Jessie Keane - The Make

‘Was there a note with this?’ asked Gracie, feeling sick.

‘Yeah. Here.’

Gracie took the note Suze handed her. It said ‘Doyle scum. No cops.’

Gracie stiffened. ‘You haven’t. Have you? Told the police?’

Suze shook her head. ‘I was too frightened to.’

‘I guess this is Harry’s then,’ said Gracie.

‘He wears it long, like that,’ said Suze.

Gracie stared dumbly at the hair. George had been a mouthy little pain in the arse through most of his childhood, but Harry had never been any trouble. Gracie didn’t like to think of someone hacking Harry’s hair off like this. She didn’t like it at all. It spoke of a spiteful need to inflict visible damage.

Her mother was still fingering the hair. Gracie set her bag down on the floor, looking around her. The same old place. She hadn’t been happy here. Mum and Dad ranting and raving at each other, Harry and George sitting on the stairs in a state of terror and tears, her trying to reassure them . . .

Bad, old memories that she didn’t want to look at all over again. She didn’t even want to be here. But she was.

‘They still living here, with you?’ she asked.

Her mother looked up. ‘What?’

‘George and Harry? They live here?’

‘Nah, they moved out when Claude moved in. About a year ago.’

‘Who’s Claude?’ asked Gracie.

‘I am,’ said a masculine voice.

A man had just appeared in the kitchen doorway. He was tall with a beer gut, a receding hairline and blue eyes magnified by hugely thick rimless glasses. He looked in his fifties, and he had a smarmy smile on his face that put Gracie’s hackles up straight away.

‘This . . .’ Her mother looked at her with less than friendly eyes. ‘. . . This is my daughter Gracie, Claude.’

‘The famous missing daughter!’ Claude came forward, holding out a hand in greeting. ‘Well, I never.’

‘Hi,’ said Gracie, pulling back when he tried to kiss her cheek.

Claude noted it straight away. He turned a smile on her mother. ‘She’s a bit frosty, Suze,’ he said jokily.

‘You don’t know the half of it,’ said her mother sourly. Gracie saw her mother’s eyes snap to his hand, which was still holding hers. His grip felt soft and damp and Gracie pulled her hand away.

‘Bad business about your brother being in hospital,’ he said, twisting his face into an appropriate expression of sympathy.

Gracie could see why George and Harry had moved out. She’d taken against Claude on sight and she was willing to bet he’d driven them away.

‘Yeah, it’s bad all right.’ Gracie turned her attention to her mother. ‘What’s the latest on that? Is George any better?’

Suze shook her head. ‘Just the same.’

‘And what’s this?’ Claude was crossing the kitchen and was now prodding at the hair. ‘What on earth . . .? Is this another lot of hair?’

‘Yeah. Some was posted to me, too,’ said Gracie, not really wanting to discuss any of this with him. ‘It’s got to be Harry’s.’

‘Well, it’s got to be some sort of joke, don’t you think?’ asked Claude.

‘A joke?’ shot back Suze. ‘Well it ain’t very funny, is it?’

‘Yeah, but you know what these youngsters are like. One of their mates larking about, and maybe him and Harry thought it’d be a laugh.’

Gracie looked coldly at Claude. The man was an idiot. And clearly he didn’t know Harry at all. She could only dredge her memory, but what she did remember told her that Harry would never go in for a sick, demented prank like this.

Gracie wondered for a moment about showing her mother the note she’d got, but decided against it. Her mother could wail and shout for England, and Suze throwing a fit all over the bloody kitchen wasn’t going to get Harry out of bother.

Gracie reviewed the facts. Harry was in trouble, George was taking nil by mouth, her casino had damned near burned down and would have burned down if not for Brynn’s quick thinking. She was only surprised that something hadn’t yet happened to Suze or her live-in lover Claude.

‘You got a room I can stay in for the night?’ she asked wearily. She scooped the hair she’d been sent back into the bag and stuffed it into her holdall. ‘My old room will do.’

Her mother opened her mouth to speak – probably to say a flat no, but Claude, the oily bastard, chipped in.

‘Of course she has.’ He was beaming with bonhomie. Gracie bent to pick up her coat and she didn’t miss how the creep’s eyes lingered on her arse.

Gracie wondered what on earth her mother saw in him, but then Suze’s judgement had never been entirely sound. Her mother was the perennial good-time girl, preferring to dance on tables all hours of the night, play bingo and get bladdered rather than take proper care of her house and kids. Suze thrived on flattery, and seemed unable to distinguish between fake and genuine. Gracie had always thought her dad did the right thing in leaving her; she still did.

‘I’ll take my things on up,’ she said, grabbing her bag just as Claude reached down to get it. ‘Thanks,’ she said with a tight smile at him. ‘And Mum – can you dig out their addresses?’

‘Address,’ said Suze, looking at her daughter with a cold eye. ‘They got a flat together, it ain’t much.’

But better than staying here with you and this arsehole, thought Gracie.

‘Jot it down for me, will you?’

‘Jesus, what did your last slave die of?’ asked Suze with a sniff.

‘Insolence,’ flung back Gracie, dismayed to find that when dealing with her mother she still felt like a snippy teenager. ‘You going to see George tonight at the hospital?’

‘No.’ Her mother’s eyes filled with easy tears. ‘Not tonight. Tomorrow. My poor boy.’

‘I’ll tag along then. If you don’t mind?’

‘Mind? Why should I mind? I’m only surprised that you care enough to bother.’

Gracie gave her mother a long hard stare. But what was the use? They’d never got on; they never would. She turned her back and pounded off up the stairs to her room. Her mother hadn’t hugged her, and she hadn’t hugged Suze, either.

Two hours later, she was awakened by grunts and bangs from the room next door to her own.

Oh, terrific.

As if she didn’t have enough to contend with, now she had to listen to creep features and her own damned mother doing the nasty through the thin partition wall. A perfect end to a perfect day. How the hell could Suze do that, in these circumstances? She thought of George, lying in a hospital bed. And Harry. Where the hell was Harry? She thought of the note with the hair. No police. Then she thought of gentle, easy-going Harry out there somewhere, in trouble, alone, and it pulled at her heart. Finally she turned over and pulled the pillows over her head. It was hours before she could get to sleep.

George and Harry

NOVEMBER

Chapter 13

Some time after Laura Dixon had shagged him shitless in the Gents at her divorce party, Harry was crossing Covent Garden when he spotted his former client, the cougar – Jackie Sullivan – browsing among the blooms outside a florist. He stopped walking and stared. He was getting to be an old hand at the escorting business now; he had plenty of dosh; he was happy.

It was cold today. Freezing. His breath plumed like smoke with every exhalation. The cougar was wrapped up in a white fake-fur hat and matching gloves. She wore black boots and was carrying a Kelly bag. Her coat looked expensive, patterned in a large black-and-white dog’s-tooth design. Harry thought she looked adorable; he started to smile, and approached her as she halted to stare in the window at a display of red hothouse roses.

‘Hey,’ he said, touching her shoulder.