Lawless

by Jessie Keane

  ‘So you told him about Michael,’ said Ruby.

  Vi nodded, swallowed. Wiped her eyes again.

  ‘I was distraught. Hurt. Furious. I told Anthony how Michael had pushed me away. And he so hates to see me upset.’ She looked up at Ruby. ‘He didn’t do it himself.’

  ‘So who did it?’ Ruby’s heart was pounding so hard it frightened her.

  ‘Oh, Rubes . . .’ groaned Vi.

  Ruby grabbed a hank of that shiny red hair and pulled Vi’s head back. She brought her face down very close to this woman who had been her friend.

  ‘Who did it?’ she spat.

  ‘I don’t know. Anthony doesn’t, either.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s true,’ said Vi, grimacing with pain. ‘One of the casual workers who used to be on the estate was told to meet someone in a pub in London, pay them to do it. Someone unknown. And that’s how it happened. So I don’t know who did it. There’s no way of knowing. But Anthony told me it had been “taken care of”. I knew what that meant. I was half pleased about it – isn’t that awful? Michael had hurt me so much. And I was horrified too. Horrified at what I’d done to you. And so, so sad. When I knew he was dead, I . . . well, all I could do was support you. Or try to.’

  Ruby let go of Vi’s hair as the words sank in. They would never know who did it. But an over-indulgent semi-senile old man had as good as pulled the trigger. And Vi had been with her at Michael’s funeral, playing the good, caring friend. When all along she had been totally responsible for this disaster.

  ‘You complete and utter cow,’ said Ruby, and hit Vi very hard across the face.

  Vi didn’t even cry out. Her head snapped sideways. Ruby, starting to sob, hit her again. And again. Then she stumbled back and sat down hard, unable to stand any longer. At last, at long last, she knew what had happened to the man she’d loved. But this was no tidy solution. A stranger had been paid to carry out Lord Albermarle’s wishes. That was all she knew. All she would ever know.

  Ruby stared at Vi; her cheeks were reddened from the blows Ruby had inflicted on her. Her eyes were puffy with tears. She looked what she was: a sad middle-aged woman trying to cling to her youth. And in doing so, she’d wreaked devastation.

  Ruby staggered to her feet, picked up the record sleeve, put it back in her bag.

  ‘I’d like to phone for a taxi,’ she said as steadily as she could.

  ‘Yes,’ said Vi, sniffing, trying to compose herself. ‘Rubes, I’m so—’

  ‘Save it,’ snapped Ruby. She went over to the phone and made the call to the taxi company who had brought her out here. Then she sat down and in silence she waited for the cab to arrive.

  ‘Rubes . . .’ said Vi pleadingly after a minute or two.

  ‘Shut up,’ said Ruby, and Vi did.

  Within five minutes, the taxi drew up outside, and Ruby left.

  She knew she would never see Vi again.

  123

  ‘Maybe there’s a way we can trace the son of a bitch who did it,’ said Kit when Ruby got back and explained what Vi had told her.

  They were all – Kit, Rob, Daisy and Ruby – at Ruby’s house in Marlow. It was the day after she’d taken off for Oxford, leaving a note for Daisy.

  ‘You shouldn’t have done that,’ Daisy complained.

  ‘I had to. I couldn’t wait for you all to come back. I needed to see her, face to face, to know what was going on.’

  ‘It must have been horrible for you. And it could have been dangerous,’ said Daisy.

  Ruby thought that Daisy was probably right; it could have been a risk, going there. Thinking of it now, of Vi sitting there trying to justify the chain of events she had set in motion, made Ruby feel nauseous. But she was glad she had confronted her. Now she felt a weight had been lifted. At last she knew what had happened to Michael.

  ‘Daise is right. You shouldn’t have done that, you should have left it to me,’ Kit told her. ‘Anything could have happened to you.’

  ‘But it didn’t,’ said Ruby.

  ‘It’s all been such a nightmare,’ said Daisy. She’d told her mother what happened at the Chigwell house, the horror they’d stumbled across.

  Ruby was still trying to take it all in. Her brother Joe was dead, and Betsy too. And Vi? Well, she might as well be dead – she was dead, to Ruby. Overwhelmed by sadness, her eyes drifted back to Kit. She could see that he was suffering, and her heart went out to him. Bianca had gone, without a word. He’d searched so hard for her, but he couldn’t find her.

  Then she looked at Daisy, and Rob – and she saw how his eyes followed Daisy when she left the room and came back in with Jody, each of the women carrying a baby. Daisy was like the cat with the cream, having her twins home, and every time she looked at Rob she lit up like a Christmas tree.

  ‘What happened,’ she asked Kit, ‘about Reg?’

  Kit was taking his nephew Matthew from Daisy, bouncing him in his arms. Matthew was laughing.

  ‘Dunno. We haven’t caught up with him yet.’ Kit shot a look at Rob.

  No need to let Ruby know they’d found Reg in the flat over the garage at Ruby’s place, dead from an overdose. And no way of knowing what tricks Vittore had pulled – blackmail, money, who knew? – to turn a faithful old soul like Reg against the people who’d been like family to him for so many years. At least he’d had the decency to top himself before either Kit or Rob had to do the job for him.

  ‘Jeez, what you feeding this kid, Daise?’ Kit asked her. ‘He weighs a ton.’

  Kit came over to Ruby and put baby Matthew down into her arms. Ruby rocked the baby soothingly and smiled up at her son. Kit smiled back at her. In this room, right now, were the people she loved best in all the world. The riddle of Michael’s death was solved. Despite her sorrow for all that was lost, she felt at peace. Almost.

  There was still one thing left to sort out.

  124

  ‘You know what shocks me?’ said Thomas Knox to Ruby when he opened the door of his Hampstead house to her next day.

  ‘Hello to you too,’ said Ruby. She was wearing a coat and carrying a bottle of Cristal champagne. It was freezing out here on the doorstep. Summer in England. It was pissing down.

  ‘You know what absolutely floors me?’ he asked, leaning against the door and staring at her.

  ‘No,’ said Ruby. ‘Go on then. What?’

  ‘That you actually believed I could rub out my old mate.’

  ‘I didn’t know you. I still don’t. My toes are cold.’

  ‘You hungry?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘You said I was on my own. That you wouldn’t help me, or Kit,’ said Ruby, feeling a little breathless.

  ‘I know I did.’

  ‘So . . . ?’ Ruby leaned in until she was nose to nose with him.

  ‘I lied,’ said Thomas, and pulled her inside and kissed her.

  An hour later, most of the champagne had been drunk and they were in the heated luxury of the pool, swimming naked.

  ‘Forgiven me yet?’ asked Ruby, floating; this felt like paradise.

  ‘Dunno,’ said Thomas. ‘So you found out who did it in the end,’ he said.

  ‘We found out who was behind it.’

  ‘Kit going to let it rest there?’

  ‘I doubt it. So, am I forgiven?’

  ‘Still dunno.’

  ‘You want me to beg? On my knees?’

  ‘That could be interesting.’

  ‘You’ve got a sadistic streak.’

  ‘You love it.’

  ‘Hm,’ said Ruby, as he pulled her into his arms. ‘I think I might be falling in love with you,’ she murmured against his mouth, gazing into those stony blue eyes.

  ‘You think?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Well, let me persuade you . . .’

  125

  It was Sunday lunch at Rob’s family home. Rob’s dad had already settled in front of the telly with his beer, and Rob’s two married older sister
s were on the sofa, chatting and doing their nails. His two teenage brothers were play-fighting, bouncing around the living room like they were on speed.

  ‘Careful!’ cautioned Dad, peering around them at the screen.

  Of course they didn’t take a blind bit of notice. They romped up and down the hallway, up and down the stairs, making a bloody row.

  Rob assembled them all, asked Dad to turn down the telly, called Mum in from the kitchen. The table was already set.

  ‘What is it? This ruddy dinner won’t cook itself,’ said his mum, red in the face and undoing her apron in a hurry.

  ‘Just a quick word,’ said Rob. He glanced at his watch. ‘I’m off to get her. We’ll be back in under an hour. Now the thing is, no one laughs at her posh voice. All right?’

  ‘We wouldn’t do that,’ said Mum, but the boys were already doing shrug-shouldered impressions of Ted Heath laughing.

  ‘I mean it,’ said Rob, giving them a stern look.

  ‘Hmph,’ said Dad.

  The family Sunday lunch. Always a nightmare. And now he was going to thrust Daisy into this madhouse, the poor cow.

  He drove over and collected her from Ruby’s place. She looked terrific, as always. Gorgeous. They kissed on the doorstep. Ruby was out, visiting a friend, Daisy said, then she’d be having Kit over for dinner this evening.

  Daisy was ecstatic at how well Kit and Ruby were getting on now.

  ‘Yeah, well, it shook him, nearly losing her like that,’ said Rob when Daisy enthused about it. ‘Woke him up, I think. Made him see the light. Made him see what a prize prat he was being.’

  He drove them back to his parents’ house. Took her inside.

  ‘Hello!’ she said, beaming around at them all.

  ‘It’s like a fuckin’ royal visit,’ said one of the boys, and Dad cuffed him.

  ‘Hello, Daisy,’ said Rob’s dad, standing up and holding out a hand. ‘Come on in.’

  And much to Rob’s surprise, it was all right. It really was.

  126

  November 1975

  It was a day much like the one on which Michael Ward had died a year ago. Two thirty in the afternoon and already the sky was a darkening purple-grey bowl over their heads. It was drizzling, and there was a cold wind blowing. Browning leaves were drifting down from the silver birches and the oaks around the perimeter of the graveyard, forming a mushy uneven carpet on the tussocks of grass around the graves.

  Kit had parked the Bentley at the cemetery gates and together he and Ruby had walked slowly over to Michael’s final resting place beneath the yew tree. The headstone was large, black granite inlaid with gold, and elaborately carved; Kit had chosen it, paid for it.

  Here Lies Michael Ward

  Much Loved, Much Missed

  1917–1974

  While Kit looked on, Ruby emptied the dying flowers from the urn, refreshed the water from the tap beside the gate, and arranged the new red roses on the grave. Then she stood up and slipped her arm through Kit’s. He didn’t flinch away, not any more.

  ‘A whole fucking year,’ said Kit with a sigh.

  Ruby squeezed his arm. ‘He meant such a lot to you,’ she said. ‘I know that.’

  Kit looked at her. She almost thought there was a glint of tears in his eyes. He’d lost so much, her poor nameless boy. Michael, Gilda, Bianca . . .

  ‘He was my dad, you know. My true dad. Not that fucker Cornelius.’

  ‘We both loved him.’

  Ruby thought about how much Michael had meant to her. There had been just one betrayal, with Vi, with a woman who pursued him fanatically, put it right there on a plate. Foisted it in his face, the bitch. Maybe she wouldn’t have forgiven him for that if he’d still been alive, but he was dead, the victim of one woman’s mad obsession, so what the hell, what difference did any of it make now?

  ‘Kit?’

  ‘Hm?’ He was staring at the gravestone.

  ‘Have you really forgiven me? Truly? Completely?’

  Kit looked up and his eyes met hers. He heaved a sharp sigh.

  ‘You know what? For the longest time, I couldn’t. I tried. For Michael, I tried. But I couldn’t do it. And then I was shot. And Rob told me about how you sat there beside me all the time, even though you were exhausted, wrung out, you sat there and talked to me, willing me back to life. And I could hear you. It was a fucking frightening place to be, but I could hear your voice and . . . well, it made it bearable somehow.’

  Tears slipped down Ruby’s face as she recalled how awful it had been, fearing he would die. Kit squeezed her arm. ‘Hey, don’t cry. Everything’s fine now. You and me, we’re OK. All right?’

  Ruby nodded, smiling through her tears.

  ‘Perhaps she’ll come back,’ said Ruby, sniffing. ‘Bianca, I mean.’

  She knew that was his dearest wish, but she was torn over it, wanting his happiness but fearful of his choices. Really, she was glad Bianca was gone. The girl had hurt him, nearly killed him.

  Kit stared at his mother’s face. Ruby was being kind, trying to give him a little hope, but he had none, not any more. Ah shit, Bianca! He’d searched for her so hard, he’d nearly gone crazy looking for her. He’d had word out on the street, find her, find her. But no one did. He’d gone to the Danieri house. He didn’t give a fuck if he ran into Fabio there, but as it happened he didn’t. There was no cream Morgan on the drive, no sign of Bianca. The old woman was there, Bella, and she came to the front door when he rang the bell.

  ‘Is Bianca here?’ he asked her flat-out.

  And what had struck him as weird was that Bella didn’t answer. Eyes blank, she turned and shuffled across the hall and into the kitchen, then sat down at the table. Kit followed. Somewhere in the building ‘Nessun Dorma’ was playing on a stereo. The kitchen was dirty, disorderly. Everywhere there was dust and mess. The place felt cold, and there was a faint smell, sour and unpleasant, hanging in the frigid air as he crossed the hall – like something nasty had crawled behind a wall and died.

  ‘Have you seen Vittore?’ she asked him.

  Kit looked at Bella more closely. Shit, she’s off her head, he thought.

  ‘I told them blood would flow. I warned them,’ she said, thin lips trembling. ‘Sometimes I think I see her, you know. In the hall.’

  ‘Who?’ he asked. ‘Bianca? Is she here?’

  ‘No, I mean the slut . . . that slut who took my boy . . .’

  Kit left her sitting there and searched the house, top to bottom.

  No Bianca.

  After that he drove down to Dante’s, but the place was boarded up, the car park empty except for a few desolate fliers swirling along the ground in the fresh sea breeze.

  In the end, he gave up, admitted to himself that this was it; she was gone for good. He had killed Tito, and owned up to it; here was his punishment. He’d lost the love of his life.

  Ruby thought that it was all past. None of it mattered any more. All done – like poor Joe, like Betsy, like her friendship with Vi.

  Time to let it go.

  She had her son back now, truly back, and her daughter, and the twins. There was the question of what would become of Nadine and Billy, Joe and Betsy’s orphaned children. She had already stepped in, conferred with the boarding school they attended so that their schooling went on without interruption. She’d had them with her in Marlow during the summer holidays, and kept in regular contact with them over the autumn term. Now she was determined to see to Christmas for them, to make sure they were cared for.

  And there was Thomas, of course. She had lost a friend but gained a lover. Life could be good again. It would be. She was determined about that. And finally she was ready to voice what she had been thinking about for the past few weeks.

  ‘I’m considering selling the business,’ she said.

  Kit looked at her in surprise. ‘Really?’

  Ruby nodded. ‘I reckon it’s time for a new challenge,’ she said. ‘I’d hoped Daisy might follow me into it, take it over one day, bu
t that was just wishful thinking. I’ve no idea what she’ll do, but it’s certainly not that.’

  ‘Maybe she’ll marry Rob,’ said Kit with a faint smile.

  ‘That would be wonderful. I love Rob.’

  Kit shrugged. ‘It’s a good business. A big business. You sure you’d want to give it all up?’

  ‘I could do something different,’ she said.

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Sail the world. Hike across the Pyrenees. Anything.’

  ‘You hate boats. And hiking?’ He looked down at her elegant court shoes. ‘I don’t think so, Mum.’

  Mum, thought Ruby. The sweetest word in the whole English language. She smiled up at him. Her son, who’d come through for her when she was sure he would not. She loved him so much.

  ‘I’ll see,’ she said, thinking that the world held all sorts of possibilities now that she had her family united once more.

  ‘Let’s get on home,’ said Kit, and together they turned and walked back to the gate as the darkness of the winter’s afternoon gathered around them.

  127

  Life went on.

  Kit carried on running his firm, with Rob at his side, watching his back. Traders, shopkeepers, restaurant owners, paid him to keep them safe from thugs, and he did. His boys collected on loans, broke a leg or two on the late-payers – this was after all a business, not a fucking charity.

  Time went on.

  General Franco died, and so did Graham Hill the famous racing driver, in a light aircraft he was piloting. The Australian Prime Minister was sacked and the Queen opened the North Sea oil pipeline.