he was doing. Too late. The shotgun fired again and Delaney's windscreen exploded, the car spinning out of control as the screaming blended with the screeching of brakes and the crumpling of metal . . .
Delaney shook his head to clear the thought and frowned as he pulled the car to a stop outside a block of upscale apartment buildings on the left-hand side of Pinner Green heading towards Northwood Hills.
'What's up, boss?'
'The petrol station.'
'What about it?'
'It's not here any more.'
Jenny Hickling turned back to the fifteen-year-old boy who was following her. Nervously flicking his long and greasy hair like a girl.
'Get a move on for fuck's sake. I ain't got all fucking day.'
'All right, keep your knickers on.'
'That supposed to be funny?'
The boy shuffled after her. His jeans were hanging off his scrawny arse gangsta-style, and although he swaggered as best he could, Jenny reckoned he wasn't as cocksure as he thought he was. She knew the type, posh kids bunking off from the grammar school up the road, dressing like hoodies and trying to talk the talk. About as convincing as her uncle Gerard who used to dress up as Marilyn Monroe at every opportunity, complete with a blonde wig and five o'clock shadow. She reckoned the boy was cherry. She'd probably get away with only a couple of strokes and the scratch of her fingernail across the business end before he'd shoot his load. She'd agreed to give him a blow job but she reckoned she wouldn't have to. She wasn't bothered about giving him a suck, it was just she weren't going to let him stick it in her mouth unprotected and she hated the taste of latex. It reminded her of the washing-up gloves her bitch of an Irish mother used to wear when she washed her mouth out for swearing. Before Jenny grew too big of course. She had believed the threat that if she tried to do it one more fucking time she'd wake up with a fucking carving knife in her throat, if that wasn't what her pervert English teacher, Mr Gingernut Collier, called a contradiction in fucking terms. She looked back at the kid who was still limping along behind. He wanted it, that much was clear, but he was still nervous as shite. His older brother was at the University of Middlesex, wherever the fuck that was, and he had nicked some gear off him. Primo gear, he had called it, like something he had heard on late-night TV. But if Jenny guessed right the prissy boy wouldn't know primo gear from a knobbly stick up his arse.
She turned the corner into the backyard of a block of flats. The bottom corridors weren't overlooked, and if she had a penny for every dick she'd dealt with back there she'd have a good pound or two and no fucking mistake.
'Will you get a fecking move on?'
She walked up the step into the covered walkway where the wheelie bins were kept and stopped dead in her tracks. The body of Agnes Crabtree lay right in front of her. One leg trailing up the steps and her head at an angle God hadn't intended. She was pretty sure of that.
She turned back to the pimply teenager who had turned white as a sheet and was running away as fast as he could move. Which wasn't very fast; she almost laughed when he tripped over and landed head first in a puddle, but the smile died as soon as it was born as she realised the little gobshite had taken the gear, primo, or otherwise with him.
She pulled out her mobile phone and dialled 999. 'Ambulance. There's an old lady here not looking so tickety-fucking-boo.'
She gave the woman on the other end of the line the address, then grimaced when she asked her how old she was. 'I'm fourteen, so I won't be here when they get here, all right.' She closed the phone down, then cursed, they'd be able to trace her from her phone number. But she reckoned the woodentops, as her mother called them, would have better things to do than chase up a bleeding truancy.
