Stay Dead

by Jessie Keane

‘Annie?’ said Ellie, seeing she was miles away.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Annie, coming back to the here and now. She took a swig of the tea, picturing the girl. She’d be a brunette, twenty-ish; keen-eyed and sniffing out wealth, power . . . and of course she would be gorgeous. Annie had seen it all before. The young Eurasian beauty on the arm of a decrepit but wealthy-looking old man in Kingstown. The glamorous blonde flirting with a man twenty-five years her senior in the Sandy Lane restaurant. She and Max had been sitting at the next table, had even smiled at each other, sharing the unspoken thought: there it is again. Blondes had never done it for Max. No, it would be a brunette. Like her, only a lot younger. The pain of it clamped at her guts, made her feel sick.

  ‘You know what?’ Ellie was saying, hands clasped around the teacup as if trying to get them warm. ‘I spoke to Doll last Monday on the phone. We were going to meet up next Thursday at the Ritz, our usual thing.’

  Annie nodded: she knew. Tea at the Ritz. Once, she had regularly joined them there.

  ‘Now she’ll never make it,’ said Ellie, her face dissolving into tears again. ‘Sorry,’ she muttered, going to the worktop and tearing off a hank of kitchen roll. She dabbed at her eyes and blew her nose, chucked the tissue into the bin. She came back to the table and sat down with a shuddering sigh, then stared at Annie with reddened eyes. Ellie’s mascara was all down her cheeks, she looked a mess.

  ‘Who the fuck would do a thing like that?’ asked Ellie. It was a howl of protest.

  ‘She was shot, Tone said when he called me,’ said Annie, swallowing past a painful lump in her throat.

  ‘That’s right. She was shot. God, poor Dolly.’ Ellie’s eyes were bright with tears. She gulped and stared at Annie’s face. ‘I thought Tone would’ve collected you from the airport. You came in a cab.’

  Annie shook her head, trying to think past this huge obstacle in her brain. Dolly was dead. Truth was, she’d been so devastated by what Tony had told her on the phone that she hadn’t thought to mention transport to him, and he hadn’t offered. Which, now she thought about it, was odd. Usually, Tone was on the ball with such things. But then, he’d had a shock too.

  ‘You got a spare bed, Ellie?’ she asked. She felt weary, right through to the bone.

  There was a flicker of hesitation before Ellie recovered herself and said, ‘Course. There’s always a place for you here.’

  Of course there was. Annie was the boss’s wife, after all. Right now, she was wondering how much longer that was going to be the case. It made her feel sad, hurt, angry. She and Max had been through so much, and she didn’t want it to end this way, with him having a hole-in-the-corner affair and her having to cope all alone again.

  She loved him. Worshipped the bones of him.

  She drank the tea and let out a heartfelt sigh. ‘I need a kip. After that, maybe this is going to make some kind of sense.’

  But I doubt it, she thought.

  ‘Come on, I’ll show you to your room,’ said Ellie, standing up. She paused there, clutching at the kitchen chair. Her tear-reddened hazel eyes met Annie’s. ‘They’ll find out who did it, though, won’t they? The Bill, I mean,’ said Ellie. ‘They’ve got to.’

  Annie nodded. ‘They will,’ she said.

  Or I will, she added to herself.

  17

  ‘I do remember you,’ said Gina Barolli, her face screwed up, her hand still clutched to her scrawny chest.

  Max moved a little closer – not too close – and he kept the gun trained on her.

  Gina’s mouth trembled. The pain was bad, and growing. Then she said: ‘You’re the security man. In London. You called yourself Mark something then. You were guarding her.’

  Max stared at her, wondering at her thought processes. So she remembered that time after Constantine’s death, when Annie had moved back to London to escape the poisonous influence of his eldest son Lucco. But it seemed she didn’t remember what had happened later, in New York, when Max’s true identity had been revealed and Alberto, Constantine’s youngest son, had taken over the reins as the godfather.

  ‘Where is Fidelia? And where is Antonio?’ Gina demanded.

  ‘Fidelia’s tied up right now,’ said Max. ‘And I told you. Antonio’s in the hospital. He had an accident. You’ve been phoning one of my clubs in London, the Blue Parrot, talking about your brother.’

  Had she? Gina couldn’t remember doing that, and if she had she ought to be ashamed, because that was a stupid thing to do, and dangerous. Omerta demanded her silence. She knew that. She had lived by that code all her life.

  ‘I didn’t phone anyone,’ she said, her lips trembling as the pain clamped her chest tight again.

  ‘Yeah, you did.’ Max glanced back at the two men standing silent, watching, from the doorway. ‘Wait outside. Close the door,’ he said, then returned his attention to Gina as they obeyed. ‘You spoke to Gary Tooley and you said something very interesting. You said that my wife ain’t my wife at all. You said that she’s still married to your brother, Constantine.’

  ‘That’s right.’ Gina’s chin set suddenly in a stubborn line. ‘That’s the truth.’

  ‘That ain’t the truth,’ said Max. ‘Because Constantine is dead. He died in an explosion years ago, in Montauk.’

  Gina raised a trembling hand to her brow, closed her eyes. Then she opened them and stared malevolently at Max. ‘How dare you come here. Constantine will see to you, my friend. You can be very sure of that.’

  ‘That would be a hell of a trick. The bastard’s dead in a box in a New York cemetery.’

  Suddenly Gina was clutching harder at her chest. ‘Can you fetch Fidelia . . . ?’ she said, her voice little more than a whisper.

  Max moved in a little. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Get Fidelia. I feel . . .’

  The only sound in the room for long moments was Gina’s laboured breathing. She was slumped further over in her chair now, holding her chest. All at once, huge globs of sweat were popping out on her face.

  Christ, she’s not faking it.

  Max ran to her chair and pulled her upright.

  ‘Gina? Miss Barolli? Come on, you old fuck, don’t bloody die on me now!’ He patted her thin cheeks, looked at the blue-tinged lips and thought, Shit, that looks bad.

  Her eyes were flickering closed and her brow was soaking wet and creased with pain. Then the eyes, dark and hate-filled, fastened on his and she spat at him. He pulled his head away sharply, as if drawing back from a striking snake, and now she was smiling although he could see she was in agony.

  ‘She’s not your wife at all,’ she gasped out, having to pause between each word to catch her faltering breath. ‘She’s his. She has always been . . . she will always be . . . his.’

  Max put a hand to her chest. He could hardly feel a heartbeat and suddenly he thought of mummies, ancient mouldering Egyptian mummies, coming to life after thousands of years. He’d always laughed at horror films, but he was living one now.

  ‘Constantine Barolli is dead,’ he said between gritted teeth. This mad old bitch, what the hell was she saying?

  Now she really was smiling, although the smile became a twisted grimace of pain.

  ‘He’s not dead,’ she said, so low that Max had to strain to hear it. ‘He’s alive.’

  ‘He died in the explosion at Montauk,’ said Max.

  She was shaking her head, laughing at him, crying out in pain, but still mocking him, jeering at him.

  ‘He didn’t die. You can’t kill a great don like Constantine . . . oh . . .’

  She was wincing, clawing harder at her chest, kneading frantically at her left arm.

  ‘He died,’ said Max.

  ‘He didn’t die,’ she gasped out. ‘And she knows it.’

  ‘She?’ Max stared at the contorted face.

  ‘Annie Carter. Her. The puttana. The bitch. She’s . . . always known.’

  With those final, damning words, Gina Barolli took one last halting breath and her eyes closed. She slumped
, lifeless, in the chair.

  And Max knew at last.

  Gary Tooley had been telling the truth.

  Annie had betrayed him.

  18

  Limehouse, 1958

  Turned out, Dolly was wrong about the safety thing. While Mum sat like a vegetable in the rocking chair up in the bedroom and the younger kids were at school or out playing, things would happen. Mum was becoming more and more cut off from reality. Dad would come in from his job and while usually he just had a wash-down with a flannel, occasionally he would bathe in the tin bath in front of the fire. Dolly would fill the bath for him with endless heavy kettles of water off the stove while he sat at the kitchen table watching her. More and more he was doing this, taking a full bath – and she knew why. She always went off into the sitting room and let him get on with it.

  ‘Dolly girl!’ he’d call out.

  It was the shout that filled her with fear. She would creep to the closed door and say: ‘Yes, Dad?’

  ‘Come and scrub my back, there’s a good girl,’ he called back to her.

  ‘I’m doing my homework, Dad!’ she shouted back, although that was a bald lie, she never did homework. If they put her in detention for it – and they did, often – she was pleased, because that meant she wouldn’t have to come home until later. She never wanted to come home, not now.

  ‘That can wait! Come on.

  What else could she do? This was Dad.

  Trembling, she opened the door and stepped into the kitchen. In front of the fire, there was Dad sitting naked in the tin bath. He was bulky, hairy. She stood there, undecided, until he looked back at her over his meaty shoulder and said: ‘Come on then, girl. Soap my back for me.’

  Dolly thought she might be sick, and if she was sick then she hoped it would choke her and end all this weird, claustrophobic misery and torment. But she went over and took the soapy flannel from his hand and started scrubbing her dad’s back. She kept her eyes firmly on his back, hotly and horribly aware that he was undressed and that this was wrong. But he was her dad and he loved her, didn’t he?

  So was it wrong?

  She didn’t know, and there was no one she could talk to about it. The teachers? Impossible. A friend at school? She no longer had any friends there, she’d drawn away from people, thinking they might guess her dirty secret and be disgusted with her just as she was disgusted with herself.

  Her brothers and sister? No, she couldn’t tell them. They would be jealous of the gifts, they wouldn’t understand. Already Sarah was acting strange with her, being cool and offish. She thought that Sarah might know what was going on, and a hot tide of embarrassment flooded her at that thought. Mum, then?

  No. Not Mum. Dolly was Mum’s rival for Dad’s affections, she could see that. And somewhere in her heart she relished it, felt a certain twisted, ghastly pride at the feeling. She wished Mum was normal like other mums, that she wasn’t a head case, that she would be here, really here, and shield Dolly from these things that shouldn’t be happening.

  So she couldn’t talk to anyone about it. And anyway, this was Dad, and Dad loved her. She soaped his back, and then he caught her arm and took it down the front of his body. He leaned back in the water and pressed her hand to that long white hard thing that loomed out of the soap suds. Horrified, Dolly thought she might scream but instead she cut off from the here and now and thought of the stained-glass angels in the little church near the primary school she had loved so much, of how happy she had been then, when she had been innocent and untouched; before she knew about the man-and-woman thing and everything had turned bad.

  Desperately she tried to blank out what he was doing, moving her hand up and down, faster and faster until his whole body stiffened and she thought he must be having a stroke or something. She hoped he was. Then the hard thing went soft, and finally Dad sighed and relaxed and let go of her arm.

  ‘You’re my special girl, ain’t you?’ he murmured, lying back, eyes closed.

  Dolly hugged her arm, which felt bruised. She let the flannel drop into the soap suds with a shudder of horror. Then she turned, and saw Mum standing at the bottom of the stairs, watching them.

  19

  Dolly was shamed to her soul by Mum seeing what was happening in front of the fire. Her face, her whole body, burned with embarrassment and guilt that her mother had seen her doing the bad thing with Dad.

  What Dolly expected was that Mum would shout and scream, that she would cuff Dolly around the ear, and she deserved that . . . but none of that happened.

  Dolly would never forget the image of that room: the hot fire blazing, her mother standing on the bottom step, staring; and Dad’s head slowly swivelling around as he saw Dolly’s horrified face turned toward where Edie stood.

  Sam Farrell stared at his wife, and said nothing. After long, long moments Edie simply turned and went back upstairs. Dad sat back in his bath. And Dolly fled the room.

  Dolly thought that after the bath thing Edie would talk to her husband, angry words would be exchanged; but again she was let down. If anything, Mum seemed to withdraw even more, only sometimes Dolly caught her mum staring fixedly at her, saying nothing, just looking at her daughter as if she was looking at a stranger.

  Then one Saturday Dad came in from the pub. Mum was in the kitchen in her usual seat, staring at nothing in particular, and the kids were out playing. Dad came in, weaving a little on his feet, slightly drunk, and looked at his wife slumped there. His expression was one of impatience and disgust.

  ‘Going to sort out the box room,’ he snapped at his wife. Then he turned to Dolly. ‘Come on, Doll, you can give me a hand.’ And he headed for the stairs.

  Dolly looked at Mum, but Edie’s eyes remained resolutely on the floor. What was he talking about, the box room? The tiny room was a tip, everything went in there, all the shit in the entire world it seemed, so why was he talking about sorting it out? Dad never bothered himself with stuff like that.

  ‘I said come on – you deaf?’ Dad snarled at Dolly from the bottom of the stairs.

  Confused, Dolly followed him up. But instead of going left to the box room, he went into the bedroom he shared with Mum. Her heart suddenly in her mouth, Dolly hesitated at the door and he took her hand, pulled her inside, shut it. He passed a hand over his face and she thought she saw a flicker of something like despair there before it was gone, quick as a flash, and then he was smiling.

  ‘You’re my best girl, ain’t you, Doll?’ he said, and his voice was almost whining, almost pleading, as he led her to the bed.

  ‘What about the box room?’ Dolly blurted out in terror, her face red with shame because she knew what he was going to do, he was going to do the man-and-woman thing to her, she knew it . . .

  And Mum knew it too.

  That thought cut into her, sharp as a knife. Mum was sitting downstairs letting him do this, because it kept him away from her.

  ‘That’ll keep. Lay down there, Dolly, there’s a good girl.’

  What could she do? This was wrong, but it was Dad, and she loved him, of course she did. So she lay down on the bed and when he lay down next to her she didn’t bolt for the door. It took willpower not to, but this was her dad. He loved her. She had to keep reminding herself of that, she had to.

  Down in the kitchen, Edie heard her daughter’s piercing scream.

  ‘Oh Christ in heaven,’ she said, and as Dolly screamed again she put her hands over her ears and rocked backward and forward in her chair, crying. ‘Forgive me,’ she moaned. ‘Please forgive me.’

  20

  After that first time, it happened again and again – so many times that Dolly lost count, and she tried to count, to think that some day she might reach the end of this, that it might stop. But it didn’t.

  Mum knew.

  That was the bit that really choked Dolly. Mum knew about this, and she didn’t intervene, didn’t give a monkey’s. She was just relieved that Dad’s attentions were elsewhere. But maybe this was normal? Maybe this was ju
st one of the adult things that Dolly hadn’t previously known about, and which she had to learn? She didn’t know.

  Time and again she thought of the angels in the little church, of how stupid and innocent she had been to think that there was beauty in the world. She remembered the sweet-faced old priest with his fine words about God and redemption. But the priest had been wrong, so wrong. There was no beauty. There was nothing in this world except filth and degradation.

  Beauty?

  What a laugh.

  It didn’t exist, not in her world. Nothing worth a flying fuck did.

  Mum wouldn’t look her in the face any more, Dolly knew that much. And more and more they carted Edie off to the hospital to get ‘zapped’, as Nigel mockingly called it. Nigel thought Dad could do no wrong, but Mum? He’d grown critical of her, aping his father’s attitude. When Edie got home, it was Dolly who had to put her to bed, clean up the sick, deal with her vague, mad statements. It always took a day or two for Edie to come back to herself, and in between she was lost to them. Not a mother at all, really, just a thing in a bed, babbling nonsense, poor cow. Dolly saw how Edie cringed away from her husband whenever he came near, and she didn’t wonder at it. She felt rage and bitterness toward her mother, no love at all now, but in the cold logical core of herself she could see Edie’s viewpoint. She could see that Edie had chosen to sacrifice her eldest daughter and save herself.

  So it went on, months and months of endless torment. Dolly ate chocolates, the guilt-gifts she got from her dad, and she grew fatter, comfort-eating. Home was a war zone and she was just spoils, to be enjoyed as the man of the house thought fit.

  It went on, and on – until she was ill.

  Everyone was ill that winter; the flu bug was doing the rounds and sure enough the whole bloody family went down like ninepins. First it hit Edie, who’d been in the hospital again getting her brain fried, and her usual sickness and nausea when she came home just went on and on, until they had to call the doctor out.

  ‘Influenza,’ he pronounced, and left. ‘Bed rest, liquids, warmth.’