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  ‘Last thing we want is her up again, eh?’

  They tiptoed from the room. Jeanette was so sorry for the baby she had just had to leave in her basket on a dirty bare floor, her clothes and bedding stained and bedraggled. She consoled herself that at least the child was clean and fed, even if it had been done by Jeanette and not her mother. Presumably Lorna would have got around to it eventually. At least, she hoped so anyway. It went against the grain for people like them to phone either the police or Social Services, but for the first time ever Jeanette realised what those agencies were actually for.

  She had seen kids out playing till all hours, scruffy and dirty. But she also knew they had been fed and loved, if only in haphazard fashion. Lorna’s child, though, would haunt her dreams. She knew that as surely as she knew her own name.

  In the kitchen Jeanette sipped her Red Stripe as she watched Lorna ineffectually attempt to clean up around her.

  ‘So what’s the sudden interest in Pippy Light?’

  ‘Just asking, you know.’

  ‘Does your brother know you’re interested?’

  Jeanette grinned.

  ‘He don’t know everything, just likes to think he does.’

  Lorna opened her eyes wide at this blasphemy.

  ‘You’re a cow, ain’t you? Well, Pippy can be found at his flat most days. But I warn you, Jeanette, don’t get in over your head. If you want to score I can give you names of people who aren’t as heavy as him, you know what I mean?’

  She scratched aimlessly at her head.

  ‘I scout for him sometimes, see. He likes me, old Pippy. Sees me all right for a bit of gear now and again. I have to put out for him, but he ain’t the worst. Just be careful. He’ll take one look and want you out earning for him. You’re jail bait and that’s his favourite pastime. Schoolgirls . . .’

  ‘Does he pay well?’

  Lorna stared into her eyes.

  ‘You ain’t seriously considering it, are you?’

  Jeanette shrugged once more.

  ‘He’d probably be too scared of me brother anyway! ’

  Lorna shook her head.

  ‘Not Pippy Light, love, he’d love it. Him and Jesmond would find it amusing. Them two ain’t scared of no one.’

  The last bit was said with bravado. After all, they were her friends.

  ‘Where’s his flat then?’

  ‘You serious?’

  Jeanette nodded.

  ‘’Course.’

  ‘I’ll ring him for you, hang on.’

  Lorna could get a drink off Pippy for this and her own back on Jon Jon in one fell swoop. What with the social worker taking the baby in the morning, and the money for the introduction from Pippy, she could be out of her brains and quids in by lunchtime tomorrow.

  Life was just getting better and better.

  Joanie hit Sheffield at just after ten at night. She rang the mobile number Errol had given them and was directed to a council estate on the edge of Sheffield town centre. As she walked up the concrete steps to the flat of the person who was going to take her to Tommy she looked around her. This place could be anywhere. Other than the accent she could hear in the street it could be London, Cardiff, Manchester or Glasgow. Anywhere there was a council estate built to house the forgotten people. The same smells assailed her nostrils, urine, sweat and fried food, and underlying the smell of poverty was the smell of drugs and drink. She recognised the familiar musky smell of heroin addicts; she had passed two in the hallway, their glazed eyes following her up the flight of stairs. The female was emaciated and vocal, telling Joanie in no uncertain terms what she thought at having to move aside to let her pass. The male was younger, unshaven and straggly-haired. He wouldn’t have noticed if a brass band had tramped through the dank lobby. He was gone from the planet and when he came back he would crash down harder than the space shuttle. But for the moment he was away, and he was happy.

  She knocked tentatively on the door of the flat she was looking for. It was answered by a woman with dyed red hair and a cheerful smile.

  ‘Joanie?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Away in, love. Did you find us all right?’

  She nodded once more, not sure what she was doing now. Frightened of it all.

  Inside the flat it was dramatically different. There were brightly coloured walls, everything was immaculately clean and very well lit, lamps and candles burning everywhere. The smell was fantastic: ylang-ylang, jasmine and lavender. The hallway was painted bright pink, and there was a framed poster of Marilyn Monroe opposite the front door.

  The walls of the lounge were painted a deep green, and the furniture was all pale green Habitat and tubular glass tables. Joanie felt better about being here. If it had been dirty or neglected she would have turned around and gone home. She actually wondered for a moment if that was what she secretly wanted, just to turn around and leave.

  But she knew she had to stay. This had gone too far now, she realised with a certainty that terrified her. The woman grinned at her, displaying uneven but very white teeth, and Joanie realised that she was much older than she had first thought.

  ‘A cuppa, a real drink or both?’ she asked.

  Joanie smiled shyly.

  ‘Vodka?’

  ‘A lass after my own heart!’

  Five minutes later they were settled on the comfortable sofa with large vodkas and Cokes.

  ‘You look nervous, pet,’ the other woman said.

  Joanie smiled.

  ‘That’s probably because I am.’

  The woman held out her hand and said, ‘Marie Drinkwater, though I should be called Drinkvodka by rights!’

  Joanie laughed loudly.

  Then Marie said seriously, ‘My daughter was murdered as well. She was seven when she disappeared. They found her three days later in a neighbour’s flat. Nice fella and all, or so we all thought. He had raped her and stuffed her in a bin bag. She was found shoved in a cupboard in his bedroom. Turned out he’d done it before. Served a two-year sentence for molestation and eight years for murder. He even helped us search. You see, no one thought anything bad had happened to her at that point.’

  Marie drained her drink swiftly in two large gulps.

  ‘You passed the flat on your way up. His mother still lives there - a decent woman who died inside because of her son.’

  Marie poured herself another large drink.

  ‘I never touched a drink in my life until that happened. Now I wonder what I’m doing alive when she’s gone, the light of my life taken. You see, Joanie, people sympathise, but it’s not until it happens to them that they finally comprehend what it’s like. How many times have you read about it, a kid gone missing, and thought, how terrible, and then hugged your own kids because it wasn’t them? They’re still there so you turn off the TV and forget about it until the next time.’

  She looked out of the window as she said sadly, ‘No one else knows what the nights are like, seeing their faces, wondering if they called for you. Knowing they did because you were their mam and mams are so important to little kids. They believe you can do anything. Except you couldn’t do anything for them when they most needed it. Needed you.’

  She grasped Joanie’s hand.

  ‘And then the court case when you watch the bastard who did it get fuck all, know that they’ll be out within a few years. Did you know most paedophiles reoffend within six weeks? I put it down to the arrogance of the psychiatrists, believing they’ve cured someone who can’t be cured. If a man is a leg man he’ll always be a leg man, a tit man will always be a tit man, and a man who likes children will always want children. You kill him, lass, or I’ll do it for you if you want. I know just what you’re feeling, I can see it in your eyes.’

  She squeezed Joanie’s hand as she said quietly, ‘There’s no justice in this country, not for the victims anyway. Money and property, that’s all the courts care about. A bank robber would get a harsher sentence than a paedophile, think on that.’

&nbs
p; Joanie felt as if she had finally met a kindred spirit, which to all intents and purposes she had. Marie knew what she was going through better than anyone. She had been there herself.

  Now it was Joanie’s turn.

  Chapter Twenty

  Jon Jon looked at the girl in the bed. She was black, with relaxed hair and an arse you could carry a case on. She was beautiful and she was clever and she was expensive. Very expensive. For a few hours she had been his, and she was worth every penny. She had all the moves and looked good while performing them.

  A true professional.

  Before they had even got down to basics she had informed him that she rarely gave it away for nothing. That the whole idea of being on the game was to make money and freebies weren’t really her thing.

  According to Candace, she had never even given a mercy fuck, and he believed her. ‘If you don’t pay, you don’t stay.’ The words, when she’d said them, had made him laugh.

  But that was last night when he had been drunk and stoned. In the cold light of day it wasn’t funny any more, though looking around her flat he had to admit she had the right idea. He only wished his mother had had her acumen and then she might have had something more to show for all her years spent on the game.

  Candace was shrewd, but she was also cold and calculating. He felt she would sell her own mother for money. Money was her god, she freely admitted that. Jon Jon had been chatting to her for an hour before they had left the party and he was annoyed about that now because there had been plenty of free pussy about. The girls were all over him like a rash these days.

  Now Candace was stiffing him for the bill and he didn’t like it.

  He had wanted her at the time, thanks to drugs and alcohol, but he had just given her the bad news: she hadn’t been worth the money. It had been a purely professional fuck and that had annoyed him. He was like Paulie in that respect, saw himself as better than the average punter. To Candace he could have been anyone. But what, he wondered, had he actually wanted from her in the first place? Was it because she was black like him that he hadn’t expected her to treat him like a John?

  But she had told him outright: to her everyone was a John.

  His head was fucked and he wanted an argument suddenly and she was as good a person to fight with as anyone. Because Candace was quite able to hold her corner, he could see that.

  ‘What exactly are you telling me, boy?’ she said in a low voice.

  She was looking at him with her big brown eyes. He could see that she was genuinely upset by what he had just said.

  Jon Jon shrugged as he said in a cocky manner, ‘I don’t pay for it.’

  She laughed as she said with bravado, one finger pointing in his face, ‘You do now. I told you before we even got in the kip what my rates were. I even brought you to my home. You never had to weigh out for no hotel, boy. Now you keep your end of the bargain because I kept mine.’

  Her voice conveyed without saying it that she had found him lacking, in bed and out of it. It also conveyed her South London accent which last night had been smoothed over and sophisticated.

  ‘Not me, lady. Like I say, I don’t pay.’

  She leaned up on her elbow and stared deep into his eyes.

  ‘You fucking wanker.’

  ‘I’ve been called worse.’

  He got out of bed slowly and felt her watching him all the time. Knew she wanted to attack him, and knew she wouldn’t because he was basically her employer. He had a feeling, though, that she would fight on verbally if nothing else; at least, he hoped she would.

  ‘I’ll put the word round that you’re a lousy fuck and mean with it,’ Candace said decisively. With that she turned her back and closed her eyes as if going to sleep.

  He wandered through her flat to the kitchen and made himself a cup of coffee. He was expecting her to come after him at any second like a wild cat, but she didn’t move from the bedroom.

  It was some flat. Everything was beautiful and carefully chosen and suited Candace down to the ground. It was all white paint and cream carpets, drifts of voile hanging strategically from brass curtain poles.

  It was also sterile, as if no one really lived here. A show home for pretend people living pretend lives. Perfect lives. It was like an advert. Which was Candace, whether she realised it or not. Like all brasses she lived behind a front, and keeping up that front was the hardest thing of all. Pretending that the job didn’t bother them, pretending to like the men paying them, pretending that their lives were great because they could afford good clothes and a nice home. At least at the lower end of the market the girls were past all that bullshit.

  But men who paid a small fortune needed to feel that the girl in question really did want them and that the money was peripheral. They were paid to pretend they admired hanging bellies, scrawny legs and wrinkled-up dicks. It was like being an actress, except no one was going to give you any award except the cash you’d already negotiated with maybe a few quid extra as a bonus. He closed his eyes, contemplating the destruction of a lovely young girl’s life.

  For all her smart clothes and her beautiful home Candace had nothing, she was an emotional bankrupt. No wonder his mother had almost smothered them all with maternal love. It was the only real emotion she had ever felt.

  He drank the coffee and stared aimlessly out of the kitchen window, looking out across London, watching the world come to life. A few black cabs were driving down the Portobello Road after taking home some late-night revellers. He lit himself a joint and toked on it deeply.

  He wondered what he was doing hanging around here. After climbing out of her bed, why was he still in Candace’s flat? More to the point, why were things like this happening to him more and more lately? It was as if he wanted to feel hurt and upset, wanted to feel used. Perhaps that was why he did it.

  At least when he was disgusted with himself he was feeling something. Since Kira he feared he had lost any real feeling and that frightened him. As he puffed on the joint he remembered her face and smiled.

  That was when he went back to the bedroom. Candace was still lying as he had left her and he put one hand gently on her shoulder to turn her round to face him. He expected her to be pouting, still upset over his refusal to pay, and he was going to pay her now, even pay her extra. He couldn’t take it out on her, she was basically a good kid. And at least she had been honest, hadn’t dressed it up as cab money. Mind you, at her prices it would have been some cab ride.

  At the end of the day a deal was a deal after all. And she had been up front about it even if her rates were a bit stiff.

  Then he realised she really was asleep because she pushed his hand off roughly and turned over once more, snoring softly as she fell deeper into sleep.

  He couldn’t believe it.

  Jon Jon started to laugh gently.

  Candace honestly didn’t give a fuck. She had accepted what he had said, and he admired her for that as well. She had swallowed her knob without a row of any kind. She knew she couldn’t win this fight so she’d just put it down to experience. Candace didn’t know it but she went up one hundredfold in his estimation because of her pragmatic reaction.

  He sat on the edge of the bed and laughed until gradually he began to cry. He felt so lonely, so very lonely and hurt and unhappy. These were feelings he was still not used to. Doubted he would ever get used to. Kira’s disappearance had left a gaping hole in his life which no one would ever be able to fill. That was the trouble with losing someone so young. You only ever remembered them as a child, never saw their faults because as yet they didn’t have any. They were still unspoiled, still good inside and out.

  Jon Jon put his head in his hands and sobbed, and all the while Candace slept beside him.

  He had never felt so alone in all his life before.

  He had done everything for his mother and his sisters, and the one time he wasn’t there this tragedy had befallen them. He felt responsible. It was his fault. He had not looked after Kira properly, been there w
hen she needed him. He would have to live with this guilt for the rest of his life.

  If he had been there that day nothing would have happened to her. She would still be with them; he would still be ironing her school uniform and making her breakfast. He would be at home every night instead of staying with a procession of slappers and prostitutes, looking for something he was never going to find. Now his whole family was broken, smashed to pieces by someone they’d thought they could trust. But he would make them pay, Tommy and his father. He was going to Birmingham this morning, and Sheffield after that if he had to.

  Suddenly he felt an arm around his shoulders.