Strong Women

by Roberta Kray

  ‘And the cops?’ Gabe said. ‘How much thanking will they be doing?’

  ‘Oh, I’ll have the perfect story ready for when they arrive. And I’m sure they’ll see it from my point of view. I mean, it’s going to be your prints, not mine, all over this gun. You were the only one left alive when I got here. It was a shock what I saw, too much to bear. And yeah, I went for you, I won’t be denying it. We fought, we struggled, the shooter went off and …’

  ‘Very good,’ Gabe said. ‘But what about the ransom? How are you going to account for why that is still missing? There has to be someone else involved in this, someone who was picking up the cash whilst I was taking care of Silver.’

  Jo knew that he was playing for time. There wasn’t anything else to do. And psychos like Marty Gull always needed to show off, always needed to prove how smart they were. But he wouldn’t play along for much longer. She thought about the phone sitting in the bedroom and wondered if Silver would have the wits to pick it up and dial 999.

  ‘Gone,’ Marty said. ‘Done a runner.’

  ‘And when they find Susan?’

  Jo heard the desperate note of hope in his voice. He was still praying, against all the odds, that she was still alive.

  ‘What, that useless tart?’ Marty snorted. ‘There’s no reason why they should connect her body to any of this.’

  ‘You fucking bastard!’ Gabe lurched forward, his eyes blazing.

  Marty pushed the gun hard against Jo’s head. ‘Don’t even think about it.’

  As Gabe fell back down, she gulped in a breath. Wasn’t it your entire life that was supposed to flash by just before you died? In her case it was only the last eight days, every vivid awful second from the moment she had stepped inside the Lumière, through every painful discovery about Peter and the Strongs, to these final few terrifying moments. ‘Any last requests?’ Marty said. Then he leaned down into her neck and murmured, ‘Bye bye, sweetie.’

  Jo squeezed shut her eyes and prayed.

  A loud bang echoed around the room.

  It was a second before her eyes flew open again. Had she been shot? She must have been. He couldn’t have missed from that range. Tears were flowing from her eyes but she couldn’t feel anything. Maybe her body had gone into the kind of shock where the pain had been cut off. But then she was suddenly aware of Marty falling to his knees beside her. The gun slid out from his hands. Cursing, he clutched at his left thigh. Between his fingers flowered a widening stain of red.

  Stunned, Jo looked around.

  Leo was sitting on the very edge of the sofa. In his hand was a small revolver. Where had that come from? As if he was thinking exactly the same thing, his gaze dropped to the gun and his mouth fell open.

  At the sound of the shot, Silver had come flying out of the bedroom. She had stopped dead, her face as confused as Jo’s.

  ‘The gun!’ Gabe yelled, struggling to his feet.

  Jo came to her senses, bent down and picked up Marty’s revolver. She jumped out of the chair and sprinted across the room. Even though he was no longer armed, even though he was curled over on the floor, she wanted to put as much space between them as she possibly could. Her heart was still pumping as she grabbed hold of Gabe and leaned in against his shoulder. Her legs were shaking so much she could barely stand. Her chest was heaving, her breath escaping in short fast pants of relief. It was over! She could hardly believe it. They were safe!

  As Jo was still recovering, Silver walked across the room, smiled and gently took the gun from Leo’s shaking hand. ‘It’s all right,’ she murmured. But then she did something that couldn’t have been anticipated. Turning quickly, she pointed the gun straight at Jo’s head. ‘Drop it!’ she demanded.

  ‘What the fuck are you doing?’ Gabe said.

  ‘Get back on the sofa,’ Silver yelped, ‘unless you want me to blow her bloody brains out!’ Both her hands were wrapped around the little gun, her index finger on the trigger. She waited until Gabe had sat down and said again: ‘Drop it!’

  Jo, with her brains barely recovered from her last close encounter, carefully laid the revolver down on the coffee table. Was this really happening? It couldn’t be. It just couldn’t. This was insane, crazy, like one of those dreadful nightmares you couldn’t wake up from. What was wrong with the damn girl?

  Silver quickly snatched up the gun and retreated. ‘You okay, Marty?’ Her eyes grew wide and fearful as she saw the blood. ‘Oh God, you’re hurt. It’s bleeding.’

  ‘Just give it to me,’ he snapped impatiently, reaching out. ‘And get a towel to put round this.’

  She passed over the revolver, laid Leo’s gun by his feet and rushed into the bathroom.

  Marty, keeping the weapon aimed at Jo, hauled himself clumsily into the chair and winced a little. He glanced at Leo and his voice was filled with menace. ‘You really shouldn’t have done that.’

  Leo shrank silently back against the cushions.

  ‘And keep your fuckin’ hands where I can see them!’

  Jo saw with regret that the bullet had merely winged him. The wound, although bloody, was only superficial.

  ‘And you,’ Marty said, turning his attention back to her. ‘Sit down in the middle.’

  Jo did as she was told, squeezing in between Gabe and Leo. She gulped down her fear. She could feel the clamminess of her hands, the dread leaking down her spine. There they were, three in a row, perfect targets for whenever he was ready.

  Silver, returning with the towel, went down on her knees. ‘Does it hurt, does it hurt much?’ She wrapped the towel carefully around his leg. ‘Is that okay?’

  ‘Good girl.’

  She smiled up at him triumphantly. ‘I was good, wasn’t I, Marty? No one ever suspected.’

  ‘Yeah, you were great, babe. The best.’

  ‘They never had a clue. No one did. We fooled them all.’

  ‘Are you mad?’ Gabe said. ‘Don’t you realise what he is?’

  Still crouched on the floor, she turned and glared at him. ‘Marty loves me. This is the only way we can be together.’

  ‘For fuck’s sake,’ Gabe said. ‘If he loves you so much, how come he got some low-life to drug you. How come he kept you chained up like a dog?’

  But she had an answer for that too. ‘We planned it together. I wanted to do it. It had to look right. Susan had to think it was for real; we needed her to pick up the ransom.’

  Gabe shook his head. ‘You’ve got this all wrong. Whatever he may have told you, he was never intending for you to leave that cellar. Susan realised that. It’s why she brought you here.’

  Marty started laughing, a vile mocking sound that made Jo’s blood run cold. ‘You think she’s stupid?’ He put his hand on Silver’s shoulder and lightly squeezed. ‘He thinks you’re stupid, babe. The only reason Susan brought you here was because she wanted to grab all the cash for herself. She tried to cheat us but she just weren’t smart enough.’

  ‘Is that why you killed her?’ Gabe said.

  ‘Shut up!’ Silver hissed. ‘Marty ain’t killed no one. He couldn’t.’

  ‘Why would I?’ Marty said quickly. ‘Once she knew she’d been sussed, she couldn’t wait to get on that plane.’

  ‘You see?’ Silver said. There was something wild and blazing in her eyes: madness, obsession, need? Perhaps a combination of all three. ‘It doesn’t matter what anyone says. We’re in love, ain’t we, Marty?’

  ‘Yeah, babe. It’s just you and me from now on.’

  She gazed at him longingly. ‘And we’re going to be together for always. You’ll take care of me, Marty, won’t you? You’ll look out for me, like you always have. You won’t ever leave.’

  Jo felt sick just listening to her. The kid was clearly besotted. She was also blind – in the way damaged teenagers often were – to her twisted lover’s true nature.

  Marty tightened his grip on Silver’s shoulder. ‘What have I always said? No one’s ever gonna treat you bad when I’m around. You know that. You’re my
girl now and no one messes with my girl.’

  Silver’s head jerked up and down in a rapid series of nods. ‘And I’m never going home again.’

  ‘You and me, hun, we’re for life. No one’s ever gonna separate us.’

  ‘You see?’ Silver said, glancing over at Gabe.

  ‘So what about your other boyfriend?’ Gabe said. ‘What about poor dead Ritchie Naylor?’

  ‘Ritchie ain’t dead either,’ she snorted, ‘and he never was my boyfriend. He was doing a job, that’s all … you know, pretending, so that everyone would think we’d run away together. You think I could ever be interested in that pathetic junkie?’

  Gabe, determined to make some kind of connection, tried again. ‘I thought we were mates, Silver. I thought you trusted me. We used to talk, remember? When we were in Blackpool—’

  ‘You never really cared,’ she said petulantly. ‘You only came to find me because Daddy paid you to. And that was all part of the plan. We knew he’d send someone eventually and when he did …’

  ‘They’d be the perfect scapegoat.’

  As if she was still capable of finer feelings, a light flush rose to her cheeks. ‘I never wanted you to get hurt or nothin’.’

  ‘Bit late for that.’

  Jo knew that it was getting a bit late for everything. The end of the line was rapidly approaching. As soon as Marty Gull had sufficiently recovered, he’d be finishing what he’d begun. Her heart was thumping in her chest. It was time to start praying again.

  Silver got to her feet. Twisting a strand of long fair hair between her fingers, she moved restlessly from one foot to another. ‘Can we go now, Marty?’ she whined. ‘Can you walk? I don’t like it here. I’m tired. I want to go.’

  ‘Sure, baby,’ he said. ‘Whatever you want.’

  What happened next would be engraved on Jo’s memory for ever. It would slide into her head at any time of day and she would dream about it in her sleep. The Kaiser Chiefs were pounding out from the radio – loud enough to cover the sound of any footsteps – when two guys suddenly marched into the room. Jo wondered if she was hallucinating. She knew them, not their faces perhaps but … She had a flashback to standing on the Euston Road trying to choose between the menace of their approaching figures and a frantic-looking Gabe beckoning to her from a black cab.

  It seemed like no one else had noticed until Silver released a gasp.

  As Marty spun round in the chair, he found himself staring down the barrel of a sawn-off shotgun. There was that second where he had the choice, where his hand made the tiniest of movements, but then he weighed up the odds and slowly released the gun he was holding.

  The third man who came in was big too but in a far more rounded kind of way. He was older with a grey, jowly face. A massive stomach drooped over the low belt of his trousers.

  ‘Daddy,’ Silver whispered.

  As he stared at his daughter, Jo saw the conflicting waves of emotion pass across his eyes: relief and anger, love and hate.

  ‘Jesus, Vic!’ Marty said. ‘There’s no need for the shooter. I was just about to call. Look, I found her, I—’

  ‘Don’t,’ Delaney snarled softly. ‘Don’t make it even worse.’

  Silver ran forward and grabbed hold of his arm. ‘No, you’ve got it all wrong. Marty saved me! He wasn’t … he didn’t … They were going to kill me. They kept me locked up and—’

  Delaney looked down at her. It was a fearsome look, a terrible mixture of sadness and contempt. A tiny breath slipped from her lips and she instantly let go.

  ‘Someone turn that fuckin’ racket off!’ he said.

  The guy who wasn’t holding the sawn-off crossed the room and switched off the music. There was one of those strange silences while their ears adjusted to the change. Delaney was the first to speak again.

  ‘Parry, take Silver down to the car and stay with her.’

  ‘No, you can’t.’ She grabbed hold of his arm again. ‘Please, Daddy. You don’t understand.’

  Delaney gently shook her free. ‘Don’t argue with me, sweetheart. Don’t say another word.’

  Silver’s mouth opened in protest but swiftly closed again. It was over and she knew it. As Parry led her away, she began to cry, a thin, plaintive sobbing that might have been for Marty but could just as easily have been for herself.

  Chapter Seventy-seven

  Grim-faced, Delaney bent down and picked up Leo’s gun. He put it in his pocket and walked over to the window, pulled aside the curtain and stared down into the street. His right hand, clenched tightly in a fist, banged rhythmically and ominously against his thigh. Eventually, there was the distant sound of a car door slamming. He released the curtain and turned to look at Marty Gull.

  Marty smiled at him. ‘You forgot to wish her a happy birthday, Vic.’

  With a speed belying his weight, Delaney stormed back across the room. Marty instinctively raised both his hands to protect himself but he was too late. The blow caught him squarely on the jaw. There was the splintering sound of bone as his head jerked back. Delaney was going in for the kill when Jo leapt to her feet.

  ‘Stop it!’

  Delaney, with his fist still raised, turned to stare at her. In fact, everyone turned to stare at her. Jo found herself the centre of attention and her heart began to pound. When Delaney had first arrived she had been relieved beyond belief but now she could see they were in as much danger as before. Being witnesses to Marty Gull’s murder would mean that they could never leave this room alive. Well, she couldn’t just wait for the inevitable to happen. It was time to start fighting back. Her mouth was dry but she forced herself to speak.

  ‘This is your … your argument, not ours, Mr Delaney. I’m really sorry about what happened to your daughter but it wasn’t down to us. We don’t need to be here. Why can’t you just let us go?’

  Delaney’s small cruel eyes bored into her. ‘What are you saying, love? That this is none of your business?’

  ‘Y-yes,’ she stammered.

  He gave a soft laugh. ‘Except it is your business, ain’t it? Mr Miller was kind enough to give me a call tonight. He left a message, telling me all about our mutual friend’s … activities.’

  Jo, surprised, looked over her shoulder.

  ‘I told you that your daughter was safe, that I wanted to get her back to you,’ Gabe said. ‘I didn’t tell you where we were.’

  ‘No, you didn’t.’ Delaney glanced at the shotgun man. ‘It was Devlin here who told me how Marty had developed a sudden interest in the place.’ He moved behind the chair and placed a thick-fingered hand on Marty Gull’s neck. ‘That was careless of you.’

  Marty flinched at his touch.

  Gabe shifted on the sofa. ‘Look, I didn’t know they’d gone ahead with the ransom. I had no idea. If I had been directly involved in any of this, I’d never have called you. I’m not that bloody stupid.’

  ‘Possibly,’ Delaney said bitterly. ‘But you still kept me in the dark. You had information right from the start which you chose to keep to yourself.’

  ‘Yeah, well, that might be true but I got the impression that you weren’t much in the mood for listening. And I could have just left you to it but I didn’t. I’ve spent the last week, at least the part where I wasn’t down the cop shop, busting a gut to find Silver.’

  Marty abruptly lurched forward. As though he’d decided that if he was going down he was going to take the rest of them with him too, he said: ‘Don’t listen to him, Vic. They were in this too, all of them. Even the kid.’

  Leo, terrified, curled up in the corner of the sofa.

  ‘That is such a lie!’ Jo cried out.

  ‘The boy doesn’t know anything,’ Gabe insisted. ‘It’s complete chance that he’s even here tonight.’ He glanced up at Jo. ‘And she’s got nothing to do with this either. Let them go. They won’t say anything.’

  Jo was about to object – she had no intention of leaving him here alone – when Marty began spreading his poison again.

&nb
sp; ‘He’s lying. They’re all in it, up to their necks. They tried to grab the ransom for themselves. She’s as bad as him, and that little bastard had a gun.’ He glared at Leo. ‘He shot me, for Christ’s sake.’

  Delaney’s eyes darted from one to the other before finally settling on the man who had betrayed him. He walked back around the chair to face him. ‘Why’d you do it, Marty?’

  Marty, still nursing his broken jaw, smiled up at him. There was a thin glistening film of sweat on his forehead. ‘Why do you think?’

  ‘I treated you like a bloody son.’

  ‘More like a bloody servant! Just look at the state of you,’ Marty sneered. ‘Fat and useless. Even your own daughter hates your guts. You’re an old, sad man and you don’t even know it. All those years … all those years when …’ He paused to wipe the blood and saliva from his mouth. ‘All those useless, empty promises.’

  Delaney shook his head. He leaned down close and stared into his eyes. ‘Nah, don’t give me that shit, Marty. You only did it because you could. You did it because you’re fuckin’ evil!’

  ‘And if I am … well, who made me like that?’

  A hush descended on the room.

  Slowly, Delaney stood up straight. He took a few deep breaths and when he spoke again his voice was hard and cold, stripped of all emotion. ‘Poor Marty,’ he said. ‘Poor little Marty.’

  Jo, wincing at his tone, began to wonder if they would ever see tomorrow. Were they really going to die, here in this flat? No, she refused to just give in. She’d go down on her knees and beg if she had to. She made one last-ditch attempt to win him round. ‘Please. Gabe did everything he could to try and find Silver, to try and save her. He’s always been on your side.’ It would be truer to say that he had always been on Susan’s side but now was not the time for too much candour. ‘If it hadn’t been for his call, you wouldn’t have found out where your daughter was. In fact, you probably wouldn’t ever have seen her alive again. He’s not to blame for any of this. You should be thanking him, not—’