by Jessie Keane
He loved Annie Bailey. He always had. He was doing this for her.
55
It was April and Annie was trying to put her cares behind her by throwing a special party. Her birthday fell on a Friday that she had scheduled for one of her regular parties, so she decided that she would make it extra-special for all the gents in attendance. There would be six additional girls, friends of Jen and Mira, to entertain the revellers. There would be birthday cake and champagne, and a reduction on the door. Fifty pounds would get you in for an afternoon of bliss.
She was going for a pink theme. She had pinned up pink balloons and streamers, there were pink tablecloths on the bar section and on the buffet. The cake itself was a masterly confection of pinks and white. There were pink flowers in profusion. Even the bloody champagne was pink. Perhaps she had overdone it?
‘No, it looks gorgeous,’ Mira assured her when they were ready for the off. ‘And so do you. Happy birthday, Annie darling.’
Mira air-kissed either side of Annie’s immaculately made-up face and slipped a small carefully wrapped package into her hand. Annie looked at it in surprise.
‘From Jen and Thelma and me,’ said Mira. ‘We hope you like it.’
‘Oh – well, that’s so nice of you,’ said Annie, touched.
She still couldn’t get used to receiving gifts. Max had been lavish with them, and the Limehouse tarts had surprised her once or twice with very small presents, but she was so used to getting the shitty end of the stick when she was growing up that she wondered if she would ever be blasé about such things. As a child, Annie got the knocks – Ruthie got the presents. Funny how she still half-expected it to be that way.
She unwrapped the long slender package and found a ladies’ gold Rolex watch inside. She looked up at Mira.
‘That’s bloody lovely,’ she said. ‘Thanks, Mira.’ She looked over at Jen and Thelma, seated on the Chesterfield, watching with beaming smiles. ‘Thanks, Jen, Thelma. It’s gorgeous.’
‘It’s engraved,’ said Mira. ‘Have a look.’
Annie took out the beautiful thing and turned over the dial.
From the girls to Annie with love.
‘Some of the old boys call you the Mayfair Madam,’ said Jen. ‘We thought about having that put on it, but “Annie” seemed better.’
‘Help me put it on,’ said Annie, delighted, and Mira did so.
‘Okay girls – let’s get ready now,’ said Annie, moving over to the door where Joshua was ready with pink champagne for the drinkers or pink grapefruit juice for the teetotallers.
The bell rang.
The party was on.
‘Any movement?’ asked the sergeant as he joined his young constable outside in the rainy street. Talk about April showers. What a fucking job! He envied the toffs inside having a bloody good time. A fucking sight better than standing out here with the rain dripping off your arse.
‘Fifteen gents gone in there so far,’ said the constable. ‘Look, there goes another one. Looks busier than normal.’
For weeks they had been keeping Annie’s apartment block under surveillance – ever since that weird bloke had come into the station and told them about what was really going on in there. Sergeant McKellan and his three constables had taken it in shifts to watch and record every arrival and departure. They’d noted what time the mail was delivered, when the rubbish was emptied and when the milkman came. They’d noted – with some surprise – that there were people going into the block who seemed of good standing in the community.
As the weeks went past, a pattern had emerged. There was a major shindig once a month, and individual visits during weekdays. Over seven weeks, he and his men had clocked over a hundred men and a regular selection of between three and ten high-class trollops coming and going.
They’d checked the rubbish over and found an awful lot of empty bottles. Malt whisky, champagne, fine wines, exquisite brandies, had all been consumed on the premises. Annie Bailey was running a well-stocked bar up there.
Selling liquor without a licence, thought Sergeant McKellan, shivering in the chilly downpour. Bloody good liquor too. These people were supposing to be setting a good example, not having a fucking good time at a high-class knocking shop.
Jesus, they’d even seen a Cabinet Minister going in there, but they’d have to keep quiet about that. The sergeant curled his lip in disgust. These people were supposed to be his betters. And they behaved like this.
Monitoring the rubbish had turned up a surprising quantity of used condoms and tissues, too. Sergeant McKellan thought that there was no limit to the depravity of the upper classes. He felt badly let down by them.
As the wet, dismal weeks went by, his grievance against the toffs became more intense. He already had a warrant to search the premises because of the illegal liquor sales, but he wanted more than that. He wanted to stop this operation in its tracks, and that meant waiting and watching out in the cold and the wet. They’d gone inside once or twice and questioned Annie Bailey’s neighbours. There had been music and voices, that was all they’d say. Nothing to complain about, really, although one regal old Dame in the apartment underneath Annie Bailey’s select knocking shop had clutched her Pekinese dog to her scrawny chest and said in plummy tones that she suspected something was ‘going on’ up there. Something nasty.
‘There goes another one,’ said the constable as a distinguished silver-haired gentleman entered the block.
A taxi swerved into the kerb and decanted a blonde woman, a big black woman, a small dark-haired woman, and an obvious queer.
‘Fuck, this is turning into a bloody orgy,’ said Sergeant McKellan.
‘Yeah,’ said the constable wistfully.
The constable sneezed and fished out his handkerchief. Loitering around this corner, they were constantly frozen to the marrow. His trousers were wet six inches up the leg. He felt he’d never again get warm. Inside, there would be drinks, food, lovely women … heaven on fucking earth, he thought. He fumbled out his Vicks inhaler and took a snort up each sore, red nostril. His sergeant watched him.
‘You want to put some Vaseline on that nose, Constable,’ he said.
‘Yes Sarge,’ said the constable gloomily. He nodded across the road. ‘Look. Two more.’
Sure enough, two more gents entered. Looked decent types, too. One was swaggering along, his expression arrogant, looked like a barrister. The other one …
‘Fucking hell,’ said Sergeant McKellan. ‘That bugger’s wearing a dog collar. He’s a man of the sodding cloth!’
What was the world coming to? A regular orgy of depravity, thought Sergeant McKellan with pious disgust. He’d soon sort out this little lot. Oh yes. A Black Maria pulled into the kerb beside them and three more officers piled out from the back of it. Time to get on with it, he thought with relish.
‘Come on, lads,’ he said, and led the way across the road.
Annie opened the door with a smile on her face and found Sergeant McKellan standing there. Her smile dropped. She slammed the door shut.
A heavy hand thumped upon it.
‘Open up! Police!’
Fucking hell, thought Annie.
Behind her, there was a scene of pandemonium as lords and tarts scattered in all directions. Dolly, to her credit, stepped up and said: ‘What the fuck’s going on?’
Annie had gone pale. Joshua dropped his tray of glasses and pink champagne spread in a sticky ooze over the costly Aubusson rug. He legged it over to his bar and started cramming bottles into boxes.
Dolly went to the door. ‘What do you want?’ she shouted.
‘I am an officer of the law,’ said Sergeant McKellan. ‘I have a warrant to enter these premises.’
‘We’re going to have to let them in,’ said Dolly to a stricken Annie, ‘or they’re going to break the bloody door down.’
Annie straightened herself up and nodded. The game was up. She put her bag aside – crammed full of notes from all the punters – and opened the door.
> ‘Thank you, miss,’ said the sergeant, and showed her the warrant. ‘Are you Miss Annie Bailey?’
Annie nodded. She felt pole-axed with the shock of it.
‘Miss Bailey, we have reason to believe that you are selling liquor without a licence on private premises, and that you are running a disorderly house here too.’
‘This is a private party,’ said Dolly in Annie’s defence. ‘It’s Miss Bailey’s birthday.’
‘We’ll see,’ said the sergeant, and the constables elbowed past the two women to get a better look at what was going on.
‘Who are you, sir?’ one asked an elderly gentleman sitting quietly in a club chair talking to Ellie.
‘Mickey Mouse,’ said the old gent staunchly.
The constable got out his notebook and licked his pencil with a sigh. Rain was dripping off the poor soul. Annie almost felt inclined to offer the lad a drink.
‘Mickey Mouse is it, sir?’ the constable looked pained. ‘And your address, sir?’
‘Disneyland, Constable,’ said the old gent. ‘Where else?’
Another of the constables went off into one of the bedrooms and came back out with screams ringing in his ears. He looked shaken.
‘Think you ought to see this, Sarge,’ he said.
Leaving a constable guarding the main door into the apartment, in case anyone thought they might make good their escape that way, Sergeant McKellan went into one of the bedrooms and found on the bed, a middle-aged, naked man, all hairy legs and huge belly, hastily covering up his private parts. A glamorous blonde was zipping herself back into her dress. On the bedside table Sergeant McKellan found packets of the new contraceptive pills, boxes of tissues, bottles of baby oil and tins of Crowe’s Cremine.
‘What’s this?’ he asked, picking up a tin and sniffing it, suspecting illegal substances.
Mira tossed her blonde hair back out of her eyes. ‘It’s make-up remover,’ she said.
Annie stood shattered in the doorway but she gave Mira an approving glance. They all knew that the cream was the best sexual lubricant going.
The police proceeded to the next bedroom and found Jen in her red, cutaway undies, scrabbling off a bed where a man, naked except for his socks, reclined. He had an erection you could have balanced a plate on. It wilted when its owner saw the police looming in the doorway.
‘What the fuck’s the meaning of this?’ he said with all the authority of old money.
‘May I ask you, sir, to stop whatever it is you are doing and get dressed,’ said Sergeant McKellan formally.
‘This is a bloody poor show,’ huffed the man, but he got off the bed and started to dress.
The sergeant had seen enough. He went back into the drawing room and confronted Annie.
‘May I ask if I might see your handbag, miss?’ he asked, indicating the Hermès bag that Annie had dropped on to one of the club chairs.
Annie numbly picked up the bag and handed it to him. She knew she was in deep shit now, and there was nothing to do but go along with it. Sergeant McKellan opened it and found it bulging with money.
He refastened the clasp and said, ‘Annie Bailey, I am arresting you for running a disorderly house and for selling liquor without a licence …’
And that was it. I’m sunk, thought Annie through a fog of terrified gloom. Sunk without a fucking trace. Who the hell did this? Who would hate me enough to do it to me, on my bloody birthday too?
Billy stood in the rain and watched as they started to empty Annie’s party guests out of her flat and into the Black Maria. Lots of them. Then the girls. And finally, Annie herself. Looking beautiful, as always. His lovely Annie. Oh, how he adored her. He was sad he’d had to do this, but she had to learn. It was for her own good. He turned away, feeling sad but justified in his actions. She would be better for it, he thought. In time.
56
At the police station they allowed her just one phone call. Annie thought long and hard about it, and called her cousin Kath. She didn’t even think of calling Redmond Delaney, her business partner. You didn’t involve the gangland boys in police business. As far as the Upper Brook Street business was concerned, she was sole owner and would take sole responsibility when the shit hit the fan. Which it had.
‘Oh, it’s you,’ said Kath, sounding put out. ‘What do you want?’
‘I’m in the shit, Kath,’ said Annie as an impassive female officer looked on in the interview room.
‘What’s that to me?’ asked Kath coldly.
Annie gripped the receiver more tightly. She hadn’t expected a warm greeting from Kath, but this was an even cooler reception than she had anticipated. Kath had chosen sides, and she had chosen Ruthie. Being married to Jimmy Bond, one of Max’s boys, who else would she choose? Mrs Max Carter, or that cheating whore Annie Bailey?
No contest.
Still, Annie had instinctively turned to family. Big mistake. She ought to have known better, really. But she was in a panic. She’d never been nicked before. It was bloody frightening. You’d think, at a time like this, that you could turn to those who should be closest to you.
‘Look, Kath, I know you haven’t got much time for me,’ said Annie.
‘Ha! You can say that again.’
‘But I’m in a jam. I’ve been arrested, and I need a brief. Can you get me one?’
‘Why me?’
Annie lost it. ‘For fuck’s sake, Kath! How long will it take you to call a solicitor and get him to come down here?’
‘There’s no need to take that tone with me,’ said Kath.
‘Sorry.’ Annie clutched at her head. Out of the corner of her eye she could see the female officer smirking. ‘Sorry, Kath. But do this one thing for me, will you?’
Kath reluctantly agreed that she would. As Annie put the phone down she felt that she had never been more alone. She put her head in her hands. They had taken all her belongings from her. Even Mira’s Rolex, her rings, a gold heart-shaped locket on a chain that Max had bought her and which she never took off. All taken. They’d even told her to take off her bra and her stilettos.
‘You’d be amazed the number of girls we get hanging themselves by their bra straps in the cells,’ the female officer had told her cheerfully, standing by while Annie self-consciously removed her bra and shoes and jewellery. ‘And we had one in last week tried to dig through the cell wall with the heel of her shoe. Nutty as a fucking fruit cake, she was.’
Much longer in this place and Annie felt that she would be nutty too. Everyone else who’d been at the party seemed to have gone long before they let her out, but one of the kind souls had at least stumped up for her bail. Thank God, she thought. She didn’t like the idea of being in this hell-hole an instant longer than necessary.
She gave her statement and Kath – God bless her – sent the brief down. He looked about ten years old, but he seemed to know his stuff. He left, and then she was locked up.
‘Don’t worry,’ her brief had said. ‘Bail will be posted, you’ll soon be out.’
But it was many hours later when the cell door opened and she was told she could go home.
‘Someone likes you,’ said the female officer, not unkindly. ‘Bail’s in place. You can go. Don’t leave the bloody country though, and you’ll be required to check in to your local police station once a week until your case comes to court.’
‘All right,’ said Annie. Her head ached. She felt shattered and sick at heart. Some birthday.
But somehow, she felt she deserved this. She had done wrong, and she was going to be punished. Annie knew that she had done more wrong than could ever be put right. She had sat in that barren cell and thought about her mother, who had never loved her. Annie had given her a lot of trouble over the years. Hitting back in the only way she could, being a brat to punish Connie for her lack of affection.
And Ruthie. Ruthie, the favoured one. She’d punished Ruthie for that, too. Punished her by ruining her marriage, ruining her life. The poor cow.
And now Annie
knew that she had been caught out, and that she would be punished. Which was good. Then maybe … maybe she could start to wipe the slate clean.
It was all over now, her and Max Carter.
She knew it was all over with Ruthie too. All those pitiful attempts at reconciliation. Who was she kidding? Would she have forgiven Ruthie, had the boot been on the other foot? Not in a million years. And Ruthie was not going to forgive her, not ever. She had lost her sister. It was done. Time to move on.
She walked out of the police station with her little bag of jewellery in her hand. She walked smack into Kieron Delaney.
‘How did you know I was here?’ Annie asked him coldly. She was looking up and down the busy road for a cab. She didn’t want to talk to anyone right now, and especially not to him.
‘Redmond told me,’ said Kieron. ‘Are you all right?’
‘I’m fine.’ Bloody taxis, never one around when you wanted one. She was wearing a thin shift dress and it was fucking freezing out here.
‘Come back to the flat with me,’ said Kieron.
‘No.’
Didn’t I already tell him several times to fuck off? wondered Annie.
‘Oh come on. Where the hell else are you going to go?’
‘That’s my business,’ said Annie sharply. At last she spotted a cab approaching.
She hailed the cab and got in without another word to Kieron.
She wondered where to go. The Upper Brook Street apartment was off-limits. It was probably still crawling with police, probably cordoned off as a crime scene.
There was only one place in the world that would forever be home.
* * *
It was just like old times, thought Annie. Darren and Aretha and Ellie and Dolly and her, all around the kitchen table in the Limehouse parlour, drinking tea and keeping Ellie from eating too many biscuits. Chris out there in the hall, in his seat by the door.
