by Jessie Keane
Fabio glanced at his older brother. ‘He had a lot of enemies.’ Even you, brother dear. And me. Neither of us could wait for him to be out of the way, so that we could have our turn.
But he didn’t say it; Vittore would flatten him if he did. Instead, he sipped the brandy and stared at Mama Bella. Earlier, when Vittore had confirmed the news, she had sobbed and shrieked and clutched at her chest. Now she seemed calmer.
‘I want to know the answer. Whoever did this is a dead man,’ said Vittore.
Bella took a swig of the drink. It warmed her, but not enough to reach the chill that had settled over her soul as Vittore spoke. Vittore wanted revenge. He wanted to find who had killed Tito, and take vengeance on them. But that would place him, Vittore, her favourite boy, in danger. She didn’t want that. She had just lost one son. She didn’t want to lose another, most particularly not the one who was so precious to her.
‘There is something I have to say to you both,’ she told them.
‘Oh? What is it, Mama?’ asked Fabio.
Bella looked from one to the other. Vittore so masculine, so imposing; Fabio so handsome. Her boys. Then her eyes dropped to Fabio’s grazed and bloody knuckles. She guessed that someone had paid for bringing bad news to Fabio; this was the way it worked in the Camorra.
‘It could have been anyone who did this,’ she said shakily. ‘One of the establishment, someone Tito crossed over a business deal or a woman.’
‘Tito crossed a lot of people,’ agreed Fabio.
‘It could have been Miller – Michael Ward’s number one,’ said Vittore. ‘Maybe he believed we carried out the hit on his boss. That’s a possibility.’
‘Or it could have been any one of a dozen others,’ said Bella tiredly, shaking her head. When her eyes met Vittore’s again they were full of command. ‘Now I’m telling you. Both of you. There will be no reprisals. I won’t have more bloodshed.’
‘But Miller—’ said Vittore.
‘We don’t know who did this,’ said Bella, steel in her voice.
‘Mama—’ started Vittore, coming to his feet.
‘No!’ Bella stood up too. The fists she rested on the table were shaking, but her eyes flashed with fire. ‘I’ve lost one child this night, do you think I will risk another? I mean it, Vittore. No reprisals.’
Fabio drank down his brandy and eyed the two of them, staring at each other across the table.
‘Swear to me,’ said Bella.
‘What . . . ?’ Vittore was almost twitching with suppressed aggression.
‘Swear it,’ she repeated, glancing down at Fabio.
He shrugged. ‘All right, Mama. If it means that much to you, I swear. No reprisals.’
Her gaze turned to Vittore. ‘And you? Vittore?’ she prompted.
He heaved a sigh. ‘No reprisals, Mama. I swear, all right? I swear it.’
Bella nodded. After a second she sank back into her chair. Looked at her boys, her two remaining living sons, and asked herself, Are they lying, to please me?
She suspected they were. But she had done this much. She thought of Kit Miller, and his mother. There was one more thing she could do, to make sure that no other sons ended up on a mortuary slab. She’d had years of this, of the killing, the crooked deals, the stress and the lust for revenge, and she was tired of it all. Then her mind turned with soul-wrenching sadness to her daughter; this would break her heart.
‘Someone ought to go in the morning and tell Bianca,’ she said.
Vittore nodded. ‘I’ll do it,’ he said.
4
‘Blood will flow.’
Ruby Darke would never forget those words, coming down the phone line at her. It was like a witch’s curse, she thought later, because blood did flow, oh yes indeed. But she didn’t know, not then. She just picked up the phone, like you do, like thousands of people do, every day. They pick up, and bang. Their world changes for ever. ERNIE’s snatched their premium bond numbers out of the pile. Or someone they kissed goodbye only an hour ago is dead, heart attack. The fates roll the dice, and we are all helpless pawns on the great game board of the uncaring universe.
Ruby didn’t expect either good news or bad, not that day. But when she looked back, that was how it all started: with the phone
the witch’s curse . . .
ringing in her Victorian villa in Marlow.
She was hurrying through the hall, the spring sunlight making pretty patterns as it shone through the stained-glass panels beside the front door. She threw a casual remark back at her daughter Daisy, who was in the kitchen with Nanny Jody, feeding Matthew and Luke, Daisy’s year-old twins.
‘Hello?’ Ruby unclipped an earring, smiled her automatic professional smile.
She hadn’t genuinely smiled since last November, not since Michael Ward had been found shot dead in an alleyway. She thought about him every day. Mourned him bitterly. Missed him so much. Even though she knew what he’d been, she’d loved him.
On the surface, Michael had been a businessman, giving generously to charities, stumping up for the Aberfan disaster, raising donations for the Hackney Road Queen Elizabeth Hospital for Children. But underneath the façade? He was a crook, the feared leader of one of the big organized gangs who ‘ran’ the streets of London, like the Krays had, and the Richardsons, the Regans, the Nashes and the Carters . . . Some of those gangs were off the scene now, and there were new developments: the Maltese were muscling in, the Mafia was cruising around, looking tasty, and then there was Tito Danieri’s lot, his camorristi, who should have been sweating it out in Naples but were here instead, causing trouble. Ruby wanted no part of that world.
Ruby and Michael had been in their forties when they met, too old to be called boyfriend and girlfriend. But they’d been passionate, committed lovers and she felt she’d buried a part of herself when she’d lost him. Slowly, though, she was coming back to some semblance of normality, telling herself to get on with it, that life had to go on regardless how much it hurt.
In the aftermath of Mike’s murder she’d ceased to care about the business – Darkes department stores, the chain she had built up from a single corner shop originally run by her dad – but now she was forcing herself to take up the reins again. As it had done so often in the past, work provided solace, kept her sane. Helped her to cope with her loss, just as it had when her twins were taken from her at birth.
She was lucky, she had to keep telling herself that. Against all odds, thirty years after she was separated from them, Daisy and Kit had come back into her life. Daisy, who’d been brought up by her biological father and his wife, had found it easier to forgive than Kit, who’d never known what it was to have a family. Even after he’d learned how she was forced to give him up, he couldn’t stop blaming her for abandoning him. While everyone else had rallied round after Michael’s death, Kit had kept his distance. That hurt her terribly.
Daisy, however, had been wonderful, as had Rob, Kit’s second-in-command, and all her staff. There had been notes of sympathy from her workers at all the stores, and even from Michael’s contacts and business associates, people she barely knew. Flowers from a man called Thomas Knox, and a note expressing his deepest sympathy. Then, a little later, a letter sent to her office, offering her help if she should ever need it, asking her to call him, asking if he could call her . . .
Ruby had quickly decided that she never would. She suspected that Knox, like Michael, operated on the precariously narrow line between big business and criminal activities, skirting between legit and not-so-kosher deals. Bad enough that Kit was following that same perilous path; all she wanted now was to escape that shadowy underworld. It was dark and it was dangerous. Look at what had happened to Michael. Wasn’t that proof enough?
‘Do you know a Thomas Knox?’ she’d asked Rob one day. She could always talk to Rob, far more easily than she could talk to Kit. Rob was solid as a rock; he’d been her minder last year, when she’d had need of one. He’d saved her life.
‘Knox? Sure. Hard
man, a real face. He was at Michael’s funeral – didn’t you see him? Big guy. Fortyish. Blondish sort of hair. Why?’
‘No reason,’ said Ruby.
She was sure she had seen Knox there, watching her with hard blue eyes.
She kept the flowers – they were beautiful – but she binned the note, and the letter.
As she picked up the phone, Ruby’s mind had already made the assumption that it would be something to do with her plan to roll out coffee shops across the Darkes chain. Shifting to professional mode, she forced herself to confront her reflection in the mirror above the telephone table. Lately, she had avoided mirrors. Now she looked and there she was: Ruby Darke, still battling away, still coping. She saw a woman of a certain age and mixed race, dark haired with café au lait skin. She was model-thin (maybe too thin, since Michael had gone and food had lost its appeal) and elegant. She was dressed in black, and pearls. Her features were delicate, and her straight, thick black hair was swept back into a neat chignon. She looked confident and wealthy. But her eyes, darkest brown with speckles of copper-gold, told the true story. The expression in them was anxious and miserable, full of sadness.
‘Is that Ruby?’ It was a female voice, accented – French or Italian? – with a hint of uncertainty.
‘It is.’ A little frown of puzzlement wrinkled Ruby’s brow. ‘Who is this?’
‘I am Bella Danieri. Tito’s mother.’
Ruby’s false business smile dropped away. Italian, then. She’d heard the news about Tito, and how he’d died. Everyone had.
‘I want you to come to his Requiem Mass,’ said Bella. ‘If you would.’
‘Well I . . .’
‘Please. I want you to come.’ And Bella started reeling off the time, the place, the date.
Ruby paused, hearing but not wanting to, wondering how she could get out of this. She hadn’t even known Tito, not really. He’d been an associate of Michael’s, so she’d brushed up against him once or twice. She hadn’t liked him. One look into those soulless eyes had told her all she needed or wanted to know about Tito Danieri. She had formed the strong impression that Michael had done his utmost to keep her out of Tito’s way. So no, she didn’t want to attend his funeral.
‘I don’t know . . .’
‘Please, you must.’ Bella’s voice trembled. She stopped speaking. Then she seemed to gather her strength to go on. ‘Please come. I have to talk to you. Or I tell you, blood will flow.’
And there it was. The witch’s curse.
Blood will flow.
And God help them all, because it did.
5
There was something awesome about Bianca Danieri, with her straight fall of silvery white-blonde hair, her lily-pale skin and her turquoise-blue eyes. And she knew it. Exploited it, in fact. To emphasize the whiteness of her hair and skin, she always wore white. The woman in white, pale as the proverbial ghost; that was Bianca. Even her name meant ‘white’. She could nail a room in one second flat, turn the attention of everyone in it directly to her.
Bianca was twenty-five years old and for the first time ever her brothers had trusted her enough – or Mama Bella had nagged them sufficiently – to run one of the just-about-to-launch new Danieri family discos. This one was in Southampton at the Back of the Walls, where the ancient city fortifications still stood. Not a prime site in London’s West End like the ones the family already owned, oh no – not like Tito’s, or Fellows or Goldie’s; of course not. Bianca had to prove herself in the wasteland of the sticks first. Well, so what? Prove herself she would.
The disco was to be called Dante’s – Bianca’s own choice, she liked the idea of replicating an inferno in here – and the red, black and gold paint was still tacky and stinking the place out. The kitchens had been fitted over the past week, the black carpets (which wouldn’t show the inevitable stains) were being laid today, then the furnishings were coming in. The sparks were in now, fiddling with the strobes. It was all hands to the pump.
‘Hey, Cora, you listening?’ said Bianca. ‘Drayman’s delivering at eleven, you sort him out, OK?’
Cora, a tall redhead who’d been running bars since before Bianca was born, nodded.
‘And Tanya . . . where the hell’s Tanya?’
While Cora was in charge of bar staff, Tanya was here to manage the waiters and waitresses, or rather ‘hosts’ and ‘hostesses’. They would be working front-of-house, dressed in fetching little devil costumes, and red horns. Red wings had been discussed as an option, but Bianca had dismissed that idea. ‘Take up too much room,’ she said. ‘You turn around, knock a punter’s drink flying. Nah. Silly idea.’
‘Tanya had a hot date last night, I heard,’ said Claire, a tiny brunette already puffing on her twentieth cigarette of the day.
‘I told her to get in early.’
Cora and Claire exchanged looks. They both knew that Tanya had been moonlighting at Nero’s, a club in Portsmouth where the girls were all tricked out in dinky little togas. They also knew that if Bianca found out about this, she would grab Tanya by the throat and give her seven kinds of shit before kicking her smartly out the door. You didn’t mess with Bianca.
‘She’ll be in soon,’ said Cora loyally.
‘She’d better be.’ Bianca might look like a cool blonde angel, but she wasn’t up for being taken for a mug, not now, not ever. She’d been adopted into a fierce immigrant family, and had absorbed their ways; she wouldn’t take any shit. And it mattered so much to her that this went right. So much.
She was special and she knew it. Bella was always telling her so.
‘We chose you out of all the little girls we could have brought home from the orphanage,’ Bella would say.
Bianca had no memory of the orphanage. All she did remember was a blonde woman, smiling. One of the nuns or matrons or whatever they were called, no doubt. And Tito, cuddling her in the family kitchen, saying she was his little sister, his precious one – with Vittore looking on, uninterested, and Fabio looking furious. Oh – and a bead of blood, dripping from a blade of grass. Weird. She must have fallen over when she was small, cut herself perhaps. Something like that.
‘Speak of the devil!’ said Claire, as Tanya came in the door, looking washed out.
‘Sorry,’ she said quickly. ‘Sorry I’m late.’
‘What the fuck time d’you call this?’ asked Bianca.
Tanya looked truculently up at the clock on the wall, brand new and still without its batteries, both hands stuck at the vertical.
‘Twelve,’ she said.
There was a brief, freezing silence.
‘Don’t even think about being bloody funny,’ said Bianca. ‘Carpet fitters are coming in today, and they’re late too, so get on the sodding phone and hurry them up, capisce? And you keep an eye on them when they get here, I don’t want to see any joins in awkward places, I want this to look the business.’
‘And what will you be doing?’ asked Tanya. It wasn’t her job to balls around looking at carpets. She was supposed to be in charge of the waiting staff, wasn’t she?
Bianca looked at her. ‘You got a hangover?’
‘A bit.’
‘Then I’ll make allowances. Not that it’s anything to do with you, but I’ll be interviewing doormen, if that’s all right with you, Tanya?’
Tanya shrugged. Sure.
‘OK, get on with it then, the lot of you. I’ll be up in the office.’
Bianca went upstairs. Cora and Claire looked at Tanya.
‘What?’ she asked.
‘You don’t half push your luck,’ said Claire. ‘She ain’t in the mood for fun and games.’
‘She never flaming is,’ said Cora.
‘She’s on edge with all the decorating and stuff going on. She wants the place to look right. Tito’s trusted her with it, and she wants to impress him.’ They all knew how Bianca worshipped her eldest brother, Tito. Claire took a long pull at her cigarette, then stubbed it out in a black ashtray on the bar. ‘Let’s get on then, sha
ll we . . . ?’
Half an hour later, the carpet fitters arrived. And half an hour after that, Vittore Danieri showed up.
‘Bianca here?’ he asked the three women, who were pausing by the bar for a fag and a coffee.
Vittore had an authoritative way about him, like Bianca; he was big, blockish like Tito, robust and tough-looking and ugly with a hooked nose, receding black hair and bulging dark brown eyes. There was a stillness, a hardness about him – and he looked somehow polished like Tito too, in the way that rich guys did.
‘Why hasn’t he got a neck?’ they’d joked between themselves when they first set eyes on him. Vittore’s head was set low on his shoulders and it poked aggressively forward; he didn’t seem to have a neck, it was true, but then he didn’t seem to have a sense of humour either, so they maintained a show of respect in his presence.
‘Bianca’s upstairs,’ said Tanya, her eyes catching his.
She thought of it as turning on the headlights. She turned them on now, gave him full beam, eyelashes fluttering, You want some of this? She knew he was married, but she didn’t give a toss about that. Of course, she would prefer to have Tito, but Vittore would do. The family was loaded, and all the brothers – even that vain little tit Fabio who’d come down here once trying to chuck his weight about – had an aura of power that appealed to her.
‘Right,’ said Vittore, and passed by all three of them without a second glance.
‘Shit,’ said Tanya, shaking her head. ‘Am I losing it, or what?’
‘Girl, you never had it to lose,’ laughed Cora.
‘Yeah, funny,’ said Tanya, and Claire gave a smirk.
‘Come on,’ sighed Claire. ‘Work to do . . .’
Bianca wasn’t particularly surprised to see Vittore show up unannounced. She was thrilled that Tito had entrusted her with the start-up of Dante’s, after she had spent several years learning the business up in London; but she was under no illusions. He was expecting her to fail, to need bailing out at any moment.
She was used to this. With three older brothers, she was always the one standing on the sidelines, the one nobody consulted or enquired after, because she was a girl and in their eyes that made her something less than a man, someone less likely to get things properly done. She had kicked against it for most of her life, but it was there, always staring her in the face: the testosterone wall.
