Lawless (2 page)

It was Miller’s voice! It was him, that
cunt
Kit Miller!

Knife . . .

He clawed at Kit, but he was already gone, running off into the deeper shadows. Tito folded almost gracefully to the ground. He barely had time to hear the shouts as his boys realized what had happened, then he closed his eyes and died.

2

One of Tito’s less experienced boys, one of the three who’d been with him at the Docklands launch, was sent to the favourite family-owned nightclub – which Tito had grandiosely named Tito’s in his own honour – to find Vittore, Tito’s brother, while the other two, each of them trembling with shock, said they would call on Tito’s mother Bella, break the bad news. They’d had to leave the scene when the ambulance and the police came. What the fuck – it was too late to do anything for Tito, anyway.

It was gone one in the morning, and downstairs Tito’s was quiet, a man tinkling away a bluesy few notes on a piano, the lighting low and drifts of cigarette smoke creating a drowsy miasma around the couples talking softly at the tables as the hostesses slowly circled them. Donato went through the main body of the club and straight upstairs. One of the boys was on the door there, and he took one look at pudgy Donato’s face and let him through without a word.

Inside the flat it was less tasteful nightclub, more Roman orgy. There were chandeliers and Aubusson carpets, deep sofas and a roaring fire. Five men, all big faces from around Little Italy, were being fawned over by a mob of girls – all of them beautiful, all scarcely wearing a thing.

Everyone was laughing, drinks were being filled and refilled. A fat swarthy-skinned man with his trousers pushed down was in a corner with a blonde woman between his legs, her mouth full of cock. Another man had a girl on his lap, squeezing a handful of naked tit. And another – ah, Jesus, there was Fabio! – he was lounging there with one of the women, a luscious nude brunette, nibbling at her neck, whispering in her ear.

Donato went straight over to him.

‘Fabio!’ said Donato. He was a cruel-eyed youngster, short, stocky, always up for a fight. Now, he looked like a kid who’d had his favourite toy snatched away. He looked like he was about to cry.

Fabio glanced up, still smiling, a curl of smoke coming from the cigarette held loosely in his hand. The voluptuous naked girl with him stared up at Tito’s boy with dead-eyed disinterest. With Fabio distracted, she raised her glass and took a long drink of champagne.

‘Donato?’ asked Fabio, half-smiling, thinking that he’d fuck the girl very shortly. She’d be only too happy to open her legs for powerful Tito’s handsome baby brother; they always were. Across the room was a large gilded mirror, and Fabio could see himself reflected in there: he’d been admiring himself all evening, his glossy black hair, his perfect nose, his olive skin. He was a very good-looking young man, and he
loved
mirrors.

‘Is Vittore here?’ asked Donato.

As if Fabio hadn’t been hearing that all his life! Is Tito here? Is Vittore here? Always looking over Fabio’s shoulder as they said it, searching for the older brothers, the ones that could be relied upon for good sense – never for Fabio, the youngest. It hurt him, every single time. Like it had hurt him when his mother and father took in his little sister, Bianca, a white-blonde miniature usurper, just three years old, who had instantly become the centre of his parents’ universe. He’d been seven when that happened, and for him it had been a disaster. At least, before
she
came along he’d been the youngest, the baby of the family. After Bianca arrived on the scene, what was he? Not even that, not any more.

‘Can you
see
Vittore here?’ snapped Fabio.
Stupid cunt.

‘Fab, it’s Tito . . .’ Donato yanked out a chair and seemed to collapse into it. His face was bleached of colour. He looked like a man in turmoil.

‘What about Tito?’ asked Fabio impatiently when Donato said no more.

Donato’s eyes came up and met Fabio’s.

‘He’s fucking
dead
, Fab. He’s
dead
.’

Fabio felt time freeze. He looked at Donato. There were actual
tears
making tracks down Donato’s face now. Donato the hard nut. Not very bright. Not bright enough to see that he’d been made a patsy by two much smarter players, that was for sure. He was sitting there blubbering like a child.

‘What . . .’ Fab felt the smile, the one he had used to such effect on the girl – fuck knew what her name was – stall on his face. The smile stayed there, but the life had gone out of it. ‘What did you say?’

‘Tito’s dead,’ said Donato. And he told Fabio about it then, through sobs and hitches and gasps.

About halfway through, the girl got up. Fabio grabbed her arm. ‘Where you going?’ he asked.

‘I . . .’ she started.

Fabio yanked her back down.

‘Ow!’ she complained. People were turning, staring. Fabio still held her arm, crushing it.

‘No, you
don’t
run off and tell everyone the news like it’s a freak show,’ he said in a low voice. ‘You stay here.’

‘You’re hurting—’ she said.

‘
You stay here
,’ he said, and this time she remained silent. His returned his attention to Donato. He was thinking
Tito, dead? No. Not possible.

Tito had been there all his life, an absolute and uncaring despot; ruling the roost after Papa went, with Vittore waiting in the wings, ready to take over when
his
turn came. Fabio’s turn at being head of the family was
way
off. It had been set in stone for so long, this fact, that Fabio had almost come to accept it. Almost. He’d always known he’d have to attend two funerals before his turn came. Two graves to stand by, and then all hail King Fabio! He’d always thought that, even as a small boy.

‘And where the fuck were
you
when all this was happening?’ he asked.

‘We were right there with him,’ said Donato. ‘Right there. This bastard came out of nowhere and did it.’

‘Right in front of your eyes,’ said Fabio.

‘Yeah. Just like that.’

Fabio let go of the girl and stood up. He was nodding, his head bent. Then without warning he lashed out, grinding the glowing tip of the cigarette hard into Donato’s cheek. Donato shrieked; so did the women in the room. The stink of scorched skin drifted up, and a faint repulsive sizzling. Everyone was suddenly on their feet, knocking chairs over, backing away, yelling and screaming. Donato was sobbing in agony. He had fallen to the floor and was holding his hands to his burned face.

‘You were there when it happened? And you didn’t
stop
it?’ roared Fabio, leaning in and jabbing the glowing cigarette against Donato’s face again, then again. Donato screamed.

One of the other men made as if to intervene. Fabio saw the movement and lifted his arm and pointed a rigid finger at him.

‘I
really
wouldn’t,’ Fabio hissed. Then he turned to the room at large and shouted: ‘Place is closed, folks. Everyone out
now
.’

No one moved. Everyone stared at the stricken Donato.

‘
Off you fuck!
’ yelled Fabio, full volume.

They started moving then, the women gathering up their clothes, grabbing handbags, edging away, their eyes still on him, the way you would keep your eyes on a dangerous animal that could turn and attack.

Fabio pressed the point harder: ‘
Get out of here! Show’s over!
’

Slowly, everyone started to move toward the door. Fabio stood glowering until the last guest closed the door behind them, leaving him alone with the cowering Donato.

‘You stupid
cunt
,’ he said, and grabbed a heavy marble candlestick from a table and waded in.

Then, when he had seen to Donato, taught him a lesson he would never forget, Fabio went through to the office next door. With hands that shook with a mixture of excitement and terror, his knuckles sore and bloodstained, he phoned his brother Vittore. He didn’t know what to do, but he knew that Vittore would. And the irony of this did not escape him.

3

This is a nightmare
, thought Bella Danieri. She couldn’t believe that she wasn’t asleep and dreaming this horror. Her boy Tito was dead. In the small hours of that same morning, she sat with Fabio and Vittore in her kitchen. Maria had come in, briefly – she knew she wasn’t welcome, she was
never
welcome at any family occasion – and she’d hugged Bella and said she was so sorry about Tito, was there anything she could do?

‘Go to bed,’ said Bella, shrugging off her daughter-in-law’s embrace as if she were an annoying insect to be swatted aside.

Maria stiffened, glanced at Vittore; he nodded and she left the room. Presently they heard the door across the hallway close loudly, and Bella slopped brandy into three glasses.

‘Who did it?’ said Vittore into the sudden silence. ‘That’s what I want to know.’

Fabio glanced at his older brother. ‘He had a lot of enemies.’
Even you, brother dear. And me. Neither of us could wait for him to be out of the way, so that we could have our turn.

But he didn’t say it; Vittore would flatten him if he did. Instead, he sipped the brandy and stared at Mama Bella. Earlier, when Vittore had confirmed the news, she had sobbed and shrieked and clutched at her chest. Now she seemed calmer.

‘I want to know the answer. Whoever did this is a
dead
man,’ said Vittore.

Bella took a swig of the drink. It warmed her, but not enough to reach the chill that had settled over her soul as Vittore spoke. Vittore wanted revenge. He wanted to find who had killed Tito, and take vengeance on them. But that would place him, Vittore, her favourite boy, in danger. She didn’t want that. She had just lost one son. She didn’t want to lose another, most particularly not the one who was so precious to her.

‘There is something I have to say to you both,’ she told them.

‘Oh? What is it, Mama?’ asked Fabio.

Bella looked from one to the other. Vittore so masculine, so imposing; Fabio so handsome. Her boys. Then her eyes dropped to Fabio’s grazed and bloody knuckles. She guessed that someone had paid for bringing bad news to Fabio; this was the way it worked in the Camorra.

‘It could have been anyone who did this,’ she said shakily. ‘One of the establishment, someone Tito crossed over a business deal or a woman.’

‘Tito crossed a lot of people,’ agreed Fabio.

‘It could have been Miller – Michael Ward’s number one,’ said Vittore. ‘Maybe he believed we carried out the hit on his boss. That’s a possibility.’

‘Or it could have been any one of a dozen others,’ said Bella tiredly, shaking her head. When her eyes met Vittore’s again they were full of command. ‘Now I’m telling you.
Both
of you. There will be no reprisals. I won’t have more bloodshed.’

‘But Miller—’ said Vittore.

‘
We don’t know who did this
,’ said Bella, steel in her voice.

‘Mama—’ started Vittore, coming to his feet.

‘
No!
’ Bella stood up too. The fists she rested on the table were shaking, but her eyes flashed with fire. ‘I’ve lost one child this night, do you think I will risk another? I mean it, Vittore.
No reprisals
.’

Fabio drank down his brandy and eyed the two of them, staring at each other across the table.

‘Swear to me,’ said Bella.

‘What . . . ?’ Vittore was almost twitching with suppressed aggression.

‘Swear it,’ she repeated, glancing down at Fabio.

He shrugged. ‘All right, Mama. If it means that much to you, I swear. No reprisals.’

Her gaze turned to Vittore. ‘And you? Vittore?’ she prompted.

He heaved a sigh. ‘No reprisals, Mama. I swear, all right? I swear it.’

Bella nodded. After a second she sank back into her chair. Looked at her boys, her two remaining living sons, and asked herself,
Are they lying, to please me?

She suspected they were. But she had done this much. She thought of Kit Miller, and
his
mother. There was one more thing she could do, to make sure that no other sons ended up on a mortuary slab. She’d had years of this, of the killing, the crooked deals, the stress and the lust for revenge, and she was tired of it all. Then her mind turned with soul-wrenching sadness to her daughter; this would break her heart.

‘Someone ought to go in the morning and tell Bianca,’ she said.

Vittore nodded. ‘I’ll do it,’ he said.

4

‘Blood will flow.’

Ruby Darke would never forget those words, coming down the phone line at her. It was like a witch’s curse, she thought later, because blood
did
flow, oh yes indeed. But she didn’t know, not then. She just picked up the phone, like you do, like thousands of people do, every day. They pick up, and
bang.
Their world changes for ever. ERNIE’s snatched their premium bond numbers out of the pile. Or someone they kissed goodbye only an hour ago is dead, heart attack. The fates roll the dice, and we are all helpless pawns on the great game board of the uncaring universe.

Ruby didn’t expect either good news or bad, not that day. But when she looked back, that was how it all started: with the phone

the witch’s curse . . .

ringing in her Victorian villa in Marlow.

She was hurrying through the hall, the spring sunlight making pretty patterns as it shone through the stained-glass panels beside the front door. She threw a casual remark back at her daughter Daisy, who was in the kitchen with Nanny Jody, feeding Matthew and Luke, Daisy’s year-old twins.

‘Hello?’ Ruby unclipped an earring, smiled her automatic professional smile.

She hadn’t
genuinely
smiled since last November, not since Michael Ward had been found shot dead in an alleyway. She thought about him every day. Mourned him bitterly. Missed him so much. Even though she knew what he’d been, she’d loved him.