Stay Dead (4 page)

Dad loved her, she thought as she ate the chocolates; she was special. She bunked off big school – no one cared, anyway – and spent more time in the house, trying to hold back the
tide of mess and failing. But she was appreciated, she was loved. Missing her mum, she liked that.

When Mum came home, looking like one of the zombies in those comics Dick loved so much, Dolly was relegated to second place, and Dad didn’t pay her much attention at all. So Dolly began
to look forward to Mum going away, because when she did, there was Dad with gifts for his special girl: a tortoiseshell comb, a music box with a twirling ballerina inside, more chocolates.

And when Mum wasn’t there, when the other kids weren’t around, he cuddled her. She liked that, at first.

‘Come and sit on my lap, Doll,’ he’d say, and she would, to be enfolded in a hug scented with Old Holborn and beer-breath, the unwashed bristly skin of his chin nuzzling
into her neck. It was lovely, comforting somehow.

The cuddling became tickling, and play-fighting, and one day down in the sitting room Sam was laughing and Dolly was giggling wildly and they rolled on the grubby carpet, her and her dad, and
his hand came to rest on the small barely formed nubbin of her breast. It stayed there, rubbing, and Dolly’s giggles faded in her shock and confusion as she felt her nipple harden.

‘They’re getting bigger,’ he said, and she didn’t know where to look or what to say, she was that embarrassed. It felt nice, the pressure of his hand there. Nice, and
somehow very wrong. Shameful. ‘Now look what you’ve done,’ he said, and took her hand and placed it over his trousers. She felt something hard there, and jerked her hand away and
sat up.

‘You know the facts of life, don’t you, Doll?’ he asked, sitting there on the floor staring at her. ‘You started your bleeds yet?’

Dolly didn’t know what to say. Was he telling her she was going to bleed from somewhere, like a nosebleed maybe? Was that somehow connected to what men and women did, how they had
babies? The thought made her shudder.

Dad put his hand on her shoulder, slid it up to caress her cheek.

‘You know what men and women do together, don’t you, Doll?’

She wanted him to shut up. This was horrible. She thought of the angels in the stained-glass window of the little church, the beauty in them, the goodness. This wasn’t good. This was
awful and evil. She knew it somehow, deep in her soul.

‘You know the man puts his thing in the lady?’ he said, and he was whispering now, leaning closer, his breath tickling her ear.

Dolly said nothing. She was frozen there, rigid with disgust and disbelief that her dad was saying these shocking things to her. She wanted to stand up, to run, but she was afraid he’d
stop her if she moved. Or touch her again in that bad way.

‘He puts his thing right in her, and it feels good,’ he said, and he was touching her hand, grasping it, bringing it back to that strange hardness at his crotch. Cringing, Dolly
tried to pull her hand free, but she couldn’t. ‘You’re my best girl,’ he said, and his voice caught as if he was breathless. ‘There. You see? It’s going to be so
good for us.’

So, after Lucy’s birthday tea, Dolly almost ran away. As far as the rec, anyway. But Dad brought her home again, and when she got home there was Mum sitting in her chair at the kitchen
table – and Dolly thought that, while Mum was here, she was safe. Dad wouldn’t try to do the man-and-woman thing with her, not while Mum was here.

Prospect, Barbados, June 1994

Annie Carter dreamed of him again on the night it all kicked off. Constantine Barolli – the godfather. Him of the all-American tan and the armour-piercing blue eyes, the
startling white hair, the sharp suits. It was as if he was there, he was so real. Smiling at her, telling her he loved her.

Once, long ago, Constantine could make anything right. Could make her feel enfolded, protected in the safe cocoon of his love. She turned over in the bed, her eyes opening to blackness, the last
insubstantial filaments of the dream floating away into the air around her. Her and Constantine, walking on the beach at Montauk on Long Island, the millionaires’ playground, hand in hand.
She could feel his strong grip on hers, could see the sun on his hair, the crinkling of the lines around his eyes . . . but it was fading, fading . . . and then it was gone.
He
was gone.

Coming back to full wakefulness, Annie felt the cool blast of the aircon and she shivered, blinking, pulling the sheet over her body. She awoke to blackness, to an empty room, an empty bed. No
Max. And now, as the dream ebbed away, as she came back to herself, she thought,
No Constantine either
.

Annie sat up, pushed her hair out of her eyes, clutched at her temples.
Jesus, these dreams.
Recently she’d had them over and over again. She was with Constantine –
Constantine as he had been so long ago – they were happy, as they had been all those years ago. It was all so real,
disturbingly
real, and strange – and then she woke up and felt
bereft, abandoned, as cold reality crept back in.

And now Max was gone too.

Annie hauled herself up in the bed, reached over, her eyes becoming accustomed to the darkness so that she could see outlines, discern dim shapes. She groped for and found the glass of water on
the bedside table, took a sip, and tried not to think about all of it.

But she did.

She couldn’t help it. How could she
not
think about it?

Twenty-three years ago, it happened. Constantine had been her second husband. Way back then – believing Max to be dead following a gangland hit – she had married Constantine, and was
pregnant with his child when
it
happened. The explosion. And after that? The dreams.

Ah God, those dreams!

At first they had not been sweet, happy dreams like those she was experiencing now. They had been
hideous
dreams, waking nightmares in which Constantine appeared before her in the night,
wrecked, smouldering, dead and yet
not
dead, holding out his ruined arms to her. Those dreams had been terrifying. She had wondered if she was losing her mind.

Annie flicked on the bedside light. Light flooded the room and drove back the shadows. Nothing sinister here, she reassured herself, looking around and sternly getting a grip on her wayward
imagination. There was no mouldering remnant of a man she had once loved, come back to haunt her.

And Max? What about him?

Annie frowned, her guts tightening with tension. Max was off in Europe on business. He’d taken off a week ago, without any real explanation. What business, he had refused to discuss with
her, even though she had asked. He had just said he had stuff to do, and left.

Max was a law unto himself. He never explained, never apologized, never kept her in the loop. He had things to do, that was all he’d said, and he’d just . . . gone.

Leaving her here, alone.

Which was OK. She was fine on her own, usually. But not this time.

Because you think he’s having an affair, don’t you? You don’t think he’s doing business at all, you think he’s doing some
tart.

It was true that Max had been cold, distant to her before he left. That had worried her. Usually, if Max had something to say to you, he’d say it to your face, get it off his chest. Not
this time, though. This felt
different
. And now she wasn’t sleeping well, and she was having these
fucking
dreams. Somehow they made her feel almost that
she
was the
unfaithful one. The one who cheated. The very thought made her frown, made a shaft of uneasiness pierce her gut, hard. She had lost Max once, but found him again, and she was so lucky to have done
that, so incredibly lucky to have him back in her life after all they had been through. She knew it. She didn’t want to lose him again.

But these
dreams
.

They were so vivid, so colourful, so convincing in their reality, that when she was asleep she was actually
there
, once again. In her dreams she was once again Annie Carter-Barolli, a
Mafia queen, cosseted and powerful, married to a man whose word was life and death, whose name struck fear in everyone on the streets of New York.

Sighing restlessly, Annie glanced at the alarm clock. Two in the morning, and she was wide awake. There was no chance she’d get back to sleep. She never did, not after one of the dreams.
They churned her up, made her think: What the hell is this, have I got a problem here?

Do I need to see a shrink or something?

Around the time of the Montauk explosion, way back in the seventies, she knew she’d had some sort of a breakdown. Was her mind slipping out of her control again, was that what this was all
about?

But everything was good now. She and Max were OK. Weren’t they? Her daughter Layla and Constantine’s son Alberto were cruising the Caribbean islands, touching base rarely, but they
were fine. Layla contacted Annie and Max whenever she could, even sometimes arrived unannounced on the doorstep, much to their delight.

Yeah, everything’s fine
, Annie told herself. But there was that niggling sense of trouble looming she couldn’t deny. The dreams. This
feeling
of something bubbling away
under the surface, sending up noxious dirty little
plops
now and again to her brain – something bad. Max had been so cold to her recently, looking away from her, leaving her without a
kiss, without even a single civil word.

Yeah, you need a shrink
, she told herself, almost laughing at such self-indulgent weakness. She was Annie Carter, she was rock-solid, a strong and single-minded woman. So why was she
letting her imagination run riot? Yes, she had secrets –
guilty
secrets. And . . . maybe now he had one too.

Shut up, you silly cow
, she told herself, lying back down, flicking off the light.

He’s at it and you know it
, said the voice in her brain.
He’s screwing around. He’s tired of you. And maybe that’s what you deserve because you’ve been
keeping secrets from him
, bad
secrets, and maybe he’s found out
.

That was when the phone started to ring in the living room.

Sicily, June 1994

Max Carter was fed up to the back teeth when he flew into Catania. He left his two travelling companions at the airport with a promise that he’d be in touch soon, and
picked up his hire car. In a sour mood, he then took the coastal road to Syracuse. He checked into the Grand Hotel Villa Politi, and waited. He waited for over a week, eating fine Sicilian food and
drinking a little Strega – not too much, he didn’t want to risk getting pissed and losing focus – and
still
the woman was dicking him around.

Bloody women.

She was capricious, imperious, but he was used to that in women – he was married to Annie Carter, for God’s sake. But
this
woman was proving even more difficult than Annie. It
didn’t surprise him, given the way the two women had clashed in the past over who was the queen bee. It was a game Annie would always win at, hands down.

First the woman said they would meet in the Politi’s lounge. And she didn’t show up. One of her lackeys phoned, said she was indisposed, so sorry. Then the venue was rearranged to
Taormina, a picturesque town set high on Monte Tauro. They would meet for lunch at the Belmond, overlooking the twin bays below. Come alone, they said.

Max drove there – alone, as agreed – and waited. Another phone call to cancel. She didn’t want to meet there after all, she’d changed her mind. She would prefer to see
him somewhere away from prying eyes. Her lackey suggested a place not far outside Syracuse, could he do that?

Max gritted his teeth, punched the wall, and said yes, that would be fine. It would
have
to be.

His senses were alert now. Something was wrong with all this. The woman was dancing around him like a ballerina, and he was wondering why. Maybe she had changed her mind about what she’d
said when she’d spoken to Gary Tooley on the phone. Maybe she regretted her actions. Maybe she’d been drunk or drugged at the time and in the clear light of day she’d sobered up,
come down off cloud nine and reconsidered.

Having
spoken
those words, though, the deed was done. The secret was out. Perhaps she wanted to put it back in its box. And the way to do it? By now he thought he knew the way she might
choose. Whatever was going on with her, he meant to find out the truth – and meeting face to face was his best chance of doing that, even if without his back-up he risked ending up dead. If
only the devious bitch would actually turn up one of these days.

In his hotel room on the morning of this
new
meeting, he got up, showered, called the hotel where his men were staying and told them what was going on.

‘You need us up there?’ asked the one who picked up.

‘No,’ said Max. ‘But be ready. I’ll call. Looks like this is it, finally.’

He dressed in a cool white linen shirt, cream cords, brown loafers; then he slipped on his gold ring with the lapis lazuli square set into it, added a Rolex and a couple of other items and
looked in the mirror, running a hand through his thick, black and slightly too long hair to tame it into shape. He could almost pass for a Sicilian himself; his old mum Queenie had always called
him her ‘little Italian’. He was powerfully built and tanned, with a piratical hook of a nose and deep, dark navy-blue eyes.

The heat was climbing and the sun was pouring molten lava down upon his bare head as he walked out into a perfect Sicilian day and got into his car. Max hated hats. He liked the sun in his eyes
and the wind at his back. He started the engine and drove up the dusty track to the agreed meeting-place, passing tiny small-windowed white villas, uniform rows of vines, olive groves.
Potato-shaped peasant women dressed in black were sitting outside their doors, lemon trees overhanging the walls of their houses, skinny dogs wandering free in the street.