Playing Dead

by Jessie Keane

  ‘There’s no one out there now,’ said Nico, coming back in and closing the door.

  Annie looked at him. Maybe just some oddball. Maybe not.

  ‘Next time Gerda takes Layla out, you go with them, okay?’

  ‘Sure thing.’

  The Spanish maid was taking Layla off to the kitchen; she had cake there, she said . . .

  Annie stood there in the hall and looked at Gerda and Nico.

  ‘Maybe just a false alarm,’ she said.

  ‘Maybe,’ said Nico.

  ‘Maybe,’ said Gerda, but her nervy, faltering smile said otherwise.

  Chapter 39

  ‘Oh, holy shit – there you are.’

  Dolly opened the main club door wide and sagged against it with relief. Annie Carter-Barolli stood there, blinking in the morning light on the doorstep, and Dolly thought she looked about as rough as a bear’s behind. Annie was dressed all in black, her hair looked uncombed, her cheeks sunken, her eyes hollow and shadowed with pain.

  Looks like she hasn’t slept in a week, thought Dolly. Or maybe a year.

  Annie frowned. ‘What?’ she asked vaguely, pushing past Dolly into the club.

  ‘I’ve been trying to reach you,’ said Dolly, closing the door and hurrying after Annie up the stairs to the flat.

  Annie gazed around the cosy little living room, which had once been where she lived but was now very much Dolly’s abode. There were lots of fluffy touches in the room now that shouted Dolly, lots of pale blues and pinks; it was a blonde’s room now, not a brunette’s.

  ‘Sit down, sit down,’ said Dolly, bustling around, switching on the electric fire.

  Annie sat down. Or rather, she seemed to collapse onto the sofa like a sack of shit, Dolly noticed. There was none of Annie’s usual elegance in the movement. She looked as though she’d had the stuffing knocked out of her.

  ‘What do you mean, you’ve been trying to reach me? What for? Something up with the club?’ asked Annie, but Dolly didn’t think she looked particularly interested. If Dolly had said the place was about to collapse around their ears, she didn’t think she was going to get a reaction.

  Annie was still looking distractedly around the room. She felt as if her life was on some weird, ever-spinning loop. She was here again, back home in London, but it felt alien to her. She was here with Dolly, her closest friend – but she had never felt so alone as she did right now.

  She passed a weary hand over her brow. Dolly sat down on the sofa. Annie stared at her friend. From rough brass to Madam to nightclub manager, Dolly certainly had progressed. Now she looked every inch the successful businesswoman in her strawberry-pink Chanel rip-off skirt suit, her poodle-perm nicely tinted to a gentle shade of ash-blonde, her make-up and nails faultless, her pale tan leather court shoes buffed to a high shine.

  ‘Fuck it, look at the state of you,’ tutted Dolly, her blue eyes anxious as they swept over Annie. Jesus, she was so skinny! ‘Why didn’t you tell me you were coming over? I’ve been trying to reach you because I’ve had some news. I was phoning you all day yesterday and the night before, couldn’t get an answer.’

  Annie let out a weary sigh. ‘I was on my way back here,’ she said.

  ‘I can see that, you daft mare.’ Dolly hesitated. ‘Annie Carter, you look like shit. You really do. What’s happened? Don’t tell me he’s dumped you! He wouldn’t – would he? But mind you, bearing in mind what I’ve heard, it could be a good thing. I said it was rash, didn’t I, you going off with him to the States? You didn’t even—’

  ‘Doll,’ cut in Annie harshly, clutching at her head. ‘Shut the fuck up, will you? I’ve got a headache like someone’s sticking a knife in me and waggling it around in my brain. So just shut up. Let me think.’

  ‘Well, excuse me,’ sniffed Dolly, put out. She was quiet for a while, staring at Annie who was just sitting there, gazing at the rug on the floor. Finally, she said: ‘So . . . what’s happened? Why’ve you come back?’

  Annie heaved a sigh that shook her entire frame.

  ‘He’s dead, Doll,’ she said quietly.

  Dolly’s jaw nearly hit the floor. ‘He’s what?’

  ‘Constantine. There was an explosion at the house last August. Killed him, Doll. If I’d been two feet closer it would have killed me, too.’

  ‘What, was it an accident . . .?’ Dolly was flailing around for the right thing to say, but coming up empty. Constantine, dead?

  Annie was shaking her head. ‘It was no accident. Someone wanted him dead.’

  ‘Shit, but you said . . . holy shit, are you all right?’

  ‘Oh, I’m still here,’ said Annie, and she turned her head and looked at Dolly, who thought that looking into Annie’s eyes right then was like looking into hell. ‘Spent a while in hospital. Had a few minor burns on my arm, but they’re almost healed now.’

  Lost our baby.

  Lost my husband.

  Now I’m fine, only I keep seeing a corpse at the end of my bed, and smelling the smoke and the stench of a burning body.

  She didn’t want to tell Dolly any of that. She couldn’t bear to. She felt that if she started talking about it she would either shriek or sob – maybe both.

  Dolly was silent. Didn’t know what to say. Then at last she managed: ‘Did they get who did it?’

  Annie shook her head.

  ‘Do they know who did it?’

  She shook her head again.

  ‘You should have called me. I’d have come straight over, you know I would.’

  ‘I couldn’t even think straight, Doll. I was in hospital, and then there was the funeral . . . I can barely even remember anything about that, only the rain coming down . . . and then . . . I just couldn’t.’

  ‘So . . . for God’s sake, what are you going to do?’

  ‘Lucco snatched the rug from under me, Doll.’

  ‘Lucco? Ain’t that the grease ball who’s the eldest son?’

  Annie nodded. ‘Lucco’s in charge now. He changed the locks on the Manhattan place so that I couldn’t get in there. I went to see him, and he pretty much said that if I stayed around or played up, I’d go the same way as his father.’

  ‘That fucker,’ breathed Dolly.

  ‘So I’m back. I’m staying at the Holland Park place; he hasn’t closed the door on that one yet. I suppose it’s just a matter of time.’

  ‘If he does . . .?’ Dolly was looking around, her eyes flitting anxiously from her cosy electric fire to her frou-frou decorations. She loved living here. But Annie was the boss, and if Annie wanted her flat back, what could Dolly say but yes?

  ‘I’ll find somewhere else,’ said Annie, reading Dolly’s expression. ‘Don’t worry, Doll. I’ve got money, I can buy another place. I won’t be trying to muscle back in here.’

  ‘Oh.’ Dolly looked a bit shamefaced at that. She reached out and grasped Annie’s hand. ‘You poor cow. I’m so bloody sorry.’

  Annie gave a taut smile. ‘Well, shit happens.’

  ‘You got that right.’ Dolly thought about what she’d heard, what she had been so desperately trying to relay to Annie – and all the while, Annie had been in deep trouble. Now she was in even deeper trouble, it seemed to Dolly. Right up to her neck.

  ‘So . . . what was it you were trying to reach me for? I know you were having problems on the refurb at the old Blue Parrot – haven’t the contractors turned in again?’

  As if she’d bother Annie with something so piffling as that.

  Dolly shook her head. Now that she’d heard about Annie’s shed-load of trouble, she didn’t feel she wanted to pile yet another ton on top of the poor mare. And yet . . . she had to. She couldn’t let her wander around the damned town not knowing that a storm was about to break over her head.

  ‘What then?’ Annie gave a grim, tired smile. ‘I’m sorry,’ said Doll, biting her lip. ‘I really am. To be the one who has to tell you this.’

  ‘Tell me what?’

  ‘It’s Max,’ said Dolly.

 
‘Max?’ What the hell was she talking about?

  ‘Your Max. Max Carter.’

  ‘What . . .? What about him?’

  ‘Fuck it all, Annie, I can’t believe it but I have to. It’s true.’

  ‘Dolly, would you spit it out? Come on.’

  ‘He’s not dead. I’m sorry. I know this is a bloody awful shock, but he ain’t dead. He’s alive.’

  Chapter 40

  An hour and a half later, Chris opened the front door of the Limehouse knocking-shop to a tornado in human form.

  ‘Where the fuck is she?’ it demanded, shoving past him and roaring off along the hall to the kitchen.

  In her haste and distraction, Annie didn’t even see Rosie, one of Ellie’s little blonde working girls, halfway down the stairs with a semi-dressed punter. She wasn’t aware of the parlour door standing open, music drifting out, the sound of giggling and moaning, the heaving shapes inside. She didn’t even notice that one of the panels on the kitchen door had been damaged, knocked through. She just threw it open and found Ellie sitting there, a cup of tea halfway to her lips.

  ‘What the f—?’ asked Ellie.

  Annie lunged at her. The cup fell to the table, splashing the contents everywhere, including over Ellie’s neat red suit, before rolling off onto the floor and smashing. Before either Ellie or Chris, who had followed Annie in her flight up the hall, could react, Annie had Ellie by the throat.

  ‘You’ve played some dirty horrible cruel tricks in your time,’ shouted Annie full in her face, spittle flying. ‘But this one? This takes the fucking biscuit.’

  ‘Annie . . .’ Chris was saying, trying to pull her off without inflicting harm. ‘Come on. Enough!’

  But Annie was shaking Ellie by the throat, half throttling her. She was weak but the sheer force of her anger was stunningly intense. The much more robust Ellie was sitting there like a sacrificial lamb, too shocked and terrified by this unprovoked attack to even begin to fight back.

  ‘I said enough,’ said Chris, and he grabbed Annie around the waist and bodily hauled her away from Ellie.

  Now she started fighting Chris. Flailing about madly. He was lifting her clean off the floor but she was still shrieking and shouting. Ellie stood up slowly, her eyes fixed on this mad banshee who’d just come crashing into her lovely, peaceful, well-run house. She raised a trembling hand to her neck. Then, slowly and deliberately, she moved around the table and approached Annie. She pulled back her arm and slapped Annie once, very hard, on the face.

  Annie’s head was whipped sideways with the force of the blow. She stopped swearing, stopped struggling. Stared at Ellie for a stunned moment. Became aware of where she was, what she was doing.

  ‘Fuck’s sake,’ muttered Ellie, as girls in various stages of undress came crowding into the kitchen doorway to see what was kicking off. She turned an angry glare on them. ‘Get off out of it,’ she snarled, and stalked over and shut the door on them. She leaned against it, breathing hard, watching Annie.

  ‘I had to do that,’ she said. ‘Sorry. You were bloody hysterical. It’s all right, Chris, think you can let her go now.’

  Chris gave her a dubious look. But he released Annie. She gulped in a breath and dragged a quivering hand through her hair. Then she pulled out a chair and collapsed onto it. She leaned on the table, shaking, her head in her hands.

  Chris gave her a long, uncertain look and then he went over to the door and back out into the hall, closing it quietly behind him.

  Ellie went over to the worktop, grabbed a cloth and dampened it and applied it to the tea-stains on the red suit before they set. Then she started mopping up the spilled tea from the table and the floor. She picked up the broken bits of crockery, and chucked them in the bin.

  Finally, she came back to the table and sat down opposite Annie and looked at her. A red mark was coming up on one thin cheek where Ellie had struck her. Her hair looked as if it hadn’t even been washed; it was all over the place. There wasn’t a scrap of make-up on her face. Her clothes looked dishevelled. This wasn’t the Annie Carter she’d known.

  ‘What the hell happened to you?’ asked Ellie in wonder. ‘You look fucking terrible.’

  ‘What happened to me?’ Annie let out a harsh croak of laughter. ‘What happened to you, you cow. What do you think you’re doing, telling these bloody awful lies? Oh, I knew you could always stretch the truth. But this? This is beyond a bloody joke.’

  Ellie folded her arms on the table and stared at Annie.

  ‘Dolly said you’d never believe it. But listen. It ain’t a joke,’ she said flatly.

  Annie drew herself up. She looked like a cobra, mad dark eyes and a grim mouth ready to spit venomous rage.

  ‘Listen, you malicious mare. Max Carter is dead. He died two years ago when he was thrown down a mountain. The kidnappers told me he was dead. Why would they have lied about that?’

  ‘Maybe they weren’t lying. Maybe they believed they’d killed him, but he survived.’

  Now Annie was shaking her head quickly. Ellie thought she looked jittery, deranged.

  ‘No! He’s dead. They told me he was dead.’

  Ellie leaned forward and spoke in low, measured tones now.

  ‘Annie. He’s alive. I’ve seen the bastard, he was right here. Chris saw him too. He was looking for you, and Layla. He didn’t tell us the full story, but he was looking for you both.’

  Annie was still shaking her head, crossing her arms over her body, her lips pursed in denial. ‘No,’ she said. ‘No.’

  ‘What should I have done, Annie?’ asked Ellie. ‘We’ve known each other a long time, we’re friends, ain’t we? Come on, what would you have done in my place? I thought about it long and hard, I can tell you. You were in the States. You were happily married to another man. And when we told him that . . .’ Ellie’s face clouded.

  ‘What?’ Annie was watching Ellie as if she was the crazy one. Because this couldn’t be true. It couldn’t be.

  ‘Well, I got in touch with Dolly as quick as I could because I didn’t have your number and she did. He was asking about you and Layla. Then . . . well, Chris broke the news to him. Right here. He was sitting right where you are now. And when Chris told him . . . he went real quiet. I tried to defend you; I told him that you had believed he was dead. And you know what he said?’

  Annie shook her head slowly. This was all crazy. This was mad.

  ‘He said, what the fuck? You thought he was dead and so you cleared off with some other man before he was even cold? That’s what he said.’ Ellie shivered slightly. ‘Christ, he was angry. Not hot, not excitable, no shouting and screaming. Just real cold and controlled and bloody scary.’

  ‘Did he say anything else?’ asked Annie. This couldn’t be true, but that . . . that sounded like Max when he really lost it. He went quiet. And that was when he was at his most dangerous.

  Ellie shook her head. ‘He just stood up and went over to that door. He looked calm. And then he punched it. Knocked the ruddy panel straight out. There was blood dripping off his knuckles but I don’t think he even felt it.’ Ellie drew in a shuddering breath. ‘He’s a hard scary bastard that one. So I phoned Dolly straight away, the minute he’d gone. I told her. And she’s told you, and that’s why you’ve come back I suppose? Fuck me, I don’t think I’d have come back to face him if I’d gone off with another man. I’d stay clear, that’s what I’d do.’

  Annie shook her head. She felt so weak, so tired and bewildered. And now this. Ellie didn’t seem to be making any of this up. Annie’s eyes drifted over to the damaged door. Could it be true? Had he really been right here?

  ‘You don’t know why I’ve come back?’ she asked.

  ‘Well . . . to see him, I thought. To face him down. Tell him you’ve moved on.’

  ‘I didn’t know anything about any of this,’ Annie told her wearily. ‘I was on my way back when Dolly was trying to reach me to break the news. I came back because it’s over for me in the States. That’s all.’


  Ellie nodded slowly. Over in what way? she wondered. But she didn’t say it. She’d ask Dolly, she’d have all the dirt. This poor bint looked as though she’d had enough talking for now.

  ‘Let me make some fresh tea,’ said Ellie, standing up and moving over to the kettle. ‘You want something to eat? You look like you could do with a feeding-up.’

  But when she looked round, Annie was over by the door. She was fingering the splintered wood, looking at it as if it might be a dream, not reality.

  ‘Annie . . .?’ said Ellie when she didn’t answer.

  Annie glanced at her. Her hand dropped away from the damaged door. She shook her head.

  ‘I’m off to catch up with Kath and Ruthie.’

  ‘Well, mind how you go,’ said Ellie, but Annie had opened the door and was already hurrying away down the hall. ‘Take care . . .’ said Ellie to the empty kitchen. Annie didn’t hear her. She was gone.

  Chapter 41

  The word was spreading around the streets like wildfire now. Max Carter was back. Steve Taylor and Gary Tooley, who had once been – along with Jimmy Bond – his most trusted foot soldiers, heard it but didn’t believe it. And then one night they went to Queenie’s as usual for a meet with the boys, and there he was, inside, sitting at the head of the table, waiting for them.

  ‘Fuck me,’ said dark, squat, powerful Steve, stopping dead in the doorway, thinking he was seeing a phantom. Max had been his friend forever, both his boss and his mate; maybe he just wanted to see the old bugger sitting there and his eyes were playing tricks.

  Gary shoved him aside and he too stared in disbelief.

  ‘Oh, you’re having a bloody laugh,’ said Gary, six feet seven inches tall, blond and whip-thin.

  ‘You greasy old bastard, how’d you pull this one off?’ asked rat-faced little Jackie Tulliver, chomping on his usual massive cigar, finding a gap in the crowded doorway to shove his ugly little beak through.