Two-Faced (42 page)

‘Must have been some fucking battle,’ Noel commented, his gaze bouncing from one to other of the numerous bullet holes in the wall behind Steve’s head. ‘How many of them were there?’

‘Don’t have a clue,’ Steve said darkly. ‘It happened too fast, and they caught us off guard. I’ll ask Tiny; she was here.’

‘What were they after?’ Noel asked. ‘Anything missing?’

‘Yeah, my fucking money,’ Steve told him angrily. ‘One of the cunts must have mugged me on the way out.’

‘What about the safe?’

‘Haven’t had a chance to look yet.’

‘The other girls?’ Noel asked now, still studiously not looking at the one who was lying right in front of him.

‘New ones are still out of it,’ Steve told him. ‘But my one’s gone.’

‘Oh, right,’ Noel said gravely. ‘Any idea where?’

‘No, but if she escaped at the same time
that
one tried to, she could be anywhere by now.’ Shaking his head again, Steve gritted his teeth. ‘Where’s Tommy?’

‘Should be here in a minute,’ Noel told him, glancing at his watch. ‘Want me to get the others rounded up?’

‘Yeah, we need to do a clean-up soon as,’ Steve said, turning to go back to Tiny. When he saw the room keys still dangling from the lock of Mia’s room he yanked them out.

‘Tiny . . . ?’ He marched up the hallway, went into the lounge and looked down at her where she was huddled on one of the chairs now. ‘Did you leave the doors unlocked?’

‘No me, man,’ she said, pointing at the wall where the keys had been taken from. ‘I hang there, he take.’

‘How many men were there?’ Steve asked. ‘And how did they get in?’

‘Tree.’ Tiny held up three fingers. ‘All black.’ She stroked her hands down over her face to indicate the balaclavas they had been wearing, items for which she had no word.

Misinterpreting the statement to mean that the men, not their headgear, had been black, Steve cast a hooded glance at Noel, who was standing in the doorway. Nodding to indicate that he understood that Steve was telling him to get on the phone and get the guys to start putting out feelers for three black men who might have pulled the job, Noel went out into the hall to make his calls.

‘How did they get in?’ Steve asked Tiny again.

‘Bat’ room,’ she croaked, pointing out along the corridor to the small toilet which was situated between the Kosovan girls’ and the Thai girl’s rooms. ‘Window no bar in dere,’ she reminded him.

‘And what happened when they came in?’ Steve wanted to know. ‘Did they say anything? Touch anything?’

‘I have gun, but man kick it out of hand,’ she said. ‘Then man pull hair, say, “We know you got girl lock up, keys –
NOW
!”’

Steve’s eyes narrowed as she mimicked the male voice. He said, ‘Girl? You sure he said girl, not
girls
?’

‘No,
girl
,’ Tiny insisted. Then, frowning, she said, ‘I tink.’

‘All right, we’ll go over it again later,’ Steve said, seeing that it was painful for her to talk. ‘Did they go into the office?’

‘No.’ Tiny shook her head. ‘Just here. Then see girls.’

‘What did they say when they saw them?’

‘“Fucky hell”,’ Tiny told him, mimicking a man’s voice again. ‘And man call me dirty name for . . .’ Unable to think of the words for giving an injection, she mimed the action on her own arm. ‘Then you come, and
boom
!’ She mimed a punch in her own face.

Steve nodded and told her to stop talking. Deep in thought, he went back out into the hall and relocked the two remaining girls’ doors while Noel spoke quietly on the phone. He didn’t like this; there was something personal about it. If it had just been a random break-in, whoever had done it would probably have tried the doors first. But they’d gone straight for the only window that didn’t have bars.

And they had specifically mentioned the girls to Tiny, which they could only have known about if at least one of them had been a customer at some point. But none of the black guys who came to the club had ever used the upstairs girls. Much as they enjoyed their little lap-dances, they wouldn’t be caught dead dirtying their cocks in whore pussy.

Anyway, the whores weren’t advertised to the club’s clientele; they were purely for the entertainment of Steve’s business colleagues, who liked to have themselves videoed doing the deed so they could buy the DVDs and wank over them in privacy. But if Tiny had been right first time, and the men had said ‘girl’ instead of ‘girls’, did that mean that they had come to get one girl in particular? If so, the only one who could possibly be worth anything to anyone was Mia. But had she been taken, or had she simply escaped, as the Thai girl almost had?

Steve would find out, one way or another, but right now he had to get this mess cleaned up because the police could be here at any minute.

Spurred into action when his men began to arrive, he had two of them take Vern’s and the Thai girl’s corpses to the incinerator. Another drove Tiny over to Rochdale to see a doctor that Steve used whenever someone had got hurt and he didn’t want the police sniffing round.

The fact that the Kosovan girls were still alive posed a bigger problem, but Steve decided to dump them out in the sticks while they were still unconscious. They had no clue where they had been, so they couldn’t lead anybody back to him. And dumping them was easier than killing them, given the mess he was already in right now.

With the upper floor cleared, Steve got his cleaners to give it a thorough going-over to rid it of any evidence of foul play. Then, relaxed, knowing that even if the police came they would find nothing, he waited until it was dark before heading out to visit Mia’s mum’s house – where he presumed she would have run to if she had escaped, like the idiot that she was.

28

‘Michelle? Are you awake?’

Mia forced her eyes open and winced in the light. She blinked slowly as the hovering face wavered just out of focus and frowned deeply. It wasn’t Steve, she was sure of that; or Vern, or Noel, or the other one – Tommy. So was it a punter?

‘Michelle?’

‘Mia,’ she corrected the voice. Her own was croaky and raw.

‘Mia’s fine,’ Liam assured her, guessing that she was confused. He smiled and reached for the glass of water that was sitting on the cabinet beside the bed. ‘Do you want a drink?’

Mia’s eyes cleared a little and she blinked rapidly as Liam’s face began to take form. ‘
You?
’ she gasped. ‘But how—?’

‘Sshhh,’ Liam told her, gently lifting her so that she could sip at the water. ‘We’ll talk later.’

Mia gagged when the cold water touched her lips and she began to shiver violently. Liam laid her back down and pulled the blankets up around her. She was suffering withdrawal symptoms; he hadn’t accounted for that. As he gazed down at her concernedly when she began to moan, he knew that there was no way he could put her through the torture of cold turkey because she’d already suffered more than enough. Anyway, there was no telling how much heroin Steve Dawson had been giving her while she’d been locked in that room, and if Liam tried to make her stop abruptly there was a strong possibility that she could die of shock.

Telling her that he’d be back in a minute, Liam ran downstairs and rang Darren, asking him to bring round a couple of wraps of the gear that Davy had supplied him with. He was loath to do it, but it was the only way of weaning her off the stuff since he couldn’t risk taking her to a doctor and getting her on a methadone programme. But there was no way he was injecting her – on that he was adamant. Her veins were already fucked, so she would have to smoke or snort it instead.

29

Michelle and Kim were singing their heads off as Sammy turned the car onto their road. They’d just come back from Prague and they were all still buzzing because it had been Michelle’s first catwalk show and she had performed fantastically.

Sammy couldn’t stop telling her how proud he was of her, and Kim was really chuffed that she had not only been invited along but had been treated like a queen – which had made a lovely change from Mia’s shows where, more often than not, she was either banned from going or hidden away in a corner like a dirty secret.

Kim had seen a whole new side to Michelle since Mia had done a runner, and she had really been enjoying her company. As a child, Michelle had always been pushed into the background by Mia and Kim felt guilty when she thought about it, because she knew that she could and
should
have done more to even the playing field between them. But it was true what they said about the one who shouted loudest getting all the attention. Mia had found her mouth at a very young age, and by
God
had she used it; demanding this, demanding that – and putting Kim on a guilt trip if she dared to say no. And Kim had found it easier to give in than to argue, because Mia never gave up. If she wanted something, she’d just keep banging on and on until she got it. Whereas Michelle had been the exact opposite: never demanding, and therefore usually not getting.

After pulling up outside the house, Sammy jumped out to get their cases out of the boot while Michelle nipped down to the shops to get the milk they’d forgotten to stop for on their way back. Kim went inside to put the kettle on.

Sammy had also been enjoying Michelle’s company. Now that she was gaining confidence she was proving to be an absolute natural – which was great from a professional point of view, because the work offers were flooding in. But her character was so different from Mia’s that she was an absolute joy to work with; never stroppy, or difficult, always polite and willing to go the extra mile and then some to get the best shot – which was earning her a good reputation and a lot of support from within the industry. In the short time that she had been ‘Mia’, Michelle had made a more positive impact than her sister had made in two years – and she hadn’t had to pull any stunts to achieve it; she’d just been her natural, warm, beautiful self.

As he reached the door with the cases Sammy heard Kim shouting. He dropped them on the step and ran inside.

‘What’s the matter?’ he asked, holding out his arms to cushion their collision when she barrelled out of the kitchen and ran straight into him.

‘Look!’ she squawked, waving her arm in an arc to indicate the mess. ‘We’ve been burgled!’

‘Oh, good lord. Is anything missing?’

‘Don’t think so,’ Kim muttered, her eyes darting from this to that. ‘Looks like they just came in to trash it. Oh, me
telly
– they didn’t have to do that!’

The TV was lying screen down on the floor beneath the window, surrounded by glittering shards of glass. Sammy shook his head. With that, and the couch and chair cushions scattered around with their stuffing bulging out through large knife-slash holes, and ornaments lying broken where they’d landed after being swept off shelves and ledges, the damage did seem rather wanton.

‘How did they get in?’ he asked.

‘Back door’s been booted in,’ Kim told him as she headed out into the hall to go and see what damage had been done upstairs.

Sammy followed and put his arm around her when she went into her bedroom and burst into tears. It was just as much a mess in there as it was downstairs: mirror smashed, everything that had been on the dressing table now broken on the floor. But it was the state of Kim’s bedding that really upset her. Looking as if it had been torn apart by somebody’s hands, it was an irreparable mess.

‘I only got that out of the catalogue three weeks ago,’ she sobbed, slumping down onto the quilt and stroking it. ‘It cost seventy-five quid, and I haven’t even started paying for it yet.’

Telling her not to worry, that he would personally replace it, Sammy glanced up when he heard Michelle coming in through the front door below. She was still humming the song that they had been singing so happily just a few short minutes ago. Then she stopped abruptly, and Sammy heard her gasp when she saw the mess in the living room.

‘Mum?’ she called out, sounding shocked and panic-stricken. ‘Mum, where are you?’

‘Up here,’ Sammy called back.

Michelle ran up the stairs and came into Kim’s bedroom. ‘Oh, no,’ she moaned. ‘Your lovely bedspread.’ She sat beside her mother and put her arm around her. ‘Don’t cry, mum. We’ll get you a new one.’

Sniffling back her tears, embarrassed because she wasn’t a natural crier, Kim said, ‘Don’t worry about me, I’m just being soft. You’d best check your own room, love.’

Michelle nodded, got up and went to check, not surprised to find her bedroom in just as much of a mess as the rest of the house, with ripped clothes strewn everywhere and everything fragile smashed.

‘I’m going to see if Pam heard anything,’ Kim said. She went back down the stairs with a thunderous look on her face.

When she’d gone, Sammy scratched his head and looked at Michelle. ‘I think you’d best come and stay with me again.’

Picking up on the undertone of worry in his voice, Michelle said, ‘I don’t think they’ll come back. They don’t usually; not once they realise there’s nothing of value to steal. It was probably just local kids who found out the house was empty.’

‘I hope so,’ Sammy replied quietly. ‘But all the same, I think I’d feel happier if you stayed with me – just until we’re sure this wasn’t a targeted attack.’

‘Targeted?’ Michelle repeated. ‘Why would anyone target us? We’re nobody, and we’ve got nothing – everyone knows that round here.’

‘My dear, are you forgetting that you’re really rather famous now?’

‘That’s Mia, not me,’ Michelle replied without hesitation. ‘And she’s not even here, so why would anyone target . . .’ Trailing off when she realised what she’d said, she smiled sheepishly.

‘Exactly,’ Sammy said.

Kim came back just then, already shouting as she pounded her way up the stairs. ‘You know what, she is one spiteful cow, her next door! She heard everything – the door getting booted in, the house getting ransacked – the lot. And she just sat on her fat arse and left them to it.’

‘Didn’t she call the police?’

‘Did she hell!’ Kim blurted out. ‘Like I said –
spiteful
!’ Looking at Sammy now, the indignation sparking in her eyes, she said, ‘You’d never guess me and her used to be best mates. We used to be in and out of each other’s houses all the time – didn’t we, Shell? Went everywhere together: bingo, shopping, the pub –
every
where. Then she got on one when I said I needed my Christmas club money back for our Mia’s photos, and she’s been a cow ever since. Jealous, that’s what she is. Bitter, twisted, and jealous as hell.’