Black Widow (29 page)

Annie got over to Kath’s pronto. She felt like shit. All the way there in the back of the car she thought about her meet with Jimmy yesterday, and how mad he’d been. She’d thought she had the upper hand, but she’d been wrong. Jimmy Bond was sticking two fingers up at her yet again.

Jimmy Bond, her main man.

Who should be her friend, her supporter. Her cousin’s husband. Her
kin
, by marriage.

That
bastard.

By the time she got to Kath’s, she was fuming. Kath was in a terrible state, wandering around her tip of a home, crying, saying she’d kill him, she’d kill him.

‘He just took ’em,’ she said between sobs. ‘Came in here bold as brass with that horrible little fucker Jackie Tulliver, and between them they took all the kids’ stuff, and the kids too. Didn’t even tell
me where they were going!
My
kids. I’m still breastfeeding the baby, and I said that to him, begged him not to take little Mo as well as Jimmy Junior, and do you know what the rotten git said? He said she’d have to get used to the bottle. Can you believe he’d do that? Can you?’

Annie thought Jimmy Bond was quite capable of doing it. And she had a fair idea of where they’d be, too.

‘I’ll have a word,’ said Annie.

‘Oh for fuck’s sake. And what difference is that going to make? He won’t listen to you. He only ever listened to Max or Jonjo, and they’re bloody gone. It’s no use, he’s taken them and I can’t do a fucking thing about it.’

Kath started sobbing again and pulling her hair, beside herself with grief.

‘I’ll have a word with him,’ Annie said again.

‘Yeah. Right,’ said Kath.

Sick at heart, Annie left her there and went back out to the car.

Tony handed her a note. ‘Some bloke just gave me this,’ he said. ‘Said it was a pizzi-something for Mrs Carter.’ Tony frowned. ‘It’s just a few numbers on a sheet of paper.’

Another
note.

Annie sat in the back and quickly read it, deciphering the simple code as she went. It read:
News.
C.

Annie looked at her watch. It was ten o’clock, and she was going to meet the boys at the Palermo at eleven. She had time.

‘Take me over to Constantine Barolli’s place, Tone,’ she said, her stomach in knots.

Constantine was in the dining room this time, seated at the head of a grand twelve-seater table and finishing breakfast with his sons Lucco and Alberto and the elegant dark-haired woman with the down-turned mouth and unfriendly eyes. The doorman showed Annie straight in, saying that Mr Barolli wanted to talk to her as a matter of urgency.

‘Mrs Carter.’ Constantine stood up, came around the table, wiping his fingers on a white napkin. ‘Thanks for coming. Had breakfast?’

Annie nodded. She’d eaten something about two hours ago, but she didn’t know what. Maybe some toast, a bit of egg. Food made her gag, ever since Layla had gone she was living on her nerves, running on empty.

‘Right, let’s go into the study. You’ve met Lucco?’

Annie looked at the smooth, dark-haired youth. Beautiful and poisonous. Lucco stared back at her with blank dislike.

‘Yeah. We’ve met,’ she said.

‘And Alberto?’

The blond one gazed at her with narrowed blue
eyes. He was spookily like his father. Bloody gorgeous, in other words, but half formed, gangly, not yet the man he would become. He nodded.

‘Mrs Carter,’ he said.

‘Hello, Alberto.’

‘And this is my sister Gina,’ said Constantine, and the woman pinched her lips and gave a nod.

Looks like she’s got a bad smell under her nose
, thought Annie.
And guess what? It’s me.

Annie nodded back.

‘Come on,’ said Constantine, and led the way out into the hall, shutting the dining-room door behind them.

They crossed the big empty hall and went into the study. Constantine closed the door behind them, and crossed to the desk. He sat down behind it and indicated a chair to Annie. He was all business today, and she was very glad of that. Their last meeting had been cringingly embarrassing, and she didn’t want to be reminded of it. Nevertheless, she remembered it. Vividly. She also remembered what Dolly had said and felt colour start to rise into her cheeks. Was that the real truth? Did she really want Constantine Barolli, just as he wanted her? But he’d changed his mind. And then he’d sent her a note saying sorry. Now what the fuck was
that
all about?

‘You said you’ve got news,’ said Annie, cutting across her own tumbling thoughts.

Constantine kicked back his chair and looked at her.

‘Do you know a Jeanette Byrne?’ he asked.

Annie looked at him in surprise.

‘I know a Jeanette, I don’t know her last name,’ said Annie.

‘This Jeanette was a dancer in one of the Carter clubs.’

‘A stripper. Yeah, I know her. Blonde.’

‘That’s right. My people tell me she’s involved with one of yours. Jimmy Bond. He’s set her up in a house.’

‘That’s right.’

‘He must be creaming a good bit off the business, to afford to run two houses,’ said Constantine.

‘You think he’s cheating the firm? So do I. I think he’s been dipping into the takings.’

‘And what are you going to do about that?’

‘I’ve no idea, yet. I looked at the books but there’s nothing obvious there. But then, I don’t
know
the clubs like Max did. I don’t know what the takings would normally be. Jimmy does the books.’

‘So you have access to them?’

Annie gave a bitter smile.

‘Oh yeah. And I’ve looked at them. I haven’t
understood
them, but I’ve looked at them.’

‘I could have our
consigliere
check them over for you,’ he said.

‘What’s that, like an accountant?’

‘An accountant, a lawyer, a counsellor. A good, solid man,’ Constantine nodded.

A good solid man in the pay of the Mafia. Annie looked at him and wondered yet again what the hell she was doing here.

‘So you think this man is robbing you, and setting himself up as…what? As a rival for the Carter manor?’

Annie shook her head in irritation. ‘Look. Who cares? All that matters is
my daughter.
Once I’ve got her back, I can sort Jimmy.’

‘You remember you told me about the kidnapping? That Jeanette was conscious throughout?’

Annie nodded.

‘My sources tell me that Vita Byrne—Jeanette’s sister—was shopping in Palma the day before the kidnapping took place.’

Annie swallowed, heartbeat accelerating.

‘Only, I think that could be significant—don’t you?’

Annie thought about that, frowning. The one thing that characterized Jeanette most strongly was her inability to keep her fat mouth shut. If she’d known her sister was on the island, she would have blabbed all about it to Annie. Wouldn’t she?

She remembered now that Jeanette had borrowed Rufio’s car the day before the hit and taken off to Palma, alone. She hadn’t talked about
it when she got back to the villa, except to say that she’d been shopping. Solitary trips did seem out of character for Jeanette, but at the time Annie had been so delighted to get rid of her for a day that she hadn’t given it a second thought. If Jeanette had gone into Palma to meet up with her sister, if it was all completely innocent, then why hadn’t she told Annie about it?

‘You said you thought the line was being tapped, when you were in the villa after it happened?’ asked Constantine.

Annie nodded. Even thinking about the aftermath of the hit made her break out in a sweat.

Then he was silent, staring at her face.

‘Look, you’ve got something on Jeanette, what is it?’ prompted Annie anxiously. ‘Is it to do with this sister of hers?’

‘Do you know Jeanette’s family?’ he asked.

Annie shook her head. But knowing Jonjo’s taste in women, she wasn’t expecting them to be the Windsors of Buck House.

‘She’s got two sisters and a brother. The sisters have both done time—petty stuff—and the brother has a record for smash and grab, drug use, demanding money with menaces. You really don’t know the family?’

She shook her head again.

‘Oh, but I think you do,’ said Constantine. ‘The brother’s called Danny.’

‘No, I don’t know him.’

‘One of the sisters is called Vita.’

‘Nope. Doesn’t ring a bell.’

‘What about the other sister then? She works at Dolly Farrell’s massage parlour. Where you’re living right now. Her name’s Una.’

By the time she got to the Palermo at ten past eleven, Annie felt as if her brain had been plugged into the mains and fried.

Una.

Jeanette and Una were
sisters.

Jeanette, Una, and Vita. Plus Danny, the brother.

There were similarities. The girls had the same broad faces, the same slight overbite. The same big tits too. Una was the taller, but Jeanette was tall too, as tall as Annie.

It was no surprise to her that Una had done time. Una was a hard, vicious bitch, and Annie didn’t think for a minute that she would be above a bit of petty larceny. Well, fair enough. She’d done the crime and done the time and that was an end to it.

But was it?

What about the
other
sister, the one called Vita? This one she knew absolutely nothing about. And
motor mouth Jeanette hadn’t ever mentioned her sisters or her brother Danny, not once. In all the times that they had lounged about together, her and Annie, side by side under the warming Maj orean sun, Jeanette—who could shoot the breeze for England—had
not once
mentioned her family, or that her sister Vita was on Majorca too.

Tony parked the car near the club and she sat in the back and looked at the seedy frontage. No one had the keys now except her, so she expected to see the boys loitering about outside.

But no.

But
then
, maybe they were doing the same as her, sitting in their cars waiting for
her
to emerge. The weather was cold and wet: who wanted to stand shivering their balls off in a doorway? And she had said no group arrivals, keep it discreet. Well, they were only taking her at her word.

At a quarter past eleven she got out of the car. She crossed the road with Tony and unlocked the door to the club and they went in.

The club was silent.

No strippers parading their wares around the stage. No weary, scruffy punters giving the poor long-suffering hostesses a furtive feel.

Annie walked down the stairs into the empty club, her steps echoing. She stood in front of the stage, looking up at the faded red velvet curtains, at the big linked gold MC at the highest point,
where the drapes met. Tony stayed up at the top of the stairs to greet the boys while she looked around her. The club was more than silent, it was dead. An air of sadness, of better days long gone, permeated the place.

Maybe she’d been wrong to close it, but seeing the pest-hole it had become had damned near broken her heart. She remembered the great acts Max had hired to perform here, Tony Bennett and Johnnie Ray and Billy Fury—all those solid gold acts that in the end had become too expensive.

She had closed the clubs on instinct, on impulse. Put people out of work. Dried up a good source of income. Pissed off Jimmy Bond.

She sat down at one of the little circular tables, and waited.

At twelve o’clock Tony came downstairs, looking unhappy.

‘Don’t look like they’re coming, Boss,’ he said.

‘No,’ said Annie, although she wasn’t surprised. And the irony of Tony calling her ‘Boss’ for the very first time didn’t pass her by, either.

Some ‘Boss’.

Jimmy Bond had put his cards on the table, had called her bluff. Had taken the kids off Kath. Had sent Annie Carter a message, loud and clear.

He was the boss of the boys and the manor now, not her.

She went back up the stairs and out the door
with Tony, locking it behind her. The light was going, the grey weather was turning day into night. People were turning on their car headlights. In the distance, a woman walked away, a woman with a blonde Afro hairstyle. Could be Jeanette. Vita’s sister. Una’s sister. Danny’s sister. And why not? She lived just round the corner, in her little love nest with Jimmy. All very cosy, one big happy family plus Jimmy Bond.

It was all starting to add up.

And what it was starting to add up to was igniting a cold fire of fury in her belly, a stark and sickening realization in her mind. She had believed Jimmy’s attitude toward her to be nothing more than male posturing; she’d been sure he was acting up because she’d put his nose out of joint by coming back to rule the roost.

But now there were all these new connections.

Jimmy. Jeanette. Vita. Una. Danny.

The fury consumed her now, leaving a cold and deadly purpose in its wake and a hard single fact in her mind: she had been misled into believing that Jimmy Bond was her friend.

But he wasn’t.

He was her
enemy.

‘So what do you think?’ Chris asked.

Chris was getting to be a regular visitor at Dolly’s place. He liked a chinwag with Ross, and having a bite to eat with Aretha and the other working girls. It was about two o’clock on Tuesday, and he’d caught Annie on the stairs when she’d come in and headed straight up them, not wanting to chat, needing to be alone, to think all this through.

‘What?’ Annie paused on the bottom stair.

Ross was off somewhere, probably on a fag break. Tony was out in the car. Chris and Annie were alone in the hallway.

‘About the…
you know,’
said Chris pointedly. ‘The money.’

He meant the job at his depot. The money. The huge stash of money that could have saved Layla’s life.
Could have
, but now wouldn’t.

Annie shook her head. ‘No, it’s off.’

‘Why?’

‘Can’t get the muscle.’ She wasn’t about to tell him that the boys had just given her a resounding vote of no confidence. It stung too much. She had thought she was gaining ground with them, but now she knew exactly where she stood, and it wasn’t in a good place.

‘Yeah, but you got the Carter boys,’ said Chris, twisting the knife deeper.

‘No, Chris. It’s off.’ She started walking off upstairs. Didn’t want to hear any more about it.

‘If the boys don’t want to get involved, I can maybe get some people together.’

Annie paused, shook her head in irritation. ‘Come on, Chris. Be reasonable. There ain’t time to set up a decent heist. And you don’t want to get into the heavy game. Think about it. We’d have to get you out and away somewhere; you wouldn’t be able to get in touch with your family or friends again; it wouldn’t be safe. Do you
really
want to go that far, just to please Aretha?’

‘We could do it,’ said Chris obstinately.

‘Oh sure. We could. Forget extra muscle, we could do it ourselves. You and me, Dolly and poor bloody Darren, Ellie and Aretha, all dolled up in balaclavas and packing shotguns. Get real, for fuck’s sake. Now drop it, okay? It’s
off.’

She went upstairs. She had decided what she
was going to do now. She sat on the bed, still wearing her coat, and her mind was suddenly clear and sharp. Jimmy had called her bluff, but he was mistaken if he thought she wouldn’t send that straight back at him. She sat there, breathing deeply, listening to the sounds of sex coming from the other rooms. Una drifted past the half-open door in a black leather basque and fishnet stockings. She looked in, her eyes cold, her face still bruised from the pounding she’d got off Annie. Then she looked away.

Watching me
, thought Annie.
She’s been watching me all the fucking time.

Annie listened to Una’s footfalls as she went down the stairs. Annie wanted to run after her, grab her by her scrawny, drugged-up head and give her a harder pounding than last time, but she fought back the urge. No, she had to think. No good going off half-cocked, not with Layla’s life still swinging in the balance.

Ecstatic moans were coming from Aretha’s room at the front of the house. Now there was a liberal marriage and no mistake. Chris was downstairs sipping tea; Aretha was upstairs shagging the clientele.

Aretha and Una, both mistresses of the dominatrix trade—but there was a difference. Aretha enjoyed enslaving her willing victims, got a sensual buzz from chastising and humiliating them, but
there was a line she wouldn’t cross. Una was another thing entirely. Una adored shouting and screaming at her victims, relished inflicting pain on them, loved to grind them, squirming in agony, beneath her booted heels.

Max would rip my head off if I went on the game
, she thought.

But then, Max was gone. She was alone.

And she wasn’t sure about Chris and Aretha. She wasn’t convinced that Chris was cool about Aretha coming back on the game. Maybe Chris was fed up with working nights, with the pitiful pay he got as a security guard; maybe he was edgy about Aretha’s return to the massage parlour.

Maybe Chris felt Aretha was undermining his position as breadwinner by coming back to work; maybe Aretha was even doing it intentionally, saying:
Look, you can’t keep me as I wish to be kept, so I’m going back to humping strangers for money, how’s that with you, honey?

Marriages!

Annie’s face clouded. Well, she didn’t have any of
that
any more. No more jealousy, no more tiptoeing around the male ego. She had nothing at all.

The phone was ringing in the hall. She heard Dolly pick up. Then Dolly’s voice, taut with urgency, was calling up the stairs.

‘Annie! You there?’

Annie went out on to the landing and peered over. Dolly, white-faced, was holding the phone aloft to her.

‘It’s him,’ she hissed. ‘It’s the fucking
kidnapper.’

Annie wasn’t even aware of going down the stairs. Suddenly she was down there in the hall, grasping the phone. Una was gone, thank Christ. She could hear Chris in the kitchen, talking in low tones to Ellie. Dolly stood there beside her, watching her face, wanting to help but unable to.

‘Hello?’ said Annie.

‘Ah, Mrs Annie Carter,’ said the Irish man.

Annie’s heartbeat picked up. What the fuck was going on? It wasn’t Friday yet. She still had some time. Was he going to tell her they wanted the money now, right now? Oh Jesus God—if that was it, then she was well and truly stuffed.

‘What do you want?’ she asked stiffly.

‘Well
that
ain’t very friendly, now is it?’

She could hear the smile in his voice—the loathsome piece of scum. She said nothing.

‘Just a social call, Mrs Carter,’ he went on. ‘Just checking you’ve got the money ready, that’s all.’

That’s all.

And she didn’t have it. Not a fucking penny.

‘Yeah,’ she lied. ‘I’ve got it.’

‘Good. Now I suppose you want to speak to your baby girl, Mrs Carter?’

Layla.

Annie closed her eyes, holding back the hot, sickening flood of hysteria. Dolly put an arm round her shoulders. She opened her eyes. Braced herself.

‘Can I? Can I speak to her?’ Her voice cracked on the last word.

There was a pause.

‘Nah,’ he said. ‘Not yet. When Friday comes, when I get the money, Mrs Carter,
then
you can speak to little Layla, how’s that?’

‘You fucking bastard,’ said Annie, unable to hold it back.

She had no way of knowing if Layla was alive or dead. Just to hear her voice would be so wonderful, so unbelievably sweet. He was playing with her, enjoying watching her writhing like a fish on a hook.

‘Yeah, and I’m the fucking bastard who’s got your girl, Mrs Carter, so you just remember that, you remember to keep a civil tongue in your head when you speak to me. Got it? Or maybe I’ll let you have a word now. What do you think?’

Annie was swallowing bile, locked in this mad cycle of fury and loathing, feeling powerless and defeated.

‘Please—let me speak to her,’ she managed to get out.

There was rustling at the other end of the phone. And then Layla said: ‘Mummy?’

Annie let out a scream. Couldn’t help it. She’d been sure Layla was dead; she
knew
they’d tortured her, cut off her finger, and she sounded so sleepy…was she drugged, was that it?

‘Now,’ said the man’s voice after a few seconds. ‘You’ve got the cash, right? I’m just checking, because if you ain’t got it, if you’re
lying
or some damned thing—then, Mrs Carter, your little girl is dead.’

‘Let me speak to her again, you scumbag!’ yelled Annie into the phone.

‘No. No more talking. Just answer the question, you got my money?’

Annie drew in a breath. Layla was alive. She was
alive.

‘I’ve got it,’ she said.

‘Good. Nice to know we understand one another. Speak to you again on Friday. Twelve noon.’