He lit another cigarette and smoked it quickly. He had actually given up the habit two years previously but he needed a fag big-time this morning because if his Chief Constable was in on this they were all in big trouble. Especially as it seemed he was taking a personal interest in the case.
Baxter hoped the television appeal would bring forward some clues. It was going nationwide. Maybe, hopefully, she was sitting in a McDonald’s somewhere, lost or in the company of a friend. It had been known before now. Runaways had turned up not even realising that their disappearance had caused so much trouble. Kids didn’t watch the news after all.
But he was clutching at straws and he knew it.
No one had seen her. It was as if she had just disappeared off the face of the earth, and it was this that was worrying him.
Here was a child who had been watched like a hawk so the chances were whoever had taken her, and he had no real doubt in his mind that she had been taken, knew her like she knew them.
But with Joanie’s track record who was to say it wasn’t a punter, a likely lad, an ex-boyfriend? Somebody could have followed Joanie from her place of work. Her whole lifestyle would have to be looked into. They were also looking into the lives of friends and relations, especially that fat fuck who was the resident babysitter. He was suspect from the moment you clapped eyes on him. Was he a nonce or a raving poof? It was hard to tell but Baxter would find out.
Kira Brewer had been missing for over twenty hours. If missing kids weren’t found in the first twenty-four it was assumed they would not be coming back.
Because that, unfortunately, was usually the case.
The police had finished with Kira’s room and Joanie was cleaning it up again. She had changed the bed and put on Kira’s new Barbie quilt cover. When she came home that would really please her. The tiny room looked bigger since Jeanette had gone to Jasper’s. Kira had missed her sister but had loved the freedom of being able to do what she wanted in there.
Tommy was helping Joanie. They didn’t talk but his company made her feel better. They placed all Kira’s teddies on the bed the way she liked.
As Joanie looked round the room at her daughter’s pictures and toys she wanted to scream with fear but held herself in check. She was still convinced that Kira would come strolling back in, or else would be found lost and bewildered somewhere.
She was not dead.
Even though she knew very well that nothing good would stop her daughter from coming home to her, she hoped against hope that Kira was with someone she knew. Someone with dark hair, Mary had said. Joanie held on to that hope. She was with someone who knew her, and anyone who knew Kira loved her. God would not take her child from her. He wouldn’t be that vindictive. However she had lived her life, she didn’t deserve this. He knew that.
Tommy smiled at her kindly.
‘I thought you came across really well on telly, Joanie.’
‘Thanks, Tommy. I hope someone sees her, recognises her like and brings her home.’
He polished the small dressing table as he said gently, ‘So do I, love. So do I.’
Joanie knew that like everyone else he didn’t hold out much hope.
If Kira wasn’t coming home Joanie prayed that it would be an accident that had taken her baby away. The alternative was so terrifying she daren’t even think about it. She had to keep forcing it from her mind.
In her trade she’d seen better than most what men were capable of. Some of the punters she had had over the years had shocked her with their wants and so-called needs so she was under no illusions about what men were capable of with women, girls or indeed little children.
She knew deep inside herself, they all knew, that Kira would never intentionally leave her or her family. So where was she? Who was she with? Was she with someone with dark hair? Mary Brannagh had told her that much and Joanie believed her.
It was precious little but all she had to hold on to. The knowledge made her want to scream out at the world. Instead she cleaned her daughter’s room and got everything ready for her homecoming.
Picking up a nightdress, she held it to her face and breathed in the scent of her child, seeing her little smiling face and hearing her happy laugh. The baby sweat smelled so sweet, the pain in Joanie’s chest felt as if her whole body was being torn asunder.
‘For Christ’s sakes, Paulie, I have stuck a bullet up their arses. What more can I do?’ Chief Constable David Smith was annoyed and it showed.
‘All right, keep your fucking hair on.’
Smith was angry and forgot for a moment who he was talking to.
‘We could have sorted this over the phone.’
Paulie was fast losing patience.
‘No, we could not. Now stop talking shite and listen to what I’m saying. I want this sorted and I want her home sooner rather than later. Do you get my drift?’
Smith nodded. It had suddenly occurred to him exactly who he was dealing with here. All his past associations with Paulie Martin were now in the forefront of his mind and he had a terrible feeling Paulie was going to use them against him.
Of course, in this he was right.
Paulie had been his Christmas box since he had set his foot on the first rung of a very high and quickly scal
ed ladder. Paulie had asked for a few favours over the years and Smith had seen that he got them. Nothing really big, only guaranteed licences for his parlours, a few quashed charges. Hardly major league.
What worried Smith now was what he had accepted in return. Money, obviously, and holidays. A car once, a new Jaguar, for helping out one of Paulie’s business associates who was having trouble with the banks due to some previous convictions that then somehow miraculously disappeared from the national database.
Smith had later accepted the car and ten grand cash, only weighing out two grand to the girl who had actually wiped the man’s name from the records. He had thought he was so clever at the time. Now he wondered if Paulie had been aware that he would keep the lion’s share of the money through greed and an inflated sense of his own importance.