Lawless (19 page)

Kit heaved a sigh. He wanted to go over to Vittore’s place and torch it. Fulminating rage swept through him as he thought of Daisy, that they’d had the
front
to try to scare her that way. He leaned on the desk, pushed his hands through his hair, looked steadily at Rob.

‘So what did you get from our boys down the cop shop?’ he asked.

Rob placed a buff-coloured folder on the desk. Kit reached for it, but Rob kept his hand on it, holding it closed.

‘There’s things in there you really don’t want to see. Morgue shots. Stuff like that,’ he warned.

Kit looked Rob dead in the eye. He could see Rob’s anxiety for him, he knew Rob was afraid that the contents of the folder would send him tumbling down the slippery slope again, hitting the bottle, that he wasn’t up to seeing just what had been done to Michael.

‘Yeah, I do.’
I need to,
he thought.
I need to know everything.

Rob released the folder, and Kit pulled it towards him.

‘They saying anything that could help?’ asked Kit.

‘Nothing except it’s been shoved to one side. Other stuff’s more important.’ Rob leaned back in his chair, put his hands behind his head, and stared up at the dirty ceiling. ‘Ruby reckoned Michael was having talks with her brother, didn’t she? Joe Darke phoned her that night, when Michael didn’t show up at his place.’

‘Which is . . . ?’

‘Over Chigwell way. You’re his nephew, don’t you know this stuff? He’s got a big fancy house out there, couple of acres with it.’

‘Ruby go out there much?’ asked Kit. He didn’t know Joe at all.

Rob shook his head. ‘They’re not close. His old lady Betsy hates Ruby, although I heard they were mates once upon a time.’

‘Wonder what they fell out over?’

‘No idea. But that’s all we’ve got right now. Michael went to Tito’s club one day, and the day after that he
should
have gone to Joe’s. But he never made it.’

Kit looked at the folder. ‘Let’s go on home and get some kip,’ he said, picking it up and getting to his feet. ‘First thing tomorrow, you and me are going to pay Ruby’s brother a visit.’

After Rob dropped him off at his house, Kit took the folder into the kitchen and started spreading the contents across the table. He drew out the morgue reports and the photographs of the corpse. He caught his breath as the horrific black-and-white shots swam into view. Forced himself to look at the images of Michael, shot in the back of the head, his skull half-disintegrated. His right eye was gone, his fucking
soul
was gone, no life there whatsoever, all of it snatched from him by some bastard with a bloody great gun.

Kit surged to his feet. He ran to the sink and vomited.

Ah Jesus!

He heaved until he felt like he was bringing his entire stomach up. Finally, panting, he washed out the sink, swooshed water around his mouth, snatched up a towel and dried himself. Then he tossed the towel aside and sat down at the table and looked again.

Michael, dead. No longer handsome, suave; no longer flashing that devil-may-care grin.

This isn’t Michael,
he told himself.
This is a shell, empty of life.

Kit breathed deeply, and felt his heart racing in his chest, felt that sudden biting
urge
to go to the drinks cabinet, get something, glug it down.

But he’d chucked all the booze away, hadn’t he?

Off-licence . . .

No. He could do this. He
had
to do this, and he couldn’t do it if he was sodden with drink.

He pulled the folder towards him. Ballistics reports. A big-calibre gun firing soft-nosed bullets of lead that spread on impact, did maximum damage. They were called dum-dums and during the drive home, Rob, who had a keen interest in munitions, had told him that the name came from the Dum Dum Arsenal near Calcutta in India, where the first expanding bullets were developed back in the 1890s by Captain Bertie-Clay of the British Army. Kit had sensed that the history lesson was Rob’s way of trying to deal with the whole thing objectively, to try to focus on details instead of giving into the red mist that would take hold if you stopped thinking about the history of the bullet and thought about what it had been used for. The fact remained, whoever fired it hadn’t wanted to take any chances. They had wanted to be sure that Michael Ward was dead.

But who did that finger on the trigger belong to?

44

Bianca sat and looked at the phone as if her will alone could make it ring.

It didn’t.

Why hasn’t he phoned me?

A little threadworm of fear uncurled in her stomach and a tiny voice in her brain whispered,

Because he’s like all the others, he didn’t mean any of it. Because, you fool, you were just a convenient lay and he said he loved you to get your legs open.

‘Staring at it ain’t going to make it ring,’ said Cora, coming into the stockroom and tutting as she saw Bianca standing there.

Bianca instantly started making like normal. Like she didn’t want to kill him or kiss him – she didn’t know which. ‘Don’t know what you’re on about.’

Cora gave a smile and a sigh of impatience. ‘Yes you do. You’re waiting for that Tony fella to call you, and so far he hasn’t. Give the man a chance. And incidentally, we’re getting low on the bitter lemon.’

‘Put it on the list for the wholesalers.’

‘Will do,’ said Cora, and snatched up a box of ready-salted crisps. Then she paused. ‘Don’t you have a number to reach him on?’

Bianca gave her a sour look. ‘No.’

‘Oh.’

‘What does that mean?’ snapped Bianca. But she
knew
what it meant, she didn’t need Cora or anyone else to draw her pictures. He hadn’t given her a number to reach him on because he’d had a fine old time with her and that was it: end of the road.

‘No offence. It seems odd that he didn’t give you a number, that’s all,’ shrugged Cora.

‘Well, he didn’t.’

‘You didn’t ask?’

‘Yes, I did. He said not to bother, he’d call me.’

‘Right. What was his name again?’

‘Tony. Tony Mobley.’

Cora hefted the box higher and gave a cheering smile to her boss.

‘He’ll call,’ she reassured her. ‘You wait and see.’

Then Bianca was alone in the stockroom again. Wearily, she sank down on a stool and thought
I have been such a fucking idiot.

She had thought it was love, real love: something different, something special. It lanced her like a dagger, through and through, to think she’d been so callously duped.

Her eyes went again to the phone.

Ring,
she thought.
Come on. For me!

But he didn’t call, not that day, or the next, or the one after that.

It was true, then. Mama was right. You couldn’t trust
any
man.

They were
all
bastards.

45

Naples, 1947

Astorre still had old contacts in the port where he had once run contraband, and through these contacts he arranged passage for him and his family on a cargo vessel bound for England. The crossing was awful, through the Bay of Biscay all of them were sick, but soon they were in the English Channel and then they were sailing up the peaceful slate-grey Thames towards London’s docks.

As the family stepped down onto dry land, swaying and feeling wrung out, dispossessed, the rain fell and the cold seeped into their bones. Three years earlier, Bella’s sister and her husband and daughter Serafina had made this same trip – and her sister’s husband had died not long after, having developed pneumonia. Bella could see why, breathing this damp dreadful air.

‘
Madre de Dios
,’ muttered Bella, looking fearfully around her as she held baby Fabio to her breast.

‘It will be fine,’ said Astorre.

It didn’t take the Danieris long to realize that England, like their homeland, had suffered during this hideous war. Bomb sites were everywhere in the capital; children roamed the streets, begged, slept in gutters. Astorre had a little money, barely enough to get them board and lodgings in a stinking rat-hole of a tenement building.

Once installed in the place, Astorre took Tito out with him onto the streets to look around, to familiarize himself with London. The chill here was unbelievable, the damp and the fog seemed to permeate their very bones after the dry radiant Neapolitan sun. But they were tough and they were desperate.

Soon they sussed out that there was a pocket of Italian immigrants living in Clerkenwell – so many that it was called ‘Little Italy’ by the English. That was where Astorre wanted to be, among his own kind. Already, he missed the old country, but he knew that he would never go back. There were others who possessed the same deadly patience he had displayed; no matter how many years passed, it would never be safe for him or his family back in Napoli.

What he needed right now was more cash.

And that, at least, was a problem it would be easy to solve.

Astorre and Tito spied out and targeted a few clubs in London – ‘up West’, as the Londoners called the more salubrious part of their city. These particular clubs were owned by one man, a self-made heavy plant millionaire called Fred Cheeseman. Cheeseman’s doormen were old lions, losing their teeth, unable to stand against bulky Astorre and his thuggish cub.

‘All right. You can take over security on my doors,’ Cheeseman told the Danieris. ‘But I still run the bar and the business.’

Trying to talk tough, like he actually had a choice in the matter. As he spoke, Tito was standing at his father’s shoulder, slapping a cosh rhythmically into the palm of his hand; big bulging-eyed Astorre was blocking out the light. Cheeseman, a short bald man, was terrified.

Cheeseman doled them out a contract, and hoped that would be the end of it – the fool. Within six months he’d caved in to extreme pressure and handed the clubs over. Astorre had even been so good as to pay him – a knock-down price, of course, a small salve to his wounded pride – and Cheeseman departed with his kneecaps intact.

‘You got to take what you want in this life,’ Astorre told his boys. And he did.

Soon they had money enough for their own home in London’s ‘Little Italy’. They became established and well respected in the area, running the clubs as fronts to launder the money they acquired by other means. The family worshipped together every Sunday – Mama Bella insisted – at St Peter’s church, and they attended all the big Catholic festivals; particularly, Bella loved to see the
Procession della Madonna del Carmine
passing through the packed streets in the summer. Still, she missed Napoli, and the old Italian songs filled the house as she remembered the old country with a nostalgic tear. But this was home now; it had to be. All that was missing, for Bella, was the daughter she longed for.

Tito was growing into a robust man now. Vittore, his mother’s little pet, was growing up fast too and showing signs of becoming a good businessman. Even Fabio, who had been a sickly sulky child – not exactly neglected but certainly not what Mama Bella wanted – was gaining strength as the Danieris surged forward, became established in their new environment.

But Bella still craved a daughter. Her sister had a girl – Serafina, who would later change her name to Sheila – but she had only sons. It broke her heart. Discreet enquiries by Astorre revealed that, as new immigrants, the Danieris would not be deemed suitable adoptive parents, and anyway they were in their forties now. They were simply too old.

‘I want a girl,’ sobbed Bella, clutching her chest when Astorre passed on the bad news.

He hated to see her pain; he still loved her, in his way.

So he decided. Bella wants a girl? She must have one.

46

Jay didn’t want to tell Vittore what he knew. He was familiar with the Danieri taste for shooting the messenger. But he had worked for the family – particularly for Vittore – for a lot of years, and if the crap really started flying and it was discovered he’d said nothing, then he’d be even
deeper
in the shit. So he had to speak up.

They were in the room over the club that had been Tito’s favourite – under Tito’s reign this room had been opulent, all chandeliers, deeply padded couches, gold leaf and tarts on tap, playfully inviting you to suck chocolate buttons off their nipples. Now it was called Vito’s and Vittore held sway. Things were plainer, less flamboyant, reflecting Vittore’s own sober nature. The whole tone of the club had changed since Tito had got himself rubbed out. Everything was more low-key. All greys and browns. Fucking
dull
, really. Whatever Tito’s faults – and they’d been many – at least he’d had a certain exuberant charm. Vittore had none. With Vittore, everything was business, everything was
cost
.

‘So what’s the problem, Jay?’ Vittore asked him, sitting down on one of the functional stone-coloured marl Habitat sofas and indicating that his employee should sit too.

Jay sat down. He was a tall man for an Italian, fortyish, his face deeply scarred purple down the left cheek by a knife attack back in his twenties. He was a good worker. Diligent. Dedicated to the family that had kept him in sharp suits and cannelloni for a long time.

‘It’s Fab,’ said Jay.

‘What about him?’

‘He’s been doing some moonlighting, working on his own.’

‘So?’ This wasn’t news. Vittore had always been aware that Fab had deals cooking outside the normal run of things. The normal run of things was the clubs, through which the family washed clean all the money that came in from other sources,
criminal
sources. It made him uneasy, but that was Fabio. He was crazy. You just had to accept that.