Scarlet Women (31 page)

The Delaneys were over so far as Hunter was concerned. He’d got so much evidence against them that the whole firm would be going down for years.

‘We’ve closed all the ports and airports,’ he told her later in the day, when she had been checked out at the hospital and Tony had been found groggy but unscathed in one of the breaker’s yard other outbuildings.

They had both been given a clean bill of health, and told they ought to stay in overnight. Both had refused, despite the fact that they had sore heads, Annie’s ankle was bruised, and her face bore several scratches from all the flying glass.

‘We’ll get them,’ Hunter assured her. ‘They’ll be behind bars soon.’

Annie didn’t believe it. It was too easy to slip in and out of the country, if you really wanted to and had the means to do it. For now, anyway,
their rule was over. Deaf Derek, the treacherous bastard, had fled. The cops had nearly caught Charlie Foster, but only
nearly.
He’d given them the slip. Fuck it: they’d all got away with it.

She felt robbed. Behind bars was too good for those bastards, anyway. They’d tried to kill her, they’d nearly taken Layla’s mother from her; banging them up would almost be like letting them off. All right, her contacts could get to them even on the inside, but she wanted
revenge.
She wanted to see them suffer, right in front of her eyes. She wanted it
done.

Still shaken by her ordeal, she was grateful to the cops who dropped her back at the club, and drove Tony back to his flat. They were lucky to be alive. She knew that. Death had been
this
close. She sat in the flat, her newly refurbished club beneath her, and thought:
I could be dead right now.
She thought of opening night on Saturday, a big celebration, and she might never have seen it thanks to those fucking Delaneys. They had to be caught. Had to be put down, like the crazed animals they were.

She looked around the small sitting room of her flat, at the mounds of beautiful red roses Constantine had sent her. Suddenly the scent of them was suffocating. They could have been decorating her
grave
, if things had gone as Redmond and Orla had planned.

Anger stung her at the thought of that. Of what they could have inflicted on her, and Tony, and Layla. Of what Redmond had inflicted on Mira. She thought of Orla’s denial over Aretha. Oh, she so
wanted
it to be Orla who she could pin that on. It would fit, it would be truly neat, she wanted that so much it hurt. But Orla’s words had rung true. That was the awkward thing, the damning thing. She felt strongly that Orla had been telling the truth.

Fuck
it.

So Chris was still in the frame for his wife’s murder. Nothing had changed. Val Delacourt and Teresa Walker were down to that twisted little git Cyrus. Gareth Fuller and Pete Delacourt were down to Redmond. But still Aretha could not rest easy because
still
they didn’t have a clue who had killed her.

A tall red haired woman
, Sir William had said.

The phone rang. Annie snatched it up.

‘When are we going to do dinner and talk?’ said Constantine.

She sat down on the couch with a thump.

Dinner!

‘There’s something I need to talk to you about,’ he said.

‘There’s something I want to talk to you about, too,’ she said.

‘Tomorrow night? Eight? I’ll send the car.’

‘It can’t wait until tomorrow night,’ she said shakily, and told him all about what had happened at the Delaneys’ yard.

He was silent, taking it all in. Redmond Delaney had gone against her and in doing that he had gone against Constantine too. ‘So what are you going to do now?’ he asked her.

She felt peeved at him. He’d said nothing. She had expected outrage, a fierce surge of protectiveness towards her. What she
hadn’t
expected was that he should be so fucking calm about it all.

‘What, like you care? Ain’t you even mad that you wouldn’t have gone on getting your sex on tap, if I’d got done?’ she demanded, feeling so irritated at his lack of response that she could have screamed.

‘
What
?’

‘And while we’re on the subject, it would be really fucking convenient for you, wouldn’t it? Me in the penthouse in Manhattan, all neatly tucked away. No family rucks over
that
, I suppose. Course you’d have to keep me on the Pill—Christ, what
would
they think if you had a kid off me?’ She dragged a hand through her hair. ‘Look, I’ll catch you later,’ she said, and hung up the phone.

Then she went to the sideboard and rummaged in the drawer, ignoring the phone when it rang again. It would be him. And, right now, she was too damned angry, too hyped up by all that had happened to her
to speak to him. She found Sir William’s business card and waited for the phone to stop ringing. Then she dialled the number on it.

He picked up at once. ‘Hello?’

‘How tall was the red-haired woman, did your man say? Aretha was a six-footer.’
And Orla Delaney’s only five foot six.

‘Is that you, Mrs Carter? Well…he said she was at least as tall as the woman she was clearly following. Perhaps taller.’

‘Over six feet tall? That’s big for a woman.’

‘Nevertheless, that’s what he said. He particularly noticed the woman’s height, because it was unusual, just as your friend’s height was unusual.’

Orla really didn’t do it.

Annie thought of Teresa Walker’s mother. Tall. Gaunt. Red-haired. Sitting there stroking her Bible, a mad gleam in her eyes. Aretha was connected to Teresa and they shared a mutual love of money. Yeah. At last. She
had
it.

‘Thanks, Sir William, that’s all I wanted to know.’

‘A pleasure, my dear. If I can be of any further assistance…’

He hung up. She dialled through to the police station, but Hunter was out.

Annie stalked around the apartment, thinking. She had escaped death thanks only to Hunter’s sharp thinking, to his nose for trouble. She couldn’t
just sit here, watch some telly, eat a meal, behave normally. She had to do something.

She looked at the roses. She picked out a bunch of twenty, wrapped them in yesterday’s newspaper. Picked up her keys and her bag, and left the flat, left the club. Out in the street, she hailed a cab and told the driver where she wanted to go.

The house at Harrow was quiet, as usual. But this time there was no heavy on the door, and that surprised her. She knocked, and the white-coated nurse opened it.

‘Ah,’ she said, as Annie pushed past her.

‘Yeah, me again,’ said Annie, already trotting up the stairs.

‘I have to talk to you,’ said the woman, following Annie up.

‘Look, I don’t want to hear about bad nights and bad days and all that shit. I’ve had a pretty bad day, too. I’ve had a pretty fucking bad
year
, actually, don’t give me earache, I don’t…’

Annie had flung open the door at the top of the stairs and now she stood frozen in the doorway, looking at the empty bed. She turned and stared at the nurse as she reached the top of the stairs.

‘What the…?’ started Annie.

‘That’s why I wanted to talk to you,’ said the woman.

‘Where the hell is she? Has she run off again?
Jesus, you people are supposed to be watching her!’

Then a worse thought occurred. Had Redmond somehow managed to track Mira to this address? Had he found Mira? Had he taken her away?

‘We have been watching her, I assure you.’ There was a glint of something other than hostility in the woman’s eyes now. ‘Look, I’m sorry. She didn’t make it.’

‘Didn’t…’ Annie echoed faintly. She turned and looked at the empty bed again. She shook her head. ‘No…’

‘I’m sorry,’ said the nurse, and there was compassion in her eyes. ‘I don’t think she wanted to go on. She…she must have been hoarding up sleeping pills, stashing them away…’

‘You
what
?’

‘She…she overdosed. We lost her during the night.’

Annie looked down at the red roses clutched in her arms. She looked at the empty bed. At the nurse.

‘No,’ she said again.

Mira,
she thought.
For God’s sake, couldn’t you have just held on? You came through so much, why did you have to give up now?

‘I’m sorry,’ the nurse said again, her eyes avoiding Annie’s.

Annie took a breath. She looked down at the roses again; roses for life, for love. Neither of which
Mira was going to know about, not any more. She held them out to the nurse with a gesture of barely suppressed fury.

‘Here. You have them.’

‘Oh, I don’t…’

‘
Take
them.’ Annie slapped the flowers into the nurse’s arms.

She took one last look at the empty bed, swallowed hard past a sudden choking lump in her throat, then went past the nurse and back down the stairs.

‘Thank you,’ the nurse’s voice drifted after her, but she was already down in the hall, going out of the front door and down the path to the road, her heart like a block of ice in her chest, her head full of hatred.

She didn’t blame that stupid nurse for this.
Redmond
had killed Mira, as surely as if he had throttled her during one of his loathsome sex games, as surely as if he had put a gun to her head and pulled the trigger. And he’d got away. He’d
got away.

At eleven the next morning, Tony drove Annie over to Soho in a borrowed Rover.

‘This is dog rough,’ he complained the minute she got in. ‘I hate this fucking car, pardon my French, Boss. The Jag had
class.
Look at this cheap trim, and what colour do they call the exterior, what is that,
beige
or something? Beige with a black roof, that looks like a frigging abortion. They call this a “compact executive” car. Well it don’t look very executive to
me.
’

‘It’ll do for now,’ said Annie. It was obvious that Tony was feeling no after-effects from his experiences with the Delaneys, and that was good. ‘We’ll get another car, a better one.’

That seemed to placate him. Annie explained what they were doing today. They pulled up outside the tattoo parlour. Annie thought of Pete Delacourt, the tattooed freak, another victim of
Redmond’s obsessive pursuit of Mira Cooper. She had relived time and again that moment when she’d found him dead in the Delaney yard.

They walked around the side until they reached the back entrance to the Alley Cat club. They went in, went to the dressing room they knew he’d be in. Tony opened the closed door, and they walked in on Bobby Jo, all glammed up in long red wig and sparkly blue dress, getting busy with a blonde club hostess wearing nothing but a frilly skirt, stockings and high-heeled shoes.

‘What the fucking hell?’ demanded Bobby Jo, while the girl let out a screech and covered her oversized naked breasts with her hands.

‘Sorry to interrupt your knee-trembler, Bobby Jo, but I want a word,’ said Annie. She turned her attention to the girl. ‘Out,’ she said.

The blonde shot past Annie and Tony like a bullet. Tony closed the door after her, leaving them with one enraged drag queen, a visibly wilting hard-on pressing up against the front of his sequinned frock.

‘You’ve got a fucking
nerve
, coming in here again,’ Bobby Jo started in, looming over Annie.

Tall and red-haired. But not a woman at all.

‘Tone,’ said Annie, and stepped back.

Tony hit Bobby Jo square on the jaw. Bobby Jo shot back against his dressing table, scattering blusher and foundation. He jumped up again,
though, and came at Tony with an inexpert swing. Tony blocked the blow easily and delivered a better one to Bobby Jo’s nose. Then he followed through with another to the stomach.

Bobby Jo doubled over, blood cascading down his blue dress. Tony brought his knee up and it crunched into the centre of Bobby Jo’s face. Bobby Jo staggered back, floundered against the dressing table, sweeping off more bits and pieces of the trade—his brushes, a pair of falsies, a tub of face powder that plumed up all around them like a dust storm in a desert.

Tony went back in.

‘No!’ burbled Bobby Jo past a mouthful of blood. He shrank back against the table, one of his false eyelashes hanging off, blood all over his face and down his dress.

Tony smacked him again.

Annie watched impassively. She felt sick inside, but the bastard
deserved
this. This, and more.

When Bobby Jo was on his knees, she nodded to Tony.

Tony drew back.

Annie stepped forward and stood in front of Bobby Jo.

‘Now,’ she said. ‘Tell me why you killed Aretha Brown.’

‘I didn’t, I don’t know what—’

Annie stepped aside and Tony moved back in,
twisting Bobby Jo’s arms up behind his back until he shrieked.

‘I didn’t, I didn’t…’ he was babbling, his face a mask of blood and make-up, his red wig askew.

‘You want my friend here to take you apart bit by bit?’ she asked. ‘Because believe me, he will. Until you start telling the truth.’

‘But I didn’t, I didn’t do nothing…’ he sobbed.

Tony wrenched harder.

Bobby Jo screamed.

‘No! Don’t! All right, I’ll tell you! I’ll tell you!’

Tony held him there. Any more lies, he’d get more.

Annie pulled up a chair and stared at the grotesque, ruined face without pity. After all, what pity had
he
shown?

‘Tell me,’ she said.

‘It…it was that cow Teresa. I was fucking her, you know I was,’ he was babbling.

‘Yeah, I know. Move on.’

‘I’ve got a…a thing going, a long-term thing, with Selma Callow who owns a share of the club. She’s a jealous woman. Wants to keep me all to herself.’

Fat chance of that, by the look of things
, thought Annie.

‘So?’

‘Teresa walked in on us once in here,’ said Bobby Jo, tears and blood running in rivers down his
face. ‘She was such a little chancer. I told you about her, passing round fucking business cards inside the club, pushing her luck.’ He paused, coughed, spluttered. ‘But I was turking her sometimes so I overlooked the problem…’

She looked at him with distaste. ‘And?’

‘She was friends with this Aretha Brown. Said they met at church or some damned mad thing. Teresa in a church! Crazy. But that’s what she said, and it was
her
idea, this Brown woman, to blackmail me.’

Aretha and her love of money
, thought Annie. ‘Go on,’ she told him.

‘I can’t, I can’t…’ He was panting, doubled over. Tony gave him a tweak. Bobby Jo yelled and straightened up. ‘All right! I thought they’d drop it after a couple of payouts…but they didn’t. They just kept coming back for more. I didn’t know what the fuck to do: if Selma found out I was dead in the water. Out of the best job I’ve ever had; out of the flat she bought me. I’d lose my car. She said if I ever cheated on her she’d see me dead, and I believed her. You don’t know what she’s like. She’s an obsessive bitch, she’s fucking scary. I was frantic. And then…Teresa was killed. I tell you, that was my lucky bloody day.’

‘Keep going,’ said Annie when he slumped again.

‘Think I’m going to be sick…’ he panted,
turning his hideous painted face aside and spitting out teeth and blood on to the carpet.

‘Keep going,’ she said again.

‘
Jesus…’

‘
Keep going.
’

‘Teresa was killed like the other one.’

‘Val Delacourt.’

‘That one, yeah. So Teresa was gone, and that was good news. I relaxed. Thought it was all over. Then that Aretha Brown came calling, saying it was
not
over, that she was going to keep taking payments from me, and she upped them, upped them a
lot.
I was desperate then, I didn’t know what to do…’

Oh fuck it, Aretha, was the damned money
that
important, really? Important enough to die for?

Bobby Jo hunched over, and with a convulsive movement was sick. The stench of vomit filled the little room. Gasping, he straightened again. Annie watched him steadily, her stomach knotted up with revulsion.

‘Then I…oh shit…I worked out a plan. The Delacourt woman and Teresa had been garrotted, it was in all the papers, and I thought if I made it look the same, then I could get rid of the Brown bitch the same way and…’ Bobby Jo paused, gasping down a breath, ‘…and the police would think it was the same man who’d done all three. They’d never suspect. I’d be home and dry.’

And Chris would have rotted in prison.

Annie stood up, weary and disgusted.

‘Now you’re going to tell all that to the Bill,’ she said. ‘And you’re going to serve time.’

Bobby Jo was shaking his head, his bloody mouth twisted into a ravaged smile. ‘No! You got this out of me with your pet ape beating lumps off me: that won’t stand up.’

Annie drew in close to the wreck in front of her, her face set with rage. She grabbed the wig and threw it aside. Grabbed the skullcap and his own hair through it. Wrenched his head back.

‘Now you listen to me, you arsehole,’ she spat. ‘You’re telling the police what you just told us. This ain’t negotiable. You die—
now
—or you confess to what you done. Tell them you fell down the stairs or a jealous husband beat you up, some crap like that. Then you keep your head down, you do your time. Inside or outside, my boys can reach you. Inside or outside, you step out of line just once and I’m telling you—you’re
fucked.
’

She let him go, breathing hard. She stepped past him to the dressing table and snatched up the phone. She dialled. When it was answered, she said, ‘DI Hunter please,’ and gave Tony the nod.

He let go of Bobby Jo. She put the phone into Bobby Jo’s shaking hand and stood over him while he confessed to the murder of Aretha Brown.

When she got back to the club, the phone was ringing. She picked up. It was Constantine.

‘Okay, what?’ she demanded.

‘What do you mean, okay, what? Where do you get off, talking to me like that?’

‘Fuck you,’ she said, and hung up.

The phone rang again. She snatched it up. ‘I
said
I had an apartment in Manhattan, that’s all,’ he said. ‘What, did you think I was propositioning you, making some sort of indecent suggestion?’

No, I thought you were tucking me away out of sight of your family. As if I was something shameful, something sordid, to be hidden away.

She couldn’t say that. She was too
proud
to say that.

‘I wasn’t doing that,’ he said.

‘No? Your family hate me.’

‘I don’t care.’

‘Well
I
do. Only Alberto’s nice to me, and I’m starting to wonder why, when all the others detest me and don’t bother to hide it.’

‘They’ll come around. Give it time.’

‘Ha!’ Annie put the phone down. It rang again. She snatched it up. ‘I don’t want to talk about this,’ she said.

‘You silly bitch, I’m asking you to marry me,’ said Constantine.

Annie sat down suddenly.

‘You still there?’ he asked.

‘Yeah, I’m still here. And that’s a hell of a way to make a proposal, calling me a silly bitch.’

There was a pause on the other end. ‘And now an answer would be good,’ Constantine said softly.

‘I’ll think about it,’ said Annie, and put the phone down in a state of shock.