Ruthless (6 page)

Dolly and Ellie had become her personal team of cheerleaders since the divorce. Every time she’d stumbled, they picked her up again. She loved them both, very much.

Annie heaved a sigh. ‘Yeah. That’ll be nice.’

There was a tap at the door as Annie put the phone down. Layla opened the door, poked her head around it.

‘I’m going out,’ she said.

But you only just got in
formed itself in Annie’s brain. She bit back the words. Forced a smile.

‘OK,’ she said. ‘Dinner’s at eight . . . you need some money?’

‘Yeah.’

Yeah, of course you do,
thought Annie.
That’s all I am to you, the Bank of Mum.
She opened the top drawer of the desk, pulled out a bundle of fivers, then stood up and went over to the door.

‘Thanks,’ said Layla, pocketing the cash.

‘See you at eight,’ said Annie, thinking,
Other daughters kiss their mothers goodbye. Other daughters hug their mums and buy them little gifts and go shopping with them. Not mine.

Layla withdrew, closing the door.

Annie tried to console herself, but Layla’s return and the realization that things hadn’t changed, the fear that they would
never
change, made her feel depressed. It was a new year, another
fucking
year, and the same old scenario.

She told herself firmly that it was fine, they would meet up later; Rosa had cooked something special and they would have a chance to chat then. But Annie could feel desperation taking hold. Three years on from the divorce, and still she was getting the cold shoulder. She
had,
somehow, to reconnect with Layla, and starting tonight, she promised herself she was going to try harder.

But she never got the chance.

Layla didn’t come home until gone ten, so Annie had to eat dinner alone.

13

Ireland, 1973

Months had passed and Megan’s baby was due to drop. Rather than settling her, the imminent arrival of their first child was making her more edgy.

‘It’s the feckin’ hormones,’ said Rory, sitting on the side of Rufus’s bed upstairs. He grinned. ‘She’s a head case. Can’t think of anything but babies, nursery curtains and nappies.’

‘Not bad things to be thinking about,’ said Rufus with a sigh. He’d never had a serious woman in his life. He’d had a boyhood crush on his cousin Orla, ferocious in its intensity. He could still remember the way he’d felt about her. But they’d lost touch over the years.

He was feeling better now, almost recovered. A little weak, his left arm stiff, but he was well enough to get up during the day, retiring early to bed. Since Megan had marked his card, he’d been careful not to step outside in the garden, high fences or no.

He was lying low. He knew his presence made Megan nervous. And Rory too, if he was honest. If Big Don discovered him here, they would all suffer. He thought of Pikey, the poor little fool, dying in that horrible way before he’d gotten the chance to grow older and wiser. It tormented him.

‘I want to see a priest,’ he said. ‘Light a candle for Pikey. Make my confession.’

‘You can’t,’ said Rory, his face draining of colour at the thought of it. He was all too aware of Don’s reputation. Rufus had screwed over a man who would never forget, never forgive. He reckoned Don would hunt Rufus until his dying day. He couldn’t tell Rufus that, and he wondered if Rufus knew it. He was acting as if he didn’t. Or as if he didn’t care. But Rory had a pregnant wife, he had Megan. He
had
to stop this. ‘The neighbours are going berserk with curiosity as it is, wondering who we’ve got in here. You daren’t go out.’

‘Still, I’d like to.’ Rufus felt uneasy at what had happened. He felt responsible for Pikey’s unhappy end, and killing Pardew had been a sin after all. He knew it was stupid, but he’d always been the same. He was Catholic, even if he
was
a crook. He needed to make his peace with God.

‘We’ll see, OK?’ Rory said quickly. ‘See how you feel in a week or so. Then, if we can, we’ll sort something out.’

Rory went off downstairs, clutching his head as he entered the front room.
‘Shit,
’ he said forcefully.

‘What is it?’ Megan glanced up from the sofa.

Rory looked at his wife. She was still pretty, huge with the child though she was. His sweet Megan. He felt a surge of love for her, felt the need to protect her.

‘Rufus wants to go to see a priest,’ he said. ‘Make his confession.’

Megan straightened. ‘He can’t.’

‘I told him. He said even so, he’d like to.’

‘And what did you say to that?’

‘That we’d see in a little while.’

‘No! It can’t be done. Rory, as soon as he’s fit enough to travel, he should be out of here. You’re his friend. If he values you at all, he ought to realize the danger he’s putting you in.’

‘He should, but I don’t think he does.’ Rory sat down beside her, pulled her into his arms. ‘I don’t know what to do.’

‘Don’t you?’ Megan drew away from him, her face hard. ‘Well, I do. He’s going to get us all done for if he carries on at this rate. I want him
gone
.’ Her face softening slightly, she continued: ‘Rory, you’re a loyal man, a great friend. But there’s a point where loyalty gets stretched beyond breaking. Think of me, your wife. Think – for the love of God – of your
child
.’

‘I know, I know,’ he sighed.

‘Phone the Garda,’ said Megan.

‘What?’ Rory sprang back from her, leapt to his feet. ‘Are you mad? I can’t do that.’

‘Rory . . .’

‘No! I won’t hear of it. Call the police on my oldest friend? Don’t ever say that again.’

And he went off out to the kitchen.

Megan sat there, alone. Her eyes drifted to the phone book. She wondered how many D. Callaghans there were in there. Not that many, she imagined.

Not many at all.

14

A week later, Rufus slipped out of the house as discreetly as he could and went to St Vincent de Paul, the nearest Catholic church. He moved up the aisle and to the side of the vast building, his footsteps echoing. The priest was at the altar, kneeling, communing with his God. Rufus felt better just for being in here. He went to the little confessional and slipped inside, pulling the door closed behind him.

He waited.

Presently, the priest came into the box next door. The screen slid back between the two compartments, and Rufus could see a shadowy figure sitting there alongside him.

‘Bless me, Father,’ he said haltingly. ‘Forgive me. For I have sinned.’

‘What is the nature of your sinning, my son?’ asked the priest.

Rufus hesitated. But the confessional was sacrosanct. Any secrets divulged here would remain secret for ever.

‘I have committed a terrible sin, Father. I have killed a man.’

The priest was silent. Then he said: ‘Tell me.’

Rufus poured it all out. He mentioned no names, but he confessed to the killing of Pardew, and to his great remorse over the accidental death of Pikey. Even as he spoke of it, he felt lighter, better. He’d done the right thing, coming here. He knew it.

The priest told him what penance he had to perform. ‘Now go, my son, and sin no more.’

Rufus emerged from the church into a soft day, all drizzle and cloudy skies, but he felt as if he was bathed in warm, forgiving sunlight. He hurried along the road towards Rory’s house, but pulled up sharply when he saw the car there, and two big men standing at Rory’s door talking to Megan.

The relief he’d felt since the confession deserted him in an instant. He ducked behind a high wall, but as he did he saw Megan’s head turning, and her hand rising to point in his direction. The cow had seen him.

The men turned. Rufus recognized Col Ballard, one of Don’s enforcers. The other man was unknown to him. In an instant, they were on the move, running out of the gate and after him.

Rufus fled. Megan had betrayed him. Not Rory,
never
Rory, he knew that.

The men chased him through the streets and over garden fences.
Jesus, won’t they give it up?
he wondered, trying the handle of a door set into a garden wall. It opened and, panting, done in, still weak from his wound, he stepped into a deserted yard. On the other side of the wall he heard the pounding of footsteps, then voices. He prayed they wouldn’t open the door.

‘Where the feck did he go?’ gasped one.

‘That way,’ said the other, and then he heard their footsteps running away into the distance.

He’d lost them. For a moment there he’d thought he was a dead man, yet here he was, still in one piece.

God be praised.

Rufus staggered to his feet, opened the door and ran in the opposite direction to the one the men had taken. He was finished here. There was no one he could truly count on any more, not even his oldest and dearest friend.

It was time to get out of Ireland. Try his luck across the water in England. He had cousins there, they were big news in criminal circles. Best of all, Don wouldn’t have such an easy time tracing him there, as he’d managed to do here.

15

Rufus found that London was ripe for the plucking. There were all sorts of scams going down. The big gangs had the town sewn up tight, there was always breaker work on offer, sooner or later everyone needed some muscle at their disposal. But when he went looking for his Delaney cousins, he couldn’t find them.

Only rumours remained. That there had been a shooting and Tory and Pat were long gone. That Kieron was abroad somewhere, no one knew where. And as for the twins, they had gone home to Ireland. The irony of that didn’t escape Rufus. He’d come here, they’d gone there. He’d wanted to see his cousin Orla again. Very badly. And he was disappointed.

The old Delaney manor was now under the control of the Carter mob. Even the tiny bit of Limehouse the rival gangs had been squabbling over for years had fallen into Carter hands. As time went by, he pieced together bits of the story of how that came to be.

‘Christ, it was a right old bang-shoot,’ said Gabby James, one of Rufus’s new drinking buddies. ‘Word is, Redmond and Orla stuck Max Carter’s missus in the bloody crusher – she would’ve been squashed like a grape.’

‘Would have been?’ Rufus was downing a pint of Guinness.

‘The Bill got to her first.’

‘What about Redmond? What about Orla? They’re back in the auld country, are they?’

Gabby puffed out his cheeks and shook his head. ‘I heard they took a plane from Cardiff to Cork, or was it Dublin?’

Rufus thought of the farm in Limerick. ‘Shannon, I would think.’

‘Well, wherever. It never landed.’

‘You
what
?’ Rufus spilled his Guinness. He’d not had much to do with Redmond, but Orla . . . ah God, there was something about Orla that had eaten into his very soul.

‘It was in the papers, what, three years ago? Nineteen seventy it was. Where have you been, on the moon? They reckoned the plane crashed in the Irish Sea. No bodies were ever recovered. Not even a scrap of wreckage.’

Rufus stared into his beer, deeply troubled. He couldn’t bear to think of Orla perishing that way, in the icy churning waters.

‘Rumour has it that while Max Carter was away, his old lady was mucking about with some Mafia type from New York, and that one arranged the crash. Which is entirely possible, it seems to me. You don’t mess around with those people, they’ll have your guts.’

Rufus heaved a sigh. Jesus. Orla, gone. He looked at Gabby. ‘What else do you know about the Carters?’ he asked.

Gabby filled him in.

Rufus felt as if the heart had been knocked out of him. His mind was full of Orla, full of those sunlit days in the garden when they were young and carefree, when he had kissed her. Sadness gripped him to think of her gone for ever. And anger took hold as he thought of the Carters, the trouble they’d brought upon her.

But he had to keep his head down, even over here. If he was going to keep out of Don’s way, it would be better not to make waves. He was safe here, and he could make a life for himself, provided he wasn’t stupid. And he wasn’t, despite what his cousins Tory and Pat had said.

‘Rufus the DOOFUS,’ they used to shout when he’d visit the farm to play. ‘Rufus the DOOFUS!’

Only now he wasn’t a hulking inarticulate thug of a teenager, upset by such goadings. Now, he was a man in his prime. Gang bosses saw his worth and made good use of him. He was a freelancer, a mercenary, hiring himself out to the highest bidder, with no loyalty to anyone but himself. The only gang he would never work for was the Carters. He spat on the ground every time their name was mentioned.

Once, he saw
her
, Annie Carter, sweeping out of a black Jaguar with a bulky bald-headed minder at her side. She was a stunner, he had to admit that. Dark hair falling around her shoulders, the black coat, the heavy shades, the red full mouth set in a grim line. She looked both exceedingly sexy and completely formidable.

The gangster woman.

Married to one gang overlord, Max Carter.

Then married again – to Constantine Barolli, Mafia boss. A bona fide Mafia queen.

And she looked it, every inch of it. Dangerous. Alluring. Expensive.

If she truly was behind the deaths of Orla and Redmond, revenge was on the cards. But that would have to wait. For the time being, he was keeping a low profile. Doing jobs. Breaking a leg or two. Intimidating late payers with his fists or a baseball bat. And always a trip to the confessional afterwards. Time passed in a blur. He was enjoying the city life and the rewards that his choice of career brought him, which were plentiful.

Soon he had his own flat, more willing girls than he could handle, a nice motor. Life was
sweet.

And then, in the way that life does, it all came crashing down on him once again.

16

1980

Rufus had been up to Chingford on a little job, chasing a late payer for one of the Pozo boys. The Pozos were Italian immigrants, avaricious loan sharks. Rufus had to wonder at people allowing themselves to become embroiled in the webs the Pozos spun. Did being poor make you stupid?