Black Widow. Jessie Keane
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about to say this twice. I’m Mrs Max Carter. And you’d better cut out the fucking crap. Max isn’t here but I am, and I’m taking over for him. You’d better not have a problem with that, Kath. You’d better get your arse in gear and pass the word to Jimmy, fast.’
Annie slammed the phone down, breathing hard.
‘That’s her told,’ said Dolly. ‘And about time too, the mouthy cow. Where you off to, then?’
‘The Palermo. And the Shalimar, and the Blue Parrot.’
Dolly nodded.
Max Carter’s three clubs.
Now, with Max gone, they belonged to Annie Carter. And so did his manor.
The first thing Vita Byrne saw when she opened the trap door on the disused hen house was a pair of very angry dark green eyes staring up at her.
Shit!
She slammed the door shut.
‘For fuck’s sake,’ she said to Danny, her brother, who had just come out from the kitchen and was staring at her. ‘You couldn’t have given her enough of that stuff, she’s awake! You fucking idiot.’
‘Hey, how do I know how much to use on a kid?’ he demanded. ‘I didn’t want to give her too much, I didn’t want to kill her, now did I?’
‘I thought she was going to be drugged up. I thought she was going to be out of it. And now she’s seen my fucking face,’ whined Vita.
‘Will you shut up? And will you put your fucking hood on, and why didn’t you have it on in the first place? That way she wouldn’t have seen your stupid face, for God’s sake.’
‘Don’t have a go at me,’ said Vita. ‘You got the dose wrong.’
‘Look, she’s a kid. I gave her what I thought was enough but not too much ’cos that could have killed her, and that wouldn’t be very clever now, would it? She’s no fucking use to us dead. What I’m saying is, she won’t know you anyway, so will you for the love of God calm down?’
‘Yeah, it’s all very well for you to say calm down, but it wasn’t your face she saw, was it?’ yelled Vita, getting good and mad and also a bit panicky.
Because for sure the little girl had seen her face. She didn’t think Danny was taking that point quite seriously enough.
‘She’s a little kid,’ said Danny with a bored tone in his voice. ‘She won’t know your face.’
‘Yeah, but Da—’
‘Shut up.’ Now Danny was getting mad too. His stupid sister had been about to blurt his name out. A kid might forget a face, but a name might stick in her memory; she might repeat it when she got free—if she got free—and then people would come knocking. All of which was a situation Danny Byrne hoped to avoid.
‘Don’t keep telling me to shut up,’ said Vita.
Everything about this was upsetting her. It was all too much. She hadn’t expected that they were actually going to kill people, and she still felt sort of sick to her stomach about that. And most particularly about what Danny had done to the man and the woman in the little villa by the gate. He had seemed to glory in their terror, to get high on it; he had laughed and played in the blood like a kid in a bubble bath. Whenever she thought of it, she felt nauseous and afraid. She’d always known Danny was crazy, but now she thought he was really sick in the head, and dangerous.
‘Look, no names,’ Danny was saying to her. ‘We never say names in the girl’s hearing, remember? Got that?’
‘Yeah, okay,’ said Vita sulkily. ‘Where’s Ph…where’s he gone, anyway?’
‘To hire the boat.’
‘Jesus, hasn’t he done that yet? I thought this was meant to be a smooth operation.’
‘It’s smooth,’ said Danny.
‘Oh sure it’s smooth. No boat, and she’s seen my face.’
‘Will you for fuck’s sake drop that?’ roared Danny.
Vita flinched and fell silent.
‘My daddy’s going to kick your arse,’ said a tearful, furious little voice from inside the hen house.
Tony was there at a quarter to two, with Max’s beautiful old Mark X Jag all polished up and gleaming. Which was good. Someone was sitting up and taking notice, thought Annie, and not before time. Kath had obviously passed on the message—grudgingly—and Jimmy had acted upon it.
All good.
Not the unqualified support she had hoped for, but the best she was going to get, and that would have to do—for now, at least.
Annie sat in the back of the car and was suddenly overwhelmed by it all. Max’s car. She had sat in here nearly five years ago, with the scent of leather all around her like a comfort blanket, the heady smell of luxury, of Max’s lemon-scented cologne, with Max right there beside her—a strong, seemingly invincible presence.
Not so invincible though, she thought despairingly.
She looked at the empty space where Max should be. And into her mind, suddenly and starkly, came the image of him being pushed off the side of a mountain: falling, bouncing off rocks, lying crumpled and broken and lifeless at the bottom.
Annie shut her eyes and swallowed sickness. Had they stood and laughed while they killed him? Had he—oh God no—had he lain there, fatally injured, suffering, hurting, for hours on end, perhaps days, before he finally died?
She opened her eyes, shuddering, and tried to get hold of herself. She could see Tony’s eyes, watching her in the mirror. Max had valued Tony. Tony was built like a fucking outhouse. He was bald and he was ugly and he wore gold hoop earrings with crucifixes dangling off them, but he followed orders to the letter and he was loyal, Max had always said that.
‘You all right, Mrs Carter?’
‘I’m fine, Tony.’
‘Is Mr Carter coming back soon?’ asked Tony.
‘I dunno, Tony,’ said Annie.
So Jimmy had been as good as his word and hadn’t told the boys the truth—that Max wasn’t going to be coming back, not soon, not ever. Jimmy had kept quiet, as they had agreed he should, and that was good.
All good, thought Annie tiredly as the car glided smoothly through the rain-drenched streets of London’s East End. Oh yeah. Fucking wonderful. Spring was coming, but today it still looked like winter. She looked out at the grimy terraced houses, the people milling around in the sodden grey streets, the shops, the traffic.
She was back.
But everything was different. Everything had moved on.
Ronnie and Reggie Kray had been banged up a year ago for shooting George Cornell, one of the Richardson boys, in the Blind Beggar, and for doing Jack ‘The Hat’ McVitie at Blonde Carol’s.
Yeah, things had changed.
The Beatles had split up. And Dolly had told her that all through this last winter the maxi-skirt had been favoured by trendy London girls over the chillier mini.
Little changes, big changes. Some bad, some good.
Annie feared that, for her, nothing was