Scarlet Women (4 page)

When they got back to Limehouse they sat at the kitchen table in a state of shock. Dolly had gone for the medicinal brandy, thrown it back, grimaced. Annie didn’t drink. Her mother Connie had been an alcoholic, the booze had killed her, so she had never developed a taste for it. She sipped her tea, and thought of Aretha with the big beaming grin, Aretha telling her funny stories about clients, Aretha breezing into this very kitchen and lighting the place up with her exuberance.

She’d never come here again.

‘They said two others had been killed the same way,’ said Annie numbly as they sat there listening to the ticking of the clock and wondering what the fuck had happened to their world.

Dolly shook her head. ‘I never heard about that.’

Annie had. Newspapers had mentioned it, but it hadn’t been on the front pages. Because these were
whores. Who really gave a stuff if whores were killed? Many people would think they’d got their just deserts. Few would care. Few would want to know who did it. All they would say now was, well, they’ve got the bloke anyway, case solved.

Only it wasn’t. Not in Annie’s eyes.

Because she
knew
that Chris could never be a killer. She knew his opinion of men who beat up on women. To physically harm a woman would be beyond him. Like most of the real hard men around the East End, Chris had been raised to respect women, not batter them. He would look down on any man who did that. And to do it himself? No. It was impossible.

‘He
did
hate her going back on the game,’ said Dolly, looking awkward.

Annie looked across at her friend. She nodded. This was true.

Chris’s job as a security guard at Heathrow never paid much. They both knew that this had been a source of embarrassment for him. He wanted to keep his gorgeous wife in luxury, give her everything she wanted—and Aretha wanted plenty—but he couldn’t. He made a decent, solid living, but it wasn’t enough for Aretha, who loved the latest clothes, who loved to earn her own money, and the way she’d always done that and earned plenty was through tarting at Dolly’s. When Dolly had extended her business to include a small
escort agency, Aretha had been right up the front of the queue for more work.

Oh, Aretha had
loved
money.

Through all this, despite his own unhappiness with the situation, Chris had supported Aretha’s choices. He’d known his woman since way before he’d ever married her. To him, Aretha had been exotic, exciting, beloved. Annie guessed he’d closed his mind to the rest of it. Made sure as far as he could that she kept herself safe. Waited for her in a parked car on rainy London nights. Didn’t want her on the bus or the Tube that late. Waited for her. Supported her.
Loved
her in the best way he knew how.

And now they were supposed to believe that he’d
killed
her?

‘They’ve got it wrong,’ said Annie, laying a hand flat on the table in absolute denial of this shit they were trying to stick on to Chris. ‘Chris did
not
kill Aretha.’

Dolly was silent.

‘Doll?’ asked Annie after a beat or two.

Dolly shrugged. ‘Yeah, but from what you told me they’ve got real evidence.
Real
evidence. That thing, that…’

‘The cheese wire,’ said Annie with a shudder. The garrotte.

‘Yeah, that. But…well, you said it had Chris’s blood on it. And his hands were cut.’

‘From where he tried to get it off her,’ said Annie.

‘Yeah, but is that how it really happened?’ Dolly frowned at her. She looked awkward. ‘Is that really it? Or…’

‘Or what, Doll?’ Annie looked at her.

‘Or—God, I hate to say this—did he get the cuts when he did the deed, you know? Did he get those cuts on his hands, cut himself, when he…when he strangled her with that thing?’

Annie was silent for long moments. Then she said: ‘You don’t believe that.’

Dolly swigged back the last of her brandy, slapped the glass back on to the table between them as if laying down a challenge.

‘Fact is, I don’t know
what
to believe,’ she said, shaking her head wearily. ‘But if the evidence is there…’

‘Well I do,’ said Annie firmly. ‘I
believe
that Chris loved Aretha. I
believe
that he injured himself trying to get the garrotte off her neck. And I
believe
that unless we help him out here, the plod are going to fit him up with this and with the murders of those other two poor bitches that were topped. He’ll be sent down for Christ knows how long, Doll, and I can’t let that happen.’

‘Yeah, fine words,’ sniffed Dolly. She poured herself another stiffener, held the bottle aloft to Annie. Annie shook her head. ‘But what can you
actually
do
? Supposing he didn’t do it, and you know what? I think he probably
did.
Once the Bill think they’ve got the right man, do you really think you’re going to change their minds?’

Annie stared at the table, thinking hard with shock and disgust. How could Dolly believe Chris had done the deed? But she was right, up to a point. Convincing the police—particularly that cynical bastard Hunter—of Chris’s innocence would be an impossible task. She knew it. But didn’t they at least have to
try?

‘The Bill must have informed Aretha’s Aunt Louella by now,’ said Annie.

Dolly nodded grimly. She’d given them Louella’s full name and address, the poor cow. Louella was Aretha’s only relative in England so far as they knew. Aretha had been sent to her Aunt’s to stay, by her parents in Rhodesia. Louella was childless herself and poor—she was a cleaner at the local hospital—but Aretha’s parents, who scratched a meagre living in a squalid township, were destitute. They had no doubt sent their precious daughter to foreign shores with a heavy heart, but with the sincere hope that she could make a better life than the one they had.

And now look.

Annie remembered sitting right here with Aretha, and Aretha telling her the tale of how she became a brass. The London of the Swinging Sixties
had seemed like paradise to the teenage Aretha, and she had joined in a life where everything seemed possible: a golden future, no more hunger, plenty of money, free love—the Pill was a miracle!—and
fun.

Her happy pursuit of
fun
had soon convinced her that all the fun she was having with boyfriends could be turned into a good living. So she started to charge for
fun.
She had no qualms about that. Her impoverished background had taught her that you got money wherever you could, by whatever
means
you could—who gave a damn how?

Soon Aretha was coining it. Aunt Louella, who was a fierce Christian, found out about it and was furious. They argued, Aretha left and moved in with Annie’s aunt Celia, who ran a quiet and orderly establishment in Limehouse before Annie and then Dolly took over the reins. And the rest was history. Aretha had settled right in as the house’s resident dominatrix, its biggest earner.

But now look, just
look.

Aretha lay in the morgue. Her husband was being held and probably being charged right now for her murder. It was an unholy mess.

Dolly looked sick about all this. ‘That poor woman’s got a world of grief to get through. They were still quite close, you know. Even though she disapproved of what Aretha did, she made a point of never losing touch with her. Maybe thought
one day she’d bring her back into the fold. Very religious lady, Louella.’

Annie nodded. She knew that Louella lived on the Carter patch,
her
patch. Max would have paid a call, sent flowers, helped out the bereaved in any way he could. When you ran an area, when you
owned
an area, there was a certain etiquette to be observed, certain dues that always had to be paid. Even Redmond Delaney, who owned these Limehouse streets and the streets of Battersea, even
he
would understand that. And now that Annie was in charge of the Carter manor in Bow, she was determined to fulfil her obligations too.

‘Give me her address, Doll. I’ll go and see her.’

‘Yeah, okay,’ said Dolly, and stood up and went to the drawer where she kept her books.

‘And I want to know who Aretha was with last night. And where.’

Dolly’s expression was irritable.

‘You’re like a dog with a fucking bone, Annie Carter,’ she grumbled, coming back to the table with books, paper and pen. ‘I wish you’d drop it. I don’t like this. I don’t like it at all. You ought to leave it to the brief. That’s my advice.’

Ross, the young heavy on front of house, knocked at the kitchen door. He poked his head around it and looked disapprovingly at Annie.

‘Tony says a guy just handed him this,’ he said, holding out a scrap of paper.

Annie looked surprised and then suspicious. It was late. Who would want to contact her here, tonight? Who would even
know
she’d be here?

She stood up and took it. ‘Thanks, Ross.’

She sat back down at the table and spread out the piece of paper. Looked at it.
Numbers.

‘Jesus H. Christ in a sidecar,’ she murmured.

‘What is it?’ asked Dolly, craning forward.

Annie sat back, shaking her head, her mouth twisted in a bitter smile.

Dolly looked at her. ‘Come on! What is it?’ She peered interestedly at the note. ‘Numbers? Haven’t you had some of these before? There was a name for them, I remember. Pizza somethings.’

‘
Pizzino
,’ said Annie.

‘
That’s
the feller. Oh!’ Dolly’s eyes widened. ‘It’s from that Mafia bloke. Barolli. Well, come the fuck on, what’s it say?’

‘What’s it
say
?’ Annie stared back at her in outrage. ‘Look, Doll, mind your bloody own will you? I can’t think about him now, how the fuck could I? Poor Aretha’s dead because of some psycho, and he thinks he can just waltz back into my life, after three months of
nothing,
with a
note
?’

‘Well, when you put it like
that…’

‘There’s no other way to put it, Doll.’ Annie screwed up the note and lobbed it angrily into the sink. She took a calming breath and nodded to Dolly’s notebooks. ‘Right, Doll, let’s get back to business.’
She stood up. ‘I’m going to phone Jerry, get him down the station to speak to Chris.’

Jerry Peters was Annie’s brief from way back: a tall, overweight man with a shock of fluffy ginger hair, a florid complexion and a brilliance in legal matters that belied his shambolic looks. ‘While I do that, dig out Aunt Louella’s address. And—yeah—everything you’ve got about Aretha’s last client, and where she met him.’

‘Ah,’ said Dolly awkwardly.

‘What do you mean, “ah”?’

‘Fact is,’ said Dolly, her eyes downcast, ‘I don’t actually
know
who her last client was. A woman phoned in the booking, said room two-oh-six at the Vista in Park Lane and the time, asked for Aretha, and the client
paid
Aretha, so…’ Her voice tailed off.

‘You didn’t know this woman? You didn’t even take a
name
?’

Dolly looked up, her expression unhappy. ‘Sorry,’ she said, ‘no.’

‘Shit,’ said Annie.

Mira Cooper would forever remember the first time she set eyes on Redmond Delaney. She’d been sitting in the luxuriously ornate dining room at Cliveden with Sir William Farquharson, married ex-member of the House, when they’d shown Redmond and his party to a nearby table.

He was just the most exquisite man she’d ever seen: tall and lithe, with red hair, lime-green eyes, smooth skin and an air of command about him. He was with a group of five others, and a darkhaired stunner was paying him a lot of attention. Redmond’s attention, much to the brunette’s visible annoyance, was fixed upon Mira, whose beautiful blonde looks had always been her fortune.

Chatting to William as they ate, her eyes were constantly drawn back to Redmond—and she couldn’t help but compare the two. William was
short, pot-bellied, balding and plain. Redmond Delaney, however, was a god.

Oh yes, she remembered it all: being in the pool the following afternoon, wearing her best silver bikini, hoping he’d be there. And he was. Sir William was lounging on one of the chairs at the side of the pool, talking to another old man and smoking a Havana cigar. Mira’s heart almost stopped when Redmond appeared at the edge of the pool. He slipped off his robe and dived in, swimming a couple of powerful laps until he ended up leaning against the side of the pool, right beside her.

‘Nice day,’ he said.

She flicked a flirtatious glance at him. She knew how to use her looks to good effect. He saw her stunning blue eyes widen slightly, saw her pupils dilate, and that was good. She liked the look of him and she was determined to let him know it. He was a handsome man, a striking man. He wasn’t old or pot bellied—and he had to be rich to stay here; she knew that.

‘Lovely,’ she said, and smiled.

‘Staying long?’ he asked, glancing over at Sir William, who was deep into his conversation, noticing nothing, certainly not the way her eyes were playing with the younger man’s, certainly not the way her nubile body was half turning towards this new kid on the block.

‘Until the weekend,’ she said, smiling.

He smiled back at her. ‘Good. I hope we’ll meet up again.’

‘We might,’ she said playfully.

‘I think we should.’

‘That’s very forward of you.’ Her eyes were dancing; she was enjoying this.

‘I am forward,’ he said, ‘in most things. My name’s Redmond, by the way.’

‘Are you a businessman?’ she asked him, entranced by his soft southern Irish accent.

‘Yes.’ It was true, more or less. He owned the streets of Battersea and a little pocket of Limehouse. He did business. Not legitimate business, but it was business anyway.

‘I’m here with—’

‘Sir William. I know.’

Mira was silent for a moment, but her eyes spoke volumes. ‘Billy has a sleep after dinner,’ she said at last.

‘Does he?’

‘For an hour.’

‘You know what? A person could do a lot. In an hour.’

‘Yes. That’s true.’

‘What’s your name?’

‘Mira,’ she said. ‘Mira Cooper.’

She flicked her leonine blonde mane and was off, streaking across the pool, her blood fizzing
with excitement. Oh yes, she remembered everything. The good bits…and the bad.

She’d told him all about herself, something she had never done before, not with any man. That she had once worked in a high-class brothel run by her friend Annie Carter—who’d been Annie Bailey then—in the West End of London. She told Redmond that, while they lay naked together in his sumptuous Cliveden suite.

‘I don’t want you seeing Billy again,’ he said as they lay back against the pillows, him lazily playing with her splendid breasts, her lightly caressing his flat, well-toned stomach. ‘Not after this week.’

She turned her head, looked at his face. ‘He’ll be upset,’ she said.

‘Fuck him,’ he said.

She grinned at that. Knelt up on the bed and straddled him.

‘I’d rather fuck you,’ she said, and bit his nipple quite hard.

‘Okay,’ he said, smiling up at her. ‘Do it.’