Stay Dead

by Jessie Keane

  Tony grunted.

  ‘That’s what I like about you, Tone. No annoying fucking small talk.’

  He didn’t comment; he knew she was taking the piss.

  ‘Can I just say something?’

  ‘You can say anything you like,’ said Tony, his eyes on the road. ‘Mr Carter’s asked me to do this, so I’m doing it.’

  ‘Under protest, right?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘I thought you knew me, Tone.’

  ‘Yeah.’ His eyes flicked up to the mirror, met hers, then flicked away. ‘I thought that, too.’

  Annie said no more. Tony might be doing this under protest, but if Max had told him to do it, then he would, and he would provide major back-up if she needed it, whether he approved or not. She settled back and enjoyed the ride, inhaling the scent of clean polished leather and Tony’s pungent aftershave.

  It was almost like the old days.

  Except it wasn’t, and would never be again, because her whole world was in ruins and her marriage was over.

  Sunnybrook was an imposing Victorian brick mansion with fancy fretworked eaves. Its frontage looked on to a tarmac car park and the drive up to the house was half a mile long. Once the home of a wealthy family, it had been sold off and converted to a nursing home.

  Someone had thrown a lot of money into the conversion, Annie could see that the minute she walked in through the crisply red-painted doors. The carpet was also red, and immaculately clean. The woodwork on the vast staircase was old, well-buffed mahogany. It smelled fine in here, of polish and air freshener, and there were fake floral arrangements dotted about the place to brighten the look of it.

  A brisk young woman with a dark ponytail and wearing a light blue smock instantly appeared.

  ‘You’re Mrs Carter?’ she asked.

  Annie said yes she was.

  ‘I’m Helen. This way then,’ she said, and took her up in a lift two floors, to Sandy Farrell’s room.

  As they travelled upward, the girl said: ‘I look after Sandy. He’s not been at all well. He’s had three really serious strokes, and I’m afraid they’ve left him unable to speak. But we do communicate.’

  How? wondered Annie, her heart sinking. Was she wasting her time coming here? She’d phoned ahead, made sure it was OK to visit, saying she was a friend of the family – well, she was a friend of Dolly’s, so it was more or less true. Sarah had told her not to break the news to Sandy about Dolly, and she had no intention of doing that. Why the hell would she burden him with anything so tragic?

  ‘Hiya, Sand,’ said the girl, leading Annie into the room.

  Fuck, thought Annie as she met Sandy Farrell for the first time.

  He was sitting lopsided in a high-backed chair beside a hospital bed, wearing pyjamas and a dressing gown. He couldn’t be much over forty, but he looked weak as gnat’s piss, with sharp cheekbones jutting against yellowish skin. His hair was crew-cut, pale brown fading to grey. His eyes were like Dolly’s, exactly the same shade of blue. There the similarity ended. Dolly had been robust, a little bulldog of a woman. This man, with his twisted mouth and vacant stare, was just the opposite.

  ‘Visitor for you,’ said Helen. ‘This is Mrs Carter, she’s a friend of your family’s.’

  Nothing.

  There was a lovely view out of the window, a big emerald lawn in front of a forest of dark pines, but Sandy wasn’t looking at that; he wasn’t looking at anything. He was just staring at the wall, making no sound, no movement.

  Jesus, thought Annie. Poor bastard.

  Helen, still smiling, took a small notebook out of her pocket, and a pencil, and indicated that Annie should sit on the bed beside her. Annie did. Then Helen said: ‘Will you say hello, then, Sand? How about an H?’

  Sandy blinked once with his left eye.

  ‘And an E?’

  Another blink. Same eye.

  Helen turned her smiling face on Annie. ‘You see? We can chat like this.’

  Annie took a breath. OK then. ‘Hello, Sandy,’ she said.

  There was no reaction, nothing at all. But he’d just said hello to her, so they were talking. In a way.

  ‘Sandy, I wanted to ask you about your dad. I know there was an accident. On the railway.’ Annie turned her head and looked at Helen. ‘Is this OK? I don’t want to upset him.’

  ‘Sandy?’ asked Helen.

  Sandy blinked his left eye.

  ‘That means it’s all right,’ said Helen. ‘But why do you want to know about that?’

  ‘Sandy’s sister Sarah told me about the accident, but she didn’t want to talk about it. I’m hoping Sandy will.’

  Helen frowned at Annie. ‘I’m not sure . . .’ Then she looked at Sandy.

  ‘All I want to know is, does he know the name of the train driver. That’s all.’

  Helen sat poised, pencil in hand. ‘I’m not sure about this. If it upsets Sandy at all, then I’m stopping. All right?’

  ‘That’s fine,’ said Annie.

  Helen nodded. ‘A?’ she said to Sandy.

  Sandy blinked his left eye.

  ‘B?’ asked Helen.

  Nothing.

  Helen carried on, right through the alphabet until she came to R.

  Sandy blinked. Helen wrote down AR.

  She went through the alphabet again and came to T. Sandy blinked.

  ‘Arth,’ said Annie. ‘Arthur?’

  Sandy blinked his left eye.

  ‘And his surname?’ Annie asked.

  ‘A,’ said Helen. Nothing. ‘B?’ Sandy blinked his left eye. ‘B then,’ said Helen. ‘A, B, C . . .’ Helen talked on until she reached I, then Sandy blinked. Helen carried on, and finally they had it. The name of the driver at the controls of the engine on the day of Sam Farrell’s death was Arthur Biggs.

  ‘Is there anything else he can tell me?’ asked Annie.

  Helen started again. ‘A?’ she asked. Nothing. ‘B? C? D?’

  Sandy blinked his left eye.

  ‘D then. A? B? C? D? E?’

  Blink.

  ‘DE. A?’

  Another blink.

  ‘A again?’ asked Helen. ‘B? C? D?’

  Sandy blinked his left eye.

  Annie and Helen stared at the notebook.

  Helen had printed there in capital letters: ARTHUR BIGGS.

  Below that, she’d printed DEAD.

  Annie stared at it, and then looked at Sandy and said one word: ‘How?’

  Sandy came back with the answer. Annie gazed at the notebook.

  It said HANGED.

  85

  After visiting Sandy, Tony drove Annie to a Camden back street. They went up to a sixties block of flats via a series of metal walkways and arrived at the second floor, stopping when they came to a door with purple paint peeling off it in strips. There were claw marks at the bottom of the door. They both looked at it and thought cat owner.

  Annie knocked.

  Seconds later, a young man with a high-coloured face, blond hair and baby-blue eyes came to answer it, clutching a large green-eyed ginger tom.

  ‘Oh!’ he said, looking at the pair of them.

  ‘Pete? Pete Jones? Do you remember me?’ asked Annie.

  ‘Mrs Carter! Oh God, yes. Sorry. Yes. Of course it’s you.’

  ‘Sorry to bother you on your day off . . .’ she started.

  ‘No! Not at all. Come in, come in, sorry about the mess . . .’ and Pete Jones, bar manager of the Palermo, stepped back, let them come in, hastily depositing the cat outside on the landing. ‘That’s Benj,’ said Pete. ‘Never get a cat. They’re adorable but they rip everything to shreds. Come in, sit down.’

  It was neat inside the flat, and pristine-clean. Annie and Tony sat on a ruby-red fabric sofa and Pete sat down opposite in an armchair, looking flushed and flustered.

  ‘Can I get you a drink?’ he said. ‘Tea, coffee? Anything?’

  ‘No thanks.’

  ‘Pete’s anxious eyes rested on Annie’s face. ‘God, this must b
e so hard on you, so awful. This whole thing with Dolly. I’m so sorry.’

  ‘You found her,’ said Annie.

  ‘I did. Yes.’ Pete made a flapping motion with his hand in front of his eyes, which suddenly reddened. ‘Sorry, sorry. I keep thinking about it, and every time I do, it’s just . . . it’s just so upsetting.’

  Annie stared at him in sympathy, thinking he’d had a terrible shock and he didn’t seem like the toughest of types, either. It must have knocked him sideways, finding Dolly like that.

  ‘Can you talk about it?’ she asked. ‘I know it’s difficult for you, but if there’s anything you know, anything you can tell us that might help catch whoever did this, it would be good.’

  ‘I know. The police have been round and asked me all about it again, but what can I say?’ Pete swiped a tear away from his eye and shook his head. ‘It was horrible. She usually opens the front entrance before eleven, to let in the bar staff and the cleaners, and I’m always first on the doorstep – we always used to laugh about that. I’m a punctuality freak. So there I was, it was a quarter to eleven, and the doors were still locked.’

  ‘And that was really unusual,’ said Tony.

  ‘Yes. Very. I rapped, but there was no reply, so I used the key she’d given me for emergencies and let myself in.’

  ‘What then?’ asked Annie.

  ‘God, it was awful. Awful,’ said Pete, and had to stifle a sob.

  There was a loud scratching noise from outside the door.

  ‘That’s just Benj,’ Pete said with a faint, tearful laugh. ‘He’s ruined that fucking door, the little bastard.’

  ‘Go on with what you were saying,’ said Tony.

  ‘There’s not much more to say. I let myself in, I went up the stairs and called out to her, asked if she was OK, but there was no answer.’

  ‘So you went in,’ said Annie.

  Pete just nodded, lips compressed, fighting back more tears.

  ‘Then,’ he said, sighing, trying to compose himself. He passed a hand over his face, and Annie saw that his nails were bitten down to the quick. ‘I tried the handle and it was unlocked. So I went in. And I found her.’ Pete’s face crumpled again as the tears flowed. ‘She was dead,’ he managed to say, and then he just sobbed his heart out.

  86

  Redmond Delaney was always interested in Annie Carter. He’d had Mitchell watch her when she came back to England, and she did that quite frequently. She was a pet project of his; he liked to think of her as a butterfly trapped under glass so that he could watch her at his leisure.

  Redmond was very curious about her trips north of the border. What was so fascinating to her up there? And he wondered – given that she’d been married to the Mafia bastard at one point – if she had known about Constantine Barolli’s plan to kill both him and his sister back in the seventies.

  He was irritated that Gary Tooley hadn’t come up with the goods yet on this next big secret. Him and Mitchell had gone to the Blue Parrot to get the information and pay the five thousand (Redmond wasn’t sure if he was going to pay Gary or cut him yet; the cunt had seriously annoyed him), but guess what? Gary was suddenly out of town. This made Redmond think that Gary was just tweaking his tail, upping the ante.

  That prick.

  ‘He’s back again,’ said Mitchell.

  ‘What?’ Redmond was sitting in his living room, and Mitchell was standing at the window, nudging aside the closed curtains. It was night-time.

  ‘The dirty little creep in the crappy car. Annie Carter’s follower,’ said Mitchell. He glanced at Redmond. ‘Now your follower too, it seems. He’s parked up outside, watching the house again.’

  Redmond stood up, went over to the window and looked out. There was a car there. Inside, dimly, a match flared as Jackie Tulliver lit a cigar.

  Redmond ground his teeth in annoyance. The Tooley business was irritating enough, and now this. His years spent as an East End Face had made him anxious about people tailing him, tracking him, following him. He was the last Delaney standing and there was a reason for that; he was the toughest, the smartest, the fastest to react. Much as he admired Annie Carter, he was not so keen on this lapdog scruffy cunt of hers watching his house.

  He’d done a little watching of his own, though; he knew Annie was back in her Holland Park house, and Mitchell had seen her talking in the street with the man out there in the car.

  ‘Jackie Tulliver,’ Redmond told Mitchell. He’d recognized him from years back as a Carter boy. ‘He’s working for her.’

  That night, Redmond lashed himself with the whip again, because he was having thoughts, impure thoughts. Nothing new there. Really, they’d done him a favour, kicking him out of the priesthood, he just wasn’t suited to it. He thought of all those lovely parishioners and got quite excited, quite agitated. And then he whipped himself harder, and got angry at the thought of those Carter people, Tooley and Tulliver, arsing him about. And mixed up in it, as usual, was Annie Carter, fabulous and unflinching as she strode about creating mayhem.

  Panting, naked to the waist, he put the whip back in its box and went to his bedroom window and looked out. And there he was, that little fecker Jackie Tulliver, sitting in his car smoking oversized cigars and having the brass neck to be watching him, Redmond Delaney.

  Redmond wasn’t happy.

  He wasn’t happy at all.

  He snatched up his shirt and dragged it on, glorying in the stinging pain as the cuts on his back stuck to the fine material. He wasn’t having this. He was going out there, right now.

  87

  Max was back again that night. Annie woke up, switched on the light, and there he was, in the same chair, looking at her. Her heart leapt. After last time, she’d been sure that was it: finished. But he was here. He was back.

  ‘Do you ever set that bloody alarm?’ he asked when she pulled herself into a sitting position and tucked the covers up to her chin.

  ‘Sometimes,’ she said.

  ‘But not right now.’

  ‘Got it.’

  ‘Because you’re expecting me.’

  Yes, she had hoped – prayed, even – that Max would come back tonight. She had doubted it; but here he was. She’d had a tiring, stressful day, visiting Sandy and then Pete Jones; then she’d phoned Hunter with the news that the train driver involved in Dolly’s father’s accident all those years ago was dead.

  ‘So what?’ Hunter had asked her.

  ‘So this: Arthur Biggs hung himself. He couldn’t live with the guilt.’

  After that, her rib had been aching so much that she’d had to lie down and rest. Now, here Max was, piling on the pressure. But she was glad he was here. He’d come back, and that meant that maybe she could dare to hope.

  ‘You want to go on with it then?’ he said. ‘What you were telling me? Not that I believe a word of it.’

  ‘Where was I?’ Please believe me, she thought, staring into his eyes. I love you, I need you, I want you so much, please don’t let this be the end of it.

  ‘You said you and he were going to be “friends”,’ he said mockingly.

  Annie let out a sharp sigh. ‘Has Gary told you exactly where Constantine is yet?’

  ‘Gary’s out of town right now.’

  Good, she thought. ‘So you really want to know what happened next?’

  ‘I’m here and I’m bloody well asking. So after that first time – when he said he was going to get a hit done on me – Alberto stepped in and Constantine backed down and said you’d be friends instead. Very fucking likely, I don’t think. So you went back. You felt sorry for the cunt.’

  ‘Yeah. I did. But . . . it was a problem.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘He behaved himself for a while. And then he started trying to get me drunk.’

  Max’s eyes narrowed as he stared at her face. ‘What, he was trying to get you pissed and have you over the table, that’s it?’ asked Max.

  ‘You have such a delicate way with words. But yeah. I think h
e was.’

  ‘You barely touch a drop, though. And when you wouldn’t drink . . . ?’

  ‘He got moody.’

  ‘I bet he did. Did he try that much?’

  ‘Couple of times.’ Maybe ten, maybe twenty.

  ‘And then he gave up?’

  Annie nodded.

  ‘OK, then what?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I knew Constantine Barolli. He might have appeared to have given up, but my guess? He hadn’t.’

  ‘You’re right,’ said Annie.

  ‘So what happened next?’

  ‘He started wheeling out the hookers.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Women. Very expensive call girls. I’d go in to dinner, and there they’d be. Half-naked or even performing sex acts on him. Right in front of me.’

  88

  Max was quiet for a long, long time, then he got to his feet and came over to the bed. ‘And how did that go down?’ he asked. ‘With you?’

  Annie felt anger rising. She was tired, edgy, and here he was again with the inquisition. Yes, she wanted him back. She needed him. But this? Right now? It was too much.

  ‘How do you think?’ she asked.

  ‘That’s what I’m asking. Did it bother you, seeing him with other women?’

  Annie reached out for her robe, awkwardly pulled it on, and swung her legs off the bed, sending him a glare as she stood, tied the sash, pulled the robe tight around her, right up to her bruised throat.

  ‘Why the fuck would it bother me, Max? I told you: all that was dead and gone. Just like he should have been.’

  ‘Yeah, so you keep saying.’

  ‘And I mean it.’ Annie went over to the dressing table and started angrily pulling a brush through her hair. ‘Can’t you get it through your skull? We were finished years ago. He was just a lonely, desperate man and . . .’ she hesitated, her hand pausing on the brush. ‘You don’t understand what it was like. How things changed over these past five years, how he changed.’

  Max came up behind her and his eyes locked with hers in the mirror. ‘Meaning what?’

  Annie put the brush down. ‘I don’t want to talk about this now,’ she said.