Playing Dead

by Jessie Keane

  Jenny decided not to argue. Going pale, she tore off her apron and started ushering the children out of the kitchen, up the stairs.

  ‘But Mummy, I wanted to show you . . .’ Layla’s voice drifted back to Annie.

  ‘Not now, petal,’ Jenny said, shushing her.

  Annie went to the drawers and starting throwing them open until she found a large knife. She tucked it into her coat pocket. Then she tore across the kitchen, out through the door and was across the deserted yard in a flash. She approached Chris’s old Zephyr at a flat run.

  ‘Chris!’ she was shouting. ‘It’s a trap! It’s . . .’

  She froze mere feet from the car.

  Looked for the first time and saw.

  The Zephyr’s windscreen was shattered, a thousand little chunks of glass glittering like ice, sparkling in the sun on the highly polished bonnet.

  Kicked out from inside.

  Oh no.

  She forced herself to move forward, to look in the car.

  Chris was slumped across the big sofa seat, one of his feet up on the dashboard. There was a damp stain on the crotch of his trousers. His eyes were closed and his face was a blotched, ugly red. His neck was a mass of livid red bruising.

  Annie stepped back. The back door on her side was open. She was almost too scared to look, but she forced herself to do it. There was no one in there. Not any more. Someone had jumped into the back seat and throttled Chris from behind. He had kicked out the windscreen in his death throes. And now . . . whoever had killed Chris was out here somewhere, and she was alone.

  ‘Oh, Stepmom,’ said Alberto’s voice softly from behind her.

  Chapter 73

  She was frozen to the spot, too terrified to even turn round. Her right hand was clenched around the knife’s handle in her pocket. She was just staring at Chris, lying there dead, and into her mind, stupidly, came the thought: How am I supposed to explain this to Ellie?

  But she wasn’t going to get the chance to explain anything. Alberto had finished off Chris and now he was going to finish her. Her throat was dry, her tongue felt swollen in her mouth with the force of her terror and revulsion. Her heart was thwacking against her chest wall so hard she thought she might faint.

  Alberto wasn’t her friend. She told herself that and tried to make herself believe it. That night in Montauk when Constantine had been blown to bits and she had been catapulted onto the sand, he’d been leaning over her. She’d thought he was checking she was still alive. But he had been checking she was dead. And he must have been so angry that she wasn’t. He had looked distressed – and so he had been. Distressed that she was still breathing.

  She started to turn, words tumbling from her mouth.

  ‘Why would you do this, Alberto? Why?’ she gasped out, turning.

  Turning.

  Everything slowing down.

  Waiting to see what she knew she must and what her heart told her could not be true. Alberto, waiting to kill her.

  And then she could put it off no longer. She turned fully and raised her eyes and looked.

  The man standing there was not Alberto. This man was an abomination. She stared at him in bewildered horror and fascination because she had heard Alberto speak. And yet Alberto was nowhere to be seen.

  ‘What the . . .?’ she said hoarsely.

  God, he was hideous. What was most shocking about his deformity was that it was only partial. He had copper-gold straight hair, lustrous, thick; his skin was clear and unblemished. He had deep-set grey eyes, a smattering of freckles over his long, aristocratic nose, a prominent chin. He could almost be handsome, but . . . Jesus, his mouth.

  His mouth was a travesty. It looked as if someone had taken a knife to it and sliced it open at both ends. There were deep purple scars running almost to his ears on both sides of it. When he smiled – he was smiling now – the scars puckered angrily and gave him a ferocious, predatory look.

  ‘Who . . .?’ Annie managed to say.

  ‘Oh, I’m nobody,’ said the freak.

  He was still speaking in Alberto’s voice; it was pitch-perfect. That sound, so familiar, so loved, coming out of that abused purple slit of a mouth made Annie’s blood run cold.

  This was a trap and she had blundered right into it.

  Max was miles away.

  Chris was dead.

  She was totally alone here, with this lunatic.

  ‘It was you on the phone,’ she said unsteadily.

  ‘Not a bad little part,’ he was saying, and now his voice wasn’t Alberto’s at all. It was radio English, cultured and with beautifully rounded vowel sounds. ‘I think I played it rather well, considering. The accent was tricky but I had a tape to study so that I could get it just so. There’s a mile of difference between Bronx and Manhattan, as you know. I flatter myself that accents are something of a speciality of mine and I do tend to get them spot-on.’

  ‘You killed Chris,’ said Annie, still trying to take it in.

  ‘What, the meathead in the car? A small precaution,’ he returned.

  The cold precision of his speech chilled her. Her hand tightened around the knife. If he came any closer, she was going to do it. She was determined on that. If it was him or her, it was going to be him.

  ‘Why?’ she demanded shakily. ‘Why have you done this? Why did you get me here?’

  ‘Because I told him to,’ said a female voice from behind her.

  She half turned and saw Cara standing there.

  Chapter 74

  ‘Yeah, it’s me,’ said Cara gloatingly. ‘Favourite only daughter of Constantine Barolli, his best girl . . . that was, until you came along. For God’s sake, all he had to do was take you to bed. He didn’t have to go and marry you.’

  Annie stared at her stepdaughter. ‘What, so now you think you’ll alter that?’ she said, thinking fast. Keep her talking, keep her talking . . .

  ‘Now I’m going to definitely alter it,’ said Cara.

  ‘Bit late,’ said Anne. ‘Your father’s dead. Whatever happens to me, you’re not going to get him back. You’re never going to be his “best girl” again.’

  ‘Yeah. But then I haven’t been his best girl in a long time,’ said Cara, almost wistfully. ‘When I asked him to do something about Rocco, I knew then that I’d lost him. That he was too preoccupied with you to bother about what was happening to me.’

  ‘What did you ask him to do about Rocco?’ asked Annie. Jesus, she had to keep thinking, keep talking . . .

  ‘I wanted him dead,’ said Cara bluntly. ‘And Papa wouldn’t do it.’

  ‘So who did it then?’ Annie saw again Rocco’s poor body floating, hideously mutilated, in the Holland Park pool, the cold relentless rain sheeting down upon him.

  ‘My friend here.’ Cara was smiling slightly, looking smug.

  Jesus, she really is demented. Rotten to the core.

  The freak looked pleased with himself. He grinned. The effect was monstrous, disgusting.

  ‘He and Rocco were lovers. I wanted Papa to kill Rocco because of it. But he wouldn’t hear of it. It would upset the Mancinis. So I got Frances to do it.’

  Annie was thinking frantically, making connections.

  Jesus. That was it.

  ‘And before that, what did you get Fredo to do?’ she guessed. ‘Why would you let Fredo hump you like a dog? I saw you, and you looked like you were about to throw up in disgust. You were letting him have you so he’d do other things for you. Back at the house in Montauk, I remember you coming in one night looking frantic and dishevelled. He’d just had you, isn’t that right? You were giving him sexual favours in exchange for . . . oh God yes! – you were letting him have sex with you because Constantine wouldn’t take revenge on Rocco and you wanted Fredo to get revenge for you.’

  ‘What’s she talking about?’ asked the freak.

  ‘Nothing,’ said Cara, but her smug smile had slipped a notch.

  ‘How’d you get like this, Frances?’ asked Annie, indicating his face. ‘Someo
ne come out of a dark alley at you? Someone like Cara’s lapdog Fredo, who couldn’t touch Rocco but who could touch you?’

  The freak’s smile was gone too. He was glancing between Annie and Cara. Finally, his eyes settled on Cara. ‘But . . . Cara didn’t do this to me. It was Rocco.’

  ‘Shut up,’ said Cara to Annie.

  ‘It was probably Fredo, her lapdog. You really think Rocco had it in him to inflict this? I don’t. But Cara? Oh, yeah – she would.’

  ‘Just shut up!’ Cara shouted.

  ‘What’s she saying? Did you . . . do this to me . . .?’ Frances was asking, touching his ruined face.

  Cara turned to him, seemed almost to debate the point.

  ‘Look,’ she said finally. ‘All right. Fredo did it. But not on my say-so. I was horrified when he told me what he’d done. I wanted Rocco to suffer, not you, not anyone else. Just Rocco.’

  Liar, thought Annie. She didn’t think Cara would care who she had pain inflicted on, just so long as someone paid in blood for her loss of dignity.

  ‘Let’s face it, Cara,’ said Annie, ‘you’ve been yanking everyone’s chain and it’s all gone wrong for you. You don’t even know which way is up any more, do you?’

  ‘Just shut up, will you?’ she snarled.

  ‘I don’t know . . .’ said Frances. He was looking at Cara as if seeing her clearly for the first time. ‘I loved Rocco. Really loved him, and he just rejected me like I was nothing.’

  ‘Well, he would,’ said Cara. ‘All Rocco ever cared about was looks. And if you didn’t have that, what use would you be?’

  ‘You’re right,’ said Frances. ‘So I wanted to kill him, that bastard Rocco! If I hadn’t got involved with him, this would never have happened to me.’

  ‘You might want to step back from involvement with his sister, too,’ suggested Annie. ‘Before anything worse kicks off.’

  Jesus, she was standing here with a pair of nutters who wouldn’t think twice about murdering anyone who got in their way.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Frances was watching her intently. His tongue snaked out, moistening his lips.

  ‘Don’t listen to her,’ said Cara. ‘Shoot the bitch.’

  ‘I mean that she likes to get even,’ said Annie. ‘And so far, she hasn’t got fully even with you.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You humiliated her by having an affair with her husband. Just having your face sliced in half isn’t enough. She had to sleep with Fredo her driver to get him to deal with the problem you created, and she won’t forgive you for that.’ Annie looked at him. ‘You might be useful for now, but soon you won’t be, and then I’d watch your back if I were you.’

  Cara was staring at her stepmother with stony intensity.

  ‘That explosion should have got you too,’ she said, every word filled with hatred.

  Annie swallowed hard. Spoilt little Cara. When Constantine had refused to deal with Rocco for her, he’d signed his own death warrant. Where were the police when you needed them? How long could it take for them to respond to Jenny’s call?

  ‘Well, it got your father,’ she said, trying to work some spittle into her mouth and failing. ‘It got him, just as you intended. How the hell could you do that?’

  ‘Easily,’ said Cara, hard-eyed. ‘I got Frances the security pass to the house grounds, he got the grenades and passed them to me outside. Everyone’s searched when they enter the grounds at the Montauk house, but never me, never the family. He came in as a maintenance man and while he was replacing some of the boards out on the deck, he set the booby-trap ready to explode.’

  ‘And you wouldn’t have cared if it had gone off later in the evening and killed Lucco and Daniella and a few of the other guests too, would you? Just so long as the job got done.’

  ‘I loved him,’ said Cara, her voice catching on a sob. ‘I loved Papa. But he wouldn’t do anything for me. It was always the sons. Lucco and Alberto. Never me. Never the girl – I didn’t matter. He had Lucco to take over from him, he had Alberto in reserve. That was all that mattered. But I was the one with the balls and the determination. I could have been a great Don. But I was just a girl.’

  Annie stared at her, feeling sick.

  ‘That bomb should have killed you both. What are you, charmed or something? You lived through that, and then Frances couldn’t even fucking suffocate you in the hospital without the cavalry charging in to save you. And then when he shot at you in London he hit Nico by mistake. That fucking Nico got the bullet, not you.’

  So it had been Cara behind all that; and Frances was the one who had been staring down at her as she lay pinned beneath Nico’s dead body outside the club, taking aim . . .

  ‘But you know what?’ Cara went on. ‘It doesn’t matter. Because you’re dead anyway. As of now. Do it, Frances.’

  Frances hesitated.

  ‘I said do it,’ yelled Cara.

  This time he obeyed. He stepped forward, pulling something from beneath his coat. Annie looked and felt her bowels turn to mush. The freak was holding a crossbow. And he was pointing it straight at her heart.

  Chapter 75

  ‘Let her have it,’ said Cara, cold-eyed.

  But Frances was shaking his head.

  ‘We won’t do it out here,’ said Frances. He gestured with the weapon for Annie to move. ‘Someone might see. Over there. There’s an empty box.’

  ‘I’m not going anywhere,’ said Annie, although her voice was shaking and she was half dead with fright.

  ‘As you wish,’ he said, and raised the crossbow again to direct its bolt straight to her heart.

  ‘Wait,’ said Annie. ‘All right. I’m moving. Okay?’

  She started to walk towards the loose box at the end of the yard. Better to appear co-operative for the moment, if only to buy time.

  But time for what? she wondered frantically.

  Had Jenny phoned the police as instructed? She’d been worried about wasting police time. Jenny was timid, uncertain at the best of times. Perhaps she hadn’t done it. But if she had, would they take her seriously, would they come? Maybe Josh or someone else, one of the stable lads, would come out into the yard? Fuck it, didn’t they have security, didn’t they have anything? It didn’t look like it.

  ‘Hurry it up,’ said Cara impatiently.

  Can’t wait to see me dead. And what can I do to stop her?

  She dawdled as much as she could, but now she was at the door of the box. She glanced hopefully around the yard. There was no one about. No one to help. But she had the knife.

  She’d have to get in close, really close, to use it to any effect, and they were keeping their distance, ushering her into the box now, pulling the bottom half of the stable door closed, then the top half.

  Inside the box, they were plunged into gloom. Straw whispered around their feet as they moved and its clean, grassy scent rose like a country perfume. For a moment, it was hard to see anything at all, and then Annie could see faint outlines. Could see Cara, her golden hair flowing onto her shoulders, her dreamy blue eyes suddenly manic with purpose. And the freak, still pointing the crossbow at her chest.

  She was inside, she was at their mercy.

  She was finished.

  Frances raised the crossbow.

  She had nothing left to lose. She pulled out the knife and ran at the freak, some sort of sound coming out of her mouth, some wild cry. He saw the dim wicked flash of the knife’s blade coming at him and stumbled back instinctively, firing the crossbow at the same time. It shot off, missing her by a mile. Then he recovered himself and grabbed the wrist holding the knife, dropping the crossbow in the process.

  Someone was screaming close by.

  For a moment, Annie thought that she was making the noises herself.

  The freak was grappling with her, trying to squeeze the knife out of her hand, but she was holding on, holding on for grim death, because once he got that off her, then he could use it – and if he did that she really was fucked.

  H
e was a lot stronger than her. There was only going to be one winner in this wrestling match, she knew it. She was only surprised that Cara didn’t wade in too, get her from behind.

  ‘Holy shit,’ she heard herself moan, as the pressure on her wrist increased to agonizing levels.

  He was going to get the knife off her, he was going to kill her. Nothing she could do to stop him now. Nothing at all. She felt her grip on the knife starting to loosen.

  She was going to drop it.

  He was going to snatch it up, slit her throat with it.

  She was done.

  And then, when she felt there was no way she could fight any longer, no way she could hold onto the blade and prevent him taking it, the door crashed in, splintering off its hinges, and Alberto and Max burst into the box.

  Chapter 76

  Max grabbed Frances and cuffed him hard with the barrel of the Smith & Wesson revolver he was holding. Frances fell back onto the straw. Max kicked him viciously in the ribs and then snatched up the dropped crossbow, flinging it out of the door. It clattered onto the cobbles of the yard.

  ‘Holy shit,’ said Gary Tooley, surging into the box with Steve Taylor at one shoulder and another heavy at the other.

  She looked around her, dazed, shattered, thinking that she had been so sure she was going to die and now Max was here, and Alberto . . .

  Where was he? Where had Alberto gone . . .?

  She looked around. He was on his knees in the straw beside Cara. She was lying there, panting, groaning. With shocked eyes, Annie saw that there was a crossbow bolt protruding from Cara’s side.

  ‘Cara,’ Alberto was saying, leaning over his sister, his face anguished.

  He looked up at Annie. ‘What’s going on?’

  Annie said wearily, ‘Your dad. Rocco. It was her. It was all her. Her and this freak.’

  ‘No. I don’t believe it,’ he moaned, and turned back to Cara.

  Her eyes were open, wide with horror, and she was staring up at his face.