Stay Dead (6 page)

‘I’m asking the questions. I thought of that. But you know Dolly. Don’t seem like her style somehow.’

Annie was pacing around, pulling the phone cord along with her. ‘What the
fuck
?’ she raged, feeling helpless, thinking that this couldn’t be happening.

‘You want me to do anything?’ asked Tony.

Annie was having flashbacks. Dolly drinking gin and tonic in the bar, laughing at some off-colour joke one of the punters had told. Dolly hauling Annie’s arse out of bed after she’d
split from Max back in 1980, pulling her back to her feet with the force of her will,
making
her carry on even when she didn’t want to. She felt her eyes fill with hot, painful tears
– and she
never
cried. But this was Dolly. Dolly was her best mate. And now . . . oh fuck, how could this be? – Dolly was
dead.

Annie blinked hard, gulping back her tears until all she felt was that cleansing rage again. She kicked the coffee table, hard. Then again. Then again. Shells skidded over the surface and
dropped to the floor. Anger rushed through her in an unstoppable tide. Whoever did this, they were
finished.
She would see to it.

When she spoke again, her voice was harder, steadier. ‘Ask the questions, Tone. Ask as many as you can. See nobody rests. Keep doing what you’re doing.’

There was a silence at the other end of the phone, all those thousands of miles away, in London. Then he said: ‘What you going to do?’

Annie drew in a breath.

Composed herself.

‘I’m coming back,’ she said.

For long moments after the man in the wheelchair killed himself, Max stood there in awe. He’d heard of it, but never seen it up close and personal.
This
was the
type of loyalty these people commanded, with their
omerta
, their code of endless silence. To death and beyond.

He stared down at the corpse still half-propped in the chair, leaning way over to the left. The bullet had been high-calibre, and there was a lot of damage; death had been a certainty, no
chances taken. Blood and bone and brain matter had spewed out of the shattered skull in a fountain. Rather than talk and disgrace himself, betray the Mafia code he’d sworn to uphold, the man
had taken his own life.

Crazy bastards
, thought Max as he took wheelchair man’s gun.

But you had to admire them somehow.

Antonio was moaning now, starting to come round.

Max forgot wheelchair man and walked over to where Antonio lay bleeding on the ground. He picked up his gun, tucked it into the waistband of his trousers with the other man’s gun. Knife in
hand, he approached the man and looked down at him.

Antonio stirred, his eyes flickering open. Crying out in pain, he put his right hand over his left wrist, where the blood was still pumping out.

Max poked him with a toe and Antonio stared up at him with the pain-warped ferocity of a rabid dog.

‘My friend,’ said Max, ‘you’re going to bleed out in about forty minutes. You understand me, yeah? Because you were going to be the interpreter for that sack of bones in
the wheelchair. Right?’

The man said nothing. His eyes flicked sideways, took in his dead companion slumped over in the chair, then back to the man standing over him.

‘Unless I get you to some help, you’re going to die,’ said Max. Judging by the way the other one had reacted, he didn’t hold out a lot of hope for this plan, but he had
to try. ‘So tell me where Gina Barolli is, and you’ll get it.’

The man spat at Max.

‘That’s not nice,’ said Max, and put his foot hard on the place where the blood was spurting out. The man on the ground shrieked.

‘Tell me,’ said Max.

The man writhed and cursed in Sicilian.

‘Don’t fuck me around,’ Max advised him. ‘Speak English. Tell me where she is.’

‘She’s in hell and so will you be soon,’ he sobbed.

‘She’s not in hell,’ said Max. ‘She’s been making phone calls, saying things. And I’m here to see her and find out what she’s on about. Only she never
shows, does she. Instead, she sends you two clowns – one dressed up like a pantomime dame and you without a fucking clue – to finish me off. Now why would she do that?’

Antonio said nothing.

‘This is going to get very painful for you if you don’t start talking,’ Max warned with a sigh. ‘I’m going to see Gina Barolli, one way or the other. So you may as
well make this easy for yourself.’

‘Fuck
you
!’ shouted Antonio.

Max leaned down over the man and opened up his other wrist, too. The man screamed like a little girl as blood spurted. ‘Now look. You’ve got trouble. Twenty minutes tops, I’d
say. People can live after this. If they get the right medical stuff done to them, and quick. But leave it too late, and you know what? Even in this hot sun, you’re soon going to start
feeling very cold. First comes the shivers, and then you’re weak and disorientated, and then you pass out and the next thing is – you’re dead.’

‘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.’

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.

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 than 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.