Stay Dead (25 page)

‘Look,’ said Ellie, her face set. ‘I
told
you—’

‘I didn’t mean to just show up, but I had to see you,’ interrupted Annie. ‘The police told me you’re organizing the funeral.’

Ellie’s face relaxed into sad lines. She let out a sigh, her shoulders slumping.

‘Yeah. That’s right.’

‘Christ, it’s the pits.
Dolly’s
funeral.’

Ellie came over to the table and sat down opposite Annie. Her brows drew together. ‘Yeah. It’s bad. Like a nightmare. And you know what? I’m thinking, if that can happen to
Dolly, who everybody loved so much, then what about me? Is this about you? I know you got trouble. Am I a sitting duck here? Or is this about the clubs, the
Carter
clubs? Is someone making a
point? Is this a takeover bid? You get all sorts in here these days, pushing drugs, you know. I could be in serious bother.’

‘You’ve got Chris here with you. Dolly had no one.’ Annie swallowed hard, thinking of Dolly, alone in the flat, and of someone climbing the stairs to kill her. ‘Look,
Ellie – I want to help out. Any way I can. With the funeral.’

‘There’s no need.’

‘I want to. The headstone. Flowers. Anything.’

‘God, I don’t know. I don’t even like you being here. Mr Carter—’

‘I’ve seen Max. I saw him yesterday.’

Ellie’s eyes widened. ‘Fuck! Did you?’

‘Yeah. I did. And there’s trouble.
Big
trouble. You’re right.’

‘Chris said it was something about the Mafia bloke you were married to once. The one who died. He wouldn’t say more than that.’

Annie looked Ellie straight in the eye. ‘Ah, what the hell. He didn’t die, Ellie. He’s alive.’

Ellie went pale. ‘What I told you in the hospital? I meant it. I
don’t
want to know the details. I got enough going on, without that.’

Annie slumped forward, then winced and straightened. ‘Yeah. I understand.’ She looked up at Ellie. ‘So the funeral’s Friday?’

‘Yeah,’ said Ellie, and told her what time, and where.

‘I’ll be there.’ Annie pushed herself wearily to her feet. ‘Meantime, if you want anything, need anything, just give a shout. I’ll be at the Holland Park place,
you’ve got the number.’

Ellie stood up too. ‘No offence, but the last thing I need is your help. You’re bad news around here, ain’t you heard? The best thing I can do is keep clear. For
all
our
sakes.’

Annie went back to Holland Park, feeling even more like Billy-no-mates. Well, had she really expected Ellie to change her mind and lay out the welcome mat, be friends
again?

She paid the cab at the door and went inside the house. It was huge, empty, echoing; the chequered floor threw back her footsteps as if mocking her, while over her head, the chandelier worth a
fortune dangled, massive and glinting with crystal droplets.

Mafia money.

Hadn’t Max once told her that the police never rested over Mafia money? Well, this place was
built
on Mafia funds. Constantine had owned this house; then he’d passed it on to
her after his ‘death’.

She went into the study, threw aside another dust sheet and sat down on a big tan leather Chesterfield. She kicked off her shoes and gingerly lay down on the sofa to rest her aching body. But
her mind refused to be still.

Constantine’s death . . .

Only Constantine
wasn’t
dead. She’d known it for years, and kept it to herself.
Omerta
was the code the Mafia lived by, and that extended to Mafia queens too. No one
ever broke that code. Secrets were never to be shared, not with loved ones, not with a living soul. Not even with husbands. Not even with Max Carter. She’d sworn an oath, unbreakable.
She’d had no choice but to be quiet.

The parcel bomb, planted on the night of Lucco’s wedding.

Ah shit.

She would never, ever forget it. She relived it in her dreams sometimes. A night full of laughter and celebration, that had quickly turned into a screaming, howling wall of grief.

Montauk, Long Island.

A soft summer night in the States.

A night of terror.

Montauk, Long Island, USA, August 1971

It started with the explosion. Or, rather, it finished. Annie’s life with Constantine Barolli, her married life with him, finished right there, on the day of his
eldest son Lucco’s marriage to his dull little second cousin Daniella from Sicily.

It was a hot August night and the party was clearly going to go on into the small hours. The mariachi band was playing, the oceanfront house in the millionaire’s playground of Montauk
was heaving with happy, laughing guests.

Annie stood alone on the deck, just a little light spilling out from inside the house, not much, and she thought of that later, realized that her eyes had played tricks on her. She was
standing in the darkness by the edge of the terrace, and she was five months’ pregnant with Constantine’s child, and she was tired; she was relishing the cool breeze blowing in off the
Atlantic Ocean, which stretched out, black as oil, to the lighter grey of the horizon.

Then the French doors opened and Constantine stepped out.

He smiled at her and picked up a present from the pile on the trestle tables just beside the door. Later, at ten o’clock, Constantine, the Godfather, the Silver Fox, would hand out the
presents to Lucco and his new bride; but for now he was smiling at Annie and shaking the present as he lifted it from the table.

‘Hey, wonder what’s in this one?’ he said, and then it happened.

The explosion. Sudden, shocking; a mind-crippling upswelling whumph of sound and sensation.

She felt herself blown off her feet, lifted over the rail and dumped on to the sand of the beach, all the air punched out of her. She couldn’t hear, and her brain couldn’t offer
up any logical reason for why she was lying there, staring at a seashell while black things rained down around her, scorched things, and fire was erupting on the balcony above her; the whole deck
was quickly turning to matchwood.

To the world at large – more importantly, to the FBI and to other rival families and to those who worked even more closely against him – that was the point at which Constantine
Barolli died.

London, January 1989

It was Alberto, Constantine’s youngest son and now Il Papa, the Godfather, the head of the Barolli family, who finally broke the news to Annie during one of their
rare, brief, secret meetings. Alberto was on the run from the FBI, but sometimes she was passed a note, a
pizzino
, and then he appeared. Sometimes he even brought his girlfriend –
Annie and Max’s daughter Layla – with him, a rare treat and something Annie lived for, and she was disappointed to find that on this occasion Layla wasn’t present.

Slowly, Alberto started to talk. He laid it all out. He talked and Annie sat there, listening but not believing what she was hearing. When he had finished speaking, she asked him to say it
all over again. He did.

‘This is rubbish,’ said Annie.

‘Annie—’

‘You’re . . . what the hell are you saying? You’re telling me Constantine’s not dead,’ she said at last, feeling like she was going to scream or cry –
probably both.

‘That’s what I’m saying,’ Alberto nodded.

Annie put both hands over her mouth. Her eyes were wide with shock.

‘Hey . . .’ said Alberto, springing to his feet, coming over to her, hugging her tight.

Annie flinched away from his embrace, shaking her head. She gulped, blinked, and dropped her hands into her lap. On one of those hands – her right – there was a small white scar
on the palm. She stared at it, numb, not believing any of this.

He was alive?

She tried to speak, and couldn’t. Tried again.

‘You’re telling me,’ she managed at last, ‘that for all these years, you’ve known this?’

‘Yeah.’ Alberto sat back; a storm was about to break over his head, and he knew it.

‘You’ve known, and you didn’t say something?’

‘
Omerta
.’ He shrugged.

‘What?’

‘Our code of silence. The Don spoke, and I had to follow his orders. Those are the rules of Cosa Nostra, Annie. Nobody breaks the code, ever. Dammit, you of all people, you know
that.’

Annie was shaking her head now, over and over, thinking,
This is crazy, this can’t be true.

‘No. He’s dead.’ She swiped at her face – there were actual tears running down her cheeks; she wiped them away and glared at Alberto, the stepson she adored,
who’d been an ally and a friend to her for almost twenty-five years. At this moment, she was staring at him as she would stare at a hostile stranger. ‘I saw him die.’

Alberto leaned forward, sighing, clasping his hands between his knees. His face turned toward her and he stared at her with those laser-blue eyes – his father’s eyes.
Constantine’s eyes.

‘The man you saw die wasn’t Constantine Barolli,’ he said.

‘No, that’s not possible, I spoke to him when we were getting dressed, I was with him all day . . .’ she was protesting.

‘Papa was with you all day, but the man who walked out on to the deck and died there was not him. That was the actor we’d hired to take his place. We groomed him, trained him,
dyed his hair silver, he even got the voice just right. Poor bastard, all he knew was that it was a family joke he was being paid to carry out on the wedding day. Some joke, uh? When that man died,
the Don was already gone, out of the house and away.’

Annie was still staring fixedly at his face.

‘You’ve had a shock,’ said Alberto.

‘A shock?’ A bitter laugh escaped Annie. She clutched at herself as if feeling cold. So many years, he’d been gone. They’d spirited him away and an innocent man had
died in his place, and they’d kept Constantine’s wife, who had lost his baby, who he was supposed to have loved, in total ignorance.

‘I wanted to tell you,’ said Alberto.

‘Sure you fucking did.’

‘I did. I swear. But you know Papa – he could detach, real easy. The Feds were closing in on him. He made the decision to go, and he carried it out. He was like that, you know he
was. He could be cold, ruthless.’

Annie nodded. ‘You’re pretty ruthless yourself. You saw me back then. I was in pain, mourning him. And you just let it pass.’

‘I had to. I told you.’

Annie jerked to her feet and started pacing around the room, still hugging herself, her movements agitated. Suddenly she stopped and stood in front of Alberto.

‘You fucking bastard,’ she said flatly.

‘Hey . . .’He stood up, reached for her.

Annie twitched away. ‘Don’t even think about it! You kept this from me! You knew it and you didn’t say a word.’

‘I couldn’t. Believe me.’

Annie paced some more. She stopped again, right in front of him.

‘Why now?’ she snapped out. ‘Come on, I’d like to know. Why not keep the stupid bitch in her cage forever?’

‘He never saw you like that. Never,’ said Alberto.

‘Fuck it, who gives a shit, wasn’t that his attitude? He was safe and well, so who cares?’

‘He did care.’

‘Bullshit,’ she said.

‘And now . . .’

Annie stopped moving. She stared at his face. ‘And now what?’ she prompted.

‘Now he wants – he needs – to see you.’

London, June 1994

At about nine o’clock Annie went down to the kitchen, looked in the fridge, which was empty, and the freezer, which was empty too. She closed the freezer door, switched
off the light and left the kitchen and went back into the drawing room with its big sandstone hearth and tapestry-covered Knole sofas.

Yawning, exhausted and achingly lonely, she yanked the curtains closed against the remaining daylight. Later, she would sleep in the master suite at the top of the stairs, in what had once been
Constantine’s bed.

She wished Max was here, but he wasn’t, and if he
was
he would probably rip her head off and beat her with it, and she might as well get used to that idea. She thought again of the
cold hatred in his eyes when they’d confronted each other at his mum’s old place.

I’ll finish him, and then I’ll finish you.

He wouldn’t forgive her, and he would never forget.

At ten, Annie went upstairs to the master suite and eased her aching body into bed. The thought of what Alberto had told her about Constantine still haunted her. For a long
while after Alberto broke that news, she had been convinced that she was going insane.

But no.

She wasn’t imagining the whole thing. It had happened. And the worst part? She could share that knowledge with nobody. Not even Max.
Particularly
not Max, because, if he knew, then
he would search out Constantine, find him, kill him. And she
couldn’t
break the code.

Now, Max knew.

So Constantine was under threat. And so was she.

What would Max’s next move be? He said he’d been to Sicily, so he’d spoken to someone in the inner circle of the family there, and they had broken the code, told him more than
they should. Who, though? She didn’t think that Daniella, Lucco’s bride, had ever been privy to that sort of information. Daniella was a lightweight, not to be entrusted with such a
burden.

Annie stared at the ceiling and thought: Gina.

It
had
to be Constantine’s sister Gina. Who else would have been told, apart from her? No one. And for years she had kept the secret, respected its gravity. Until now. Why
now
? What could have happened to make her betray the family and give out such information to strangers?