by Jessie Keane
‘Jesus . . .’ the man wept, rolling from side to side while the life’s blood flooded out of him and was sucked up by the sand.
‘It don’t have to be that way, though,’ said Max. ‘Tell me where Gina Barolli is, and help’s on its way.’ Max frowned. ‘Think I can do a bit of first aid, patch you up good enough to get you to the hospital. If you talk, that is. If you don’t, forget it.’
The man’s dark eyes were glaring up into Max’s. ‘I will never talk,’ he said.
‘Now see, that’s annoying,’ said Max, wondering what a Sicilian male would place more value on than loyalty. He thought he knew. He leaned down and unzipped the man’s fly.
‘What are you—’ the man babbled, bleeding, squirming.
‘What, you’re like your mate in the wheelchair? You’re prepared to die to keep her secret?’ asked Max. ‘Then you’re going to arrive in hell minus your prick, you cunt. Now talk, or things get ugly. That’s a promise.’
14
Oh, the fucking rain. How could she have forgotten about the rain? And the grey skies. A year in Barbados, and now Annie Carter’s default setting was blue skies, white sand, vivid sunshine. This was strange to her, but the damp air and the cool wind reminded her forcibly that this was home, where she was born, where she had spent most of her life. London. Traffic swooshing by in the downpour as she sat in the taxi from the airport. Grimy buildings looming like canyons overhead as the car edged along in thick traffic, the windscreen wipers sweeping back and forth in a sleep-inducing rhythm.
She’d love to sleep. She hadn’t slept on the plane, although she’d tried. Her brain just kept churning over what Tony had told her on the phone the day before yesterday – that Dolly was gone, lost to her, dead and never to return.
It choked her up, every time she thought about it.
And she thought about it all the time.
She hadn’t even spoken to Dolly recently. They called each other maybe once a month, just for a chat. Annie would ask how the business was going, and Dolly would always say fine and tell her what the girls in the club had been getting up to. There was always some funny story with one of the punters, Annie always put the phone down laughing.
The last time they’d spoken had been about a fortnight ago, and then there had been no suggestion that anything was wrong, and Annie had been blissfully unaware that that was the last time she would ever talk to her friend.
She just wished that she had been able to speak to Max before she left Prospect. She’d left him a note in their usual place, told the maid where she was going, and to tell him when he got back, but . . . she’d really needed him there when she got that awful news. And as usual he was away, busy, doing something that didn’t concern her.
A spasm of hurt lanced her as she thought about that. He was so secretive these days and she was thinking more and more . . . trying not to, but she was thinking that her gut feeling was right, that he was having an affair. Why else would he not tell her what he was doing, where he was going?
She was trying not to be all little-wifey and clingy and needy about this, but for God’s sake, he never told her anything! So yes, she felt hurt. And angry. And guilty and afraid, because she had secrets of her own. And on top of all that, now she had this to deal with – and where was he?
He’s fucking another woman . . .
Stop it!
Her mind was all over the place. Even things that should have been straightforward, like deciding where she was going to stay in London, had her going round in circles. The Holland Park house was standing empty, closed up, unstaffed and unwelcoming since Rosa, her old housekeeper, had retired. The Carter firm still owned the three nightclubs – the Palermo Lounge, the Blue Parrot and the Shalimar – and each had a flat above the premises. But Annie didn’t feel strong enough to go near the Palermo, to set foot in the place where Dolly had been murdered – not yet, at any rate. Besides, the Bill would have the flat cordoned off as a crime scene; most likely they’d have shut down the club too.
The Blue Parrot was being run by Gary Tooley, a tall blond vicious man who’d been one of Max’s most trusted foot soldiers for years and who cheerfully hated Annie’s guts, so he wouldn’t be putting out the bunting for her anytime soon. She didn’t like Gary, and when he phoned Max in Barbados she always left the room. And she’d noticed of late that after these calls Max was always cold and uncommunicative toward her. But then, Gary had never missed a chance to put the knife in where she was concerned. He was always ready to drip poison in Max’s ear about her.
Having ruled out Holland Park, the Palermo and the Blue Parrot, she’d booked herself into a hotel. Only now that she was back in London and the reality of Dolly’s death was beginning to sink in, the last thing she wanted was to be all on her own in a hotel room. For a moment she considered going to stay with her sister Ruthie in Richmond, but then dismissed the idea. Ever since they’d been kids their relationship had always been difficult, edgy.
In the end she’d told the cab driver to forget about the hotel and take her to the Shalimar club instead. First things first: she needed to touch base with Ellie, who together with her husband Chris Brown, ran things at the club. Ellie had been Dolly’s friend too. Once, she’d been a working girl just like Dolly, and they’d lived together at Aunt Celia’s Limehouse knocking shop. They’d both worked for Celia, and then for Annie. Ellie would understand how devastated Annie was feeling.
‘Here we are then,’ said the driver, pulling into the kerb outside the Shalimar. He was a big bluff Cockney in a red anorak who’d chatted to her all the way from the airport. She couldn’t remember a single word he’d said, and she didn’t know what she’d said back to him either. Her mind was fogged with grief and weariness.
Annie paid him and got out into the rain, dragging her case and hand luggage with her. The cab pulled away. Almost instantly she was drenched, and she stood there with the cold rain battering down on her upturned face, looking up at the Shalimar sign, grey now in the noonday gloom, all its bright red neon lights turned off. She looked up and down the soaked street, traffic nudging along, jostling pedestrians with umbrellas held low against the gusting downpour, trying to avoid the puddles on the glimmering wet pavement. For better or worse, she was home.
‘Annie?’ asked a female voice.
Annie turned, and there was podgy, dark-haired Ellie, standing in the rain clutching a pint of milk, her neat two-piece burgundy suit darkened with moisture around her shoulders. Dolly, Ellie and Annie – over the years they had become a trio of mutual cheerleaders. Now, one of them was gone. Annie watched as Ellie’s face crumpled.
‘Christ,’ said Ellie, and threw herself sobbing into Annie’s arms. ‘Can you believe it?’ she choked out. ‘Dolly!’
Annie hugged her tight in the pouring rain.
15
Gina Barolli looked out of the window and saw the car coming up the drive toward the big sprawling villa, churning up a yellow dust-cloud as it came.
So it was done. It was put right.
Two of their best had gone to correct the mistake she had made; she couldn’t remember their names and that was annoying, but they had gone, she knew that, and she knew that everyone was very agitated and angry about it all.
She couldn’t remember what her mistake had been.
She knew she’d made it, yes of course she did, she wasn’t a fool, even if the people here treated her like one sometimes. Shouting at her, saying why did she do that, why did she make these stupid mistakes?
Ah, none of it mattered now anyway. The car was coming, and she craned out of her wheelchair, using the windowsill as a support, to see it pull in at the front of the building where the lavender grew thick and violet-blue, heavy with bees and a delicious fragrance. A man got out, black-haired, darkly tanned. She didn’t recognize him and that puzzled her. Where were the other people, her people? He looked like one of the Cosa Nostra, the brotherhood; but she didn’t know him. Two more men followed – bigger, bulkier men tha
n the first one. She didn’t recognize them, either.
Or . . . she didn’t think so.
Of course, sometimes nowadays she didn’t know anybody, and that irritated her; so perhaps he was one of hers after all. Who knew?
God, old age was a curse; things slipped away from you – your strength, your health, even your mind, until finally what was left? Nothing except a pile of bones in a casket. But – and now Gina smiled to herself, a secret, triumphant smile – sometimes you could cheat old age. Sometimes you could even cheat death.
Then the smile faded as she remembered. The mistakes. Oh yes. Lots of them. Her big, dreadful mistakes. Suddenly she grew agitated, trembling, trying to hoist herself from the chair. No, perhaps the man wasn’t one of her own. Now she remembered what had been happening but it was all a jumble, none of it clear. She’d been phoning someone in London. She knew she had. But who? She couldn’t remember. And then this man had started calling the number she’d left – this number, and she had said she would meet, talk. She’d been putting him off because she had no idea what this was all about, but she knew it couldn’t be good.
The only thing she remembered clearly was the furious reaction when they found out what she’d done. She’d heard shouting outside her room and women sobbing – someone calling the nurses silly bitches, demanding to know why they hadn’t done as they’d been told and kept her away from the house phones, telling them they were fired. But when they came in to see her, their voices were calm, telling her what to do. Stall him some more, this Max Carter person.
That was his name. Max Carter. She’d remembered!
So she’d stalled him. Told him she would meet him to discuss it here, then here, then here. And she hadn’t shown up, and then Antonio . . .
She’d remembered that too! Antonio!
Antonio had said, We will sort this, once and for all. We will go out, Bruto and me, and Bruto will pretend to be poor old Gina in her wheelchair, and all will be well. Tell him the old amphitheatre, and we will finish him there, Antonio told her, his voice as patient and soothing as if he was talking to a naughty child. Yes, she had made some silly mistakes, maybe a lot of them, but there was nothing too impossible to sort out. He was going to sort it.
Gina frowned as she heard doors slamming downstairs, raised voices, the sounds of a struggle, things crashing to the ground. Anxiously she twisted around in the chair to look at the open doorway leading out into the hall. She tried to get up from her chair – she hated the thing, she spent so many hours confined to it – but she was too weak. With her skinny, shaking, blue-veined hands she fumbled with the chair’s wheels, and managed to turn it so that she was facing the door.
‘Fidelia!’ she called in her querulous voice, a voice that had once made people snap to attention. Once she had been respected, even feared, because of her family connections. Not any more.
Fidelia didn’t come.
Suddenly, all was deathly quiet in the villa. Stillness. Silence. And then she heard it. The stealthy tread of footsteps approaching. Frozen there, her heart stuttering in her chest, she clutched at the blanket over her knees and anxiously watched the open door.
‘Fidelia?’ she called again, quieter, her voice trembling.
Then a man stepped into the doorway. He was carrying a gun. He was compact, muscular, with black hair and dark navy-blue eyes. He was aiming the gun steadily, straight at her. As he moved, he left faint bloody footprints on the marble floor. Two other men appeared behind him, both of them armed, both of them looking dangerous.
‘Who are you?’ she asked the one in front, her voice hardly more than a whisper.
‘I’m Max Carter,’ said the man, coming into the room. ‘You wanted to speak to me, didn’t you.’
‘No, I . . . it was a mistake. That’s all.’ She looked bewildered, then she remembered. A faltering smile lifted her lips back from her yellowing teeth. ‘Antonio has put it right.’
‘No. He hasn’t. Antonio’s in the hospital,’ he said.
Gina said nothing. If I say nothing, she thought, then I can’t do anything wrong. I can’t make another mistake. This mistake was clearly a bad one, far worse than everyone had previously thought. Antonio was in the hospital. For a moment, groping around in her mind, she couldn’t remember who Antonio was, and then she had it. Antonio was the one who had got very angry with her. Antonio was the one who said he’d put it right.
Max stepped further into the luxuriously appointed and sunlit room. He didn’t lower the gun. He was looking at a helpless, confused old lady in a wheelchair, but seeing something very different: the latent, deadly power of the Mafia. The old woman had secrets and in her confused state she had spilled them – and those secrets were dire enough to make her send two men to kill him so that they would never be revealed.
He moved closer to where Gina sat. Leaning in, he grabbed the blanket and threw it aside. Helpless old woman or not, he wasn’t taking any chances. But there was no weapon hidden there; no knife, no gun. He knew these people were dangerous, unpredictable, like scorpions. The sting was in the tail, and the tail would strike when you least expected it.
Max stepped back again, watching her like a hawk. She looked bewildered, but it could be an act; he didn’t trust it. He put himself out of kicking distance, and placed himself so that he could watch her and at the same time not block his back-up’s view from the open doorway.
‘Tell me your name,’ he said.
‘My name . . . ?’ she echoed faintly. Gina stiffened. A shot of pain, a bolt of white heat, went through her chest and she put a shaking hand there.
‘Yeah. I want to hear you say it.’
‘My name . . .’ For another of those frustrating, maddening moments she couldn’t remember. It would come to her. Be calm, be calm . . . but how could she be calm when this man, this stranger and these other men were here, pointing guns at her head? And this pain! Worse than any she’d had before, it was nagging, growing, spreading.
But was the man a stranger, really? She seemed to know his face, his manner. And the name. She felt she knew that, too. But she could be wrong. She was wrong about so much, these days.
The name.
Her name.
All at once, she had it. ‘I am Gina Barolli,’ she said, grimacing. The pain was increasing. Her left arm was beginning to tingle.
Max was nodding. ‘You may not remember me, Miss Barolli, but I remember you.’
‘Do you?’ For a moment she looked pathetically hopeful. Then she winced.
Is she ill? wondered Max. Or just bluffing?
‘Yeah, I do. You’re Constantine Barolli’s sister.’
16
Up in the kitchen over the Shalimar, all was quiet except for the radio playing; the girls weren’t in yet to get ready for the evening’s trade.
‘Chris is down the wholesaler’s,’ said Ellie, taking the teapot off the dresser, which was loaded, as always, with her ‘crystals’ as she called them; gemstones and glassware fashioned into dainty swans, penguins, dragons. She made the tea and put the pot and two bone-china cups on the table. ‘Take the weight off, Annie,’ she said, and Annie sat down and watched as Ellie took a seat opposite and poured the tea out.
‘This is awful,’ Annie said, voicing what they were both thinking. ‘I can’t believe it.’
Midway through pouring the tea, Ellie slapped the pot down on the table and put her head in her hands. ‘Shit,’ she muttered, and groped for a hankie, found it. Red-faced, eyes wet, she blew her nose hard, tucked the hankie back in her pocket and looked at Annie.
‘Dolly! Why, for God’s sake? What did she ever do to anybody?’ Ellie gasped out.
Annie reached for her hand and patted it. ‘I don’t know. Have the police been here yet? Have they asked you anything?’
Ellie shook her head. With unsteady hands she picked up the pot and took another stab at it. This time, she got the tea into the cups. Slopped in milk. Pushed one cup across to Annie.
‘Thanks.’
‘They keep talking about it. It’s horrible. It was such a shock,’ she said, and her voice was steadier. Then she looked at Annie. ‘I thought Mr Carter would come with you. Being as it’s Dolly, being as it’s such a terrible thing to have happened.’
‘He’s away. Busy,’ said Annie.
Yeah, busy doing what? drifted through her brain. Didn’t they say you should always trust your gut feelings? But that he was having an affair – that was too horrible, too devastating, to take in.
But it’s possible, yes?
Yeah, it was. Max was a handsome man, charismatic; he drew women to him. Annie had seen it happen. Had actually seen the cheeky cows ignore her, standing right there beside him, and zoom in on him like a missile. She had even laughed about it to herself, secure in the knowledge that Max would never stray. But now, well, who knew? She was eleven years younger than him, but she was in her forties now, and loads of wealthy men in their fifties went for girls half their age. Young and nubile, the girls flattered them and looked so good as the men flaunted them in front of their jealous friends.
He wouldn’t be the first man to do it, and he certainly wouldn’t be the last. All those secret trips to Europe, those covert chats to Gary on the phone . . . But maybe some of those calls hadn’t been from Gary at all. The way he’d pulled away from her, detached from her, getting up and going into another room, closing the door, talking low. And afterwards, he’d been different with her, there was no denying it. She wasn’t imagining it; he’d been cold to her.
So was he really talking to Gary?
Or was he talking to some other woman?