Playing Dead (37 page)

‘Why?’ she demanded shakily. ‘Why have you done this? Why did you get me here?’

‘Because I told him to,’ said a female voice from behind her.

She half turned and saw Cara standing there.

Chapter 74

‘Yeah, it’s me,’ said Cara gloatingly. ‘Favourite
only
daughter of Constantine Barolli, his best girl . . . that was, until
you
came along. For God’s sake, all he had to do was take you to bed. He didn’t have to go and
marry
you.’

Annie stared at her stepdaughter. ‘What, so now you think you’ll alter that?’ she said, thinking fast.
Keep her talking, keep her talking . . .

‘Now I’m going to
definitely
alter it,’ said Cara.

‘Bit late,’ said Anne. ‘Your father’s dead. Whatever happens to me, you’re not going to get him back. You’re never going to be his “best girl” again.’

‘Yeah. But then I haven’t been his best girl in a long time,’ said Cara, almost wistfully. ‘When I asked him to do something about Rocco, I knew then that I’d lost him. That he was too preoccupied with you to bother about what was happening to me.’

‘What did you ask him to do about Rocco?’ asked Annie.
Jesus, she had to keep thinking, keep talking . . .

‘I wanted him dead,’ said Cara bluntly. ‘And Papa wouldn’t do it.’

‘So who did it then?’ Annie saw again Rocco’s poor body floating, hideously mutilated, in the Holland Park pool, the cold relentless rain sheeting down upon him.

‘My friend here.’ Cara was smiling slightly, looking smug.

Jesus, she really is demented. Rotten to the core.

The freak looked pleased with himself. He grinned. The effect was monstrous, disgusting.

‘He and Rocco were lovers. I wanted Papa to kill Rocco because of it. But he wouldn’t hear of it. It would upset the Mancinis. So I got Frances to do it.’

Annie was thinking frantically, making connections.

Jesus. That was it.

‘And before that, what did you get Fredo to do?’ she guessed. ‘Why would you let Fredo hump you like a dog? I saw you, and you looked like you were about to throw up in disgust. You were letting him have you so he’d do other things for you. Back at the house in Montauk, I remember you coming in one night looking frantic and dishevelled. He’d just had you, isn’t that right? You were giving him sexual favours in exchange for . . . oh God yes! – you were letting him have sex with you because Constantine wouldn’t take revenge on Rocco and you wanted
Fredo
to get revenge for you.’

‘What’s she talking about?’ asked the freak.

‘Nothing,’ said Cara, but her smug smile had slipped a notch.

‘How’d you get like this, Frances?’ asked Annie, indicating his face. ‘Someone come out of a dark alley at you? Someone like Cara’s lapdog Fredo, who couldn’t touch Rocco but who
could
touch
you
?’

The freak’s smile was gone too. He was glancing between Annie and Cara. Finally, his eyes settled on Cara. ‘But . . . Cara didn’t do this to me. It was Rocco.’

‘Shut up,’ said Cara to Annie.

‘It was probably Fredo, her lapdog. You really think Rocco had it in him to inflict this? I don’t. But Cara? Oh, yeah –
she
would.’

‘
Just shut up!
’ Cara shouted.

‘What’s she saying? Did you . . . do this to me . . .?’ Frances was asking, touching his ruined face.

Cara turned to him, seemed almost to debate the point.

‘Look,’ she said finally. ‘All right. Fredo did it. But
not
on my say-so. I was horrified when he told me what he’d done. I wanted
Rocco
to suffer, not you, not anyone else. Just Rocco.’

Liar
, thought Annie. She didn’t think Cara would care who she had pain inflicted on, just so long as someone paid in blood for her loss of dignity.

‘Let’s face it, Cara,’ said Annie, ‘you’ve been yanking everyone’s chain and it’s all gone wrong for you. You don’t even know which way is up any more, do you?’

‘Just
shut up
, will you?’ she snarled.

‘I don’t know . . .’ said Frances. He was looking at Cara as if seeing her clearly for the first time. ‘I loved Rocco. Really loved him, and he just
rejected
me like I was nothing.’

‘Well, he would,’ said Cara. ‘All Rocco ever cared about was looks. And if you didn’t have
that
, what use would you be?’

‘You’re right,’ said Frances. ‘So I
wanted
to kill him, that bastard Rocco! If I hadn’t got involved with him, this would never have happened to me.’

‘You might want to step back from involvement with his sister, too,’ suggested Annie. ‘Before anything worse kicks off.’

Jesus, she was standing here with a pair of nutters who wouldn’t think twice about murdering anyone who got in their way.

‘What do you mean?’ Frances was watching her intently. His tongue snaked out, moistening his lips.

‘Don’t listen to her,’ said Cara. ‘Shoot the bitch.’

‘I
mean
that she likes to get even,’ said Annie. ‘And so far, she hasn’t got fully even with you.’

‘What?’

‘You humiliated her by having an affair with her husband. Just having your face sliced in half isn’t enough. She had to sleep with Fredo her driver to get him to deal with the problem you created, and she won’t forgive you for that.’ Annie looked at him. ‘You might be useful for now, but soon you won’t be, and then I’d watch your back if I were you.’

Cara was staring at her stepmother with stony intensity.

‘That explosion should have got you too,’ she said, every word filled with hatred.

Annie swallowed hard. Spoilt little Cara. When Constantine had refused to deal with Rocco for her, he’d signed his own death warrant. Where were the police when you needed them? How long could it take for them to respond to Jenny’s call?

‘Well, it got your father,’ she said, trying to work some spittle into her mouth and failing. ‘It got him, just as you intended. How the hell could you do that?’

‘Easily,’ said Cara, hard-eyed. ‘I got Frances the security pass to the house grounds, he got the grenades and passed them to me outside. Everyone’s searched when they enter the grounds at the Montauk house, but never me, never the family. He came in as a maintenance man and while he was replacing some of the boards out on the deck, he set the booby-trap ready to explode.’

‘And you wouldn’t have cared if it had gone off later in the evening and killed Lucco and Daniella and a few of the other guests too, would you? Just so long as the job got done.’

‘I
loved
him,’ said Cara, her voice catching on a sob. ‘I loved Papa. But he wouldn’t do anything for me. It was always the sons. Lucco and Alberto.
Never
me. Never the girl – I didn’t matter. He had Lucco to take over from him, he had Alberto in reserve. That was all that mattered. But
I
was the one with the balls and the determination. I could have been a
great
Don. But I was
just a girl.
’

Annie stared at her, feeling sick.

‘That bomb
should
have killed you both. What are you, charmed or something? You lived through that, and then Frances couldn’t even fucking
suffocate
you in the hospital without the cavalry charging in to save you. And then when he shot at you in London he hit Nico by mistake. That fucking Nico got the bullet, not you.’

So it had been Cara behind all that; and Frances was the one who had been staring down at her as she lay pinned beneath Nico’s dead body outside the club, taking aim . . .

‘But you know what?’ Cara went on. ‘It doesn’t matter. Because you’re dead anyway. As of
now.
Do it, Frances.’

Frances hesitated.

‘I said
do it
,’ yelled Cara.

This time he obeyed. He stepped forward, pulling something from beneath his coat. Annie looked and felt her bowels turn to mush. The freak was holding a crossbow. And he was pointing it straight at her heart.

Chapter 75

‘Let her have it,’ said Cara, cold-eyed.

But Frances was shaking his head.

‘We won’t do it out here,’ said Frances. He gestured with the weapon for Annie to move. ‘Someone might see. Over there. There’s an empty box.’

‘I’m not going anywhere,’ said Annie, although her voice was shaking and she was half dead with fright.

‘As you wish,’ he said, and raised the crossbow again to direct its bolt straight to her heart.

‘Wait,’ said Annie. ‘All right. I’m moving. Okay?’

She started to walk towards the loose box at the end of the yard. Better to appear co-operative for the moment, if only to buy time.

But time for what?
she wondered frantically.

Had Jenny phoned the police as instructed? She’d been worried about wasting police time. Jenny was timid, uncertain at the best of times. Perhaps she hadn’t done it. But if she had, would they take her seriously, would they come? Maybe Josh or someone else, one of the stable lads, would come out into the yard? Fuck it, didn’t they have security, didn’t they have
anything?
It didn’t look like it.

‘Hurry it up,’ said Cara impatiently.

Can’t wait to see me dead. And what can I do to stop her?

She dawdled as much as she could, but now she was at the door of the box. She glanced hopefully around the yard. There was no one about. No one to help.
But she had the knife.

She’d have to get in close, really close, to use it to any effect, and they were keeping their distance, ushering her into the box now, pulling the bottom half of the stable door closed, then the top half.

Inside the box, they were plunged into gloom. Straw whispered around their feet as they moved and its clean, grassy scent rose like a country perfume. For a moment, it was hard to see anything at all, and then Annie could see faint outlines. Could see Cara, her golden hair flowing onto her shoulders, her dreamy blue eyes suddenly manic with purpose. And the freak, still pointing the crossbow at her chest.

She was inside, she was at their mercy.

She was finished.

Frances raised the crossbow.

She had nothing left to lose. She pulled out the knife and ran at the freak, some sort of sound coming out of her mouth, some wild cry. He saw the dim wicked flash of the knife’s blade coming at him and stumbled back instinctively, firing the crossbow at the same time. It shot off, missing her by a mile. Then he recovered himself and grabbed the wrist holding the knife, dropping the crossbow in the process.

Someone was screaming close by.

For a moment, Annie thought that she was making the noises herself.

The freak was grappling with her, trying to squeeze the knife out of her hand, but she was holding on, holding on for grim death, because once he got that off her, then he could use it – and if he did that she really was fucked.

He was a lot stronger than her. There was only going to be one winner in this wrestling match, she knew it. She was only surprised that Cara didn’t wade in too, get her from behind.

‘Holy
shit
,’ she heard herself moan, as the pressure on her wrist increased to agonizing levels.

He was going to get the knife off her, he was going to kill her. Nothing she could do to stop him now. Nothing at all. She felt her grip on the knife starting to loosen.

She was going to drop it.

He was going to snatch it up, slit her throat with it.

She was done.

And then, when she felt there was no way she could fight any longer, no way she could hold onto the blade and prevent him taking it, the door crashed in, splintering off its hinges, and Alberto and Max burst into the box.

Chapter 76

Max grabbed Frances and cuffed him hard with the barrel of the Smith & Wesson revolver he was holding. Frances fell back onto the straw. Max kicked him viciously in the ribs and then snatched up the dropped crossbow, flinging it out of the door. It clattered onto the cobbles of the yard.

‘Holy shit,’ said Gary Tooley, surging into the box with Steve Taylor at one shoulder and another heavy at the other.

She looked around her, dazed, shattered, thinking that she had been so sure she was going to die and now Max was here, and Alberto . . .

Where was he? Where had Alberto gone . . .?

She looked around. He was on his knees in the straw beside Cara. She was lying there, panting, groaning. With shocked eyes, Annie saw that there was a crossbow bolt protruding from Cara’s side.

‘Cara,’ Alberto was saying, leaning over his sister, his face anguished.

He looked up at Annie. ‘What’s going on?’

Annie said wearily, ‘Your dad. Rocco. It was her. It was all her. Her and this
freak.
’

‘No. I don’t believe it,’ he moaned, and turned back to Cara.

Her eyes were open, wide with horror, and she was staring up at his face.

‘He
shot
me,’ she said weakly. ‘She ran at him . . . oh shit . . . the bloody thing just went off. It should have been
her.
’

‘Don’t talk,’ said Alberto. He turned and shouted: ‘Send for an ambulance! Hurry!’

Annie saw one of the heavies run for the house.

And where were the police?

‘Take him,’ said Max, pulling Frances roughly to his feet and shoving him towards Steve and Gary. They hauled him away, bleating about he’d done nothing, it was all her, it was her who was crazy, not him.

‘Shut your fucking mouth,’ said Steve, dragging him off.

Then Frances was pulling a grenade from his pocket, holding it aloft. Steve and Gary stepped quickly back.

‘Keep away!’ yelled Frances, his eyes mad with fear and excitement. ‘Keep back or I’ll pull the pin.’

Annie stared at him, feeling sick. Grenades. It had been grenades that had killed Constantine, killed her child. She moved towards the door, but Max yanked her back.