Sunday 7 October, midday
40 Mill Street, Leek
Less than a mile away from the police station, in Mill Street, the atmosphere in the small room was already suffocating, an airless fug of cigarette smoke mixed with stale chip papers. Extracting some security in being together, Debs, Chi and Fifi, her three cronies, mates since before her prison stretch, had slept here the night before, using the cushions from the sofa and some old blankets, while Kath had claimed one of the two bedrooms. Now Debs, Chi and Fifi sat squashed together on one small, sagging sofa, its material heavily marked by carelessness, pockmarked with cigarette burns and splashed with wine, coffee, cider and other substances. Kath sat, alone and regal in the armchair, plotting. She thought best, whatever the hour, when her brain was sharpened by alcohol and sustained with food. Fifi had popped out to the chippy again and Chi had replenished their supply of cider, so the timing was perfect. She felt sharp as a bloody needle.
Revenge. It filled her brain and focused her wits.
She slammed the bottle down on a coffee table so flimsy it staggered on thin legs. She stuck a cold chip in her mouth and picked up another dart, poising it ready to throw. ‘I’m going to get the bitch,’ she sang. ‘I’ve waited a while for this chance and I am going to soooo enjoy it.’ She chucked the dart and this time got her right in the middle of her pregnant belly. She grinned, happy at her aim this time around. She took another swig but then noticed Chi was looking worried and a bit thoughtful. Kath’s eyes narrowed. She could smell doubt a mile off. To her doubt meant disloyalty. People were either for her 100 per cent or not, which equated to 0 per cent. Which meant a traitor. Which meant …
She leaned back, eyeing her false friend from beneath her eyelashes, sensitive to the one person in the room who wasn’t going to play ‘follow the leader’. Maybe it was just that Chi wasn’t as drunk as the rest of them. But her instincts were telling her something more. She sat bolt upright, picked up another dart and felt the point of it with the ball of her thumb. ‘You got something to say, Chi?’
Sensing danger, Chi shook her head. ‘No … but.’
Kath leaned forward. ‘But what, you fucking chicken?’
Chi tried again, making an attempt to moderate her language as she pointed out the obvious. ‘She’s a cop. Whatever you do to her, Kath, you’ll get it back tenfold. When you get caught you’ll have an even longer stretch. You’ll be back in clink before you know it.’
For an instant Kath didn’t move. She was too angry. Years ago she had lost an incisor. She’d lost it in a fight – but not the whole tooth, and it hadn’t really been a fair fight as she’d been holding a baseball bat at the time while her opponent, a one-time friend named Craig, unprepared for conflict, had been unarmed. But he’d still struck a lucky shot with his fists, removing most of the incisor. She had a small jagged piece of it left. When she smiled it gave her a mad, demonic, threatening look. When she was very angry she rubbed it with her finger which was a warning sign to all who knew her. It fuelled her fury by reminding her of things: the nastiness and unfairness of life in general, and in particular it reminded her of the untrustworthiness of false friends like Craig. As she rubbed her finger over it now she could almost taste the wavering loyalty of someone she’d been in school with. Had bunked off lessons with, had smoked behind the bike sheds with – even shared a boyfriend with, once, in a forgettable threesome. But now? She could smell that friend’s wavering conviction.
False friend. Traitor, the jagged tooth screamed. She needed to know what was going on in the sly thing’s mind. She played the middle game.
‘If I get caught, Chi,’ she said, glaring.
Chi dropped her eyes.
No one quite knew how ‘Chi’ had got her name. Her real name was Rachel. But like the other two, her real name had little to do with her commonly used moniker. Maybe Chi had stuck because of the upwards slanting eyes. Or the silky hair that she straightened to a railroad track. But whatever its origins, the name had stuck, even though both her parents were as Staffordshire as oatcakes.
Chi nodded now, her pointy little chin bobbing up and down in agreement. ‘Yeah,’ she said, repeating the phrase but with added emphasis, ‘if you get caught,’ counting on the fact that Kath Whalley was immune to irony, as she was to many other subtler nuances of the English language. ‘I suppose there’s always the chance that they won’t connect you with any assault on a serving police officer.’
She might have said more but stopped abruptly when she read the level of doubt and suspicion in Kath’s face, which signalled danger and hostility, which in turn triggered a red alert. Too late, she realized she had just sailed too near the wind.
Sitting in the centre of the sofa, hemmed in by the other two, she could not escape the heat and doubt in Kath’s gaze.
But Chi had a secret, a plan and an escape route. In that order. And as Kath continued to stare at her, Chi wondered whether Kath could read some of it.
She was worried.
And she was right to be. Kath’s stare stripped her of her secret.
Nearly three weeks ago, Chi had made a new friend.
Tuesday 18 September, 2 p.m.
Out of Kath’s cronies, Chi was the only one with a job. Legit. Debs and Fifi scraped together some PIP if and when they could convince their questioner that they had a genuine mental health problem that prevented them from working. They supplemented this paltry income with a few ‘foreigners’ done for cash, and they supplemented that in turn with a much more profitable and reliable income gained from petty crime, burglary, opportunistic pickpocketing and a bit of drug peddling. Nothing too heavy or complicated. They didn’t want to tangle with the big guys so they stayed under the radar. Just satisfying themselves with bits and pieces here and there. They survived by following this simple code: beg, borrow or steal.
Until Kath had come out of jail, when they’d been taken over by her and absorbed into her plans. Trouble was, Kath Whalley was just that bit more ambitious.
Chi had been desperate to escape, and since Kath had emerged from prison her desperation had compounded. Now she would do anything to escape before disaster struck and, together with Kath and the others, she was consigned to HMP.
Truth was Kath frightened her. They’d been at primary school together, and even then Chi had realized that Kath was mad, bad and dangerous to know. But since she had come out of prison she had lost all inhibition. All she cared about now was getting her own back on the detective who had successfully beaten her and put her behind bars. And she didn’t seem to care about the inevitable consequences. As long as she took DI Piercy down, Kath wasn’t bothered whether she went down too. And that included dragging her three faithful cronies down with her. Which was not in Chi’s life plan.
All too often, Chi had witnessed Kath at work, watched her victims cower away from her slaps and thumps and punches. One November night, just before she’d been put away, Kath had invited her to join her in a baseball-bat foray. She’d had a score to settle against a girl who had, she believed, betrayed her. Chi had remained unconvinced. The frenzy of sights: blood, terror, sounds, bones cracking, screams, and the smell. Gore, piss and shit. It had frightened and revolted her so much that she knew she was not like Kath. Never would be like Kath. And since Kath had been released, she’d spent all her time trying to dream up a way of escaping Leek and her one-time friend for ever.
One event in particular had firmed her resolve.
It had been a week or so after Kath had come out. Although it was April, there had been a light dusting of snow and a wicked easterly wind that found its way through your clothes right into your bones. They’d been wandering the town, feeling bored, sour and grumpy, looking through the shops, wondering which bits to nick, when a boy on a bike had collided with her on the pavement and Kath had given him ‘what for’. ‘Come on, Chi,’ she’d urged. ‘You can give him a punch too. He went over your foot. I saw him.’
But Chi had had enough. Though she too objected to cyclists on the pavement, this response was just going too far. He was just a kid. She’d seen the terror on his face, the blood pouring out of his nose, the eye already starting to close and she’d shaken her head. ‘Let him go, Kath.’
Kath’s head had spun round. Chi had caught the blast of fury followed by mockery for her squeamishness. ‘Come on, Chi,’ Kath had ordered, ‘Don’t be a wimp. Put the fucking boot in.’
But Chi shook her head and repeated, ‘Let him go, Kath.’ And surprise, surprise, or maybe because she was so surprised, she had. Removed her fist from the boy’s collar and turned towards her friend, once she’d warned the terrified youth what she’d do if he told anyone. (Take your fucking eyes out. Both of them.) The boy had left his bike on the pavement and run.
Then Kath had turned her attention on to Chi and Chi had felt the sour taste of fear. It didn’t do to show Kath anything less than absolute loyalty. She knew what had happened to Craig.
So two weeks later, when Kath had invited her to ‘join in’ on a punch-up outside a pub, she had, but half-heartedly with weak punches. Kath had finished the job for her, breaking the woman’s jaw and pulling out a handful of hair, which she’d brandished like a trophy, her eyes all the time on Chi who’d known Kath was on her guard. She was being watched and tested. And the strain was terrifying. At any moment Kath could turn on her, pull her hair out, smash up her face, burn her with acid or bleach, drain cleaner or lighter fuel. If she knew what was in Chi’s heart, Kath would wreak her vengeance and she had plenty of actions in her repertoire. It was just a matter of time before her instincts took over and she realized that Chi was planning her escape route.
Chi’s first step had been to take a real job and earn legitimate money. Initially bar work, but then she had moved to an upmarket coffee shop/restaurant named Rosemary’s and the manageress, guess her name (whom Chi suspected of being a lesbian), had taken a shine to her and quickly promoted her to waitressing and, though the hours were long and the tips a bit unpredictable, she quite liked waiting at tables. At least you met normal people. Families who didn’t squabble, shout, get drunk and throw things around. Couples who weren’t yelling at one another every time they were together. OK, some of the kids were quite disgusting and their parents rude, but on the whole she liked the work. Trouble was she wanted/needed to move a long way from Leek and her psycho friend and find somewhere decent to live. Her dream was somewhere near the sea, warmer and safer than this little corner of Staffordshire. But for that dream to be converted to reality she needed money. Working as a waitress, even when the tips were good, it was going to take her one thousand years living on absolutely nothing before she’d have saved enough to get away. What she needed was a lucky break. A win on the government lottery. Or else a lucky draw on the lottery of life. So her antennae were wafting around, trying to pick up that elusive chance. Chi was an optimist and she felt certain that something would come her way.
And then it had.