The Know (52 page)

She looked in at the windows of the flats around her. Saw the lights, the different wallpapers, the flickering of television screens; listened to the pumping music and the screams and laughter of the teenagers hanging about the street below, and envied everyone their uncomplicated lives.

Her mother used to say that for most people life was shit; it was what everyone else in their life made it. You never had a choice really, it was other people who fucked you up. Until tonight Joanie had not understood what she had been talking about. Every person who was hurt was only hurting because they loved someone. Look at little Bethany. She loved Monika so much and it was a wasted love. The worst of it all was that, as young as she was, Bethany already knew that fact.

Joanie clasped the bin bag to her and, sinking to her knees, cried like a baby, the pain inside her chest so acute she really did think she might die from it.

 
‘Please, Dad, listen to me for a minute, will you?’

Kieron was starting to panic now. No matter what he said to his father he was ignored or ridiculed.

Big John mimicked his voice nastily.

‘
Dad, listen to me, will you?
Will I bollocks!’

Jon Jon looked at Kieron with no feeling for his distress.

‘Why don’t you shut up, you fucking perverted cunt?’

Kieron, some of his usual animosity to the fore now, said, ‘Are you really going to let him talk to me like that, Dad? A fucking coon and you’d let him talk to
me
like that? Where’s the Big John McClellan I know and loathe?’

Big John laughed.

‘Oh, upset you, has he? You fucking noncing piece of shit!’

Jon Jon leaned over between the seats in front of him.

‘Did you have any dealings with my sister Kira? Only I can see from the photographs your dad showed me that you know her little mate Bethany intimately.’

Big John laughed.

‘That’s a good one, Jon Jon, you have a way with words. Intimately. How old was she then, Kieron? Nine, ten?’

‘Wouldn’t you like to know?’

He started to laugh and Big John, even though he was driving, leaned backwards and attempted to punch his son in the face.

‘You stroppy little bastard! I’ll kill you for what you’ve done to me . . .’

He stopped the car in the middle of the road and jumped out. Opening the passenger door, he started to punch his son in the head and body. He was losing it. After all he had had to contend with, he was finally losing it.

It took Jon Jon all his strength and powers of persuasion to get John back into the driving seat.

People were staring at them, wondering what was going on but not willing to get involved. Looking at this big angry man, who could blame them?

‘Calm down, for fuck’s sake, before we all get nicked! Pull the car into the kerb, people are looking.’

Kieron was slumped in his seat, quiet at last. He was also bleeding profusely.

Jon Jon saw that Gerald and James had pulled up behind them and were watching the scene in silence. As he couldn’t see Pippy he had to assume they had talked to him already.

He walked over to their car. Cupping his eyes, he looked into the back window. Pippy was lying on the seat. He was bloody and battered but still alive, and that was all Jon Jon was interested in.

Gerald opened the driver’s window.

‘Is it true, Jon Jon?’

He nodded.

‘Jesus Christ, it can’t be . . . Kieron’s a fucker but he wouldn’t do something like that . . .’

Jon Jon took the folder from his jacket pocket and passed it through the window. He pointed at Pippy Light.

‘Don’t you dare kill him. I need to talk to him about my little sister, OK?’

They nodded.

‘Once I find out what I need to know he’s all yours.’

As he walked back to Big John’s car a police vehicle drove past them at speed, all the lights flashing and siren blaring out, looking out for the incident that had been reported.

But Jon Jon, like the others, ignored it.

As usual, they were too late.

 
Paulie was in his office at Angel Girls. He liked being there lately, it was the only place he could relax. Though he wasn’t relaxing tonight. He was smoking a cigarette, something he only did occasionally, and in between puffs he was shredding documents. He had already destroyed all the discs he had and the computers where things might have been stored. Not that anyone else had ever been near his computers but fear and paranoia had taken over. He had felt an instant connection between Jon Jon and McClellan, knew now that the big man had somehow sussed something out. It was just too pat the way he’d showed up, trailing a moneyspinning deal, and asking if Paulie had a good man he could put on to it. But it was only when Jon Jon had blanked him by missing the meet that he had finally put two and two together.

Why had he ever let himself get involved with Jesmond and Pippy? Because it had never occurred to him that an innocent like Kira might get involved in what he had financed. Never in a million years would he have believed things could go that far. Foreign kids, they’d said. Born and brought up to it. Knew no better.

Lots of people asked him to bankroll schemes and he had financed them, for a price. He had made fortunes that way. And that was all he had done with Pippy, financed his operation. He had worked on the premise that what you don’t know can’t hurt you. How wrong he had been.

This was Pippy Light after all, mad as they came and into schoolies. He had known in his heart that he should never have had any dealings with Pippy or Jesmond, they were the scum of the criminal fraternity. But Jesmond had explained the economics of it all and it had seemed too good an opportunity to pass up.

It was the only reason he had given Sylvia what she had wanted. He knew he was not in a position to have his finances scrutinised too closely. So did his solicitor. Paulie had had a bad feeling about it from the off, but the potential for all that money had allayed any scruples or fears of capture he might have had.

And the worst of it all was, he was more frightened of being captured by his own peers than by Old Bill. Lily Law would have more chance of policing the Gaza Strip than the Internet, and it was this that was worrying Paulie so much. You could find almost anything there if you were out to prove something. Once his name was linked to known paedophiles he was fucked. Now Jesmond was dead, but who knew what he’d said?

Paulie had gone to Pippy’s tonight and got Earl to break in for him. What he had seen on the computers there had terrified him. He had smashed up all the machinery and then torched the place, after ransacking it first of course.

But like Big John his fear was that other computers around the world now held photographic evidence of children he had helped to procure. And somewhere his name just might be there along with it, on an e-mail to Rumania or the Czech Republic. Pippy was just cunt enough to say who’d funded them.

Paulie felt hot just thinking about it.

When he’d realised Kieron was also involved it had put the fear of Christ up him, but Pippy had sworn Big John had absolutely no idea about his son and he’d believed it, knowing John as he did.

But he had not known anything about Kira. Had not asked Pippy and Jesmond for updates on their clientele or their workers for that matter. He’d had no idea they were mad enough to touch local kids, had genuinely believed her disappearance was down to some random nutter - not the international paedophile ring he’d financed in expectation of a hefty return.

It was his own overwhelming greed that had led to his downfall, Paulie knew. To that and the death of the innocent child he’d fathered. His own daughter . . . his and Joanie’s. But he couldn’t think about that. He had to shut it out of his head and concentrate on saving his skin.

‘Kira.’ He found himself talking out loud, remembering her little face. The child he had denied. ‘I can’t think about you. I can’t bear to think . . . Oh, God, Kira, what have I done? Sweetheart, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry . . .’

 
Inside the breaker’s yard in Romford was a large unit used for storing car parts. The two Dobermanns, Pixie and Dixie, were used to sleeping in there between their stints patrolling the yard. Tonight their owner, an old man called Arnold Jigson, had been dragged from his kip inside an abandoned Dormobile to take them home.

He had not asked any questions, merely pocketed the fifty quid without a backward glance. He was used to the skulduggery of his boss Big John and had no desire to get involved with anything that did not have a direct bearing on him or his family. If the filth asked, he had been there all night, alone. Arnold knew the score.

Gerald poured them all a drink in the unit’s office space. Jon Jon rebooted the lap top and slipped in the disk he had been given by Big John.

As the screen flickered into life he watched the reactions of Pippy and Kieron. Pippy had the grace to look ashamed but Kieron’s arrogance remained, as if he truly believed he had done nothing wrong.

He was prominent in all the photos, far more than the ones his father had printed off, and Jon Jon quickly realised that this must be his own personal disc, one he kept for his own private enjoyment. So where did they keep the others? The ones they sold on to like-minded perverts?

Gerald and James looked ill. They were both white and sweaty.

James dragged his eyes away from the screen and stared at his little brother. But he was lost for words, couldn’t talk or even react properly so great was his shock. His father knew just what he was feeling.

‘Nice thing I bred here, eh, boys? What a fucking blinding relative. Proud of him, are you? Still want him to go home to his mummy?’

Big John dragged his youngest over by the hair and shoved his face towards the computer screen.

‘Go on, have a look. Be a last memory to take with you, won’t it?’

He was sobbing and shaking, but Kieron was quiet and passive, allowing it all to happen. He knew he was finished. There was nothing he could say to get himself out of this.

He pulled himself away from his father and straightened up, tidying his clothes, tucking his shirt in, and smoothing down his hair. Ever the dandy.

‘Where’s me sister?’ Jon Jon asked.

Kieron grinned.

‘What you asking me for?’

‘Oh, for fuck’s sake, tell them what they want to know, will you? Let’s get this over with.’ Pippy’s voice was high-pitched with tension. He just wanted it all to end as quickly and easily as possible.

Jon Jon turned to him.

‘Where is she, Pippy?’

He shrugged.

‘It was him.’ He flicked his head towards Kieron. ‘It’s happened before.’

A coughing fit overtook him then. One eye was swollen and bloody and his lip was split from the beating the brothers had given him.

Kieron laughed contemptuously then looked at James as he said, ‘You better get those knuckles looked at. They’re all scraped and bleeding. Must have hit his teeth. Bet that hurt.’

He grinned as he continued, ‘And he’s HIV, did you know that?’

That was the catalyst.

Picking up a crowbar they used to lever open the crates of contraband that regularly hit the yard, James smashed it across his brother’s skull. The sound was sickening. Kieron slid to the floor.

‘Pick him up and sling him out in the yard. This carpet’s nearly new.’

Big John sounded like an affronted housewife. Jon Jon couldn’t help it, he burst out laughing. His laughter was infectious and Gerald joined in.

‘Don’t know what you lot are laughing at. I might have AIDS!’ James said, affronted.

‘Shut up, you tart!’

Kieron levered himself up on to his elbow and gasped, ‘Look at you, all standing there looking so righteous. I used scum, like you lot do. They loved it once they knew what we wanted. Your little sister would still be around if she hadn’t been so fucking stubborn! ‘‘Oh, no . . . Please . . . I want me mum.’’ ’

Everyone looked at him appalled as he playacted the scene. None of them could believe just what they were hearing, a dying child’s last words as this man brutalised her.

He rambled on, knowing he’d caught their attention. He knew he would die tonight but he had something to tell them first. He believed that everything he had done was entirely justified.

‘They were all accidents waiting to happen. That Bethany, she couldn’t get enough of it, the drink and the drugs, being the centre of attention . . .

Kids like being with us, we
love
them.
Really
love them.’

‘Jesus fucking Christ!’

This was from Gerald, his absolute shock and disbelief evident in his expression and his voice.

‘What the fuck is going down here, Dad?’

He knew that his brother really believed what he was saying, that was the hardest thing of all.

‘Get him out! Get him out of my fucking sight.’

Kieron groaned as they went to lift him up. He rolled to one side and looked up at his father.

‘Thanks to the Internet we ain’t alone any more. There are millions of us worldwide, and one day we’ll be able to be open about what we do. You ignorant bastards have all thought about it, you just ain’t had the guts to
do
anything.’