Black Widow

by Jessie Keane

  He needn’t worry, thought Annie sourly.

  A liaison with Constantine Barolli was the last thing on her mind.

  She thought back, to the shocking thing he had said to her. Still couldn’t believe it.

  ‘Penny for them?’ Dolly sat down beside Annie and started pouring the tea.

  Annie looked at her, startled. ‘What?’

  ‘You’re miles away.’

  ‘Oh, nothing.’ Annie gave a tight smile.

  ‘Did something happen at the Barolli place?’

  ‘What? No. Nothing.’

  ‘Is he going to help then? With the money?’

  ‘No. I don’t think he is.’

  ‘But I thought he was a friend of Max’s. Well, at least a business associate. I thought they were tight together.’

  Annie shrugged and sipped her tea.

  She had sworn to herself that she would do anything, anything, to get her daughter back safe.

  But not this, she thought. I can’t do this.

  Because Constantine Barolli wanted her in bed.

  He’d stated that fact, calmly, clearly, shocking her rigid, making her run for the hills. But how far could she really run? Layla’s safe return, the money, everything hinged on her compliance.

  But she just couldn’t do it.

  So then. Plan B.

  And then Jimmy Bond came in, and sat down at the kitchen table across from Annie, and looked at her.

  ‘It’s done,’ he said. ‘We’ve got him. Shall we go? We’ll take my car.’

  It was time to stand up and be counted. Annie gathered up her coat and gloves.

  ‘I’ll see you later, Doll,’ she told Dolly.

  Dolly just nodded. She didn’t know what was going on and she didn’t want to know either. It was better to be left in ignorance.

  38

  Charlie ‘The Dip’ Foster was Redmond Delaney’s right hand, and right now Charlie knew he was done for.

  Some heavy faces had brought him to Smithfield meat market and he knew he was in big trouble.

  They’d snatched him, worked him over. Taken him completely by surprise.

  He’d been at a party at his girlfriend’s house, her twenty-first birthday. They’d gone outside for a bit of how’s your father and he’d been caught with his trousers down—literally.

  So now here he was.

  They’d laughed as they’d hung him up here, joking about meat being well hung. Then they’d left him here for an hour, just left him dangling.

  He was a tough bastard but right now he was scared shitless.

  It was the noise. The awful noise of that thing coming down on the wooden block. His brain was agile, you didn’t get to be well up in the mob without having a few brain cells rattling around in your head, but now his brain kept faltering. That noise.

  Thunk!

  That thing on wood.

  Thunk!

  Chopping through flesh and bone.

  He tried again to get his hands loose from their bindings, but again he failed. He slumped again, exhausted.

  They’d hung him up from one of the meat hooks by the back of his jacket collar, laughing as they lifted him up there. The smell had hit him first. The smell of meat, of death. Pigs’ heads surrounded him, the skin flayed from the flesh. Their eyes stared at him sightlessly. Sides of beef nudged against him.

  The cleaver came down again and a trotter thumped on to the floor.

  Thunk!

  Oh God help me, he thought. Please help me.

  But then he knew he’d done bad things. Hurt people. Robbed. Bad things. So perhaps God wasn’t listening. Perhaps he was turning a deaf ear.

  The butcher with the gentle eyes and the bloodstained apron went on chopping away patiently at the meat.

  And now Charlie could see through his stinging eyes that there was a woman approaching.

  A woman in black.

  All black.

  Dark hair and eyes that were just this side of crazy. Black coat. Black leather gloves.

  A heavy on either side of her. Known faces. Jimmy Bond, he knew that bastard all too well, moving off to one side and watching, his eyes going from the woman to Charlie, back and forth, back and forth.

  The woman stopped several paces away and stared steadily up at Charlie.

  He gulped.

  ‘You’re Charlie Foster,’ the woman said. Her voice was low. ‘Are you wondering who I am, Charlie? Or do you know?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Charlie with an effort. Hanging up here was killing him. His head ached, his shoulders were agony.

  ‘I’m Annie Carter.’

  Fuck it, thought Charlie. Carter was a name he hadn’t wanted to hear, not here, not now.

  ‘And you’re the Delaneys’ main man,’ said Annie. ‘Got a question for you, Charlie. Think carefully before you answer.’

  Charlie nodded.

  ‘Where is Kieron Delaney?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Charlie.

  Jimmy came over, slipping something on to his hand. He suddenly gut-punched Charlie with a brass knuckle-duster. All the air came out of Charlie in a whoop.

  ‘Think again,’ said Annie.

  Charlie was struggling to get his breath back. He was gasping like a fish out of water.

  ‘Jesus, I don’t know,’ groaned Charlie, his face screwed up in pain.

  Panic blurred his thoughts. His brain felt like mush.

  ‘Come on, Charlie. You can do better than that. Just tell me where Kieron Delaney is and you can go.’

  ‘I don’t know where he is,’ said Charlie. ‘If I knew, I’d tell you.’

  ‘I think you do know, Charlie. And you’d better tell me.’

  ‘I don’t. I don’t know,’ babbled Charlie.

  An eye for an eye, thought Annie.

  She nodded to Jimmy.

  Jimmy nodded to the boys. They manhandled him back down on to the concrete floor. His legs sagged under him. He was shaking. Urine trickled down his thighs. They held him up between them.

  ‘Put him here,’ said the butcher, indicating the block.

  Charlie started to scream.

  39

  Ten minutes later, Annie went outside and was sick into the gutter. Being sick, feeling sick, repulsed, disgusted, was becoming a way of life. For the first time, she seriously wondered if she had the balls for this.

  An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.

  All very well to think it, say it—but to do it? That was another thing altogether. Layla had lost her finger and her freedom and Annie had craved revenge for that. So Charlie had lost a finger too. However, he still hadn’t given away Kieron Delaney’s whereabouts. And he wouldn’t. Charlie was tough. Scared shitless, yes—but hard as nails. He wouldn’t squeal.

  ‘Should we go on?’ Jimmy had asked her after the butcher had done the job on Charlie.

  She’d shaken her head, disgusted with herself, that desperation had driven her to this. She’d walked out.

  Oh yes—and then she’d been sick. Sick as a cowardly dog in the gutter.

  Sick like the feeble woman she was. Max wouldn’t have been sick. Neither would Constantine Barolli. They would have severed Charlie’s digits themselves and then carried right on until he blabbed or died. She knew it.

  But she’d done what she had to do. She’d sent a clear message to the Delaneys that they crossed her at their peril. And she wasn’t finished yet—not by a long shot.

  ‘You happy now?’ Jimmy said, coming out and finding her, apparently composed, waiting by the car.

  ‘Oh, I’m fucking ecstatic,’ said Annie coldly.

  ‘There’ll be trouble over this,’ said Jimmy.

  Annie looked at him. For fuck’s sake! He was meant to be on her side; he was meant to be her right-hand man. And all she was getting from him was aggro.

  ‘There’s already trouble,’ she told him. ‘I’m unhappy. And when I’m unhappy, you’d better watch out.’ She turned away from him and got into the car. Jimmy drove her back
to Limehouse in silence and then sped off without a word.

  40

  It was Friday—party day again. The weeks were speeding past. There were three new girls in, entertaining the punters in the front room. Music drifted out, not too loud of course—had to keep the neighbours in mind. The door from the hall was wide open and Ross was at his station beside the door.

  As she passed the open front room door, Annie saw the drinks set out, and the nibbles, and the low, intimate lighting in there. One of the girls was straddling an older punter in an armchair, bouncing up and down. He looked too old to take the strain. Annie hoped she didn’t kill the poor old sod: a stiff on the premises would be awkward.

  But then, she thought wryly, it wouldn’t be the first time it had happened.

  Two of the girls—pretty, fresh-looking young girls—were kneeling on the carpet giving two punters blow jobs on the sofa. The two men were chatting about the state of their share margins as the girls gave them head. They could have been in the boardroom. They looked the type.

  There were rapturous noises coming from upstairs, and the fainter sound of a whip whacking on flesh. Una.

  Dolly emerged from the kitchen, closing the door carefully behind her. She beckoned to Annie.

  ‘Billy’s here,’ she hissed. ‘He says he’s got news for you. Christ, he does pick his moments, don’t he?’

  Annie hurried into the kitchen, closing the door on the sounds of revelry behind her. Billy Black was there, sitting at the kitchen table, his hat in his hand, his briefcase clutched on his lap, a cup of tea steaming in front of him.

  He looked up as she came in, and blushed.

  ‘Hello Billy,’ said Annie, and sat down at the table. She looked across at him. ‘Dolly says you’ve got news. Have you found out something?’

  Billy nodded and haltingly told her what he had discovered. That he had an address. It hadn’t been easy and it hadn’t been quick. The quarry had been cagey, taking careful steps, but Billy prided himself on his persistence and it had certainly paid off. He’d found that this was a long-standing arrangement, not an overnight wonder. The quarry had been back and back and back for more.

  Annie stood up.

  ‘Right,’ she said. ‘Come on, Billy.’

  Tony was waiting in the car, reading the paper. Senator Kennedy was on the front page and there was trouble in Sudan and Ethiopia. Same old, same old. Annie tapped on the window and he wound it down and looked at her expectantly, and at Billy standing there at her side like a spare part.

  ‘We’ve got an address to go to, it’s not far. Billy’s going to direct you.’

  Tony nodded and put his newspaper aside. Billy got in the front passenger seat, Annie in the back.

  Stammering and halting, Billy directed Tony through the streets until they wound up at a small row of terraces with a neat and tidy air about them. Tony got out and opened the door for Annie. Billy came around the car. They stood on the pavement and looked up at the house in question.

  ‘That’s his old Zodiac over there,’ said Annie. She’d clocked the registration number when he’d driven her back from Smithfield meat market, and the colour was distinctive: it was definitely the right one. She looked at Billy. ‘Make yourself scarce now, Billy. Can you get back home from here?’

  ‘Course I can,’ he mumbled, and shambled off along the road.

  She didn’t want Billy taking any heat because he’d helped her with this.

  ‘Okay, Tone,’ she said, bracing herself for this. ‘Let’s go.’

  41

  So the kidnappers were not in Palma any more. There had been talk about a boat, so perhaps the scum had already left the island? But talk of a boat didn’t mean they’d actually got on one, did it? Constantine Barolli’s boys had done door-to-door and that had proved worth while. Now they concentrated on taxis, car rentals, and the bars and, yes, the boats in and around Palma’s harbour to find the route out that the kidnappers had taken. They drew a blank on the taxis and the car-hire firms—nothing on those names, nothing on those descriptions, not a damned thing. Then they started on the bars, talking to bartenders, owners, waitresses.

  In one of the last they tried they spoke to two waitresses who said that on the night in question, a Wednesday, they hadn’t been working, but Talitha, another waitress, had, and her boyfriend was a fisherman who had a boat with his father and—guess what?—sometimes they did little jobs here and there; not fishing, little jobs, did they know the sort of thing?

  Oh yes, the men laughed, they knew the sort of thing.

  And where did Talitha live? the men asked. Oh, we couldn’t tell you that, giggled the girls, and the men said, oh but you could, and smiled, and flashed enough money that the girls managed to overcome their scruples towards their colleague’s privacy.

  It was a very slim chance, but they were used to pursuing slim chances now.

  42

  The girl was gorgeous. Blonde, Afro-style hair. Big tits, pink nipples you could hang your hat on. Tiny waist, real womanly hips. Not a natural blonde, which was a bit of a disappointment. Reddish bush. But still—luscious. She was the sort who’d run to fat in later life, but he wouldn’t be boffing her in later life, so who gave a fuck? And she had too much chat, but then that was women for you, thought Jimmy Bond as he lay in the afterglow of a stupendous sex session.

  One of many stupendous sex sessions.

  He felt like a tiger in the sack with this girl.

  Oh, he’d had other girls since he’d walked up the aisle with Kath. Silly cow got up the duff on their honeymoon—fucking rubber had burst—and after that it was all downhill. First with the morning sickness, then the not wanting sex in case it hurt the kid, then on and on and on, nag, nag, nag, until he’d just tuned her out. When they’d first been married he could have eaten her; now he wished he fucking well had.

  He’d been hanging out at the Blue Parrot the night she’d dropped the first sprog, and down the billiard hall with the lads when she dropped the second. By then he knew the drill. Kath was a dirty cow, let the house go all to fuck, and he was fastidious by nature, he hated mess. So what else could he do but look elsewhere for his pleasures?

  ‘Was that the doorbell?’ his bed-mate asked, rolling against him and giving him the equivalent of a full body massage.

  Jimmy felt himself getting excited all over again. Christ, she was a handful. He clutched at the big breasts, rolling them around in his hands. Luscious, he thought. Yeah, that really summed her up. And of course there was another little bonus involved in shagging this particular girl. It turned him on every time he thought about it, and he was thinking about it now.

  ‘You’re awful,’ she groaned happily, arching her back and moaning. Then she stiffened. ‘That was the doorbell. Just a tick, sweetheart, I’ll have a look, see who it is.’

  And she was gone.

  Fuck it, thought Jimmy. It would be some frigging door-to-door salesman, trying to get her to buy brushes or cunting encyclopaedias.

  ‘Leave it. They’ll go away,’ he said lazily.

  But she was peeking out through the nets, looking down. Jimmy stretched and yawned and thought what an arse as he watched her standing there in the buff. He thought of who else had admired that arse and lay there feeling like a king.

  Only trouble was, the Queen had come back, and that was a bit of a downer.

  He frowned.

  Annie fucking Carter.

  The King is dead, he thought. Long Live the Queen.

  Wasn’t that what they always said? He’d heard it somewhere, and he’d rolled it around in his head many times over the years he’d worked the Carter patch. His version had recently changed, however. His version now said: Max Carter the King is dead, and Jonjo the King’s brother is dead too, and the new King was going to be him—Jimmy Bond. King of the hill; top of the whole bastard heap.

  Only so far it hadn’t worked out that way.

  Annie fucking Carter.

  She seemed to have nine lives, like a ca
t. She’d been shot in the chest, and lived. Had been set upon by Pat Delaney—and he knew hard men, real faces, who had walked in terror of Mad Pat Delaney and his drugged-up benders. But she’d survived that too.

  Couldn’t seem to kill the bitch for love nor money.

  That fucking skirt had stormed back into the manor like a whirlwind, dishing out orders, and Jimmy was not used to taking orders, not any more. It had suited him down to the ground, Max out in the sun, Jonjo flitting back and forth between the manor and Majorca and not caring too much what was going on. He had taken charge. Now, he was used to being in charge. And he didn’t like it one little bit that he wasn’t King any more.

  Of course, he could play it smart, get in good with the Queen. She was certainly tasty, in that stuck-up, ‘how dare you think about touching me?’ way she had. It was sort of challenging with a woman like that, breaking down the reserve, penetrating (and here he congratulated himself on making a really good pun) that thick layer of ice…But he didn’t like bossy women. And Christ, she was bossy.

  Needs a good stiff talking-to, he thought, feeling his erection tenting the bed sheet as he thought about doing just that. That would sort her out. And I could be just the man to do it. And then I’d be King—because she’d be the Queen, but I’d make sure she took a back seat, left me in charge…

  ‘Shit!’ yelped the girl.

  She snatched up her robe from the floor.

  Jimmy looked at her in surprise, disturbed from a pleasant reverie in which he was master of Annie Carter, master of the whole effing manor.

  ‘What?’ he asked irritably. He wished she’d stop arsing about and come back to bed. He’d got himself all worked up thinking about how he was going to bring Annie Carter to heel, and he was annoyed that the girl was faffing around the room now, checking her hair in the dressing-table mirror, shuffling into her slippers, telling him to get up.

  ‘What the fuck for?’ Jimmy asked, sitting up in bed, getting pretty angry now.