Faceless (4 page)

She felt dry, empty.

Even friendship frightened her these days and yet once, friends had been everything to her. She closed her eyes and saw once more the two bloodied bodies, saw the carnage her drink-and drug-fuelled rage had caused, and felt the familiar bile rise into her throat.

23

Friends were not an option any more. She was much safer alone. Everyone was safer if Marie could just stay alone.

Carole Halter sat in the club alone. It was early, most of the girls wouldn’t be in till later, but she liked to have a few drinks under her belt before she started her night’s work.

The bouncer, a young blond body builder called Declan, looked her over and obviously found her wanting.

‘Had your look?’

She challenged him from habit, neither of them really caring about the other’s opinion. He put himself above her and she saw herself as beneath him. It worked for them both.

‘Have you seen anything of Tiffany?’ Carole asked.

He shook his head. Didn’t even bother to answer properly.

‘Why the fuck would I want to see her anyway?’

‘I was only asking!’

Carole’s voice was loud and aggressive now.

She carried on sipping her drink, eyes prowling the club in case a punter had crept past her. A small good-looking blonde girl came in. Though heavy-breasted she was otherwise practically anorexic in build. Long bleached hair hung like a curtain across her face. She pushed it away with one slim hand, violet-painted nails looking dangerously long.

Carole smiled at her.

‘All right, Tiff?’

The girl stared at her for a few seconds.

‘It’s OK, Carole, I know. I was told earlier.’

She carried on walking to the cloakroom that also doubled as the strippers’ changing room and Carole followed her.

‘What are you going to do?’

The girl pushed the door open with surprising force and shrugged.

‘Do? What am I supposed to do?’

‘Well, she is your mother.’

Tiffany grinned into the dirty mirror above the sinks.

‘So I hear.’

Carole was alarmed at the girl’s attitude and it showed.

‘I don’t think you quite realise the strength of her, Tiff. She is strong, not just physically - and we all know the truth of that. But mentally she’s like man mountain Dean. If that fucker wants to see you bad enough, she will.’

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Tiffany shrugged.

‘Yeah, so? Shall I practise my curtsey now then?’

Carole shook her head sadly.

‘Listen to me. She is still your mother, love. No matter what. She loved you in her own way …’

Tiffany waved her hands angrily.

‘Oh, yeah? Left us for hours on end by ourselves, drugged out of her fucking brain! Well, Carole, that kind of mother love I can do without, OK? Now if you don’t mind I have to get undressed.’

‘But I’ve had her round my gaff. Tiffany … She won’t give up. Especially if she finds out ‘bout little Anastasia.’

The girl rolled her eyes in exasperation.

‘Yeah? So? If I don’t want to see her, then I won’t. Now piss off!’

Her voice was hard, uncaring, and Carole knew better than to push it. She left the room quietly, her heart heavy at the thought that her one-time friend’s daughter wanted nothing to do with her. And if Marie found out that Carole actually worked with Tiffany and had not said so, what would be the upshot? It was this that worried Carole more than anything.

Tiffany stared into the cracked mirror and then began to apply a thick layer of foundation to hide the acne scars in her skin. As she brushed on her blusher she knew she was just putting on an act for everyone. In fact she was frightened of what her mother might stir up. As Carole said, if Marie wanted to see her she would.

Tiffany’s eyes registered her grimy surroundings and she shuddered. What would Marie make of her daughter’s life and job? ‘History repeating itself was how Pat described it, saying she was just like her mother at the same age.

Well, fuck her mother! She had in effect dumped Tiffany when she was a baby so she had no right to any respect now. And if pushed, Tiffany would tell her that.

Oh yeah, she would tell her that to her face.

The girl remembered her mother as a force to be reckoned with. The neighbours had all been terrified of her. Marie could make even men nervous when she was out of it. There was an air of violence about her that people picked up on pretty quickly. Pat had regaled her with stories of her mother’s marathon temper bouts and drinking and drug binges. Tiffany knew enough about Marie to realise she didn’t want her anywhere near her own child. A double murderess was hardly the kind of person she wanted around her Anastasia, thank you very much. But inside she wondered exactly what can of 25

worms would be opened by her mother’s release into society.

Ten minutes later Tiffany was ready for her first act. Stripping was lucrative and Pat had promised to get her into a lap dancing club where the money would be even better. It was her ambition in life to buy a little place of her own, and she was determined to do it. Her daughter deserved the best, and she would see that Anastasia got it.

Tiffany cut herself a line of coke to give herself an edge. As she went through the ritual of cutting, cleaning and snorting it, she felt more relaxed inside.

Unlike her mother she used drugs, and not vice versa. All she needed was a little lift now and then, just a lift to give her an edge.

And after the revelations of today, she needed that lift more than ever.

Louise Carter listened to her daughter’s mother-inlawto-be, gritting her teeth. Mary Watson was a busybody, a two-faced, interfering bastard of a woman.

‘I hear she walked up to the front door, large as life and twice as pretty …’ The last was a jibe at her son’s girlfriend and they all knew it. ‘But then she was always a good-looking girl, you can’t take that away from her. Fair’s fair in that respect. Marie was a looker.’

‘For all the good it did her. Now if you don’t mind, Mary, I would rather we dropped the subject.’

Louise’s voice was dangerously low and Mary suppressed a small triumphant smile.

Lucy stood up abruptly and said in a false bright voice, ‘Shall I make more tea?’

She left the room and Mickey followed her.

Louise stared at the woman before her, took in the brown rat-like eyes and tightly pursed mouth, and wondered how her daughter could want to join a family with this vicious old bitch at its head. It never occurred to Louise that she was looking at another version of herself. The two women hated one another because, as Mickey had pointed out on many occasions, they were too alike to get on.

Though no one had yet had the guts to say that to either of them.

‘So, I suppose it will all be dragged up again, won’t it? The violent murders. The drink, drugs, whoring … It will give this lot round here grist to their mills for a while.’

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Louise didn’t answer the taunt. She dropped her eyes and concentrated on a small stain on the carpet, fighting an urge to swing back her arm and fell the woman sitting on her sofa. Instead she plastered on a smile and said gaily, ‘The wedding will likely take the edge off the gossip anyway. You know, the murderess’s sister marrying your only son.’

She saw the barb had hit home. Mickey was a mummy’s boy and everyone knew it. But Lucy was well able for him and his mother once the marriage was a fact. They both fell silent, but the animosity in the room was almost tangible.

Marie watched the activity in the Spitalfields gym. It was eight-thirty in the morning and people were already there working up a sweat. She observed them from a small cafe opposite and marvelled at the women working so industriously to keep their bodies in shape for men. It was the same in prison; most women were only in there because of a man yet their one aim in life was to get out and get another as soon as possible. It had amazed her.

Marie was happy to be alone. She was an expert in it nowadays. As she sipped her coffee she kept an eye out for Pat Connor. The thought of facing him scared her, but she knew she had to. He owed her, owed her big time, and although she was wary of him there was no real fear of him any more. There was nothing he could do to her now, say to her now, that she hadn’t done or said to herself.

One thing about prison, it made you mentally strong if nothing else.

He arrived at nine-thirty-five in a black BMW convertible. He looked good, but the old feelings she’d harboured for him were long gone. Once -his body had drawn her like a beacon. He looked better these days, toned, well-dressed, but she knew what he really was now and he no longer attracted her.

She paid her bill, gasped at the thought that three cups of coffee had cost nearly six pounds, and as she crossed the road to the gym told herself she would have to walk back to the hostel because she was skint.

Marie gathered a few admiring glances despite her old clothes. She was a good-looking woman even without make-up or expensively styled hair. But she ignored them. She was on a mission and she was going to complete it. She was smiling as she walked into Pat’s Gym.

27

Patrick Connor was sipping herbal tea and lotting up his night’s takings when Wednesday, his young secretary, told him a woman was outside insisting she wanted to see him.

‘What’s she like?’

The girl shrugged.

‘Blonde, not bad-looking but scruffy …’

Before she could finish Marie had walked into the room.

‘Hello, Pat. Long time no see, eh?’

She enjoyed seeing the fear in his eyes, and the greyness that was appearing underneath his chocolate-brown skin.

Wednesday looked from one to the other with obvious interest.

Pat sat down behind his executive desk. His legs felt weak.

‘Goodbye, Wednesday.’

His voice had a note she had never heard in it before. She had seen her boss deal with violent drug dealers and bona ride faces. This woman was intriguing. Who was she that she could rattle

Patrick Connor? “

‘Shall I bring through some coffee?’

The girl was smiling at Marie as she said it, evading Pat’s eye.

Marie nodded in a friendly way.

‘That would be lovely, thank you.’

Alone she and Pat looked at one another for long moments. He broke the silence as Marie knew he would. It was a knack she had developed in prison. Quietness scared people, she’d found. If you waited long enough they would speak first and it gave you the upper hand. And with Pat, you needed that edge. He would lie about what he’d had for breakfast, couldn’t help it, it was part of his makeup.

‘You look well, Marie. How’s things?’

It was lame, they both knew it was lame, and it made Marie smile. That changed her face and she saw him relax.

‘How do you think I am, Pat? I’m confused, scared, but most importantly, keen to know about me kids.’

Pat stared at her. She knew his mind was crunching like a 1950s gearbox.

‘Have you seen them at all? Have you kept in contact with our son? That’s all I want to know. Pat.’

He was biting his top lip, a nervous action she remembered from years gone by. Then his mobile rang. It was a loud tune, Bob Marley’s ‘No Woman, No Cry’. It seemed appropriate to them both

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and he stared at it, then at Marie, who grinned.

‘Clever. Never seen one close up before. One of the women on my wing had one, a PO smuggled it in for her, but I never actually saw it meself. They turned her cell over and that was that. Four days on the block for wanting to phone her daughter. But then, unlike me, she had a number for her, an address. She actually saw her child.’

Pat wiped one large hand across his face.

‘What you want, Marie?’

‘Don’t try your Jamaican accent on me! You never left London all your life. I heard through the grapevine you was finding your roots - well, save it for the silly little birds who are interested in it. Where’s me kids?’

‘How the fucking hell would I know that?’

She looked into his piercing blue eyes and sighed.

‘You never bothered with your own son, is that what you’re telling me?’

He couldn’t look her in the eye but stared at his hands instead. He was ashamed and they both knew it. Annoyed, Pat tried to justify himself.

‘I didn’t need this shit, Marie. I was having enough trouble keeping meself…’

She sat quietly staring at him as he attempted to dismiss twelve years of neglect. With that accusing stare levelled on him he tried, unsuccessfully, to excuse what he had done.

‘What good would I have been to him, eh? Think about it. I wouldn’t have been able to take care of him, would I? I mean, think about it, what would I do with a kid?’

She was shaking her head in despair.

‘So he didn’t have either of us then. What about Tiffany, have you seen her?’ •

Patrick was quiet for a moment.

‘No. Why would I? She wasn’t mine, was she?’ he said at length.

It was what she’d expected.

He opened the desk drawer and took out a bundle of money, twenties and tens, all rolled up with an elastic band around them.

‘Here you are, girl. I was gonna give you something anyway, get you on your feet, like.’

Wednesday came in with the tray of coffee. Marie brushed past her and walked from the room. Pat’s mobile rang again and the tune brought back more painful memories. It made her think of

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blues in Brixton, walking along the Railton Road looking for a dealer. Standing around half-naked in the freezing cold, staring into car windows and smiling at strange men. Brought back the salty smell of sex and the uncomfortable feeling of being fucked unceremoniously in the back seat of cars. New cars, old cars. Cars that had kids’ toys in the back, or a briefcase. Cars that said so much about their owners’ lives, if they only knew it.

It made her aware once more of the wasted years she had spent in prison until in a strange way they brought her salvation.

She still wanted to cry for her little boy, left without a father and a mother. Unlike her daughter Jason had known who his father was, had had a sort of relationship with him. He must have been terrified going into care, being alone with no one to look out for him. And you read such stories in the papers … kids being abused, left unloved, starved, beaten.