Geezer Girls, page 40
The DI opened the file in front of him. Pulled out a few transparent A4 pockets, each of which had something inside it. He stabbed the first one with his finger. Twisted it around to face Frankie.
‘Do you know who that is?’
Frankie looked at the evidence. A photograph of Daniel Gray-Hammond.
Frankie kept his face blank as he answered, ‘Nice kid. But I ain’t clapped eyes on him before in my life.’
‘As you well know, this is Judge Gray-Hammond’s son. We found two sets of fingerprints on it, one of which belongs to you.’
Frankie remained silent as his heartbeat increased.
‘And this,’ the next piece of evidence was pushed towards Frankie, ‘is a detailed plan of the judge’s son’s school.’
The sweat formed over Frankie’s lip.
‘And I’m sure you know what this is.’
Frankie glanced at the next piece of evidence. Shit. It was his wallet. Displayed next to it was a white card. Nervous puffs of air entered Frankie’s body.
‘Doesn’t take a genius to recognise that the gold engraved FS means this is your wallet. Next to it is a card with the address of the judge’s son’s school.’
The DI took out the next piece of evidence – four pieces of A4 paper stapled together. ‘Now this,’ the officer laid the papers in front of Frankie, ‘is a blow-by-blow account of Judge Gray-Hammond’s life. Address, schooling, what she does when she ain’t handing down sentences to criminals like you. And of course information about her son. Once again, Frankie boy, this lot has your fingerprints all over it.’
‘You could’ve got this shit from anywhere. You’re just trying to fit me up.’
‘Then how do you explain this?’
Frankie took a deep breath when he saw what was in front of him. Two photos of his stolen car. One showing the car in a lock-up and another showing the evidence that had just been shown to him strewn across the car’s front seats. The officer sent him a triumphant smile.
‘My client will not be answering any further questions.’
The celebration at the Shim-Sham-Shimmy went on for a good half-hour. Jackie still couldn’t believe that Frankie was truly out of their lives. She felt like crying. She gave everyone a massive hug as they slowly started to leave. Finally it was just Misty and her, sat at the long table, polishing off the last drops of vodka.
‘You need to go home so that we can get your hen night ready,’ Misty said.
Jackie gave Misty an assessing look, feeling brave on booze and elation. ‘I’ve always wanted to ask you a question, but I don’t want you to take it the wrong way.’
Misty lifted an eyebrow. ‘Only if you’re gonna ask what colour G-string I wear every day of the week.’
Jackie chuckled. ‘No.’ The humour left her, replaced by anxiety as she watched Misty sip her drink. ‘Are you my dad?’
Misty coughed and spluttered. ‘What you trying to do, girl? Change the colour of my hair?’
Jackie nervously ran her fingers through her own hair. Misty quickly grabbed her hand as it came down. ‘No I ain’t. I don’t know who he is, but if he was someone worth knowing Nikki would’ve told you.’ She gave Jackie a bittersweet smile. ‘I wish I were your old man because you know what, Jackie? Any bloke would kill to have a daughter like you.’
Jackie leaned forward. ‘Can you keep a secret?’
‘Cross my heart, hope to die,’ Misty said playfully.
Jackie’s voice dropped. ‘I’m gonna have another kid.’
‘Oh, sweetheart,’ Misty said as she reached across to hug Jackie. ‘Why didn’t you tell me sooner? That bloody Schoolboy’s gonna marry you now whether he likes it or not.’
Jackie eased back. ‘I ain’t told him yet or the others. So just between me and you for now.’
Misty squeezed Jackie’s hand at the same time as Ollie stepped into the room.
‘What is it?’ Jackie asked, seeing the serious expression on her friend’s face.
‘It’s just been on the news. The very dead bodies of Finlay and Jason have been found.’
Misty swung her stunned expression between both women. ‘You lot didn’t have nothin’ to do with this?’
‘Are you mad?’ Jackie threw back. ‘We might’ve hated them but we’d never kill no one. No way.’ Jackie gave Misty a deep look. ‘Was it you? You’re connected. I know who your brothers are and everyone’s shit scared of them.’
Misty shot up from her chair and turned away.
‘My God, Misty, you never did . . . ?’ Jackie shot out.
‘No, no,’ Misty reassured her. She slowly turned around. ‘Alright, I’ll admit that it did cross my mind to have my brother Charlie sort Frankie out, but the night I came to Miss Josephine and you lot told me the truth I decided to do things your way. So I gave Charlie a bell and told him to back off.’
‘It could’ve been anyone,’ Ollie said. ‘Frankie had more enemies than we’ve had hot dinners.’
Misty sent her a lukewarm smile. Her hand shook as she raised her glass. The girls might not have any idea who’d committed those murders, but she was pretty certain she did. Why didn’t I see this coming when I got the phone call? Misty asked herself. When they grabbed me outside the club? Never in a million years did she think it was all going to get this out of control. And the girls were going to find out soon enough at the hen night because there were names on the invitation list the girls knew nothing about.
Daisy.
That was all Frankie could think about as he was jostled into the back of the security van on his way to some prison he’d never heard of. How many years was it going to be before he smoothed his hand over her hair again? Laughed with her as they watched the box together? Took her to stand at his mum’s grave? It would be years, because however long they sent him down for he was never going to let her see him inside. Watching the respect fade from her beautiful eyes as the years went by was something he never wanted to see. There was him thinking that he’d sorted her future out if anything ever happened to him, when all the time that bitch Jackie was . . . He cut the thought off as his hands shook in the handcuffs. He needed a smoke like a prisoner craves privacy. Abruptly the van swerved to the left. His back punched against the wall, making one of his feet come off the ground. As he used his hands to steady himself he heard the screech of tyres. The van juddered to a halt. The sound of a slammed door hit the air. Then a bang. Frankie’s body jolted straight. He knew that sound. A shotgun. Another blast. The van dipped on its right side as if a tyre had been blown out.
‘Get out,’ roared a voice.
He heard the front doors being harshly pulled open. Heard feet crunch onto the road and knew that the guards in the front were out of the van.
‘Lie down.’ The voice was ferocious now.
A few seconds later Frankie heard the key turning in the van’s back doors. He pressed his back fearfully to the wall. The doors were flung back to reveal a black man standing with a shotgun. The man was huge and embodied the term badass.
‘Get out.’
Heart beating like crazy, Frankie stepped forward. Jumped down.
‘Come with me,’ the man commanded.
‘Who the fuck are you?’
‘A friend from many years ago owes you a favour.’
He moved quickly with the man, past the petrified guards, who lay spreadeagled on the ground, towards an anonymous-looking car.
‘In the back.’
Frankie jumped in.
The man got into the driver’s seat. Slammed the door. Shoved the shotgun on the ground near his feet. Ignited the engine and took off.
‘Who did you say you worked for?’
‘Soon, my friend. Soon.’
It took the car over an hour to reach its destination. A cottage in Epping Forest. Frankie stared curiously out of the window as the driver killed the engine. The man got out of the car and moved to the back. He opened the door. Frankie stepped outside. He tripped and fell onto the man. His cuffed hands grabbed the man near his front jacket pocket. He shoved himself up, one of his hands curling tight, and said, ‘Sorry mate.’
‘Come,’ the man said as he moved towards the front door.
Frankie followed him. They stepped inside. The air was cool, as if the house hadn’t had its central heating system on for a long time. They moved down the hallway. The man reached a closed door. Held it open.
‘Mrs Omote and the others are inside.’
Mrs who? Frankie thought as he moved past the man into the room. Omote? He knew that name. Didn’t he? When he caught the faces of the three people inside he knew that the man had lied. These weren’t friends. He stared at each one of them with shocked disbelief.
‘Long time no see, Frankie,’ said the one with the flaming shoulder-length red hair.
forty-seven
‘You’re all dead,’ Frankie finally croaked as his body expanded with shock.
The three people who stood in front of him gazed at him with dangerous glints in their eyes. Nikki Flynn, Maxine Munro and Jasmine Craig. The women were all classily dressed, not a sign of grey hair, with a touch more living marked on their faces.
‘He doesn’t look very pleased to see us,’ Nikki said.
‘Well, you wouldn’t, would you,’ said Maxine. ‘I mean, if you think you’ve topped someone then they turn up like a ghost ten years later it must be a proper shock.’
‘The nerve of it,’ Jasmine carried on. ‘Not having the decency to remain dead.’
Nikki sauntered over to him on her four-inch heels, holding a filled champagne glass. She stopped two strides away from him. Stretched out an arm. ‘Touch me,’ she dared him. ‘Feel me.’ She took another step. This time he smelt her raging anger.
‘Go on. See how dead I feel.’
The hand holding the champagne glass came up and he thought she was going to dash the contents in his face. Instead she drew it to her mouth. Took a deep sip.
‘How did you fucking pull it off?’
‘The power of the pussy, babe,’ she replied in a tight quiet voice. ‘See, that was the fatal flaw in your plan. Major Omote couldn’t get enough of me. My boobs and butt were all he thought about morning, noon and bloody night. He got real attached to me calling him “big boy”. Asking him to put me six feet under was like asking him to hack off his dick.’
She drained the last of the fizz. Turned away from him and went to stand with the others.
‘So where have you been hooked up for the last ten years?’ Frankie asked, the shock getting thicker in his voice.
Maxine stepped forward. A very different Maxine to the one he’d last seen ten years ago. She was composed, confident, head held high, and he would bet that the liquid in her glass was not champagne.
‘See these?’ She pointed to the diamond necklace around her neck. ‘These are called Gates of Dawn. But of course you know that because you were trying to get your greedy mitts on them ten years ago. But what you didn’t know was that they were going to save our lives. Unlike you, we’re standing here because someone showed Nikki a great act of kindness.’
Nikki stepped forward. ‘A young girl, same age as my Jade, is sharing a cell with me. She bribed a guard with a diamond. The night he comes to get her, instead of turning tail and leaving me, do you know what she does? She gives me one of her diamonds – I suspect the biggest diamond she has. She tells me to give it to the guard. At first I didn’t have a clue what she was chatting about. Then I figured it out, so the next time Omote comes to see me I try to bribe him with the diamond to get us outta Sankura . . .’
‘But he couldn’t do it,’ Jasmine cut in. ‘The problem was that if we turned up back in England we’d have become an international embarrassment to the Sankura government because they’d told the world that they’d executed us. Omote said that we couldn’t go free but maybe he could get us outta prison and take us somewhere else in Sankura. So he used Nikki’s diamond to bribe a state official and took us away to live in his house in the mountains. Well, it was more like a palace really. From jailbirds to the lap of luxury, just like that.’ She snapped her fingers.
‘So you and your girls are in this together?’
‘What are you talking about?’ A bewildered expression crossed her face.
Realising that they knew nothing about his recent involvement with their daughters he grinned and dug the knife in. ‘So you loved living it large in Sankura more than you did your little girls, or you would’ve come and got them.’
Nikki rushed over to him and delivered a stinging blow across his face. ‘Don’t you ever fucking say that to us.’ He raised his head, his fingers brushing the trickle of blood at the corner of his mouth. ‘Of course we wanted to fucking come back, but we couldn’t. We didn’t have passports, money, nothing. We lived in an area where everyone was shit scared of Omote, so no one was gonna help us do a bunk.’ A soft expression covered Nikki’s face. ‘Strange thing was that big bastard Omote really started to love me. He knew I was missing my little girl, so after a couple of years he sent someone to London to check on our girls, only to find that they’d disappeared. Omote’s man even went to see my mate Misty, but he couldn’t tell Misty we had sent him because I needed Misty still to think I was dead. Misty didn’t tell Omote’s man anything because she thought Frankie had sent him. Every year Omote sent someone to look for them but no one could find any trace of them. You’ve got a little girl, Frankie. How would you feel if she disappeared off the face of the earth?’
Frankie said nothing.
Maxine said, ‘Our girls were our only ties to London, so after a while we just settled into our new life.’
‘Then a year ago two things happened at the same time,’ Nikki said. ‘Omote’s missus kicks the bucket and his private army captures a diamond mine. One month later, guess who’s the new Mrs Major Omote? Yours truly. Then last month there’s a coup in the country and all hell breaks loose. When the dust settles Sankura has got a new government. A government who want Sankura to have a fresh start. So do you know what my husband does? He offers them his diamond mine in exchange for our freedom. You ever been loved by someone that much, Frankie?’
Frankie just looked back at her with scorn.
‘The government agreed to set us free as long as we slipped away quietly. So Omote takes us to Switzerland, where his bank accounts are. But we had to try and find our girls one last time. So a week ago we arrive here and go to see my mate Misty. The first time I tried to see her was when she went to see this play . . .’ Nikki’s voice cracked. ‘I had no idea that the woman and child with her were my daughter and grandson. Do you know what that feels like, not realising you’re looking at your own flesh and blood? We finally caught up with Misty one night outside the club and that’s when we found out what really happened to our girls.’
‘You’re scum,’ Maxine spat. ‘Total scum. How could you have treated children that way? Drugs, gun running, gem smuggling. The way we hear it is if the girl with them hadn’t pumped you full of shit you would’ve tried to murder them as well. When I heard what you did to my little girl. Hung her out the window like she was a piece of crap . . .’ Her voice cracked.
‘You’re gonna die, Frankie,’ Jasmine said. ‘Just like Jason and Finlay.’
‘You killed them?’
‘Did you like what we did at St Nicholas?’ Nikki asked, ignoring his question.
‘Frankie Sullivan RIP. Hope you liked “Ghost Town” because we thought it was a nice touch.’ She threw her head back and laughed. ‘Jason, what a fucking gullible prick. All we had to do was wave a bit of potential pussy in front of him for him to come running. Only one way he deserved to die, head first out of a window. And men who pour petrol over little girls deserve to arrive in hell in a blaze of glory.’
The image of Finlay burned and dead flashed into Frankie’s mind.
‘How should you go? That’s the big question, Frankie,’ Jasmine said, stepping forward. ‘A man like you who’s done so much evil. We had a real good chat about that one but we all agreed there’s only one way for a man like you to go.’
Maxine walked to the door. Pulled it open. In came the man who’d taken Frankie from the van. This time he held a revolver in his hand.
They took him to the basement of the house. Unused, cold concrete. The man with the revolver pushed Frankie inside. His gaze ran over the room. Stopped when it hit one wall where another wall of bricks was starting to be built in front of it.
Nikki moved in front of him. ‘We wanted you to die real slow to give you time to reflect on all the badness you’ve given the world.’
‘What you talking about?’
‘We’re gonna prop you against the wall, eyes wide open, and then brick you up. Can you imagine that? Slowly dying of starvation.’
They turned around and headed for the door. He ran after them, yelling, ‘You can’t fucking do this to me.’ The man with the gun shoved him back. He hit the cold floor. ‘But we aren’t cruel,’ Nikki said. ‘So we’re gonna give you a couple of hours to remember your little girl. We’ll be back tonight to say our final goodbyes. When my daughter gets married tomorrow I don’t want you on the face of the earth any more.’
The door was bolted shut as Frankie lay on the floor. Fury and fright shot harshly from his mouth.
‘Daisy, Daisy,’ he mumbled over and over. His cuffed hands slammed against his pocket. That was when he felt the pen he’d picked from the pocket of the women’s gorilla as he’d stumbled on him outside the cottage.
Nikki Flynn popped a Prozac into her mouth. Tilted the glass of water to her lips. Swallowed the chilled liquid in one gulp. They were back in the main room.
‘You alright?’ Jasmine asked.
Instead of answering Nikki gazed at her two friends. They’d all come such a long way since meeting as single mums aged eighteen, with no one to call their own except three babies with names the same as gems. The years hadn’t been easy, but they’d stuck together like the family they had become.
