She also - very usefully, as Ruby saw it - did blood, and gore, and some very convincing wound-work: replicating every cut and scratch, gouge and soft-tissue injury, disembowelling and decapitation that the studios who hired her demanded.
And bullet-holes. Always, bullet-holes.
“Don’t matter whose daughter she is, does it?” Ruby said. “I ain’t about to tell her what it’s for. We could be makin’ a bleedin’ film ourselves, for all she knows. I just need her to show me how she does it, maybe borrow a bit of equipment for the duration. And it ain’t as if she has much to do with her old man, anyway. Way I heard it, she feels the same way about him you do. Not so keen on how Len made his money, Kathleen.”
“I don’t like it. I want to make that very, very clear.”
“Didn’t think you would. But you’ll do it, if we have to?”
Sita sighed.
“When are we meeting her?”
“I don’t know if I can do this,” Kat told Ruby, the morning before setting out to meet Madera on The Strand. “She sees through me, and I’m done. Game over.”
“Then don’t let her. You’re an actress, ain’t you? Act.”
“Was an actress. Was. I don’t know what the hell I’m supposed to be anymore.”
“Just… what do they call it? Channel your emotions. Make it real.”
“And what does that mean, then?”
‘It means… you hate that Hannah, right?”
“D’you even have to ask?”
“And it pisses you off, don’t it, us bringing her in on this job? Don’t bother answering - it’s written all over you, has been for weeks. And me… you ain’t my biggest fan right now either, are you? You think I’ve done you over, not kicking her out on her ear the second she showed her face.”
Kat didn’t reply.
“Listen, girl,” Ruby said, conciliatory, “I ain’t trying to get at you, alright? I’m just sayin’: you’re already mad as hell. And that’s what you gotta show our Dolly, if you want to sell this. All that anger, that bitterness… every bit of hate you’ve had buildin’ up inside you since Marchant - you gotta let it spill out. Let her see it.”
“And then what? D’you even know what you’ll be doing, once I’m in with her?”
Ruby scratched her chin - seeming, Kat thought, momentarily forlorn.
“More or less,” she said, quietly. “There’s a few question marks over everything, a few answers we ain’t gonna have until the very last. And a few calls we’ll have to make, me and Sita. But I got the shape of it, at least. I bleedin’ hope I do, anyway.”
“I’m sorry, Ruby,” Kat said, looking at the old woman down the barrel of the pistol Madera had given her, the one she’d stripped of its live rounds and loaded with blanks when Madera and Carruthers had their backs turned. “I really am.”
She pulled the trigger: once, twice, three times.
Now, she thought, willing Ruby to do her part, and do it quickly. For fuck’s sake - now.
She saw Ruby’s hand twitch; saw the old woman’s thumb press down on the remote control she’d been concealing up her sleeve.
And then, to her relief, saw Ruby’s head succumb to a perfect simulacrum of a gunshot: the tiny packet of blood taped to her skin and hidden below six layers of industrial foundation bursting into life, while the larger packet taped to the back of her scalp - and hidden below her thick, grey hair - unleashed its contents onto the carpet and the wall behind her in a spray of artificial blood and brain matter and God knows what else.
The thumb twitched again, and two more of the pseudo-wounds revealed themselves, at her shoulder and chest.
She fell backwards to the ground, breaking her fall with the side of her body - yet more of the blood she’d acquired from Len Wolf’s daughter spilling from her ears and nose and the third, tiny packet she’d kept hidden under her tongue.
Absolute silence descended on the basement, the calm before the inevitable storm.
And Sita, in what had to be the finest performance of her career, growled like a wounded animal before releasing a single bullet of her own into the centre of Kat’s chest.
The last thing Kat saw, before she depressed the button on her own control and let herself collapse, eyes closed, beside Ruby, was Madera - scanning the room and, apparently not liking what she found, and then sprinting to the stairs and up, out of the basement.
“Your sister,” Sita had said, after their initial conversation with Kathleen Wolf. “She won’t let it go, if we let her leave that house. You do know that, don’t you? She’ll keep on coming for the girls. And me. You too, in all likelihood.”
“You think I don’t know that?” Ruby had told her. “I said as much myself to young Kat the other day. I know.”
“And yet you still believe you’ll be able to convince her otherwise? To talk her out of whatever she has planned for us?”
Ruby had shaken her head; looked mournfully down into her cup of coffee.
“Truthfully, Sita? No, I don’t, alright? I don’t. But what am I supposed to do? I’ve got to try to make her listen, haven’t I? She’s my sister, for crying out loud. I owe her that.”
Sita had lit a cigarette; waited several long minutes before she’d spoken again.
“You have a contingency measure in mind, I take it?” she’d asked.
Ruby had looked up from her coffee, her eyes red-rimmed.
“Yeah,” she’d said. “Gonna need your help with it, though.”
“Of course. But how so?”
“Matteo Randazzo - you still talk to him?”
“Every now and then. He spends most of his time on that ranch of his these days, up in Nye County. But we occasionally have dinner, when I’m in New York.”
“You reckon he’d do you a favour, if you asked him?”
Sita had pondered this as she’d smoked.
“I believe so, yes,” she’d answered. “We had some rather lovely moments together. I like to think he remembers me fondly.”
Ruby had grimaced but nodded, as if she’d expected nothing less.
“Let’s give him a bell, then,” she’d said. “Me and you, this afternoon. ‘Cause if you’re right, and our Dolly don’t want to let it go… we’re gonna need all the help he can give us.”
Chapter 33
Osterley Park, London, May 1998
The kitchen, Dolly thought. The kitchen was the most sensible place for her to wait for them.
Pasadena kept the front door sealed; God knows, he’d shown her enough times how. Kept it locked and bolted with that biometric fingerprint recognition system of his, the one he’d said no-one but him could get through without chopping his hand right off his wrist.
A poor choice of phrase, given her line of work, she’d considered at the time. Very poor.
There was no chance of them getting out of the front of the house, then; no chance at all. They’d have to use the back door - the door they must have come through in the first place.
And to get there, they’d have to go through the kitchen.
All she’d have to do was stand quietly in the corner, somewhere that gave her a view to the hallway, and she’d have a clear line of sight to all four of them as soon as they made it up the stairs. Four clean shots, one after the other, and they’d go down like dominoes.
She took the stairs at a gallop; as quick as she could, before the smoke cleared and the younger ones decided it was time to start shooting. They didn’t know what they were doing with the guns they’d brought, she’d seen that from the first: in normal circumstances, she might’ve taken her chances. But there were three of them, not including the old girl, and only one of her, and all it took was one bullet to go astray or ricochet off a bit of furniture, and suddenly you were down on your knees with your guts spilling out in your hands.
It wasn’t worth the risk.
The ground floor was bright: every lamp and spotlight in the place lit up like a Christmas tree, the way Pasadena seemed to need it. He’d always
been afraid of the dark, that boy; she should’ve known he’d run away at the first sign of danger. He’d even left the lights on over the cooker, she saw as she entered the kitchen.
Spineless little shit.
“Ms. Madera,” said a voice from the other side of the room: male, deep, American.
She spun a quarter foot towards him, or where she thought he must have been: not enough to expose any vital organs, but enough that she could see him, get some sense of who he was and what the hell he was doing there.
“Who’s asking?” she said.
The owner of the voice stepped forward, showing himself. He was tall, dark, well-dressed; physically fit, from the way he carried himself. And a professional: she could see as much from his stance, the way he was sizing her up. From his easy, familiar handling of the Smith & Wesson in his hand, the one he had pointed straight at her.
He wasn’t alone.
The man behind him was shorter, stockier but equally athletic. He was armed, like his friend - but his hands, Dolly noted with some concern, held not a pistol but a shotgun. An automatic.
“Mr. Randazzo, Ms. Madera,” the taller man said. And fired.
Chapter 34
Ludgate Hill, London, June 1998
“You let us think you were dead,” El said, holding the bag of ice Sita had given her to her shoulder.
“I know, love,” Ruby told her. “And I’m sorry. We weren’t sure it was gonna be safe, at first. For me to, you know… come out of the closet, so to speak. She had friends, our Dolly. We didn’t know who she’d been talkin’ to. Whether there was anyone else we needed to worry about.”
“But it’s safe now?”
“We reckon so, yeah. Randazzo seems to think so, an’ all. And that bloke’s got eyes bleedin’ everywhere.”
Kat and Sita had cleared out of the flat, decamping to a coffee shop across the road while Ruby told her story - Kat griping all the way about the stabbing pains in her back and the thumbprint bruises El had left around her neck.
It was just the two of them now, her and Ruby. And try as she might to tamp it down, to tell herself it was nothing personal and that it had to be done… El was furious.
“Dexter and Michael,” she said. “Do they know?”
“About me being…?”
“Not dead. Yeah.”
Ruby looked away, apparently not able to meet El’s eyes.
“No. No, I ain’t told ‘em, not yet.”
“To keep them safe,” El said flatly.
“Yeah. Them and Rose and Karen, an’ all. I’m gonna tell ‘em, I am. Only…” She paused. “Truth is, girl: it weren’t just about making sure you lot were alright, me going to ground. I needed a bit of time away myself. Time to think, know what I mean?” She rubbed at the back of her neck - a self-soothing gesture El had very rarely known her to deploy. “It’s been a rough month or two, this has. A rough couple of years, what with Marchant and Soames and now our Dolly. I’ve had… how do them Americans say it? A lot to process. A lot of thoughts goin’ round in my head.”
Even through the haze of her anger, El got it – understood what Ruby was trying to tell her. It had been difficult for all of them, she knew. But somehow, she hadn’t stopped to really consider it - the idea of Ruby being affected by it all. Ruby, who always had a trick or two up her sleeve; Ruby, who always found a way to pull off the job, even if was at the eleventh hour.
Ruby, who’d been there for El since El was a kid: solid and dependable - and occasionally as immovable - as a rock.
You forgot she was a person, El told herself. That she had feelings; stuff of her own going on. An interior life that wasn’t just about you and Rose and the boys and the job.
“I get it,” she said, guilt dissolving what was left of her indignation.
Ruby smiled at her; put a hand to El’s face and ran a thumb across her cheek.
“Thought you might, darlin’. Thought you might. Been a funny one for all of us, ain’t it?”
“Guess so,” El agreed - thinking of Madera and Carruthers, lying dead on the floor; of Charlie Soames, and the horrors he’d rained down on his wife and kid; of Ricky Lomax, and Hannah, and Marchant. Of her cottage on fire, and everything she owned burned to a cinder inside it.
Of her Mum - the ghost of her quietened, if not ever really put to rest.
And of Sophie and Rose, finally. Of what the three of them together might mean.
“There’s something else, an’ all,” Ruby said, in a voice that El might have read as nervous, had it come from someone else. “I ain’t quite worked out how to tell the rest of ‘em this yet, neither… but I reckon I might be done.”
“Done? Done with what?”
“All of it. The job, the runnin’ round… the worry. I’m old, girl. Old and tired. Me and Sita both. We always said we’d stop, one of these days - when it was getting to be more of a headache than it was fun. And… I don’t know. I’m starting to get the feeling it might be getting on for that time.”
She’s leaving, too, El thought. Her and Sita - they’re leaving together.
“Where will you go?” she asked, the reality of it still a way away from sinking in. “What will you do?”
“Do? Christ knows. Ain’t sure there’s much either of us needs to be doing, at our age. Bit of travelling, maybe. Hit a few museums. Actually stop and have a look at some of the stuff we’ve spent so bleedin’ long trying to steal.”
“And you’ll… stay in touch?” Her own voice sounded desperate, she knew; small, and frightened and sad.
Ruby moved closer to her on the ancient sofa and pulled her into a hug.
“‘Course we bleedin’ will,” she whispered, pushing El’s hair out of her face and pressing a kiss to her crown. “We ain’t plannin’ on dying just yet.”
“I’ll miss you,” El whispered back, embarrassingly aware that she’d begun to cry.
“Yeah? Glad to hear it. ‘Cause I’ll miss you, an’ all. You and that family of yours.” She pulled her in tighter, until El’s head was resting on her shoulder. “Gonna let you in on a secret though, just between you and me. You’ll be alright, girl. Whatever you do - you’ll be alright, whether I’m around or not.”
El buried her face in the crook of the old woman’s neck, her face a mess of tears.
“You sure about that, are you?” she said, snuffling.
“Never been surer, sweetheart. Learned from the best, didn’t you? The very bleedin’ best.”
Palermo Soho, Buenos Aires, March 1999
It was barely 10am, but Carmen Navarro was exhilarated - the rush of a prospective sale flooding her veins with chemical euphoria.
“It’s beautiful,” said the Canadian, gazing up at the Castillo with something like wonder. “Just exquisite.”
“We’re very lucky to have it,” Carmen told her. “Castillo’s son… you could say he bequeathed it to us, when his father passed on.”
“Pretty generous donation.”
“He’s a very generous man. It helped, of course, that he was married to our owner at the time.”
Carmen let out an awkward laugh, hoping that the Canadian would follow suit. But she demurred.
“What do you think?” the woman asked her assistant in English. “You can be honest.”
“It’s pretty,” the girl replied, in a British accent. “Sort of weird, but pretty. For a painting, I mean. You sure it’s worth the money, though?”
The fixed, saleswoman smile stayed firmly on Carmen’s face, but inside she scowled - cursing the girl’s brashness, her lack of taste and, worst still, the bite that lack of taste might take out of what Carmen hoped would be a sizeable commission.
The girl was young: you could say that, at least, in her defence. Probably no more than eighteen, Carmen thought, and obviously new to South America. Her pale, freckled skin had burned to a boiled-lobster vermillion in the early Autumn sun; a situation not helped in the slightest by her bright red hair and long brown dress, which together conspired to give
her the look of a children’s lollipop on a wooden stick.
“Thiago, Castillo’s son,” Carmen said, addressing the Canadian in Spanish. “He was offered a quarter of a million dollars for it by a gallery in New York. American dollars, that is.”
“And he still just… gave it away?”
“His ex-wife… she could be very persuasive, when she tried.”
“But a hundred thousand dollars… that’s what you’re asking for it now? And in dollars, not pesos?”
“Just so. We’re in a recession,” Carmen added, in case the Canadian had neglected to pick up a newspaper, turn on the television or look out of her hotel window since she’d been in the country. “The dollar feels a little more… stable, just at the moment. Or so our owner tells me.”
And if I can get this sale done and those dollars stashed away before that wizened old witch comes back from vacation, she thought, then so much the better. She never so much as looks at that fucking painting anyway; she won’t even notice it’s gone.
Besides – what does she expect, on what she pays me?
The Canadian leaned in towards Carmen, as if she were about to share a secret.
“It’s for my partner,” she said. “For her birthday. Pop Art… it’s kind of her thing, you know?”
“Ah,” said Carmen smoothly - thinking of her cousin in Miami, and the timid young woman she’d brought home with her last Christmas. “Of course. Well… if she knows anything at all about Castillo, then there’s no doubt at all she’ll understand the value of this particular piece. Not to say the lengths you went to, to get it for her.”
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