Free Working Girls by Maureen Carter

were cooling on the dashboard. Esso’s finest and a parking space just
off the forecourt.
    “Pompous git,” she said. “Why do jerks like Brand go in for teaching?”
    He brushed a couple of crumbs on to the floor. “To buy a house like that for one thing.”
    “Reckon?” She paused. “I wonder. I think we’ll have a closer look at Henry Brand. And not just the size of his wallet.”
    “That stuff about Michelle?”
    She nodded. “He was up-front but he had to be. Like he said…we were bound to find out. He thought he was being smart.”
    Oz wiped his lips with a napkin from Bev’s doughnut. “I suppose it’s possible. She might have made up a story just to drop him in it.”
    “Anything’s possible, Ozzie. It’s possible Mike Powell will buy a round of drinks in the club one night.”
    He grinned. She liked working with this bloke, he laughed at her jokes. What’s more it meant she saw very little of Powell these days, in or out of the bar. She took a sip of coffee.
“I just don’t see why Brand was so keen to shitbag the girl. Speaking ill of the dead, and all that.”
    She warmed her hands on the cup, swirled the liquid round, watching the patterns, thinking her thoughts. Why had he been such a bastard? He clearly hadn’t wanted them in the house. He
could barely look at Bev. And he hadn’t shown the slightest sign of sorrow or regret at the waste of Michelle Lucas’s young life. Then again – who had? Apart from the caretaker
who’d found Michelle’s body, the only tears Bev had seen shed were Vicki’s. The only decent lead had come from Vicki. The only promise of help, Vicki. Bev crumpled the empty cup
in the palm of her hand. And where the hell was Vicki Flinn now?

 
    7
    Across the city, the girls were gathering in Big Val’s place: end terrace, back street, front room. The weekend’s events had forced a camaraderie of sorts on women
who normally wouldn’t give each other the time of day. Out on the patch, they circled round like big cats staking territory. Now they were sitting round sharing six-packs, trying to look
cool. Except Val.
    Val was the oldest, admitted to forty; the meet had been her idea. She’d put the word out: only the kids at this stage. Six had shown – just one face missing.
    Big Val had moved down from Leeds in the late seventies. She’d worked the streets longer than the Royal Mail. She was pinning a mass of unruly red hair into a beehive. “I’ll
tell you something for nothing. If we don’t look out for each other, no bugger else will.”
    She was perched on a bed shared with a herd of stuffed pigs. Any size, any shade; if it had trotters and a curly tail, she went for it. Apart from a lumpy bean-bag, there was nowhere else to
sit, so the girls were lying on the floor propped on an elbow or two. It was a wet Sunday, half past two, nothing else on.
    Jo leaned across and took a cigarette from one of several packs lying open on an ash-grey carpet, the colour as much accident as design. The fifteen-year-old had given up but might as well have
been on twenty a day given the blue haze hovering overhead. She was nearly six feet in her wedgies. “Come on, Val. It’s not Ripper country, is it?”
    “One kid dead. Another on life support. It’s not Disneyland either.”
    A painfully thin girl called Jules took a swig from a can of Red Stripe. The purple in her hair matched a massive bruise on one of her arms. “If I’d wanted a row, I’d have
stayed at home.” The fingers clutching the can had more rings than a Samuel’s window. “What we gonna do about it? That’s what you got us round for, innit? Or are you just
trying to scare us shitless?”
    Val was beginning to wonder. Maybe she’d over-reacted. The kids weren’t fazed. Shell’s murder hadn’t touched them, nor Cassie’s beating. Then again, they
hadn’t been on the game long; it was still a bit of a giggle. Apart from the odd swinging fist and flying fuck, they were virtually