Ruthless (35 page)

Feeling as if someone had scooped out her insides and filled the void with anguish, Layla slumped into the chair and stared sightlessly at the screens.

Alberto had dumped her, even before anything had begun.

She couldn’t
believe
it.

Tomorrow, Precious would come hurrying into her bedroom all fired up for the big night, and Layla would have to tell her that he’d called it off.

‘Bastard,’ she muttered, rubbing her hands over her face. Why couldn’t he have said this at the start? Instead of giving her hope, only to dash it away.

She stared at the screens with sore bleary eyes. Wished Precious was up here with her, so that she could talk to her, cry on her shoulder.

There was Opal, gyrating in a silvery bikini in front of a man with the flushed face of a heavy drinker.

On the next screen was China, topless and sinuous, wearing a dark-coloured G-string, her long black hair swirling around her semi-nude body as the grinning man on the couch watched her.

Layla, trying to choke back tears, looked at the third monitor. She hitched in a startled breath as every nerve in her body froze into ice. The man in the private dancing room was standing up, not sitting down. He was bending, leaning over something on the floor.

Layla blinked, squinted, trying to see what was going on. Nothing seemed very clear in black and white. She was sure something was on the floor. She thought she could see something pale, maybe skin. She thought she could see dark hair. She thought – oh
shit
, she thought that what she was looking at was
Precious.

For a long moment Layla felt glued there, unable to move, unable to even
think.

Precious was on the floor.

And now the man straightened, and looked up.

‘Jesus . . .’ said Layla faintly, shrinking back in the seat, her skin crawling as she saw that it was
him.
The big shock of lightish hair that she knew was red. The pale face, the cold eyes.

Layla felt her body dissolve in terror.

It was the man who’d pursued her through the park. The man who had almost –
almost
– caught her. He was in there, with Precious – and Precious was lying on the floor.

Layla stumbled to her feet, a thin cry of horror escaping her. She looked at the door, thinking
help, someone help.
Where the fuck was Kyle, shouldn’t he be coming back any minute now . . .? Shouldn’t someone be standing in for him during his break? Frantically she looked at the desk, the notepads, the pens, dirty cups, sweet wrappers, the
buzzer.
The buzzer to summon help to the private rooms from the front of the club.

‘Oh Christ,’ said Layla, and hit the buzzer hard, knocking cups over, cold tea spilling across her hand, the desk, the papers on it. She didn’t even notice, she just kept her hand on it, jamming it hard into the sodden desk.

Suddenly Junior was in the doorway. ‘What’s going on?’ he asked, then his eyes flicked to the monitors. He saw what was happening on the third screen, and went a sickly shade of grey. ‘Oh shit,’ he gulped.

Layla looked again at the screen.
Forced
herself to look.

The man was gone.

Now there was only Precious, lying on the floor.

77

Layla couldn’t remember running along the corridor, hurling herself down the stairs. The club was thrumming to a loud disco beat and she ran straight through the centre of it, grabbing Ellie as she went, trailing Junior behind her.

‘Precious!’ she screamed to make herself heard above the noise. Ellie looked at her in bewilderment, not knowing what the hell she was talking about. Punters were looking, half-smiling, they didn’t have a clue. ‘The man in with her, she’s on the floor, it’s
him!
’

Doormen from the front were already hurrying through, alerted by the buzzer. They raced through the main body of the club, Kyle among them, and went through the gold bead curtain and into the narrow corridor where the three private dancing rooms were located.

Chris was first through the door, Kyle piling in after him.

The red-haired man was gone.

There was only Precious, lying there, naked, bloodstained and groaning.

Layla hesitated at the doorway, in a state of shock. Then she saw the two men staring down at Precious and she felt something erupt in her head.

‘Give me your jacket,’ she said to Kyle. When he hesitated, she yelled: ‘Jacket – NOW! Don’t look at her. Keep
away
from her.’

‘Layla . . .’ started Ellie, reaching out.

Layla shrugged her aside. Grabbed Kyle’s jacket, draped it over Precious, concealing her bruised, bloodied body from view. She looked up at Chris. ‘He didn’t go back through the club, did he?’ She was panting, trembling, her eyes flicking from Chris’s shocked face to Precious, and oh shit, all the blood, she could hardly make out Precious’s face, there was
so much blood.

The men looked blankly at each other. Ellie shook her head.

‘Then he must have gone down the corridor and out the fire exit at the rear,’ said Layla. ‘Get after him!’

Chris, Junior and Kyle turned and raced along the corridor and out into the alley.

‘I’ll call an ambulance,’ said Ellie, dashing off.

‘What’s happening?’ Opal was at the door, letting out a shriek as she saw Precious lying there. ‘Oh my God. . .’

Layla fell to her knees beside Precious. She was moving a little, and moaning softly. Her eyes were rapidly being reduced to slits, swelling up where he’d hit her. Her lip was split, it looked as though he’d knocked a couple of teeth out. Precious’s exquisite nose was crooked and bloody. Layla thought with a stab of ice-cold rage that it must be broken.

There was a lot of blood coming from a wound on the back of Precious’s head, where Layla guessed she had collided with the edge of one of the wall-mounted speakers when that bastard whacked her face. ‘Blame it on the Boogie’ was still thumping out of the speakers, adding a surreal note to the proceedings. Layla thought of the sheer brute size of the man, and of Precious’s sweetness and extreme femininity, and felt sickness choke her.

Precious’s eyes were half-open, maybe she could see Layla. She doubted it, but she spoke to her anyway, tried to offer reassurance.

‘It’s going to be OK,’ she said, taking hold of Precious’s hand. She saw that three of the nails there were snapped and bleeding, where she had tried to shield herself from attack. ‘You’re going to be fine. Help’s on the way.’

Opal was starting to cry hysterically.

‘Get her out of here,’ said Layla. ‘That’s not helping.’

Chris, Junior and Kyle returned. Chris looked at Layla and shook his head.

The men escorted Opal out of the door, and Ellie came back in, shutting it firmly behind her.

‘She going to be all right?’ Ellie asked anxiously. She was looking at Layla like she’d never seen her before.

My God, thought Ellie, seeing the way she was snapping out orders, taking control.
She
is
Annie Carter’s daughter after all.

‘She’s going to be fine,’ said Layla, and silently thanked God when she heard the siren.

78

Rufus thought they were all silly cunts, except Orla. She was different, a princess. Yes, she’d killed Rory, but she’d done it out of loyalty to him. She was damaged, poor love. The other women, they couldn’t hold a candle to her.

It was so easy to charm them into dropping their pants.

A night in a plush London hotel, that was a favourite. Or a mini-break.
Then
they thought you were serious about them, they started thinking engagement rings, shit like that. Which was a laugh. All he was serious about was causing the Carters maximum pain. Two weeks had gone by since Orla broke into the Holland Park house. Two weeks and not a word from her. He’d been in denial before, but now he knew that Orla was gone. That the Carter bitch had killed her.

Layla went with Precious in the ambulance. She sat there holding her hand but keeping out of the way of the paramedics who were busy working on her.

‘What’s her name?’ the younger of the two asked, while shining a light into Precious’s bruised and slitted eyes.

I don’t know,
thought Layla, and wanted to weep. ‘She’s known as Precious.’

He looked at her sharply. ‘
Known as?
’

‘They don’t use their real names at the club,’ said Layla. ‘In case someone tries to target them. Some weirdo.’

But some weirdo had done that. Targeted beautiful, sweet, bright Precious.

This is all because of me,
thought Layla.

The ambulance tore through the night streets of London, and Layla could not avoid thinking,
This is all my fault.

‘Call Mum and Dad, tell them what’s happened,’ she’d said to Ellie before she left the Shalimar, and Ellie promised that she would. Neither Dad’s men nor Alberto’s seemed to be about, and that bewildered her, but right now she didn’t care, she was too frantic about Precious. ‘Tell them it was the man from the park.’

Once at the hospital, Precious was quickly transferred on to a gurney and rolled away into the bowels of the place for treatment. Layla wandered into the waiting room and sat down with a thump, feeling all the desperate strength that had sustained her through this ordeal suddenly deserting her.

Don’t mix with the girls,
Annie had told her.

She’d thought that was snobbery.

She should have known better.

Annie hadn’t been protecting
her
with that order. She’d been protecting the girls.

She dropped her head into her lap, feeling the dizziness and clammy sickness suddenly overwhelm her. The blood seemed to roar in her ears as she relived it all. The panic, the fear, Precious on the floor covered in blood.

That
bastard.

She felt so furious, so nauseous, that she wanted to pound someone until they died, preferably
him.
To make him suffer as Precious was suffering now.

‘Are you a relative?’ asked a female orderly, coming in and sitting beside Layla, a clipboard and form at the ready.

‘No. A friend.’

Some friend. It’s my fault this happened to her.

‘And her name is . . .?’ The orderly clicked her pen, held it at the ready.

‘Precious. She’s called Precious. She works at the club, the Shalimar. I don’t know her real name. The girls don’t use their real names. If you phone there, ask for Ellie, she’ll fill you in on the details.’

‘You got the number?’

Layla gave it to her. She was useless, hopeless, but the one thing she could do without any trouble at all was remember numbers. ‘Is she going to be OK?’

‘The doctors are with her now,’ said the woman. She stood up, and left the room.

Layla sat there, waiting. A constant procession of misery passed by in front of her: a mother clutching a child’s teddy and weeping into her husband’s shoulder, an elderly couple fretting over an ancient mother who’d been rushed in with chest pains, a solitary girl who had the gaunt look of a druggie, hunched in her seat, bloodstains on her grubby T-shirt, sobbing quietly.

‘Layla? Honey?’

She looked up. Annie was there, with Max.

Layla stood up and practically fell into her mother’s arms. Annie clutched at her, held her steady.

‘It’s Precious,’ she said, unable to hold back the bitter tears of grief and remorse.

‘Shh,’ said Annie, rocking her.

‘It’s
my fault
,’ Layla sobbed. ‘You told me. You told me not to get involved with the girls, you
said
that, and I thought you meant I was too good for them or something. But you didn’t. I can see it now. You didn’t mean that at all.’

‘It’s going to be all right,’ said Max, rubbing her back.

‘I made friends with her,’ said Layla shakily. ‘And now she’s in bits.’

‘Someone must have seen you together,’ said Max.

‘We were together a lot,’ said Layla. ‘Anyone could have seen us. Oh
shit,
I’ve been so stupid.’

‘You shouldn’t have come here on your own,’ said Annie.

‘There was a mix-up over whose shift it was,’ said Max grimly. Someone was going to get their arse kicked over that.

‘I just didn’t have time to think about it,’ said Layla.

Alberto appeared in the doorway.

Layla took a halting breath, tried to stop the flood of tears. Annie gave her a handkerchief.

‘I’ve had a word with one of the nurses,’ said Alberto, glancing between Annie and Max. ‘They’re taking her up to surgery.’

‘They say what the damage is?’ queried Max.

‘A lot. That guy had himself a real bang-shoot with her. Broke some ribs, her nose and her jaw, and there’s a head wound – they’re worried about internal bleeding.’ His eyes met Layla’s, and slid away.

Layla wiped her eyes, pulled free of Annie’s embrace.

‘I was in the monitor room when it happened,’ she said, struggling to regain control. ‘I saw him. It was
him,
Mum – Rufus Malone.
We have to get him.
’

79

At three o’clock next morning, Annie, Max and Alberto were at the Holland Park house. They’d brought Layla home from the hospital, after a lot of protesting on her part.

‘I can’t go. I want to be there when she comes round from the surgery,’ said Layla.

‘She won’t come round until tomorrow morning at the earliest. Get some rest, and we’ll come back then,’ Annie insisted.

So they’d returned to the house, and Annie had put Layla to bed.

Layla had been convinced she wouldn’t – couldn’t – sleep. But she did. She was beyond exhaustion, and Annie had only to sit with her for ten minutes before she was dead to the world. Then she’d crept from the room, and joined Max and Alberto downstairs.

‘Malone can’t be doing all this on his own,’ said Max.

Annie rubbed her eyes. She was tired out, deeply upset by Layla’s distress. She wanted this bastard found, and found fast. But it was like chasing a shadow. Somehow he was constantly evading them. Max had a point. He must be getting help. Help from close quarters.