Ruthless (20 page)

‘You can stay as long as you like,’ said Ellie. ‘That goes without saying.’

I’m going to lose my job,
thought Layla. She loved her job, it defined her. She loved neat rows of figures, making columns add up. She craved order, and accountancy gave her that.

Yeah, because it’s missing in other areas of your life, right?

‘Telly’s there if you need it,’ said Ellie, desperate to break the uneasy silence. ‘And there’s the radio.’

‘Fine,’ said Layla.

She made no move to start unpacking, settle in. Just stood there, looking lost.

‘Don’t go out if you can avoid it, but if you
do
, you take Chris or Simon or Kyle with you,’ said Ellie.

Layla knew Chris on sight: Simon was a blond mound of muscle, and Kyle had waved her in the door today, dark-haired and barrel-chested, with a broad smile of welcome. She rather liked Kyle.

‘And you don’t ever go out without telling me exactly where you are.’

‘Don’t tell me,’ said Layla. ‘Mum’s orders?’

Ellie smiled but didn’t answer that. ‘Just ask if you need anything,’ she said, going to the door. ‘Oh – and Layla?’

‘Hm?’

‘Probably best if you stick to your room in the evenings,’ said Ellie, and with that she closed the door.

Terrific,
thought Layla.

46

Annie was alone that evening when the police came knocking. She was just sitting there, thinking over what Layla had said before Tony had taken her off to Ellie’s place.

I’ve phoned Dad.

Shit. If there was one thing she didn’t need, didn’t
ever
need, it was him poking his nose in.

She’d got used to him being on the other side of the world, and she liked it that way. Max had his fingers in quite a few pies still, she knew that. She couldn’t
avoid
knowing. Layla always came home from her Barbados vacations fizzing with joy, keen to impart news of her dad.

Annie didn’t want to hear any of it. She didn’t want to see, either, how lit up her daughter was, how suntanned, happy, exuberant – a different girl almost – simply because she’d been in her father’s company, in her father’s home.

His home.

Well, that was what Barbados was these days. Max lived the life of a wealthy ex-pat, with interests in Barbados, Cuba and the Cayman Islands. He still owned the three London clubs, along with Carter Security, which was now managed by Steve Taylor. The clubs were raking in a fortune and Steve was doing well, pulling in lucrative City contracts and work all the way out to Essex.

Annie sighed. She wouldn’t mind being an ex-pat herself, upping sticks to New York where
her
work was. But then . . . you couldn’t really call the club
work
, not with Sonny running the place so smoothly that she was left with little to do. He was a good manager, honest and diligent. Her occasional flying visits to check up on the place only served to put his nose out of joint; he took it as a lack of trust on her part, an affront to his integrity, when in fact all she was doing was trying to pretend she had a purpose in life.

In London she had nothing to occupy her besides shopping and chewing the fat with her mates. But most of the time they weren’t even free. Dolly and Ellie were both busy women with responsible jobs, so she was often hanging about alone, like a spare part. She would never admit to anyone that she was lonely. And – up until these last few hellish days – she’d been bored witless, too.

It almost came as a relief when Rosa’s knock interrupted her thoughts.

‘Señora Carter?’ The housekeeper’s eyes were wide with worry in the wrinkled folds of her face. ‘
Polícia
.’

Here we go,
thought Annie.
Eyes down, look in.

She stood up. ‘Thanks Rosa. Show them in here, will you?’

Rosa nodded. She ushered in two plain-clothes cops, one an older man, tall, dark-haired, grave-faced, with inky-brown eyes that scanned her like a computer.

The other was a young female, with honey-coloured hair scraped back to display knife-sharp cheekbones and hostile eyes. The girl didn’t
look
like Layla, but something in her buttoned-up manner, her deliberately unflattering choice of hairstyle and strictly unsexy clothes, reminded Annie forcibly of her daughter.

I suppose she’s here in case I faint or something,
thought Annie wryly.

She thought she recognized the older detective. Could be an undertaker, a face like that, with that turned-down trap of a mouth. She hadn’t expected CID this fast in the proceedings, though. She’d assumed uniforms would arrive first.

The senior man flashed his badge.

‘For God’s sake,’ said Annie.

‘Mrs Carter,’ he said.

‘DI Hunter!
Thought
it was you. Long time no see.’

‘I had hoped to continue that absence of contact,’ he said smoothly, taking a seat. ‘And it’s DCI now.’

‘Well, good for you.’

‘This is DI Duggan.’

Annie nodded to the woman. ‘Haven’t seen you in a long time,’ she said, returning her attention to Hunter. He’d aged well. Still looked the business.

‘Is this your car, registration number . . .’ asked DI Duggan, whipping out her notebook and rattling off a number.

‘It is,’ said Annie.

‘And are you aware that it was blown up not far from one of the Carter clubs?’ asked Hunter.

‘Yes.’

‘You drove it there?’

‘Yes.’

He stared at her. ‘You left the scene.’

‘I was shaken up. Had to come home.’

His stare hardened. The Annie Carter he’d known – the one he’d encountered back in the day when some nutter was wasting London prostitutes – wouldn’t have been
shaken up.
That Annie Carter had been too busy throwing her weight around, leaving him and his colleagues playing catch-up while she stalked the streets that she – according to her – owned.

‘No one else was in the car with you, I take it?’

‘No. Nobody.’

‘Yet someone was right there when the bomb exploded. And that person is dead.’

‘That’s terrible.’

‘Isn’t it. We’ve yet to identify the indiv—’

‘As far as I could see, there wasn’t much left of them. Whoever they were. Was anyone else hurt?’

‘Minor injuries, which was lucky. Cuts and scratches. It wasn’t a large explosive device. Only lethal at short range.’

‘Did you talk to Dolly Farrell? The manager of the Palermo.’

‘We did.’

‘Then she’ll have told you that I was with her when it went off, in the office upstairs. I didn’t see anything, I was inside the club.’

‘But you saw the aftermath, obviously.’

‘I did.’

‘And you have no idea who this person might be? The one who died in the blast?’

‘None.’

‘Have you anything you’d like to tell us, Mrs Carter?’

‘Such as?’

‘Such as – oh, let’s see. How about telling us why someone would be trying to kill you?’

‘There’s nothing I can tell you. Nothing I know that you don’t.’

‘And you locked the car when you left it?’

‘Yes. I did.’

‘You’re sure?’ asked Hunter.

‘Perfectly sure. This person who was in the blast,’ said Annie. ‘
You’ve
no idea who he or she is?’

It couldn’t be Redmond. Could it?

Hunter stood up. ‘Not yet. We’ll be in touch, Mrs Carter.’

‘Only that might tell us something important, don’t you think?’ said Annie.

He paused. Seemed to count to ten. ‘Our first and most urgent priority will be to discover the identity of the person who died.’

‘That’s a damned good place to start.’

Hunter glared at her. ‘Don’t give me any trouble, Mrs Carter.’

‘Of course not,’ she said, standing up and moving around the desk as his DI got to her feet too.

Annie escorted them to the drawing-room door and across the hall to the front door. When she opened it, Bri turned and looked at her. She widened her eyes at him.

‘Thanks for coming, DCI Hunter,’ she said as the policeman and his cohort went off down the steps, bypassing Bri with suspicious glances.

‘We’ll be in touch,’ said Hunter, his eyes resting coolly on her face.

‘Look forward to it,’ she said, and went back inside to make a telephone call to the States.

47

Next day everything was quiet at the house. Annie phoned Layla to check that she was OK – which she was – and then spent the rest of the day on tenterhooks, thinking
this is the calm before the storm.

Her mind was a whirl of anxiety after another sleepless night, and when daylight began to stream in through her window she was consumed with dread. Another day of waiting. Followed by another night when she would go to bed in the master suite and think of Orla dying in there. And all the while Redmond might be out there, waiting his chance to come and get her.

She sat alone watching TV late into the evening, putting off the evil hour when she would have to go upstairs. When Rosa tapped on the door, she nearly jumped out of her skin.

‘Señora,’ said Rosa, coming in, smiling.

Annie was clutching a hand to her chest. She had to swallow hard to get her breath. ‘Yeah, Rosa. What is it?’

‘It’s . . .’ started Rosa, then someone stepped past her.

‘It’s your worst nightmare,’ said Max Carter, coming inside, and closing the door behind him.

Annie felt her heart flip. Her chest was so tight it was a struggle to breathe. What had he just said? That he was her worst nightmare?

‘You’re not
quite
my worst nightmare,’ she said coldly, flicking off the TV. ‘You’re flattering yourself. As usual.’

Max came over to the big pair of Knole sofas. He sat down on the vacant one, opposite where Annie herself was sitting. Leaned back. Studied her for a moment. ‘Layla phoned me,’ he said, his dark blue eyes on her face. Annie kept her expression neutral.

She’d been expecting him to arrive ever since Layla had told her she’d been in touch with him, but the reality of it was still a shock. She found herself feeling . . . well, she didn’t know
what
she felt.

Up to this point, contact between them had been practically non-existent. Now here he was, and his physical impact on her was no less than it had ever been. He was still a stunning man, she had to admit that. Fit lean body, black hair, dark tan, hard dark blue eyes that gave him the flashy, dissolute air of a riverboat gambler. He was gorgeous. She could see that, could admit it to herself. And once, that might have made her weaken. But those days were long gone.

‘I know Layla phoned you,’ said Annie. ‘She told me.’

‘She said Orla Delaney broke in here.’

‘That’s right. She did.’

‘She
said
that she shot her.’

‘That’s right too.’

Max frowned. ‘But I
thought
Constantine finished Orla.
And
her brother, that fucker Redmond.’

‘I thought he did too.’

‘The plane crash, did that not take care of it? When was it . . . nineteen seventy?’

‘Yeah.’

‘But how the hell could that be? You’re certain it was Orla?’

Annie took a breath. ‘It was her. No question.’

‘And please explain to me how you allowed my daughter to get hold of a gun, to actually
shoot
someone.’

Annie bristled at his tone. It was accusatory, to say the least.

‘
Your
daughter? Excuse me – she’s mine too. And it happened like this: I heard someone moving about, coming up the stairs. I got your old gun, the .45, and woke Layla. Orla knocked me flat on my arse as she came through the bedroom door. She had a knife. Layla panicked, snatched up the gun and shot her.’

‘I’m not happy at any of this,’ said Max. ‘What sort of crap security you got here? You even switch the house alarm on?’

‘Rosa did it, same as she does every night. Orla cut the wires before she got in through the basement window. And we haven’t needed “security”. Why would we?’

‘See you’ve got one of the boys on the door now.’

Annie nodded. ‘Steve put Bri on there.’

‘And Steve cleared up?’

‘Yes.’

‘Where’s Layla now?’

‘In a safe place, until we know what’s going on here. Did she tell you about the man in the park?’

Max nodded. ‘Why didn’t
you
tell me about that?’

‘I was away when it happened.’

‘Where?’

‘Does it bloody well matter?’

He shrugged.

‘I was in the States.’

‘Right.’

‘On business.’

‘Oh yeah. Business.’

Annie could feel her blood pressure starting to build. Eight years apart, and he could
still
drive her mental.

Why did he always do this to her? Right now she wished she’d never met him. She regretted ever climbing into bed with him, and marrying him that first time when she’d been young and stupid. The only good thing to come out of that was her one and only child, Layla. And to
think
she’d been such a fool as to shed tears when she’d thought him dead.

Then she’d met Constantine, who’d been so much better for her, and she’d married him, but for God’s sake she had to go and lose him too . . . and then Max had reappeared, by some miracle he had survived, and that should have been the happy ending she’d craved but it wasn’t. They’d remarried but he’d been too jealous of Annie’s relationship with Alberto, Constantine’s son, to even see that he was wrecking their lives all over again.

She stared at him, narrow-eyed.

‘And how
is
Golden Boy?’ he asked.

‘
Don’t
call Alberto that.’

‘Might’ve known you’d leap to his defence.’

Annie released a pent-up breath. No. She wasn’t going to put up with this again. No way.

‘I’m not having this conversation with you,’ she told him flatly.

‘No?’

‘No.’

Max was half-smiling, but the smile was cruel, calculating. ‘So – why didn’t you tell me
after
you’d come back from the States?’