TRAPPED (21 page)

‘Okay, well cheers for coming. I’ll see you later in the club.’

As Saucers talked she watched Johnny pull out his phone.

‘I ain’t going to leave it with Nicky you know. I’m going to keep ringing until he answers. Let’s see if he’s about now.’

Saucers eyes widened as it struck her what Johnny was doing. He was calling Nicky. As Johnny waited for the phone to connect, panic set in as Saucers realised any second now Nicky’s phone would start to vibrate and then ring, the same phone which was lying on top of the coffee table next to where Nicky was hiding.

Gina Daniels wondered if blood actually boiled because if it did, hers certainly was. One thing she hated was the idea that someone was taking advantage of her and the idea was not only a thought; it was a fact. She’d heard Nicky had done a runner, leaving her not only short of a few bob, but well and truly in the shit with Johnny.

No doubt Nicky had expected her just to forget about everything now he’d gone, but Gina Daniels had never left anything in her life; apart she supposed from her kids, but they didn’t really count – she was best rid of them anyway.

If she couldn’t get what she wanted from Nicky, she certainly wasn’t going to leave it. She’d do the exact opposite; she’d light a firecracker up the Donaldsons’ arse.

Maggie was the cause of everything. If it wasn’t for her meddling, things would be running smoothly still. She would be up a few hundred quid a week instead of turning into a skivvy for someone else’s daughter and for that Maggie would pay. Yes, Maggie Donaldson was going to pay a heavy price.

Gypsy stood over Lorna as she lay in a pool of blood. She bent down and touched Lorna’s head, watching the blood ooze from her scalp. She stood up, realising she needed to call the ambulance, even though a large part of her didn’t want to. But she couldn’t let it go that far.

‘Gypsy?’

Gypsy jumped, her daze broken by the sound of a familiar voice – though what she saw on her husband’s face was far from familiar. Frankie was staring at what she was holding, a look of horror on his face. In Gypsy’s right hand was a cosh drenched in Lorna’s blood.

‘Frank … it wasn’t …’

‘What the fuck have you done?’

Tommy Donaldson paced up and down, his shirt feeling stiff from where the summer sweat had dried. He was agitated and couldn’t think straight. His thoughts were all blurry. He’d been lucky not to be seen but what he
had
seen had changed everything.

He slumped down on the clean white bed. For the first time in a long time Tommy
needed
to talk. He couldn’t get the woman’s face out of his head. He’d seen a tiny glimpse of her but that’d been enough. He knew her face, every inch of it, every line, every detail. And now it was as if the walls were closing in on him and the fevered anxiety which had consumed him as a child had flooded back. He felt alone and scared but there was no stopping now, even though the place where he was heading looked dark and frightening.

Tommy lit a cigarette; he wasn’t a heavy smoker but occasionally the heavy taste of the smoke circulating in his mouth and the tightness at the back of his throat, for some reason made him feel better.

As Tommy stood at the corner of Berkley Square, Maggie came into his thoughts and he smiled. He liked to think of her. To him she was everything that was good. She was the light to his darkness and when everything started to get too much, it was her face he’d try to picture to stop him falling too far.

Still thinking about Maggie, Tommy leant against the
railings
and saw a woman in the distance on the other side of the square, frowning and looking concerned as she talked. She wore red patent shoes, smart and expensive, and a black coat with red trim buttoned up to the top.

Tommy walked into the Georgian house quietly. He knew he was taking a risk; it was daylight and he didn’t know if someone else was in the house but he wanted to follow his instinct, trust in himself as other people didn’t and know it’d be okay.

The back door had been inaccessible, a big iron gate standing between Tommy and what he wanted to do. So he’d pushed the front door and it’d opened with frightening ease.

He stood for a moment and listened to the sound of panting. It was his own. His hands were shaking and for a short while he was mesmerised by them, wondering if it was fear or the adrenalin kicking in.

There were shopping bags left in the hallway and Tommy tried to quieten his breath against the silence of the hall. He moved along the corridor to where a door was slightly ajar. He brushed back his hair with his forearm and took a deep breath and walked into the kitchen.

As she lay in a pool of her own blood, Tommy knew he only had seconds to find an escape route or face whoever he’d just heard coming in. His eyes darted around frantically. At the side end of the kitchen there was another door and Tommy ran to it, his mind loaded with terror, unable to contemplate being caught.

He ran through and exited in another part of the large hallway and then found his way out into the fresh air the same way he had come into the house. As he left, Tommy turned his head – and that’s when he saw her. The woman from his dreams.

Frankie’s eyes stared at the numerous hospital monitors which beeped out of unison with each other whilst green output lines with sharp jagged points flashed across the small screens in continuous motion. The male nurse, with his rounded sympathetic face, short greying red hair and unfashionable rectangular glasses, silently recorded the data.

Lorna had been brought into ICU at University College Hospital with a head injury and Frankie hadn’t left her side, apart from the odd trip to the bathroom and a stay awake coffee run to the ground floor.

She’d been brought in by the ambulance unconscious and had stayed that way ever since. He’d told the hospital staff she must’ve had a fall. Which couldn’t be further from the truth if he tried. He didn’t
actually
know what had happened – though he had a damn good idea what had – nothing could get the image of Gypsy holding the cosh out of his mind and once Lorna woke up, he’d make sure she told him the truth. Once he knew that, he was going to sort it out his way. Not a copper’s way, not by the laws of the land. He was going to sort it with the rules he’d been brought up with. The rules of the street.

He glanced to the side of him and locked eyes with Gypsy. She’d pleaded her innocence since the attack, imploring him to believe her that she hadn’t done it. The problem was he didn’t believe her, how could he? She’d proved she was a lying cow by what Lorna had seen and he’d been gutted; devastated.

He loved her. She was his and his alone, though that hadn’t been enough for her. She’d been seeing other fellas. The image of his naked wife with her tits out for another man came into his head and it enraged Frankie to the point that he had to hold onto the sides of the uncomfortable red plastic chair to stop exploding in a rage of fury.

For the past couple of days he’d been waiting to decide what to do with the information; perhaps see if he could gather more. But now this’d happened; Lorna had been attacked and he’d walked in to find his wife holding the cosh. It’d messed his head right up. Gypsy had told him she’d just walked in and found Lorna like that, but then she’d also told him she was a faithful wife. It was as if he didn’t know who she was anymore. She was so full of hate for Lorna, maybe he should’ve seen this coming.

What Gypsy needed to do was own up. God knows it was stupid not to, she’d been caught red-handed, but she was denying it. As hard as it would be to hear that his wife had taken leave of her senses by attacking one of her own, he would’ve preferred to listen to the truth than the running bullshit he’d had to listen to. ‘Frankie, you got to believe me babe, I ain’t done nothing to Lorna. God bleeding knows the idea hasn’t run through me bonce, but actually doing it is another thing
.
’

He’d looked at her and felt her put her hand between the gaps of the buttons on his shirt. Her touch had turned his stomach and he’d grabbed her hand, squeezing it hard and making her yelp.

Gypsy had brimmed up with tears and seeing her upset had made him start to soften; but as he contemplated comforting her, the image in his head which had been there since the night Lorna had reported back had overwhelmed him. He’d roared in anger at her.
‘Stop with the bleeding tears girl. Christ, it’d be easier for us all to stop the frigging charade Gyps and just tell me the truth.’

‘I ain’t got a flipping clue what’s got into you, Frankie. I know you’re upset about Lorna but I can tell it’s not just that. I’ve been married to you long enough to know when something’s bothering you.’

‘You’re really pushing it Gypsy. Fuck me, you’re really going to stand there and give me a look of bleeding innocence when both of us know what’s been going on for a while.’

‘Frankie, I don’t get it. I know you’re upset about Lorna and all this grief won’t help you get better either, but I’ll be honest darlin’, I ain’t got a clue what you’re talking about.’

‘No? Well, let me refresh your memory. I know all …’

Frankie had stopped himself mid-sentence. The last thing he’d wanted to do was to let what he knew out of the bag before he was ready. When he’d got his head around it and he didn’t feel like someone was driving a stake into his chest, he’d talk to her, keeping his voice cool and hard and emotionless. He’d treat her no different than the way he treated the guys who tried to turn him over.

As Frankie continued to think, the small black monitor nearest to Lorna’s bed rang out an alarm, startling both Frankie and Gypsy equally. The nurse sitting at the end of the bed got up and moved around to the flashing machine, calmly pressing buttons and silencing the screeching alarm.

Frankie leapt up anxiously and felt Gypsy put her hand on his leg but he brushed it away, focusing his attention on his sister’s wellbeing.

‘Is she alright mate?’

The nurse answered in a comforting reassuring voice.

‘She will be. The only reason she’s still unconscious is that with a lot of brain injuries, for a precaution we keep people in a medically induced coma to help with the swelling. It protects it from getting more damaged by letting the brain sleep and heal. Thankfully your sister hasn’t got any swelling and the scan shows her injuries were all superficial. So the good news is the doctors have told us to start waking her up. After the sedatives have worn off hopefully she’ll be back to her old self within hours.’

Frankie nodded, relieved now he thought his sister was going to be alright. He turned to Gypsy who was still sitting down and looking at him anxiously. Not wanting the nurse to overhear, he spoke quietly with a definite tone of sarcasm. ‘Good news, Gyps? I bet this is what you were praying for hey, babe?’

‘Yeah Frank, I’m pleased.’

‘Are you, are you really?’

‘Course I am. No matter what I thought of the old goat, I wouldn’t wish this on her.’

Frankie stared at his wife, trying to ignore all the things about her which made her so attractive to him. He pulled on his Barbour brown leather jacket in angry silence, careful not to bang his stab wound which was healing nicely.

Now he knew Lorna was going to be okay, he could go back to Soho. He needed a stiff drink, a few lines and a God almighty fuck.

He didn’t bother saying anything more to Gypsy. Instead he gave an appreciative tap on the nurse’s shoulder, pressing a couple of fifty pound notes into his hand before storming off. Gypsy was left wondering exactly what she’d done so wrong for Frankie to believe she was capable of attacking Lorna.

The sound of a horn behind the brass made her jump. It was loud and continuous and Frankie saw her nerves wouldn’t allow her to ignore it. She turned around and he opened the passenger window, smoothly gliding it down with the gold electric button in his white Range Rover. He grinned boldly, his words loud and punctuated by fake laughter.

‘Looking for me, babe?’

A slinky smile spread across the hooker’s face, used to the corny chat up lines from punters, but her eyes were dark and guarded.

‘That all depends.’

‘On what?’

‘On what I’ll find.’

‘How about I jump in, and trust me when I say you won’t be disappointed.’

The brass opened the passenger door and slipped herself onto the thick black leather seats, smelling a mix of the burning joint and expensive cologne.

Immediately Frankie reached over and started stroking her leg, making his way up to her thigh before roughly putting his hand between her legs. He grabbed at the crotch of her knickers, ripping them across to one side and slid his fingers into the hooker, licking his lips with his pupils dilating from the cocaine and the thought of sticking his cock into her wet pussy.

The hooker took the joint from the car ashtray, inhaling deeply as Frankie started to drive with one hand on the wheel and the other still roughly inside her. She looked across and saw what looked like tears rolling down the cheeks of Frankie Taylor.

The phone began to vibrate on the coffee table and Saucers knew in the next beat it’d be all over for her and Nicky when it began to ring, unless … It was madness to do it but she knew that’s what it was going to take.

She closed her eyes and braced herself before throwing herself onto Johnny. Flinging her body over him, Saucers grabbed the phone out of his hand and sent it flying across the room, causing it to break apart as it came into contact with the wall.

‘What the fuck are you doing?’

Johnny roared in shock as Saucers ground her body onto his, pushing him back down on the couch. He struggled with her but he was really too stunned by the strangeness of the situation.

‘Oh Johnny baby, I want you, I’ve wanted you for so long. Fuck me baby, fuck me.’

‘Jesus, Saucers, what’s got into you? Get off me.’

He pushed her off him; if he wasn’t so startled he might’ve laughed. She was bouncing on top of him, grabbing hold of her boobs and shrieking like a woman possessed.