Black Widow

by Jessie Keane

  ‘It’s too early to say.’

  He was playing with her. This was a game.

  ‘Money? I can get it.’

  Could she? She wasn’t sure how much Max kept here, but she knew it would be little more than small change. She’d never had to think about money: Max took care of all that. There was no safe here, no cashbox. She felt a shiver of apprehension crawl up her spine.

  ‘I have jewellery,’ she said hurriedly when he didn’t reply. ‘Expensive jewellery. You can have it.’

  Now he was laughing, the bastard. Was he the one who had done that to Inez, to poor harmless Rufio?

  ‘Check your jewellery case, you’ll find I’ve already got it.’

  Christ! Annie looked at Jeanette and nodded at the gun. Her eyes said, Keep watch. Like your life depended on it.

  They’d been inside the finca, probably when she and Jeanette were up finding that horror in the smaller building. Annie watched Jeanette. The hand holding the gun was shaking and she had tucked the knife into her waistband. She was eyeing the outside door as if a troop of marauders were about to burst through it.

  And maybe they were.

  ‘So I’m asking the question,’ said Annie. ‘What is it that you want?’

  ‘Maybe more than you can deliver,’ he said.

  ‘Anything’s possible. All you have to do is ask.’ Annie’s brain was spinning, but she took a deep breath and said it. He wouldn’t like it, but what could she do? ‘Listen, there’s no money here.’

  ‘Don’t kid around with me, sweetheart, I don’t like it.’

  ‘I’m not kidding. There’s no money here.’

  ‘For fuck’s sake!’ he roared. He sounded furious.

  ‘Wait!’ Annie started talking fast. She didn’t want that anger being directed at Layla. ‘Wait. Just because there’s none here doesn’t mean I can’t get any. I can. I can get anything, any amount you want, in London.’

  ‘Fuck it,’ he said savagely.

  Annie flinched.

  ‘Are you bullshitting me?’ he demanded. ‘Because I warn you—’

  ‘No! I’m not feeding you bullshit. This is the truth, you hear me? You’ve been in here, in this finca, didn’t you check? I bet you did. There’s no safe here, nothing. But look. My husband owns clubs in London. He has property there, business there; that’s where the money is. Give me a chance and I’ll get it for you.’

  Silence.

  ‘So tell me,’ said Annie. ‘Tell me what you want, I’ll get straight back there and I’ll get it for you. It’s not a problem.’

  She really was going to vomit in a minute, talking to scum like this, trying to persuade him not to just lose it and hurt Layla, trying to persuade him that she could do it, she could come up with the goods.

  Could she though?

  He was silent again. She was sure he was just going to put the phone down again, leave her dangling in limbo for God alone knew how much longer.

  ‘Come on, talk to me!’ she pleaded desperately. ‘We can do a deal. You know we can do a deal.’

  He was going to put the phone down. There was a silence again, an unnerving silence, and then he said: ‘You can get money there? Straight now, no bullshit? Because I warn you…’

  ‘It’s not bullshit.’

  A silence again. A long, long silence, eating into her soul. Then: ‘Where will you stay there? Give me the address.’

  Annie thought fast. Cursed inwardly. Gave him the address anyway.

  ‘And the phone number.’

  She gave him that too.

  ‘Now tell me what you want. Tell me and I’ll get it sorted, okay?’ said Annie.

  ‘Later. I’ll call you again when you’re back in London.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Go back there, I’ll get in touch.’

  ‘Wait!’ The protest burst out of Annie without thought. Suddenly she knew she couldn’t leave the island, couldn’t leave Max. Couldn’t believe he was dead, and so couldn’t leave, couldn’t accept any of this. And Layla! Layla was here. She felt sick with fear. She might never see her again if she went back to England and left her here, in the hands of these animals. ‘No, wait!’

  ‘No?’ There was no laughter in his voice now. ‘You listen to me, you fucking jumped-up tart. You fly back there tomorrow morning and you don’t ask questions or tell me no because I don’t like that. You got it?’

  Annie took a steadying breath. ‘All right.’

  ‘Good. When I get off this phone, you get on it and book a flight out for you and the girl with you. No police, don’t even think about that, or your little girl goes right here and now, got that? No more messing about.’

  The line went dead.

  ‘What did he say?’ asked Jeanette.

  Annie took the gun back off her before she shot one or both of them by mistake.

  ‘We’re flying back to England tomorrow morning.’

  ‘We can’t! What about Layla?’

  ‘We have to,’ she told Jeanette. ‘They want money, and the money’s there.’

  But if it wasn’t, if she couldn’t raise whatever these people wanted, then what the fuck was she going to do? She told herself it had to be there. It had to be.

  ‘But tonight! We can’t stay here tonight!’

  ‘Yes we can. We’re going to barricade ourselves in here, and ship out in the morning, okay?’

  ‘No,’ said Jeanette, her voice wobbling all over the place. ‘No!’ She made a chopping motion with her hand and then lunged across and grabbed the phone. She started to dial with shaking fingers.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘I’m calling the police,’ said Jeanette. ‘It’s what we should have done in the first place. We can’t cope with all this, we can’t—’

  Annie thought of the phone tinkling as she passed by it after the blast. She grabbed it off Jeanette and smashed it back on to the cradle. ‘No police,’ she said.

  Jeanette had finally flipped. She grabbed the phone again. Annie yanked it off her and Jeanette came at her ready for violence. Annie raised the gun and pointed it at Jeanette.

  ‘Back off,’ she said.

  ‘What the…what the fuck are you doing!’ yelled Jeanette.

  Annie stared at her. The hand on the gun did not waver.

  ‘I’m shooting you dead,’ said Annie, ‘if you touch that fucking phone again. You silly cow! There could be a tap on this line. The man said no police. If you went ahead and phoned them, they could kill Layla.’

  Jeanette stepped back, shaking her head.

  ‘I didn’t think…’ she faltered.

  ‘Well think on this, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm: if you go near this fucking phone again I swear to you that what little brains you have are going to be decorating this hallway—do you understand me?’

  ‘I understand,’ said Jeanette, going pale under her tan.

  ‘Now here’s what we’re going to do,’ said Annie.

  What they were going to do was this. Phone the airport and book the flights. Make another call, one that Annie thought she would never have to make, one that the kidnappers would find entirely acceptable, so no worries about the line tap there. Then they were going to check out the finca from top to bottom.

  They did all that, and by then it was nearly dark and the shadows were deepening, making them both jumpy.

  ‘What do we do now?’ asked Jeanette, her eyes going in all directions.

  Now Annie explained that they were going to barricade themselves into the bedroom with water and a bucket overnight.

  ‘I don’t want to stay here,’ moaned Jeanette, trailing along behind her like a pathetic baby bird waiting for its mother to feed it. They didn’t have any food. Annie knew this was an oversight. They should have picked some up when they were up at the little gatehouse. There was nothing in the kitchen here. But who the fuck could have thought about food at a time like that?

  ‘We have to stay here,’ said Annie flatly.

  ‘It’s horrible. With Jo
njo dying out there in the pool, and the servants just up there rotting…’

  Servants. That was, strictly speaking, what Inez and Rufio had been. But they had also been good friends and helpers, cooks and chauffeurs, life-support almost. And now they were dead. Annie’s guts churned at the thought.

  ‘The dead ain’t going to hurt anyone,’ she said. ‘It’s the living you have to fear.’

  She went on, checking room to room, gun in hand.

  Jeanette followed her, thinking that Annie was fucking scary. The woman’s child had been snatched and her husband killed, and here she was, ice-cold, ready to shoot anyone who came near.

  I’d be in bits if this happened to me, thought Jeanette, not realising that Annie’s rigid control was all that stood between her and madness.

  Satisfied that the finca was clear and secured, Annie filled a large jug with water and grabbed two glass tumblers and a bucket and then ushered Jeanette into the main bedroom, the room she had always shared with Max.

  Max.

  Heart-wrenching grief gripped her, stifling her as she thought of him. Once more she shook thoughts of him aside, and with Jeanette’s help she levered the heavy wooden dresser over the bedroom door.

  ‘What we’re going to do is this,’ she told the girl, pulling down a suitcase from the top of the wardrobe. ‘We’re going to take turns sleeping. Two hours on, two hours off. One stands guard, one sleeps.’

  Jeanette nodded shakily. ‘Okay.’

  The windows were barred, the shutters closed, the only door into the room blocked off. Annie assessed the situation. For the moment, they were safe.

  Safe, thought Annie. Sure they were safe, unless someone was really determined to finally kill them. These people had blown up the pool house, why not blow up the bloody finca too? Her ears felt suddenly oversensitized, as if every tiny sound were a threat. She took first watch while Jeanette lay down on the bed, protesting that she would never be able to sleep. Within minutes, she was snoring gently.

  Annie sat up in a chair with the gun held ready across her lap. The old building creaked and groaned as it always did, the rafters shrinking and popping after the gentle warmth of the day. Was it that? Or was it someone coming to finish them off?

  She didn’t know.

  She had to hold herself in readiness, just in case. Their plane tickets were booked; Annie had packed a few bits into a suitcase. In the morning they would take Rufio’s battered old car and Jeanette would drive them to the airport.

  Until then all Annie had to do was wait and think. She knew she wouldn’t sleep, although she knew she had to try and rest, to keep strong so that she could cope with all this. So she would try not to think about what could be happening to Layla right now.

  She thought instead about Max. Annie Carter, who never weakened, never cried, sat there amid the wreckage of her life and let the grief take hold of her. She let the tears stream unchecked from her eyes, and silently swore that the death of the man she loved would be avenged.

  5

  The little girl was very afraid as she sat in the damp darkness. She felt very tired, very drowsy. She wondered what had happened to Daddy. They took him away somewhere, she knew that; those bad people took him away. He would never have left her on her own.

  She expected Mummy to come and fetch her soon; she had been expecting this for what felt like hours now. Mummy was always watching her carefully, always. She whimpered in the dark, wanting her Mummy so badly.

  The men hadn’t talked to her. One of them had held something over her nose and that was when she’d started to get really, really sleepy. One of them was small, like a lady, but Layla wasn’t sure about that. They wore hoods over their heads and that was scary, like they weren’t really people at all.

  Layla so wanted someone to talk to. She would have talked to the lady, if she could, even though she had done this nasty thing to Layla. All her dolls and teddies were at home. Now she had no Mummy. No Daddy. Nothing except this horrible place.

  When they had dropped her in here and slammed the trap door shut on her, she had been half-awake and had groped her way around her small prison. She found all the walls were dirt: slimy with moisture in places, bone-dry in others. There had been a little daylight left then.

  But now it was night and she was cold.

  She was able to stand up, although the top of her head touched metal. Metal like waves, like an old tin roof on a hen house. There was a sort of bed in the dirt, so that she could lie down on a rough blanket they had put there for her. They had put a dish of water on the floor; she’d kicked it over by accident when she’d been trying to grope her away around in here. There was some bread too, but it was stale. Like she was an animal.

  Layla decided to pretend that she was an animal, someone’s pet. She ate the dry bread and licked the bowl clean of what remained of the water. Then she lay down and wrapped herself in the blanket.

  Daddy would come back soon. Mummy too. They would never leave her alone like this, with these strange people who didn’t speak and who covered their faces.

  She was an animal, curled up on her bed and waiting for her owners to come and collect her. She curled up in a ball, rocking herself, hands clasped around her knees. Suddenly, she was asleep.

  6

  ‘Fucking hellfire, it is you,’ said Dolly when she flung open the front door of her Limehouse knocking shop and found her old friend Annie Carter and an unknown blonde standing there. They looked like someone had kicked the shit out of both of them. ‘Come in, for God’s sake.’

  Annie stepped into the hall and looked around at a place that had at one time felt so familiar, but was now completely changed. The black, wrought-iron clock shaped like a guitar was gone, so was the wooden plaque with the matador and the bull. Now the decor was bang-up-to-the-minute. Now there was bright orange-patterned wallpaper, the wooden staircase was painted white, and a cane basket chair was suspended from a hook in the ceiling in the corner.

  Where Chris used to sit and greet the punters, thought Annie.

  There was no bouncer there now, but there was a folded newspaper on the chair and an empty mug on the floor beside it.

  ‘We’ve got a new boy on the door,’ said Dolly, seeing Annie’s look. ‘Ross. He’s off on an errand, but he’ll be back later.’

  Dolly’s eyes locked with Annie’s.

  And then I’ll have to tell him you’re here, said Dolly’s eyes.

  Annie nodded. Ross would be another Delaney boy, like Chris the old doorman had been. This was Delaney turf; Dolly paid them protection. The arrival of a prominent Carter family member on their patch couldn’t go unannounced.

  Annie felt as if she was moving through a dark, unspeakable dream. The familiar was gone, changed, lost forever.

  Max, she thought. Oh Christ—and Layla!

  She looked at Dolly. Dolly had changed too. Once the roughest of street working girls with an attitude to match, Dolly was every inch the madam-in-charge now, in a pink bouclé skirt suit and with her blonde hair immaculately cut and styled. Remembering the rough-edged brass that Dolly had once been, Annie felt even further disconnected from reality. Now Dolly was the embodiment of chic, just like Annie’s long-departed Aunt Celia, once the madam here, had been. Dolly even smelled good, of a fragrance Annie instantly identified as Guerlain’s Mitsouko.

  ‘You look like death warmed over,’ said Dolly, taking Annie’s suitcase and leading the way into the kitchen. ‘Come and have a cup of tea and tell me what the fuck’s happening. I couldn’t believe it when I got your call. And who the hell is this?’

  ‘This is Jeanette,’ said Annie as they went into the kitchen.

  Dolly put the suitcase down, out of the way. She looked at Jeanette.

  ‘She don’t say much,’ said Dolly.

  ‘We’ve had a bit of a rough time,’ said Annie.

  Dolly nodded.

  ‘Everything looks different.’ Annie peered around the kitchen. Her old table was gone. There was a smoked glass
circular table in its place, and snazzy chairs to match, and a big descending taupe-coloured smoked glass light above it. Posh fitted units all around, with oatmeal doors and a wooden trim. Rush matting on the floor.

  ‘Well, it’s been a while,’ said Dolly, filling the kettle.

  She flicked the switch on and turned and looked at Annie, who was sinking down into a chair like an old woman. Jeanette sat down too. Jeanette looked the worst of the two, thought Dolly. Jeanette looked as if someone or something had scared the crap out of her, big time. Annie looked almost grey with exhaustion, but Annie was made of tough stuff. Annie would always bounce back…or would she? Looking at her now, Dolly wondered about that.

  ‘How’s business? Good?’ asked Annie, her head in her hands.

  ‘Good enough,’ said Dolly. She leaned back against the cream-coloured fake marble worktop and crossed her arms over her chest. ‘You going to tell me what happened? I couldn’t believe it when you called me.’

  ‘I couldn’t believe it either,’ said Annie.

  There had been only brief telephone calls, three or four a year, between the two of them since Annie had left, but they had remained friends.

  ‘Come on, Annie,’ said Dolly in sudden exasperation. ‘Spill the beans, will you?’

  Annie looked at the open door into the hallway. ‘Anyone else around?’ she asked.

  Dolly shook her head. ‘We’re alone. I made sure we would be, at least for now. So come on. Give.’

  Annie sighed and shook her head. ‘No, Doll, I’m knackered. I need a bath and a lie-down, then I can think about what’s going on.’

  Dolly nodded, but she was frowning. This was big trouble—she could smell it. She wasn’t exactly over the moon to have Annie Carter here. She didn’t want to make waves with the Delaneys. The feud between the Irish Delaneys and the Cockney Carter clans had been raging for years and was still going strong. The Delaney patch was an uncomfortable and maybe dangerous place for Annie Carter, wife of the boss of the Carter clan, to be, but then Annie knew that. The fact that she was here must mean that she had nowhere else to go.

  A friend’s a friend, thought Dolly. She couldn’t turn the poor bint away, now could she?