Black Widow (6 page)

The next day, Billy Black arrived on the doorstep. Annie ushered him into the kitchen and closed the door behind them so that Ross, the hard-eyed young Delaney man on the door, couldn’t hear what was said. Ellie and Darren were upstairs with clients; Dolly was sorting the takings in the front room. When they had come face to face in the hall, Ross had given Annie a look that should have turned her to stone, but she ignored it. Una was out—no one knew where and no one dared ask, either, if Annie was any judge.

‘Your cousin Kath don’t like you,’ Dolly had said when she got back from making her calls yesterday.

‘So what else is new?’ sniffed Annie. Who gave a fuck? The kidnappers hadn’t called yet.
That
was Annie’s only concern.

‘I told her you wanted to speak with Jimmy,
but she put the phone down on me. Twice. Said Annie Carter was nothing to her.’

Good old Kath
, thought Annie.
Stupid
and
obstinate, as always.
All right, Annie held her hands up. She’d done wrong, taking Max off her sister Ruthie. But all that was long gone and forgotten. Ruthie had forgiven her. So why not Kath?

Because Kath likes family aggro
, thought Annie.
Always did, always will.

She thought of Kath’s face—Kath had never been pretty, but she had these bright eyes that were endlessly curious, gleefully absorbing gossip, gathering grudges like a squirrel hoarding nuts. Kath
loved
a family ruck—or any ruck at all, come to that.

‘Did you tell her it was urgent?’

‘She didn’t give me the chance.’

‘Okay, Doll’

But at least Billy was here.

Billy hadn’t changed a bit. Same old raincoat hanging off his thin frame, same old hat on his head, same briefcase clutched against him like it was the bloody Crown Jewels. Same pale face with that vacant look. Same stammer.

The word was that the cord had got wrapped around his neck when he was born, cutting off blood supply to his brain and rendering him…well, not simple exactly. But not the brightest nail
in the toolbox, for sure. But Billy was devoted to Max. Max had trusted him to do certain undemanding jobs around the manor, and Billy had always had a soft spot for Annie.

‘How you been, Billy?’ asked Annie, setting a mug of tea in front of him as they sat down at the table.

‘F-fine,’ he said.

‘Still working for the firm?’

‘No.’ Billy hesitated, forming words. It took a while. ‘Not since Jonjo took over.’

Annie nodded. ‘But you’re still Max’s boy, yes?’

‘I’ve always been one of Mr Carter’s boys,’ said Billy proudly.

Annie knew this was going to be a shock to Billy, but she knew she could trust him to keep his trap shut. She took a breath.

‘Max is dead, Billy. And so is Jonjo.’

Billy stared at her.

‘Dead?’ he repeated blankly.

Annie nodded. She waited for a beat to let that sink in a little. Then she said: ‘This is just between you and me for now, Billy. You and me, okay? It mustn’t go any further.’

Billy nodded slowly. ‘I…see.’

‘So I’m in charge now. You got that? And there’s something I need sorting out, Billy. Urgently.’

‘Okay.’ He looked bewildered.

‘I need my friends around me now.’

‘I’ve always been your friend,’ he said, blushing.

‘I know you have, Billy. And I appreciate it.’

Annie patted his hand. Poor sod. She’d hated telling him. He’d idolized Max. She reached up around her neck and undid the gold chain. She left the gold heart on it and took off Max’s chunky gold ring with the slab of brilliant blue lapis lazuli.

‘Do you recognize this, Billy?’

Billy nodded vigorously. ‘That’s Mr Carter’s ring.’

‘I want you to get it to Jimmy Bond today—as soon as you leave here, Billy, you understand? Take this ring to him and tell him I need to see him, right now. You got that?’

Billy took the ring and held it reverently in his palm. ‘I’ve got it,’ he said, and slipped the ring into his pocket.

‘And remember what I said. The thing about Max and Jonjo. That’s our secret for now. You got that?’

He nodded.

‘Good. Now drink your tea. Time’s short.’

Billy must have moved like wildfire. Within two hours of his departure, Jimmy Bond was at the door. Ross was ready for him. He knew the Carter boys. He was a Delaney man, of course he knew them.

In particular he knew Jimmy Bond.

Jimmy Bond was a hard-looking bastard. Crew-cut pale brown hair. Chippy blue eyes. A chiselled, stern face and a cruel mouth. Immaculately turned out in black coat and sharp suit. All the Carter crowd were snappy dressers. But Ross knew not to be deceived by that. Beneath all the flash, the Carter mob were dangerous. None more so than this one.

‘What the fuck do you want?’ Ross bulked himself up like a threatened toad so that he filled the front doorway.

Jimmy gave the younger man a look.

‘Civility,’ he said.

‘What?’

‘Mrs Carter in?’

Dolly came hurrying down the hall looking flustered. She clocked Jimmy Bond standing on the doorstep in the rain.

‘Mr Bond,’ she acknowledged him politely. The Carter boys had got them all out of the crap that time when Mad Pat Delaney kicked off, and she hadn’t forgotten it. She owed them a lot.

She turned to her stony-faced bouncer. ‘Ross, Mr Bond’s come to see Annie. Let the man in, for God’s sake.’

Ross looked unhappy but he stood back. Jimmy stepped into the hall.

‘She’s in the kitchen—straight through there,’ said Dolly.

Jimmy nodded, stepped around a scowling Ross and went into the kitchen.

He closed the door from the hall into the kitchen behind him and leaned against it. Sitting at the table looking up at him was Annie Carter. There was a moment’s thick silence while they stared at one another. Then Jimmy took the ring from his pocket and tossed it to her. Annie caught it deftly, then busied herself putting it back on to the chain around her neck.

‘Why don’t you take a seat, Jimmy?’ she said as she fiddled with the clasp.

Jimmy chose a chair and sat down.

Placing himself with his back to a wall
, noted Annie.
No doors behind him, and no windows.

‘Nice tan,’ said Jimmy.

Annie nodded cautiously. ‘Majorca’s still warm, even in February,’ she said. ‘How’s Kath?’

‘Kath’s fine.’

‘I tried to get a message to you through her,’ said Annie. ‘She put the phone down. Twice.’

‘Kath bears a grudge.’

‘That’s ancient history.’

‘Not to Kath.’

‘You ought to keep your house in order, Jimmy. I wasn’t pleased.’

He shrugged.

So that’s the way it’s going to be
, thought Annie.

‘Max and Jonjo are busy in Spain, so I’m taking over here.’

Now
she got a reaction.

‘Bollocks,’ he said.

‘What?’

‘I said bollocks. Max wouldn’t hand control over to a skirt.’

‘Max
has
handed control over to a skirt. A skirt who happens to be his wife. A Carter, Jimmy. So watch it.’

‘Watch
it? You’re having a fucking laugh.’ Jimmy sat back and folded his arms.

‘Am I laughing?’

‘No, but I am.’ Jimmy stared at Annie. ‘So what’s happened?’

‘What?’ Annie felt her heart leap into her throat. This wasn’t going the way she’d planned it, not at all.

She had felt that she owed it to Billy Black to tell him the truth, but she wasn’t ready to risk that with Jimmy Bond yet. Tell Jimmy Bond, and all the boys would know. She didn’t feel secure enough in her own position at the moment to face that.

‘You heard. I want to know what’s happened. The truth, not some made-up pile of shit.’

‘You’re pushing your luck, Jimmy,’ said Annie flatly.

‘Come off it,’ said Jimmy roughly. ‘I don’t even know you’re a Carter, do I? Oh sure, Jonjo said there’d been a wedding, but he wasn’t there on the day, was he? He said there was a kid too, but it could have been a bastard Bailey, not a Carter at all, for all he or anyone else knew.’

Annie shot to her feet and leaned across the table, eyes glaring.

‘You want to watch your mouth, Jimmy Bond,’ she told him. ‘My daughter’s not a bastard. And Max and I are married. Legal.’

‘That’s what Ruthie thought,’ said Jimmy.

Annie took a breath, tried to calm down. But fuck it. She’d thought that Jimmy would be her ally. She was scared shitless and she needed serious
help. But she could see that she wasn’t going to get it from him. No way.

‘That’s in the past,’ she said.

‘What goes around comes around,’ he said, and stood up. He put his meaty fists on the table and leaned in close. Despite herself, Annie found herself leaning back a little. ‘I’ll see you around, maybe,’ he said, his eyes holding hers. ‘When you’re ready to tell me the truth.’

He walked to the door, not looking back.

Annie sat down with a thump. He was going to walk out. Simple as that. Convinced she was lying. Hadn’t Max told her that Jimmy had gypsy roots, that his instincts were always sound? He knew she was lying because she bloody well
was
lying.

‘Jimmy,’ she said as he placed his hand on the doorknob.

Jimmy half turned and looked at her.

‘All right,’ she said. ‘I’ll tell you the truth.’

And so Annie told Jimmy Bond the truth. That there had been a hit. That Jonjo was dead. That Max was dead. That Layla had been snatched. That she had had to come back here to get some cash together and that as yet there had been no word from the kidnappers.

Throughout all this, Jimmy kept quiet. When she’d finished, he pulled out a chair and sat down again, his eyes on her face.

‘You’re telling the truth,’ he said. A statement of fact.

‘Of course I bloody am. But no one else can know about this, Jimmy. No one must know Max is dead. Because if they do…’

Jimmy nodded. If word got out on the streets that Max was gone, rival gangs would start to move in. He understood that perfectly.

‘What if the bastard on the phone spreads the word? No Max, no Jonjo—the manor’s wide open,’ said Annie anxiously.

‘Why should he?’ asked Jimmy. ‘He wants money. Why would he risk not getting his wedge from you by making trouble on the manor?’

Annie looked at him. He had a point. ‘But he’s still got my fucking daughter,’ she said bitterly.

‘Yeah, but he won’t hurt her if he wants the dosh. Listen to what I’m saying. He ain’t interested in the manor or he’d have done you all over. He just wants the money. If any rumours
do
kick off, we deny everything. And we kill them off at source,’ said Jimmy.

‘How?’

Jimmy gave a twisted smile.

‘Bust a few heads, people start to think twice about opening their mouths,’ he told her. ‘Trust me, nobody’s going to start anything around me. And I’ll be quiet as the grave. I’m Max and Jonjo’s number one, remember?’

As if you’d let me forget it
, thought Annie.
You arrogant git.

‘I’m placing a lot of trust in you,’ said Annie. ‘More than I’m comfortable with, to be honest, given your connection to Kath and knowing how she feels about me.’

‘Kath won’t know,’ said Jimmy.

‘She mustn’t,’ said Annie. ‘Because if she does, family or not, I’d have to have a word. She starts flapping that big mouth of hers and it’ll be all over the manor before you can say knife. And then we’re fucked.’

‘Kath won’t know. She knows nothing about the business. Never has, never will.’

Annie nodded. This was the way Max had always conducted his business, too. She recognized an echo of truth in Jimmy’s words, because Max’s outlook had been much the same. Keep the wife out of it. Keep her in the dark and feed her shit, then she’d be happy.

But was that a good idea?
thought Annie. Because look what had happened now. She was adrift in an ocean full of sharks, and Max was fucking nowhere to be found. She had no funds to speak of—unless she found some double-quick. Things were bad. Hard to see how they could get any worse, really. But she had to hold on, keep her head, because while there was a chance she could save Layla—however slim that chance
undoubtedly was—then she would have to tough it out.

‘So how can I help?’ asked Jimmy.

Annie swallowed. ‘I’m going to need to find or raise some money, Jimmy. I don’t know how much yet.’

Jimmy nodded. ‘Max would have some stashed somewhere.’

‘Yeah, but where?’

‘You’ve really no idea?’

‘None,’ said Annie.

‘Then we’ve got a problem.’

We.

Annie felt that
we
was a small victory. If she had Jimmy Bond onside, she had an important ally. Not a friend. Never a friend. Kath had been dripping her poison into his ear for years, telling him what a cheating bitch Annie was, how she had betrayed her own sister, how her own mother had washed her hands of her. So Jimmy would always regard her with suspicion.
But
—and it was a big but—she was also Max Carter’s wife.

Or I claim to be
, thought Annie soberly. Jimmy was right—she could be lying about all this, up to and including the marriage and the legitimate child. Fair enough, he doubted her. But he had also said
we
have a problem, so she was a little reassured. If she truly was Annie Carter and not plain old Annie Bailey, his wife’s
slag of a cousin, then Jimmy Bond would at least owe her respect.

Annie looked at him in the thickening silence.

‘All suggestions welcome,’ she said hopefully.

Jimmy gave a half-smile and stood up. ‘I’ll think it over,’ he said. ‘See what I can come up with.’

‘What about the clubs? The Palermo? That was always Max’s favourite. Maybe he’d have some cash there.’

‘Maybe,’ Jimmy shrugged.

‘Is it still running smooth?’ asked Annie. Not that she cared, but she was trying to get him to communicate with her. It was bloody hard going.

‘Yeah. Opens lunchtimes too now.’

‘Right.’

Annie had to bite her lip to keep back her exasperation.
We don’t have time to fuck about
, is what she longed to say. But she stopped herself. She didn’t want to start out by trying to push Jimmy Bond into a corner. He was a proud man—Max’s best boy—and she had to treat him with respect, too.

‘Make it soon,’ was all she allowed herself.

‘I will,’ he said, and left.

She watched him go through the open kitchen doorway, nodding to Dolly as he passed her in the hall and giving the hard man on the door a mocking smile before stepping out on to the path. Ross kicked the door shut behind him.

‘Fucking
bastard,’
he muttered, then came along
the hall to the kitchen and handed Annie a note. ‘For you,’ he said, and went back to his seat by the front door.

Annie looked at Dolly and opened up the folded sheet of paper. The handwriting was forward sloping and almost painfully neat. The note said:
We hope you like your stay, Mrs Carter. Just make it a short one, and there’ll be no trouble.

It was signed
Redmond Delaney.

Annie pocketed it, her eyes on Ross through the open kitchen doorway. He returned her stare. Dolly, standing between them in the hall, swallowed nervously. And then the telephone started to ring. Annie steeled herself, nerves jangling. The fucking phone had rung a thousand times over the past few days. Always it was clients, or mates of Darren’s or Ellie’s. Una didn’t seem to have any mates, which was no big surprise. But it was never, ever the call Annie was waiting for. She watched Dolly pick up the phone, watched her face go bleached white. Dolly’s head turned and she held the phone out to Annie.

‘For you,’ she said, and Annie’s heart froze.

‘Hello?’ said Annie when she took the phone from Dolly.

Dolly shooed her doorman into the front room and closed the door on him. Then she stood beside Annie in the hall, her face anxious.

‘Ah, so you are there,’ said the voice.

The same voice again. Irish. Annie hated that voice.

‘I’m here.’
I’ve been here for days
, she thought, but didn’t say it. Best not to antagonize him.

‘And now you are, what shall we do with you?’ he asked, and she could hear it again in his voice, that smile, that loathsome smile.

Annie was gripping the receiver so tightly that her knuckles were white as bone. She relaxed her grip, took a breath.
Calm
, she thought.
Keep calm, think clearly. For Layla.

‘You tell me,’ said Annie.

‘And what if I don’t feel like telling you quite yet?’ he said, playing with her, the bastard. A
ding
in the background…teacups? Something…

‘That’s your decision,’ said Annie, refusing to rise to the bait, refusing to scream and yell and pull her hair like he wanted her to. ‘Is Layla all right? Can I speak to her?’

‘Yes, and no. In that order.’

‘Then how do I know she’s still alive?’ asked Annie.

‘You don’t. You have to take my word for it.’

Bastard.

‘I want to do a deal with you,’ said Annie.

‘You’re in no position to be offering deals,’ he said.

‘Yes I am. And the deal is, me for Layla. Hand Layla over, and take me instead.’

Dolly made a ‘for Christ’s sake no’ gesture. Annie waved her away.

‘It’s a good deal,’ said Annie when there was only silence at the other end. ‘It’s me you want to torment, isn’t it? Or else why am I still alive? You could have killed me in Majorca.’

‘There’s another reason we could have kept you alive, though,’ he said.

We.
But of course there was more than one person involved in all this, as Jeanette had told her. To blow up the pool house, kill Max and Jonjo, kill her two friends, snatch Layla, drug her…too much, far too much, for one alone to manage.

How many then?
wondered Annie. Hadn’t Jeanette said four? But then Jeanette was an idiot.

‘And what’s that?’ asked Annie.

‘For the dough, dear heart. For the brass, the wonga, the
money.’

At last.

‘How much?’ asked Annie. ‘Tell me and I’ll get it.’

‘Ah, now that’s something we’ve yet to decide upon.’

Toying with her again. Playing her. Tormenting her. Annie clutched at her head, which felt as if it was about to burst open. A pulse of pain bloomed behind one eye.
Calm
, she thought.
Calm.