Then she saw Junie watching her and held out her hands in supplication. She hadn’t even known the girl was in the house.
‘She pushed me, Junie, she pushed me too far.’
Jasper’s sister nodded nonchalantly. She had seen it all before.
‘She’ll survive. Get yourself out of here for a bit while I call an ambulance. I’ll look after her, don’t worry.’
In fact, Junie hated her mother more at this moment than she had ever hated her before. But then, she had heard every vicious word Karen had said.
Sylvia had all the records of Paulie’s businesses. She had been through the three safes he kept at home and was perusing these pieces of paper as if they were gold dust. Which, of course, to her they were.
She had had him followed for months, and now knew everything about him. The association with the Brewer woman had amazed her, though. Knowing his penchant for younger women she had actually felt a moment’s jealousy of this prostitute who, it seemed, had her husband’s ear. Even her son worked for him.
Now the woman’s child was missing and that was terrible.
Whatever Sylvia was she was still a mother.
She saw her own children as an investment in the future. All the time she had them she was safe. It meant she had something over Paulie’s head. Something to keep the money rolling in.
She knew everything there was to know about her husband, and the old saying that knowledge is power had never seemed so true. If he played ball, as she was sure he would, then she would accept a settlement and agree to take a back seat and forget what she knew. If he wouldn’t then she would give all her information to the relevant authorities and take her chances.
But she wasn’t too worried about that prospect. Paulie knew which side his bread was buttered and so did she. Sylvia shook her head as she glanced through the papers then she put them all away. The girls were at her mother’s for a few weeks until everything calmed down.
Sylvia ran herself a bath and lay in the hot water, luxuriating in the solitude and the aroma of ylang-ylang.
As she lay there she closed her eyes and hummed a little tune. She loved this house, but she loved it most when she was alone in it. That was something Paul had never understood, her need for solitude sometimes, her need to be alone.
He had learned, though. She had made a point of teaching him manners, as she put it to herself. If it had been left to him she would have ended up like one of those dreadful women his business associates were married to - over-the-hill blonde bimbos whose husbands had women all over the place and who could only talk about their villas and their sun beds and their stupid children.
Well, that was not for Sylvia. She was not going to end her days with a man who had no social graces and even less personality than the Labrador dog he had thankfully buried in the garden two years previously. It was the only time he had ever gone against her, when the girls had wanted a dog. They had plagued her, and she had said no, and then one day he had come back from a friend’s scrapyard with the puppy in a cardboard box.
The girls had been all over him that day and Sylvia had learned a valuable lesson. Never let them believe he had their best interests at heart, it must all seem to come from her. Consequently, the girls had always believed that he’d had no intention of getting them horses, that their mother had had to talk him into it.
She smiled as she thought of it.
‘All right, Sylv?’
Her eyes flew open as she heard her husband’s voice. For a split second she thought she was hallucinating. But there he was in the doorway of the en-suite, looking quite at ease in these surroundings despite the injunction banning him from the house. She sat up, the force of her movement making water slosh all over the floor.
‘Oh, Sylv, that’s not like you, making a mess, is it?’
She was stunned.
‘Now get your fat arse out of the bath and get it down those stairs so we can have a talk.’
Her face was all lines now, her consternation evident.
He looked her body over as she sat there and made sure she realised what he thought.
‘Fuck me, Sylv, you do look rough in the buff!’
He laughed at his own silly rhyme, knowing he was annoying the life out of her and enjoying every second.
Chapter Fourteen
The old woman answered the door and stared at her visitor with naked animosity. Jon Jon knew instinctively that this was someone who had had more fights than Mike Tyson and probably won most of them.
‘Excuse me, I’m looking for the Rowe family and someone said they lived here.’
Jon Jon was smiling his best smile, but he could tell by the way that she was looking back at him that his bright friendly expression might not be enough. He had a feeling she was not into political correctness. She saw a black man and that was it. She probably thought muggers were touting for business on the knocker these days.
‘Who wants to know?’
It was a deep voice, a real Cockney voice, and coming as it did from this tiny woman in front of him it made him want to smile. She was real old school Cockney and proud of it.
Jon Jon knew the best thing to do was to treat her like she was treating him so he said without preamble, ‘I want to know, Mrs Rowe.’
That was the law of the street round this way and he understood it. Then he said, more quietly and respectfully, ‘I am Jon Jon Brewer. My little sister is missing, Kira, it’s been on the news and that.’
She nodded slowly, still eyeing him up and obviously finding him lacking.
‘What has that got to do with us?’
She was so suspicious Jon Jon wondered how the fuck she ever got her meters read. He had a feeling he would have a better chance of getting into the Bank of England on a Sunday afternoon than he did of setting his foot across this old dear’s front doorstep. He also had a feeling that it was because of the colour of his skin. He was used to that now, but it still annoyed him.
He tried again in his best voice.
‘I was told you had had dealings with a certain Little Tommy . . .’
The door was shutting in his face now and he pushed out an arm and a foot to stop her.
‘Please, Mrs Rowe, this is important.’
‘Get your bleeding foot out of my door, Sonny Jim.’
She was game and he admired her for that much anyway. But she was also starting to annoy him.
If she knew what could have happened to Kira then she was going to tell him even if he had to beat it out of her. And he would do that and all, old woman or no old woman. He wanted to know and he wanted to know now. He had been keeping a lid on his emotions but it was getting harder and harder by the hour. Jon Jon sighed and forced the door open as he did so.
Earl came into view and she looked him up and down aggressively. Jon Jon could not help liking her. He would lay money that in her day she’d been a force to be reckoned with. Probably still was.
‘Open the door, lady, please.’
Jon Jon’s voice was low, almost pleading with her.
‘I ain’t got nothing to tell you.’
She planted herself in front of him, arms crossed, her body language speaking volumes.
He sighed once more. This time his voice was louder and far more authoritative.
‘Well, I think you have. Your daughter or grand-daughter or whatever was supposedly nonced by that cunt and I want to know what happened. I ain’t going nowhere until I find that out.’
He had made his point, he knew there was no sense in labouring it. They stared each other out. Mrs Rowe was small, almost birdlike. She had grey hair which had once been black scraped into a bun, and wore large gold hoops in her ears. She was wearing enough tomfoolery to open a jeweller’s shop, rings, bangles, and necklaces - so many necklaces she looked like Mr T’s little sister.
She wore an overall pinafore, the type that fastened at the side to keep her clothes clean while she worked. But it was her face that fascinated Jon Jon most: it was wrinkled up
in all the wrong places. She looked like a little spider monkey, her brown eyes filled with either cunning or intelligence. He wasn’t sure which yet but he was going to find out.
‘Now we can do this the nice way or the nasty way, Mrs Rowe. It’s up to you.’
He looked aggressive enough to make her think twice about what she was doing. She stared him out for a few seconds more before grudgingly opening the door wide enough for him to pass her.
‘He ain’t coming in.’
She nodded at Earl who grinned.
‘Don’t want to, love.’ He looked at Jon Jon. ‘I’ll be in the car, OK?’
Jon Jon nodded.
‘Sure you’ll be all right? The woman looks vicious.’
‘Fucking smart arse!’
She was annoyed but it was a friendly animosity now. She had taken what Earl had said as a compliment. Mrs Rowe walked into the flat without another word, her back stiff and her manner still unfriendly.
Jon Jon followed her, wiping his feet on the mat and shutting the door gently behind him. Inside he could smell scones cooking, a homely smell that suited the surroundings.
In the tiny front room there was a two-seater sofa and an easy chair, a tiled fireplace with an ancient gas fire, and a hand-built red-brick shelving unit to one side that held an old portable TV and an ancient radio.
It also held photographs of three smiling girls, all blonde and blue-eyed. He guessed one of them was the child in question.
Above the fireplace was a painting of a crying boy. The walls were papered in burgundy flock and the dado rail was chipped and yellowed from the gas fire.
Jon Jon felt the powerlessness of old age in this room and it made him upset. The poor old bag had lived through a world war for this - a poxy flat that was damp, dilapidated and overdue for knocking down while warehouses along from here were being stripped out and sold for hundreds of thousands as yuppy ‘lofts’.
He smiled at her with an effort. Fear for his sister was overriding everything else in his life. He had been keeping it together for his mother’s sake but he was on the edge and no amount of cannabis would change that.
The old woman stared at him again and he could practically feel her sizing him up, but the funny thing was he liked her more every time she blanked him. She had heart and he knew that whatever she said would be the truth.
‘Want a cup of tea?’
It was said grudgingly, good manners overtaking her innate racism. He nodded. Anything to get her talking without having to resort to violent language or behaviour. He had the distinct feeling he was the first black person to step across her doorstep in the whole of her long life.
‘Sugar and milk?’
He nodded again, and when finally she was settled by her fireside with a mug of tea he spoke once more.
‘I really need your help, Mrs Rowe. You must know about me sister - Kira Brewer? She’s only eleven and she’s missing. Well, I heard off one of your old neighbours that some bloke who lives near me now was accused of noncing by someone in your family. This is really important, Mrs Rowe, because he might know what’s happened to Kira . . . might know where she is.’
She looked him over, her natural animosity coming to the fore once more. Finally, after what seemed an age, she spoke.
‘My big boy, my eldest, is doing thirty years: drugs and armed robbery. His wife Leigh, a trollop of the first water, lived nearby.’
She sipped her tea to give herself time to phrase this carefully.
‘She started to leave the girls with this Little Tommy Thompson. Anyway, the next thing we knew she had taken up with his old man, Joseph.’
She sipped at her tea again, playing for time once more. Jon Jon guessed it was hard for this woman to talk about her family to a stranger.
‘Her middle girl, Caitlin, was always round there - she loved it, you couldn’t keep her away. Then she said that she had been touched like, physically. But we never got to the bottom of it, see. She never said who it was, the father or the son, all we knew was she said it had happened. Leigh kept us out of it all. Didn’t want anyone to know, see, because of me boy. He was well banged up by then but Leigh knew he would still want answers so she went on the trot with the kids. He loved them girls . . . whatever he was, he loved them. But their mum - he hadn’t long got sentenced and already she was out more often than the local tom. It was fear of him finding out how careless she’d been with the kids that sent her on her way. She was gone overnight and so was they, the Thompsons. They knew once it got out they couldn’t stay round here. Shit sticks, don’t it? And I ain’t seen none of them since. They all went on the trot, mate.’
Mrs Rowe sighed heavily.
‘No one knows where Leigh and me grandkids went. It’s my guess someone gave her a wedge to go, and believe me, son, she wanted to. She wanted out of it all. I can understand that in some ways. My boy wasn’t the easiest of husbands, a violent sadistic bastard like his old man, but like I said, we never got to the bottom of any of it, see. The only people who know what really happened are Leigh, her daughter and the blokes concerned. And let’s face it, they ain’t going to say anything, are they?’
She sat back in the chair as if tired out from all the talking. He guessed rightly that visitors were few and far between for her. She spent her days visiting her son or waiting for letters from him. It was a terrible existence for anyone, especially a proud woman like her.
‘And you have no idea where Leigh is?’
The old woman shook her head.
‘What I can tell you, though, is I never liked the father or the son, but out of the two give me the boy every time. He was treated like shit and he swallowed all that he was given. I couldn’t say much, see, about the situation because my daughter-in-law was already trying to get out of my son’s life and that meant getting out of mine as well. I had to be careful what I said like because I knew she wanted shot. I’d lost me son, and then I lost me grandkids as well. What’s left for me now, eh?’
She could see the answering fear in this boy’s eyes and offered him a crumb of comfort.
‘I have her mother’s address. I don’t know if she’s still living there but if she is she’ll know where her daughter is. Closer than close, them two. She won’t tell me fuck all and I’ve given up trying. Thinks I’ll tell me son, which in fairness I probably would. But if you find out anything for sure, let me know, would you?’
He nodded.
‘’Course I will, mate. How are you coping without your son?’
She shrugged.
‘Best I can, what else can you do?’
‘Are his mates seeing you all right?’
It was the law of the street: you looked after the family of friends banged up. They had lost a wedge and you provided it for them.
‘Look around you, son, what do you think?’
She went into the bedroom and came back with an envelope, the address written neatly on it.
‘I ain’t got no phone number for them and I don’t know if they’re still here but you can give it a try.’ She sat back down before saying quietly, ‘If you find me grandkids, let me know how they are, OK?’
His heart went out to her. She was obviously missing them.
‘I promise I will.’
He stood up. Taking both her hands in his, he said: ‘Thank you, Mrs Rowe. I really appreciate your help.’
She smiled then, for the first time, and he knew he had finally won her over.
‘I was no help really, son. But I hope you find your little sister.’
He took out a wad of money and peeled off five hundred quid. She eyed the notes hungrily.
‘Treat yourself, mate.’
She seized the money in her claw-like hands.
‘I won’t knock it back, son, I appreciate it.’
He wrote down his mobile number and gave it to her.
‘If you hear anything, Mrs Rowe, give me a bell.’
She nodded.
‘And if you ever need anything, you use
that number, you hear?’
She nodded once more, knowing that he meant what he said.
‘I wish you luck with your search.’
He sighed.
‘If it was left to the filth we’d still be none the wiser.’
‘Always the way with them.’
Spoken with the voice of experience.
She saw him out of the flat and he shook her hand once more.