by Jessie Keane
Annie slammed the phone down, breathing hard.
‘That’s her told,’ said Dolly. ‘And about time too, the mouthy cow. Where you off to, then?’
‘The Palermo. And the Shalimar, and the Blue Parrot.’
Dolly nodded.
Max Carter’s three clubs.
Now, with Max gone, they belonged to Annie Carter. And so did his manor.
11
The first thing Vita Byrne saw when she opened the trap door on the disused hen house was a pair of very angry dark green eyes staring up at her.
Shit!
She slammed the door shut.
‘For fuck’s sake,’ she said to Danny, her brother, who had just come out from the kitchen and was staring at her. ‘You couldn’t have given her enough of that stuff, she’s awake! You fucking idiot.’
‘Hey, how do I know how much to use on a kid?’ he demanded. ‘I didn’t want to give her too much, I didn’t want to kill her, now did I?’
‘I thought she was going to be drugged up. I thought she was going to be out of it. And now she’s seen my fucking face,’ whined Vita.
‘Will you shut up? And will you put your fucking hood on, and why didn’t you have it on in the first place? That way she wouldn’t have seen your stupid face, for God’s sake.’
‘Don’t have a go at me,’ said Vita. ‘You got the dose wrong.’
‘Look, she’s a kid. I gave her what I thought was enough but not too much ’cos that could have killed her, and that wouldn’t be very clever now, would it? She’s no fucking use to us dead. What I’m saying is, she won’t know you anyway, so will you for the love of God calm down?’
‘Yeah, it’s all very well for you to say calm down, but it wasn’t your face she saw, was it?’ yelled Vita, getting good and mad and also a bit panicky.
Because for sure the little girl had seen her face. She didn’t think Danny was taking that point quite seriously enough.
‘She’s a little kid,’ said Danny with a bored tone in his voice. ‘She won’t know your face.’
‘Yeah, but Da—’
‘Shut up.’ Now Danny was getting mad too. His stupid sister had been about to blurt his name out. A kid might forget a face, but a name might stick in her memory; she might repeat it when she got free—if she got free—and then people would come knocking. All of which was a situation Danny Byrne hoped to avoid.
‘Don’t keep telling me to shut up,’ said Vita.
Everything about this was upsetting her. It was all too much. She hadn’t expected that they were actually going to kill people, and she still felt sort of sick to her stomach about that. And most particularly about what Danny had done to the man and the woman in the little villa by the gate. He had seemed to glory in their terror, to get high on it; he had laughed and played in the blood like a kid in a bubble bath. Whenever she thought of it, she felt nauseous and afraid. She’d always known Danny was crazy, but now she thought he was really sick in the head, and dangerous.
‘Look, no names,’ Danny was saying to her. ‘We never say names in the girl’s hearing, remember? Got that?’
‘Yeah, okay,’ said Vita sulkily. ‘Where’s Ph…where’s he gone, anyway?’
‘To hire the boat.’
‘Jesus, hasn’t he done that yet? I thought this was meant to be a smooth operation.’
‘It’s smooth,’ said Danny.
‘Oh sure it’s smooth. No boat, and she’s seen my face.’
‘Will you for fuck’s sake drop that?’ roared Danny.
Vita flinched and fell silent.
‘My daddy’s going to kick your arse,’ said a tearful, furious little voice from inside the hen house.
12
Tony was there at a quarter to two, with Max’s beautiful old Mark X Jag all polished up and gleaming. Which was good. Someone was sitting up and taking notice, thought Annie, and not before time. Kath had obviously passed on the message—grudgingly—and Jimmy had acted upon it.
All good.
Not the unqualified support she had hoped for, but the best she was going to get, and that would have to do—for now, at least.
Annie sat in the back of the car and was suddenly overwhelmed by it all. Max’s car. She had sat in here nearly five years ago, with the scent of leather all around her like a comfort blanket, the heady smell of luxury, of Max’s lemon-scented cologne, with Max right there beside her—a strong, seemingly invincible presence.
Not so invincible though, she thought despairingly.
She looked at the empty space where Max should be. And into her mind, suddenly and starkly, came the image of him being pushed off the side of a mountain: falling, bouncing off rocks, lying crumpled and broken and lifeless at the bottom.
Annie shut her eyes and swallowed sickness. Had they stood and laughed while they killed him? Had he—oh God no—had he lain there, fatally injured, suffering, hurting, for hours on end, perhaps days, before he finally died?
She opened her eyes, shuddering, and tried to get hold of herself. She could see Tony’s eyes, watching her in the mirror. Max had valued Tony. Tony was built like a fucking outhouse. He was bald and he was ugly and he wore gold hoop earrings with crucifixes dangling off them, but he followed orders to the letter and he was loyal, Max had always said that.
‘You all right, Mrs Carter?’
‘I’m fine, Tony.’
‘Is Mr Carter coming back soon?’ asked Tony.
‘I dunno, Tony,’ said Annie.
So Jimmy had been as good as his word and hadn’t told the boys the truth—that Max wasn’t going to be coming back, not soon, not ever. Jimmy had kept quiet, as they had agreed he should, and that was good.
All good, thought Annie tiredly as the car glided smoothly through the rain-drenched streets of London’s East End. Oh yeah. Fucking wonderful. Spring was coming, but today it still looked like winter. She looked out at the grimy terraced houses, the people milling around in the sodden grey streets, the shops, the traffic.
She was back.
But everything was different. Everything had moved on.
Ronnie and Reggie Kray had been banged up a year ago for shooting George Cornell, one of the Richardson boys, in the Blind Beggar, and for doing Jack ‘The Hat’ McVitie at Blonde Carol’s.
Yeah, things had changed.
The Beatles had split up. And Dolly had told her that all through this last winter the maxi-skirt had been favoured by trendy London girls over the chillier mini.
Little changes, big changes. Some bad, some good.
Annie feared that, for her, nothing was ever going to be truly good again.
As Jimmy had told her, the Palermo Lounge was open, the red neon sign shining brightly above the set of red double doors in the sullen daylight. She had brought Max’s keys but she didn’t need them. It felt odd to just walk in during the day. The Palermo, like Max’s other two clubs, had always been very much a nightclub. But today there was a jungle beat going on inside.
There was a man on the door, and Tony introduced her as Mrs Carter. She saw the man’s expression change then. Saw the glint of respect that the Carter name commanded.
She went in, Tony dogging her footsteps.
Annie paused and looked at the poster board. Her eyes widened. She glanced at Tony, but Tony was suddenly finding the ceiling of great interest. Annie pushed through another set of double red doors and the beat of the music shot up to deafening levels. She went down the stairs and paused halfway.
The lights in here were dim—Christ, how come no one broke their necks on these stairs coming in here? She looked down and saw about fifteen punters sitting at tables in a fug of cigarette smoke, some clutching drinks bought from the bar at the far side of the room, others just goggling open-mouthed at what was happening on the brightly lit elevated half-circle that passed for a stage.
Above and to both sides of this ‘stage’ were thick red velvet drapes edged in gold. Annie remembered those drapes. At their apex were the gold letters MC.
Max Carter.
In the centre of the stage, a girl wearing black pants, bra, suspenders, and stockings was gyrating wildly in time to the music, her huge tits bouncing around like melons in a sack, her blonde hair turned silver by the spotlights. As Annie watched, the girl leered at the watching crowd and reached back, unhooking her bra. The massive tanned breasts jumped free and there was a feeble roar of encouragement from the watching men.
Fuck it all, thought Annie. Max would hate this. What’s happened to this place?
The girl was parading around now, clutching her breasts—not naked, but brandishing gold nipple tassels—and wiggling them provocatively in the faces of the watchers.
‘Get ’em off,’ shouted someone.
Annie remembered her Aunt Celia, once proud madam of what was now Dolly’s Limehouse brothel, telling her that men didn’t like topless dancers wearing tassels.
‘If they can’t see the nipple, they feel cheated,’ Celia had told her. ‘To a bloke, a naked tit has to be completely naked, or he feels put out.’
No danger of anyone here feeling cheated for long. The girl was now swinging her hips and leaning over the front tables, inviting the front-row watchers to pluck off her tassels.
Annie looked over to the bar as movement there caught her eye. Two girls were loading trays with drinks and gliding off between the tables, wearing tiny black skirts and white waist pinafores. They were topless. They deposited the drinks on the tables, smiling wearily at the punters, dangling their exposed dugs right under the noses of the men. As Annie watched, several of the punters grabbed a quick feel.
For fuck’s sake, thought Annie. It’s Tit City in here.
Jonjo. This was all down to him, she was sure of it. Left to his own devices, he’d installed his own idea of what passed for good entertainment.
Fucking Jonjo.
‘That girl,’ she said to Tony, having to shout to make herself heard above the noise, ‘on the stage.’
Tony nodded.
‘Don’t let her leave. I want a word with her.’
Tony nodded.
‘I’m going up to the office.’
A punter plucked off a tassel. The crowd cheered. Annie went back up the stairs and passed through the red doors again. She unclipped a rope on which was hung a small sign saying PRIVATE—STAFF ONLY, and clipped it back across when she’d passed through. Then she ascended a smaller staircase. At the top of the flight of stairs she paused before two doors. One she knew was a tiny flat, the other an office. She selected the smallest of the keys on Max’s bunch, labelled ‘P/Office’. She inserted the key in the lock, but it was already unlocked. She pushed open the door.
There was a naked girl spread-eagled on Max’s desk, her legs up around the neck of a man who had his back to Annie. Annie stared at his white spotty buttocks pumping away—his trousers were around his ankles—with first surprise and then distaste. What the hell?
The girl spotted her first and let out a small shriek. The man half turned.
‘Fucking hell, what do you think you’re doing?’ he demanded.
Annie’s face froze into an icy mask. ‘I was under the impression I was coming into my office,’ she said coolly. ‘Or am I wrong? What is this, a knocking shop now?’
He pulled out of the girl and Annie caught a flash of cunt and another, even less welcome, of a wet, deflating dick. She turned her head away as the girl scrabbled up, snatching clothes off the floor. The man adjusted his clothing and carried on shouting the odds, as if she was in the wrong here.
‘Look, I don’t know who the hell you are, but you’d better get out now or you’ll be next over this desk, sister,’ he yelled at her.
‘Really?’
Annie pulled a hand out of her black coat’s capacious pocket and suddenly Max’s gun was there. She put the muzzle of the gun flat against the man’s forehead and flicked off the safety.
The girl screamed and froze.
‘What the fucking hell…?’ wailed the man, staggering back against the desk, trying to get away from the gun, staring at it cross-eyed in horror.
Annie’s eyes were ice.
‘Shut your noise,’ she said to both of them. The girl fell silent, the man was breathing heavily. ‘This is a hair trigger,’ she told the man. ‘You know about hair triggers?’
The man gave a tiny nod, then groaned and shut his eyes. Sweat was starting to pour out of him. He stank already. Disgusting.
‘Good. Now tell me—who the fuck are you, arsehole?’
13
‘Mrs Carter?’ It was Tony, bursting through the door with a struggling blonde in tow. He looked at the girl still trying to get dressed, and the rumpled, white-faced man, and the gun in Annie’s hand. ‘You okay?’
The white-faced man ran a hand through his thinning blond hair. He looked balefully at Annie, then at Tony.
‘Are you telling me this is Max Carter’s missus?’ he demanded.
‘Who is this wanker?’ Annie asked Tony, indicating the man.
‘Club manager. Lou Morris.’
‘Will you get your effing hands off me, you great ape,’ snarled the blonde with Tony. Then she saw Annie and grew still.
Annie looked around at the assembled company. Five people in Max’s office. The last time that had happened, someone had got themselves shot. She flicked the safety back on and pocketed the gun.
‘Can we all calm down?’ she said smoothly. She crossed the small room and threw open the window. Traffic roared outside and fumes billowed in, but it was better than the stink of stale sex and unwashed bodies.
‘You,’ she told the girl from the desk, who had gathered up her clothes and was now partly dressed. ‘You work here?’
The girl nodded. Bright blue eyes and straight brown hair. She looked terrified. ‘I’m a hostess.’
‘What’s you name?’
‘Roberta,’ she said.
‘Well, Roberta, you never do anything like this again in any of the Carter clubs, you got me?’
Roberta nodded.
A pound note fluttered to the floor and she stooped, blushing, to grab it.
Annie looked at her in disgust.
‘And don’t sell yourself so damned cheap,’ she told the girl. ‘Go on, get out.’
Roberta hustled past Tony and the blonde.
Annie turned toward Lou and looked at him as if he’d just crawled out from under a rock.
‘You’re the manager here?’
‘That’s right,’ said Lou with bravado. ‘Jonjo Carter hired me last year.’
Annie nodded. ‘And I’m firing you this year. That’s sort of neat, don’t you think?’
‘Now wait.’ Lou looked outraged. ‘Just because I poked one of the girls over the desk?’
‘No, because I don’t like your face and I don’t like your attitude. Now—keys. You’re the manager; you’ve got keys, yes? Hand them over.’
Lou looked at Annie’s face. Then at Tony’s. The blonde was still, watching.
‘Ah, what the fuck, I hated the job anyway,’ snarled Lou, rummaging in his jacket pocket and slapping a bunch of keys into Annie’s waiting hand. ‘But you’re gonna be sorry you did this,’ he warned, pushing past her and past Tony and the blonde, and stamping off down the stairs.
‘See he goes straight off the premises, Tony,’ said Annie. ‘Don’t want him helping himself to the fixtures and fittings, do we?’
Tony pushed the blonde further into the room and followed Lou out through the door, shutting it firmly behind him. Annie shrugged off her coat and went around the desk and sat in Max’s high leather chair.
Right here was where she’d been shot. She looked at the wall behind the chair, where the bullet that had passed through her and had imbedded itself. The wall was smooth now, neatly repaired. No trace of that traumatic event remained. But there was still a safe in the corner. She looked at it.
A combination safe. She wondered what was in there, and if it was enough. She doubted it.
She turned back to the blonde and nodded to the chair on the other side of the desk.
‘Hiya, Jeanette. Take a seat. We need to have a chat.’
Jeanette looked sulky. She slumped down into the chair and stared at Annie mulishly.
‘You didn’t even say goodbye,’ said Annie coolly. ‘And I thought we were such good friends, too.’
‘You’re joking,’ snorted Jeanette.
‘That’s right,’ said Annie. ‘I am.’
‘So what do you want? I’m supposed to be on again in fifteen minutes.’
‘You’re not,’ said Annie.
‘Not what?’
‘You’re not on again in fifteen minutes. In fact, you’re not on again ever, not here.’
‘Oh come on!’ Jeanette burst out. ‘You can’t fire me too! I ain’t done nothing wrong and you know it. Listen,’ she whined, ‘I’m just keeping my head down and doing what I’m paid for, that’s all. I don’t want to know about your business, I don’t want to get involved.’
‘But you’re already involved,’ said Annie. ‘Remember? You’re involved because you were there, right there in Majorca, when it happened. I was out of it; they doped me. But they didn’t dope you. So you were conscious all the way through. You saw what happened. And I need to know more about what you saw.’
‘I’ve already told you. Nothing.’
‘You said there were four of them…’
‘Three, four…maybe more. I’m not sure.’ She shook her head, frowning. She pulled her red robe closer around her. ‘It was all so confusing. So fucking frightening. I’ve never been so scared in my life.’ She looked at Annie. ‘I thought they were going to kill me.’
There was a tap on the door. Tony poked his head around it.
‘He’s gone, Mrs Carter. Anything else?’
‘Yes, Tony. Close up, will you? Send all the punters home, and all the girls and the barmen—we’re closed until further notice.’ She tossed him the keys. ‘Lock up after, will you? Then get the locks changed. Pound to a penny Lou’s had a spare set cut, and we don’t want any unexpected visitors.’
