a useless cunt and if he ever sends his men to my patch again, I’ll come looking for him and he won’t be as lucky as his nephew was.’
Alfie paused whilst he touched his nose, wincing at the pain. He turned his attention back to the man. ‘I want you to take him something back for me.’
Alfie put his hand into his back pocket and pulled out the pliers he always carried. He nodded to two of his men who came forward and pulled the man up from the fall. One held him up and the other prised open his mouth, leaving Alfie to teach him a lesson the Jennings way. ‘Now say “ah”.’
As Vaughn turned away from the violence, a thought struck him.
Where’s Casey?
Casey ran through the back room hoping to find a way out. The exit door was locked but there was another door slightly ajar, and she could see a flight of stairs behind it. Rather than stay in the back room or head back into the chaos, she decided it’d be safer to head up the stairs.
At the top, Casey saw crates of wine and boxes stacked up neatly against the wall. She walked cautiously down the corridor hoping to find one of the doors open and a room she could wait in. The first door she tried was locked but the second opened and led to a storeroom full of large boxes. Almost unconsciously, Casey continued to look around. There were televisions, computers, Blu-ray players, iPods and iPhones, all boxed, plus a huge selection of Romeo y Julieta cigars.
There was a door at the back and Casey, letting her more inquisitive side take over, quickly opened it to see what was behind it. It was a tiny bathroom.
About to walk out of the storeroom, Casey heard voices coming down the corridor. She felt panic rise within her and she stayed motionless and waited for the voices to go past.
The voices didn’t pass. Casey could hear them directly on the other side of the door. She saw the handle turning and immediately crouched down behind the largest box, hoping whoever it was wasn’t coming in to take the plasma TV she’d just hidden behind.
The voices Casey heard were foreign. One belonged to a man and the other was female. Casey peeked around the box. She got a glimpse of the man, and saw that there were two women with him, not one as she first thought.
She continued to watch, terrified she might make a noise. She saw the man push one of the women hard in the back as he opened the door to the bathroom. The woman let out a tiny squeal and was given another shove to stop her cry. Casey felt as if she should be doing something but she didn’t know what, so she stayed hidden and watched as the man leaned on the doorway of the bathroom, not letting the women have any privacy as they used the toilet.
Crouching behind the box, Casey noticed the women were dressed in tracksuit bottoms and thin short-sleeved tops and their feet were bare. As they were coming out of the bathroom, the light was bright enough for her to see the smaller woman’s arm was covered in bruising and marks. The man opened the door to the storeroom, leading the women out behind him. Casey listened to the footsteps disappearing down the corridor.
In the darkness of the tiny storeroom Casey could feel her whole body shaking; she was terrified and she knew she couldn’t be caught hiding. She took some deep breaths to try to calm her racing heart and listened to see if she could hear anybody else coming. It was all quiet and she decided it was probably safe to go back downstairs.
Casey cautiously walked down the corridor. She wasn’t sure what she’d just seen but whatever it was she certainly didn’t want to get involved; she was here in London for one reason only and all she wanted to do was get the hell out of there.
Coming down the stairs Vaughn was standing at the bottom.
‘Where’ve you been? I was worried sick. You alright? You look a bit pale.’
‘I’m fine; thought it was best to wait on the stairs.’
Vaughn looked to the top of the stairs.
‘That’s where you’ve been all this time?’
Casey nodded her head and couldn’t help but think Vaughn was looking at her suspiciously. She was feeling very unsafe and it dawned on her how stupid she’d been to agree to have a drink with Vaughn in the club alone. She didn’t know the first thing about him, but after what she’d just seen happen, if he was a friend of Alfie’s he was part of something very dangerous.
She wanted to go home but she didn’t want to raise Vaughn’s suspicions any more than they seemed to be raised already. She needed to be careful; she didn’t want him guessing she’d seen the girls. Mustering up some courage which she didn’t feel, Casey spoke, hoping her voice would sound light and be relieved of any tension.
‘Anyway, Alfie was right; gong night is certainly something not to be missed.’
Casey grinned up at Vaughn who grinned back, with neither of their smiles reaching their eyes.
CHAPTER TEN
‘For fuck’s sake, woman, can’t you be a little gentler? You’ve got hands like a fucking gorilla.’ Alfie pushed his wife’s hands away as she tried to clean the hardened dried blood off his face with a ball of cotton wool.
He knew he should’ve washed it off last night but by the time he’d got home to Essex, his face had been hurting so much, he hadn’t wanted to look at it in the mirror, let alone touch it.
He’d taken some sleeping pills, but he’d been rudely awoken a few hours later by Janine’s piercing scream directly in his ear, after she’d turned over in bed and seen him asleep next to her with his face covered in blood.
‘What the fuck are you screaming about, woman?’
‘I thought you were bleeding dead.’
‘And if I was, how the hell does screaming make it better? You nearly fucking gave me a heart attack.’
‘Well what was I supposed to think?’
‘Nothing, like you usually do. Christ almighty, Janine, if I was going to cop it, I hope my dying hours wouldn’t be lying next to you snoring your head off.’
Janine had laughed and waddled off to find some cotton wool and TCP to bathe Alfie’s face.
Alfie had been driven home by one of his men, which had given him time to think about the situation with Jake. He hadn’t actually known he’d been connected to the Bellinghams in East Ham, not that it would’ve made a difference; in fact, he might have enjoyed dishing out the punishment all the more.
He still hadn’t spoken to Emmie any more about the matter; the last thing he wanted to listen to were wails of hysteria from his lovestruck daughter. He’d leave her to stew for a few days and then he’d pick her up something special from Selfridges to cheer her up.
It still pissed him off when he thought about it; he couldn’t get the image of his daughter with that scumbag out of his head and as he put on his shoes, the image of Emmie in just her bra got larger and he felt the rage start to enter his body. He stood up abruptly, throwing the bowl of hot water Janine had brought onto the floor.
He stormed along the marbled landing, kicking Emmie’s cat out of the way, and marched down the elegant curved staircase to the front door,
