Taking Liberties (Liberty Chapman) Read online

  Brixton Dave was over the moon with himself. He danced across the room, playing the air drums, probably thinking about all the ways he was going to drop his five hundred grand. Daisy, on the other hand, was thinking about all the ways this could go wrong. Brixton Dave was no big player, whatever Frankie thought. He was a chancer. He’d met a crack head from a rich family and seen an opportunity. And, like all chancers, he hadn’t thought things through.

  What if the Greenwoods couldn’t get their hands on the money or, more likely, what if they wouldn’t? What if they had other ideas about how to end this? They’d do what they needed to for Frankie, but her? Jay wouldn’t piss on Daisy if she were on fire. And what would a loose cannon like Brixton Dave do then?

  ‘Why the long face, Daisy?’ he asked.

  ‘Just aching,’ she said. ‘Sitting here all night like this.’

  ‘Would it be better if I cut your ties?’ he asked. ‘Let you move about a bit?’

  She looked up at him. He couldn’t be serious.

  He stared at her for a moment, then burst out laughing. ‘You should see your mug.’ He bent from the waist, slapping his thighs. ‘What a picture.’

  Daisy had clients like him sometimes. They’d say something they thought was funny, more often than not at her expense, then collapse into hysterics. They wanted her to laugh, too. Like it wasn’t enough that she was in the back of a car going down on them for thirty quid, they needed her to understand just how little they thought of her. She didn’t give a fuck. She hated them too.

  ‘Good one,’ she told him.

  He did another little jig, his arms going like windmills. ‘Don’t know about you but I’m Marvin Haggler,’ he said. ‘I could well go for a burger and chips.’

  Daisy’s stomach churned at the thought. These days, she lived mostly on the individual pots of chocolate mousse she bought on her way to work. On days when she was trying to take herself in hand, she’d buy milk and Coco Pops, or maybe heat up a tin of beans and hot dogs, but she usually left most of it. ‘Chips would be good,’ she said.

  He gave a deep bow. ‘What the lady wants, the lady gets.’ Then he skipped over to her and pushed his face into hers. ‘It goes with-out saying that if you try anything at all I will rip you a new one.’ He waited for Daisy to nod. ‘Like you say, Frankie’s family don’t give a shit about you so the only reason I’m keeping you in one piece is because my old mum gets the hump if I get blood on my clothes.’ He reached for the roll of masking tape on the window ledge, tore off a strip and placed it over her mouth. ‘Good girl,’ he said, and patted the top of her head.

  As soon as he’d left the room, Daisy opened her knees, which she had been keeping tightly together. There, trapped between her thighs, was the metal piece of tube, one end still blackened from the smoke.

  Chapter 17

  March 1986

  The new social worker’s got flashes in her hair. I wonder if she had them done on student night at the local tech because they look like someone did them with one eye and a knitting needle. As she drives me to my new placement, she talks non-stop. She tells me all about her new cat and how she’s called it Snowdrop. She tells me how when she first brought it home, it hid under a bookcase, did a shit and stayed there. Eventually her husband had to roll up his newspaper and whack the poor thing on the arse until it ran out and she could catch it.

  The last social worker left after what happened at the contact centre. Apparently she was ‘very upset’ and put in for a transfer to the Living with Disabilities team. This one doesn’t want to dwell on what went on before but says we all need to use our energy to ‘look forward’. I’m trying, honestly I am, but it’s hard when I don’t know where I’m going to be living, if I’ll be going to a different school or when I’ll next see the kids.

  ‘I think you’re going to like this new placement,’ she says.

  ‘Is it a care home?’ I ask.

  ‘A residential unit,’ she corrects me. ‘No.’

  ‘But it’s not with a foster-family?’

  ‘Not as such.’ She pushes her stripy fringe out of her eyes. ‘There’s just one foster-mother, who specializes in looking after teens.’

  ‘I’m nearly twelve,’ I say.

  ‘Let’s not split hairs, Elizabeth,’ she replies.

  I certainly wouldn’t want to split hers. With the amount of bleach put in it, a clump would probably come off in my hand. And then I bet they’d accuse me of pulling it out.

  We turn off the main road on to a country lane full of pot holes. We bounce our way down it until we meet another car, when the social worker huffs and puffs as she has to reverse back a bit. We carry on like this, back and forth, back and forth, until we get to a gate. Well, when I say gate, I mean a hole where a gate should be. The actual gate has been torn off its hinges and is lying on the grass.

  ‘Here we are.’ The social worker drives through the hole. ‘Langton Manor.’

  When we get up to the house, my jaw drops open. Perched up on a grass verge is a grey brick mansion about a thousand years old. The roof is a huge white zigzag of rotting wood. One of the three chimneys (three!) has collapsed and the broken bricks are scattered on the ground near the door. It’s like something from Hammer House of Horror. ‘Geraldine is a very good person,’ the social worker says, with a firm nod. ‘Very good indeed to do what she does. Try to remember that, Elizabeth.’

  We get out of the car, and as we walk up to the door, it opens with the loudest creak I’ve ever heard and a woman steps out. She’s about sixty and is wearing a donkey jacket, the lapels covered with badges.

  The social worker gives such a wide smile, I worry her cheeks will split. ‘Geraldine, this is Elizabeth,’ she says, but unfortunately she trips on the crazy paving and falls over.

  ‘Careful there,’ Geraldine roars. ‘The bloody thing is full of cracks.’ She puts out a hand to help the social worker back to her feet. ‘I ought to get it fixed but it’s too damn expensive.’

  The social worker says something but Geraldine isn’t listening. Instead, she turns to me. ‘So what do they call you, Elizabeth? Lizzie? Beth?’

  ‘Lib,’ I answer.

  ‘Lib? Never heard that one before.’

  ‘It was my brother’s first word,’ I tell her. ‘Mam assumed he was trying for Liz, but he couldn’t manage it.’

  ‘Could be worse. Are you hungry?’ she asks.

  I’m about to be polite and say I’m fine but she’s already heading back inside.

  ‘Of course you are. Eat me out of house and home you lot will.’

  The hallway is dark and cold and enormous. Like a cave. There’s a bucket parked right in the middle of it and Geraldine taps it with her foot. ‘Careful as you go. Bloody roof’s leaking again.’ She throws open a door at the end of the hallway and we’re in the kitchen but Geraldine doesn’t take her coat off. I don’t blame her. It’s just as cold in here as outside. And there are two more buckets catching steady drips from the ceiling. ‘Sit,’ she barks at us, so we plonk ourselves down at the square wooden table, with eight different chairs to choose from.

  On one of the counters there’s a glass dome, which she lifts to reveal a fruit loaf. She cuts a slice, chucks it on a plate and passes it to me. It looks a bit dry and burned at the edges but I know I’ve got to eat it anyway. I start nibbling and read some of the badges on Geraldine’s jacket. Nuclear Power, No Thanks. Free Nelson Mandela. Some are just symbols. Like an upside-down trident and a circle with a cross stuck to it. Not much point to them if only she knows what they mean, is there?

  ‘I’ll be honest with you, Lib,’ she says. ‘I’m not actually very good at being dishonest. If you bugger me about I’ll send you packing, but if you don’t, I’m sure we’ll get along like a house on fire.’

  I glance around the kitchen, taking in the chipped tiles, the missing cupboard doors, the damp patches. A fire is all this house is good for.

  It was a busy Saturday afternoon in Brixton when Liberty and Crystal
arrived. They’d made brilliant time, due in one part to a clear motorway, and in another thanks to Crystal topping a hundred most of the way, flashing any car that dared to get in front of her.

  ‘There might be cameras on the bridge,’ Liberty had warned, as they passed junction twenty six.

  ‘We don’t bother with speeding tickets in this family.’ Crystal laughed until she caught Liberty’s withering glance. ‘Joking obviously.’

  She pulled into a Tesco car park, hoping to find a spot, driving around a group of boys crowded around an ancient Peugeot 106 with its sound system blaring, laughing and shouting at one another, smoking weed. That was the thing about Brixton: although the property developers had moved in and slaved their arses off trying to gentrify the area, it remained, at heart, a vibrant working-class neighbourhood made up of many races. The middle classes might have moved there because they could no longer afford Clapham but they had not driven away the old guard.

  Crystal found a space and nudged the Porsche into it. ‘So, what’s the plan?’

  ‘Call Jay and see if he got anything from the people in Spain,’ Liberty replied.

  ‘And if he didn’t?’

  ‘For fuck’s sake, just call him.’

  Crystal reached for her mobile and dialled.

  ‘I was just about to bell you,’ said Jay.

  ‘Tell me we haven’t come all this way for nothing,’ said Crystal.

  A couple of girls had joined the Peugeot crowd, all gold hoops and twerking butts. One had braids interlaced with red and orange strands of PVC. She grabbed a joint from the lips of one of the boys, took a draw and pushed it back between his teeth.

  ‘No one can tell me anything concrete,’ said Jay.

  ‘Naturally,’ said Crystal.

  ‘But they do remember Frankie hanging around with some lads from south London when he was over there.’

  ‘Did the name Brixton Dave ring any bells?’ Crystal asked.

  ‘Not the Brixton bit, but they did think one of them was called Dave. Bit of an arsehole, by all accounts. Cocky, mouthy, a bit too fond of the Bolivian marching powder.’

  ‘Sounds like exactly the kind of twat our Frankie would take up with,’ said Crystal, with a sigh. ‘Any ideas on where to find him?’

  ‘Like I say, nothing concrete, but I’m waiting on a call from Danny Macdonald.’

  ‘I thought he was doing a five stretch.’

  ‘Nah,’ said Jay. ‘That was his brother, Declan. Danny’s out in Marbella running a bar. If anyone knows anything it’ll be Danny.’

  Sol breathed a sigh of relief when the Greenwood sisters finally turned off their engine. His petrol gauge had been winking red and angrily empty for several miles. Natasha never let her car go below the halfway mark, a habit Sol had intended to copy but had never managed. It would have been typical if he had lost them in order to refill the car when he’d managed to tail them all this way, despite their best bat-out-of-hell impression. But Brixton! Where did that come from?

  Hassani called him on the mobile. She sounded pissed off. ‘He hasn’t moved,’ she grumbled.

  Sol kept his eye on the Porsche. Liberty and Crystal had parked up but were still inside. ‘What?’

  ‘Jay Greenwood,’ said Hassani. ‘He’s still inside the Black Cherry. I’ve been waiting out here for hours now.’

  ‘I told you surveillance was boring.’

  ‘I’m gonna have to leave before I kill myself,’ said Hassani. ‘Or wet myself. Where are you?’

  ‘Brixton,’ he replied.

  ‘Brixton? In London?’

  ‘Yup.’

  ‘Is that where Chapman lives, then?’ Hassani sounded shocked. ‘I’d have expected a swankier part of town.’ Sol heard papers rustle at the other end of the phone. ‘I’ve got her custody record here and the address she gave the sergeant was in Hampstead.’

  ‘You have her custody record?’ asked Sol.

  Hassani gave a small cough. ‘I photocopied it.’

  Sol shook his head. Hassani was on self-destruct.

  ‘No one saw me,’ she told him. ‘I waited until the sergeant was away from his desk.’

  God, that was even worse. When he got back to Yorkshire he was going to have a really long chat with Hassani, try to make her see that she couldn’t open herself up like this. ‘I don’t think they’re here on a social visit,’he said. ‘We’re parked outside Tesco’s.’

  Hassani let out a long breath. ‘I can’t believe you’re getting all the excitement and my backside’s numb.’

  ‘Get over it,’ he said, and hung up.

  Daisy wanted to scream as she dropped the metal tube for the tenth time. Once again, she had to pick it up with the tips of her third and fourth fingers, then move it towards her index fingers. The first time, she’d been too hasty and the tube had pinged away from her, bouncing from her leg to the floor, where it rolled away. She’d had to bum-shuffle to retrieve it, then bum-shuffle back in case Brixton Dave came in.

  By the fourth attempt, the sweat had been pouring off her, but she’d worked out that she needed to use a gentle rolling motion to get the tube where she wanted it. The trouble was, even when she had the thing between her index fingers, it wasn’t anywhere near the tape binding her wrists. She needed to bend it around, so that the end of the tube was touching the end of the tape, but by now her hands were slick and the tube kept slipping away.

  Sunlight flooded through the window, the glass making the heat unbearable as it smacked Daisy in the face. Outside people would be doing all the things that people did. Daisy had to think for a second what those things might be. For a long time now all she had ever done was work to get money to buy drugs. Take the drugs. Work to get money for more drugs. Ordinary people, though, they did other stuff, didn’t they? They went to the shops, mowed their lawns, watched the telly. She used to feel sorry for people like that, with their stupid boring lives.

  She held the tube as firmly as she could between her index fingers, then slowly spun it towards her, rotating it 180 degrees until it was now millimetres from the tape. All she needed to do was swing it back and forth a few times and connect. The edge of the tube would then hopefully nick her bindings.

  She was so close. She just needed not to drop the damn thing again.

  The sound of a door slamming reverberated around the walls. He was back. Shit. In panic Daisy let go of the tube, watching as once again it rolled away.

  The Nike Air Max thundered up the stairs.

  She tried to scoot towards the tube, but fell to the side, banging her shoulder.

  The door was flung open. ‘What the fuck?’ he shouted.

  Daisy closed her eyes and played dead. What else could she do?

  He grabbed a handful of her hair and pulled her upright. She wanted to scream, but kept her face immobile, her eyes shut. The tape came off her mouth in an agonizing rip.

  ‘Wake up!’ he shouted. There was a fierce sting as he slapped her hard across the cheek.

  ‘For fuck’s sake.’ He shook her hard. ‘Wake up, you silly bitch.’

  Daisy fluttered her eyelids as if desperately trying to open them.

  Brixton Dave let go of her and laughed. ‘Thought you’d gone and died on me there, Daisy.’

  She opened her mouth slightly, then let it fall shut. ‘I think . . .’ She tried to sound as groggy as possible. ‘I think I fainted.’ He hadn’t noticed the tube, lying next to her. ‘It’s so hot.’

  ‘You wanna drink?’

  Daisy nodded and watched him leave the room, muttering to himself.

  As soon as he was through the door, she leaned over and tried to grab the tube. On the third attempt she had it in her grasp then quickly dropped it between her legs and clapped them shut.

  Liberty got out of the car and frowned into the heat. Dad had always said that the south was ‘two coats warmer’. That London was hotter still because of the pollution. Lord knew where he got it all from. As far as she could remember, he’d only ever been to Londo
n once on a coach trip to see a rugby match. He’d got so pissed he’d missed the game and managed to lose his shoes.

  ‘Christ on a bike,’ said Crystal. ‘Let’s get out of this lot, shall we?’

  Liberty smiled at her sister. Her pale skin didn’t like the sun and Crystal didn’t like the freckles it sent out in defence. ‘There are plenty of bars and cafés up by the tube station on Brixton Road,’ she said. ‘We can get a cold drink there, while we wait for Jay to call back.’

  They fell in step, side by side.

  ‘I wouldn’t have thought this part of town would be your cup of tea,’ said Crystal.

  It wasn’t. Liberty stuck mostly to the north side of the river. ‘I’ve been to a few gigs.’ She put on her shades. ‘At the Academy.’ In fact she’d been to one with a man called Alex, whom she’d dated briefly. He was an accountant and recently divorced, keen to relive the youth he vaguely remembered, before marriage and tax returns had ground down his soul. When he’d suggested they go to see Morrissey, she’d assumed it was a joke. It wasn’t. Alex had worn a flower-print shirt and jumped around to the music, spilling lager from his plastic pint glass.

  As Liberty and Crystal arrived at a packed bar close to the tube station, a couple got up to leave a pavement table. ‘Grab those seats,’ Liberty instructed her sister.

  ‘Can’t we go inside?’

  ‘It’ll be even hotter than out here and there’ll be nowhere to sit.’ She pushed Crystal towards the table. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll angle the umbrella over you, Snow White.’

  Crystal sat down with a ‘humph’ and checked every inch of her was in the shade as Liberty fiddled with the giant parasol. She then headed inside and bought two Diet Cokes. As they sipped their drinks, watching the crowds pass by, Crystal asked, ‘Are you happy down here, Lib?’

  ‘I’ve got a good job and a nice flat,’ Liberty replied.

  ‘That’s not what I asked.’

  Liberty was glad she’d brought the sunglasses. ‘What about you? Harry seems like a good bloke.’