Black Widow

by Jessie Keane

  ‘So how’d you wash the kids today? Not in cold water?’ Annie went over to the door Kath indicated, and flicked the switch down. Then she filled the kettle and stuck it on the stove to heat up.

  ‘Haven’t got around to much yet,’ said Kath.

  Annie felt a stab of anger at her cousin. It was nearly two o’clock in the afternoon, and the kids hadn’t even been washed yet. Here was Kath—and oh yes, Annie could see the poor cow was up against it, what with losing her mother and being married to that prize prick Jimmy Bond—but here she was with two beautiful kids, and she wasn’t even looking after them properly.

  If I had Layla right now, I’d be treating her like a princess, she thought miserably. When she had first held Layla, bloody and squawling after her birth, she had known the meaning of complete and utter love. Oh, she had loved Max. She had loved him with a passion that had never ceased to surprise her. But Layla had come from her, was a part of her. When she was separated from Layla, she ached to be with her. When Layla suffered, she suffered too.

  She was suffering now.

  And Kath was here, with her two wonderful children, neglecting them.

  All right, she could understand that Kath felt depressed. Christ, she certainly wasn’t having a ball being married to Jimmy. And she’d been so closely connected to her mother that Maureen’s death had come as a horrible blow to her.

  But still, she had her kids. And wasn’t that worth making the effort for?

  Annie certainly thought it was.

  The kettle whistled and she turned off the gas and poured the hot water into the bowl. She found rubber gloves under the sink and started on the washing-up.

  ‘Christ, Annie Carter the domestic type,’ sneered Kath, watching as Jimmy Junior picked up the tea towel and held his hands up to Annie. She handed him down a saucer, and he started to dry it with enthusiasm, his brow knitted in concentration.

  Lovely kid, thought Annie. Jimmy Junior! She was sure it was Jimmy’s idea to call his son by his own name, the bigheaded bastard. Didn’t Kath deserve a say?

  Angrily, Annie plunged her hands into the sink and cut a swathe through the washing-up. It helped to do something constructive, even if it was only a small thing. It helped her rage at Billy’s death, helped her grief, helped her confusion.

  She’d shut the clubs, when according to the books they were good paying concerns. She’d lost people their jobs, their livelihoods. Wrong.

  She’d made such a bloody hash of everything, she knew that.

  She had heard that stupid noise on the phone and jumped to the wrong conclusion. Half hysterical with distress, beyond reason, she had pinned all her suspicions—which had been totally wrong—on Kieron Delaney.

  She’d moved in on Charlie and incurred Redmond’s wrath—so wrong.

  And now Billy was dead.

  Full house.

  And what had she got right in this whole sorry mess? Nothing, yet. But she had to keep at it. There was nothing else she could do. She knew she’d grown soft and slack, had come to rely on Max too much. Now, somehow, she had to conquer her doubts, get a grip on herself, and be self-reliant again, the way she used to be.

  It was going to be hard, and she knew it.

  If you were up against it, you had to take responsibility, make decisions.

  Sometimes, they were the wrong ones.

  Oh, and how she knew that.

  But you had to keep going. Keep your eye on the goal.

  Jimmy Junior was tugging at her dress and she was staring out of the window, sudsy water dripping from her hands. Away with the fairies again.

  She passed him down a sandwich plate. Kath was talking.

  ‘What?’ Annie asked.

  ‘Jimmy told me Billy Black got hit,’ said Kath.

  Annie felt the stem of a glass snap in her hand. There was sharp pain and then blood spurted.

  ‘Damn,’ she said. ‘Got any plasters, Kath?’

  Kath nodded towards one of the kitchen cabinets. Annie held the tea towel around the cut on her finger and scrabbled about with the packet of plasters. She got one out, stuck it over the cut.

  ‘You all right?’ asked Kath as Annie sat down at the kitchen table.

  Annie looked at her in surprise. Kath was watching her nervously, as though she might flip at any moment.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Annie on a sigh. ‘I’m fine, Kath.’

  There was a brief silence, broken only by the baby’s noisy suckling.

  ‘It’s rotten, losing someone,’ said Kath, her eyes on the baby’s head as she stroked the downy hair.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Annie. Jimmy Junior ran over to her and gave her the dried plate with a big beaming smile on his face. ‘Thanks, Tiger. That’s nice.’ She looked at Kath. ‘You must miss your mum something awful.’

  ‘Yeah.’ Kath didn’t look up but a fat tear rolled down her cheek and plopped on to the baby’s head.

  ‘It gets easier,’ said Annie. ‘Don’t it?’

  Christ, I really hope it gets easier, she thought.

  Kath looked up. ‘S’pose so,’ she sniffed. ‘Look, no offence. But I don’t want you coming round here any more, and I don’t want that bloody Ellie here either, poking around. Jimmy don’t like it.’

  ‘Okay, Kath. I understand,’ she said. She stood up and put her coat on. No point staying where she wasn’t wanted. Best to get on, do what she had to do. She was halfway out the hall door when Kath said: ‘I’m sorry you lost Billy. On top of everything else.’

  Annie paused and looked back at her cousin. Kath looked awkward.

  ‘And I’m sorry about this business with Layla,’ said Kath haltingly. ‘Jimmy told me someone’s snatched her. I’m sorry.’

  Annie stood there, thinking that Jimmy had obviously been mouthing off more than he should have been, but also thinking, miracles would never cease. Kath was being almost nice to her.

  ‘Thanks, Kath,’ she said, and she went on out through the front door, closing it softly behind her.

  Tony was waiting in the car. Reading the paper again. Jesus, Tony read a lot of papers. Annie sneaked a quick peek. The Israelis and Syrians were fighting again.

  Thank God for Tony, thought Annie.

  ‘Where to, Mrs Carter?’ he asked as she got in the back.

  Annie braced herself. She’d had an idea, maybe a stupid one, but what did she have to lose now?

  ‘Constantine Barolli’s place,’ she said.

  53

  Barolli was on the phone when Annie was shown in. She sat down in her usual chair and looked at this man who she knew had his fingers in all manner of extortion rackets. And new things, too: things that the London gangs weren’t much into yet. Things like legitimate business loans, offered at better interest rates than the banks. So long as the retailer paid up promptly, all was well. If a retailer defaulted, the Barolli firm claimed the business, asset-stripped it, and sold it on. Which wasn’t that dissimilar from the banks, really. Only the banks didn’t break your legs if you complained about their business methods.

  ‘Sorry about that,’ said Constantine, putting the phone down at last.

  ‘That’s okay,’ said Annie. ‘Is there any news of Layla?’

  ‘Not yet. Be patient.’ He sat back, looked at her.

  Annie clasped her hands together and stifled the impulse to launch herself at him in fury. For fuck’s sake! When was there going to be news of Layla? There was less than a week to go now. Desperation boiled in her, but she was determined not to show it. He would use it against her, she knew he would.

  ‘I heard our mutual contact had a mishap,’ he said.

  Annie’s fists clenched in her lap, the nails digging into her palms.

  ‘He’s dead,’ she said flatly, staring at him with cold, emotionless eyes. ‘If you can call being dead a mishap, then yeah, he has.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  At least he’s not saying ‘I told you so’, thought Annie. There was that to be thankful for. If he
knew more details, if he knew how big a hash she’d made of things, he didn’t say so.

  ‘How do I get in touch with you now?’ asked Constantine.

  ‘Through my driver, Tony,’ said Annie. And please God don’t let anything happen to Tony because of me.

  ‘Good.’ Constantine stood up, went to the window behind his desk, lifted the blinds and glanced out. He turned back to Annie.

  ‘I’ve been thinking about your problem, Mrs Carter,’ he said, putting his hands in his pockets and leaning back against the wall.

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘You know, it puzzles me. Why ask for such a large sum? Half a million! That’s a great deal of money. And why give you so long to raise it?’

  ‘Perhaps they’ve given me so long to raise it precisely because it is so large a sum,’ said Annie.

  ‘Maybe. But why not pitch it lower—say, half of that? Then it would be a safer bet, yeah? In their shoes, that’s what I’d do. The mark should be able to raise that, even if it was a struggle…and then no need for this long wait for the money. Little fish are sweet, Mrs Carter. So you know what I think about this?’

  ‘No,’ said Annie.

  ‘I still think that whoever is doing this is doing it not only to get the money, but to hurt you too.’

  ‘Do you think they expect me to fail to raise it?’ she asked. God knew she had her doubts about her own ability to come up with the goods. The doubts were increasing all the time, and now she felt almost at screaming pitch.

  Constantine shook his head.

  ‘No, they know you’ll raise it, one way or another. You’re a mother; you’ll raise it. But they’re in no hurry to get it, and that makes me suspect that the big buzz here is all about twisting your tail. So the question we should be asking is—who hates you enough to do that?’

  Annie stared at him. The silver fox. She looked away.

  ‘I thought it was Kieron Delaney, but Kieron Delaney is dead,’ she said. ‘He had a…a sort of obsession with me. I was sure it was him, but Redmond Delaney says it’s not possible.’

  ‘And you believe him?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Annie. ‘Funnily enough, I do.’

  ‘I heard you shut all three of the Carter clubs.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Why? If you need to raise money to get your daughter back, why close a profitable business?’

  ‘Because those clubs had been turned into tacky hellholes, that’s why. And we both know that the money I’m losing through the clubs won’t cover a fraction of what these people want from me.’ Annie clutched at her head. It was pounding. She looked up at him. ‘There’s really no news? None at all?’

  Constantine’s blue eyes stared into hers. ‘Nothing concrete yet.’

  ‘Or are you just saying that to string me along?’

  ‘We’re following leads.’

  ‘All right, then. The money. Loan me the money. Right now. So I’ve got it in place.’

  ‘What?’

  Annie jumped to her feet. Suddenly she couldn’t just sit there and pretend to be cool any more. Time was running out fast. There was less than a week to go. Less than one week! They couldn’t let this thing go right to the wire. If there was no news now, then the money had to be there very soon.

  ‘You heard me.’ Annie planted both fists on the desk and glared at him. ‘You make business loans. The banks won’t lend me fuck-all. But you could. A legitimate business loan, Mr Barolli. From you to me. All signed and sealed. All perfectly above board. You loan me the money and—’

  ‘And what?’ Constantine pushed himself away from the wall. ‘You’ve closed down the only means of income you have and, Mrs Carter, loans have to be repaid.’

  ‘I know that.’

  ‘Plus there’s the slight problem that you don’t own the clubs, your husband does…’

  ‘I have Max’s permission to act as necessary, always.’ She was in limbo and she knew it, tangled up in a web of lies.

  ‘He’s been in touch then?’

  ‘No,’ said Annie. ‘He hasn’t.’

  ‘No,’ said Constantine. ‘Thought not.’

  ‘He’s alive,’ said Annie, but it was a lie. She knew it. He knew it. She was fooling nobody.

  ‘He’s dead. Everything points to that.’

  Annie took a deep breath.

  ‘Look,’ she said. ‘The point is that I’m here and Max is not. So I closed the clubs because I was unhappy with the way they were being run, and I am going to reopen them and run them at a profit. So you can give me a business loan, and if I default on any of the payments then you can beat me over the head, anything, only give me the fucking loan.’

  Constantine didn’t even blink. He looked up at her with the same blank impassivity he always displayed. Then he said: ‘No.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I said no. You know my terms, Mrs Carter. I don’t particularly want to extend a business loan to you. You know I have a more personal arrangement in mind. I’ll come up with the goods when you come up with the goods.’

  Annie closed her eyes briefly. She slumped back into the chair and then stared at him.

  ‘You bastard,’ she said flatly.

  ‘Yep, I guess that’s true.’

  ‘You utter, fucking bastard.’ Now she was shaking with rage, incandescent with it. ‘Don’t you have any feeling? Don’t you have any conscience?’

  ‘An upright prick has no conscience, Mrs Carter. As I’m sure you know.’ Constantine’s mouth tilted in a slight smile. ‘And, incidentally, the last person who spoke to me like that was my mother, and I didn’t much like it. I still don’t. I suggest you stop right there.’

  Annie jumped to her feet. ‘And I suggest you stuff it up your arse,’ she yelled. ‘You can shove your personal arrangement.’

  And she stormed from the room, crossed the empty hall, and went out of the front door and on to the steps. Once outside, she stopped. Breathing hard, she hesitated. Because she had no choice. No choice at all.

  She went back inside and crossed the hall and opened the study door and went back in, closing it behind her. She looked at Constantine, sitting there patiently behind his desk.

  ‘You gonna tell me to shove my personal arrangement again, Mrs Carter?’ he asked.

  Annie gulped down a calming breath and finally shook her head.

  ‘No, I’m not going to say that.’

  He looked at her curiously.

  ‘What, then?’

  Annie thought: Here we go.

  ‘I’m going to ask you if you’ve got a key for this door. People seem to keep bursting in on us.’

  Constantine stood up, came around the desk, walked over to where she stood. He took a small key out of his jacket pocket, put it in the lock and turned it.

  Oh fuck it Max, I’m sorry. Forgive me for this.

  Constantine drew closer, staring at her face.

  ‘What?’ she asked nervously.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘No, what is it?’

  ‘I’m just wondering if any woman can be worth half a million pounds,’ said Constantine.

  Probably not, thought Annie.

  ‘You remember the art exhibition in Jermyn Street? Kieron Delaney had painted a nude of you. I was there.’

  ‘I know. I saw you.’ Annie remembered that occasion very well. Constantine had been there with his family, and she had instantly noticed him: a stunningly handsome man, glossy and polished as only wealthy American men ever were.

  ‘Kieron Delaney was all over you like a cheap suit. And Max came in and there was a fight. Even Redmond Delaney was treating you respectfully, and I don’t think he has much time for women on the whole. I know all about the bad blood between the Carters and the Delaneys, and that was a factor, but Kieron Delaney and Max were mostly fighting over you. I could see that. And you know what? I could see why.’

  ‘Why?’ Annie asked, dry-mouthed.

  ‘Because you’re something else, Mrs Carter. Something different.�
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  ‘You don’t have to flatter me to get me into bed, Mr Barolli. It’s a done deal.’

  ‘It’s not flattery. It’s a fact.’

  ‘Whatever—it’s not needed,’ said Annie coldly.

  Constantine smiled a little at that. ‘I think you’re going to be a very tough nut to crack.’

  Annie shook her head. ‘No, I’ll be easy. That’s the deal, right? I’m easy and you pay. But first I want to know one thing.’

  ‘And that is…?’

  ‘When do I get the money?’

  ‘Straight down to business. Money for sex, very direct. I like that.’

  Annie felt herself colour up. She knew he was alluding to her past.

  ‘I’ve never been on the game, Mr Barolli, whatever you may have heard or read in the press.’

  ‘The Mayfair Madam,’ said Constantine thoughtfully.

  ‘Yeah, note the word “Madam”. I ran the show, I wasn’t a performer.’

  ‘Were there other men? Kieron Delaney?’

  ‘No.’ Although Max had always thought there was something between the two of them. His endless jealous suspicions had driven her crazy; they were groundless.

  ‘And, before Max…?’

  ‘No.’

  Constantine drew back a little, his expression sceptical, his mouth curving in a cynical smile. ‘A one-man woman?’

  ‘Excuse me, is that even remotely bloody funny? And you haven’t answered my question.’

  ‘You get your money when I’m satisfied, Mrs Carter—but certainly by Friday. Of course, if I’m not satisfied…’

  ‘You will be,’ said Annie quickly, feeling sick at heart, cursing the evil, miserable bastards who had pushed her into this corner.

  He looked around. ‘On the couch over there would be good.’

  He indicated one of the big tan leather Chesterfields. Annie walked over to it as if she was about to be shot. So this was it. Down to business. But now it was here, now she was actually going to have to do it, she wasn’t sure she could.

  Constantine saw her hesitation.

  ‘Let me take your coat,’ he said, and he slipped it off her shoulders.

  Annie stiffened.

  He was standing so close to her, right behind her. Only Max had ever done that.

  Now he was pushing her hair to one side, and she felt with absolute panic his hands moving at the back of her neck, felt him grasp the zip on the back of her dress and pull it down.