Black Widow (30 page)

Her life was in bits but she still had things to do, places to go. Tony drove her to the place she told him, and when they got there he looked at her and his eyes said,
I don’t fucking well believe this.

They were outside a breaker’s yard in Battersea. It was rumoured to be the same yard where Jack ‘The Hat’ McVitie’s car was crushed after he’d been done by the Krays. Forever after, the car had been known on the streets as ‘the Oxo’, because all that had been left of it was a tiny cube of mangled metal.

‘It’s okay, Tone,’ she reassured him. ‘Wait here, yeah?’ she said as they got out of the car and stood in front of the gates.

The yard was completely fenced off with tall, thick wire panels. Tony looked at the security guard approaching with a black-faced Alsatian, snarling and yanking at its choke chain. At the back of the
yard, piled high with the rusting hulks of dead cars, they could just glimpse the edge of a static caravan that served as an office.

‘No, Boss, I’m coming in with you,’ said Tony.

The dog was going mad. The guard snapped a command at it, jerked the chain. The dog fell silent.

Annie nodded acceptance of what Tony had said. Easier than arguing. Now she’d braced herself to do this, she hadn’t the energy for a fucking debate. Best to get it over with, get it done.

The guard looked them over. And suddenly the one man became, as if by magic,
three
men. Big, hard, flint-eyed men who gathered around the other side of the fence and stared at them with extreme suspicion.

One of them was Charlie ‘The Dip’ Foster, the Delaneys’ number one man. He stared at Annie as if he’d like to slit her open like a rotten fruit. She looked down at his hands: one was bandaged. Annie didn’t feel sorry, not any more—even though she knew she’d made a huge mistake over the Delaney involvement in Layla’s kidnapping. Charlie was a bastard; she was
surrounded
by bastards. If he had to refine his dipping technique to cope with his new disability, so what? Fuck him.

‘I’ve come to see Redmond,’ said Annie.

‘Maybe he don’t want to see you,’ said Charlie.

‘Just tell him I’m here,’ said Annie, hard-faced even though inside she was quaking.

They all stood there looking at her sceptically. Charlie went away.

He came back inside five minutes. He looked at the guard and nodded. Annie and Tony were ushered inside the yard.

‘Open the coat,’ said Charlie to Annie.

‘Hey!’ said Tony.

‘It’s okay,’ Annie told him, and unbuttoned her coat and held it open.

Charlie watched as one of the other men searched her pockets and then frisked her with leisurely relish. By the time his pal had finished, Annie felt completely fine about the damage she’d done to Charlie Foster.

Tony looked like thunder as the man repeated the exercise on him. Neither of them carrying, they had nothing to hide. Tony kept sending Annie looks that said,
What the fuck are we doing here?

‘Okay, come on,’ said Charlie, and led the way.

Inside the static, Redmond and Orla Delaney were sitting at a desk. They stared at her steadily as she came up the steps and walked in. It was basic in here—a desk, three chairs, a lamp, a kettle and tea tray, some filing cabinets. Nothing fancy.

The twins said nothing. One man, one woman, with the same thick red hair, white skin, pale green eyes. Both tall, both thin.
Book ends
, thought Annie. A perfectly matched pair of beauties: cold as ice and twice as nasty.

Finally, Redmond spoke.

‘Mrs Carter,’ he said cordially. The faint Irish lilt was there in his voice. Southern Irish, like the voice on the phone. But Redmond’s voice wasn’t harsh, it was low and well educated. Totally deceptive, as she knew only too well. This effete and perfect specimen of manhood had ordered Billy murdered with as much compunction as he would swat a gnat.

Annie stepped forward. She felt nauseous and her hands were clammy with sweat. Her heart was pumping madly.

‘Hello Redmond,’ she said coolly. ‘Hello Orla.’

‘Annie,’ acknowledged Orla.

‘Can we do something for you?’ asked Redmond.

Yeah, you can drop dead, the pair of you
, she thought furiously.

But Annie remained outwardly calm. ‘I’ve come here to set the record straight over a few things.’

The twins stared at her flatly.

Then Orla said: ‘What do you mean?’

‘I’ve come to say that what you did to Billy was beyond the pale. He didn’t deserve it.’

Redmond shrugged his shoulders. ‘We discussed this before, Mrs Carter. It was business. Nothing personal.’

‘It was personal to me,’ said Annie.

Again the shrug. He didn’t give a fuck, she could see that. ‘And was there anything else?’

‘Yeah,’ said Annie. ‘Plenty. Max is dead. So’s Jonjo.’

They were silent, staring. Brains whirring like calculators, if she was any judge.

‘They were hit in Majorca,’ she went on. ‘They’re gone.’

‘I see,’ said Redmond slowly.

‘Yeah, I bet you do. But what you
don’t
see yet—and I’m going to fill you in on this, stay with me—what you
don’t
see is that I’m taking over here. Now we were friends once, and because of that I’m telling you all this, just marking your card before you decide to do anything foolish.’ She could feel sweat trickling down her back. ‘All the shit stops here. I run the Carter patch now. It belongs to me, and that’s the way it’s gonna stay. Max is gone. Jonjo’s gone too. But I ain’t. So, before you get any ideas about taking over or anything rash like that, think again. I’ve got muscle, and no one is taking anything away from the Carters.’

When she finished speaking, they were silent, taking it all in.

‘You’re still in Limehouse,’ said Redmond at last.

‘Not for much longer.’

‘Good.’

‘I appreciate you letting me stay there,’ said Annie, although it nearly choked her. ‘It’s temporary, as I said. But Dolly Farrell’s my friend and I’d
like to call on her in the future if I can. I appreciate it’s your patch and I respect that. But I’d like to be able to call in there. Just occasionally.’

Redmond shrugged again. ‘I don’t see why you shouldn’t. You see, Mrs Carter, I’m not an unreasonable man. Now if that’s all…?’

‘Yeah,’ said Annie. ‘That’s all.’

She turned and walked out of the little office, back down the steps. She crossed the yard with Tony, and the guard let them out, the Alsatian emitting a low, threatening growl throughout. Charlie Foster and his co-workers watched them blankly as they got back into the Jag.

‘Jesus,’ said Tony.

Annie sat back, feeling on the point of nervous collapse. She closed her eyes.

‘Amen,’ she said faintly.

‘Hot candle wax,’ Aretha was saying to Annie and the others later in the day when Annie got back. They were all sitting around the kitchen table. ‘Can you believe that?’

‘I can believe
anything,’
said Darren, sipping tea and shivering.

‘But don’t it hurt?’ asked Dolly.

‘That’s the buzz, I guess,’ said Aretha with a shrug.

‘What a bloody pervert,’ said Ellie, dipping into the biscuit tin.

‘Hey, whatever gets you through the night,’ said Aretha. ‘That’s what massa wanted, that’s what massa got. So there I was, dripping
hot candle wax
on to his balls, and you know what? He seemed to like it.’

‘Takes all sorts,’ said Darren.

‘But when he said he wanted me to pass the
flame over his
cojones
, I drew the line. Think that’s more Una’s bag than mine. She enjoys beating the living crap out of men, after all. Has a fucking
orgasm
when she hurts people. Burning their balls has just
got
to be a major turn-on for that bitch.’

Annie took off her coat and sat down. Dolly pushed a mug towards her and poured the tea. Annie thought that marriage had softened Aretha, just the same as it had softened her. Which could be a bad thing, and she knew it. She wanted to tell Aretha, to warn her not to let her guard down too far, but she kept quiet and drank her tea. Tried, for five blissful minutes, not to think of the complete mess her life had become. Then Ross came in, and gave her a note.

A
pizzino
, he said coldly. For Mrs Carter.

‘What’s it say?’ asked Dolly eagerly as Annie unfolded it. ‘Hey, that’s all numbers.’

‘It’s code,’ said Annie, and quickly deciphered it.

It said:
Come Friday morning. Early.
C.

‘Is that from Constantine Barolli?’ asked Dolly. ‘He’s keen.’

‘He’s persistent, for sure,’ said Annie. She thought about Constantine: handsome as the devil and just as alluring. She still didn’t know if she could trust him. She didn’t know
who
she could trust any more. She looked across at Ellie, who was watching her. Redmond must know that she
had been in talks with the Mafia boss, because Ellie knew and Ellie was the Delaneys’ insider. Nothing happened here that the Delaneys didn’t know about.

Ellie blushed as she saw Annie returning her gaze.

‘It’s okay,’ she said sulkily. ‘I don’t grass to the Delaneys no more.’

Dolly gave her a stern look.

‘Yeah, we had a talk about that, didn’t we?’ Dolly looked at Ellie then at Annie. ‘After we had all that trouble with Ellie after Pat Delaney popped off, I took her back in but there were terms. And those terms were, no grassing us up to the Delaneys. What happens inside these four walls—or even outside them if it concerns any of us—
don’t
get told to them. That was the deal, and I think Ellie’s stuck to it.’

‘Course I have,’ said Ellie uncomfortably.

‘You’d bloody better have, if you know what’s good for you.’

‘I
have,’
Ellie insisted.

Annie looked at Ellie. She hoped Dolly was right.

‘Everyone deserves a second chance,’ said Dolly with a shrug.

Annie wasn’t sure that she would have been so generous.

‘Where’s Una?’ she asked, thinking of what Constantine had said to her about the woman’s
family link to Jeanette—and of what she would have to do about all that as soon as she got her chance to act.

She ached to batter Una, very soon. But for now, she knew she didn’t dare. If she so much as mentioned the Byrne family to Una, word would without doubt shoot straight back to them that she was sniffing around, getting clever.

No—it was safer to keep quiet. Safer for Layla. For now she would have to hold back. But later, she promised herself, they were going to pay for what they’d done, every one of them.

Annie squirmed with thwarted rage as she thought of the harm the Byrnes had inflicted on her family. For now they had her right where they wanted her. Right where they could keep an eye on her. Right where she could not even think of retaliating.

Una. That bitch. And silly, chatty Jeanette. Vita, the unknown sister. Danny—what about this Danny, was it him who had lopped off Layla’s finger, was it him she spoke to on the phone? And Jimmy! Jimmy
had
to be involved, and for that she was going to have his guts.

But not yet.

‘Una’s out,’ said Dolly, pulling a face.
‘And
she ain’t signed the bloody book again. Thinks rules are for other people, that one.’

I can’t do a damned thing to her anyway
, thought Annie.
My hands are tied. I’m in chains.

But Layla was alive, she knew that now. And Constantine might be pissed off with her, but he was still there, still on her side. She hoped.

Ross put his head around the kitchen door. ‘Client,’ he said. ‘For Aretha.’

Aretha hauled herself to her feet.

‘A woman’s work is just
never
done,’ she complained with a grin, and went off into the hall.

Annie went and sat upstairs on the bed to think. She got out Max’s ring and held it in her hand; it gave her some comfort. In the other one she had the
pizzino
from Constantine Barolli.

Come Friday morning. Early. C.

She closed her eyes and let it all wash over her: the rage, the grief, the guilt, the fear. Max was gone for ever, and she had to accept that.
Had
to. She could hear Norman Greenbaum’s
Spirit in the Sky
drifting out from Ellie’s room. Lyrics all about death.

But accepting Max’s death was hard, almost too hard to bear. He was dead, and she was still alive, and she almost wished their positions were reversed. But Max wouldn’t allow his feelings to stand in the way of what he needed to do, and neither must she.

She had to be strong.

Dig deep and stand alone.

She’d lived by that creed all her life, clinging to it when the going got hard. It had sustained her, allowed her to always find a way through.

Would she find a way through this time?

She had to.

Annie turned her face into the pillow and gritted her teeth and
willed
herself to be strong enough to go on with this.

She had to find a way through the obstacles, to get Layla back.

Yes, Max was gone.

And there was something else she had to privately admit to—that there was a strong tug of attraction between her and Constantine Barolli, and that it was mutual. She thought of Barolli, suave bloody American, handsome, authoritative, sitting over there in Holland Park with everything nicely under control.

She thought of his family—his exquisite yet sour-faced sister Gina, the angelic Alberto, and slimy, dark-eyed Lucco, who had seen that there was a spark there, and warned her off. She thought of Constantine’s wife, Maria, dead five long years. He’d been through what Annie was going through now. He knew how it felt.

How it felt was
bad.

She clutched Max’s ring harder, felt the metal digging into her palm and welcomed the pain of it.

It was no use, though—whatever she did, however she felt, there was no way to summon him back to her side, no way now to make it all right again.

Max was
gone.

And she was still here.

And so—for now at least—was Layla. She had to cling on to that.

So she was going to have to go to Constantine’s early on Friday, and this time she was going to make sure that things went smoothly between them. He would provide the cash as soon as she fell into line, so she would do it.

Friday morning, early.

This time, she was
determined
to do it.

Until then, all she could do was wait.

Oh yeah—and
pray.