by Jessie Keane
‘OK.’ Constantine raised a tired smile. ‘Then, I tell you what. Put the gun on the bed and go and look at that tapestry over there. It’s a good one. French, you know. The best. Cost a fucking fortune like everything else in this damned cold hole of a place. When they come in, you can tell them I snatched the gun off you.’
Max stood up. Carefully, he placed the gun on the bed near Constantine’s right hand.
And now I’ll turn my back and the crazy old cunt will shoot me, thinking I’m some old enemy.
Ah, fuck it. Max turned away from the bed and took two steps away to look at the tapestry, all sewn in faded rose-pinks, greens and golds. Nymphs and cherubs, angels and demons, all writhing together in pink fleshy chaos.
He’s going to shoot me.
Max could feel the skin between his shoulder blades crawling as he waited for the hammer-blow of the gunshot. He wouldn’t hear it – you never heard the shot that killed you. And thank God for that.
Thirty seconds after he turned his back on Constantine, the shot rang out, deafeningly.
Max flinched at the noise, and spun back toward the bed.
The gun lay in Constantine’s open hand. There was a head wound and blood – not much. Actually Constantine looked quite peaceful, lying there. Max stood and listened to the commotion start outside, to running footsteps coming closer. He sat down in the chair again, feeling neither satisfaction nor pleasure.
It was just done, that was all.
Constantine – finally, at long, long last – was dead.
116
‘So what happened? Really?’ asked Annie as they sat in the dining hall an hour later.
Max looked at her. They were alone in the room and it was cold, no fire burning in the hearth. Upstairs, Alberto was coming to terms with losing his father. The others were cleaning up. Mrs McAllister had gone to her room, shattered by the night’s events. Down in the kitchen, she hadn’t heard the gunshots. Alberto had assured her that the trouble was over, told her to go to bed, there was nothing to worry about.
‘Really?’ Max looked at Annie. ‘I’ll tell you. He snatched the gun off me and shot himself. It was a happy release, for God’s sake. The poor old sod was fucked, anyway.’
‘You didn’t encourage him to do it?’ Annie’s eyes were narrowed with suspicion.
‘No. It’s done. Let it rest. How’s your throat?’
Annie shrugged. There was a thin angry red line on her neck, but what little bleeding there had been was stopped, crusted over.
‘I’m fine,’ she said. ‘It’s just so bloody sad, what’s happened here tonight.’
‘It had to happen,’ said Max. ‘He thought I was Nico, and he seemed to be waiting for Nico to appear. When he did, he could rest.’
The door opened and Alberto came in. He looked strained and pale, but composed. He crossed to where they sat and slumped into a chair and put his head in his hands.
‘Jesus, what a night,’ he groaned.
‘I’m sorry, Alberto,’ said Annie. ‘Really.’
Alberto looked up at her. ‘Why be sorry, Stepmom? We lost him quite a while ago, didn’t we. That wasn’t my father up there, rambling on like some sad old fart. Fucking incontinent and not holding his fudge. Eating baby food. Not recognizing people. Even me, you know that? Last week, he asked who I was. No . . . it’s better, what happened tonight. And Max? You mustn’t blame yourself for it. It was kinder, really, that it ended that way.’
‘So now what?’ asked Max.
‘Now?’ Alberto heaved a sigh. ‘Now I make the arrangements for the funeral. Bury David Sangster once and for all. Constantine Barolli is already long dead. And you know what? I think it would have been better, really, for him if he had truly died when that bomb went off in Montauk, instead of the poor sap who died in his place. That would have been a better end for a great man, don’t you think?’
‘If there is anything we can do . . .’ said Annie.
‘There’s nothing,’ said Alberto with an attempt at a smile. He stood up. Looked at them, sitting there. ‘It’s been a tough time. Losing Aunt Gina, and now Papa.’
‘Gina?’ asked Annie. She glanced at Max, who looked blankly back at her. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t know that.’
‘And now I guess you’ve resolved your differences, you two?’ said Alberto.
‘Is there anything you don’t know about?’ groaned Annie.
He smiled. ‘Very little. Stepmom, two abductions in the space of a week! I was scared for you. My people saw to the first two guys, but the second lot . . . I told them to hang back on that one. Had a feeling they were your people, Max – the ones in the boiler suits?’
‘They were,’ said Max.
‘Thought so.’ Alberto glanced between them. ‘I hope you can resolve this.’
‘I’ve explained everything,’ said Annie.
‘And been believed? I hope so.’
‘I hope so too,’ said Annie, and looked at Max, but his face told her nothing.
‘I’ll get your transportation fixed up, get you back to London.’
‘How’s Layla?’ asked Max.
Alberto relaxed a little. ‘She’s happy and she’s well.’ He walked over to the door and paused there. ‘And she’s pregnant,’ he added, before leaving the room.
117
Next morning Annie awoke in the master suite of the Holland Park house, to find Max sleeping beside her. They’d started off in separate bedrooms, but some time during the night he’d obviously decided he wanted to be in here, with her. As she stared at him, so peaceful, his navy-blue eyes opened and looked into hers.
‘Hi,’ he said.
‘Hi,’ said Annie.
After a moment, Max stretched, yawned and then pulled her in against his naked skin.
‘Did all that just happen?’ he murmured against her hair.
‘It did. And it’s over now,’ she said, cuddling in close against him. Her rib protested, but she didn’t care. She’d missed this close contact with him so much.
Yeah, but has he forgiven you? Have you won, or lost?
‘You went to Sicily to see Gina,’ said Annie. ‘You didn’t . . . ?’
‘Oh, come on. She was sick, frail. It was her heart. It just gave out.’
‘Right.’
‘And did Golden Boy really say he’s knocked up my daughter?’
Annie disentangled herself, moved to the edge of the bed and slipped on her robe. ‘I’ll make some tea,’ she said.
An hour and a half later, DCI Hunter was standing on their doorstep with a new companion at his side. This one was male, tall, and not at all sour-faced like DS Sandra Duggan had always been whenever she was close to Annie Carter.
‘Mrs Carter, I just wanted a word,’ said Hunter. He half-turned to the younger man with him. ‘This is DS Nolan.’
Annie nodded to the handsome, bright-eyed young man and opened the door wide. ‘You’d better come in then,’ she said, and they followed her and Max inside the house. Annie led the way to the drawing room and indicated that they should sit. Max stayed at the back of the room, standing by the door.
‘Where’s DS Duggan then? I miss her smiling face, I really do,’ said Annie.
Hunter gave her a look. ‘On a training course. DS Nolan’s filling in.’
‘What’s this about?’ asked Annie, sitting down.
‘We’ve been checking the telephone records at the Blue Parrot and the Palermo club and the Shalimar. The Blue Parrot received a lot of international calls. Some from Barbados, but others too.’
‘Where did these other calls come from?’ asked Annie, but she knew.
‘Sicily,’ said Hunter.
‘The Palermo had some calls from Barbados to Miss Farrell.’
‘That was me, phoning Doll.’
‘None to the Shalimar at all.’
Annie and Max exchanged a look. Poor old Gina Barolli. Losing her marbles and telling secrets to Gary. Who tried to cash in, like the grasping bastard he was – and found himself in too deep,
falling foul of Redmond Delaney.
‘What you were saying, Mrs Carter,’ Hunter went on. ‘What Sandy Farrell told you . . .’
‘About the train driver,’ said Annie. ‘Arthur Biggs?’
‘Who took his own life,’ said Hunter.
‘He couldn’t live with the guilt,’ said Annie. ‘Sam Farrell’s death was murder. Redmond Delaney told us what happened. It wasn’t an accident. All Sam Farrell’s co-workers were told what he was, what he’d been doing to his daughters, and they ganged together in a mob and killed him. And really? I don’t blame them.’
‘A dirty business,’ said Hunter.
‘Yeah,’ said Annie, thinking that it wasn’t finished, not yet.
When Hunter and his DS left, she phoned Tony and told him what to do.
118
It took Tony about five days to get the information, calling in favours from numerous contacts and then just waiting while they dug around. The records were old, archived, and his contacts told him that some had – mysteriously – gone missing. But there was enough to piece it together. All they needed was an address, really, and they got that, and passed it on to Tony. Tony passed it to Annie, and they got in the Jag and he drove her over there, to a large council estate full of weary-looking identical pebble-dashed cream houses, many of them with old sofas and fridges in the front gardens. The roads around the estate were littered with burned-out cars.
A young woman answered the door to them. She was mousy blonde, anorexic-thin, wearing a pink T-shirt and tight-fitting ripped jeans. Annie put her at about twenty years old, and hard-faced.
‘Yeah?’ she asked, seeing Annie standing there with Tony behind her.
‘The Biggs family live here?’ asked Annie.
‘Nah,’ said the girl, and went to shut the door.
Annie stuck her foot in it.
‘You mean they don’t?’ she asked.
‘Get your fuckin’ foot out my door,’ said the girl.
Annie shoved forward and the girl teetered into the hallway. Annie grabbed her by the throat and pushed her back against the wall. Her rib protested, but she ignored it. Tony came inside too, and stood there watching.
‘The Biggs family. I’ve asked you politely, but there are other ways. They live here?’ said Annie.
The girl squirmed. ‘What the fuck’s wrong with you? I said no, didn’t I. They used to live here, sure, not any more.’
‘And they moved where?’
‘That was years ago. When my mum and dad moved in here, I was ten.’
‘And they moved where?’ repeated Annie.
‘Gawd, how would I know? There was some sort of family scandal, I know that. They were a bad lot, something happened and they moved away, got out of the area.’
Annie glanced around the hall, wondering if Arthur Biggs had topped himself right here; hung himself from these very stairs.
She let the girl go. ‘You’ve been very helpful. Thanks.’
When they left the house, Tony went to one side of it, Annie to the other, and they started knocking on doors. Did anyone remember the Biggs family that used to live here? No one did. Time had closed over the scandals of the past. Tony went on knocking, and Annie was getting pissed off with the whole thing when he came and fetched her.
‘Got something,’ he said. ‘And by the way, saw your mate Hunter going into the old address just now. His car’s parked up over there, see? Reckon they’re on the same track as us – don’t you?’
Nine doors along from the old Biggs home, a grey-haired woman with large bulging brown eyes was leaning eagerly out of the front door. When they approached, she smiled and ushered them inside, straight into a tiny lounge with chairs and a TV. Most of the room was taken up by a bed, and in it lay a very old woman, sunken-cheeked, white-haired, but beautifully clean and turned out lovely in a mint-green bed jacket tied with ribbons at her wrinkled throat.
‘Mum?’ shouted the woman who’d come to the door. ‘These people are asking about the Biggs, you remember them?’
The old lady cocked her head and stared at her daughter. ‘Biggs?’ she said in a cracked voice.
‘You remember, don’t you? The old man hung hisself, there was an accident on the railways. He was a train driver.’
‘Course I remember Biggs,’ said the old lady.
‘Take a seat,’ said the daughter, who was pushing seventy. The old girl in the bed had to be ninety-five if she was a day, but she was sharp.
Annie and Tony sat down.
‘These people are friends of the family, they want to find out where they’ve moved to,’ said the daughter, shouting.
‘Bad do, that was,’ said the old lady. ‘Broke the wife’s heart when he did that to hisself. She passed on not long after he did it. His married daughter found him, you know. Let herself in with her key one morning and there he was. Hanging from the sodding hall stairs. She had to go and wake her mother up, tell her.’
‘God, that’s awful,’ said Annie.
‘This your fancy man?’ asked the old lady, smiling toothlessly at Annie, at Tony.
‘Mum!’ said the daughter. ‘That’s not your business.’
‘No, this is my friend,’ said Annie. ‘Do you have an address for the married daughter? Any contact details?’ she asked, thinking that the old lady would say no.
‘Of course I have,’ said the old woman scornfully. ‘I get a hundred and twenty cards every Christmas. My daughter Susan and me keep in touch with all our old pals, and Clarry Biggs is on her list. Or Clarry Jameson, as she is now. Clarissa, posh name that, always called her Clarry. Susan and her went to school together.’
‘Can we have her address then? Please?’
119
Clarry Jameson, married daughter of Arthur Biggs, lived in Wimbledon near the Common. Her house was a detached Edwardian with deep bay windows. The house looked tired, the paintwork was neglected, the eaves rotting in places, but the front garden was well kept. It was colourfully planted with marigolds and red begonias around a lovingly striped square of emerald-green lawn. There was an unflashy Ford motor in the driveway and an air of peaceful suburban gentility lay over the small cul-de-sac.
The front door was wide open. Tony knocked at the door, and a thin, weary-looking man with a long solemn face and sand-coloured hair peppered with grey came up the hallway from the kitchen and stared at them both standing there.
‘Hello,’ said Annie. ‘We’re looking for Clarry Jameson.’
The man’s features seemed to stiffen. ‘What for?’ he asked.
‘We’d like to speak to her,’ said Annie.
He heaved a sigh. ‘You’re not reporters, are you?’
‘No,’ said Annie. ‘Why do you say that?’
‘Oh, we’ve had people round here before, trying to dig up the past. Asking about my father-in-law and the rail accident. That happened years ago. But you know what? It never seems to go away. I’m just making some tea. You might as well come in.’
Inside, the place was a mess. Unwashed cups and dishes were stacked on the draining board, and the dust was thick on every surface. The carpet was stained and didn’t look like a Hoover had ever troubled it.
‘I don’t do a lot of housework,’ said the man, sticking the kettle on to boil. ‘I’m out in the garden, mostly.’
They sat down in the dirty kitchen and Annie said: ‘Clarry – your wife? – she’s not here?’
‘Clarry? We agreed to separate a long time ago. Her nerves were bad, you see. After it happened. Couldn’t stand all that wailing and weeping. Christ, comes a point you just got to try to move on.’
Another dead end.
Annie sighed. ‘So where does she live then?’
‘Live?’ The man looked sad all of a sudden. ‘She don’t live, Clarry. She never got over finding her dad like that. Turned her head, shot her nerves to pieces.’
‘What happened?’ Annie was getting a bad feeling about this.
‘She took two hundred paracetamols. After we’d
agreed to go our separate ways. She saved ’em up and just whopped ’em down in one go. I found her dead upstairs on the bed when I came home from work. Terrible shock, it were. And she had the letter in her hand.’
‘What letter?’
‘The confession. The one her dad left when he topped himself. Saying it was him, he murdered a shunter called Sam Farrell. He said how sorry he was. All old news now, ain’t it. None of it matters a toss any more.’
‘Did it say anything else?’ asked Annie.
‘It did. It said as how one of the big gang bosses of the time – not the Krays, but one of those types – got wind of Sam Farrell doing something to his daughter and gave the order for it to be carried out.’
‘Mr Jameson, can we see this letter?’ asked Annie.
‘Nah. Burned it. Long time ago. Old stuff, see? You got to let it go. Let the past stay dead.’
Annie was silent for a while, thinking. Then she said: ‘Do you have children, Mr Jameson?’
‘Just a boy. Peter.’
‘Does he live at home?’
‘Nah, moved out. He works in a club up West called the Palermo. Lap-dancing or some such thing. He runs the bar, done well for himself.’
Annie felt her whole body turn to stone as he spoke those words.
There was no Peter Jameson working the bar at the club – but there was a Peter Jones, and he had found Dolly dead.
‘Did he ever see that letter, Mr Jameson?’ she asked.
‘Peter? Sure he did. We both did.’
‘Do you see him much these days?’ asked Annie, feeling her throat go dry as dust, feeling the aftershock of discovery still jolting through her.
‘Hardly ever,’ said Mr Jameson.
120
‘What do you mean, he’s gone?’ asked Annie when they went from Wimbledon over to the Palermo.
She was in the main body of the club and it was all business as usual: the dancers were getting ready, the DJ was pumping out ‘Venus’ by Bananarama from the decks, the bar staff were polishing glasses and bringing up cases of drinks and snacks from the cellars, but there was no sign of Peter Jones.
