Dirty Game (33 page)

Max had taken a suite in a posh but discreet hotel up West to keep Annie out of the way of the Press after the trial. No way was Max going to doss down overnight in the Limehouse brothel – on Delaney territory – and the Press would have a field day if he did, they both knew that. He thought the Palermo’s little flat might contain too many bad memories for Annie. They could have gone to his mum’s old place, but it was cheerless, less a home than a meeting-place these days.

So, instead of slopping out as she had expected, Annie found herself on the morning after the trial bathing in luxury, then breakfasting not on horrible prison food but on delicious kedgeree and vintage champagne. Max went out to do some business at lunchtime, and Annie made some calls, thanked her lucky stars and then had a surprise visitor.

‘Redmond told me you were here, so I thought
I’d stop by. You know, you’re a lucky woman. I seriously thought you were dead that night at the Palermo,’ said Orla, breezing into the suite and settling herself on a small, ornate sofa.

‘So did I.’ Annie wasn’t surprised Redmond had known where she was. She knew that the mobs kept careful tabs on each other. For sure Max knew where Redmond was, too, at any given moment.

‘And I seriously thought you were going down yesterday.’

‘Me too.’

Orla smiled. ‘So what are your plans?’

‘I’m going straight,’ said Annie, frowning. All right, she’d been lucky this time – thanks to Max. But she was not going to push her luck and risk ending up in the dock again if she could help it. ‘Got to keep my nose clean. I’ve had enough of being a Madam anyway. I got into it by accident, but I’m getting out of it by design.’

‘Shame,’ said Orla. ‘You’re a good businesswoman.’

‘Well, if that’s true,’ reasoned Annie, ‘then I can make a go of something else, can’t I. Something legit.’

‘I came to say sorry,’ said Orla, her smile fading fast. ‘About Kieron. I never thought he had it in him. First he shoots Tory dead, then he tries to shoot Max Carter.’

‘And how is Kieron?’ asked Annie coldly. Not
that she gave a fuck. But if Orla could make an effort to be civil, then so could she.

‘It’s big of you to ask that, since he damn near killed you. He’s abroad, I think. Painting, probably.’

Kieron had spoken to Annie weeks ago about the Spanish light. He would be there, she thought. Lying low. But he would be back. She felt sure of that.

‘I don’t think he’s right in the head,’ said Annie. Even the thought of Kieron Delaney gave her the jitters now.

Orla smiled. It was the most chilling smile Annie had ever seen.

‘We’re all disturbed. My father’s senile, my mother lives in a fantasy world where her “boys and her girl” can do no wrong. We’re career criminals, for the love of God. But she’s always seen only the good in us. Refuses to see the bad.’

‘Pat was bad,’ said Annie, seeing in her mind’s eye that horrible night when he’d died.

‘So he was. And not much missed.’

‘And Tory too.’ Annie shook her head in wonder at all that Orla had suffered, and at the hands of her own family too. ‘You’ve really had the shit kicked out of you. But you’re not disturbed. Damaged, perhaps.’

‘Damaged,’ considered Orla. ‘Now that’s probably the right word for it, I’d say. Do you know,
I was wetting the bed until I was eighteen. Terrified of the night, I was. When I reached puberty and couldn’t share a room with Redmond any more, the terror got worse. I had to have a light on all night. But I was still scared. I peed myself nightly, I was so scared. Even though by then there was a bolt on my door because I couldn’t sleep in a room alone without one.’

Annie looked at Orla and felt her heart might break.

Damaged
, she thought.
Yeah, that’s the right
word
.

‘Kieron saw things happening,’ said Annie. ‘Maybe that excuses what he did, to some extent. To see that must have affected him too.’

‘Still, he had no right to treat you like some sort of star prize,’ said Orla. ‘What gets into men, that they think they own a woman, have rights over her?’

‘Well, no one has rights over you,’ pointed out Annie.

‘No,’ said Orla. ‘And I’m glad of that.’

Annie paused.

‘No boyfriends then?’ she asked. ‘No husband? No children?’

Orla shook her head. ‘No,’ she sighed. ‘I can’t see that happening for me. I’ll concern myself with business, I think. I want nothing of all that.’

‘I never had a brother,’ said Annie, her mind still on children, because she was late. And she was
never
late. She felt sort of different too. Her tits were sore and swollen. Her stomach too. There could be no doubt about it, no doubt at all.

‘None of mine were worth having,’ sniffed Orla. ‘Except Redmond. He sends you his regards.’

‘He must be a comfort to you.’

Orla shrugged. ‘All we have is each other.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Annie.

‘Ah, don’t be,’ said Orla. ‘It’s enough. We make the best of it.’

God, what a life. Annie looked at Orla and thought how brave she was. Had such horrors happened to her, would she be so strong? She doubted it.

Orla moved quickly off the subject of her family after that; it was obvious to Annie that it hurt her even to mention it. Instead she talked of lighter things – how Elizabeth Lane was becoming the country’s first female High Court judge and how David Bailey, the famous fashion photographer, had just got married with Mick Jagger as his best man.

Max came back in, greeted Orla with cool civility and then retired to the bedroom. Orla took the hint and got up to go, and Annie thanked her warmly for coming.

‘A pleasure,’ said Orla, and left – a cold, quiet woman with a damaged past and no future.

‘What’s up, lovey? You look sad,’ said Max, coming in and leaning over the back of the sofa to kiss her neck.

‘It’s just Orla,’ said Annie. ‘I feel sorry for her.’

‘Well don’t,’ advised Max. ‘The Delaney twins are a pair of vipers, not to be trusted – or pitied.’

Annie frowned. So for all that had happened, Max still hadn’t changed his mind about the Delaneys. She didn’t suppose he ever would. She stood up and went into his open arms. He kissed her, and she relaxed into his embrace.

‘I’ve got something to tell you,’ she said against his lips.

‘And I’ve got something to tell you,’ said Max. ‘I thought we’d take a holiday. Now you’re clear of the courts.’

Annie stared at his face, dark and brooding and intensely sexual. He loved her, she knew that now. He’d done things for her that had proved it to her, once and for all.

‘That sounds good. So what did you have on Judge Bartington-Smythe?’ she asked, smiling.

Max’s blue eyes were suddenly wide-open, the picture of innocence.

‘Come on, Max, give. Was he shagging his housekeeper, or entertaining rent boys?’

‘So you think I’d try to pervert the course of justice, is that what you think?’ Max pulled her closer into him, smiling.

‘I
know
you would, Max Carter.’ Annie looked at him and felt luckier than she had any right to be. ‘Where shall we go?’

‘Anywhere you want. The sky’s the limit. Now what do you have to tell me?’ asked Max.

Annie told him. Max gave a shout of laughter and kissed her again for a very long time. No further words seemed necessary.

After leaving the hotel, Orla’s driver took her to the florist. She bought one dozen blood-red roses. Then Petey drove her to the cemetery and pulled up outside the gate.

‘Go for a walk, Petey,’ said Orla as she got out of the car. ‘I want to be on my own.’

He looked unhappy, but it wasn’t his place to question what a Delaney told him to do. He strolled off. Orla went into the church and lit candles for Tory and Pat, so that she could phone her mum in Ireland tonight and tell her that she’d done it. Then she walked out through the deserted graveyard until she came to Tory’s grave. No resting place here for Pat, she thought. By all accounts he was feeding the fishes. Carefully she bent and removed the dead blooms and replaced them with the bright new blooms.

As she did so, she spoke to the dead brother who had abused her and ruined her young life.

‘So here we are again, you and me, Tory Delaney. Me alive and you dead as a plank of wood. Bet you wish those positions were reversed, now don’t you?’

The priest, Father Michael, was going into the church and he paused when he saw Orla Delaney away in the distance tending her brother’s grave. A devout girl, that Orla – and generous in her donations to the church fund. God knew what her family got up to, but it was not his job to judge them, only to minister to their needs. Not that they ever made much call upon his services. Certainly Orla never set foot inside the confessional, which grieved him; but it was her decision.

He watched Orla finishing her weekly task of refreshing the blooms on her brother’s grave. Ah, she was a good girl. And then his jaw dropped as he saw Orla, right there on her brother Tory’s grave, lift her hands to the heavens and dance.

At the same time as Orla Delaney was amazing Father Michael, Ruthie Carter was boarding a train at Waterloo. She opened the door to the first-class carriage and just before she stepped inside she took off her engagement and her wedding rings. The elderly porter put her luggage in the compartment and waited for his tip. She put the two rings in his outstretched hand.

‘What the …’ He looked at them, then at her face.

‘Keep them or sell them, I don’t care which,’ said Ruthie. ‘Either that or I’ll throw them in the rubbish bin, it’s up to you.’

The porter looked at the rings. They looked expensive. There were diamonds, and gold, and a large cabochon-cut emerald that caught the light like green fire. He shrugged and slipped them into
his pocket. Ruthie boarded the train, and the porter shut the door after her.

She was going to have an adventure.

She’d never had one before.

Now the world was opening up to her at last.

‘Notes,’ said Detective Inspector Fielding.

Constable Lightworthy had almost been nodding off behind the wheel. He didn’t know why they were here today, watching Billy Black again, who was loitering on his usual corner outside The Grapes public house.

They’d been watching Billy for months, looking for something, anything, with which to nail Max Carter, to tie him in to the Tory Delaney killing or the department store job – or anything else they could stick him with.

Lightworthy was sick of all this. The DCI was gnawing away at it like a dog with an effing bone. Even the Super was running out of patience with him.

‘Notes, sir?’ he asked, straightening up.

‘He’s always scribbling in notebooks,’ said Fielding, straightening up suddenly in the passenger seat. ‘Rubbish at the front, facts at the back.’

‘Yes, sir.’
So the poor bastard’s not quite right
in the head. Everyone knows that. So what
?

‘So where does he keep them? Start the bloody car,’ said Fielding. ‘I’ve got to get a warrant.’

Billy had lots of notebooks. For years they had all been packed away safely in his bedroom in an old suitcase. They told all about the Carters and their boys and Annie and parlours and money-laundering through the clubs and billiard halls – and of getting rid of Mad Pat Delaney’s dead body in a covert clean-up operation.

When the doorbell rang a couple of days later, Billy was in the wasteland they called their back garden, sitting on the bench in the sun. Uncle Ted let the four coppers in, and Mum looked surly as she ushered them through to see Billy.

‘Hello again Billy lad,’ said the head copper.

‘Hello,’ said Billy. He’d been expecting them. They’d been watching him for a long time, he knew that. Things had started to get a bit hairy, Max had warned him to be careful. That was why he’d done what he’d done – and not a minute too soon, by the look of it.

‘They’ve got a warrant to search the house,’ said Mum, all a-quiver with moral outrage. ‘What you been up to, you little runt?’

‘Nothing, Mum,’ said Billy.

‘We’ll start upstairs. If you will show us to Billy’s
room, Mrs Black, we’ll get this over with as soon as possible.’

Billy sat there peacefully and listened through the open back door as the coppers went thundering up the stairs to his room. He let out a sigh and sat back in the low autumn sun, his deerstalker shielding his eyes from its glare as he gazed off down the garden towards the little metal incinerator Uncle Ted used to burn the garden rubbish in. A faint curl of smoke rose from its chimney, but the fire was out now. He had already checked that all his notebooks were burned to nothing. All that time and effort, gone into dust and ashes.

He thought of Max and Annie, together. They were going away, leaving Jonjo in charge. He wouldn’t work for Jonjo.

As the coppers thumped about upstairs in his room, he felt a new peace seep over him. Life would go on for now, without them. He would manage. And one day – who knew? – perhaps one day he might see his beautiful Annie again.

When Annie walked into the Limehouse parlour one sunny morning it was just like she’d never been away. Chris let her in with a smile, she strode along the hall and there in the kitchen, seated around the table, were Dolly, Darren and Aretha. It was cosy in here, and Dolly was pouring tea. No Ellie raiding the biscuit tin for once.

Aretha stood up and gave Annie a brisk high-five. ‘How you doin’, girlfriend?’

‘I’m good, Aretha.’ Annie looked at Ellie’s empty seat.

‘I had to get rid of that treacherous little tart, she was doing my head in,’ sniffed Dolly. ‘How the hell are you, Annie love?’

‘Blooming,’ said Annie with a grin, taking off her coat and sitting down. ‘How’s tricks?’

‘Busy,’ said Dolly with satisfaction.

‘Glad to hear it. Hey, I’ve got some news for you.’
‘Come on then,’ said Darren, scooting his chair closer to hers, his eyes alight with interest. ‘Out with it then.’

‘I’m up the duff,’ said Annie.

A whoop went up around the table.

‘For God’s sake!’ smiled Dolly.

‘You pleased?’ asked Aretha.

‘Who’s the daddy then?’ demanded Darren.

‘Who do you think?’ asked Annie, giving his arm a thump.

‘Is it all working out then, you and him?’ asked Dolly, pushing a full mug towards her.

Annie picked it up, absorbing its warmth, smelling the fragrant tea. She cupped her hands around it and took a moment to consider. She looked around at her three very best friends in all the world.

‘Yeah,’ she said at last. ‘It’s taken a while, but I think we’re getting there.’

‘Girl, it sounds like you are doin’ just
fine
,’ said Aretha with a broad grin.

Yeah, Aretha was right. Everything in Annie’s world was very fine indeed. She was in love with Max Carter and that love was returned. She was carrying his child. She felt peaceful now about what had happened with her and Ruthie. All that was gone. And she was going straight.

Whatever came next, Annie knew that she could face it head-on, no worries.

None at all.