Jessie Keane - Ruthless

‘Shit!’ he yelled, and thrashed about wildly. It didn’t help. His hands were bound, his feet were tied, he’d been dragged out of his nice warm lodgings and he was now dangling over this scary space like a landed cod, his thin hair blowing in the cold evening breeze. All right, he knew he was no angel. He was a small-time house burglar and sometimes – just occasionally, mind – he liked to touch up a kid or two. He couldn’t help himself, couldn’t be held responsible. He got these urges. He didn’t deserve this.

Max Carter placed the knife against the rope. It was all that stood between Dickon and a high-impact headache if he should fall forty feet to the hard cobbles below.

‘OK, let’s get down to business,’ said Max.

‘I didn’t do it!’

‘Didn’t do what?’

‘If I’d known the woman was anything to do with you, Mr Carter, I wouldn’t have gone near. Ask Moira! I don’t do women,’ wailed Dickon. ‘He wanted to get her, not me.’

Max drew a breath. ‘Who’s Moira?’

‘My landlady.’

‘Right. So where’s Redmond Delaney?’

That took a minute or two to sink in. ‘Redmond? What? Well… I ain’t seen him. Nobody has. Not in years.’

‘Wrong answer,’ said Max, and started sawing at the rope.

‘Wait!’ screamed Dickon.

Max stopped sawing. ‘God’s honour, Mr Carter, he ain’t been around in years, no one’s seen him, and you can cut that rope but I ain’t seen him, that’s God’s truth, that is.’

‘He set a bomb on a car. On Annie Carter’s car.’

Dickon was shaking his head. ‘No! It couldn’t have been him.’

‘Or you’re covering for him,’ said Max, handing the knife to Steve so that he could think this over. Now Steve applied himself to the rope.

‘No! I ain’t!’

Steve swiped the blade down, cutting into Dickon’s scrawny calf. Dickon screamed.

‘You tosser, you better start telling the truth or you’re well and truly fucked ,’ snarled Steve, waving the knife and throwing off droplets of blood from its razor-like tip.

‘I’m telling the truth! On my life!’

Max sighed and leaned against the bridge, gazing down at Dickon as Steve started sawing again. Was there anything in the world worse than a nonce?

Yeah, there was. A filthy little nonce who’d been within a hundred miles of his – admittedly adult – daughter. Like this one obviously had.

The rope was fraying now, quite badly.

‘Start talking,’ said Max, his mind consumed with disgust at the thought of Layla being anywhere near this scum. And that car blowing up. His wife – ex-wife , he reminded himself, and Layla’s mother – could have been inside it. He felt rage at that, ungovernable, unstoppable. Layla being pursued through a park, barely escaping. Who knew what could have happened to her, if she’d been caught?

‘I don’t know nothing…’ Dickon cried.

Steve sawed and the rope frayed.

‘Only about Rufus Malone…’

Screaming, Dickon plunged forty feet to the cobbles below and hit them with a wet, meaty whack.

Steve stared down there for a long moment. Then he drew back. ‘Oops,’ he said.

He handed the knife to Max.

Max shook his head. ‘That’s a bit inconvenient,’ he said, tucking the knife away. Rufus Malone? he thought.

‘Can’t stand nonces,’ said Steve.

‘Let’s sort that mess out and get on to the next one.’

‘Precious,’ said Layla next day as they sat on the bed chatting. They’d made up, they were friends again.

‘Hm?’

‘I need your help,’ said Layla.

‘To do what?’

‘To… well, do myself up a bit. You know?’

Precious grinned and clapped her hands together. ‘Really?’

‘Yeah, really.’

Precious jumped to her feet. ‘About bloody time ,’ she laughed. ‘I thought you were never going to ask. Get your hair washed, I’ll be back.’

Layla washed her hair and then Precious returned with a bag-load of stuff and sat her down in front of the mirror. She started pulling a broad-toothed comb through Layla’s dark locks, then coating it in a strong-smelling solution.

‘What’s that?’ asked Layla suspiciously.

‘Setting lotion,’ said Precious, and then she carefully wound Layla’s hair on to huge rollers, put a plastic hood over her head, and told her to sit there and shut up until it was dry, and here was a magazine to pass the time.

‘Jesus, is this going to take long?’ complained Layla.

‘You heard the old phrase about suffering to be beautiful?’ said Precious with her sweet, patient smile. She settled on Layla’s bed, and opened her textbooks. ‘Read your magazine.’

Layla did as she was told. An hour passed, then Precious set her pen aside, took the curlers out, brushed Layla’s hair through, back-combed the top, smoothed it down, doused her in hair spray.

‘Don’t look yet,’ said Precious, teasing away with her comb.

‘Gawd,’ said Layla, choking.

‘Patience.’ Precious made a final adjustment, then turned Layla round to face the mirror.

Layla could only stare. A stranger was staring back at her. Oh, it was her face, but surrounding that face was a big puffy cloud of dark, lustrous hair. Rather like her mother’s. Only it wasn’t her mother’s. It was hers.

‘Holy shit,’ said Layla breathlessly. ‘Well, that’s…’ She stammered to a halt, unable to think of a word to describe it.

‘Nice, yeah?’ Precious turned and shouted: ‘China! Destiny!’

China and Destiny crowded into the doorway of Layla’s room. Layla noted that Destiny had a black eye that she had tried – not very successfully – to cover with make-up. Marital relations were still strained.

‘What do you think?’ asked Precious.

‘Fabulous,’ said Destiny. ‘Layla, you look amazing.’

‘Fab-los,’ said China, nodding. ‘But no…’ China made painting motions in front of her perfect little face.

‘No make-up,’ said Precious. ‘You’re right. Spoils the effect, no?’

‘I don’t like make-up,’ said Layla. They had a point, though: her hair now looked as if it belonged on some other woman, someone glamorous, exotic. Not her, plain old Layla Carter. ‘Lipstick, I hate that. Tried it once. Too jammy .’

‘We can kit you out with a matt one,’ said Precious.

Layla stood up, bewildered, overwhelmed. Peered at the stranger in the mirror again.

‘No,’ she said. ‘I don’t think so…’

Ellie appeared in the doorway behind Destiny and China.

She caught Destiny’s chin in one hand as Destiny tried to turn her face away. Stared at Destiny’s blackened eye. ‘What the hell happened here ? Walked into another door, did we?’

‘Ellie…’

‘Take a couple of days out,’ said Ellie. ‘You’ll frighten the fucking punters, looking like that.’

‘Oh, come on,’ pleaded Destiny. ‘I can’t afford to skip work.’

‘No.’ Ellie released Destiny’s chin with a sigh. ‘But you can’t work marked up either. Give it a couple of days, we can cover what’s left of it then.’ She turned to Layla. ‘Visitor, Layla. Your brother again.’

Shit, thought Layla. Her heartbeat accelerated. She wasn’t ready for this.

‘How many times? He is not my frigging brother.’

Layla pushed her way out through the throng. Alberto was there, Sandor looming beside him.

Alberto smiled, came forward, hugged her. Seemed not to even notice her bloody hair, she realized. All that effort, and for what?

‘Hi, Layla. How are you?’

‘Peachy,’ she snapped.