A Lesser Evil - Lesley Pearse [144]
It was the club in Nottingham he had a problem with. The manager had been creaming off the profits for some time, and he wanted Del and Martin not only to go up there and teach him a lesson, but to bring back what Trueman believed he was owed.
‘Right, guv,’ Del nodded. ‘How bad are we to hurt him?’
‘Bad enough that he won’t try it again. But not so bad he’ll need a hospital. He’s good at his job, and he can keep it if he pays up. But if he don’t –’ Trueman made a sort of chopping gesture with his cigar, implying that they could lame or blind the man for all he cared.
Del went to the door as if to leave. Martin began to follow him but stopped abruptly and looked back at Trueman.
‘What about the women?’ he asked. ‘They need food and water. Shall we go out there first?’
‘You leave that to me, son,’ Trueman replied with a grin which didn’t reach his eyes. ‘Get off to Nottingham now and quick about it.’
Martin hesitated. It was Friday, and they hadn’t been out to the barn again since they took the second woman on Tuesday night. But Del tugged at his sleeve in a silent reminder it wasn’t a good idea to argue with the boss.
Once down the stairs and out into St Anne’s Court, Martin turned to his friend. ‘Look, Del, we’ve got to go out there first,’ he insisted. ‘They’ll be starving, and they’ve probably got no water left either.’
‘In case you’ve forgotten, we gave the key back on Wednesday, so we can’t get in there,’ Del said. ‘So stop banging on about them, he’ll have got someone else going out there. Not that the mouthy bitch deserves anything anyway.’
It was raining very hard, and neither Martin nor Del was exactly thrilled to be ordered to Nottingham on a Friday afternoon. Anywhere north of Watford felt like a foreign country to them, and by the time they’d done their business up there, they’d be forced to doss down in some fleapit before the drive home. That would mean they’d be shagged out for Saturday night, the busiest night of the week.
A couple of strippers from the Mirabelle came into the Court, huddled together under an umbrella. When they saw Del and Martin their faces brightened.
Most of the men they met in the club were middle-aged at least, and usually weirdos. To the strippers Del and Martin were white knights as they gave the girls some protection and dealt with troublemakers. Del took advantage of their admiration and trust, and often sold them amphetamines so they could lose weight and work longer hours. But then, Del took advantage of almost everyone, including Martin.
‘Coming in the club later, boys?’ the red-haired one asked.
‘Not tonight, sweetheart,’ Del said, flicking out his snowy-white shirt cuffs from his dark green mohair suit jacket. ‘We’re off on some business. Might catch you tomorra night, though.’ He looked at Martin and jerked his head as the signal they had to go. Martin knew then that Del had already forgotten about the women in the barn.
Fifi, and what she’d told him, had been haunting Martin. Del insisted that she was talking a load of old cobblers and that the reason the boss captured her was because her old man had pulled a stroke on him and then legged it. The other woman was supposed to have kept the books in one of the boss’s businesses, and she’d been ripping him off. Del said they were only being held until Dan Reynolds surfaced and the Frenchwoman had been taught a lesson.
But Martin didn’t believe this. He’d already been told Dan was a bricklayer, he even knew where he worked, and as far as he knew there was no Frenchwoman employed to do the books in any of Trueman’s businesses.
There was nothing remotely unusual about Martin and Del being sent to deal with a bloke who’d stepped out of line. That was a major part of their job.