by Jessie Keane
Everything had been fine until the woman called the Blue Parrot club in London and talked to Gary Tooley. Gary had relayed the news to him. Max hadn’t asked for any of this. But he had it. And ever since Gary had passed on the woman’s words, he’d been having sleepless nights, tormented days. He thought that it couldn’t be true, could not be possible. But . . . what if it was?
That nagged at him, wouldn’t let him rest. If it was true and not the ramblings of a drunkard or a fool or a crazed cow off her head on nose candy, then there would be big trouble and he was going to kill some cunt. But he could handle trouble. It was uncertainty that sent him mental.
He drove, trying to clear his mind, determined not to let the fury take hold again, not to let it all pile in on him and fog his brain. He drove past the lines of olive trees heavy with fruit, past thin goats and their kids, past plodding donkeys laden with hay coming back with their owners from the parched yellow fields.
Finally he reached the place she had chosen.
It was a disused amphitheatre, a crumbling old wreck well off the tourist trails, built by the Greeks or the Romans – he didn’t know which and he didn’t care. He got out of the car, hearing nothing but the silence of the hills and the mad chirruping of the crickets, seeing nothing but dust and heat-haze and the purple-sloped hugeness of Etna lowering over the scene. No car here, not yet.
He wasn’t early.
He looked at his watch.
He was on time.
A hard sigh escaped him. She wasn’t going to show today, either. He knew it. Swearing, the dust-swirling wind buffeting him, he strolled off toward the remains of the theatre, entering the sheltered boiler-room heat of the big sand-covered circular arena where once life and death had been played out for real. Max walked out to the centre, under the full super-heated blaze of the Sicilian sun, and looked around.
In the echoing silence he could imagine the ancient crowds up on the stands, howling for blood; huge lions imported from Africa and starved to make them even more ferocious running loose; gladiators in body armour and fearsomely crafted helmets and shields wielding maces and swords, battling it out with the big cats and each other.
That world was gone, but close your eyes and you could see it, taste it, almost hear it. He could still feel danger in this place, and bloodshed, and tragedy. It was so quiet here; eerie.
Good place to get rid of someone, he thought. No one ever came up here. It was the perfect spot to dispose of an enemy, leave them for the crows to dine out on.
Then he heard the car. He looked in the direction of the entrance where he’d come into the arena and saw the plume of dust as a motor climbed the hill toward it.
At last.
She was coming.
Game on, he thought, and his heart started to beat more quickly.
10
Across the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, Annie’s heart was beating quickly too. She grabbed her robe, threw it on. Ran through to the living room and snatched up the phone. ‘Yes?’ she said.
It couldn’t be good news. Not at this hour. Or maybe she was just panicking over nothing, coming out of that stupid damned recurring Constantine dream all hyped-up with worry when there was no reason to be. Maybe it was Max phoning home, forgetting the time differential. Time was a flexible thing in Max’s world. He was late for everything. It was a standing joke between them.
Her husband was powerful, tough, independent. He was still essentially the man he had been back in the sixties, when he had run a lucrative protection racket around the East End. He’d made a fortune, and he’d been bright enough to never get caught doing it.
That was it. This was Max, calling home. Suddenly she felt hopeful.
‘Max?’ she asked. She could hear breathing on the line. ‘That you?’
‘Mrs C?’ asked a male voice.
Not Max then. Annie felt her spirits droop. ‘Who’s this?’
‘It’s Tony.’
She clutched a hand to her brow and closed her eyes. She had hoped it would be Max, even if he had ballsed up the times. When he’d left, he’d been . . . well, so odd. Removed from her. She didn’t like that. It made her very anxious.
‘Tone?’ Into Annie’s mind flashed an image: big eighteen-stone bruiser Tony, bald, besuited and with two gold crucifixes, one in each cauliflower ear.
Tony had driven Max around the London streets for a long time, and then her; he was a dedicated member of the Carter team, which had evolved over the years so that now it was almost entirely legitimate. Once, things had been different: in the sixties, Max Carter and his boys had rivalled the Krays for sheer honest-to-God fear factor. Back then, big gangs had owned the streets – the Frasers and the Richardsons from South London, the Regans from the west, the Foremans from Battersea, the Nashes from the Angel, while the Krays held Bethnal Green and the Carter boys had Bow and a bit of Limehouse.
Slowly, things had changed, though; now the Carter operation was clubs and security, and nearly 100 per cent straight. Nearly. But Max was still the boss, and Max was always a wild card; unpredictable. This latest departure was a classic example; she didn’t know what the hell he was up to.
He’s having an affair, you silly bitch. Because he knows. He’s found you out and he’s having a revenge fuck. He’s sticking it to someone new and – oh yeah – someone younger.
‘What you phoning for at this hour? It’s two o’clock here,’ she asked Tony.
‘Mrs C . . .’ Tony started, then hesitated. ‘Is Mr Carter there?’
‘No, he’s not.’ Annie frowned. ‘What’s up, Tone? What is it?’
‘I got bad news for you, I’m sorry.’
Annie slumped down on to the sofa. Outside, she could hear the faint dull rhythmic roar of the ocean, pounding up on to the warm white sands of the beach below the villa. Her heart clenched with fear. Max? she thought.
‘Tell me,’ she said.
‘It’s Dolly, Mrs C.’
‘Doll? What about her?’
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘She’s dead.’
11
Max watched as the man – who was short but powerful-looking, dark-skinned and wearing a cream Panama hat – unloaded the woman from the car.
Unload was the word. Max had expected that she might be frail, but there was this whole business going on, the man taking the wheelchair out of the back of the car, bringing it to the front passenger door, nearly hauling the woman into it. Then he backed the chair up, closed the door, fussed over her, settled her comfortably, draped a pale-blue blanket over her lap to cover her bony knees and her bright red pleated skirt; then he pushed the wheelchair containing the bent old woman toward the arena where Max stood waiting.
Max watched them coming, watched the dust-devils whirl around them, the man and the woman in the wheelchair. They vanished into the deep shade of the entrance, then reappeared into the vivid sunlight in the centre of this decrepit old place. The woman was wearing a huge broad-brimmed straw hat, pulled low over her face. Her hands were tucked in under the blanket, and her feet were big, clad in sparkling white trainers.
They approached slowly, and man and chair came to a halt six feet from where Max stood waiting.
The man gave a grin and said: ‘Mr Carter?’
Max nodded slowly.
‘I am Antonio, I will interpret for Miss Barolli,’ said the man, and he reached inside his shirt.
Max dived to one side and a spring-loaded knife concealed in his shirt sleeve dropped into his hand. He threw it as Antonio pulled the gun out, and the knife hit the man’s wrist with a hollow thunk. Antonio let out a high shriek of pain and shock and the gun fell into the dust. He collapsed to his knees on the ground, clutching at his bleeding wrist with the knife deeply embedded there. Max moved forward quickly and kicked Antonio under the chin, sending him flying backward. Max was on him in an instant, but he was out of it, unconscious. Max yanked his knife loose, ignoring the sudden arterial spurt of bright crimson blood, and turned to the wheelchair
. Its occupant was struggling upward, tossing aside the blanket.
Max came up behind the chair and rammed the bloody knife against its occupant’s throat.
‘Hold it,’ he said, pressing hard, and the woman in the chair froze, held her hands up. Max pulled off the hat to reveal a man’s haircut, and threw it aside. There was a gun in the ‘old woman’s’ lap, which had been hidden beneath the blanket.
‘Gina Barolli don’t need an interpreter,’ said Max. ‘She speaks perfect English. I know that because I’ve met her before. And you, my friend, are not Gina Barolli. And you’ve got bloody big feet for a woman, haven’t you.’ Max pressed harder with the knife. ‘In fact, you’re a bloke. Enough of this fucking around. Tell me where she is, or I’m going to cut you a new arsehole.’
The man started babbling in a thick Sicilian dialect. This one maybe did need an interpreter.
‘Shut up,’ snapped Max. ‘Speak English.’
More Sicilian.
‘Mate, you’re going to lose a lot of bits if this goes on,’ said Max. ‘Now come on. It’s an easy question. Where is Gina Barolli?’
And then the man did a surprising thing; he lifted the gun in his lap . . .
‘Don’t,’ said Max, pressing harder with the knife. A thick thread of wet red trickled down on to the baby-blue blanket.
The man ignored Max. He raised the gun to his temple, crossed himself, and blew his own brains out.
12
‘What did you just say?’ Annie Carter slumped down into an armchair, still clutching the phone in her hand.
‘Dolly’s dead, Mrs C. I’m sorry,’ said Tony’s voice.
For a second Annie had a wild hope that maybe this was all part of a damned dream – that she was still asleep, that this wasn’t real. But the sound of the waves on the shore was real enough. The sadness in Tony’s voice was real, too. Terribly, horribly real.
Annie gulped. Her mouth was dry and she had trouble getting the words out. ‘What happened?’ she asked faintly.
She thought he would say heart attack. Something sudden, something unexpected like that. Dolly was a fit middle-aged woman. But shit happened; Annie knew it.
Instead, he said: ‘She was shot. Killed. In the flat over the Palermo.’
Annie stared numbly at the phone. She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Dolly, shot?
‘I’m sorry,’ said Tony again when Annie said nothing.
‘What . . .?’ Annie croaked. She coughed, cleared her throat, tried again. ‘What the hell do you mean, she was shot? Who shot her?’
‘We don’t know. Pete on the bar came into work and she hadn’t opened up. He thought that was strange – you know what she’s like, always up and at ’em . . .’
Annie knew. Dolly was a morning person; she was not. Back in the day when they’d both lived at Aunt Celia’s place in Limehouse, there Dolly would be, irritating as hell, whistling at seven o’clock in the morning while everyone else nursed sore heads and growled at each other.
‘. . . He used his own main door key, went up to the flat and there she was. Dead.’
Annie still couldn’t take it in. Dolly. For God’s sake. She thought of her friend – her oldest, dearest friend – full of life and coarse jokes. Once the roughest of rough brasses, Dolly Farrell had evolved over the years into a very efficient club manager, a pivotal member of the Carter workforce.
And now Tony was telling her that she was dead? That someone had killed her?
‘Why would anyone want to hurt Doll?’ she asked, pulling a shaking hand through her hair. Across the room she could see herself reflected in a big driftwood-edged mirror that she’d picked up on a trip to the market with Max – a lone woman in a red silk robe, slumped in the seat as though she’d just been knocked sideways. Her hair was mussed up from sleep, her tanned face was grey-tinged as the shock set in, her dark green eyes were shadowed with pain.
‘I don’t know. I really don’t,’ he said.
‘The police . . . ?’ she asked.
‘They’ve been. Done their stuff. Dabs. Pictures. The usual.’
‘When did it happen?’
‘Thursday night.’
‘It’s Saturday. Why the fuck didn’t you call me sooner?’ Now anger was overriding the anguish.
‘What could you have done?’ Tony was silent for a beat. Then he said: ‘Mr Carter’s not there with you?’
‘No. He’s not.’ But she was used to coping without help, even without hope. Dig deep and stand alone, that was her motto in life. So far, it had served her well. She had come through storms before, had soaked it all up and she was still standing. But this . . . this was the bitterest of blows.
‘Have the Bill got any leads?’ she asked, thinking, Not Dolly, no, make this be a bad dream, please . . .
‘That’s what I’m asking our tame coppers, right now. Not getting any answers yet, but I’ll keep asking.’
‘Who the hell would do this?’ said Annie, suddenly springing to her feet, clutching at her head. ‘What had she— I mean, what’s been happening with her? Was there a man involved with her, anything like that?’
Even as she said it, Annie thought that it was a stupid question. Dolly had never, to her knowledge, had much time for men. She had a troubled past, and Annie knew that men had been a large part of that trouble. So far as she knew, her friend had been happiest living a celibate life.
‘I’m asking the questions. I thought of that. But you know Dolly. Don’t seem like her style somehow.’
Annie was pacing around, pulling the phone cord along with her. ‘What the fuck?’ she raged, feeling helpless, thinking that this couldn’t be happening.
‘You want me to do anything?’ asked Tony.
Annie was having flashbacks. Dolly drinking gin and tonic in the bar, laughing at some off-colour joke one of the punters had told. Dolly hauling Annie’s arse out of bed after she’d split from Max back in 1980, pulling her back to her feet with the force of her will, making her carry on even when she didn’t want to. She felt her eyes fill with hot, painful tears – and she never cried. But this was Dolly. Dolly was her best mate. And now . . . oh fuck, how could this be? – Dolly was dead.
Annie blinked hard, gulping back her tears until all she felt was that cleansing rage again. She kicked the coffee table, hard. Then again. Then again. Shells skidded over the surface and dropped to the floor. Anger rushed through her in an unstoppable tide. Whoever did this, they were finished. She would see to it.
When she spoke again, her voice was harder, steadier. ‘Ask the questions, Tone. Ask as many as you can. See nobody rests. Keep doing what you’re doing.’
There was a silence at the other end of the phone, all those thousands of miles away, in London. Then he said: ‘What you going to do?’
Annie drew in a breath.
Composed herself.
‘I’m coming back,’ she said.
13
For long moments after the man in the wheelchair killed himself, Max stood there in awe. He’d heard of it, but never seen it up close and personal. This was the type of loyalty these people commanded, with their omerta, their code of endless silence. To death and beyond.
He stared down at the corpse still half-propped in the chair, leaning way over to the left. The bullet had been high-calibre, and there was a lot of damage; death had been a certainty, no chances taken. Blood and bone and brain matter had spewed out of the shattered skull in a fountain. Rather than talk and disgrace himself, betray the Mafia code he’d sworn to uphold, the man had taken his own life.
Crazy bastards, thought Max as he took wheelchair man’s gun.
But you had to admire them somehow.
Antonio was moaning now, starting to come round.
Max forgot wheelchair man and walked over to where Antonio lay bleeding on the ground. He picked up his gun, tucked it into the waistband of his trousers with the other man’s gun. Knife in hand, he approached the man and looked down at him.
Antonio stirred
, his eyes flickering open. Crying out in pain, he put his right hand over his left wrist, where the blood was still pumping out.
Max poked him with a toe and Antonio stared up at him with the pain-warped ferocity of a rabid dog.
‘My friend,’ said Max, ‘you’re going to bleed out in about forty minutes. You understand me, yeah? Because you were going to be the interpreter for that sack of bones in the wheelchair. Right?’
The man said nothing. His eyes flicked sideways, took in his dead companion slumped over in the chair, then back to the man standing over him.
‘Unless I get you to some help, you’re going to die,’ said Max. Judging by the way the other one had reacted, he didn’t hold out a lot of hope for this plan, but he had to try. ‘So tell me where Gina Barolli is, and you’ll get it.’
The man spat at Max.
‘That’s not nice,’ said Max, and put his foot hard on the place where the blood was spurting out. The man on the ground shrieked.
‘Tell me,’ said Max.
The man writhed and cursed in Sicilian.
‘Don’t fuck me around,’ Max advised him. ‘Speak English. Tell me where she is.’
‘She’s in hell and so will you be soon,’ he sobbed.
‘She’s not in hell,’ said Max. ‘She’s been making phone calls, saying things. And I’m here to see her and find out what she’s on about. Only she never shows, does she. Instead, she sends you two clowns – one dressed up like a pantomime dame and you without a fucking clue – to finish me off. Now why would she do that?’
Antonio said nothing.
‘This is going to get very painful for you if you don’t start talking,’ Max warned with a sigh. ‘I’m going to see Gina Barolli, one way or the other. So you may as well make this easy for yourself.’
‘Fuck you!’ shouted Antonio.
Max leaned down over the man and opened up his other wrist, too. The man screamed like a little girl as blood spurted. ‘Now look. You’ve got trouble. Twenty minutes tops, I’d say. People can live after this. If they get the right medical stuff done to them, and quick. But leave it too late, and you know what? Even in this hot sun, you’re soon going to start feeling very cold. First comes the shivers, and then you’re weak and disorientated, and then you pass out and the next thing is – you’re dead.’
