Stay Dead

by Jessie Keane

  ‘That’s good,’ said Hunter as she climbed up the steps to the house. ‘I’m questioning Dolly Farrell’s brothers and sister at the moment, if you’re interested.’

  Right now, Annie wasn’t. She didn’t answer.

  Hunter stared at her curiously, then said: ‘I’m glad Mr Carter’s with you, anyway. You might need a little moral support.’

  Annie paused and looked at him. ‘Why?’

  ‘We’re releasing Miss Farrell’s body. Mrs Brown is arranging the funeral for this Friday.’

  Oh shit, she thought.

  Inside the house, it was deathly quiet. Having said goodbye to Hunter at the door, she crossed the big, empty, echoing hall with its black-and-white chequered marble floor tiles, passing beneath the vast chandelier. All the tables and chairs in the hallway were shrouded in white dust sheets. She dropped her ruined bags and her suitcase, then opened the study door and went inside, tossing more sheets aside and sitting tiredly down in the gold leather captain’s chair behind the desk. Her heart was racing, her mouth dry. She wished she drank, because if ever drink was called for, it was now.

  Max knew, and he wanted a divorce.

  A divorce.

  She slumped there behind the big Moroccan leather-topped desk and let her head sink into her hands. Her rib twinged painfully as she leaned forward, and in frustration and irritation she picked up the bone-handled paper knife that had once been Constantine’s, and flung it to the floor.

  Christ, what a mess.

  Her brain flashed back to the fury in Max’s eyes, the way he’d spat the D word at her. She shuddered as if caught in a blast of cold air. He meant it, too. She knew that.

  But he don’t know it all. He only knows part of it.

  Would he give her a chance to tell the rest? She doubted it.

  She was still sitting there an hour later when the doorbell rang. She heaved herself to her feet and went and answered it. Jackie Tulliver was standing there.

  ‘Now where the fuck you been? You keep vanishin’ like you do, how am I supposed to stay in touch?’ he asked, his voice indignant as he bustled inside.

  Didn’t I tell him to sod off?

  Annie let out a weary sigh and closed the door behind him. ‘What the hell do you want now?’

  ‘Hey, I’m workin’ hard here, on your behalf. Findin’ out things. Doin’ some business, greasin’ some palms.’

  ‘Did I ask you to?’

  ‘I’m not the sort of person who quits on a job,’ said Jackie.

  No, not when there’s some beer money in it, thought Annie.

  ‘Y’see, the way I see it is, my job is to take a load offa your shoulders, help you out, smooth your path through life.’

  ‘Right,’ said Annie. ‘So start doing that. Ellie told me that, years ago, Dolly asked the Delaney boys to knock off her dear old dad.’

  ‘She what?’

  Annie clutched her head. It hurt to think. Her brain ached. She felt like her head was almost coming off.

  Dolly wanted her father killed.

  Well, had Ellie’s words really been such a big surprise? After what he’d done to her, it was only what he’d deserved, the dirty old bastard. She thought of the Delaney clan, arch-enemies of the Carters, who had ruled the Lime-house streets back in the fifties and sixties. Tory, the eldest, and Pat his second-in-command. Then, later, the twins: Orla and Redmond.

  Tory was dead, shot in Stoke Newington.

  Pat? He was dead too, his bones mouldering somewhere out in the depths of the English Channel.

  The youngest of the family, Kieron, was long gone. And Orla, she was gone too.

  The only living member of the family was Redmond. Annie had seen him five years ago, on the Essex marshes. Had thought almost that she’d dreamed him, but no, he’d been real, he’d been there in the flesh and he’d claimed to have put aside his evil ways – but had he?

  Redmond would know exactly what had happened, all those years ago, to Dolly’s father, and that might even lead them to the person who’d killed her.

  ‘Jackie?’ she said.

  ‘Yeah, what?’

  ‘You’ve got to find Redmond Delaney.’

  ‘Fuckin’ hell,’ said Jackie.

  ‘Do it,’ she said, and went to sluice some of the mud, sweat and hospital stench off her skin, dig out some clean clothes and stuff another load of painkillers down her throat.

  68

  Next day Annie took a cab over to the Shalimar, passing the Palermo on the way and getting the driver to stop there.

  Things were being unloaded from the back of a large van; Caroline was moving into the flat over the club, obliterating all memory of the woman who had once lived there.

  Isn’t she worried by the thought of a murder having been done there? wondered Annie.

  Obviously Caroline wasn’t. Maybe Caroline was so ambitious that she would even consider murder to clear a path for herself. Who knew?

  ‘OK, drive on,’ she said, and the driver took her on over to the Shalimar.

  One of the cleaners let her in; no bouncers in yet, it was too early for that. She went through the nearly empty club and up the stairs to Ellie and Chris’s flat.

  ‘Hello?’ she called ahead, not wanting to surprise anyone. Chris was already pissed off with her, and Ellie too.

  Down below, the Hoover started up just as she reached the kitchen door. Chris was sitting at the table, reading a paper. The front page showed French troops pouring into Rwanda.

  ‘Hi, Chris,’ she said.

  He looked at her with a mixture of embarrassment and surly dislike.

  ‘Now what the fuck?’ he asked.

  ‘It’s OK, Chris, I’ll take it from here,’ said Ellie, appearing at her shoulder.

  Chris stood up, folding his newspaper. He brushed past Annie, then she and Ellie went into the kitchen. Ellie closed the door while Annie sat down at the table.

  ‘Look,’ said Ellie, her face set. ‘I told you—’

  ‘I didn’t mean to just show up, but I had to see you,’ interrupted Annie. ‘The police told me you’re organizing the funeral.’

  Ellie’s face relaxed into sad lines. She let out a sigh, her shoulders slumping.

  ‘Yeah. That’s right.’

  ‘Christ, it’s the pits. Dolly’s funeral.’

  Ellie came over to the table and sat down opposite Annie. Her brows drew together. ‘Yeah. It’s bad. Like a nightmare. And you know what? I’m thinking, if that can happen to Dolly, who everybody loved so much, then what about me? Is this about you? I know you got trouble. Am I a sitting duck here? Or is this about the clubs, the Carter clubs? Is someone making a point? Is this a takeover bid? You get all sorts in here these days, pushing drugs, you know. I could be in serious bother.’

  ‘You’ve got Chris here with you. Dolly had no one.’ Annie swallowed hard, thinking of Dolly, alone in the flat, and of someone climbing the stairs to kill her. ‘Look, Ellie – I want to help out. Any way I can. With the funeral.’

  ‘There’s no need.’

  ‘I want to. The headstone. Flowers. Anything.’

  ‘God, I don’t know. I don’t even like you being here. Mr Carter—’

  ‘I’ve seen Max. I saw him yesterday.’

  Ellie’s eyes widened. ‘Fuck! Did you?’

  ‘Yeah. I did. And there’s trouble. Big trouble. You’re right.’

  ‘Chris said it was something about the Mafia bloke you were married to once. The one who died. He wouldn’t say more than that.’

  Annie looked Ellie straight in the eye. ‘Ah, what the hell. He didn’t die, Ellie. He’s alive.’

  Ellie went pale. ‘What I told you in the hospital? I meant it. I don’t want to know the details. I got enough going on, without that.’

  Annie slumped forward, then winced and straightened. ‘Yeah. I understand.’ She looked up at Ellie. ‘So the funeral’s Friday?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Ellie, and told her what time, and where.

  ‘I’ll be there.
’ Annie pushed herself wearily to her feet. ‘Meantime, if you want anything, need anything, just give a shout. I’ll be at the Holland Park place, you’ve got the number.’

  Ellie stood up too. ‘No offence, but the last thing I need is your help. You’re bad news around here, ain’t you heard? The best thing I can do is keep clear. For all our sakes.’

  Annie went back to Holland Park, feeling even more like Billy-no-mates. Well, had she really expected Ellie to change her mind and lay out the welcome mat, be friends again?

  She paid the cab at the door and went inside the house. It was huge, empty, echoing; the chequered floor threw back her footsteps as if mocking her, while over her head, the chandelier worth a fortune dangled, massive and glinting with crystal droplets.

  Mafia money.

  Hadn’t Max once told her that the police never rested over Mafia money? Well, this place was built on Mafia funds. Constantine had owned this house; then he’d passed it on to her after his ‘death’.

  She went into the study, threw aside another dust sheet and sat down on a big tan leather Chesterfield. She kicked off her shoes and gingerly lay down on the sofa to rest her aching body. But her mind refused to be still.

  Constantine’s death . . .

  Only Constantine wasn’t dead. She’d known it for years, and kept it to herself. Omerta was the code the Mafia lived by, and that extended to Mafia queens too. No one ever broke that code. Secrets were never to be shared, not with loved ones, not with a living soul. Not even with husbands. Not even with Max Carter. She’d sworn an oath, unbreakable. She’d had no choice but to be quiet.

  The parcel bomb, planted on the night of Lucco’s wedding.

  Ah shit.

  She would never, ever forget it. She relived it in her dreams sometimes. A night full of laughter and celebration, that had quickly turned into a screaming, howling wall of grief.

  Montauk, Long Island.

  A soft summer night in the States.

  A night of terror.

  69

  Montauk, Long Island, USA, August 1971

  It started with the explosion. Or, rather, it finished. Annie’s life with Constantine Barolli, her married life with him, finished right there, on the day of his eldest son Lucco’s marriage to his dull little second cousin Daniella from Sicily.

  It was a hot August night and the party was clearly going to go on into the small hours. The mariachi band was playing, the oceanfront house in the millionaire’s playground of Montauk was heaving with happy, laughing guests.

  Annie stood alone on the deck, just a little light spilling out from inside the house, not much, and she thought of that later, realized that her eyes had played tricks on her. She was standing in the darkness by the edge of the terrace, and she was five months’ pregnant with Constantine’s child, and she was tired; she was relishing the cool breeze blowing in off the Atlantic Ocean, which stretched out, black as oil, to the lighter grey of the horizon.

  Then the French doors opened and Constantine stepped out.

  He smiled at her and picked up a present from the pile on the trestle tables just beside the door. Later, at ten o’clock, Constantine, the Godfather, the Silver Fox, would hand out the presents to Lucco and his new bride; but for now he was smiling at Annie and shaking the present as he lifted it from the table.

  ‘Hey, wonder what’s in this one?’ he said, and then it happened.

  The explosion. Sudden, shocking; a mind-crippling upswelling whumph of sound and sensation.

  She felt herself blown off her feet, lifted over the rail and dumped on to the sand of the beach, all the air punched out of her. She couldn’t hear, and her brain couldn’t offer up any logical reason for why she was lying there, staring at a seashell while black things rained down around her, scorched things, and fire was erupting on the balcony above her; the whole deck was quickly turning to matchwood.

  To the world at large – more importantly, to the FBI and to other rival families and to those who worked even more closely against him – that was the point at which Constantine Barolli died.

  70

  London, January 1989

  It was Alberto, Constantine’s youngest son and now Il Papa, the Godfather, the head of the Barolli family, who finally broke the news to Annie during one of their rare, brief, secret meetings. Alberto was on the run from the FBI, but sometimes she was passed a note, a pizzino, and then he appeared. Sometimes he even brought his girlfriend – Annie and Max’s daughter Layla – with him, a rare treat and something Annie lived for, and she was disappointed to find that on this occasion Layla wasn’t present.

  Slowly, Alberto started to talk. He laid it all out. He talked and Annie sat there, listening but not believing what she was hearing. When he had finished speaking, she asked him to say it all over again. He did.

  ‘This is rubbish,’ said Annie.

  ‘Annie—’

  ‘You’re . . . what the hell are you saying? You’re telling me Constantine’s not dead,’ she said at last, feeling like she was going to scream or cry – probably both.

  ‘That’s what I’m saying,’ Alberto nodded.

  Annie put both hands over her mouth. Her eyes were wide with shock.

  ‘Hey . . .’ said Alberto, springing to his feet, coming over to her, hugging her tight.

  Annie flinched away from his embrace, shaking her head. She gulped, blinked, and dropped her hands into her lap. On one of those hands – her right – there was a small white scar on the palm. She stared at it, numb, not believing any of this.

  He was alive?

  She tried to speak, and couldn’t. Tried again.

  ‘You’re telling me,’ she managed at last, ‘that for all these years, you’ve known this?’

  ‘Yeah.’ Alberto sat back; a storm was about to break over his head, and he knew it.

  ‘You’ve known, and you didn’t say something?’

  ‘Omerta.’ He shrugged.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Our code of silence. The Don spoke, and I had to follow his orders. Those are the rules of Cosa Nostra, Annie. Nobody breaks the code, ever. Dammit, you of all people, you know that.’

  Annie was shaking her head now, over and over, thinking, This is crazy, this can’t be true.

  ‘No. He’s dead.’ She swiped at her face – there were actual tears running down her cheeks; she wiped them away and glared at Alberto, the stepson she adored, who’d been an ally and a friend to her for almost twenty-five years. At this moment, she was staring at him as she would stare at a hostile stranger. ‘I saw him die.’

  Alberto leaned forward, sighing, clasping his hands between his knees. His face turned toward her and he stared at her with those laser-blue eyes – his father’s eyes. Constantine’s eyes.

  ‘The man you saw die wasn’t Constantine Barolli,’ he said.

  ‘No, that’s not possible, I spoke to him when we were getting dressed, I was with him all day . . .’ she was protesting.

  ‘Papa was with you all day, but the man who walked out on to the deck and died there was not him. That was the actor we’d hired to take his place. We groomed him, trained him, dyed his hair silver, he even got the voice just right. Poor bastard, all he knew was that it was a family joke he was being paid to carry out on the wedding day. Some joke, uh? When that man died, the Don was already gone, out of the house and away.’

  Annie was still staring fixedly at his face.

  ‘You’ve had a shock,’ said Alberto.

  ‘A shock?’ A bitter laugh escaped Annie. She clutched at herself as if feeling cold. So many years, he’d been gone. They’d spirited him away and an innocent man had died in his place, and they’d kept Constantine’s wife, who had lost his baby, who he was supposed to have loved, in total ignorance.

  ‘I wanted to tell you,’ said Alberto.

  ‘Sure you fucking did.’

  ‘I did. I swear. But you know Papa – he could detach, real easy. The Feds were closing in on him. He made the decision to go, and he ca
rried it out. He was like that, you know he was. He could be cold, ruthless.’

  Annie nodded. ‘You’re pretty ruthless yourself. You saw me back then. I was in pain, mourning him. And you just let it pass.’

  ‘I had to. I told you.’

  Annie jerked to her feet and started pacing around the room, still hugging herself, her movements agitated. Suddenly she stopped and stood in front of Alberto.

  ‘You fucking bastard,’ she said flatly.

  ‘Hey . . .’He stood up, reached for her.

  Annie twitched away. ‘Don’t even think about it! You kept this from me! You knew it and you didn’t say a word.’

  ‘I couldn’t. Believe me.’

  Annie paced some more. She stopped again, right in front of him.

  ‘Why now?’ she snapped out. ‘Come on, I’d like to know. Why not keep the stupid bitch in her cage forever?’

  ‘He never saw you like that. Never,’ said Alberto.

  ‘Fuck it, who gives a shit, wasn’t that his attitude? He was safe and well, so who cares?’

  ‘He did care.’

  ‘Bullshit,’ she said.

  ‘And now . . .’

  Annie stopped moving. She stared at his face. ‘And now what?’ she prompted.

  ‘Now he wants – he needs – to see you.’

  71

  London, June 1994

  At about nine o’clock Annie went down to the kitchen, looked in the fridge, which was empty, and the freezer, which was empty too. She closed the freezer door, switched off the light and left the kitchen and went back into the drawing room with its big sandstone hearth and tapestry-covered Knole sofas.

  Yawning, exhausted and achingly lonely, she yanked the curtains closed against the remaining daylight. Later, she would sleep in the master suite at the top of the stairs, in what had once been Constantine’s bed.

  She wished Max was here, but he wasn’t, and if he was he would probably rip her head off and beat her with it, and she might as well get used to that idea. She thought again of the cold hatred in his eyes when they’d confronted each other at his mum’s old place.