Black Widow

by Jessie Keane

He had big hands, she noticed. But it was his eyes that really caught her attention. They were deep-set, penetrating, searching her face. Mafia, she thought, and shuddered. These were dangerous people. People that not even someone with gangland connections on this side of the pond should mix with. She remembered all Jimmy’s warning words and thought: What the fuck am I doing here?

  But she knew.

  This was Last-Chance Saloon.

  There was nowhere else for her to go, nothing else for her to do. Desperate times called for desperate measures. But still, she shivered at her own boldness and wondered if this was a terminally stupid move.

  ‘What can I do for you, Mrs Carter?’ he asked. He had a low voice, calm, unhurried. ‘I apologize for keeping you waiting today,’ he went on, surprising her. ‘It’s not every day a daughter gets married.’

  ‘Congratulations,’ said Annie automatically.

  He shrugged and spread his hands in a gesture that was pure Italian. No, thought Annie, Sicilian.

  ‘He wouldn’t have been my choice, but then, who would? Who would ever be good enough for a father’s little girl?’

  It was a rhetorical question. Annie sat silent, thinking of her own little girl, wounded now, perhaps irreparably damaged by what had happened to her.

  ‘So tell me what I can do for you,’ said Constantine again.

  Oh nothing much, thought Annie. Lend me half a million. Save my daughter. Bring my husband back. Turn back the clock. Make it all go away.

  ‘I heard there was some trouble on Max’s turf,’ said Constantine when she didn’t speak. ‘At one of the venues.’

  Jesus, already the word was spreading. And wasn’t Jimmy Bond supposed to be keeping a lid on things?

  ‘I heard two of the Delaney venues had trouble too.’

  ‘I ordered that,’ said Annie, her eyes moving nervously away from that laser-like gaze.

  ‘It don’t pay to let these things go uncorrected,’ he agreed, sipping brandy. ‘You’re sure…?’ He held up the brandy balloon.

  Annie shook her head.

  ‘What is it you want then? Backup?’

  ‘No. We can handle our own affairs pretty well.’ Just in case you’re thinking of moving in like Jimmy says you are.

  ‘Max abroad?’ asked Constantine.

  ‘Jonjo and Max had some urgent business to take care of,’ lied Annie smoothly. ‘I can’t reach them.’

  ‘And I guess you’re in charge now?’

  ‘I’m in charge now.’

  I’m a wreck and I’m in charge…

  ‘Only the word on the street says Jimmy Bond’s running the show.’

  Annie shook her head. ‘Then the word’s wrong. Jimmy has stood in, sure. But now I’m back to take over. That’s what Max wanted.’

  ‘So the problem is…?’ he prompted.

  ‘I have to raise some money fast. A lot of money.’

  He nodded again. ‘For what?’

  And here was where she could either go on lying her head off or appeal to his better nature. Supposing he had one, which she doubted. With unsteady fingers she took the little box out of her pocket and opened it. She took out the broken chain and the heart, slipped those back into her pocket. Then leaving the box open, she placed it in the centre of the desk, beside Max’s ring.

  ‘You have a daughter who’s getting married today, Mr Barolli,’ said Annie. ‘I have one who’s missing a finger.’

  The silence in the room was almost choking. Annie swallowed and felt sick all over again, looking at Layla’s lifeless finger on its little bed of grubby cotton wool. A roar of happy laughter went up from outside in the hall, and she flinched.

  Constantine was still looking at the finger.

  Why don’t he say something? she thought in frustration. Is he that cold-hearted, to sit there looking at a child’s finger and feel precisely nothing?

  Next thing his wife would be in here, asking why he was neglecting his guests. Maybe she ought to have gone away, tried again tomorrow. She was getting nowhere here.

  I’m sorry,’ she said stiffly, standing up and reaching for the box. ‘This wasn’t a good day to call, was it?’

  Constantine was still staring at the box and its pitiful contents. He reached out a hand and caught hers before she could pick it up. His hand was hot. Hers was freezing cold.

  ‘Wait.’ His eyes rose to her face. ‘You can’t come in here, show me this and just go. Tell me what the fuck’s happened.’

  Annie swallowed hard. ‘Layla—my daughter—was snatched in Majorca,’ Annie said. ‘She could be there or in England now, we don’t know.’

  ‘Max don’t know about this?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You can’t get in touch with him?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And now these people want money?’

  Annie nodded.

  ‘You refused?’ He nodded toward the finger.

  ‘I didn’t refuse. It just threw me, how much they were asking for.’

  ‘And that was?’

  ‘Half a million pounds sterling. I said I couldn’t raise that sort of money…’

  ‘That true?’

  ‘Of course it’s true!’

  ‘And that’s why you’re here. To ask me for this money?’

  ‘I know you were a business associate of Max’s.’

  ‘Were?’

  ‘Are.’ Annie clutched at her brow. ‘I don’t have access to that sort of money and I can’t contact Max about it.’ She hesitated. ‘Look, I have three clubs and a house.’

  ‘No.’ Constantine put the brandy glass down on the desk. ‘You don’t. Max has three clubs and a house. Unless of course he’s dead, in which case, as his widow, you would own them. You got the title deeds?’

  ‘I’ll get them.’ But they’re in Max’s name, of course. And I don’t have a fucking clue where they might be.

  ‘So you don’t.’ Constantine was silent for a beat. ‘Is Max dead, Mrs Carter? Because without a body I believe it’s five months before he can be legally declared dead and his estate would then, and only then, pass to you.’

  Annie felt sick again. His cold assessment of her situation was just too painfully accurate. All she was doing was tying herself in more knots. There was no way out of this situation. Layla was lost. She got shakily to her feet.

  ‘I’m sorry to have wasted your time,’ she said stiffly, reaching for the box.

  Again he caught her wrist.

  ‘Hold on. Now come on. Level with me. Is he dead? Is that it?’ asked Constantine.

  ‘No, he’s alive. He’s not free to help at the moment, that’s all.’ They’ll take over the manor, Jimmy had warned her. This was a huge mistake.

  Constantine’s eyes were steady on hers. ‘Is there a deadline on this?’

  ‘A month last Friday,’ said Annie.

  ‘Then we have time. Okay, so why pay up? There’s an alternative.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Find them.’

  ‘And how the hell are we supposed to do that?’

  ‘It’s worth a shot. Have your people tried?’

  ‘No.’ Annie shook her head firmly. ‘The kidnappers told me no police, no funny business. If they even suspect we’re looking, they could kill her. Could you let go? You’re hurting my wrist.’

  He let her go.

  Annie repacked the little box as Constantine Barolli came around the desk. He held out Max’s ring to her as she pocketed the box.

  ‘Thanks,’ said Annie, glancing up at him. She took the ring.

  ‘We’ll start looking,’ he said.

  ‘No,’ said Annie.

  ‘Time may be shorter than you think. Any chance is worth taking.’

  Annie looked at him, shook her head in confusion. ‘No. I don’t know. I’m not sure.’

  She had come for the money, that was all. Now she had an offer of something more, something riskier for Layla. And yet there could be a chance here. He was right. A chance to get Layla out whole, or at least
alive. Not dead.

  ‘Do you have any idea how many people were involved in taking her?’ he asked.

  Annie looked at him and gave up. She told him what Jeanette had told her about the gang. It wasn’t much.

  ‘The address of the villa,’ he said.

  She told him. He wrote it down.

  ‘Give me a description of Layla.’

  She described Layla. He wrote that down too.

  ‘How do I reach you, Mrs Carter?’ he asked.

  ‘You don’t,’ said Annie with a firm shake of the head. ‘I think they had a tap on the phone line in Majorca, and I think they’ve done that here too. So no phone calls to where I’m staying. Sorry.’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘Have someone pass a message to my boy Billy Black. He drinks at The Grapes in Bow.’

  Constantine nodded. ‘No problem. To be doubly sure we’re safe, I’ll use the code.’

  ‘What code?’

  ‘Caesar’s code,’ he said. ‘It’s over two thousand years old. Each letter of the alphabet becomes a number, and you add three. So A is one, plus three, which equals four, B is two, plus three, that’s five, and so on. You got that?’

  Annie nodded. Then she looked at him and spoke from the heart.

  ‘Layla’s life could depend on this,’ she said. ‘For Christ’s sake be careful.’

  ‘You got it,’ said Constantine Barolli, and held out his hand, palm down.

  Annie looked at his face and she almost believed what he was saying. Her eyes dropped to his hand.

  And here we go again, she thought. He expects me to kiss his damned hand. It’s like having an audience with the Pope!

  Something in her rebelled.

  Annie extended her own hand and shook his briefly. Constantine Barolli looked at her with an expression of mild amusement.

  ‘I’ll be in touch,’ he said.

  Annie nodded and left the room, feeling that she had somehow made a pact with the devil.

  When she’d gone, Constantine stood there for a long moment staring at the closed door. Then he went back to the desk, picked up the phone, and dialled. It was quickly answered.

  ‘Nico?’ he said after a beat. ‘Got a job for you.’

  30

  Tony was waiting in the car, patient and enduring as always. She was suddenly very thankful for Tony. It was dark outside now, dark and cold. She huddled into the back seat and absorbed the warmth of the car’s interior.

  Tony was good. He didn’t ask how the meet with Constantine Barolli had gone, and she was grateful for that. She wouldn’t have known how to answer anyway. Talking to Constantine Barolli had been like entering a foreign land. In the sumptuous Holland Park house the overwhelming aura had been one of great riches, extreme comfort.

  Yeah, and they say crime don’t pay, she thought sourly.

  She reminded herself that Constantine Barolli was a crook of the highest order, cunning as a fox. Wasn’t that what they called him on the streets of London and New York, the silver fox? Now she could see why. She was hoping that a man with Barolli’s clout could somehow turn the odds in Layla’s favour, magic up a good result.

  Impossible.

  In her heart, she knew that her baby girl was lost, gone from her forever.

  And maybe that’s what I deserve, thought Annie painfully.

  After all, she’d done some pretty bad things, things she wasn’t proud of. She thought of Ruthie, her lovely trusting sister. She’d stolen her sister’s man from right under her bloody nose, and she had walked carelessly on the dark side of life—she had even colluded in murder. She deserved to suffer, that was it.

  But still she couldn’t give up. She knew she was beaten, she knew it was all for nothing, but she could not give up. Not while there was even the smallest chance that Layla could still be alive.

  ‘Where to, Mrs Carter?’ asked Tony as he moved the car smoothly off into the flow of traffic.

  There’s a block of apartments in Mayfair, on the corner of Oxford Street and Park Lane. Let’s go there.’

  But what the hell for? she wondered the instant she’d said it.

  She knew what for. She was revisiting her old life, the life where she had been in control, where things had never been easy but at least they hadn’t ripped her guts out and left her to die slowly inside. She was trying to reassure herself, to tell herself that all was not lost—even when she knew that it was.

  They were passing Hyde Park, the car zipping along smoothly.

  Max’s car.

  Is he dead? Constantine Barolli had asked her, his hand on her wrist.

  She hoped he hadn’t felt her pulse leap with the lie.

  Now they were cruising past Park Lane, into Piccadilly, and then they were there, and the block of flats looked just the same. Tony eased the car into the side of the road.

  Nothing had changed. She had lived here with Max as his mistress, and she had been so happy. Rapturously, first-love happy. There were lights on in the apartment; someone else was living there now. Annie wondered if human feelings sank into the bricks of old buildings, if other people could feel the happiness of past generations…but if that was so, then what about Dolly’s place? There had been plenty of sex there and plenty of laughter—but there had been other things too. Worse things. Pat Delaney meeting his Maker. Poor little Eddie, Max’s youngest brother, too…but she didn’t want to think about that.

  Tony waited behind the wheel, the motor idling.

  ‘You know Upper Brook Street, Tony?’ she asked at last.

  ‘Yep. I do.’

  ‘Let’s go there.’

  It wasn’t far. Back along Park Lane, passing the glitzy hotels, then the car swung right and she was back in her old life again.

  This place was luxurious too. But the memories she had made here had not been like those she had made in Mayfair with Max. These memories were of a successful business, a high-class brothel. Peers of the Realm and MPs and City gents had flocked here to see Madam Annie’s classy girls. But then it had all gone sour. It was here that she had been arrested. Here that Kieron Delaney, pampered brat of the rival Delaney gang, had tried to force himself on her…

  ‘That’s enough, Tony. Let’s get home.’

  Or what passed for it.

  ‘No, wait.’ Annie straightened. ‘You know Max’s mother, Queenie, you know where she used to live? Max never sold the house, did he?’

  Tony shook his head.

  ‘I know it,’ he said. His eyes moved sideways, away from hers, in the mirror. ‘It might not be convenient tonight though, Mrs Carter.’

  Annie stared at his face curiously.

  ‘Convenient for who?’ she asked.

  ‘It’s just that the boys meet there sometimes…’

  ‘Ah. And they’re meeting there tonight? Well good. Come on then, Tony. Let’s take a look at the old place.’

  Tony glanced at her face in the rear-view mirror. He sighed, then pointed the car toward the meaner streets of the East End.

  Annie had never been inside Queenie Carter’s home. She knew Max and the boys used to meet there—they still met there even after Queenie was dead—but she had never stepped inside. She had never even met Queenie. Her sister Ruthie had. Ruthie, as Max’s prospective bride, had been taken to Sunday tea with the imperious woman and had declared herself to be ‘scared shitless’ throughout. Which had to be true, because Ruthie rarely swore, but she had come back home from the meeting in a real lather.

  ‘She’s horrible,’ Ruthie had told Annie. ‘Really scary.’

  But Max had adored his mother.

  Had Queenie lived, Annie doubted that she would have found favour with the old woman, either. At least Ruthie had been sweet natured and biddable, which must have been what Queenie wanted in a daughter-in-law. But Annie was strong-headed, opinionated—too much, she felt, like Queenie herself. They would have clashed. That much was certain.

  There were people still arriving when Tony stopped the car. Dark shapes passing
beneath the streetlights, disappearing into the doorway.

  ‘Coming then, Tone?’ Annie was out of the door but then stopped dead, remembering what had happened last time she hurried across a street.

  But the road was quiet.

  Tony got out and locked the car and followed her over the road.

  He knocked and the door opened to reveal a rat-faced little man holding a cigar. Rat Face’s jaw dropped when he saw Tony standing there with a woman in tow.

  ‘What the fucking hell…?’ asked Rat Face. ‘Who’s this, Tony?’

  ‘This is your boss,’ said Annie, pushing forward and into the hallway. ‘Shut the door, will you? It’s freezing out there tonight.’

  ‘This is Jackie,’ said Tony to Annie. To Jackie he said: ‘Watch your mouth. This is Mrs Carter.’

  The faces of the men seated around the big table in the back room upstairs were so comically startled by her appearance that Annie almost had to stifle a laugh. Jimmy Bond was there, at the head of the table. He looked not just startled but badly put out. There were a couple of others she recognized. Gary Tooley was there: lanky, blond and—by all accounts—vicious. And Steven Taylor, a squat and powerfully built man with mud-coloured eyes and a permanent five o’clock shadow on his chin. If Jimmy was Max’s most trusted lieutenant, these two were tough sergeants-at-arms. Hard men. Handy men. Men who were not to be trifled with.

  ‘Hi Jimmy,’ said Annie brightly, unbuttoning her coat. ‘Introduce me to all these nice gentlemen, why don’t you?’

  Jimmy looked as though he was about to blow a gasket, but he swallowed it and stood up.

  ‘Boys, this is Max’s wife.’

  ‘Who is taking over, as of now,’ said Annie, smiling tightly.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Jimmy. ‘Annie—’

  ‘Mrs Carter,’ Annie reminded him sharply, still smiling.

  ‘Mrs Carter,’ said Jimmy with heavy irony. ‘This is Steve, this is Gary…’

  ‘Yeah, I remember you two,’ said Annie.

  They nodded, looking at her as though she’d just landed from Mars. ‘This is Deaf Derek, and this is Benny. This is Jackie Tulliver…’ The cigar-smoking little Rat Face nodded, all the while looking at her as if she’d crawled out from some place beyond his understanding.

  The welcome was distinctly underwhelming, but Annie was determined to remain unfazed.