Strangers (24 page)

‘Year … year and a half.’

‘A year and a half, and already you’re at it again.’

‘I said I haven’t …’

‘I heard you the first time, you little twat. But it’s a lie, isn’t it?’ There was no anger in McCracken’s voice. He spoke matter-of-factly; only half-interestedly, as if this whole thing had become a tedious routine. ‘Everyone
knows
it’s a fucking lie. You and your team have been at it again. This year alone … two big townhouses down in Wilmslow. Plus a farmhouse out in Delamere Forest … way out there in the lovely Cheshire countryside. Every time the same thing. Three blokes wearing ski masks, one pistol each. Occupants battered and tied up. If they aren’t forthcoming about the safe and other valuables, one of the burglars gets to work on their toes with a set of pliers. Doesn’t usually take long after that, does it, Pixie? Properties get ransacked. High-quality merchandise only. Always a decent haul.’

‘It … wasn’t me,’ Pixie stammered. ‘I’m keeping my nose clean these days.’

‘That’s the last lie you’ll tell me, you little turd, if you know what’s good for you.’

Pixie hung his head, coughing, hawking up blood.

‘All together, these three breaks have netted you … how much?’ McCracken asked.

‘Mr McCracken … please!’

‘According to the newspapers, it’s at least three hundred grand’s worth.’

‘But it’s … it’s not cash,’ Pixie stuttered. ‘So we can’t divi it up that easy.’

‘So …
what
?’ McCracken feigned astonishment. ‘We don’t get paid?’ He chuckled. ‘Is that seriously what you’re trying to tell us, Pix?’

‘It takes time. There’s stuff to fence, you know?’

‘Ah, so … you actually
were
going to pay what you owe, just at some point in the future?’

‘Yeah, yeah, sure … same arrangement as always.’

‘Except … you didn’t tell us you were back in the game.’

‘There wasn’t time, Mr McCracken.’

‘But there was time to lie in bed with that skanky bird of yours.’

‘Look … I can get the money in a couple of weeks. Soon as we’ve unloaded enough stuff. The jewellery alone should fetch a hundred grand.’

‘Trouble is, Pix … it’s two hundred.’

Pixie’s eyes widened in his blood-spattered face. ‘That’s two thirds …’

McCracken nodded, chuckled again. ‘And that’s not the end of it, either.’

He signalled to one of the heavies, who came around from the other side of the BMW with a string and brown paper parcel. Cheerfully, McCracken unwrapped it, shaking out what looked like a transparent plastic raincoat, and a pair of transparent plastic gloves.

‘Oh, come on, please!’ Pixie wailed.

‘Now I can see the lads have already given you a seeing-to, Pix,’ McCracken said, as he donned the protective clothing, ensuring to button the raincoat all the way to the top. ‘But I’m guessing that was because you played hard to get.’

‘Mr McCracken, please … I’m gonna get you the money.’

‘Oh, I know you are, Pix … otherwise we wouldn’t be having this conversation. But …’ McCracken ensured the gloves were a comfy fit by flexing his big, knobbly-knuckled hands inside them. ‘But, you see … I can’t just let you walk away with a busted nose. I mean, what would my reputation be worth if I did?’

‘Mr McCracken, please!’

Pixie writhed in his captors’ gasp, but they held him firm. And as such, he never even saw the right hook that caught him smack-bang in the middle of the face. His nose, which might finally have been congealing from the earlier beating, splattered wide open again. Ruby droplets sprayed over McCracken’s plastic coveralls.

Pixie gave a choked gasp of agony.

A left hook followed, slamming into the same spot, the resounding smack of fist on bone echoing across the otherwise empty cul-de-sac. The third blow caught him in the ribs, the fourth under the jaw, the fifth to the left side of the face, the sixth to the right,

Lucy lost count after that. She withdrew from the hole in the wall, heart thundering.

It was the gravest problem any undercover officer could face – what to do in the event of serious criminal offences being committed in your presence. Especially when the overriding priority was to maintain your covert status. On the face of it, if the victim was a criminal himself there was perhaps less of an impulse to intervene … but by the sounds of it, this was a savage and protracted beating. Even now it was going on, and the impacts of the blows were deafening. The guy wouldn’t die. That was expressly not their aim. But for a police officer to witness such torture, to stand there and do nothing … and yet what
could
she do?

And then another voice intervened. Jayne McIvar’s. By the sounds of it, she too had emerged onto the road from the club’s entry passage.

‘Not outside my place, Frank … please.’

‘
Your
place, Jayney?’ McCracken replied, breaking off from his exertions, breathing hard.

‘You know what I mean. Anywhere but here, please. It’s bad for business.’

Lucy went back to the wall and peeked through.

Jayne, who during the evenings glammed up in make-up, jewellery, an ankle-length cocktail dress and uber-high heels, made an incongruous figure on the grimy backstreet. Pixie meanwhile, still suspended with arms spread between two of McCracken’s goons, but now slumped downward, was a bloody wreck; like a man who’d died on a cross. McCracken himself was sprayed crimson, though of course his transparent plastic coating had protected his expensive suit, if not his face.

He took care of the latter by dabbing his cheeks and forehead with a silk handkerchief.

‘When I tell you how to package high-class pussy, darling,’ he replied, ‘you can tell me how to run my end of the operation. Now why don’t you be a good girl and go back inside?’

Very reluctantly, Jayne withdrew. McCracken turned back to his victim, from whom there wasn’t so much as a twitch, let alone a groan.

‘But … ultimately, I think we
are
done here.’ McCracken lowered his fists. ‘Take him to that shithole pad of his. Leave him to the tender mercies of his girlfriend. Let’s see if she’s worthy of the name. When he comes round, remind him he’s got a week and that we’re in for two hundred K.’

The goons hauled Pixie’s lifeless form around to the rear of the BMW. Someone flipped the boot lid open, and they deposited him inside. McCracken peeled off his gory plastic, handed it to Shallicker, then straightened his tie and headed back indoors.

Lucy backed away from the hole and turned – just as a dark form flashed across the yard towards her from the door; a burly figure, but moving with catlike agility and a frantic clatter of spike-heeled boots. Before Lucy could draw breath, a leather-clad forearm had slammed her backwards against the bricks, and now exerted incredible force as it crushed her windpipe crosswise. In the same blur of speed, a partially gloved hand brought a cigarette lighter to Lucy’s face and spurted out a long tongue of flame, which flickered so close to her left cheek that she was certain she could smell her own skin as it singed.

She gagged and whimpered and tried to turn her head away, but her captor was larger and vastly stronger than she was, and held her locked in place.

‘Who the fuck are you!’ Suzy McIvar demanded in a snakelike hiss. ‘And what the fuck do you think you’re playing at?’

‘Nothing, Miss McIvar,’ Lucy stammered. ‘Please, I thought I heard …’

‘
WHO ARE YOU, I SAID?
’

‘Hayley Gibbs, Miss McIvar … I’ve only just started here.’

Suzy continued to hiss but now as she breathed, glaring into Lucy’s face from point-blank range. Bizarrely, her eyes were odd-coloured, one green, one a muddy brown – another testimony to her violent life, no doubt. Her clenched teeth glinted white between tightly drawn lips. ‘
What
are you?’ she demanded.

‘Ex-tom, miss. I work on the coats. Sorry, I just …’

‘You seem very interested in everything that’s going on here for a coat-check girl!’

‘I couldn’t … I couldn’t help it. Please …’

It wasn’t difficult for Lucy to pretend she was so frightened that her words tumbled over one another, because she was. Nor was it purely down to the proximity of that long, wavering flame, which could surely be no more than a centimetre from her flesh. Partly it was due to the craziness imprinted on the face behind the flame. Up close, Suzy McIvar’s eyes looked glassy, dead – like they weren’t real. The Head of Security resembled her sister, even if she wasn’t identical to her, but there was an icy derangement there that even Jayne the brothel-queen lacked. With effort, Jayne McIvar could pass as a respectable woman, but no matter what fancy feathers this creature donned, she’d always be a street-hoodlum.

‘You lie to me, girl, and I’ll blowtorch that pretty nose right off your face,’ Suzy snarled. ‘You’ll spend the rest of your life with two bony holes where the snot comes out!’

The lighter-flame felt as if it was performing this task already, Lucy’s left cheek flaring heat and pain.

‘Just thought I heard something weird,’ she stuttered. ‘I got curious, that’s all …’

‘I’ve never seen you around before. Who’d you tom for?’

Before Lucy could blurt out her reply, another voice intruded. ‘Don’t spoil her face, if you don’t mind!’

Over Suzy’s shoulder, beyond the tear-inducing glare of the flame, Lucy saw that Jayne McIvar had stepped into the yard. Delilah was loitering worriedly behind her – possibly she’d alerted her mistress to what was happening.

Suzy snapped her lighter closed, the intense heat instantly extinguished, but continued to bore into Lucy’s head with her weird, doll-like eyes.

‘Did you hire this smackhead bitch?’ she replied.

Jayne’s heels clicked the flagstones as she approached. ‘What’s going on?’

Suzy still didn’t look round. ‘Came out for a smoke and found this one fixing her beady little gaze on Frank and his team.’

‘Sorry, Miss McIvar,’ Lucy said, addressing Jayne. ‘I overheard them … I just didn’t know what it was …’

‘This surprises you?’ Jayne told her sister. She too was stony-faced with rage, but apparently her ire was aimed elsewhere. ‘Right fucking pantomime … bang outside our front door! If there was any neighbourhood left here, they’d
all
have been looking!’

‘I said did you hire her?’ Suzy said.

‘She checks out,’ Jayne retorted. ‘What’s the exact problem?’

What seemed like a minute passed, during which Suzy breathed hoarse and heavy like some predatory beast besotted with the scent of blood, her eyes never once leaving Lucy, her prey – until slowly, very slowly, she leaned backwards, dropping her elbow.

Lucy gasped and coughed.

‘Maybe there isn’t a problem.’ Suzy backed off. ‘But Hayley Gibbs … if I catch you sticking your nose where it isn’t wanted again …’ She gestured with the lighter, before ramming it back into her pocket. ‘Well … I’ve told you, haven’t I?’

‘I know you’re pissed off,’ Jayne quietly advised her sister. ‘We all are. But taking it out on the help won’t get us anywhere.’

Suzy chose to ignore that. Instead, she pointed at Lucy one last time before heading back inside, stiff-shouldered and with loud, stumping footfalls.

Lucy could only lean against the wall and gently knead at her bruised trachea. Jayne walked over to her and irritably fingered the chink in the brickwork.

‘Not a very good idea, love,’ she said. ‘Spying on Mr McCracken’s business is the last thing that’ll win you friends round here.’

Lucy shook her head, struggling to enunciate words that didn’t hurt her throat. ‘I had no idea that’s what I was doing, Miss McIvar … honestly. I don’t even know who this Mr McCracken is.’

‘I believe you, Hayley. You know why? Because if you did –’ Jayne placed her fingertips under Lucy’s chin and turned her head sideways ‘– you wouldn’t have been doing what Suzy’s just caught you doing.’

‘I was on my break. I thought I heard something bad, I wasn’t sure …’

‘You’ll hear a lot of bad things while you’re here, Hayley. If you haven’t got the stomach for that, you’re in the wrong place.

‘Yes … erm, yes, miss.’

‘It’s understandable you’re curious, of course.’ Jayne frowned, her brows knotting with frustration. ‘Bastard gangsters. They lord it over us like kings. We all have to scrape and bow, even me and Suzy. But at present we also have to know what’s good for us.’ She released Lucy’s chin and edged backward. ‘No damage done there, at least … so you could still make the Talent Team, if ever you’ve got a mind to. But until then, Hayley, follow my sister’s advice … get on with what you
are
supposed to be doing, and you’ll be fine.’

‘Yes, Miss McIvar. Of course.’

Taking it that the interview was over, Lucy scuttled back indoors.

Chapter 18

There were no more dramatic events at SugaBabes over the next few nights, which allowed Lucy to concentrate on what she was supposed to be doing. One by one, she learned and memorised the names of the girls, though it was a time-consuming process as most of them never even came downstairs until the club officially opened, at which point they immediately began to entertain customers. As far as she could discern there were none working here, at least none she’d yet discovered, who were even casually referred to by the name “Lotta”, nor any who matched her statuesque description.

‘Mr Billworth!’ Marissa called from the vestibule, distracting her from these ruminations. ‘Your taxi’s here, sir.’

Lucy felt an irresistible prickle of interest, waiting po-faced as a customer ambled into view from the Russian Room. He smiled amiably as he produced his ticket and she handed over his coat and gloves. He was about seventy, with clean-shaved features and long, white, soft-looking hair, and was extremely well-presented in an Armani suit, a pink silk shirt, a pink silk tie and a gold tie-pin. She also noted pearl-studded cufflinks and a Rolex. When she gave him his overcoat she could tell it was richest cashmere.

As soon as Billworth had left the building, Lucy made an excuse to Delilah and wandered out into the yard at the back, where, having ensured there was nobody else hanging around, especially not Suzy McIvar, she warily moved to the chink in the wall. It felt like madness after what had happened last time, but as before, she wasn’t making any real ground here and proactivity seemed like the only potential antidote to that.