Free Blood Sister: A thrilling and gritty crime drama by Dreda Say Mitchell

duplex down on the river. I’m saving for a deposit on a place of my own. You can be the guest of honour at my house warming. My clients like a bit of glamour.’
    He wasn’t giving up but he wasn’t being very helpful about himself either. When Jen asked him the whereabouts of his gaff all she got was, ‘Oh you know, down on the river. It’s a warehouse conversion, porterage, the works. Lovely balcony overlooking the Thames, you know.’
    ‘Yeah, I know. But whereabouts? Wapping or The Island is it?’
    He became even vaguer. ‘Round there, yeah.’
    Jen gave up on grilling him and decided to enjoy her ride instead. It was certainly a change from waiting for a night bus with London’s crazies after an evening out with a young lad, even if she hadn’t actually had a proper evening out with this one. As he zoomed through East London she began to warm to him. He was definitely dodgy but he seemed to be doing it well. As her mum had once told her, there were two types of men: the dodgy failures and the dodgy successes. It was only as the castle-like outline of The Devil’s Estate came into view that she noticed, in the rear of the car, a scattering of crystal specks on the leather seat in the rear and then, above that, a plastic sheet that had been sellotaped to the quarter light.
    ‘What happened to your motor?’
    He looked over his shoulder. ‘Oh that? I went to visit some mates in Hackney and some kids broke into it looking for the usual pickings to nick. And stupid me, I’d left a few sheets in the glove compartment – my bad. That’s the trouble with the East End; it’s full of criminals—’
    ‘Why haven’t you had it repaired then?’ Jen couldn’t keep the suspicion out of her voice.
    Nuts wasn’t fazed. ‘I haven’t had time. No one’s gonna break in it now, are they? Anything worth having would be gone. I’ll take it down the shop next week.’ He looked at her and added, ‘It’ll all be cushty when I come to pick you up for our first date.’
    Jen turned and looked down. There were still shattered lumps of glass lying on the mats below the seats. She said nothing for the rest of the journey. She didn’t mind a little patter and a few fibs to grease the wheels but this boy seemed to think she’d fallen off a Christmas tree, and that was taking it too far. He didn’t seem to notice her silence though, and kept up a constant barrage of saucy chat and barely disguised nudge-nudge-wink-wink along with boasts about how he was going to skyrocket to the top.
    When he drove on to her estate, the first thing they saw – to Jen’s shame – was a load of cops swarming outside and in a ground-floor flat in one of the low-rise blocks. She didn’t need to be told that it was a drugs bust; that was the third one in that building this year. Five years ago, the whispers were that same flat was a knocking shop. No one was out gawping along the balconies or other blocks; this was the usual usual; everyone had seen it all before.
    Nuts didn’t seem fazed by any of it. As he drove the car away from the drama he performed a wheel spin for her on a patch of gravel and knocked over a few bollards as an encore before stopping in front of her block. He rejected out of hand the idea that she could manage her way to her front door. ‘No way, babe; you ain’t going up to that flat on your own. This estate is a zoo and you need a lion tamer as an escort. You know what I mean?’
    When they reached her front door, she thanked him for a lovely evening out and the lift home but Nuts didn’t seem to notice the sarcasm. He put his arm over the doorframe to stop her going in. ‘I’m busy tomorrow and Monday – shall we say I pick you up Tuesday about seven-thirty?’
    Cheeky bugger.
    ‘We can say that but’s it’s not going to happen.’
    ‘Wednesday then?’
    She grinned at him. ‘You’re not getting it are you? You deal drugs with nightclub bouncers, you steal cars and you don’t even know where your