‘Mrs Holroyd,’ Reggie said. ‘Fancy seeing you here. It’s a small world, isn’t it?’
Funny Business
Your name came up in connection with one of several individuals we’re investigating and so we would like to ask you some routine questions, if that’s all right? Why? Why Tommy, of all people? Crystal puzzled. How could he have known about those days? He was only a handful of years older than her and Fee. Had he been one of the kids at their parties? Her heart was popping in her chest and Fee said, ‘You all right, Teen? Have a fag. I could make some tea?’ She didn’t look capable of wrangling a kettle but Crystal said, ‘Yeah, go on then. Thanks.’ She didn’t say anything about herbal or no dairy, she knew how stupid that would have sounded to Fee.
She hadn’t even recognized Crystal when she’d opened the door to her. ‘It’s me. Tina,’ Crystal said. ‘Christina.’
‘Fucking hell,’ Fee said. ‘Look at you. Miss Universe.’
‘Let me in,’ Crystal said. ‘We have to talk. The police are asking about the magic circle.’
‘I know.’
It seemed that the judge had a daughter. Crystal hadn’t known that. She was called Bronty, apparently, and the same thing had happened to her as had happened to them. Fee said she remembered her, but Fee had gone to more parties than Crystal. Now, all this time later, Bronty Finch had gone to the police and that was why everything was suddenly unravelling, the past and the present crashing into each other at a hundred miles an hour. ‘And Mick, too,’ Fee said. ‘Seems it’s prompted him into naming names. Have they found you yet? They were here, I told them what they could do with themselves. We could tell them lots, couldn’t we? Lots of names.’
‘I’m not going to talk, not to anyone. I found this on the car.’ Crystal showed her the photo of Candy and the writing on the back. ‘It’s a message. They’re threatening my kid.’ Fee held the photo for a long time, just staring at it, until Crystal took it back. ‘Nice,’ Fee said. ‘Nice kid. I had something too.’ She searched in her bag and came up with a piece of paper. The message on it was less succinct but still pretty straightforward. Don’t talk about anything to the police. You’ll be sorry if you do.
The judge was dead now, of course, a lot of the magic circle were. The knight of the realm – Cough-Plunkett – was still on the go, he’d made a decrepit appearance on TV not long ago. And the MP, now a peer, who liked – no, don’t even think about what he liked – he was right at the top of the heap now, blustering on about Brexit. ‘Call me Nick,’ he said. ‘Old Nick. Ha ha.’ It gave Crystal the willies every time she saw him on the television. (‘Let’s not watch the news, Harry, it’s depressing.’) He still had all sorts of connections, to all sorts of people. People you didn’t even know existed until they started threatening you.
Crystal had got away when she was fifteen. Carmody had given her a handful of cash – dirty notes ‘from the ponies’ – he was the silent partner in an on-course bookmakers, Crystal’s relationship with laundered money went back a long way. Dirty into clean, the story of her life. ‘Get lost,’ Mick said as she stuffed the money into her bag. She was too old now, he said. So she went to the station, got on a train and left. Simple as that, she realized. You just turned your back on everything and left. Christina, running away.
She’d begged Fee to come with her but she’d chosen to stay, already listlessly hooked on drugs. Crystal should have dragged her kicking and screaming out of that caravan, out of that life. Too late now.
She had got a room in a flat and it wasn’t as if her life changed overnight like in fairy tales or Pretty Woman, and she had to do some lousy stuff to survive, but survive she did. And here she was now. New name, new life. She wasn’t giving it up for anyone.
They drank the (weak) tea and smoked without pause.
‘You married, then?’ Fee asked, dragging hard on her cigarette. She was more animated and Crystal wondered if she’d taken something while she was making the tea. ‘An old married lady,’ she laughed, amused by the idea.