Читать книгу The Make - Jessie Keane - Страница 20

Chapter 12

21 December

Gracie called in on Brynn next day at his sister’s place and told him to take over, that she was going down South for a bit.

‘How long’s a bit?’ asked Brynn, still coughing and spluttering after yesterday’s fire.

‘I don’t know. You can keep in touch with me on the mobile, and I’ll be back soonest, okay?’

‘Not much is going to be happening for a while,’ said Brynn, wheezing then letting out a hacking cough. ‘If the insurance people come back with anything, I’ll let you know.’

‘You look after him,’ said Gracie to Angie.

‘Will do,’ said Angie.

She dropped an awkward kiss on to Brynn’s leathery cheek, registering his surprise at this small show of affection. Gracie Doyle, she thought, unable to help herself. The girl with a calculator where her heart should be. Wasn’t that what Brynn, what the whole world, thought? That she was cold? And maybe he was right; maybe she was. But perhaps right now, when everything was hitting the fan, that was a good thing to be.

She’d already thrown a few bits and pieces into a suitcase and a bag this morning, put them in the back of the car. Now, with Brynn primed, she drove off into the cold, leaden-skied morning down the M6. She picked up the M1 east of Birmingham, stopping briefly in the services to refuel. Four hours later, she was in London.

It was starting to snow. Maybe it would be a white Christmas after all. She snagged a parking space a long way from her mother’s door in the familiar Hackney street, bought a parking ticket, and went and knocked at the door of the plain Victorian house she’d grown up in. There was a small, red-berried wreath hanging on it. Mum had kept the house after the divorce, and Dad hadn’t objected. Gracie guessed he’d just been glad to be free, to start anew.

‘Who is it?’ asked a shaky female voice from the other side of the door, after she’d knocked on the damned thing for what felt like an age.

‘It’s Gracie,’ she called out.

‘Gracie?’ echoed the voice. ‘What the hell . . .?’

There was a noise of chains being unfastened, bolts being thrown back.

‘What, you had a crime explosion round here?’ asked Gracie as her mother swung the door open. ‘What’s with the—’

Gracie stopped speaking. Her mum was standing there. Her mother had always been a youthful dresser. She was pushing sixty now, but still she wore skinny jeans and a fashionable turquoise top. Her hair was cut close to her head and skilfully dyed a flattering ashy blonde, but her face looked pale and puffy. Her bloodshot brown eyes were darting and nervous. Her lips trembled. She looked like she’d had the stuffing kicked out of her.

‘Oh fuck,’ said Suze wearily. ‘Not you.’

‘Nice to see you too, Mummy dear,’ said Gracie, and pushed inside the hall with her case and bag.

‘I suppose Sandy phoned you.’

‘She did, that’s right. And the police called too. Said you’d notified them. Why didn’t you call me?’

Suze shrugged, as if it wasn’t worth dignifying Gracie’s comment with a reply. ‘I’m just surprised you actually bothered to turn up.’

Gracie turned a gimlet eye on her mother. ‘Yeah, well, I actually did,’ she said, refusing to rise to the challenge of a fight so soon. She was tired from the trip. She didn’t want arguments, she wanted tea, biscuits and answers – in that order. She went on through to the kitchen. So familiar, but all different – the units were new beech-effect, the worktops a shiny black granite.

Suze was busy refastening the defences at the front door. By the time she joined Gracie in the kitchen, Gracie had taken out the jiffy bag and decanted the hair inside it out on to the worktop.

‘Someone sent me this,’ she said, as her mother stopped dead in the doorway and let out a small cry.

‘Oh shit,’ Suze moaned, putting her hands to her mouth.

‘George is in hospital,’ said Gracie. ‘So Sandy told me.’

Her mother nodded. ‘Yeah. He is.’

‘Did someone cut his hair? Does this look like George’s hair to you?’

Her mother was shaking her head. She went over to the worktop and lightly touched the hair, her hand shaking violently. ‘No. I mean yes. They cut his hair, they had to, but George never wears his hair this long anyway. And look.’ Suze pulled a jiffy bag out of a drawer and tipped out the contents. More hair. And it was the same.

‘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.