Dirty Game

by Jessie Keane

  ‘How bad is it?’ asked Dolly, getting straight down to brass tacks.

  Annie sipped her tea and sighed. ‘Pretty bad,’ she admitted. ‘The brief reckons I could be looking at a two-year stretch. I was caught red-handed running a disorderly house. No argument. He reckons it’s best to plead guilty, get the two years, then appeal.’

  ‘What if you threatened to drop a couple of names to the Bill?’ suggested Aretha. ‘You know, girl, all those lords and stuff. They wouldn’t want to be put in the frame, now would they? They got clout, those people. They got reputations to protect. Couldn’t they get you offa this?’

  ‘I couldn’t do that,’ said Annie. ‘Look, I ran the place. I accept responsibility.’

  Dolly nodded. ‘Aretha, Darren, Ellie and me were lucky to get out of the nick in one bit. The pigs didn’t have nothing on us, we were just there for your birthday party after all. But it was touch and go for a minute there as to whether they’d swallow it or not. Look, Annie, what about Redmond?’

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘Well, wouldn’t he pull some strings?’

  ‘I won’t ask him,’ said Annie. ‘You know how it is, Doll. They take care of you but you never implicate them.’

  ‘And is he going to do that? Take care of you … when you’re …?’ Dolly couldn’t say it.

  When you’re inside, added Annie to herself with a shiver.

  Christ, going to prison. She knew it was going to happen. She knew she’d done the crime and she would have to do the time. But the thought of it was putting the fear of God up her. Her bowels felt liquid. She felt sick as a dog.

  ‘Well, we’ve got to hope so, haven’t we,’ said Annie, dunking another biscuit. She had to eat, at least, had to keep body and soul together.

  ‘You’re being very brave about it,’ said Darren. ‘I’d be in bits.’

  But Annie had always toughed it out. It was in her nature to stand alone and stick two fingers up to the world. Suddenly she felt tired. She’d been nicked on her twenty-second birthday. Two years had gone by since she’d first done the dirty on her sister by sleeping with Max Carter. Two long, fucking years.

  And what did she have to show for it? A dodgy ex-lover, a family who didn’t want to know her, and a pending prison sentence. Nothing to be proud of, now was it?

  And the papers were lapping it all up. The Mayfair Madam was fast becoming a national figure to be poked fun at by the populace. Neighbours at the Upper Brook Street apartment had tattled to reporters and the story had been seized upon with delight. Echoes of Profumo, yelled the dailies. Pillars of the community caught with their trousers down. Red-faced peers and clerics and high-flying businessmen cavorting with classy West End prostitutes. The scandal!

  A picture of Annie walking along a London street wearing a fur coat and sunglasses had been found from somewhere and splashed on to front pages. ‘Jackie Kennedy lookalike Annie Bailey’, they called her. Beautiful, high-class prostitute, Annie Bailey.

  But I’m not a fucking brass, thought Annie in dismay. I never have been.

  There’d been photos of Mira, too. Impossibly glamorous Mira, striding along with her blonde locks glowing in the sun. She looked expensive, pampered. There were stories about Cliveden, William had been named and he had lost his parliamentary seat as a consequence, although his wife was standing by him. Either that, or Lady Fenella would lose the country estate and the title, thought Annie sourly, and she wouldn’t relish that at all. Fuck it, thought Annie. What a mess it all was. But at least they didn’t know that she was here in Limehouse.

  ‘What will you do, Annie love?’ asked Dolly.

  ‘Sit tight and wait for the case to come up,’ shrugged Annie. ‘What the hell else can I do?’

  ‘Your sister been in touch yet?’

  ‘You’re having a laugh.’

  ‘Well, your room’s free.’

  ‘Thanks, Doll.’

  Not a nice prospect – sleeping in the room where they’d done for Pat Delaney. But better than nothing. Better than finding a hotel, running from the press, all that shit.

  Dolly gave a sudden snort of laughter. ‘Fucking hell,’ she burst out. ‘That copper’s face when he looked in the bedrooms! It was bloody priceless.’

  ‘Gave him a fucking inferiority complex, I bet,’ said Aretha.

  ‘Get the brandy out, Ellie love,’ ordered Dolly, wiping her eyes. ‘Let’s top this tea up with something a bit more lively.’

  Trust Dolly to laugh in the face of adversity. Annie loved her for it. She almost raised a smile.

  57

  It was the same old routine, Kieron noticed. Orla went into the church, her flame-red hair covered with a black veil, and lit a penny candle for the soul of Tory Delaney. Never went near the confessional, he noted. Straight out to the grave and then placing the usual twelve blood-red roses into the urn. She was like a robot, his sister Orla. Precise, ordered, void of emotion. Cool as fucking ice. Petey was standing by the car at the gate, watching the surroundings. Watching not the subject but those who might wish to do her harm.

  Too fucking late, of course.

  Kieron looked at the headstone.

  Tory Michael Delaney

  Beloved Son, Beloved Brother

  Rest in Peace

  ‘I’m thinking of going away,’ said Kieron.

  ‘Oh?’ She looked up. ‘Where?’

  ‘I was thinking of Spain. The light’s good there.’

  She nodded and went back to her task.

  She wouldn’t miss him, he thought. Try taking Redmond from her side and there would be a riot. But him, her baby brother? Dispensable. Out of sight, out of mind.

  ‘It didn’t work out with Annie Bailey, did it?’ she said.

  Kieron snorted. ‘No. I wish it had, but there you go. She has troubles enough now, anyway.’

  ‘So I hear.’ Orla looked up, her green eyes locking with his. ‘That unfortunate business with the police.’

  ‘Well, you play with fire, you get burnt. I told her she shouldn’t have been in that line of work. But would she listen? She would not.’

  ‘Redmond tells me the court case is due next month.’

  ‘Redmond knows everything.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Orla. ‘He does. I thought you were a friend of hers though, Kieron. She needs all the friends she can get right now.’

  ‘She’s made it plain she doesn’t want me,’ said Kieron moodily. ‘That fucking Carter’s got such a hold on her.’

  ‘Maybe she’ll change her mind.’

  ‘You think?’

  ‘She’s coming to us for dinner on Saturday. The least we can do, I think. It’ll be a quiet evening, just us three. Perhaps you’d like to join us?’

  Kieron kicked at a tussock of unmown grass. Annie kept rejecting him, pushing him away from her, even though he knew she wanted him really. She’d be his, if only Max Carter wasn’t in the bloody way.

  ‘Ah, I don’t know. I might even be gone by then. Orla, the woman’s going down.’

  ‘Well.’ Orla turned back to the flowers. ‘The offer’s there. And it’s true she’ll probably do time, but there’s hope of an appeal.’

  ‘I’m surprised you’re having her in the place,’ said Kieron. ‘You don’t want any mud sticking to the pair of you.’

  ‘She’s a friend we know through you, that’s the story,’ said Orla smoothly.

  ‘Ah, sure. That’s the story.’

  ‘Yes. It is.’

  Orla turned back to the flowers and started in with the murmuring under the breath again. Kieron drew a bit closer.

  ‘Bastard, you bastard, you’re dead and I’m alive …’

  Kieron drew a breath. ‘Orla,’ he said.

  She stopped. She put the last flower in place and stood up and faced him. ‘Yes, Kieron?’

  ‘You hated him, didn’t you?’ said Kieron.

  ‘Who, Tory?’ Her eyes were shuttered now. ‘He was our brother.’

  ‘He was a bastard, the worst kin
d.’

  Orla lifted her chin. ‘He was the head of the family,’ she said.

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘And to be accorded respect.’

  Kieron stared at her. ‘Orla. Tory and Pat were bastards together. They were bad to the core.’

  ‘Were? You’re talking as if Pat’s dead, too.’

  ‘Don’t you think he is?’

  Orla paused for a beat. ‘I know he is.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Redmond and I believe he died at the Limehouse parlour. Annie Bailey complained of him before to Redmond, said Pat was taking drugs and getting out of hand. Not that it was a surprise. We knew, anyway. And he was there the day he vanished, then he was gone during the doorman’s break and there was word of the Carter mob coming in and doing a clean-up that night. They carried something out of there. Annie Bailey had hurt her leg somehow, and Dolly Farrell had a tooth missing. The story was there’d been a catfight over territory, but it stank to high heaven. They were all jumpy with us after that. Guilty as hell. Oh, Pat’s dead all right.’

  ‘You don’t sound very sorry,’ said Kieron.

  ‘Why would I be?’ Orla’s smile was chilling. ‘As you say – he was a bastard.’

  Kieron looked at her. ‘So … you’re glad Pat’s dead.’

  ‘Honestly? He’s no great loss.’

  ‘And so I guess you’re glad Tory’s dead too,’ said Kieron.

  Orla stared at him. ‘He was my brother.’

  ‘You can’t bring yourself to say it.’

  ‘The head of the family.’

  ‘Orla.’ Kieron grabbed her shoulders and stared into her face. ‘We all know what Tory was. He was vicious and he was a thug and he hurt you and Redmond.’

  ‘Kieron, stop it,’ said Orla.

  ‘No, it’s got to be said,’ said Kieron passionately. ‘I remember it all, just as if it were yesterday. Tory was seventeen, I was eight, Pat seven. You and Red were just ten years old. I heard it all happening. I’ll never forget it. I heard Tory in your room, and I saw … once I crept out and I saw what he was doing to the pair of you and I felt sick and I ran off, I was afraid that he would do it to me too if I made a sound. I saw Pat in there too, laughing and watching. Seven years old and he was already a sick little bastard, I saw him.’

  Orla started to tremble. ‘Please, stop this,’ she said in a small voice.

  ‘It’s all right, it’s all right,’ said Kieron soothingly, rubbing her shoulders now, his hands gentle. ‘They’re gone, they’re both gone, thank God. Never to return. I wanted you to know, that’s all. I wanted you to know that I did it for you, for you and Redmond. I set you free of him, once and for all.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ asked Orla.

  ‘I think you know,’ said Kieron.

  ‘No. I don’t. Tell me what you mean.’

  ‘I didn’t come back from Africa just before the funeral. I was here, in England, a month before Tory was killed. When Redmond phoned long-distance to say that Tory had been shot, a friend took the message and phoned me. I was painting in Hayle. Huge beaches, vast skies. The light’s good there, too. Vivid.’

  ‘Kieron.’ Orla nearly screamed it.

  ‘It was easy to do. I was in the country nearly a month before. It had been eating away at me for years, what he did to you and Redmond when you were just children. And I thought, why not? No one even knows I’m about the place. Everyone has guns out in South Africa, you know. It’s a dangerous country. I had a gun, I had bullets. I brought it back with me and I painted and I thought about what had been done and that it had never been avenged.’

  ‘Go on.’ Orla’s face was bloodless. She looked like she might faint.

  ‘I came up here and I watched. I was careful that no one knew I was about – not even you. I watched Tory’s movements. I knew he went out to the Tudor Club at Stoke Newington every Friday night. So I went there too, and I waited outside … and then I shot him. No one ever suspected. Everyone thought Max Carter had done it.’

  Orla stared at him. Kieron was half-smiling, knowing she would be pleased.

  Then she slapped his face so hard that he reeled backwards. Then she fell on him like a fury, grabbed his hair, yanked back his head and yelled into his face: ‘What the hell have you done, you bloody fool?’

  Kieron blinked in shock. She was supposed to be pleased. He was sure she would be pleased. ‘But you hated him. You had good reason to hate him.’

  ‘Yes! I hated him!’

  ‘Well then.’

  ‘Well then nothing, you fucking little idiot. Yes, I hated him and I hate him still. I come here and light candles and lay flowers for Mum, not for me. And I curse his rotten soul every time I come here. I hope he’s frying in hell. I detest the memory of him. If I was unattended here, you know what I’d do?’

  ‘No. I don’t.’ Kieron’s voice shook. His face burned where she had struck him. He was amazed at the change in her. This wasn’t the Orla he knew.

  ‘I’d dance, Kieron. Right on this fucking grave. I’d dance on top of him.’

  ‘Well …’ Kieron felt afraid. He had never seen her in such a tear.

  ‘But Dad doted on him. Tory was his firstborn, his favourite. Do you have any idea what it did to him, losing Tory? It drove him mad, Kieron. It drove him mad with grief! Our dad’s an empty shell, he’s nothing now. An old man with a wandering mind. And you stand there smiling like someone waiting to get a prize? Shame on you!’

  ‘But you hated him …’ repeated Kieron blankly. He couldn’t understand her reaction, he couldn’t take any of this in. She was supposed to be pleased.

  ‘Of course I did.’ Orla was hissing into his face, spittle flying with every word she uttered. ‘What do you think I am, a fool? I know what he did to us. I know he ruined us both. I can’t look at men. I can’t contemplate marriage, or sex, or babies. It gives me the heaves every time it crosses my mind. Because of what my own brother did to me. How do you think that feels, Kieron?’

  ‘And that’s why I did it,’ said Kieron desperately. ‘Because I knew, and because I couldn’t let him get away with it.’

  Orla took a quivering breath and regained a measure of calm. She stared at him as if at a stranger.

  ‘You killed him,’ she said.

  She’d thought of just about everyone, but never Kieron. She had suspected the Mafia – the Americans, particularly the Barolli family, were strong in the West End and Tory had been openly resentful about their presence here and about their business links with the Carters. And the Carters. Of course the Carters. Hot-headed Jonjo or cool, controlled Max. Either one. Someone had set out to kill Queenie Carter, and that had been a step too far. No one would have blamed them for wreaking revenge.

  ‘I did it for you,’ said Kieron urgently. ‘For you and Redmond. You must have wanted to do it yourselves. You must have.’

  ‘Of course we did,’ spat Orla.

  Every day of her life she remembered it, every night she dreamed of it; a flare of faint light from the landing. The bedroom door opening, then closing softly. Someone moving inside the dark room, inside her and Redmond’s room. Someone was coming to her bed.

  Even now she felt the familiar hopeless terror, the awful tightness in her chest. Someone was sitting down on the edge of her bed, but she mustn’t scream or tell, she mustn’t cry out because she would never be believed, Tory had always told them that. Her tears were silent, like her fear. And then the covers moved, and the nightmare became unspeakable.

  ‘Of course we wanted to kill him,’ she said, dragging in a breath to steady herself. ‘But we never would. He meant too much to Dad. When Dad was gone, then we would have made our move. Not before.’

  ‘He was a bastard and he deserved what he got,’ insisted Kieron, determined to justify himself. ‘He was cruel and sadistic. Messing with his own brother and sister. And he called me a pansy because I painted. Both Tory and Pat despised me because I was an artist, not a proper part of the firm like they were. Well I showe
d him. I’m not a fucking pansy, I’m not as soft as you all think I am.’

  Orla was still giving him that odd look, as if she had never seen him before. ‘You didn’t have any part in the killing of Pat too, did you?’ she asked.

  ‘No. But you know what?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I wish I had.’

  Orla stared at him. Her sensitive, artistic little brother. The misfit in a family of gangsters. Maybe not so much a misfit after all. The thought troubled her. Blood ran deep, she thought. Deeper than she had ever thought possible.

  ‘You did it for us,’ she said at last. ‘You meant to do good.’

  ‘Of course I did,’ said Kieron.

  He’s like a puppy, she thought. Bringing you your shoe although he’s chewed it beyond redemption. Trying to please. Creating havoc but only for the best of reasons. God help him.

  God help them all.

  58

  Annie went to dinner on Saturday at Redmond’s and Orla’s house and got a nasty shock when she found Kieron there too. There was a brooding atmosphere between the brothers and sister. There’d definitely been a family row. Annie was a connoisseur of family rows.

  ‘What did you think of the cheese soufflé?’ asked Orla, making polite conversation while Kieron and Redmond looked daggers at each other.

  ‘It was great,’ said Annie, although with the court case looming she was a bit off her food. With Kieron making cow-eyes at her from across the table, she felt even less inclined to eat.

  ‘And the lamb?’

  ‘Superb.’

  There was a silent middle-aged woman serving them, and Annie guessed she was probably their housekeeper and had been elected chef for the night. Now she was bringing in small pots of chocolate mousse. Redmond waited until the woman had left the room before he said, ‘You’re looking thin, Miss Bailey.’

  ‘Am I?’ Annie was startled. Redmond didn’t usually get personal.

  ‘Yes, I thought that,’ chipped in Kieron. ‘You are looking thin, Annie.’

  For fuck’s sake. Talk about Little Sir Echo. Annie felt a pang of utter loathing. She had tried so hard to get shot of Kieron, yet here they were again, him taking an interest in the state of her, her wishing he’d back off.