Ruthless Girl: An absolutely gripping, gritty crime thriller Read online

  Aleksei had seen her like no one ever had before. He had loved her for who she was, and she had loved him. It had been hell, keeping him a secret, knowing that her love was a complete betrayal to the people she worked for – people who were her friends, the family she’d never known before. She couldn’t have walked away from the love she shared with Aleksei any more than she could have stopped drawing oxygen into her lungs. But of course, as she had known it would eventually, it had all come to a head a few weeks before.

  Aleksei hadn’t earned the right to be working on the Tylers’ patch – he had bullied his way into his corner of Soho, completely ignoring the rules of underworld society. The Tyler brothers had been inside, and Anna had managed the situation as well as she could, but the day the brothers got out everyone knew that Aleksei was on borrowed time. Aleksei knew this too. It was why he had tried to kill Freddie and tried to rope Josephine into helping him do it.

  Josephine had finally been pushed to make a decision. It had not been an easy one, she loved Aleksei with all her heart, but she also loved Anna and the rest of her friends and she owed them her loyalty. The night she had been ordered to lure Freddie into Aleksei’s trap, she had instead tried to scupper Aleksei’s plans. It had backfired and he’d turned on her, even tried to kill her for her betrayal, but unbeknown to Josephine, Anna had been following her and had saved her life, killing Aleksei in the process.

  It had been a shocking chain of events, and she’d been forced to come clean to Anna and Tanya about everything. They’d covered up Aleksei’s death and had sworn never to speak a word to anyone about what had happened that night – not even Freddie. There was too much at stake, too many complicated threads to untangle.

  There was a knock at the door and she jumped, the lipstick she had still been holding to her lips shooting across her cheek and leaving a bright trail. She tutted and quickly grabbed some tissues and tried to wipe it off before walking over to the door and opening it.

  Tanya stood the other side, a wide smile of greeting on her face. ‘Alright? How’s it going?’ She waltzed in leaving a cloud of Chanel Coco Mademoiselle in her wake.

  Josephine wafted the air with her hand as she closed the door behind her. ‘OK, thanks,’ she replied.

  ‘You’ve got a bit of, um…’ Tanya pointed a long, polished finger towards Josephine’s face and made a circular movement. ‘Lippy.’

  ‘I’m aware of that,’ Josephine replied drily. ‘Thank you.’ She continued rubbing her face with the tissue and walked into the small kitchenette to put the kettle on. ‘Cuppa?’ she asked.

  ‘Go on then, quick one,’ Tanya replied, checking her watch. She still had what felt like a million things to do this evening, but was pointedly aware of how fragile her friend was at the moment, so didn’t want to just run out after getting what she came for. ‘Do you have the accounts ready?’ she asked.

  ‘On the coffee table,’ Josephine called over her shoulder.

  Tanya picked them up and sat down on the couch, making herself comfortable as she flicked through them. Like many of the businesses under the Tyler empire there was only one set of accounts for The Sinners’ Lounge, which were coded and kept carefully hidden from anyone outside of the inner circle. The accounts were handwritten by Josephine and passed over once a month either to Anna or Tanya who would then launder the profits through Club Anya. It was a fairly straightforward process with card payments, as they just used one of Club Anya’s card machines and put the payments through as food or drink, but they also took a vast amount of cash. Once the girls and the overheads were paid from this, the rest had to be carefully trickled back into the more legitimate company so as not to raise suspicion.

  ‘Jesus, Rose has been a busy bee,’ Tanya remarked, raising her eyebrows with a smirk.

  ‘Born for this life, that one. Loves it more than a fat kid loves chocolate,’ Josephine replied, placing two cups of tea on the coffee table and taking a seat in the armchair opposite Tanya. ‘How are plans for the new place coming along?’

  ‘It’s getting there. The walls have been replastered and painted now, so no trace of the carnage.’ Tanya’s gaze briefly flicked up towards her friend. ‘You know you can come down and see it anytime you like,’ she said carefully.

  Josephine flinched. ‘I can’t,’ she said in barely more than a whisper. ‘There’s just… It would be too much of a reminder of everything.’

  Tanya nodded sagely, choosing not to reply. The premises for their new restaurant was Aleksei’s old club, taken back into the fold now that he was gone. It was a difficult position that they all found themselves in at the moment. As far as the world knew, Aleksei was just missing. She, Anna and Josephine were hiding the truth and it was still a very tense time. Barely a few weeks had passed and although no one had found his body underneath the rubble of the building that had collapsed on top of his corpse, that wasn’t to say they were completely out of the woods yet. And on top of this, Josephine was also grieving. Whatever else Aleksei had been, he was the man she’d loved. But although Tanya sympathised with her, she couldn’t support her in the way one usually would a friend who had just lost their lover. It was a tricky situation.

  ‘How is Anna?’ Josephine asked, tentatively.

  Tanya sighed and put the accounts down before running her hand through her long red hair. ‘She’s OK,’ she replied. ‘Busy with all the new stuff going on.’

  Josephine nodded and bit her lip. ‘Is she ever going to be normal with me again, do you think?’ It was a question she had wanted to ask for a long time but had been skirting around, afraid of the answer.

  There was a short silence, before Tanya leaned over and squeezed her friend’s arm. ‘Give her time,’ she answered gently. ‘She still loves you, Josephine, you’re still family. But Anna is a very black-and-white person. You hooking up with Aleksei, hiding everything from us…’ Tanya trailed off and bit her lip, not wanting to say anything that would upset Josephine further. Whilst she understood Anna’s feelings on the matter, she also felt Josephine had been through enough. She didn’t want to add to it.

  ‘I know,’ Josephine mumbled.

  ‘Just give it some time,’ Tanya repeated. ‘Anna might be a bit of an ice queen at times, but all ice melts eventually.’

  ‘The polar caps haven’t,’ Josephine replied glumly.

  Tanya smiled and grabbed the accounts as she stood up. ‘I’ll catch you later. Chin up.’

  As she walked out, her smile dropped. For all her hopes and her jolly words, deep down Tanya wasn’t sure that Anna was ever going to be able to forgive Josephine. Anna’s bar was set high and made from reinforced steel. Right now, she was still warring with this bar and her heartfelt wish to forgive their friend. But there would come a point when Anna would realise that she couldn’t change how she felt. And what that would mean for Josephine and her future here, Tanya didn’t dare think about.

  Six

  Balancing one of the hot coffees she held on top of the other, Sarah Riley lifted the latch on the old wrought-iron gate and walked into the sprawling graveyard. With a groan and a clang it closed behind her and she set off towards the far corner where she knew Freddie would be waiting for her. She looked up at the bright blue morning sky and then around at the neatly kept graves that sat in rows in the short, thick grass. As far as graveyards went this one was pretty beautiful, situated as it was on a rolling hill overlooking the lush countryside just outside the city. And this was, of course, why Freddie had chosen it. He wanted nothing but the best for the people he cared about, even after death.

  As she turned a corner by the small chapel in the middle of the grounds that was rarely used, Sarah caught sight of Freddie sitting on the bench he’d had installed behind his sister’s grave, staring out at the view. He appeared lost in thought and didn’t turn to acknowledge her until she was just a few feet away.

  ‘Here.’ Sarah passed one of the steaming coffees to Freddie. ‘I figured you might need some caffeine. This is a bit earl
y for you, isn’t it?’ Most of Freddie’s business was conducted at night-time, Sarah knew, so mornings were usually pretty quiet as far as he was concerned.

  ‘Thanks.’ Freddie took the offered takeaway cup and waited as Sarah sat down next to him. He continued to watch as the shadows from the few sparse clouds above made their steady journey across the rolling hills beneath. ‘What’s the latest?’ he asked, taking a sip of his coffee.

  Sarah Riley was a DCI for Thames Valley Police. She worked directly under Ben Hargreaves, the secretary of state for justice. She also worked for Freddie and despite day-to-day appearances, it was with him that her true loyalties now lay. When Ben had formed a task force to bring the Tylers down, it had been Sarah who had worked hard to sabotage their plans from the inside. She’d done a good job for the most part – they had nearly been home and dry when one of the officers had stumbled across something that even she couldn’t cover up or warn them about in time.

  Sarah placed her coffee down on the bench beside her, pushed her fists into the pockets of her short leather jacket, and crossed one leg over the other. ‘Nothing much has changed. He has Daniels keeping tabs on you still, but I’ve made sure to increase his workload, so he doesn’t have a lot of time to spare on a project that isn’t a priority. Still, he has flags on most of your accounts.’

  Freddie shrugged. ‘That’s not a problem. I’m not stupid enough to put anything through there that ain’t legitimate. How itchy is he getting, with us on the outside still?’

  ‘Pretty itchy,’ Sarah admitted, pushing her short dark hair back behind her ear. ‘But he doesn’t seem to be making plans to move on you again. He can’t justify it really, not after what he spent getting that arrest on you before. He had to answer to the board for that, you know. Spending such a big portion of the budget on the team to bring you down, to only bag you on a mere drugs charge.’ Sarah raised her eyebrows and gave a small smirk. ‘He pissed off a lot of people. He can’t justify putting any of the budget on you again unless you give them a seriously big reason.’

  Freddie nodded. ‘What have you heard about that Jamaican weed heist, south of the river?’ he asked, changing the subject.

  ‘That wasn’t you, was it?’ she asked with a guffaw of amusement, turning to look at him.

  ‘Nah, ’course not,’ he replied. ‘Do you know what they’ve got on it so far, though?’

  ‘Not a lot. It was in the middle of a housing estate so no cameras. All they have to go on is the witness accounts, but the description was pretty generic. Young white males, nondescript clothing. I’m not running the team on that one, but the DI in charge is one of mine. Why?’ she asked.

  ‘Try and bury it, if you can. Or at least take it off their priority list. It’s nothing to do with me, but it would be doing a friend a favour,’ Freddie answered.

  ‘I’ll see what I can do. I’ve just had a murder come in last night, I’ll see if I can put that on their plate perhaps.’ This reminded her how much she had to do today. Pushing up her sleeve, Sarah glanced at her watch. ‘Is there anything else?’

  ‘Yeah.’ Freddie leaned forward onto his knees and cast his gaze down to the white granite gravestone in front of him. It belonged to Thea, his little sister who had been murdered three years before. ‘Hargreaves.’ His feelings of disgust for the man soured his tone. Hargreaves had been the one who’d insisted the SWAT team burst in and take the Tyler brothers from Thea’s funeral, not even having the decency to wait until it was over. ‘I want you to build a file on him for me. Collect details of his comings and goings. Patterns, habits, any unusual activity.’

  Sarah raised her eyebrows in surprise but kept her thoughts to herself. ‘OK. How deep?’

  ‘As deep as you can without making ripples,’ Freddie replied. ‘I know you say he’s not planning anything but we’re better safe than sorry. I like to keep a few steps ahead.’

  ‘Gotcha. I’ll start today.’ Sarah stood up and straightened her jacket. ‘I’d best be off. Catch you later.’

  Walking back the way she came in, Sarah pondered how she was going to set about following her boss without being noticed. There were a variety of options at her disposal, but most of them could be easily traced back to her if she wasn’t careful enough. She almost immediately dismissed the idea of using the equipment available to her through the force for this reason and made the decision to contact Bill Hanlon, one of Freddie’s men who had a certain skill with security and technology. He could get practically anything she needed on the black market and it was usually better than what the police had to hand anyway.

  As she passed through the gate once more, she almost turned to walk up the hill, but something about the car that was passing made her pause. She frowned and stared at it. The large black Range Rover seemed out of place cruising down the deserted country road of the little village at this time of the morning. But more than that, there was something about it that she was sure she’d seen before. Aside from the blacked-out windows that were not, in fairness, uncommon, the black wheel rims were personalised with a bright red trim. That was uncommon. Range Rover didn’t make rims like that, the car had been purposely detailed. And Sarah had seen it before. Outside Freddie’s club.

  As her attention swiftly moved up to the windows, the car sped up with a screech and raced away around the corner.

  Seven

  Anna took a deep breath, braced herself and walked into the main room of The Sinners’ Lounge. It was empty, being so early in the day, other than the cleaner running the hoover round the bar area and Bill, who was seated at one of the tables near a window, waiting for her to arrive.

  ‘Hey.’ She greeted him with a smile. ‘Thanks for meeting me here so early.’

  ‘No worries,’ he replied. ‘Show me where you’re thinking then we’ll work out some options.’

  ‘Great. There’s an empty space in the loft which is almost a room but not quite – the ceiling is too low. No one has need to go up there, so I figured that would be a good place to keep it.’ Anna was referring to the bulk load of cannabis she had been discussing with Freddie the night before.

  After leaving the club she had called Bill and asked him to meet her at The Sinners’ Lounge to discuss the privacy and security of the product. It might only be one load of drugs right now, but should they need to use the space going forward, it would be handy to have everything set up to the highest standard.

  Footsteps entering the room sounded behind her and, knowing who it was likely to be, Anna locked her jaw with a grim expression. She swiftly hid this behind a polite smile, so that Bill didn’t pick up on the tension between the two of them. The footsteps faltered and then resumed moving closer at a slower pace. Anna forced herself to turn around.

  ‘Anna, how are you?’ Josephine asked with a hopeful smile.

  Anna smiled tightly in return. ‘Well, thank you. And you?’

  ‘All good.’ Josephine looked down at the coffee in her hand before walking over to Bill and setting it down in front of him. ‘Would you like one?’ she asked, gesturing towards the steaming cup.

  ‘No, I’m not staying,’ Anna replied curtly. ‘Too much to do,’ she added in a softer tone, seeing Bill’s gaze sharpen and his brow furrow. ‘I’ll catch you later though, OK?’ She shot Josephine the brightest smile she could and saw hope light up in the other woman’s eyes. This caused a strange mix of emotions to start swirling in her stomach and she looked away. Sadness at the awkward distance between them and a wistfulness at the thought of the good times they used to have danced with feelings of anger and betrayal. This was why she had been avoiding Josephine. She couldn’t find it in her heart to forgive her for everything, not yet at least.

  ‘OK, well, let me know if you change your mind,’ Josephine replied.

  ‘This way, Bill,’ Anna said, walking swiftly past Josephine towards the stairwell beyond. She didn’t trust herself to respond. The strain between them was evident.

  Bill took a big swig from the coffee cup in front
of him and wiped the foam off his lip as he stood up. ‘Thanks, Josephine,’ he said with a friendly grin.

  ‘What’s happening, exactly?’ Josephine asked, tentatively, her gaze darting towards Anna’s retreating back.

  Anna paused and rolled her eyes, cursing internally. She couldn’t just leave Josephine out of the loop, this was her home and workplace. Placing her hands on her hips she turned back around.

  ‘Sorry, Josephine, I’m not thinking straight today. I’ll pop down in a few minutes and explain, I just need Bill to come and see the roof first.’

  ‘OK, great.’ Josephine held the smile as Bill joined Anna. As they disappeared from view, she stopped faking it and let the misery spread back over her face. Anna couldn’t even bear to be in the same room as her. The same Anna who had been one of her closest friends just a few weeks before. Were things ever going to get back to normal?

  Anna opened the door to the last room at the top of the building. It was filled with odds and ends of furniture and a few half-used cans of paint. At the back of the room was a small door, about half the height of a normal door, that led into a wide space between the storeroom and the eaves. Anna opened this and stepped aside to let Bill see.

  Bill hunched over and peered into the space. It was bigger than it looked from the outside, spanning a good few metres each way, but with the ceiling sloping sharply down making it impossible for anyone to stand upright in there. He nodded slowly.