Bitch. Look what trouble you left me in . . .
He licked his lips nervously. “Hey bro, I can find her for you. No sweat. She was here ’cause she and Tina are tight. She’ll be back, yeah?”
The man stared at him without expression. “I think she might have been back but you said something—did something—to alarm her, da?”
“Hey I—”
“Something foolish,” the man went on, “that panicked her into running again.”
“She was gonna leave, go out. I just tried to stop her—”
The man gave a snort and muttered something under his breath that Elvis didn’t catch but didn’t need to. He got the gist.
And then without warning the man surged out of the chair and backhanded him across the face hard enough to snap his head round. The blow exploded his already tender nose into a haze of pain, flooded his eyes and sent his body reeling into shock. His knees gave way, his bladder following. He was only vaguely aware of being hauled upright by the meaty hand at his shoulder, held locked tight, immobile.
“If you had not spooked her she would have come back here. Where else does she have that she can go?” the man said, his voice too close, too soft. “I would have been very pleased with you. And you would now be a rich man, da?” He paused. “But instead you are a fool.”
“Hey man, she was here like I told you,” Elvis mumbled driven by self-pity to his own defence. “Not my fault she—”
“Not your fault? So maybe you think I am to blame, da? For being too slow. Maybe you think I am the fool?”
Elvis was hazily aware that things had turned upside down against him. It wasn’t fair! It had seemed like easy money. Money for nothing. One phone call and Harry Grogan’s boys would come and grab her and Tina would never know he’d had anything to do with it. And now it had gone to shit and it was all that bitch Kelly’s fault, of—
The blow to his kidneys didn’t feel like a truck. This time it was more like a freight train or one of those big pile-driving cranes Elvis had seen down in the East End. His legs gave out completely and this time the giant didn’t try to hold him up.
If things had been bad while he was on his feet, Elvis soon realised they got a whole lot worse once he was down. He prayed for unconsciousness. It seemed to be a long time coming.
67
Kelly was half a mile away from the flat before she stopped running. She ducked into an alleyway between two rundown shops and doubled over gasping, her hands braced against her knees. She was winded, shocky, and shaking with both effort and reaction.
As adrenaline hangovers went this was shaping up to be a doozy.
A part of her couldn’t believe Elvis had sold her out. Another part—a more cynical embittered part—was more surprised he’d waited so long.
Paid for it though, didn’t he?
The laptop Kelly instinctively flung at him had found its mark with devastating effect. She wondered how long it would be before she could block out all recall of the dull crunching sound that his cartilage and flesh and bone had made as the hefty blunt object struck. That he had threatened her—pulled a knife on her—no longer seemed a good enough excuse for what she’d done.
What the hell am I going to say to Tina?
As little as possible seemed to be the best response.
Slowly, reluctantly, she straightened still breathing hard. She dragged the cellphone out of her sweatshirt pocket and keyed in Tina’s number but her thumb hesitated over the dial button.
Eventually she took the coward’s way out, composing an apologetic if slightly defiant text message and sending it fast before she’d time to change her mind.
As she slipped the phone away again it clunked against something hard in the other front pocket. She reached in and pulled out the knife she’d taken away from Elvis.
Another blade . . .
An image of Tyrone’s mutilated body flashed into her mind, hard and strong enough to rob her of what little breath she’d managed to retrieve.
There was no blood on this one but that hadn’t been for lack of trying. Elvis had taken a determined if inexperienced swing at her. He hadn’t counted on reflexes honed from half a dozen attempts to cut her up while Kelly had been inside.
Attacks using cell-fashioned hidden shivs were as common as they were inventive in there. Some inmates viewed being stabbed as so inevitable they took regular ice-cold showers to try and prepare their bodies for the shock, train themselves to power through it. They claimed it worked. Kelly felt avoidance was the better option but sometimes you didn’t have a choice.
Nevertheless, she hadn’t survived for five years by running away from trouble. She’d learned to meet it head on. So as soon as she’d seen the knife she had reacted on full-auto with speed and aggression.
Now cooling rapidly, she thought of Elvis and remembered again the strange internal wrenching noise his bones had made as she’d twisted his wrist up and round to break his grip. She had not hesitated, not for a moment.
But she was not in prison any longer. She was back in civilisation and supposed to behave accordingly. It just seemed that there had been no transition between in and out and when she was under threat the lines blurred altogether.
For a moment she felt a hollow churning up under her ribcage and thought she might vomit. She bent over again and leaned her forehead against the brickwork in front of her, cushioned by her forearm. Gradually the sickness subsided.
Her head came up slowly and she realised she’d no clue where she was. She’d fled without thought to direction. It took a few minutes’ staring at the nearest street sign for her to place the area and realise she had strayed north into Camberwell. Totally the wrong direction for Clapham Common.
Lytton!
A glance at her watch told her she was already late for their meeting. Would he wait for her? And for how long?
Would he turn up at all?
As her vision cleared she noticed there was a drain a few feet away fed by a fractured drainpipe. The brickwork was grey and furred with damp. Kelly wiped the handle of the knife on the inside of her sweatshirt and dropped it into the broken grid. Looking at the rest of the building it would be a long time before the owner got around to calling Dyno-Rod.
The phone buzzed in her pocket. She pulled it out again and gave the display a cursory glance. She recognised the Brixton code but not the number. Tina’s work perhaps? She flipped the phone open with a sense of trepidation.