As the nurses wandered round, serving teas and giving out biscuits, Marie watched Joanie confidently skirt the shrubbery where she’d been standing. She walked towards the path leading to a public area and turned swiftly back on herself as if she had just walked out of the French doors of the visitors’ room. She was carrying a large wicker shoulder bag and wearing a jaunty bright blue sun hat, a long black leather coat and gloves. The outfit was finished off with big Armani sunglasses.
Tommy saw her before anyone realised there was anything untoward going on. His cry of fear was a low moan; he was in shock at seeing her suddenly appear in front of him.
Opening her bag, Joanie took out a glass bottle. As she unscrewed its cap Tommy was staring at her, fear stark on his face.
‘Please, Joanie . . .’
‘Don’t you dare say my name, you cunt!’
Her voice was a low hiss and Tommy realised the deadly danger he was in. A nurse was staring at them now. So Jeffrey Palmer finally had a visitor? He didn’t exactly look pleased about it. She started walking towards them.
‘Excuse me, have you reported to Sister?’
She was nearly level with Joanie now and saw Mr Palmer frantically trying to move his wheelchair, but she had braked it herself. It was an unwieldy old model, the only one that could cater for his weight. He was a sitting duck.
‘Hello, Tommy. Or should I say Jeffrey?’
Joanie looked at the nurse and smiled brightly, but the nurse was staring at the dirty lemonade bottle she was holding in her hand.
‘I’m an old friend, love, I brought him something. ’
She looked back at Tommy and even in her anger felt a stirring of pity for him. Jon Jon had done a proper job on him. But it wasn’t enough, he had not paid dearly enough. There was no price too high for what he had done.
‘Are you all right, Mr Palmer?’
Tommy was staring at Joanie, terrified to take his eyes off her in case she did something to him.
‘Where’s my baby? Come on, tell me where she is and all this can stop now.’
‘Look, what exactly is going on here?’
Joanie turned to the nurse and said through gritted teeth, ‘Fuck off, love, you really don’t want to get involved. Believe me, you don’t want anything to do with this.’
She turned to Tommy again.
‘Where is she? I need to know.’
She was slowly taking the lid off the bottle and a distinctive odour was coming from it. Tommy cowered. The nurse was looking round frantically while an orderly was watching the scene, fascinated.
‘Go and get some help!’
Tommy held up one arm as if to shield himself.
‘I don’t know where she is, I swear! Don’t you think I’d tell you if I knew? I loved her as much as you did . . .’
Joanie was crying now.
‘You don’t know what love is. Your love is fucking sick . . .’
As she raised the bottle ready to crash it down on his head the nurse grabbed at her arm, twisting it.
The bottle slipped from her hand and the hydrochloric acid it contained splashed Tommy’s legs and the nurse’s shoes before the bottle smashed on the ground. Joanie punched the nurse in the face, forcing her to let go of her arm, and then she was running back the way she had come.
She turned and shouted at the writhing, sobbing man, ‘I’ll be back. You ain’t getting away with it. Not this time.’
Marie was waiting with the engine already running in a white Sierra that had been stolen the night before.
‘I fucked it up!’
Marie was laughing with nerves and adrenaline.
‘He knows you can find him now, love. He’ll never sleep easy in his bed after this, console yourself with that. We found the bastard once, we’ll find him again.’
Chapter Twenty-One
‘So what do you want then, Jeanette?’
Pippy was smiling at the girl before him. She was a cracker. Even with her face plastered in makeup the child in her was still evident. Her breasts were a bit too big for most of his clients, but there was still some good mileage in her.
He poured her out another cup of tea. As he sugared it, Jeanette looked around her. His flat was not what she’d expected at all. It was comfortable in a shabby kind of way. All the furniture was old; the Chesterfield looked worn out but wonderful to relax on. The walls were painted a pale lemon colour, and the curtains were heavy chintz. The whole place looked like something from an old black-and-white fifties film.
Pippy was different too. He still looked scruffy but he was wearing a Tag-Heuer watch and a diamond ring on his little finger. She felt he was trying to impress her and was oddly flattered.
He handed her the cup of tea and Jeanette smiled as she took it, trying her hardest to look grown-up and sophisticated.
‘I just need to earn a bit of pin money, that’s all.’
He grinned.
‘Now let me get this right. You decided all on your own to go on the game, correct?’ His voice was drenched in sarcasm. ‘And you say all you want is pin money?’
She nodded.
‘Then why not take a Saturday job in Tesco’s stocking shelves?’
She dropped her gaze and noticed that the carpet by the fireplace was almost threadbare.
‘You need a rug to go over that,’ she said, pointing as she spoke.
Pippy’s face was pinched with fury. It happened in the blink of an eye and suddenly she knew why they called him Mad Pippy.
‘And you need your fucking head examined if you think I’m going to take you on.’
Jeanette stared at him, unsure what to say now. It had all been going so well, she knew he’d liked the look of her, but suddenly he looked ferocious, his brown teeth bared and looking menacing as he half smiled at her. His smile was like Jon Jon’s in that it rarely reached his eyes.
Suddenly she was frightened. And to cap it all she didn’t even know why she was in this room with him except that somehow it felt like she should be here. Should pay the price for all the times she had blown Kira out, told her to go away, been horrible to her. Jeanette knew she was guilty of neglect, of not loving her sister enough, and wanted to punish herself.
Every time she closed her eyes she remembered another slight she’d given her little sister, another nasty comment she had made to her, and all Kira had ever wanted was for Jeanette to like her.
And the stupid thing was she had liked Kira, loved her, but she hadn’t known how to show it - and now it was too late and all Jeanette deserved was this - an introduction to a man as feared as he was hated. A man who could find her easy work as long as she wasn’t fussy.
But perhaps she was fussier than she’d thought? Jeanette was realising new things about herself with every second that passed in this claustrophobic room.
Jealousy had been an all-consuming emotion with her since her sister had been brought home from hospital. Jon Jon had immediately fallen in love with Kira, with her blonde hair and big blue eyes. She had been like a little china doll. Everyone who saw her made a fuss of her, looked after her. Kira never had to fight to make people notice her, care about her. Not like Jeanette. There’d been a gulf between them when Kira disappeared, a gulf of Jeanette’s making. She suffered because of it. She deserved to suffer some more. But like this? She wasn’t so sure any more.
Pippy watched her. He could read the expressions going across her face as if they were words. He had seen so many girls like Jeanette over the years; they were his stock in trade. Usually he used their self-hatred to foster his own ends but Jon Jon Brewer’s face was superimposing itself on Jeanette’s and he was unaccountably nervous.
‘What did you see yourself doing? Taking on one punter a week? Two a week? Or maybe four or five a day? I mean, what exactly do you class as pin money?’
Jeanette was not ready for this kind of talk. She had assumed he would snap her up. She had not bargained on meeting any resistance to her plan. Now she had she was strangely glad but she
wouldn’t let him see that. She knew instinctively that any sign of weakness now would be a worse mistake even than coming to see him.
‘You got so many girls you can pick and choose then?’
Her voice was deliberately sarcastic.
‘Could be, love, or maybe I’m fussy what I and my clients touch. I mean, imagine what could happen to one of them if your brother turned up at the crucial moment, eh?’
‘Very funny, Pippy.’
She stood up to go, on shaking legs.
‘It’s your loss.’
Pippy stayed sitting in his chair, watching her.
‘Did Jon Jon send you here? Tell me the truth.’
She sighed as if he had just said the most stupid thing she had ever heard.
‘Oh, yeah, he can’t wait for you to pimp me out. Use your fucking loaf!’
He made no move to let her out. Jeanette forced herself to step around his chair and walk slowly down the hall to his steel-reinforced front door. She expected him to come after her at any second.
She drew back two bolts, scrabbling at one and tearing a nail in her haste to be out of this terrible place. He’d left the key in the lock. She turned it and stepped outside with a sob. Outside she started to run and didn’t stop until she reached the Copeses’ house, her chest and throat tight with fear and a foul taste in her mouth.
There was only Karen in and for the first time ever Jeanette was pleased to see her.
When she’d left, Pippy sat for a few minutes gnawing on his thumbnail then took out his mobile and punched in a number.
‘I think we’ve been rumbled.’
He listened for a few seconds before turning the phone off. He’d arranged a meet for this evening and just hoped he could avoid Jon Jon Brewer till then.
Joanie was still shaking from the encounter with Tommy. One half of her wished she could have carried out her plan, the other half was glad she had been stopped.
Whatever he had done, he’d looked so bereft, so terrified, she had actually felt a flicker of pity for him. This annoyed her even as it made her feel sick to her stomach. Why should she care what happened to scum like him? If she was right, and she was convinced she was, he was the cause of her child’s death.
‘You OK?’
Marie’s voice was low.
Joanie nodded.
‘I think so.’
‘You need to get back to London as quick as you can. They’ll have him moved in no time at all and you’re bound to be questioned. Have you covered your arse?’
Joanie had not covered her arse or any part of her anatomy for that matter.
‘Nah. I didn’t think . . .’
Marie sighed.
‘Get on your Moby, love, and get yourself a proper alibi, OK?’
Joanie nodded once more.
‘Let’s get you back to London. We’ve plenty of time to cook a story up. You hungry?’
Joanie shook her head.
‘I could do with a drink though.’
Marie laughed.
‘Couldn’t we all!’
Jesmond was on the spot and he knew it but fought his corner bravely. If Bernard had not been there he would not even have bothered to answer Jon Jon’s charges. Would have taken him out of the ball game without a second’s thought. But he was in the spotlight now and had to come out of this looking like an innocent man.
‘I have never been involved in anything like that and I resent you coming steaming in here shouting the odds in front of a friend.’
‘Rumours are sometimes true, Jesmond.’
It was Bernard talking now. It was almost as if he and Jon Jon had rehearsed this.
Jesmond stood up painfully to his full intimidating height and said loudly, determined to front this out, ‘What is this, eh? So what if I cater now and again for the gymslip crew? They ain’t really kids I use, they’re girls who look young for their age, that’s all. I mean, coming from you, Jon Jon, it’s a bit rich considering we’re in the same fucking business. You telling me you ain’t got any schoolies knocking about your parlours?’
Jon Jon was aware of what he was trying to do and said as much.
‘Don’t try and change the subject. I am well up on you and what you are capable of. Our parlours have grown-ups in them, you know that, or are you trying to bring Paulie down to your level? And what about your little parties, eh, where the star guest is a child? I know all about them.’
Bernard Lee looked stunned. This was obviously news to him.
‘What you on about, Jon Jon?’
He flicked his dreads in Jesmond’s direction.
‘Ask him.’
Bernard and Jesmond stared each other out. Jesmond finally shrugged as if bored.
‘Don’t know what he’s talking about.’
He was the man again now, had regained his equilibrium.
‘You can’t come in here and shout your fucking mouth off without some kind of back up, and I don’t mean your heavy friends. I mean without proof, and there ain’t any proof because I ain’t done fuck all.’
He looked out of the corner of his eye at Bernard, the man he was really trying to convince of his innocence.
‘That’s not what I heard,’ growled Jon Jon.
‘Who told you then?’
Jesmond held out his arms in supplication.
‘Come on, that’s the least you can do. Put your fucking money where your mouth is, boy. I am guilty of a lot of things but fucking noncing ain’t one of them.’
‘All I need to know is, did you ever have any dealings with Tommy Thompson or his father?’
‘Did I fuck! Are you trying to wind me up or what?’
He was emphatic now, his fear of Bernard being replaced by real anger. Who the fuck did Jon Jon Brewer think he was - Big John? And more to the point, where had he got this information?
‘Listen to me, you might be Paulie Martin’s brown-eyed boy but that don’t give you the right to come here and disrespect me. Now I am telling you, you are barking up the wrong mango tree, my son, so until you can prove my involvement in anything you had better get the fuck away from me and mine.’
The last bit was for Bernard’s benefit and he knew it.
‘Come on, Jes, surely you can do better than that?’
Jon Jon studied the two men covertly. There was an undercurrent here that he couldn’t quite fathom. Jesmond was clearly panicking now.
‘You would trounce me on the say-so of this little cunt, Bernard, after all the years we’ve done business together?’
He nodded.
‘’Course I would - if I found out you were a nonce.’
He grinned.
‘I’d remove your dreadlocks myself with a pair of pliers and that would just be for starters, Sonny Jim.’
Bernard’s biggest fear was of being tarred with the same brush. People would assume he was involved because he and Jesmond had worked closely together for so long, and he wasn’t having that. Bernard had his standards and any fiddling about with kids deserved the death sentence in his book, whether it was inside or outside the law.
Jesmond was cornered and he knew it, but he wasn’t giving up anything he didn’t have to.
‘Does Paulie know you’re here, Jon Jon?’
‘That’s irrelevant, Jesmond. Stop trying to change the fucking subject.’
‘I tell you what, you go and talk to him about all this, right, then come back and see me after that.’
‘He’s having a laugh!’ Jon Jon looked at Bernard as he said incredulously, ‘He is having a laugh, ain’t he?’
Bernard replied seriously, ‘I ain’t laughing and neither are you! Now who have you got outside with you?’
‘Big Earl, a couple of the others. Why?’
‘Bring them in, we can have a party.’
Jesmond could not believe what he was hearing.
‘You wouldn’t fucking dare!’
‘Well, either you tell us what we want to know or we’ll force it out of you. Won’t we, Jon Jon??
??
Jesmond was being threatened for the first time in his life. Even as a schoolboy he had been much too big to diss. Now it seemed that like all bullies he had finally met his match. All he could do was hope to salvage something from this situation.
‘You won’t like what you’ll hear, Jon Jon, I warn you.’