Murder Ring (A DI Geraldine Steel Mystery) by Leigh Russell Read Free Book Online Page A

better.’
    ‘Please tell us we have a match,’ Geraldine muttered.
    ‘We have a match,’ Adam went on, and this time the cheering officers were not so readily quietened. ‘His name is Leonard Parker, known as Lenny. He was released from the nick on Monday and went on a bender – his saliva was mostly alcohol. Let’s go and pick him up.’

9
    R OSA PUSHED HER straggly hair from her face with the back of a hand without taking her eyes off the kid. His thin arms and legs jerked with frog-like spasms as he kicked a football at the wall. As far as she could tell, he was trying to hit the exact same spot each time. Mostly he missed. His flat face was screwed up with concentration, and he mumbled to himself each time the ball hit the wall.
    In response to the regular thudding of the ball, there was a sudden knocking from the other side of the wall. The next-door neighbour began shouting at the kid to stop his bleeding racket.
    ‘Shut the fuck up! Some of us are trying to sleep!’
    ‘It’s two o’clock in the bloody afternoon!’ Rosa yelled back, as loudly as she could.
    Her thin voice didn’t carry far. She hoped the miserable old geezer next door could hear her. If he didn’t leave it out she’d set Jack on him, see how he liked that.
    ‘Wait till my Jack gets home!’ she added.
    ‘Shut the fuck up or I’ll have that fucking crazy kid locked up! Stop banging on the bloody wall!’
    Theo stopped his kicking. He wasn’t really a kid any more. His widely spaced black eyes stared at her from his pale face. ‘Wait till my Jack gets home!’ he screeched suddenly, the words tumbling out in high-pitched mimicry of his mother.
    Rosa gave a nod of approval although she wasn’t sure he understood a word he was repeating. Inside his twenty-two-year-old head he had the mind of a small child. It was time he learned to stand up for himself; if you didn’t fight back, they crushed you. People on the estate scented fear like sharks smelling blood. She had seen it happen. Jack’s father had been so scared of gang members on the estate he’d left without even saying goodbye. He had told her right from the very first night together that he wasn’t planning on staying around for long. For more than a year she listened to him babbling about finding a better life, away from London.
    ‘Where will you go?’
    ‘Anywhere away from this hellhole.’
    She had been a fool to believe he would take her with him. He had hung around for a few months after Jack was born, until she dared hope he would stay forever. Then he had gone, leaving her with a three-year-old problem child and a baby. She rarely thought about him now.
    ‘We don’t need no old man round here,’ Jack had told her, and he was right. ‘I ain’t never had no father and I ain’t starting now. If he ever walks back in our lives, he won’t walk nowhere again.’
    Her younger son’s vicious words frightened her, but she needed him. If it wasn’t for the wages Jack brought home she and the kid would struggle to cope. She watched Theo kick his ball repetitively against the wall. He was never going to get a job, not like Jack. Fat chance when there were no jobs any more. It was a miracle Jack had managed to keep hold of his for so long. He was off his face more often than not. She lived in dread of him coming home one day to tell her he’d been laid off. Jack laughed at her fears with the confidence of youth. Theo was completely different. Even the school hadn’t wanted him. They had given her a load of bullshit about home visits which had never happened, and tests and assessments, but it was clear they hadn’t known what to do with him. All they had ever wanted to do was take him away from her.
    ‘They come for him, I’ll kill them,’ Jack said.
    For once she had agreed with him.
    ‘You carry on,’ she told the kid, nodding at his ball.
    The football was nearly flat anyway and only made a dull thudding noise when it hit the wall. She wasn’t going to be