by Jessie Keane
Gary heaved a sigh. ‘As I said—’ he started, and Redmond slammed the phone down.
Gary put the receiver back on the cradle with a satisfied smile. He hoped he wasn’t pushing this too hard. In fact, he already had the information Redmond wanted, but Gary wanted him hungrier, willing to part with even more dosh this time.
Ten grand, he was thinking.
Yes, Gary already knew these things, but he was holding on, keeping his powder dry, building up Redmond’s interest and anxiety until he was desperate for a word on all this. Gary was playing a long game. Oddly, that batty old cow Gina Barolli hadn’t phoned him for a while now, but that didn’t matter – he had what he needed. That crazy-eyed cunt Delaney might be snapping at his heels, but he could handle him.
He was sure of it.
Ten grand for the big one, for the best and most shocking thing of all.
The news that Constantine Barolli was alive.
53
Annie lay in bed that night and thought about Dolly’s past. She fell asleep and dreamed of chasing a murderer through a church with Hunter, and then the murderer morphed into Darren, who had been her friend, camp as a row of pink tents and dead, long dead. Then he was laughing and joking with Ellie as they both sang along to ‘Summer Holiday’. At first they were in the church and then the church became upstairs in Auntie Celia’s old knocking shop.
Halfway through the song, the flesh started to melt off Darren’s face and Dolly popped her head around the door – not Dolly as she had been then, a rough and uncouth brass, but the Dolly she had been just recently, well-groomed, middle-aged.
Dolly told them it was the heat coming off the lines, nothing to worry about, but Darren just kept melting like a candle, his eyes vanishing under strings of waxen flesh, his cheeks dissolving, his mouth slanting to one side like a stroke victim’s, and the music just went on and on, pounding into her head, louder and louder, and then Annie woke up abruptly, panting, sweating, shooting up in the bed to stare wild-eyed into blackness.
She flicked on the bedside light, pushed her hair out of her eyes and looked at the big empty bed and wished that Max was here with her. You got used to a person being there, and Max’s presence had always been so reassuring. With him around, you felt nothing could go too badly wrong. Without him . . .
Christ! Where is he? What’s going on?
Earlier, she had tried the Prospect villa number again; still, he wasn’t there. And he hadn’t even phoned home.
Anxiety gripped her. What if he was planning to leave her, and the next time she saw him it would be just so he could tell her goodbye? The terror of that crushed her chest like a vice. More than anything she longed to go home, to go back to being in Barbados with Max, happy, unworried.
But she had to stay here in London. She was needed here. Dolly’s death could not go unpunished and the truth was she didn’t trust the law – not even Hunter, who had been useful in the past, had even once pulled her cut and bleeding from a near-terminal wreck – to handle the job of tracking down Dolly’s killer.
She knew she was needed elsewhere, too: the pizzino, the note, hastily passed to her in the street. Come at once.
Well, she couldn’t. Not now.
They know, she thought. That’s what this is. Everyone knows.
And . . . oh shit, Max knows too.
She reached for a bottle of mineral water, poured herself a glass and drank half of it down in one swallow; she was parched. She looked at the bedside clock; a quarter to four in the morning and already outside the traffic was starting. Soon it would be daylight and the birds would sing and London would come heaving back to her feet after the night’s rest and start her frenzied daytime dance again.
But Dolly would still be dead.
Annie squeezed her eyes tight shut.
Ah, Jesus, why her? Come on, God, if you had to take somebody, why’d you have to take Dolly?
There were no answers.
It was just the heat coming off the lines.
Crazy, crazy dreams. What the hell did that mean?
She had no idea. She lay back down, flicked off the light. Thought of old friends, dead friends. Darren and Aretha and Billy . . . and now Dolly had joined them.
They’re up there now, in heaven, singing ‘Summer Holiday’ . . .
That thought at least made her smile. Her eyes closed. This time, she slept and the nightmares stayed away.
54
Annie left the hotel next morning and got a cab over to Ellie’s. The cleaners were in, hoovering up the debris and collecting champagne corks from the excesses of the night before.
Annie went upstairs and walked straight into Chris.
‘Hi, Chris,’ she said.
He just grunted. Avoiding her eyes, he swept past her down the stairs. Annie walked on into the kitchen. It was all shipshape again, although the dresser with its crystals was gone. Everything else was neat and tidy, as Ellie liked it. Ellie herself, elegantly dressed in a navy skirt suit and white blouse, was sitting at the table drinking tea. When Annie appeared, she missed her mouth and slopped tea on to the table.
‘I see I’m still getting the bum’s rush off everyone,’ said Annie with a grim smile.
Ellie grabbed a tea towel and wiped at the table’s surface. She was scowling – and, like her husband, avoiding Annie’s eyes.
‘Ellie,’ said Annie, sitting down opposite.
‘What?’ Ellie wasn’t looking at her, she was still dabbing at the wet patch, trying to prevent a mark on the wood.
‘You’re supposed to be my mate.’
Ellie glanced up. Her big moon face went pink. ‘I am your mate,’ she said, and turned her attention back to the tabletop.
‘Then tell me what’s going on. I’ve had the cold shoulder off you, Tony, Steve, Gary – everyone except Jackie Tulliver, and that’s only because he’s a useless waste of space and he sees me as one big fat wad of walking cash to provide the next drink for him. Tell me, Ellie. Tell me what the hell it is.’
Ellie shrugged and looked unhappy. ‘I can’t help you,’ she said.
‘You mean you won’t.’
Ellie’s eyes darted up and met Annie’s. ‘Will you leave off? I mean I bloody daren’t. Don’t you get it? Having you here put me in bother with people – they damned near wrecked this place just because I said I’d let you stay. You’re trouble, Annie. And I don’t need trouble. I’ve had enough of all that. All I want’s a quiet life. That’s all. No bother, no aggro.’
Annie decided it was time to put the screws on. Ellie had always been the weak link in the strong chain of friendship with her and Dolly. Ellie was the self-centred one who would pull the ladder up and say fuck you when the going got rough. ‘If you came to me in trouble, I’d help you,’ she said.
‘Yeah, you say that.’
‘I mean it. I need a friend, Ellie, and at the moment I’m on my own.’
Ellie stood up and put her cup and saucer into the sink. She turned quickly, and this time she looked Annie square in the eye.
‘Look, I don’t want to have to say this to you, but I have to so I’m going to say it, straight out, no sugar coating. Just piss off, will you? For my sake. Just go away. I can’t help you, I’ve got nothing to say to you, just leave me alone.’
55
Annie walked out of the club feeling sick and bereft. Ellie had washed her hands of her. She had one friend dead and the other not giving a fuck.
Not that she blamed Ellie. Ex-tarts were always of the nervous variety, she knew that. They’d seen the rough end of life and when they escaped from the game they didn’t want anything except normality, the comfy old fire and slippers routine. How could you blame them for that? Annie knew she’d be exactly the same, in those circumstances.
A bike shot past and then a long dark car swerved into the pavement with a screech of brakes. Horns hooted, taxi drivers hollered out of their windows and waved their fists. Annie kept walking, thinking about Dolly. She paused in front of the ca
r to cross the street; Jackie had said he’d meet her in the next road. And then suddenly there were two big men standing on either side of her and one of them was shoving something that felt like a knife into her side.
She winced and shouted: ‘What the fuck?’ in surprise and pain, and the knife dug deeper.
‘In the car,’ said the one with the knife.
She looked up into a plug-ugly big dish of a face with a nose dotted with blackheads, mean piggy eyes and thick curling black eyebrows that met in the middle.
I know you, thought Annie.
He jabbed the knife deeper into her side, hard enough to hurt.
‘Don’t fuck me around,’ he warned, nudging harder and harder, pushing into her. His mate moved in closer too. Annie flashed him a glance. Taller, shaven-headed, his darkly tanned face pitted with adolescent acne. His face was like stone, without expression.
Jesus, I’m in trouble here.
Between them they shoved her into the back of the car. Eyebrows got into the back with her while the bald one went round to the front and slid behind the wheel. The whole time, Eyebrows kept up the knife pressure on her side.
Gonna have a bruise there, she thought.
‘You don’t want to do this,’ she said, her voice breathy with panic.
‘Shut up,’ said Eyebrows.
‘No, listen. You really don’t.’
Eyebrows stared at her. ‘I said, shut up.’
Annie shut up. She was aware of her mouth drying to ashes, of her heart rate accelerating crazily with fear.
‘Can you tell me what the fuck’s going on?’ she managed to get out.
Eyebrows turned a dark cold look on her. ‘Shut up,’ he said, and the way he said it made her freeze. ‘You make me say it again, you’ll be sorry.’
The car was in motion, swerving out into the traffic; more honking of horns, more taxi drivers shaking their fists.
Help me, thought Annie, but there was no help to be found. She thought she saw Jackie, ambling along the pavement on the other side of the road, but he was there and then gone; the car moved fast, leaving Jackie far behind.
As usual, she was on her own.
They stopped beside a warehouse down by the docks. Annie was watching Eyebrows nervously, but as he got out he flicked the knife shut and slipped it into his pocket. Baldy got out too and the pair of them dragged her from the car.
Annie decided she had to front this out.
‘You don’t know what you’re playing with here,’ she said to Eyebrows. And, ridiculously, she heard the next phrase coming out of her own mouth, a phrase she openly laughed at when it was uttered by politicians, film stars, people who were so far up their own arseholes that they had lost all sense of reality. ‘Do you know who I am?’
Eyebrows just looked at her. Baldy gave a slight smirk.
‘Yeah,’ said Eyebrows. ‘We know exactly who you are, and what you are too. That’s why we’re here.’
‘I’m warning you—’ started Annie, but the words were cut short when Eyebrows slapped her hard across the face.
She flew backward as if shot from a cannon. The stinging pain of the blow shocked her. She grabbed at her face as if to check it was still attached to her head. Couldn’t believe it. This fucker had the nerve to hit her – her, Annie Carter. She drew in a gulping breath. Her eyes were watering.
She started to speak again, and then Eyebrows came in close and punched her mid-section and all the breath went from her body in a huge whoosh of exploding air. She fell to the ground and lay there, unable to draw breath, her mind floundering in shock, her body clenched, her stomach a fiery ball of agony.
You bastards! You can’t do this! I’m Max Carter’s wife, are you fucking mental . . . ?
Her mouth formed the words but she couldn’t speak. She had no breath to speak with. Groaning, face screwed up in pain, she tried to crawl away, thinking this can’t be happening, and then Eyebrows kicked her hard in the ribs and there was pain, unbelievable pain. She felt something give; something that had been solid inside her was broken, and she went face-down into the gravel and the mud, the rain washing her hair into the dirt, covering her expensive clothes with yellow slime.
Then there were more kicks, and she was crawling, trying to get away, but it wasn’t possible. They were following her, both of them, kicking her, and in the end it was easier to just stop moving and hope that it would end.
It did end, eventually. In this century or the next, she wasn’t sure.
But not before she’d prayed for oblivion, even for death, just to make the pain go away.
Help me, someone.
But no one came.
PART TWO
56
‘You again? Look, OK, I’ve got what you want, but it’s going to cost you,’ said Gary when Redmond called in unannounced at the Blue Parrot one night.
Gary took Redmond up to the office, away from all the punters and the dancing girls and the noise of the DJ’s decks thrumming out ‘Sledgehammer’ by Peter Gabriel; Gary loved that song.
All right, he hadn’t expected an actual visit from Redmond, and he certainly hadn’t expected that he’d bring along a big shaggy dark-haired sidekick with a look in his eyes that said he’d kill his own granny for a fiver, but he had this sorted, he was the one in charge.
‘This is Mitchell,’ said Redmond. ‘He helps me out.’
Gary gave Mitchell a nod. Mitchell didn’t nod back.
‘Now listen,’ said Redmond, still talking reasonably, sweetly. ‘The time has come for you to stop dicking me about and tell me. What information do you have?’
Gary sat back in his chair behind his desk and pursed his lips. No way was he going to let Delaney rush this. He had the whip hand.
‘It’s very expensive information,’ he said.
‘How expensive?’
Gary thought of the ten grand, and hiked it a bit. Delaney would want to haggle, anyway.
‘Fifteen,’ he said.
‘Fifteen thousand?’ Redmond raised his eyebrows. ‘You can’t be serious.’
‘I’m very serious indeed,’ Gary said, and the track downstairs changed to ‘West End Girls’.
Redmond was shaking his head. He stood up and came around Gary’s desk. Gary didn’t like people doing that, he felt like a king on a throne behind that desk, he didn’t want oiks shoving around behind it.
‘Hey—’ he started, but he didn’t have time to finish.
Redmond grabbed the front of Gary’s bespoke tailored shirt and hauled him to his feet and hissed into his face: ‘You great long streak of piss! You think you’ve got the measure of me, do you?’
‘I—’ started Gary again, wondering where these delicate negotiations had gone wrong. This wasn’t in his plan, not at all.
‘Five grand,’ said Redmond, and to Gary’s horror he whipped out a knife and held it against his throat. ‘That’s what you’ll get, and that’s generous. If I don’t decide to cut you to ribbons instead.’
‘Hey, that’s—’ gulped Gary.
‘Five,’ said Redmond. ‘Right here. Four days’ time. And you tell me the rest of it.’
He let go of Gary’s shirtfront and moved back around the desk. Mitchell opened the door, and they left the room.
Gary sagged in his chair, shaken, aware that his palms were clammy.
Jesus!
That guy was a maniac.
Gary stared at the closed door, and touched a trembling hand to his throat. He’d thought he could handle Redmond Delaney, but looking into that crazy cunt’s eyes? Now he wasn’t so sure.
57
There was a mad jumble of impressions running through Annie’s head. Muddy yellow gravel and then wetness on her face, the rain, the fucking endless rain. Crawling again. Then collapsing into the wet grit beneath her, her fingers clawing into the gravel, her whole body clenching against the agony in her middle.
Something broken in there, for sure.
And then nothing. Blackness. Which was OK, which w
as pretty damned good really. But did it last? No. Soon she was back again, and this time there were voices, men’s voices, the sway of motion, she was back in a car and then a rush of air and she was on the ground again. Consciousness faded out, then in. Now there were people talking again, above her. Hands lifted her and she fell, and someone snapped: ‘Careful!’
She clawed at the ground and it was smooth, it was tarmac this time, not yellow grit, and she felt sticky hanks of wet hair hanging in her eyes when she opened them. She was lifted again. A crazy cacophony of sounds and cars zipping past, feet away; hands touching her, voices, more voices, and she was struggling to break free, to get away before they started on her again, but she was too weak to move.
‘Don’t,’ she whispered.
Then she was out of it again, she was gone.
‘. . . and no real internal injuries, she’s been . . .’
Voices. One female, one male.
Annie kept her eyes closed. She felt groggy, without strength.
‘Five milligrams,’ said someone close to her head.
Then she was gone again, blackness sweeping up and over her like a cloak.
Some time later, she was back. An hour may have passed, or a second. Or a year. She didn’t know. She half-opened her eyes and there was a bed, she was in a bed; there were five other beds nearby, all occupied, and there was a reception desk at the end of the row of beds, nurses in uniform, chatting, laughing, as if everything was normal.
Hospital, I’m in hospital.
She drew in a shuddering breath. It hurt like fuck. Her hands went to her midriff. She felt wide adhesive stuck there, stretching over her ribs and right round to the centre of her back. Into her mind came Eyebrows and Baldy, kicking her while she lay helpless on the ground.
Bastards.
‘You’re back with us then,’ said someone.
Annie turned her head a little and was instantly aware of pain in her neck, an aching muscle-deep pain that spiralled down to her arms, to her legs. She gulped, tried to find her voice. She felt drugged, enfolded in layers of cotton wool. They’d given her something, of course they had; without it, she reckoned the pain would be much, much worse. She looked at the young blonde nurse at the end of the bed.
