Cath Staincliffe - Looking for Trouble

‘Did he tell you to ring me?’

‘What?’

‘Why did you ring me? Did he tell you to do that too?’

‘No, he fucking didn’t.’ Realisation dawned on her face. ‘You thought I was doing it for him, to frighten you off? I don’t work for him, you know, right. Well clear, I stay well clear. He wants me to – and I’m not talking about telephone work, neither.’ Leanne stopped abruptly; she’d said more than she’d wanted to.

‘I had to find out whether it was you warning me, or him threatening.’

‘Same difference, isn’t it, really?’ She dropped the cigarette into a styrofoam cup. It hissed. The bluebottle flew a lazy circle back to its breakfast,

‘Is Smiley dealing drugs?’

Her face closed in on itself, pinched. ‘I dunno. I don’t know anything about him.’ Wary now.

‘Cut the crap, Leanne. We both know he’s a pimp, we both know he’s done time, that he got carved up for grassing on his mates. You know if he’s involved in any other business?’

‘I mind my own; you ought to, an’ all. He’s bad news.’

‘Where can I find him?’

‘What?’ She was aghast.

‘If I can’t find out any other way, I’ll have to go straight to him.’

‘Yer cracked. He’d kill you. You haven’t got a clue, have you?’

‘Why are you protecting him?’

‘I’m not. I’m looking out for myself, right.’ She leant forward, yelling at me. ‘JB’s dead, Derek’s dead; you think I’m going to have a slack mouth?’

‘Who’s Derek?’

She averted her face, stared at the windows. There was no view out there; they were encrusted with decades of grime.

‘Just a mate of mine.’

‘He knew Smiley?’

She nodded, addressed the windows as she talked. ‘He did a bit of running around for him, got paid in kind. He couldn’t see it was doing his head in. Said it made him feel good. There’s not much makes you feel good round here.’

My eyes flicked to her bare arms; no sign of tracks, bruises. She noticed.

‘People smoke it nowadays. Don’t you watch the documentaries on telly?’ She gave a short laugh.

‘What happened to Derek?’

‘They fished him out of the Mersey, didn’t they…’

‘This last week? The paper said it was to do with the drug gangs.’

‘Don’t know what they said that for. Load of crap.’

‘What do you think happened?’

‘How should I know? He was a good mate, Derek. We was in care together. He always…’ Emotion got the better of her and her mouth formed a small o shape. She breathed slowly. I watched the bluebottle for a minute or so.

Leanne lit another cigarette.

‘Do you think Smiley had anything to do with it?’

She shrugged. Feigned indifference. ‘He kept giving him the stuff. It was just a matter of time.’

I sensed she was hiding again. From me, or the truth that she feared?

One of the bodies stirred and turned, pulling the cover from the other. A young boy; grubby T-shirt and shorts. Leanne’s age or maybe a bit older. And this was home. Did his mother know where he was?

Leanne walked over and tugged the cover over him again. ‘You better go.’ She flashed me a look of defiance.

‘You shouldn’t have come, anyway.’

I got the message. Stood up and pulled a tenner from my purse. Handed it over. She took it with the same sullen look. I kept my other hand firmly on my purse.

‘I found out where Martin’s staying,’ I said.

‘I don’t want to know.’

At the door, I turned back. ‘Leanne, thanks for the warning.’ I glanced at the room, the rubbish. ‘If there’s anything I can do…’

Her shrug said it all.

As I picked my way back through chunks of plaster and broken furniture, I thought back to when I was thirteen. I longed to be sixteen and grown up. I could never get enough to eat. I played in the school netball team. My friend and I whispered about periods, neither of us having experienced them yet, and both had a crush on our history teacher. We had uncontrollable giggling fits and invented our own secret code.

What had changed? Were there kids like Leanne around back then, surviving on the edge, underage and worldly-wise? Or were they a new breed, emerging from the weakened Welfare State at a time when hope and help were measured in terms of cost-effectiveness?

I paused at the fence. Peeped through to make sure all was quiet, before swinging aside the loose section and clambering through. Leanne might tell Smiley; she might not. At least I could be vigilant.

What was Smiley worried about? That I knew something about his involvement in JB’s ‘overdose’? JB was dead and buried. Three weeks had passed since his death. Without witnesses, evidence or even a motive, I wasn’t in any position to pursue it, even if I wanted to.

Perhaps he thought that JB had passed on information to me before he’d been silenced and Smiley was anxious to know if I was acting on it. Something to do with drugs? But what? Surely it’d be common knowledge on the streets that Smiley was supplying? How did Martin Hobbs fit into the picture? Had the two things got mixed up? Whilst looking for leads on Martin, had JB stumbled on something else?

I kept coming back to the missing hours between JB’s phone call, when he’d sounded chirpy and relaxed, about to go off asking round the clubs, and the following afternoon, when Leanne had seen Smiley hurrying away from the squat and had found JB dead. In those few hours he’d found out something serious enough to invite murder. Maybe I needed to retrace his footsteps – go round the clubs asking about him. I shuddered. Who wants to step into dead men’s shoes?

On the way to the car, I used a call-box to ring Nina Zaleski. Still no reply. My mole had gone AWOL.

My stomach was growling. It knew it was lunchtime.

I queued in a town centre sandwich bar and bought a cheese and chutney barmcake and a piece of flapjack. I ate in the car. The barmcake was middle-of-the-road but the flapjack was wicked; hundred per cent syrup, tacky as toffee. Great exercise for the old jaw muscles.

It took only ten minutes to get to Longsight. The industrial estate I wanted crouched behind the back of a large redbrick mill, surrounded by waste-ground. Some attempt at landscaping had been made, with mounds of grass here and there and the odd sickly sapling in its little cage. There were ten identical units – breeze block and corrugated iron. Unit 9 was Kincoma Products. I sat in the car for a few minutes. Somebody was in; the mesh security screen was ajar, though there were no other cars parked in front.

I rang the bell. The woman who answered was in her mid-twenties. She had a neat, triangular face and permed hair. She wore a tan cotton-knit short-sleeved top and an orange mini skirt with orange slingbacks. She had a gold cross round her neck.

‘Is it about the heating?’ she had a rich Irish accent.

‘No,’ I said. ‘Market Research.’

‘You want to talk to me?’ She raised her eyebrows.

‘Whoever’s here.’

‘I’m on my own right now, but if I’ll do…’ She didn’t ask for identification. I followed her. Her heels made a slapping sound on the concrete floor. ‘I thought you was the heating. It’s frigging perishing in here. I rang ‘em first thing.’

She was right. Inside, there was no hint of the warm weather. We were in a vast corrugated box. Dexion shelving supported racks of cardboard boxes. A narrow aisle ran down the centre of the building. The plastic corrugated skylights let in some daylight, but not enough to lift the gloom. She led me to a partitioned room, reception-cum-kitchen.

‘Sit down.’ She nodded at a scuffed bucket seat. ‘You’ll have a drink?’