Black Widow

by Jessie Keane

  ‘I’ll see what I can do,’ said Jimmy, standing up.

  ‘Have a word with her, Jimmy. I’m serious.’

  ‘I said, I’ll see what I can do.’

  ‘Good.’ Annie picked up the pencil again as Jimmy approached the closed door into the hall. ‘And Jimmy?’

  ‘What?’ He paused.

  ‘Hit two of the Delaney halls.’ Annie pulled the books back toward her. She didn’t look up. ‘Hit them hard.’

  22

  ‘He fancies you,’ said Dolly, strolling into the kitchen when Jimmy was gone.

  ‘What?’ Annie looked up blankly.

  ‘That Jimmy Bond. Fancies you rotten.’

  ‘Doll, you’re going mad.’

  ‘I’m telling you.’ Dolly put the kettle on and spooned tea into the pot. Then she turned and looked at Annie. ‘Trust your Aunt Dolly, she knows what’s what. Actually he’s quite tasty.’

  ‘I couldn’t be less interested, Dolly,’ said Annie, scribbling away again. Then she paused. ‘You know, I bet he’s got a girl tucked away somewhere. He’s a creature of habit, Jimmy Bond. He wouldn’t play around, exactly. He’d have one woman in a flat somewhere, nice and discreet, well out of Kath’s way.’

  ‘He’d rather have you, out of Kath’s way.’ Dolly poured the boiling water into the teapot. ‘Don’t pay any attention to all that macho bullshit posturing. You’re tough and that’s winding him up, but it’s also turning him on.’

  ‘Well he isn’t going to have me, out of Kath’s way. I told you, I’m not interested.’

  ‘Max Carter would be a hard act to follow, that’s for sure,’ said Dolly, putting two mugs, milk, sugar, and teapot on to a small tray and bringing it over to the table.

  She sat down and looked at Annie squarely. ‘And you’ve got to be careful, in your position,’ she said.

  Annie put down the pencil and looked at Dolly.

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘Meaning you’re like the Virgin Queen. You got to be above all that. Above reproach. Spotless and aloof. Can’t be seen to be mixing with the hoi polloi, now can one?’

  Annie almost smiled as Dolly put on a posh voice for that last bit.

  ‘Only you’ve got a bit of a position to consider, ain’t that so?’ Dolly stirred the pot thoughtfully.

  Annie watched the movement, heard the noise. A little like the noise she kept hearing over the phone. Familiar, but forgotten…or was it? Somewhere at the back of her mind, a horrible suspicion was starting to form.

  ‘If someone got close to you,’ continued Dolly, ‘they’d…well, they’d sort of be in charge then, wouldn’t they? The Queen’s consort. The manor’s wide open—but for you standing there like the prize in a coconut shy. No Max or Jonjo in the way, just you. A woman. And you know how these men rate women. And if you got involved with someone—someone like Jimmy Bond, for instance…’

  ‘Who’s married to my cousin, with two kids,’ Annie reminded her.

  ‘Like he’d give a shit. You’d be really tempting to a man like Jimmy Bond. From what you say, his wife’s turned into her granny as soon as she’s got him up the aisle—and I wish I had a sodding quid for every time I’ve seen that happen—and you’re all that’s left of the Carter clan and you’re a looker into the bargain. Wish I had those legs…’ Dolly sighed as she considered her own shapely but short pins. ‘Let’s face it, when God handed out legs, I was behind the frigging door.’

  ‘Is this going somewhere?’ asked Annie politely, quietly fuming at Dolly’s lack of tact. What did she care about men? She was Max’s wife.

  No, she thought painfully. Max’s widow.

  With the thought came the horrible pain of it again.

  ‘Yeah, it is.’ Dolly poured the tea. She flicked a glance at Annie and her eyes were serious now. ‘Just watch your step, okay?’

  ‘Meaning what?’

  ‘Meaning watch yourself with him. He’d be on you like a shot given half the chance, and I don’t think you want to open up that can of worms.’

  Annie splashed milk into her mug. ‘I don’t want to open up any can of worms at all, Doll,’ she told her friend sadly. ‘I don’t want another man. Why the hell would I? The only man I ever loved is dead. Anyone else would be second best.’

  23

  Next day they were sitting around the kitchen table again, Annie and Dolly and Darren and Ellie—no Una, she was upstairs with a punter. All mates together, just like the old days.

  Only nothing’s like the old days, thought Annie. My husband’s dead. My kid’s gone. My life’s in bits. Everything’s tainted. She was looking through the morning paper, turning the pages, not really taking any of it in. Nixon was attacking the communists in Cambodia, someone had tried to assassinate Makarios in Greece, John Wayne had won Best Actor at the Oscars for True Grit. None of it meant a damned thing to her. Ellie was spilling toast crumbs over the table as she devoured her breakfast, and Dolly was looking at Ellie as a mother would look at a difficult child.

  Annie had questioned Dolly about Ellie’s surprise return to the fold, and Dolly had said: ‘I felt sorry for the silly tart, all right? I know she’s a bit two-faced…’

  ‘A bit?’

  ‘But don’t everyone deserve a second chance in life?’

  So here they all were, together again.

  ‘When I was on the game I wouldn’t kiss a client,’ Dolly was telling Ellie, who was apparently having problems in that direction. ‘If he looked like Elvis and fucked like a weasel, I still wouldn’t kiss him. Kissing’s too intimate. But occasionally a punter insists. And if it’s a choice between throwing a screaming fit and exchanging one small kiss, then I always went for the kiss—even though I didn’t want to.’

  Ellie screwed up her pudgy face.

  ‘Yeah, but a lot of my clients are old. Let me tell you, there’s no bigger turnoff than kissing an old man with rattling dentures and bad breath.’

  They all shuddered.

  ‘Then don’t do it,’ shrugged Darren. ‘Explain beforehand—nicely—that mouth-to-mouth is off-limits, anything else is fair game. Although I don’t see it myself. If you’re prepared to give some ugly old fart a blow job, why draw the line at a kiss?’

  Annie looked at Ellie, who was diving into the biscuit tin again. Annie glanced at Dolly, whose expression said it all. They’d both seen this before with seasoned brasses, and they both knew what it meant.

  The fact was, boffing strangers all day and half the night required a variety of coping mechanisms. Quite a few prostitutes took a bath or shower after every client, and that was okay, personal hygiene was always a good thing. Rules were rules. The punters might come in here drunk, disorderly, smelly, but the troops had to be fragrant to a fault.

  Which was fine, up to a point. But Ellie had reached that point—in fact she had passed it about a mile back down the road.

  ‘Caught her in the loo scrubbing herself down there,’ Dolly had confided to Annie earlier in the day. ‘With a flaming nailbrush. And she’s had the bleach bottle out after she’s washed, scouring the sink and the bath. How long before she starts thinking it’s a good idea to use the bleach to clean herself off? I’m telling you, she’s not right.’

  It was the beginning of the end of tarting for Ellie, and they both knew it.

  ‘That’s why she’s getting so bloody fat,’ Dolly had told Annie. ‘Can’t cope with it all any more. Comfort eating.’

  Annie almost envied Ellie that. She couldn’t comfort eat. She could barely eat at all. Just waking up every day was a renewal of the pain she was suffering. She’d lost the love of her life, lost him forever. And maybe Layla too, who could say? Dolly kept forcing toast and egg down her, but she felt sick every single day, creased up with anxiety and a feeling of utter helplessness. She was in the hands of the kidnappers, totally. She had no power over what happened next, hard as she found that to accept.

  ‘Maybe you should take a break, Ellie love,’ suggested Dolly. ‘A couple of weeks down Southend woul
d do you the world of good.’

  But Ellie was looking mulish. ‘I’ll think about it,’ she said.

  From above them came the sound of someone letting out little yelps of either pain or delight.

  ‘Jesus, I really think Una enjoys her job too much,’ said Darren, staring up at the ceiling.

  And there’s poor Ellie, not enjoying it at all, thought Annie.

  ‘Something’s come for you,’ said Ross, poking his head around the kitchen door and looking coldly at Annie. She wasn’t on his Christmas card list, that was for sure, and his expression whenever he looked at her said so loud and clear. But for as long as Redmond Delaney said it was okay for her to be here, he’d just have to swallow it.

  ‘For me?’ Annie repeated stupidly. But no one would send her anything. ‘Can’t be.’

  Ross was holding out a small white box, four inches by four, a couple of inches deep.

  ‘It was on the doorstep.’ Ross shrugged. ‘It wasn’t posted, but I didn’t see anyone leave it there. Just stepped outside for a fag and there it was. Look, it’s got your name on it.’

  Everyone in the kitchen was silent and still. Ross was right. In block capitals on top of the box was written ANNIE CARTER.

  Enjoy the gift.

  Annie jumped to her feet and barged past Ross and out into the hallway. She flung open the front door, ran down the path and stood gasping in the street, looking left and right. Didn’t know who or what she was looking for, but someone had brought the box here, had placed it right on the doorstep while they were all inside, unaware. But she could see nothing suspicious. Just people, walking the dog, pushing prams, parking cars, the odd one or two looking at her, at this dark-haired woman all dressed in black, with distress and madness written all over her face.

  Nothing.

  Annie took a shaky breath and went back inside. Ross had returned to his chair by the door. She walked straight past him and into the kitchen, shutting the door behind her. Dolly, Ellie, and Darren were still there, and there was the little white box in the middle of the table. They looked at it, then at her.

  Annie felt her head begin to pound. Her hands started to shake.

  Enjoy the gift.

  Oh Jesus God.

  She sat back down. Looked at her friends. Looked at the box.

  ‘What the fuck is it?’ asked Dolly.

  Annie couldn’t work enough spit into her mouth to answer. She stared at the box. ANNIE CARTER.

  ‘Well, open it,’ said Ellie.

  Annie took a breath. So simple. Open it. Easy enough, but for the moment she felt too scared to even touch the thing.

  Dig deep, she thought. Got to dig deep.

  Annie reached out in the dead silence of the kitchen and touched the thick cardboard. She grasped the lid; it wasn’t stuck down. It was nice and easy to open.

  ‘Go on for fuck’s sake,’ said Darren, clutching both hands to his chest.

  Annie removed the lid.

  Inside, on a bed of cotton wool, was a child’s finger.

  24

  ‘The bitch should have got her present. She’ll toe the line now,’ said Danny confidently, his eyes jumping wildly between Vita and Phil.

  Vita was sitting pale and shaken at the kitchen table again, head down. Right now she couldn’t even look at her brother.

  Phil was quiet, pretending to read the paper when really he felt as if he was going to vomit.

  Really, he was shocked. When he’d gotten into this deal it hadn’t included harming kids. He looked up at Blondie. Danny. Fucking lunatic, he thought.

  ‘You got something to say?’ demanded Danny.

  ‘To you? No.’ Phil got back to his pretend reading, a muscle flexing in his jaw.

  ‘Good. Get your arse off that fucking chair then and get going.’

  Phil closed his paper. He looked across at Danny. He looked at the gun on the table between them.

  Danny’s eyes were challenging. You think you’re hard enough, fast enough? Try it.

  Phil stood up.

  ‘Fine,’ he said, and left the room.

  Vita’s head was hung low, as if she was waiting for a storm to break. She looked at the painting laid out on the table. Ducks. Painting by numbers. Her brush was in a cup of water, she was going to do the Mandarin drake’s head next, and that colour was almost red, almost like blood. She felt her stomach start to roll.

  Painting by numbers! Christ!

  Vita had seen the kit and brought it along, thinking that the kid would be amused by it, but she’d ended up painting the thing instead, to stave off madness. The kid was hardly ever awake enough to do anything, anyway. Getting absorbed in the painting stopped her from thinking too much about the plight of the little girl in the cellar. They’d had to drug Layla Carter when they’d snatched her, and they’d had to keep on drugging her, keeping her out of it on the stuff, and that was good, Vita thought, that was very good. Because then she wouldn’t have really felt it, would she, what Danny had done to her?

  That was what Vita had to tell herself. That way she could deal with this. She wondered all over again why she’d got involved with any of this. For the money? But she didn’t much care about the money, not really. No, it was mostly because Danny had told her to go along with it, and she had gone along with pretty much anything Danny had told her to, ever since the cradle.

  But now something in her rebelled. Hurting a kid. And what he’d done to that Majorcan couple. And she couldn’t forget that the kid had seen her face, not Danny’s, not Phil’s. Hers.

  ‘She’s not eating much,’ she said to Danny.

  Danny shrugged and sat down, pulling the paper closer.

  He neither knew nor cared how much a kid that age ate.

  ‘Do you really think you should have done that?’ asked Vita quietly.

  Danny looked up from the paper.

  Vita quailed.

  ‘I mean, damaged the goods,’ she said quickly, in case he went off on one. ‘What if she gets an infection or something?’

  ‘If you do your part of the job right, she’ll be okay.’

  Vita felt the dry heaves start in her throat again. The kid had been spark out of it when Danny had done that—she couldn’t even name it in her head—and afterwards he had told Vita to fetch the Dettol and bandages he’d brought along with them, he thought of everything, Danny, mad as he was, crazy as he was, he never dropped a stitch.

  He had shown his sister how to hold the kid’s arm up to stop the bleeding, had shown her how to clean the wound, the stump, and bandage it up. Because it was Danny—and because she had never, ever, said no to Danny—she did it, but she had gagged all the way through and afterwards she had gone into the loo and vomited up her breakfast.

  She had started to wonder what damage it would do the kid, the way Danny kept her drugged up all the time. Even when Layla was conscious, when she ate—and how little she ate, just a tiny amount, was that normal?—she was in a daze, not quite with it, poor little cow.

  But Vita knew the drugs were necessary. Otherwise, Layla would probably start screaming her head off, they would have to gag her, and she’d still make a noise, and they couldn’t risk that. Not in the hen house behind the little place in Palma, because there were other people living close by, and Marietta coming and going. Not on the boat either, because Phil had carried her aboard in a large canvas holdall that Danny had slashed here and there to make air holes.

  The fishermen on board didn’t ask questions. Probably thought they were transporting drugs, and they’d been paid well, what did they care?

  But no, it was Layla, it was a little kid drugged to fuck, unconscious. And now Vita was really worrying about it all. Would all this really not harm the kid? Would she really recover?

  And now they were back in England. It was all building up to some sort of horrible crescendo, and she was full of fear, wondering where this mad scheme—which had seemed so easy, so simple, to start with—was going to end.

  Danny was hopping to
his feet again, all restless energy.

  ‘Get packed up,’ he told her. ‘We’re off up to the Smoke tonight.’

  He left the room.

  Vita sat there, looking at the ducks in the half-finished painting. Then her eyes strayed to Danny’s gun, just lying there on the table, and she thought of Layla, who would probably always suffer the after-effects of all that crap Danny had been dosing the poor little bitch with; Layla, who had seen her face.

  25

  Annie thought she would never stop being sick. She was crouched over the toilet bowl heaving her guts up and Dolly was there, stroking her hair, making soothing noises. Even when there was nothing left to bring up, still she was heaving and gasping, her innards rebelling at the outrage.

  Lay la’s finger.

  They’d cut off her baby’s finger, and placed it on the front doorstep and walked away.

  Bastards.

  How could they do that? How could anyone torture a child that way?

  Of course it had been Dolly who had stayed calm, stoic to the last. Annie had screamed her head off when she saw it. Ellie had cringed back in disgust. Darren had turned milk-white and looked as though he might faint. Then Annie had fled the room, blundered into the loo and been sick.

  Dolly had searched desperately for something to say, anything, that would help Annie’s pain.

  ‘Look, it means she’s alive at least. They’re trying to throw a scare into you, that’s all.’

  ‘That’s all?’ Annie straightened, tore off a strip of toilet paper and wiped her mouth and stared at Dolly. ‘I tell you what, Doll—they’ve fucking well succeeded.’

  And the finger didn’t mean Layla was still alive, she thought. Of course it didn’t. They could have hacked it off after they’d killed her. They could post back her baby girl to her bit by bit to prod her into raising the cash, only to reveal at the end that Layla had been dead all along.

  ‘What the fuck am I going to do?’ she asked Dolly wildly.

  Dolly flushed the loo and let out a sigh. ‘I wish I knew, Annie love. I really do.’