Chapter 14

Jim and I rejoined the girls to find Dom and Mel sitting either side of Amber. Daisy was once again looking at her phone. She looked up when she noticed we’d entered.

“Just messaged Kojak,” she said. “He said he heard from Skinner yesterday afternoon. He was after some work.”

“Who’s Kojak?” I asked.

“Another producer,” Jim said. “He’s bald, hence the nickname. Good guy though, just not as picky about who he hires.”

I nodded. “Do we know where this guy has been or why he has suddenly turned up again?”

Daisy shook her head. Jim shrugged.

I went to stand in front of my girls. “Amber, you’re staying at our place tonight. No arguments, okay?”

She nodded but said nothing.

“Dom, I want you to make up the bed in the spare room when we get home.”

“‘Kay.”

“And Amber, I’ll need to know if there’s anything at your place that you’ll need for an extended stay.”

“Extended stay? But what about your wife coming home at the weekend?”

“She’s not. She’s probably coming home tomorrow. Wednesday at the latest.”

“What?” said Dom and Mel at the same time.

“But ... But...” Dom struggled to express how she felt about this news. I completely understood.

“I’ll explain later. First, let’s get Amber sorted.”

Poor Amber. The girl had completely lost control of her situation—not that it seemed she had much control of it in the first place—and while she looked relieved that she wouldn’t have to deal with her abusive boyfriend, she had that little girl lost look of someone who had no idea what was happening around her.

All six of us left the viewing room and while Daisy wandered off into one of the offices, Jim accompanied us to the exit.

“Be careful if you’re going over there,” he said after the girls had left the building and just before I did. “The guy has more than a couple of screws loose. Not surprising the amount of shit he does. That stuff messes with your head. That’s why I never touch it.”

“I know. During my years in The City, I saw plenty of people fuck up their lives over one substance or another. They say some are worse than others, but at the end of the day, the results are usually the same. Don’t worry about me. I know how to handle myself. I’ve been doing it long enough.”

We drove back to the house in relative silence—a local radio station was on but no one was speaking—and back at the house, Dom took Amber upstairs to make up the spare bed, while Mel followed me out to the garage from where I went to collect our largest suitcase.

“You sure this a good idea?” she asked.

“What? Amber staying here or going over to her place to collect her stuff?”

“Both! If your wife is really coming home tomorrow, how are you going to explain the porn star staying in your spare room?”

I shrugged. “Tell her the truth.”

“What? That her daughter is also a porn star, you’ve been fucking her since Friday, not to mention fucking me, and that you’re starting a career in porn too?”

“No. That Amber is a friend of Dom’s from work who needs a place to stay while she gets her life sorted away from an abusive boyfriend.”

Mel huffed and rolled her eyes. Then she said, “Skinner is an arsehole. You don’t want to take him on.”

“I’ve been taking on arseholes my whole life.”

“He’s bigger than you. Much bigger. Brick shit-house bigger.”

“The bigger they are...”

“The harder they hit you.”

“He won’t lay a finger on me.”

“I just don’t want you to get hurt.”

“I won’t.” I looked her square in the eye. “Didn’t you learn anything from Saturday night? Experience will always win out in the end. And I’ve got plenty of experience of dealing with the likes of this idiot.”

“You haven’t met him.”

“I don’t need to have met him to know how to deal with him. Experience, remember?”

She shook her head. “It’s your funeral.”

I’d been right about Amber’s flat. The three-storey Victorian terrace had indeed been converted, but at least the landlord had only put one flat on each floor instead of trying to squeeze in as many as he possibly could. This meant that I entered into a small hallway with three doors off it, rather than going straight into the main living space.

“That you, Jen?” a deep voice called from beyond the door to my right. “Did you do like I told you and ask that fucking puffter for more fucking money? If he’s having you shag some fucking old, crusty wanker he needs to cough up more than five hundred fucking quid, innit?” His accent was coarse—East London, maybe? Not quite Cockney, but not Estuary either. And he had that annoying tendency to make everything he said sound like a question. Although, in fairness, I’d only heard him say two sentences and one of them was a question.

I didn’t answer and instead opened the door to my left. It was, as Amber said it would be, the bedroom, so I put the empty suitcase on the bed and started to fill it with all the clothes from Amber’s wardrobe. Sad to say that there weren’t all that many. I probably didn’t need a suitcase this big. She had less than half the clothes there were in Dom’s wardrobe and I only saw a small, three-drawer chest compared to Dom’s huge six-drawer monstrosity.

“Hey, bitch,” the voice called. “Fucking answer me when I’m talking to you.” The door opened and a man with long greasy hair and a tattoo on his neck just above his white t-shirt came into the room. “The fuck? Who the fuck are you? What the fuck are you doing in my house?”

I looked up. “Three points. One, it’s not a house, it’s a flat. Two, it’s not yours, Amber’s name is on the lease, so—”

“Course, it fucking is. I ain’t signing no fucking lease or contract or nothing. What the fuck’s that got to fucking do with anything? And who the fuck are you?”

I took a breath and continued as if he’d not interrupted. “—so you have no right to stay here without her say so and no legal right to be here if she’s not. And three, I’m the fucking crusty old wanker she shagged yesterday. And if her reaction then and since is anything to go by, I did a better job of it than anyone else ever has. Including you.”

“Fuck off. She’s a fucking actress. She was acting.”

“That’s not what ... what did you call him? That fucking puffter seems to think. And he should know, the number of times he’s seen her act.”

“You ... fuck!”

He charged. Which was stupid, since it was what I’d been expecting since he entered the room. I was able to sidestep him and use his momentum to push him on into the wall behind me, where he banged his head. Hard. I followed this up with a firm kick to the back of one knee then the other, when made him crumple to the floor and narrowly miss banging his head on the small bedside cabinet.

I jammed my elbow down hard into the crook of his neck, then grabbed his hair and tugged his head back so that he was looking up at me.

“That’s the trouble with idiots like you. After spending all that time in the gym, you think you can rely on brute force. You never actually learn how to fight.”

I pushed his head forward and down, slamming it into the bedside cabinet. I had meant for him to just hit his forehead, but I misjudged it.

“My Doze! Dou doke my ducking doze!”

“Shame,” I said. There was a lot of blood. “You know the best thing for nose-bleeds through?” I tugged his head backwards again by the hair. “Tip your head back.”

I shifted my stance so that my knee was firmly pressed against this back, and tugged harder on his hair.

“Do you still have the money you took from Amber yesterday? Or have you spent it?”

“Duck Dou!” Then he spat at me. Or tried to. It was obviously supposed to go in my face but went harmlessly on my shirt instead.

So I slammed his head into the bedside cabinet again—this time it was only his forehead that connected.

“Do you still have the money you took from Amber yesterday?” I asked again, jamming my knee harder into his back while still tugging his head back by the hair.

“Arrrgh! No! No, I haven’t!”

I tugged his head back a little harder, just to be sure.

“I swear! I used it to buy some gear and some booze! She didn’t have any and I—”

“Figured as much,” I said. I didn’t need to listen to any more of his shit than was really necessary. “Okay, this is what’s going to happen next. I’m going to finish packing up Amber’s things, while you sit there quietly and bleed—unless you’d rather go to the hospital. I’ll pay for your taxi if you do. When I’m done here, I’m going to take her things to her—she’s staying with me for a few days until we can find her a new place so that you won’t know where she is.

“Meantime, you’re going to get the fuck out of this town. And stay out. I don’t care where you go, don’t give a shit what you do, but you will never come near Amber again. Got it?”

He tried to nod, so I loosened my grip to let him.

“Good.” And for good measure, I slammed his head into the bedside cabinet—just to reinforce the point. Then I let go of his head. “Now get out.”

He looked at me, clearly weighing up his options. But frankly, he didn’t have many. He gingerly stood up, then scrambled past me, out of the bedroom and out the front door. There was a satisfying clunk as the door shut behind him.

I quickly packed up the rest of Amber’s belongings then went back out to the car. As I was lifting the suitcase into the boot, my phone beeped the receipt of a message. I shut the boot, took the handset from my back pocket and swiped across the screen to unlock it and read the message.

My girls were waiting for me when I got back to the house. They must have heard me opening the front door because as I entered all three of them came rushing out of the lounge.

“Ohmigod! Is that blood?” Dom said, rushing up to me. Amber was only a step behind. Mel lingered back and leaned against the kitchen door-frame.

“Don’t worry, it’s not mine.”

“Nath’s?” Amber asked. “But ... He’s bigger than you! And you don’t even have a black eye or anything.”