‘Congratulations. You found me. I thought I’d have to give you some help, but I didn’t need to, did I? If coming here wasn’t the most stupid thing you ever could have done, I’d have said it was very clever of you.’
Cherie was wearing slim-cut khaki trousers and a black jean jacket buttoned all the way up to the throat. She was handling the Beretta casually, in no way afraid of it the way most people would have been. She had cut her hair into a bob, which curled up on both sides to hide a lot of her face. Along with the lipstick and the mascara I guessed that she was pretty much unrecognizable to anyone who hadn’t actually seen her. It would certainly have taken a very keen officer who’d only looked at my Mac-Fit to realize who she was. I saw straight through it all because of her expression. It was the same as in her bedsit when she ripped the phone out of my hand. Cold, dead, her thin, wide mouth a perfect straight line as she held the gun on me.
‘Well?’ she asked. ‘Tell me. How did you do it?’
I looked away from Cherie, my eyes moving instead to the armchair. To Sharon. To her pale, frightened face. I’d assumed that she must have been tied to the chair and couldn’t understand when I saw that she wasn’t. She was just sitting there. I wanted to know what she was doing there, how the hell the police right outside her door had let Cherie get to her. Had she killed them all somehow? How had she even found the flat? Trying to hide the cold terror I was feeling, I turned back slowly to the girl with the gun in her hand. My eyes scanned the room for a paperweight, a wine bottle, something heavy. I couldn’t see anything.
‘Denise Denton,’ I said. ‘The hooker you picked up at Loughborough Junction. She kept her mobile line open to the girl she was standing with when you took her. She relayed everything back to her.’
Cherie laughed, and nodded at the same time. ‘I thought she was talkative. Well, never mind. I was going to call you anyway and ask you round tonight. Mrs Minter saved me the trouble.’
‘She told you about me?’
‘Eventually.’ Cherie nodded again. ‘She took some persuading. I waited until she was in the bath before coming home with Sharon here, you see? The old bat always has her soak at the same time so she can listen to the play on the radio. We got in without the nosy witch jumping out on us but then, to my surprise, she knocked on my door. She hardly ever did that. I asked her what she wanted but she said she just wanted to know if I was staying in that night. I thought that was odd and so I followed her down to the phone and heard her making a call. Mr Howells, she said, but I knew it was you. When she was off the phone I persuaded her to tell me what was up, and she said how you’d come to call. My brother? You? You’ve no idea how much that thought disgusts me.’
‘Where is she?’
‘Mrs Minter? Back in the bath. The poor dear had an accident, a fall. Hit her head and drowned. Lots of old folk go out like that. But now then, get up. Move your pathetic arse. We’ve got things to do. We’ve got some very, very exciting things to do.’
Cherie took a step backward and jerked the gun up and down. I stood up from the floor, my head spinning from the blow I’d taken. I breathed deeply and put a hand to my face. Cherie had been wearing knuckledusters and I was pretty certain my cheekbone was broken. The knowledge of what had happened hurt far more. The knowledge that Sharon was there. I asked myself, if I rushed forward, just went straight in and took a bullet, would I be able to overpower Cherie, or at least give Sharon the chance of getting out of the door. I waited to see what would happen. I pulled more air into my lungs and got the aftershave again. Cherie noticed the look on my face and she smiled.
’It is pretty nasty, isn’t it? I’ve told him about it but he won’t listen.’
I took a breath. ’Who?’
‘Don’t you know? Come on! I saw you recognize it in my bedsit. I was a bit worried until I realized you thought I’d had men up there to massage.’
‘Men from the gym.’
‘That’s right. Well?’
I thought about it. There were a lot of guys there, some of whom I knew pretty well, men like Pete, who I wished to God I’d called that night. But there were others who only showed up now and then, or just came to use the machines, and didn’t box. It could have been any of them. Cherie was smirking, waiting for me to get it. All of a sudden I knew who it was. The expression, the grim, flat determination in the jaw, the eyes. It was the same.
‘Jeff,’ I said. ‘Where is he?’
‘We’ll get to that,’ Cherie said. ‘Don’t worry. But now then, don’t you want to say hello to your girlfriend?’
I looked from Cherie to Sharon, relieved to see that she didn’t look hurt in any way. But again that confused me. Sharon just looked scared, fighting hard to stay in control. How come she wasn’t tied up, gagged at least? Why hadn’t she called out? I couldn’t see anything that could have been used to compel Sharon to be quiet when she heard me come in. There was no gun other than the one I’d brought in and there was no knife either. Nothing. Now Cherie didn’t seem to be worried about her. She wasn’t covering Sharon with the Beretta, only me.
‘I’m sorry,’ Sharon said, reading my thoughts. ‘I wanted to warn you, but she told me not to. I had to do what she said, Billy. I’m sorry.’
I thought about how I’d pointed the gun at Sharon’s head and I felt sick. I told Sharon that it was OK, I understood. But I was more confused than ever. I glanced round the apartment for some kind of explanation. It was a neat and tidy studio with nothing to indicate what kind of girl Cherie was. It was stripped, anonymous, a full black grip sitting on the bed to my left. Cherie was leaving. But, I imagined, the plan would be for us to remain. Guilt coursed through me, almost as fast as anger did. I’d wanted Sharon away from London. I’d been persuaded that she’d be safe. Again I thought of the guys in the hall, the man on the roof opposite. My fingers itched with rage, at both Cherie and Andy Gold. Once more I looked for something heavy to throw. I thought of the rug, beneath us. If I ducked and pulled it, would it bring her down? Again Sharon read my thoughts.
‘Billy,’ she said. Her voice was measured, but urgent. As if there was a tarantula on my shoulder. ‘You have to stay calm. Don’t do anything. Please.’
I nodded slowly but I was still in the dark. ‘How did she get you here? Those coppers, they didn’t leave you alone?’
‘No,’ Sharon said quickly. ‘Cherie, she got my number out of your phone. I called you when she was massaging you, remember? She knew from how you spoke to me that I was your girlfriend. She called me,’ Sharon said. ‘She called and told me to meet her. And I did.’
‘What?!’
‘Billy, please.’ Sharon took a breath and then swallowed a sob. ‘I had to.’
‘Why? What in God’s name did she say to you?’
‘I said nothing.’ Cherie’s voice cut through the room. She was smiling now, enjoying my confusion. ‘It wasn’t me that persuaded you was it?’
‘No.’
‘Then what the hell…?’
‘It was the baby crying. That’s what made her come. And what I said would happen to it if she didn’t. She’s a good person your girlfriend, Billy, a much better person than you. She came out straight away so that the baby would be saved. She cares about people’s babies. Because she’s normal, unlike you. You didn’t care about the baby in me, or the ones I should have had after. You let them all die.’
Cherie’s expression was fixed and intense, her eyes wide. She was back in Chester, her father’s fist in her stomach. I was just stunned. The baby? Denise’s child couldn’t have survived, surely, not out of a hospital. It was too young. And Jen’s had been left in her kitchen for her husband to find. I closed my eyes.
‘You’ve killed someone else,’ I said. ‘You’re crazy. Who was it this time, someone I sat next to on a bus once? Someone I played with when I was five? Someone I knew in a previous life?’
‘No.’ Cherie looked at me as if I was stupid. ‘There’s been no one else. Just the three plus that first mistake.’
I didn’t get it. ‘Then whose baby have you got?’
‘Whose?’ again the look. ‘Surely you know? ‘The girl in the cafe. The baby Sharon heard was hers.’
The words hit me like a truck, knocking all the air out of my body. Sharon was completely still but was pressing all her energy towards me. A grimace pulled my face apart.
‘Uh uh.’ I shook my head. ‘No way. I saw Ally’s baby on Alfred Road.’
‘No you didn’t. That was the young whore’s.’
I shook my head again. ‘No,’ I insisted. ‘The child was white. It wasn’t Denise Denton’s baby. I met her husband, he’s black.’
‘But her boyfriend isn’t,’ Cherie said.
‘What?’
‘She told me all about it: when she thought I was a social worker trying to save her life. Her boyfriend. It’s why she ran away from Birmingham. She’d had a fling with a white boy and was pregnant. She really wanted the baby but she loved her husband. She didn’t know who the father was. If it was black she was going to go back home to him. If not she’d have got the thing adopted and gone back anyway. So the baby you saw on Alfred Road was hers, Denise’s. It didn’t survive, unfortunately, after it was removed. The one I have survived. It was the only one that did.’
‘And it’s Ally’s.’
‘Not any more.’ Cherie’s mouth firmed in an instant and she pointed her finger at me. ‘That’s where you’re wrong. It’s mine. I’ve been looking after it. Loving it. Making it smile at me. I’m having it in return for the one you took from me. He’d never have found me on his own. I’d have had a lovely little baby. And now I will. I’ll have it to love and to love me. For ever. Isn’t that what everyone can expect? Isn’t that fair? You didn’t think you’d escape, did you? You didn’t think you could get out of paying me back for what you took?’
‘OK,’ I said. ‘Where is it, the child?’
‘Outside,’ Cherie said. ‘And this is what we’re going to do. We’re going out onto the balcony. The baby’s on the street in her pram. With Jeff. Uncle Jeff. He’s been helping me. He used to be in the Marines, taught me all sorts of things. We have an unusual relationship, shall we say. He hated my dad as much as I did. Burnt his house down, in fact, after I told him what he did to me. Jeff would do anything for me. Anything. He’d even throw a little baby into the Thames and let it sink to the bottom. Something he’s going to do right now, in fact, if you don’t do exactly, exactly, what I tell you.’