Playing Dead (16 page)

Hey, wonder what’s in this one?

She winced with pain and stared at Nico. ‘Is he dead?’ she managed to get out, her voice breaking on every word.

Nico’s eyes met hers at last. He nodded and compressed his lips. Tears spilled over and ran down the lines of his face.

‘No,’ whimpered Annie, her face screwing up in denial. Then she had another terrifying thought. ‘Layla?’

‘She’s safe,’ said Nico. ‘Her and the nanny were way out of it, at the other side of the house. I’ll . . . I’ll get the nurse.’

Annie was staring down at her stomach. She moved her right arm painfully, laid a hand on her belly. It was . . . flatter. A spasm of terror and misery shot through her.

No . . .

Nico pressed the button and they sat there together in dazed silence until the nurse arrived. She was brisk, professional. She smiled a lot and said she would fetch the doctor. The doctor turned out to be female, white-coated, dark-haired, yellow-skinned, Eurasian.

‘You want me to go . . .?’ asked Nico, lumbering awkwardly to his feet.

‘You’re a friend of Mrs Barolli’s?’ the doctor asked.

‘Yeah. A good friend.’

‘Then if Mrs Barolli doesn’t mind, I’d like you to stay for a while.’ The doctor turned her attention to Annie. ‘You’ve been very lucky,’ she said.

Funny how Annie didn’t
feel
lucky. She felt as though her insides had been scooped out. There was a solid lump of anguish occupying that space now. Constantine was dead.

The doctor did something very surprising to Annie then. She took Annie’s right hand and laced her fingers through hers. Annie stared at their conjoined hands.

She had to ask the question. She was very afraid of the answer, but she
had
to know.

‘Is the baby okay?’ she asked with lips that felt numb.

The doctor’s face grew grave. A million times she must have delivered bad news to patients, she did it so well.

‘I’m sorry, Mrs Barolli, but no, it’s not. I’m afraid you’ve lost the baby.’

Chapter 31

The police came – two plain-clothes detectives – and interviewed her the next day. Nico had gone home, shattered, to change and wash and try to get the stink of the explosion out of his hair and off his skin.

‘Mr Barolli died instantly,’ said one of them; he had corn-gold hair and looked more like an Iowa farm boy than a city detective. ‘He didn’t suffer.’

Annie took some comfort from that. She felt shaky, weepy; not herself. She was a tough nut – everyone who knew her said so. Born in the East End of London to a drunk of a mother and an absentee father, she’d had to grow up fast. She had learned to fend for herself, fight her corner. But this was all too much. As the detective spoke those words, she could feel her control slipping, could feel her throat begin to close, her eyes starting to fill with tears.

Her baby was dead.

Her husband was dead.

And what had that doctor said yesterday? Oh yeah.
You’ve been lucky.

‘Do you feel strong enough to answer a few questions?’ asked the other detective – a tall, athletically built man who looked both older and more world-weary than the golden farm boy.

Annie got a grip and nodded. A single tear escaped and slid down her bruised cheek, but that was all.

‘The parcel containing the bomb – did you see it?’ he asked.

Annie could see it even now. Constantine walking towards her with a smile, shaking the damned thing, saying,
Hey, wonder what’s in this one?

His last words on earth.

Her throat closed again. She reached unsteadily for a glass of water, sipped it, could barely swallow a drop. But it helped. Gave her a moment to compose herself.

‘It was blue,’ she said hoarsely. ‘Sky blue. With a big red ribbon.’

They both nodded. The farm boy was taking notes.

‘The techs are cataloguing the evidence,’ said the dark-haired one.

Evidence?
she thought.
Was there enough left of it for that?

‘But it looks like a booby trap,’ he went on. ‘A cluster of grenades with the pins wired through to the table, so that when it’s picked up . . . boom.’

She thought again of Constantine, picking the thing up and starting to come towards her. Dying instantly.

‘Your husband was in business, is that right?’ asked the dark-haired one.

Annie looked at him and instantly she could see it in his eyes. These two knew what Constantine was. They wouldn’t
say
it, but they knew.

‘Imports and exports,’ she said. ‘Olive oil, mostly.’

‘Olive oil,’ said the farm boy, and wrote it down.

‘Why would he pick up that particular present?’ asked the dark-haired one, watching her face. ‘There was a table full of presents for the happy couple, according to some of the guests we’ve spoken to. Why that one?’

Annie forced her addled brain to
think.
And when she did that, she realized that Constantine had just hurried his death along by an hour or so by picking up the thing when he did. Because at ten o’clock it had been agreed with the party planners that Constantine would present Lucco and Daniella with the wedding presents. By doing what he did, Constantine had spared the lives of his son and his new bride, and of many of the guests too, because they would have all been out on the deck to watch and applaud and cheer.

‘It was the biggest gift. The most brightly wrapped,’ said Annie. ‘The most eye-catching. And it was right at the front. Almost out on its own.’

As if it had been deliberately placed there.

And Constantine was being playful with his wife; he was so happy because all the family were there on that special day. But she wasn’t about to tell that to these two cynical men with their knowing faces and their notebooks.
Fuck
them.

She knew she ought to co-operate. These two might be doing more than going through the motions; they might actually be able to find out who had left that bomb there. But she didn’t believe they’d try too hard. She simply didn’t. They knew Constantine was Mafia – she had seen the patrol cars loitering outside the Montauk estate entrance, watching who came, who went. Taking pictures. Taking notes. Their attitude to the death of a Don would be
Good. One less to keep an eye on.

Annie leaned over and pressed the button to summon the nurse.

‘You know what?’ she croaked out. ‘I don’t think I feel up to this right now. I’m sorry.’

The nurse came.

‘If you think of anything . . .’ Farm Boy was saying, closing his notebook.

‘I’ll call,’ said Annie, closing her eyes.

‘Anything at all,’ said the dark-haired one.

Yeah. Like you give a flying fuck.

‘She’s very tired. If you can go now . . .?’

They left.

So did the nurse.

Annie lay there in her hospital bed, alone and exhausted. Of course the police would do nothing. It was for the family to find out who did this thing to Constantine and to dish out appropriate punishment. She should know that. She had been married to a king among men; she had been a Mafia queen. She ought to know by now how these things worked. Lucco was head of the family now. He was the Don. It was for him to seek revenge for the death of his father.

As for her, she was too tired to think any more. Her eyelids were drooping. Without even being aware of it, she drifted off to sleep.

She came awake with a start and with the clear realization that she couldn’t breathe. There was something smothering and relentless pressing her head inexorably back into the lumpy hospital-issue pillow, clogging up her nose and her mouth so that every panicky attempt to draw breath ended in a no-show.

Spots were dancing in front of her eyelids. But it was dark. This big, soft, deadly thing was compressing her airways, and someone –
someone –
was trying to squash the life out of her.

She tried to cry out, but her mouth was full of cotton fabric and she was drowning in the stink of antiseptic, and all it did was make that someone push down harder.

Jesus, she was going to die.

And would that be so bad? She was weak and bloodied and bruised, she had lost her baby and the man she loved. Would it
really
be so bad to join them?

But the urge to survive, the urge to
kick ass
was so strong, and what she actually felt along with the panic was rage. Rage that someone could have shattered her life so comprehensively, and now they were looking to finish the job off. And what was she going to do? Give them that satisfaction; just lie here like some limp dick and
let
them?

But she couldn’t stop them. Her arms were flailing around; she was trying to strike at some solid body that was lying upon her, crushing her, smothering her, but she was making no headway and she knew it.

Spots dancing in front of her eyes . . . and a new feeling, a sensation of detachment, of the whole world spinning away, that air didn’t matter, that there would be something else, something better . . .

And then, voices.

God, she felt so weak. Wondered if she was imagining all this, if it was just a result of the trauma of the explosion, her mind playing games. Once in the long restless night she had awoken to see Constantine sitting in the chair beside her bed – Constantine alive and well, smiling at her . . . and when she reached out for him he began rotting, became a corpse, melting like wax into the fabric of the chair. She had been too weak even to scream, and she had been crying and retching as she drifted back off to sleep.

This was just another nightmare. That was all. She would wake up, and it would all be okay.
She
would be okay.

But in her gut she knew that she wasn’t going to wake up from this.

And there were voices now, and those voices weren’t imaginary.

The voices were
real.

And then the pressure was gone. Annie was aware of quickly receding footsteps as she threw the damned pillow away from her, onto the floor. She whooped in air, heaving, gasping. Tried to get up, tried to haul herself from the bed. She was too weak. She fell sideways, her arm hitting the floor, her legs still pinned beneath the bedclothes. The drip flew loose from the arm with a sting of pain and spurted liquid. She was twisted sideways, staring at the stark hospital flooring, upside-down, gasping. Noticed the door was still swinging on its hinges.

That was real
, she thought.
That wasn’t a dream.

Nico and the nurse arrived at a run. They looked at Annie, lying there, half in and half out of the bed, red in the face, in clear distress.

‘Mrs Barolli?’ The nurse’s tilted upside-down face was taut with concern as she dashed forward, but Annie’s eyes were on Nico.

‘Someone just tried to kill me,’ she wheezed. ‘With the pillow.’

Nico was off like a shot, out of the door, dashing along the corridor.

He won’t catch them
, she thought.
He doesn’t know who he’s looking for. And neither do I.

‘Are you all right?’ the nurse was asking, easing her back into the bed, refastening the drip, touching Annie’s brow.

Ten seconds longer and she wouldn’t have been all right at all.

Someone had tried to kill her.

Someone had wanted her to join her baby and her husband in death.

But for fuck’s sake –
who?

Chapter 32

The burial of Constantine Barolli was as lavish and as full of pomp and ceremony as the burying of an emperor. His remains were grandly interred in a heavy and elaborately gilded casket strewn with mounds of red roses. A procession of limousines carrying hordes of mourners followed the hearse into St John’s Cemetery in Queens, and in the first of these was his widow, only recently released from hospital.

Layla cuddled up against her mother as they stared out from the limo at the thundering sheets of rain that fell from the heavens like tears. Annie had done her best to explain to Layla that Constantine was with the angels in heaven – like Daddy Max – and she was filled with pity for the little girl’s bewilderment.

Layla had now lost two fathers. She’d doted on Constantine – the more so since she had lost Max – and now the poor little cow had lost him, too.

Annie hugged her daughter tightly and tried not to give in to the despair and the rage she felt flooding her like a cold, bitter tide. Someone had intended that Constantine should die. Had they intended that she should die too? They had managed to kill her unborn child, hers and Constantine’s. Layla’s little brother or sister would never draw breath, never know the sweetness of life.

Annie still felt ill. To find one great love in a lifetime was extraordinarily lucky; to find two was nothing short of a miracle. The gods had smiled on her despite the fact that she’d been bad, borderline crooked; but now she was being punished for her luck; what the fates had given, they had decided to snatch away again.

The burns on her arm had not been serious, and had healed well. But her mind was a mess. She had long since stopped bleeding from the miscarriage, and the doctors had assured her that there was no reason, no reason at all, why she should not go onto have more children.

Nothing other than the fact that my husband’s been blown to fucking bits
, thought Annie.

Wearing a severe black skirt suit and with her head swathed in a thick black veil, Nico holding a huge umbrella over her and Layla, she stood at the graveside and watched Constantine’s coffin being lowered into the ground.

Whoever had done it, she wanted them to pay.

Standing beside Lucco and his new bride Daniella, Cara and Rocco, Alberto, Aunt Gina – all solemn-faced and properly mournful, she knew they all wanted whoever had done it to pay.

Annie looked around at all the mourners. So many of them had come to pay their respects to a great man. She recognized heads of other families,
capos
, foot soldiers. And she looked around her at all the people there – hundreds of them, packed together and getting drenched by the rain – and wondered who could have done this thing.