FORTY-NINE

Fergal stood at the foot of the bed grinning, as if the lanky animal had done something clever.

Knacker peered over Fergal’s shoulder like a younger boy admiring booty snatched from a school bag. ‘Must have given him the address when they was calling each uvver. Big mistake.’

‘Yes, that is a fact, Knacker.’ Fergal jutted his chin at Stephanie. ‘And I do bet he wished he never come.’ He embellished the taunt with a titter.

Knacker smirked approval at the jest.

Fergal pushed his face at her. ‘Who else you give the address to?’

Stephanie stared back but never spoke.

Fergal’s grin broadened and he showed all of his yellow teeth. ‘Knacker. Have you still got somefing that belongs to me? Somefing that keeps tarts in line?’

At that Knacker didn’t even smile. ‘Upstairs, I fink.’

‘Bullshit!’

Knacker jumped backwards, then swallowed.

‘I can see it in your pocket, you big pussy. Gotta be the bottle cus your cock ain’t even half that size. Give it over.’ Fergal snapped two absurdly long fingers in the air, the ends black with grime and Ryan’s blood.

Knacker pulled the bottle of acid out of the front pocket of his jeans.

‘Tut, tut, tut. Shouldn’t keep it by your pecker, Knacker. Don’t you know nuffin’? Top might have come off. Your nudger getting burned off won’t be no loss to the girls though.’

At that Knacker winced and placed the small medicine bottle in Fergal’s outstretched fingers. Knacker’s own hands were shaking.

‘She don’t half make you repeat yourself, don’t she?’ Fergal began to unscrew the cap of the bottle. ‘So who else you told about this place.’

Stephanie pulled her legs further up the bed. She swallowed to find her voice. ‘No one. Just him’

‘That right?’

They were going to kill her. Curiously, she entertained the thought dispassionately. But even though her imminent death was becoming a fact, she would choose their punching fists and stamping feet over acid thrown into her face. ‘He was just bringing me a deposit. For a new room.’

Fergal patted the pocket of his jacket. ‘He certainly did. And every little helps.’

The idea of Ryan’s money inside Fergal’s pocket – hard-earned money he had brought down to Birmingham so that she could escape from the house – stung her more than the thought of them being in possession of a toy she might have treasured as a child. Despite what she had read in the news, or studied in a criminology module of her psychology A Level, or even seen on television, she realized she had never fully understood just how base and cruel people like the McGuires actually were. Nothing in her experience had prepared her for them, not even her stepmother.

‘So who else might your boyfriend have told about his little visit?’

‘I don’t know.’

Fergal unscrewed the bottle cap one full turn. ‘Fink harder.’

‘He’s . . . he’s not my boyfriend. Not any more. He lives with another girl now.’

‘My heart is breaking.’

‘He wouldn’t have told her anything.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because his girlfriend wouldn’t want him seeing an ex.’ She wished she were lying, but realized she wasn’t.

‘Not some slag he used to fuck. I can understand that. And your mum can’t stand the sight of you. Mine was the same. Your dad snuffed it. We got that in common too. Who else knows you is here?’

‘Bank. Temping agency,’ she said before thinking it through, and immediately saw that they both believed her lie with a reluctance that caused them great displeasure.

‘Yeah,’ Knacker said. ‘She’s been giving out these food samples and all, but ain’t had no work for a while.’

Fergal turned his head to Knacker. He was showing all of his teeth and Stephanie was glad he was not showing that face to her. ‘Anyone ever tell you, Knacker, that you is a useless twat? Eh? That can’t get nuffin’ right? Not never since I known you? I fink back to that day they put you in wiv me and Bennet, at the Scrubs, and I fink listening to you was the worst mistake I ever made. Now, what are we gonna do about this situation?’ The question was intoned rhetorically because Fergal had already arrived at a decision.

It was just as well because Knacker didn’t offer an answer; he just stared at Stephanie in silence. And she knew that Knacker wanted Fergal to do something unpleasant, an act Knacker didn’t have the stomach for and wouldn’t take part in. He didn’t care about how it was done, as long as he didn’t have to do it.

She was a witness to Margaret and Ryan.

If the two men were caught, she could already hear Knacker’s wheedling voice, and see the tears in his big, doleful eyes as he told the police how Fergal had killed Margaret, Ryan, her, no doubt Svetlana too by then, and however many other women Fergal had murdered under this roof: ‘Nuffin’ to do wiv me, like. I was scared for me own life. Fought it was gonna be me next, yeah? Swear on me muvver’s life.’

She felt like she was stuck in some horrible dream in which she was taunted with a vision of the next scene before it happened. She only wished she could live long enough to watch Fergal kill Knacker; she knew there was a distinct possibility of that happening. Taking lives for expediency, or as the consequences of blind rage or insanity, was becoming commonplace, and seemed to have long been normalized at 82 Edgehill Road.

She doubted Fergal had any illusions about his partner’s character either. And after his comment about meeting Knacker in what she assumed was a prison cell, in something they called the Scrubs, she now doubted there was even a blood tie between them. A cover story and another lie. She didn’t even know their real names.

‘Only one fing for it at this stage of the game,’ Fergal said.

Knacker raised his eyebrows.

Fergal grinned at Stephanie. ‘Black Maggie. Black Maggie’s got business wiv her. Bennet’s right. Has been all along. So she’s going in. Down there. It’s where they all end up anyway. And Maggie will want her. Bennet says she never says no to a bit of company.’