by Jessie Keane
Caroline kept on walking. Annie could see she didn’t give a shit. Life had just bounced her a big result; she’d caught herself a nightclub manager and now she was going to step into Dolly’s shoes and have the running of the Palermo. Probably she’d get Tony and the Jag to queen it around town in too. No wonder she was so made up with it all.
Sickened, Annie stood there as Caroline vanished back downstairs. Jackie looked at the floor.
‘It’s fucking sad,’ he said. ‘About Dolly.’
‘Yeah,’ said Annie, thinking that she’d like to kick Gary Tooley’s balls up around his ears somewhere. ‘Ain’t it just. Come on, let’s go see this fucking contact of yours.’
41
‘It’s years since I’ve been in a nightclub,’ said Redmond, looking around at the lush gold and brown decor of the Blue Parrot as Gary greeted him in the foyer. ‘We owned some, you know. My family. Back in the dim distant past,’ he said in that almost hypnotically soft southern Irish lilt.
And they were all burned to the ground, he thought.
‘Really,’ said Gary Tooley, uninterested.
Redmond took his time looking over this strange stork-like individual. He was too tall, too thin, his hair swept back and coloured a bright blond. His eyes were the eyes of a killer; pale, uncaring. Redmond recognized a kindred spirit, someone who could be every bit as vicious as himself.
‘So,’ said Redmond after they’d shaken hands. ‘This information you’ve got for me . . .’
‘Yeah. You’ll be amazed,’ said Gary. ‘Come on up.’
He led the way up the stairs at the side of the big room, escorted Redmond into an office, closed the door behind them. He sat down behind the desk, while Redmond sat in front of it. Then Redmond sat there and stared at Gary Tooley expectantly. Gary swallowed; he seemed all of a sudden nervous.
Well, he should be, thought Redmond. Gary Tooley ought to remember that the Delaney gang had shoved hard at the Carter territories, had been almost more trouble than could be handled. The Carter boys had been tough; but the Delaneys had given them a run for their money.
‘So?’ said Redmond, when Gary didn’t speak.
‘I’ve been getting calls,’ said Gary.
‘From who?’
‘Whoa.’ Gary sat back in his chair, sprawled, tried to reestablish just whose office this was, who was in control here. There was something about Redmond that chilled and intimidated him. But they were here to do business. That was all. Redmond had been out of the hard game for years. Even so, he still looked like a cold son of a bitch who’d pull your throat out through your ears if you upset him.
‘Whoa?’ echoed Redmond. His thin lips tilted in a lopsided smile. ‘Would you like to explain just what you mean by that?’
‘I mean let’s not rush this. There’s the question of payment first.’
‘Payment?’ Redmond’s smile broadened but it didn’t touch his eyes. ‘For what?’
‘For the information. It’s pretty hot stuff, I can tell you.’
‘But you can’t tell me. Apparently. Until I pay you money.’ Redmond stared at Gary and thought of old enemies. ‘Has Max Carter told you to do this?’
‘No. No way. This is all my own work.’
‘Mr Tooley, I need a suggestion of what you’re talking about.’
‘All right.’ Gary sat back, hooked one long leg over the other. Considered for a moment. ‘Suppose I shared with you some information I’ve held for a long, long time. About you. And about your sister, Orla.’
Redmond went very still. He had no idea where his twin was, or what had happened to her. They had parted ways back in the seventies, and so far he’d felt no driving urge to hook up with her again. He hoped she was well, and happy, wherever she was, but being Orla, tormented soul that she’d always been, he doubted it.
‘Go on,’ he said.
‘Someone’s been in touch with me and has told me things that concern you, and her.’
‘Like what?’
‘Can we negotiate first? Agree a price?’
‘No. I need more.’
‘It concerns an accident. A crash. Back in the seventies.’
Redmond stared at Gary but he wasn’t seeing him. Suddenly he was back there. The plane plummeting from the sky. The icy waters closing over his head, the panic, the pilot strapped dead, drowned, in his seat at the controls . . .
‘What about it?’ asked Redmond.
Gary smirked. ‘That got your attention.’
‘I said, what about it?’
Gary took a breath and said, very slowly, leaning forward in his chair: ‘It wasn’t an accident.’
He saw the impact his words had on Redmond. Saw the pale face blanch even whiter as the words sank in. Gary leaned back again in his chair and said: ‘Now can we talk money?’
42
They talked money, lots of it. Five thousand for information, five thousand to discover that there had been no fuel leak; five thousand to find that Constantine Barolli the Mafia don had ordered sabotage, had wanted both Redmond and Orla dead.
‘And there’s more,’ said Gary Tooley, clearly gloating now. ‘This old cunt keeps phoning here, talking about past times, and she’s hinting at something more. Something incredible.’
‘And what is that?’ demanded Redmond.
Gary spread his long-fingered hands. ‘That I don’t know yet,’ he lied. ‘But I will. I’ll worm it out of the crazy old bitch and then we’ll talk again, yeah? Agree another price for the additional information?’
Redmond smiled. It was the smile of an alligator before it snaps its jaws shut on its prey.
‘Of course,’ he said.
After the meeting, Redmond went home to his new rented house.
‘Good day?’ asked Mitchell, who had replaced the old housekeeper after his troubles with the church. Mitchell had worked for Redmond years ago, he could cook – after a fashion – and he was handy in any sort of fight, however nasty, so he was always useful to have around. Redmond had been booted out of his grace and favour home, although that didn’t concern him much. Years ago he had salted money away all over the place, the proceeds of lorry hijacks and shop robberies; he was minted. He could do as he pleased. He did miss all those willing little acolytes from the church, but what could you do? There were always women, if you wanted them. Right now, he didn’t.
‘Yeah, good,’ he said, and doggedly ate the meal Mitchell had prepared to keep his strength up, although he felt sick with excitement and his insides were churning.
Constantine Barolli had planned to kill him, and his twin.
And for what? Because Barolli had the hots for Annie Carter, of course. And who wouldn’t? She was – had always been – magnificent. Strong, ferocious – a lioness. You had to admire that.
It was a miracle that they had survived that crash.
The Mafia boss had wanted them dead.
And Gary Tooley had said there was more information to come.
Redmond wanted that information now.
He finished the meal, hardly even registering what he was eating, and went upstairs to his bedroom. There he sat on the bed for a while, then he stood up, stripped off his jacket and his shirt, and went to the mirrored wardrobe. Turning slightly, he saw the marks on his back, the freshly healed scars there. He opened the wardrobe door and took out a brown cardboard box, three feet long by four inches wide, removed the lid, and lifted out the kidney-shaped piece of rubber and the cat o’ nine tails hidden there.
He was wicked and he knew it.
He’d disgraced the church.
Disgraced himself.
Self-flagellation was the only cure, the only thing that cleansed him and made him feel better. So he lifted the woven-leather handle, marked brown with dried blood – his blood, and the blood of some of those women before Sally Westover, those poor little acolytes of his with their puny soft backs striped with the marks of the whip, the way he liked them, whimpering in pain and fear and adoration.
; He put the rubber between his teeth. Then he lifted the whip out, and swung it back, and struck, hard.
The pain was exquisite, cleansing him, scouring his troubled soul.
43
Limehouse, 1960
Dolly became a fixture around Celia’s knocking shop. She cleaned, she ironed, she chatted to the girls, and what little remained of any childlike innocence quickly fell away. It became her task to keep the bedrooms tidy and the bedding fresh, to make sure every room was ready for action.
It was her job to make sure there were plenty of tissues and packets of French letters beside each bed, and that there was always a full bottle of baby oil and a tub of Crowe’s Cremine, which was a theatrical make-up remover and perfect for lubrication. In Aretha’s room she also made sure there was a stock of rope and leather straps – and she regularly whopped the Dettol over a couple of old tasselled camel whips that someone had brought back from a Moroccan trip.
It always astonished Dolly, the diversity of the men who came through the door of the knocking shop. Cavalry officers, dustmen, bowler-hatted civil servants – the search for sexual satisfaction knew no social boundaries. And mostly they were well-behaved. But one night they weren’t, and what happened then stuck in Dolly’s memory and just wouldn’t budge.
‘I told you I don’t do that,’ Ellie was shouting.
Dolly came out of her room and stood on the landing.
‘No! For fuck’s sake, what are you—’
Darren came out of his room, quickly pulling on a robe. ‘What’s going on?’ he asked.
‘It’s Ellie,’ Dolly said, and Darren stepped forward and knocked on Ellie’s closed bedroom door.
‘Ellie? You all right in there?’
No answer came back.
Darren went to the banister, leaned over and shouted: ‘Celia!’ Then he went back to Ellie’s door and tried the handle. The door was locked. They could hear Ellie crying.
‘Shit!’ said Darren, kicking the door. Then he hammered on it again. ‘Open this bloody door!’ he shouted.
Celia was standing on the bottom stair. ‘What’s up?’ she called.
‘Ellie’s got trouble,’ said Darren. ‘The door’s locked, I can’t get in.’
Celia said nothing, just went to the phone on the hall stand and dialled quickly. Dolly didn’t hear what she said, but no sooner had she spoken to someone than she put the phone down again and hared up the stairs. She banged on Ellie’s door.
‘Ellie? You all right in there? Come on, unlock the bloody door.’
‘I can’t!’ came back Ellie’s shaking voice.
‘Why can’t you, for God’s sake?’
‘He won’t let me.’
‘Well, he’d better bloody let you or there’s going to be trouble. You all right?’
‘He hit me.’
There was a muttering of a male voice from behind the door.
‘Oi!’ yelled Celia. ‘You! Arsehole! You want to go beating girls up, do you? Come out here and try it on one who can take it then!’
‘Fuck off!’ yelled the punter.
‘You shit, you get out here. This is my house!’ returned Celia.
‘I said fuck off!’
From down below came the sound of a key turning in the front door and a gust of cold night air came in; with it came two red-haired men built like barn doors. Dolly had never seen the Delaneys before. Celia always spoke about them in hushed tones, like they were gods or something, set apart from the rest of shambling humanity. Now, as Dolly saw them come running up the stairs toward her, she thought they were just bloody terrifying.
‘What’s going on?’ asked the one in front, who had the air of being in charge.
‘Mr Delaney, one of my girls is having trouble. The door’s locked,’ said Celia.
‘Pat, get it open,’ he said, and they all stood back as Pat, massive and mean-eyed, took a kick at the door lock. It instantly juddered open, and he pulled a tyre iron out from under his mac and charged in, his brother following.
‘What the fuck’s this—’ started the man sitting on the bed, who was in shirt and Y-fronts.
Ellie was sitting on the other side of the bed nursing her jaw, her face wet with tears.
‘I’ll show you what the feck it is,’ said Pat Delaney, and yanked the man up and smashed a fist into his nose. Blood spattered out of it as he staggered away, then the one in charge caught him and held him as Pat started whacking his middle with the tyre iron.
Once the man sagged and all the fight left him, the one in charge flung him to the floor, and Pat waded in again, thwacking the iron down again and again, landing blow after blow to the man’s face until all Dolly, peeping in from the hallway, could see was a wet bloody mask.
Finally, the Delaneys hefted him up, grabbed his trousers and jacket, and bundled him and his belongings down the stairs and out the front door. Celia, who had followed them down, closed the door softly behind them. The house was quiet again, but for Ellie’s soft sobbing.
Celia came back up the stairs and looked at the bloodied carpet in Ellie’s room.
‘Get some soap and water and take care of that, will you, Doll?’ she said to Dolly, then she and Darren went in and sat either side of Ellie on the bed.
‘You all right then, Ells?’ asked Darren, putting an arm around her.
‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘He kept on about having a French polish, and I told him I don’t do that, I’ve told him a dozen times before, and tonight he just went bloody mad and wouldn’t listen.’
‘Never mind, Ellie, it’s over now. Tory and Pat Delaney have sorted him out good and proper. He won’t come back again,’ said Celia, patting her shoulder.
‘What’s a French polish?’ Dolly asked Darren later, when they were just turning in for the night and peace was restored.
‘A blow job,’ said Darren.
‘Oh.’ Dolly knew about blow jobs. She could understand Ellie’s aversion.
‘Night then, Doll,’ he said, and went back to his room.
Dolly went to bed. She lay there in the dark thinking about the man who’d had his face smashed in because he wanted a French polish, and the Delaneys that Celia paid protection money to. Now she could see why. They’d worked that bloke over like they were tenderizing a piece of meat. It had taken her some while and a lot of elbow grease to get the blood stains out of the carpet.
She had always thought that men worked against you – the exception being Darren, who was too interested in his own sex to ever bother the girls. But tonight had taught her a lesson; sometimes men could work in your favour, too. She turned over, plumped up her pillows, and slept more soundly than she had in a long, long while.
She caught Celia alone in the kitchen next day.
Celia looked up at her young worker through a haze of ciggie smoke. She was turning the pages of the Daily Mail, reading about all the bookshops selling out of Lady Chatterley’s Lover on publication day. ‘What?’ she queried.
Dolly sat down at the table. ‘I’ve remembered his name, that pimp who duffed me over.’
Dolly closed up the paper and took another deep drag on her ivory holder. ‘That’s good. What’s he look like?’ she asked.
‘He’s tall and thin. Bony. Dark-skinned. There’s a big scar here.’ Dolly ran a finger down her left cheek. ‘And he wears these flashy shoes with silver eagles on the toecaps.’
Dolly would never forget the eagles. One of them had been imprinted on her thigh for days after the beating he’d given her. You could make out the beak and even the feathers, he’d kicked her that hard.
‘Is that right?’ Celia exhaled a plume of smoke. ‘And his name?’
‘I’ll start on the bedrooms,’ said Dolly, standing up. ‘It’s Gregor White.’
‘Right you are,’ said Celia, and went back to her paper.
44
Gregor White knew the trouble with brasses. The trouble was, you had to be on their backs day and night. Keep them on their backs, too. Fail to do that, and th
e lazy cows would slope off to the Lyons Corner House or the coffee shop or the local Wimpy and stuff their faces with cakes and burgers and get a big arse on them and turn the punters off and then where would you be? Fucked, that’s where.
Discipline was Gregor’s watchword when it came to whores. You had to rule them with an iron fist, these women. That was all they understood, because basically they were scum, but they were lucrative scum, you must never forget that. Provided you kept a good eye on them, reined them in when necessary, landed a punch or two in the right place (which was never the face, punters were so picky) your income was secure.
And this was why Gregor was pissed off one night at around eleven o’clock to find that two of his best payers, Julie and Charmaine, were not on their usual corner where he expected them to be. He knew this because he was looking out of the window of his toasty-warm flat over the newsagents and from there he could see the corner – and where the fuck were they? Granted, it was foggy out there, and bloody cold, but they were used to it, they’d been doing it for years. This just went to prove that what his dear old mum had told him on her deathbed was true – you couldn’t depend on a bloody soul.
Angry, muttering under his breath, he pulled on his silver toecapped shoes, his favourites, and his tailored jacket, and then he pounded off down the stairs to find out what was occurring. The cold hit him like a knife and he pulled his jacket around him, shivering. Bastard women, he’d have to discipline them over this. And then he was going to give each of them a stiff talking-to.
He stalked to the corner and looked around. Traffic drifted past, fog lights cutting a swathe through the pea-souper, all the streetlights wearing shadowy mustard-yellow haloes. The fog dampened all sound, stifled the traffic noise – it felt quite spooky out here. He paced around, looking up the road and down it. No sign of them. No sign of anyone.
‘Fuck it,’ he muttered.
‘Got a light?’ asked a voice behind him.
He spun around, startled. He hadn’t heard anyone come up. The fog was drifting, thick as cobwebs; he could feel the dampness of it on his face, seeping into his clothes. Fuck this for a game. There was a bulky man wearing a mac and with a hat pulled down low over his face standing right there under the sickly, soupy glow of the street light. He was holding a cigarette.
