Ruthless (2 page)

‘It’s not the same.’

Annie could only stand there, feeling sickened and powerless. This was a bloody disaster. Max was supposed to have been gone before Layla got home – to avoid a scene. Only it was all going wrong, pulverizing her afresh with the pain. She hated what they were doing to Layla. But it was done. And it was best now – wasn’t it? – to just get this over with.

Max straightened, seeming almost to read her thoughts.

‘I’d better go,’ he said, easing Layla away from him.

‘No, Daddy, please don’t,’ she wailed.

As if she was four, not fourteen,
thought Annie in anguish, feeling Layla’s torment as if it was her own.

‘I’ll call you,’ said Max, kissing Layla’s cheek. ‘Very soon. OK?’

Layla nodded dumbly, crying more quietly.

Max moved away from her, came towards the open door where Annie stood. He paused there, and their eyes met. If she reached out to him now, said,
Let’s talk, let’s not do this
, would he stay?

She almost did it, but her pride stopped her.

Then the moment was gone. Max brushed past her, walked across the hall, picked up his suitcase and bag, and left.

Annie gulped hard, trying to compose herself. It was finished. Leaving her with a heartbroken girl to look after. It didn’t matter how
she
felt, she had to focus on Layla. She walked towards her. Layla’s sobs had died away to hitching little gasps.

‘Honey, why don’t you go and find Ros—’ she started.

‘Don’t you come near me,’ yelled Layla suddenly, stopping Annie in her tracks. ‘This is all your fault. All you had to do was
be
here, but you always had to be running around doing your stupid
business.
I
hate
you.’

She ran past Annie, shoving her aside. She flew across the hall and up the stairs.

Annie stood there, feeling sick with hurt, and heard the door to Layla’s room slam shut. She closed her eyes and took in a deep breath. The silence of the house enveloped her. She was alone again.

On shaky legs she walked over to the leather-tooled desk and sat down behind it, slumping there in exhaustion and despair. She didn’t even know who she was any more. She took the decree absolute out of her pocket and put it on the desk and stared at it.

Well, I’m not Mrs Max Carter, that’s for sure.

God, she was tired. Too tired to think, but still it all spun around, unravelling in her tortured brain – losing Max in Majorca, believing him to be dead. Then her involvement with Constantine Barolli, Alberto’s father. All the troubles and the dangers she had endured to come to this point.

Was it worth it?

Ten years ago she had been an underworld power to be reckoned with, running the streets of Bow. Until Redmond and Orla Delaney, the psychotic twins who’d ruled Battersea with an iron fist, tried to kill her. And that had ended in
their
deaths, organized by her Mafia contacts.

So much trouble.

So much pain.

The attempt on her life had caused her to step away from all that. She’d thought she could leave it behind her, sit back and enjoy the good life – but it hadn’t worked out that way.

Annie gazed around her at the empty, opulent study with its tan Chesterfield sofas, its walls lined with books, the costly Aubusson rugs on the floor. She had everything . . . and she had nothing at all. She’d lost her husband, and her daughter hated her.

Raindrops pattered against the window panes. She stared out of the window at the darkening sky, and wondered how the hell she was going to come back from this. She’d fought so long and so hard, but all she felt was
defeated.
She was too worn out even to try any more.

Annie sat there and thought of old friends, old enemies, her weary mind a tangle of jumbled images. Two faces emerged from the fog in her brain and she shuddered.

The Delaney twins.

She could see their faces, their cold, pale green eyes, their red hair. Those twisted, horrible bastards.

It was raining harder now and she was dimly aware that she was crying. She
never
cried.
Dig deep and stand alone,
that was the motto she’d always lived by. And she’d never been more alone than she was right this minute.

Well, that was one thing she no longer had to worry about. The Delaneys were gone. And she couldn’t help thinking that, perverted as they were, evil and vindictive and out for her blood as they had always been, the Delaney twins were the lucky ones. She was here, alone and suffering: Redmond and Orla Delaney had been fortunate in comparison.

They were out of it.

They were dead.

3

Over the Irish Sea . . ., 1970

Orla Delaney had always been a nervous flyer. She was nervous
anyway,
on this flight – for it was a flight in every sense of the word. Along with her twin, Redmond, she was fleeing for her life in the Cessna 210, knowing that London was over as far as they were concerned. Orla’s only comfort was the knowledge that, before their crime empire had collapsed, they had finally got rid of Annie Carter.

Barumph!

The wind buffeted the small plane with a vicious swirl and she clutched harder at her seat, stifling a scream as the four-seater rocked from side to side and then plummeted, dropping like a stone, leaving her stomach somewhere up on the padded ceiling. She wondered if she was about to be sick.

‘Rough night,’ said Fergal the pilot, a big grey-haired Irishman who sat unperturbed at the controls.

Orla was reassured by Fergal. He’d worked for the Delaney firm for years, ferrying illicit cargoes – drugs, arms, people – in and out of Britain. He boasted he could land the Cessna on a gnat’s tit, he’d been flying it for so long. Orla believed him. He’d been a British Airways pilot once, then he’d done a stint crop-dusting in Kenya before Redmond had recruited him into the far more lucrative family firm.

She glanced at Redmond. He seemed calm. He half-smiled, squeezed her hand briefly. It was only
she
who was panicking.

It felt like an eternity since they’d left the airport. After a wild drive down to Cardiff in the dead of night, Fergal had flown them into the tumultuous skies unauthorized, with no co-pilot, no mechanic, no clearance. They were in violation of air traffic safety guidelines and aircraft operation rules. But Fergal didn’t give a shit about any of that. Neither did either of his passengers.

Orla glanced at her watch and saw that they’d only been aloft for ten minutes.

Whumph!

Again the wind tossed the plane, batting it almost playfully around the blackening sky. Night was coming, the moon was up and full, scudding clouds drifting across its face. Even in big planes, she was nervous. In a miniscule Cessna, a fluttering stomach and a chest tight with fear took on a whole new level. She prayed for dry land, for the lights of the airport. Peering out of the window, she saw only the dark sea below them. No lights. No
ships,
even: in weather like this, any sane captain would put in to shore, ride out the storm.

But not them. If they’d delayed getting out of England by so much as an hour, the police would have shut down their escape.

They’d only just made it.

Orla stifled her nerves. It was OK. They’d got away. Soon they’d be in Limerick. She could see it now in her mind: the old farm on the banks of the Shannon, the Delaney family home. From there they could go anywhere, anywhere in the world. All would be well. She breathed deeply, told herself,
calm, be calm.

‘What the f—’ said Fergal.

‘What is it?’ asked Redmond.

The pilot was tapping one of the dials in front of him.

‘Fuel reading’s low.’ He tapped it again. ‘Should be showing nearly full.’

Orla felt the fear erupt, break out of its cage. Suddenly she found it hard to catch her breath.

‘How low?’ asked Redmond.

‘Ah, don’t worry. Must be a malfunction, we’ve only just filled up,’ said the pilot comfortably, not answering the question. ‘It’s nothing. Ten minutes, we’ll be there.’

Ten minutes, we’ll be there.

Fergal had hardly finished uttering the words when the engine started to sputter. Orla saw – she didn’t want to see but she couldn’t help it – she
saw
the damned propeller falter and stop turning.

No, this can’t be happening,
she thought wildly, clutching at Redmond’s hand.

But it was.

She watched Fergal fighting the controls, trying to keep the nose up when there was no power, nothing to stop the inevitable. And finally, horribly, it happened. The tiny plane stalled in mid-air. Then it plummeted like a stone into the cold embrace of the Irish Sea.

4

The stunning, mind-numbing impact as the plane hit the water nose-first blew in the windscreen. Icy water instantly surged into the cockpit like a burst dam. The water enveloped Orla, whipping all the breath from her body with the intensity of its coldness. As the nose-cone dipped, she saw Fergal, still strapped into his seat at the controls, his arms flailing against the force of the inrushing water.

As their pilot vanished beneath the churning foam, Orla felt movement beside her as Redmond tugged at his seatbelt release.

‘Christ!’ he was shouting as the sea battered them, swirling up around their chests, snatching the air from their lungs.

This couldn’t be happening, it was a nightmare. Reeling with shock, Orla reached down with rapidly numbing fingers and tried to free her own seat belt.

The water was rising fast, too fast.

She was fighting against the strap, panicking. She couldn’t get it undone.

‘Don’t lean forward, you’re jamming it, try to relax . . .’ Redmond yelled as waves rose up around his mouth.

Orla couldn’t. Had he got his free? She couldn’t tell, couldn’t see anything, couldn’t do anything above the hysterical fear that the water was coming in,
pouring
in, and they were going to drown. It was up around her neck now, and her fingers were struggling, she couldn’t get the clasp free.

She was going to die.

Redmond was surging up out of the water, he was half-standing, getting above it, but it was still coming in, it was rising all the time and
she couldn’t get free.

‘I can’t—’ she shouted, her teeth chattering with cold.

Redmond took a breath, and plunged down under the swirling waves.

Orla was alone with the rising sea. The airplane was groaning, the fuselage popping and shuddering with the pressure and weight of the sea water as its interior filled up.

‘Redmond!’ she shrieked.

There was no answer.

She was alone. She was going to
die
alone.

Then suddenly he appeared beside her, spluttering, coughing, his face shockingly pale in the half-light, his red hair flat to his head.

Her belt was loose. He’d done it.

‘We have to get—’ he started.

His words were cut off as the plane lurched sideways.

Orla screamed. Redmond lost his footing and fell against the bulkhead, his forehead striking metal. His eyes rolled up. He collapsed into the water and disappeared from sight. Then the tiny battered plane gave one last deathly groan, and sank further beneath the waves.

‘Redmond!
Redmond!
’ Orla cried, frantically reaching out, trying to find him.

Her hands were numb, like her legs. She was freezing, she was dying. She knew it. She scrambled around, sobbing with terror. He was gone. He must have been swept out of the hole made by the blown-in windscreen and into the sea.

Then her hand touched cloth.

His coat.

He was still in here, in this coffin that was now swirling downward, spiralling deeper into the icy waters, carrying them to their graves. She found a reserve of strength from somewhere and grabbed the cloth and hauled it up.

Redmond’s face appeared above the surging waters, his eyes flickering open in panic, his mouth open too, whooping in a mouthful of air. He was shivering hard, and bleeding. Orla pulled him towards her.

‘Oh, holy Christ, Red—’ she sobbed.

The water was lapping over their mouths and they were slipping, sliding sideways as the plane descended into icy blackness. The aircraft tipped sharply again and Orla’s feet slid from under her. She tried to hold her breath, but her lungs were bursting with the effort and with the fear that at any moment she was going to die. She couldn’t get her balance. She floundered, stretched, grabbed Redmond’s arm and hauled herself up, coughing, choking.

The cockpit would soon be completely full of water, and what would they do then?

They would drown.

There was only a tiny air pocket left to breathe in, under the roof of the cockpit, and they were huddled there, gasping, as the waters rose and rose around them.

‘We have to get out,’ said Redmond.

Orla clutched at the roof and shook her head.

‘Before it sinks too far down,’ he insisted.

There were trenches in the Irish Sea thousands of feet deep. Long before they reached that depth, the water pressure would kill them. He was right. They
had
to get out.

‘Through the front. It’s the only way. The windscreen. Come on.’

Not giving her time to answer, Redmond took a couple of deep breaths and plunged under the black churning water.

Orla was left there, alone, the water lapping around her face. Terrified, she didn’t want to move. But she was alone here. She would
die
here. Redmond was gone.

She took a desperate, despairing breath and dived.

5

Orla swam, lungs bursting, pushing herself along to the front of the little cabin. In horror she saw with salt-stung eyes the dim outline of Fergal in his short-sleeved white shirt, his arms floating aloft, his hair billowing around his shocked, bug-eyed dead face. He was still strapped into his seat at the controls. She saw the hole where the windscreen had been. She couldn’t see Redmond.