Lawless (6 page)

But Fabio had been lucky. And he meant to stay that way. When he was sure the copper was out of sight, he jumped from the roof onto a wall, and then almost fell down onto the other side, which turned out to be a main road. A road he
knew.

Thank you, God.

He grinned triumphantly then broke into an easy loping run, heading homeward. He was fit as well as handsome, he took care of himself. He was just a jogger now – so long as nobody looked too closely at the scrapes and the bloodstains, and the black top hid a lot of it anyway. All around him, bedlam was breaking out. Cop cars sped past, blue lights flashing, sirens wailing.

Fabio trotted on, knowing precisely where he was going. In fact, he was getting tired of this, getting away with things by the skin of his teeth, these little bank jobs. But he’d accumulated a good bit of stake money in the process. Soon he would start getting into something far more lucrative and less risky.

Fabio had been working on a plan. The smash-and-grabs at the banks had brought in cash, but he was making a name for himself and that was dangerous: it was time to quit while he was ahead. The drugs game was a much better bet. Friends in the trade had told him the figures, and they were mind-blowing. He could buy a load of coke in Colombia for three or four grand, then sell it on for thirty grand in the UK. What was not to like?

Furthermore, he had a ready market in the clubs his family already owned. He could get people in his pay circulating among the socialites, the carefree daddy’s-little-rich-girls-out-on-the-town, and they could knock it out for a thousand pounds an ounce, netting him a clear thirty or forty grand profit on every deal.

Compared to that, bank jobs paid
peanuts.

No need to enlighten Vittore as to this new status quo though. Big brother might think he owned the world now that Tito had gone off to run heaven, but Fabio liked having this secret, hugging it to himself. He would make a fucking fortune and it would all be
his.
No
way
was the family taking a share.

11

Kit was on his way out when he saw the woman. There must have been a smash on the road; the traffic was crawling in both directions. He sat at the wheel of his Bentley, gridlocked, and stared out at the God-awful weather. It had stopped raining for now, but it was still as cold as a witch’s tit out there. He wondered when this bastard headache was going to let go. Occasionally he sipped out of the open bottle of Scotch on the seat beside him.

He was too drunk to drive, he knew that.

He didn’t
care
.

Places to go, things to do
kept turning over and over in his mind.

That was when he saw her. Traffic crawling along in the other direction, his own car going nowhere fast. And there was her face, in the back of a big black limousine – she was pale as ivory, with huge turquoise-blue eyes and . . . hadn’t Marilyn Monroe said she had a body for sin? Well this woman had a mouth like that. Sensual, full-lipped, you could imagine her doing all sorts of things to you with that mouth. Her hair was so white it was almost silver, falling straight to her shoulders, a black veil pushed back from it. He couldn’t see any lower, only that she was all in black and it drained the life out of her features. Drunk as he was, he still felt the swift urgent tug of sexual attraction.

Her head turned a little, and her eyes met his. She didn’t look away, just returned his stare. This was no shrinking violet: her gaze was direct, intelligent. Then the traffic in her lane moved on, and she was gone. He turned in his seat, wanting to maintain the eye-contact, but that was it, folks: end of show. She was gone, off across the city, one more person moving around the vast metropolis.

He picked up the bottle again and drank.

This is a nightmare
, thought Bianca.

Vittore had hired a trio of limos from the funeral directors. One, of course, for Mama and himself (he was her favourite, they
all
knew that), while Fabio would have a limo to himself, leaving Bianca to share with Maria, Vittore’s poor doormat wife, who didn’t comment but must surely notice that she had been relegated, separated from her husband by his overbearing mother, yet again.

Now the limousine Bianca and Maria were travelling in was stuck in the traffic, crawling along, prolonging the agony of this day. The other two limos, travelling behind the hearse, were lost to view. The driver had said he knew a better route to the church, and had turned the car around. He was sweating, the idiot, he didn’t know the way at all. Now they were sitting, unmoving, in yet another line of cars.

Inch by inch, the car crept along. Bianca sat there like wood, gazing out at the matt dove-grey of the sky, thinking
This cannot be happening.

But it was.

Today the family was saying its final farewell to Tito, who had been murdered in cold blood by some piece of scum – she
spat
on them, whoever they were.

Tito was dead.

She couldn’t believe it, but it was true.

Her eldest brother, the one she’d loved so much, idolized, was dead and gone. She knew that it was mostly Tito’s doing that she had been entrusted – at last – with Dante’s. Vittore would never have entrusted her with any responsibility. Vittore had always seemed indifferent to her; he was secure in his position as Mama’s firm favourite. As for Fabio, he had mocked the very idea.

‘Bianca? What, you joking, Tito?’ he’d laughed when the possibility of her running a club had first been broached.

All her life, Fabio had mocked her. Resented her. Cuffed her around the ear, punched her when Mama wasn’t looking, because she was the interloper, the new baby, and she’d taken his privileged place.

Only Tito had loved her as a brother truly should, indulging her, showing her the noble old Italian ways, accepting her unstintingly into the family. He’d taught her everything, even how to shoot. She remembered how he’d taken her hunting rabbits on farmers’ fields, and how she had treasured that time alone with him.

Now, her heart was broken. He was gone.

A sleek Bentley paused alongside the limo, heading in the other direction. Her eyes caught and held the stare of the man sitting behind the wheel. Even sunk deep in grief, she was arrested by how amazingly handsome he was: dark-skinned, black-haired. And his eyes were a startlingly clear bright blue – but they seemed full of some private pain.

Then the limo edged forward and the man slipped out of her line of sight. She turned to look back, but he was gone.

Maria was taking her hand, squeezing it. Bianca snapped back to the present, looked at her sister-in-law, the poor cow.

‘He’s in a better place, you know. Tito, I mean,’ she said.

Bianca took her hand away.

A better place?

She knew that plenty of people would think Tito was destined for hell, particularly the one who’d killed him. And she wanted to know who that was; she was
desperate
to know who the bastard was who had robbed Tito of his life and brought such devastation on her family. Adopted or not, she had absorbed the culture she’d been taken into. She was a true child of the Camorra, and that was a proud and unforgiving heritage.

When she found out who was responsible, she would have her revenge.

She
swore
it.

12

It was freezing cold and windy as the mourners filed inside the church. Outside, some brave early daffodils were being tossed in the breeze and flattened into the muddy soil. It was scarcely warmer inside the building. The atmosphere was grim. The organist was playing a dirge, appropriately sad for a Requiem Mass.

Many had come to pay their respects, because they had to. The Danieris expected it. Tito might be gone, but there was still Vittore; there was still Fabio. Failure to attend would be noted, and frowned upon. Everyone knew that.

Loitering outside were a couple of plain-clothes policemen, noticed but ignored by the bulk of the mourners. The police had only recently released the body, and ‘enquiries were ongoing’ into Tito’s murder. But so far no one had been arrested and everyone knew that the police wouldn’t dig too deeply or trouble themselves too much: obviously it was another gangland killing, one of many that occurred every year around the city, nothing too remarkable.

Bastards
, thought Bianca, walking up the aisle beside Maria, both of them curtsying and crossing themselves before the altar before joining Mama in the front pew.

‘Where have you
been
?’ demanded Bella of her daughter.

Bianca squeezed her mother’s hand. ‘Sorry. Traffic. Got held up.’

‘Have you seen Fabio?’

‘He’s just arrived, we saw him as we came in. He’s . . .’
Out there, unloading the coffin.

Bianca couldn’t bring herself to say the words. They choked her, cut off her breath. All the way here, she had felt sick with horror. Traffic slowing the cars down, holding her up, had been yet another twist to the torment, prolonging this when she just wanted it to be over.

She thought then, very briefly, of the man’s face, the one in the car going in the other direction. Dark skin, blue eyes, something autocratic in his bearing . . .

‘Fabio’s a good boy,’ said Bella.

Bianca came back to the here and now. Her mother was still talking about Fabio. ‘Good’, in her opinion, was pushing it. Fab had a certain laddish charm, but he couldn’t pass a mirror without kissing it. ‘Good’ wasn’t a word she would ever associate with him. He’d bullied her all her life, hated her on sight. He wasn’t ‘good’ at all. But Mama Bella was nodding, affirming her opinion of her youngest son to herself.

She looks exhausted
, Bianca thought, feeling the emotion of the day rise up and almost stifle her. She was glad of the thick black veil she now wore pulled down over her face, identical to her mother’s. It hid the tears that spilled over and slid down her cheeks. She bit her lip so hard she almost drew blood.

Bianca glanced behind her, seeing the mourners shuffling inside. Among them she saw a tall dark-skinned woman moving near the rear of the church, her eyes downcast.

‘What’s
she
doing here?’ asked Bianca, gulping back her tears.

Bella looked up, saw who Bianca was staring at, said nothing.

‘Isn’t that Ruby Darke?’ said Bianca. ‘The woman who runs the department stores? Did she know Tito? Oh wait – wasn’t she involved with Michael Ward . . . ?’

Bianca fell silent. Ruby Darke was also the notorious Kit Miller’s mother, and there were rumours circulating like Chinese whispers that Tito’s death could have been a revenge killing for the death of Michael Ward. That pointed to Miller, who had been Ward’s number one man. But these were merely rumours, unfounded, unsubstantiated. There was no proof, nothing positive to suggest they could be true.

‘I asked her to come,’ said Bella.

Bianca’s head whipped round. She stared at her mother. ‘You what? Why?’

‘I have to talk to her.’

‘Mama, you’ve taken leave of your senses,’ said Bianca, shaking her head. ‘You know what’s being said . . .’

‘Yes, I know. That’s why I want to talk to her.’

‘But—’

‘Hush! Show some respect,’ said Bella, her tone sharpening. She looked back. ‘Ah, dear God, my boy, my poor boy . . .’

They were bringing in the coffin. The music swelled, the priest came forward in his ceremonial robes. Bianca, Bella and Maria rose to their feet along with the rest of the congregation as the pall-bearers came up the aisle, carrying their sad burden. Bianca felt her mother sway and she grasped her arm, held her steady. She felt as if her heart was being ripped, still beating, from her chest.

Ah, Tito . . .

She thought of Tito cuddling her in his arms when she was small, kissing her forehead, murmuring words of comfort. He’d taught her so much, shared the ways of the Camorra with her. Her big brother, she’d loved him so. It crucified her that he had died, a man in his prime, with no wife, no children, to lament his passing.

Bianca watched the grim procession of pall-bearers pass by with the coffin. Vittore was there, giving solid support at the front, with the slighter Fabio immediately behind him, smartened up in a black suit, his almost girlishly good-looking face and hands marred by scratches and cuts. The mahogany coffin was covered in a luxuriant mass of red hothouse roses formed into the shape of a cross. The men moved slowly, placing their burden carefully on the dais while the priest looked on.

For Bianca the whole thing was torture. It was all she could do to watch as the coffin was sprinkled with holy water and then it was incensed. Prayers were said for Tito’s soul and the choir sang ‘On Eagle’s Wings’. Then came the funeral Mass and absolution, with candles lit around the coffin.

And then they were all outside in the biting wind, gathered around the freshly dug grave. The elderly priest intoned his words of conclusion: ‘May his soul and the souls of all the faithful departed through the mercy of God rest in peace.’

At last, it was over.

Having kept a tight grip on her mother throughout, Bianca could feel Bella trembling, shuddering with sobs. To bury one’s own child must be agony. The crowds of mourners began to disperse, leaving only close family by the graveside. Then Bianca saw Ruby Darke again, standing alone some distance away from their silent little group.

‘What the fuck’s she doing here?’ asked Fabio.

Bella stepped forward and slapped her youngest son’s face. ‘Shut up! You are in a place of worship, standing at your brother’s grave,’ she snapped.

Maria’s eyes met Bianca’s. Maria was mouse-like in the presence of her forceful mother-in-law. Bianca felt almost sorry for her sometimes, when she wasn’t feeling scornful over Maria’s lack of backbone. Bianca loved Mama, but she knew she could be manipulative, and Vittore was a sucker for her machinations. Maria, who was not bright, was no match for Bella. In Maria’s place, Bianca would have given Bella a hell of a fight.