Dirty Game (12 page)

At four o’clock on a Sunday morning an arsonist slipped a rag soaked with lighter fuel through the letterbox of the Galway Club. Then the arsonist did the same at the Liberty. The clubs were both owned by the Delaneys. By five o’clock the fire brigade were in attendance, hosing both places down. By six, dawn was breaking and the twin jewels in the crown of the Delaney empire were nothing more than smouldering wrecks, black and gutted, open to the early morning rain. By seven, Orla and Redmond and Pat Delaney were outside the Galway looking at the wreckage. At seven-thirty, Kieron showed up, bleary-eyed and incredulous as he saw what had happened.

‘Fucking
Carters
,’ Pat roared, and hit the blackened wall.

The police were there, standing some distance away. They knew the score. This was a gangland
reprisal. They had already taken details from Redmond, but every one of the Delaneys knew that the Bill would take the paperwork back down the station and promptly lose it. They had enough work on their hands policing law-abiding citizens, they wouldn’t trouble themselves over mob fights.

‘You think it was them?’ Kieron asked, open-mouthed with shock.

‘Give the boy a coconut,’ sneered Pat.

‘Because of what happened to Eddie Carter?’

Pat said nothing but kicked the wall.

Kieron looked at Redmond and Orla, both standing there like statues, saying nothing. He hadn’t ever allowed himself to think about what had happened to Eddie Carter. But at the back of his mind was a suspicion that his family had been involved. They might not have done the deed, but he suspected they had been behind it.

Pat was violent and a natural-born liar, and Kieron knew it. Pat had always been a loose cannon. But hadn’t Pat also been keen to get the family involved in the lucrative drugs trade? He’d talked about it to Orla in front of Kieron and, although Redmond had said no, Kieron knew that Pat chafed under his brother’s rule. They all knew that Pat wanted to be boss after Tory got himself killed. Maybe Pat had done some independent work and stirred up a hornet’s nest. Maybe this wasn’t the Carters at all. Maybe Pat had started
getting interested in dealing and had stepped on someone’s toes.

Maybe, maybe, maybe. Kieron stared at the wreckage of the Galway, Tory’s favourite of their two clubs, named for their Irish homeland. All gone now. As usual he found that he had to cut dead all thoughts of his family business. He had never been a part of it. They were involved in dangerous games. It was a nightmare to him, and that was why he had stayed away so long, travelling the world, forgetting where the wherewithal that allowed him to do so had come from. From crime. From gambling dens and prossies and casinos and dodgy deals and intimidation. He’d shied away from it. Enjoyed the privileges it bought, yes, but turned his head away from the facts of his family’s livelihood.

Now it was staring him in the face. At least they were honest about it all; whereas he was just a fucking hypocrite. He was glad Mum and Dad were back in the old country and didn’t have to see this.

His exhibition was starting tonight in Toby Taylor’s Jermyn Street gallery. Toby was a crime junkie. He nearly had an orgasm just talking to the Delaneys. He got high on the danger of it, tried to dress like Redmond, treated Orla like a queen. When Kieron Delaney asked about an exhibition, he’d turned him down flat. Fuck it, Toby
said, he had Hockney lined up, he was having talks with Lucian Freud, he’d exhibited Warhol just last year, he was
hot
. Who needed a fucking no-hope novice? But then Kieron had given in and told Toby he was one of
the
Delaneys. He’d uttered the magic word. Toby was all over him now like hives.

Kieron had been at the gallery all weekend, working on getting the positions of the canvases just right and checking that the lighting did them justice. The nude of Annie was smack in the centre of the thing, visible the instant the punters walked through the door, raised up above all the other works, stairs ascending to either side of it. He’d sweated hard over the exhibition, had gone to bed in a state of high excitement and happy exhaustion.

Now this. A reminder.

What was it Annie had said? That the gallery-owners wouldn’t say no to him, because he was a Delaney. She was right, and he knew it. It soured his achievement more than a little, to know people so feared his family. So did he have this exhibition because he was a great artist – or because Toby Taylor didn’t want his gallery to burn to the ground one night, or to find himself lacking a pair of kneecaps?

He knew the answer to that. All too well.

‘I’m going home,’ he said, turning away sick at heart.

Maybe he should stay and comfort Orla, but he knew from years of experience that she and Redmond were a pair, entirely co-dependent. As for Pat, big stupid bully that he was, banging on walls and snorting with rage, what a joke. Kieron didn’t even recognize Pat as his brother any more. He didn’t miss Tory. Tory had been a bastard. The
worst
kind of bastard. He wished Mum and Dad could be here. Ah, but they were old now, too old to stomach all this shit. Better for them to be where they were. The game was changing. The game was getting too dangerous.

 ‘Oh Christ, not you again. I’ve been wondering when you’d show up to gloat.’

What a welcome. Annie stood on the doorstep and wished she was somewhere, anywhere, else.

She looked at her mother through the fug that was seeping out of the half-open front door. God, what a pesthole this whole place was. Funny how when she’d been living around here she’d never noticed the litter in the streets or the dog mess on the pavements, or how scraped and battered Connie’s front door was, or how Connie never cleaned her front step or got the window sills painted, or how the new nets Connie had splashed out on for Ruthie’s wedding were now coffee-coloured and caked rigid with dirt.

‘I haven’t shown up to gloat, Mum,’ said Annie flatly. ‘I’ve shown up to see Ruthie.’

Or at least this had been her intention when
she’d got up and dressed this morning. Her stomach had been churning with nerves ever since. It had been so long since she’d seen her sister. She’d had that brief glimpse at Eddie’s funeral, but that hadn’t helped; Ruthie had been as changed and as remote as a total stranger.

‘She don’t want to see you. I don’t know how you’ve got the nerve to ask.’

Annie held on to her temper. When she looked at Connie she felt a sort of sad contempt. Connie was as scruffy as this shit-tip of a rented house. God knows how she kept up the payments. Annie didn’t even want to think about that. Maybe Ruthie pitched in to help? Annie didn’t suppose Connie was up to working any more. Her mother was more to be pitied than hated.

‘Why don’t we let her decide that?’ said Annie. ‘Is she in?’

‘Yes, she’s in,’ said Ruthie, stepping into the doorway beside Connie.

Annie looked at her sister and was suddenly struck dumb. No, this wasn’t the Ruthie she had known all her young life. This was a cool, sophisticated woman with pain-filled eyes. Pain that
she
had caused. Annie swallowed and licked her dry lips.

‘Hello, Ruthie,’ she said.

‘Hello Annie. Well, aren’t you coming in?’

‘You don’t have to see her if you don’t want
to,’ said Connie, looking at Annie with open dislike.

‘What good would that do?’ asked Ruthie. ‘Let her in, for God’s sake, Mum.’

They went through to the kitchen. There were plates piled high in the sink and on the draining board. The lino was scuffed and sticky underfoot. The stove looked as if it hadn’t been cleaned for a month. Annie sat down at the kitchen table, looking carefully at the chair before she did so. Ruthie sat too, and smiled grimly as she saw Annie’s mouth thin with disgust at their surroundings. Jesus, thought Annie, she lived in a flipping knocking shop but she would never stomach this sort of mess around her! Surely, even if Connie was too drunk or bone-idle to clear up, Ruthie could shift herself and do it?

But this wasn’t the Ruthie of old. She had to keep reminding herself of that. This Ruthie didn’t do housework. This Ruthie had sleekly dressed hair and polished nails. This Ruthie wore a smart two-piece suit not dissimilar to the one Annie wore. Fuck it, they looked like two flamingos perched on a muck¬ heap in here! The thought was amusing, but Annie didn’t share it. Ruthie wouldn’t see the joke. Ruthie’s face – so much thinner than it used to be – was set in grim lines. She didn’t look like she’d laughed in a long, long time.
And that’s my fault
, thought Annie. She felt shrivelled inside with the guilt of it.

‘Don’t think you’re getting a fucking cup of tea,’ snorted Connie, hovering threateningly over Annie, scattering venom and fag ash and drink fumes. ‘What did you think I’d do, roll out the bloody red carpet for a cheap little whore like you?’

‘
Mum
,’ said Ruthie loudly.

‘Well, she’s got a fucking nerve, showing up here. Hasn’t she done enough damage?’

‘Just give us a few minutes, will you Mum?’ asked Ruthie coolly.

Connie withdrew, leaving the kitchen door open into the hallway. Ruthie got up and shut it. She sat back down and looked at Annie.

‘So,’ she said. ‘What is it you’ve come for, Annie?’

‘I’ve come to see how you are.’

Ruthie looked at her blankly. ‘You’ve come to see how I am,’ she echoed. Then she laughed. ‘I’ll tell you how I am, shall I Annie? I’m surviving. That’s all.’

‘Ruthie, I’m sorry.’

Ruthie nodded. ‘You should be.’

‘I wish you were happy, Ruthie. I really do.’

‘Well I’m not.’ Ruthie’s eyes were hard. ‘Let me tell you about my life, Annie. I spend a lot of time sitting alone in that mausoleum in Surrey now that poor little Eddie’s gone. If I go out to get my hair done or to go shopping I have to take my minder with me. The stockbrokers’ wives with their little
Pony Club kids and their twinsets and pearls don’t like my accent or my dodgy connections and they shun me. I don’t see my husband very often, he’s a busy man, but when I do we’re at each other’s throats. Mum’s in bits on her own but Max won’t let her come and stay with us because she might mess up Queenie’s rugs or leave drink stains on the tables. So I came back to the Smoke. I go out to the shops here, but still I’ve got to take my minder with me. The shopkeepers all serve me first, before all the other women. I go straight to the front of the queue, even if I don’t want to. I have to apologize for that, but the other women say, oh don’t worry, we’re not in a rush. But they stare at me and they hate me and they envy me. They’re afraid of me. Or rather they’re afraid of Max. That’s my life, Annie. That’s my life.’

Suddenly there were tears in Ruthie’s eyes. Instinctively Annie put out a comforting hand, but Ruthie snatched hers away.

‘Don’t you
dare
pity me,’ she said.

‘I don’t,’ lied Annie.

‘I’d rather be me than you,’ sniffed Ruthie, her expression one of disgust. ‘Running a massage parlour! For God’s sake, whatever possessed you to get sucked into all that?’

‘Mum threw me out,’ Annie reminded her. ‘Where the hell else could I have gone? And Celia always liked me.’

‘And now she’s left you in charge?’

‘Yes.’

‘You ought to be careful,’ said Ruthie. ‘You’ll get all sorts banging on your door.’

Don’t I know it
, thought Annie. But the parlour had been her lifeline. She was busy expanding it. Fuck it, she was
proud
of the work she’d done there. It had been running at a quarter of its full capacity under Celia. Under Annie’s rule, it was thriving.

‘I’m always careful,’ said Annie. ‘So … are you and Max still together, Ruthie?’

Ruthie looked at her sister scornfully. ‘Yes, we’re still together. Contrary to rumour. I’m going back at the weekend, we’re going to spend it together. Don’t think you’re going to step into my shoes, Annie Bailey. I’m still wearing them.’

‘I don’t,’ said Annie, colouring.

‘No?’ Ruthie gave a derisive snort. ‘He always wanted you, really. But he won’t ditch me for you, Annie. Max doesn’t dump his commitments. He isn’t Jonjo. He takes his responsibilities seriously.’

‘I don’t want him to,’ said Annie, standing up sharply.

‘Sure you don’t,’ scoffed Ruthie.

‘I don’t!’ God, was she trying to convince Ruthie or herself? Flustered, Annie snatched up her bag. Her cheeks felt hot. She looked at Ruthie. ‘I just wanted to see you,’ she said.

‘What for? To see the damage you’ve done?’ snapped Ruthie.

‘We were so close before,’ said Annie.

‘Before? You mean, before you fucked my bridegroom?’

It wasn’t like Ruthie to swear. But then this was a different Ruthie – hardened and sharpened by life, by all that had happened to her. Annie stared at her and could see nothing of the Ruthie she had known and loved. Nothing at all.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

‘Yeah,’ said Ruthie. ‘Of course you are.’

‘I think he’s had enough,’ said Annie, passing through the hallway and pausing to look at what Aretha was up to.

More and more Annie was becoming blasé about the sex parties. Men were a strange lot, straight sex seemed to be the last thing on their mind. One client had begged her to let him redecorate the kitchen – while stark naked of course – while Aretha whipped the crap out of him and told him to do it better. Annie had declined his request. The kitchen was off-limits to clients. Men! What a bloody strange bunch they were. In her limited experience, women were so much easier to please. Most women wanted a nice warm one-to-one cuddle – blokes wanted much more diverse pleasures.

‘Why? He’s a very naughty boy,’ purred Aretha.

This was becoming a practised part of their little act. Aretha was the slave mistress, the beater and
abuser dressed in a leather basque and holding the whip, Annie was the prudishly clad, sweet voice of discipline and reason who said enough was enough. It was good cop/bad cop, really. Which was ironic, when you considered that the bloke who was strung up from the stairwell was a chief inspector.

‘Who’s a naughty boy then?’ asked Aretha, biting pineapple and cheese from a cocktail stick and then giving the copper a playful stab in the buttocks with the point. He shrieked with ecstasy and writhed about.

Frankly, Annie had seen prettier sights than this middle-aged man, his fat arse slick with baby oil, hung up there like a sodding Christmas ham. It tickled her that Chris was still sitting by the front door, his face impassive. He could have been a eunuch standing guard in a harem for all the interest he showed in the proceedings.

‘Another ten minutes.’ Annie looked at the alarm clock set up on the hall table. It would ring at three o’clock in the afternoon, announcing to their visitors that it was time to get gone. She was always relieved at this point, however much she became accustomed to what happened here. Dolly was upstairs with two punters, Ellie was drinking sherry with one of their dear old fellows in the front room. Darren had a judge upstairs, doing God knew what. Connie Francis was belting out her latest on the radiogram, Annie loved that song.

She was tired now, tired of smiling and being Madam. Their new barman, Brian, was boxing up the empties, putting the dirty glasses to one side. All the food had been cleared today. It had been a busy party, and very profitable. No trouble, either. All in all, a good day’s work.

Annie went through to the kitchen and put the kettle on. She kicked off her courts and sighed with pleasure. You couldn’t beat a cup of tea and a sit-down at the kitchen table with all your mates to talk over the day together. She looked around her happily, then frowned at the new kitchen door.

Not frosted glass now. She didn’t like it, but this one was solid wood, with a peephole and a Yale lock. At the kitchen window, which looked out over a tiny square of garden, there was now an iron grid. There was also a discreet strip of barbed wire on the fence at the bottom of the garden and the side of the house, and a solid securely locked side gate had replaced the pretty, white painted, wrought-iron one that used to be there.

None of this pleased Annie. She felt like she was living in fucking Stalag 13, and the wooden door blocked out a lot of light from the kitchen. Everyone was admitted from the front of the house now. No surprises, nasty or otherwise. She picked up Chris’s paper from the table and browsed through it, stopping dead when she came across
a piece about two nightclubs being burned to the ground. Arson was suspected. The clubs were owned by the ‘influential’ Delaney family, it said. Enquiries were ongoing.

Annie sat down at the table. Yeah, sure, she thought. The Bill were sure to enquire closely about what happened to gangland clubs, weren’t they. She hugged herself and shivered. She’d been feeling down since going over to Mum’s to see Ruthie. She didn’t know what she’d expected. Maybe a tearful, happy reunion? Perhaps for Ruthie to hug her and say, there, there, it’s all forgotten. To be forgiven for the unforgivable? What a fucking laugh. She’d told herself to buck up and get a grip. She’d done the deed, and these were the consequences. Still, she’d been undeniably low ever since. And now this!

Did the fires have anything to do with Eddie Carter falling off the twig? She couldn’t forget her own involvement, or Darren’s. Or the way Celia had bottled it and taken off, who the hell knew where. She looked again at the solid door and the metal grille over the window. No surprises, nasty or otherwise. Perhaps it was best to be on the safe side after all.

 Redmond Delaney’s call came at four o’clock that afternoon. Everything was cleared and ready for the evening’s trade, Annie had luxuriated in a hot,
deep bath, she’d got over the jitters. Wrapped in her thick towelling dressing gown, she came downstairs from her room at Chris’ call and picked up the phone.

‘Mr Delaney,’ she said as Chris shook out his paper and took his usual seat in the corner by the front door. ‘Are you keeping well?’

‘Very well, Miss Bailey,’ said Redmond. ‘And you?’

‘I’m good, Mr Delaney. Thank you.’

‘And how is business?’ he asked.

‘Thriving,’ said Annie. She considered mentioning the fires, but thought better of it. Her relationship with Redmond was strictly formal. She knew that any hint of familiarity would be met with a sharp rebuff.

‘The barman is satisfactory?’

‘Brian’s perfect, Mr Delaney.’ And I’m paying
his
wages out of my profits, thought Annie. But she couldn’t complain. The profits were bloody good. ‘I shall need more girls for the next party.’

‘I’ll put the word round,’ said Redmond.

‘Only nice girls,’ said Annie. ‘Presentable and clean and experienced.’

‘Exactly so,’ said Redmond.

‘Maybe six?’

‘Six it shall be,’ said Redmond. ‘Goodbye, Miss Bailey.’

‘Goodbye, Mr Delaney,’ said Annie, and started to put the phone down.

‘Oh, Miss Bailey?’ said Redmond.

‘Yes, Mr Delaney?’

‘I hope I shall see you at Kieron’s exhibition on Saturday night?’

Annie nearly dropped the phone. ‘Well … yes,’ she said in surprise.

She hadn’t planned to go, but she supposed she ought to put in an appearance, if only to give Kieron a bit of a boost. She was amazed that Redmond had mentioned it. This was surely crossing the line into informality. That wasn’t like him.

‘I look forward to it,’ said Redmond, and the line went dead.

‘Blimey,’ said Annie.

‘Problem?’ asked Chris.

‘No, not at all. Just Redmond Delaney being nice to me.’

Chris smiled and returned his attention to his paper. Annie put a call through to Kieron.

‘Listen, am I invited to this shindig on Saturday? This exhibition thingy?’ she asked.

‘Of course you are, if you want to come. I didn’t think you would.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because you’ve been such a reluctant sitter!’ barked Kieron. ‘Jaysus, you’ve acted right the way through as if I was trying to sell you into white slavery instead of painting your ruddy picture. I thought you’d hate to see the thing hung on a wall.’

‘Sorry,’ said Annie.

‘Apology accepted. Come as my guest, I’ll pick you up at eight, will that do you?’

‘Hadn’t you planned to take anyone else?’

‘No, I hadn’t. I’m a working artist, I haven’t time to be chasing girls all around the town, you’ll be doing me a favour. How about it then?’

‘Okay,’ said Annie. ‘Saturday at eight.’

After she’d put the phone down she realized that she hadn’t talked to Kieron about the fires, either. Ah, it was just as well. What would she say about it anyway? She didn’t want to go treading on dangerous ground. She didn’t want to know more than she knew already.