Ruthless (26 page)

‘If you say so.’

‘I
do
say so. And actually – if I wanted to “be” with him, as you so tastefully put it, I could whistle for it. Because he doesn’t see me that way.’

Max’s eyes narrowed to slits. ‘And how does he see you? Exactly?’

‘As his stepmom. Which is what I am. Nothing more, nothing less.’ Annie took a calming breath. He could do this to her, every time. Make her blind with rage, completely
lose
it. But she wasn’t going to. Not this time. ‘And you know what? I’ve had this out with you already. About a thousand times. And I am
not
doing it again. So let’s get down to business, shall we? The man who planted the car bomb. Do you think it was Redmond?’

‘Dunno. Bulky and red-haired, that was the description Layla gave me of that fucker in the park, and it matches what the police are saying about the bomber. But Redmond? Not sure. Could have been.’

Annie’s mouth dropped open. ‘What do you mean, it
could
have been?’ she snapped. ‘Is that the best you can do? You’ve got people crawling all over this city and you say it
could
have been?’

‘No other sightings,’ he shrugged.

‘Well, let’s not wait for
sightings,
’ said Annie sharply. ‘Let’s go to where the Delaneys are likely to be found. Their old houses, clubs, the places they controlled. What about the scrap yard, is that still operational?’

‘We’ve covered that. The scrap yard’s gone, has been for years. Everywhere’s been checked out,’ he said. ‘No sign of Redmond. The boys have lifted quite a few stones, waited to see what crawls out from underneath. Nothing much has, except—’

‘Then we’re sitting ducks! If he realizes Orla’s been taken care of, he’s going to come in all guns blazing.’

‘You going to let me finish? We’ve found a distant Delaney relation called Dickon. We think there’s a cousin too, but we’re having trouble tracking him down.’

‘For God’s sake, Max, why didn’t you
say
so?’

Max gave a slow smile. ‘Scared?’

Annie glared at him.
‘Fuck
you. Of course I’m scared. I’m scared for Layla. She’s already trying to break out, and it’s dangerous. She has no idea what we’re dealing with here – and I don’t want to tell her just how sick, scary and downright bloody perverted Redmond is.’

‘If he’s alive,’ said Max.

Annie nodded slowly. ‘You know what . . .?’

‘Go on.’

‘I’ve got a creepy feeling. I think he is. I really do.’

‘Then I guess we’d better get him before he gets us,’ said Max.

58

‘The IRA use this stuff,’ said the portly male pathologist.

‘What stuff is that?’ asked DCI Hunter. He was trying not to look at the remains laid out on the table. Trying not to inhale, too.
Smoke and pork,
he thought. Hadn’t he read somewhere that cannibals said human flesh tasted like pig meat? Well, it probably did, and here was the proof. Shit, it was enough to turn a person vegetarian overnight.

‘Semtex. Traces of it all over the clothes.’ The pathologist plucked up a detached finger with his gloved hands. He could have plucked up any other part, easily. A toe, an ear, a fragment of a cock. Lumps of shattered blackened flesh draped in charred scraps of clothing. When you pieced all the bits together, laid them out like the pathology team had, then you could see that this had once been a living, breathing person. Otherwise, you’d be hard put to guess.

‘It’s clever stuff,’ said the pathologist, his eyes alight with interest.

‘How so?’ Hunter thought it was vile.

‘Sniff. See? Not much odour to it.’

All Hunter could smell was scorched flesh.

‘Semtex is easy to use. Very stable, unlike nitro. Gaddafi’s boys out in Libya have been shipping it to the IRA for years. The Irish boys have been using it for landmines, and as a “booster” for homemade bombs. And for little car jobs like this, too.’

‘Right,’ said Hunter.

‘What else can I tell you? He died instantly. Literally blown apart. Not a bad way to go, actually, despite appearances. Oblivion in an instant. You found a name for him yet?’

‘Frank Day,’ said Hunter. DI Duggan had filled him in on the departed.

Frank or ‘Frankie’ Day, as he was known, had been a small-time criminal feeding a voracious dope habit. He’d been trying car doors the day the bomb went off.

He’d tried the Merc.

Boom!

No more Frankie.

Interestingly, the car belonged to Annie Carter. Who apparently had no idea why someone would want to blow her arse to kingdom come. But no smoke without fire, right? He thought of Annie Carter and along with the thought came just one word: trouble. For years she’d been skirting around on the edges of criminal gangs. London overlords like her ex husband. She had connections to the
Mafia,
for Christ’s sake. But the woman was like Teflon. Nothing ever stuck to her.

So all they had to go on was the red-haired man the girl in the charity shop had mentioned. The one who’d been sitting in Annie Carter’s Merc just before Frankie had gone off to knock on the pearly gates.

DCI Hunter wondered who the hell the red-haired man was.

59

‘The amygdala controls emotions,’ said Precious. She was curled up on Layla’s bed in jeans and a sky-blue jumper, writing this down as part of her course work. Her pen was scribbling busily across the page. ‘And the emotional reaction to any given situation kicks in before the intellectual . . .’ She paused, looked up at Layla, who was sitting on the stool at the dressing table, idly staring at her reflection. ‘Which I guess is why people of limited intelligence are quick to lash out.’

Layla was thinking
Amygwhat???
Precious didn’t realize that she was sitting doing her homework in a murderess’s bedroom. Was that why
she
had lashed out, killed Orla Delaney? Because she was dense? Or psychotic.

Precious was staring at her.

‘What?’ she asked.

‘Tell me to mind my own business if you like, but why
are
you so strung out? You really need to relax.’

‘I can’t talk about it.’

‘OK. But I can teach you something, calm you down if you want.’

‘Go on then.’

‘Do you know the heart-brain has forty thousand neurons?’ asked Precious.

‘What?’

‘Every time your heart beats, it sends information to the head-brain, and that regulates ANS signals.’

‘ANS?’ echoed Layla.

‘Automatic Nervous System.’

‘You lost me back at “relax”.’

‘And you’ve
got
to relax, Layla. Look, try this. Whenever you feel stressed, put your hand on your heart, breathe slowly, and think of a happy time in your life. Give it a go now.’

‘That’s bullshit,’ said Layla.

‘Try it.’

Layla closed her eyes and put her hand over her heart. She breathed deeply, slowly. Thought of Orla Delaney, lying dead and bloody on the floor.

Her eyes shot open.

‘Close ’em,’ said Precious. ‘Relax. Breathe. Happy times. Think of the happiest time you can remember.’

She was out on the
Maria
, Alberto’s yacht, on New York Sound. She was ten years old, and he was there, bronzed and godlike, telling her to watch out for the boom, and the sails were luffing, and then they spun about, into the wind, and the
Maria
shot along like a bird in flight. She’d been so happy, then. So very happy.

‘OK, you can open them now.’

Layla’s eyes flickered open. She felt calmer. Her heart was beating slow and easy. She looked at Precious.

‘How did you do that?’ she demanded.

Precious smiled and returned her attention to her textbook. ‘Simple standard relaxation technique. A child could do it. And now you can too.’

‘What was that thing called again? The amyg—’

‘Amygdala.’

Layla nodded and let Precious get back to her work. Had she reacted emotionally, killed Orla because she was of low intelligence? No. Of course she wasn’t.

She
knew
she wasn’t.

She had acted in haste and in panic, to save her mother. To stop Orla Delaney. And God how she’d stopped her. She didn’t think she would ever forget the noise of the blast, or Orla flying back, or the blood trickling down the wall . . .

‘Precious?’

‘What?’ Precious looked up, her dark hair falling in her eyes. She pushed it back.

God, she was beautiful, thought Layla. Precious was beautiful enough to turn a straight woman gay. And Layla remembered – painfully – that look on Alberto’s face when he’d met her. He’d been bowled over, she could see that.
All
men reacted to Precious in that way. But Precious was more than just beautiful: she was warm and kind. Layla couldn’t believe it, but Precious actually sought her out every day. For the first time in her life, she had by some miracle acquired a real friend.

‘I’ve been thinking about what you said,’ said Layla, ‘accusing me of playing my looks down.’

Precious let out a laugh. ‘No, I didn’t
accuse
you of anything. And I’ve already apologized. It was tactless of me, I’m sorry.’

‘But you
did
say it.’

‘Yeah. I did.’ Precious looked concerned. ‘I thought I was forgiven.’

‘I’d just like to know what you meant, that’s all.’

‘No, no.’ Precious put her pen down. ‘Let’s drop this. I don’t want to offend you.’

‘I won’t be offended,’ promised Layla, knowing she probably would.

‘You sure . . .?’

‘Sure I’m sure. I want,
need,
your help with this. Go on. Tell me.’

‘Well . . . the hair, for a start.’

‘What’s wrong with my hair?’ Layla patted the top of her head nervously. Her hair was long and dark brown, like her mother’s. And thick, too. Mostly she wore it pulled back – no fringe – in a bun. Kept it out of the way in the office. And in a ponytail when she worked out.

‘Nothing. But you just don’t
show
it, that’s all.’

‘I can’t have it dangling all over the place when I’m working,’ said Layla.

‘Yeah, but you never let it down, do you? Not
ever
.’

‘Well, I . . .’ Layla felt defensive.
I asked for it,
she thought.
And I got it, right between the eyes.
‘OK, OK. What else?’

‘No make-up,’ said Precious.

‘I’ve never worn it.’

‘Why not?’

‘Never occurred to me, I suppose.’

‘Why not?’

Layla thought about it. Shrugged.

‘And the way you dress,’ said Precious.

‘What’s wrong with the way I dress?’ She studied the plain black pencil skirt and camel jumper she was wearing.

‘You dress to play down your body, not flatter it. Which is – sorry – sort of odd. Wouldn’t you say?’

Layla felt a flare of indignation at that. ‘Well, I don’t dress like a tart, if that’s what you mean.’

‘You don’t even dress like a
woman.’

Compressing her lips, Layla looked at the floor.

‘And I just have to wonder, why is that? Do you know? Have you any idea?’ Precious went on.

Layla didn’t know. She’d never given it a moment’s thought. She’d been busy studying, then working, and her family life, the bickering between her parents, had always been going on in the background.

‘See? I have offended you,’ said Precious.

‘No, but I think we’d better drop this before you do,’ said Layla stiffly, feeling the prickle of emotional tears behind her eyes. God, she wasn’t going to cry. This was ridiculous. It was stupid to get upset over something so silly.

She stood and headed for the door.

‘And your hands, what the hell happened there?’ Precious called after her. ‘You never heard the word “manicure”?’

‘Oh shut the fuck up,’ said Layla, and left the room.

Hurt as she was by the things Precious had said to her, Layla still found herself fascinated by her – and by the other girls too. There had been a time when she’d thought:
Jesus, lap dancers!
But now she knew these girls weren’t fools. China was supporting her family as best she could, Destiny was holding up a faltering marriage, and Precious was paying her way through uni, plotting her escape into psychotherapy.

That night, Layla ignored Ellie’s advice and went downstairs when the club was open, to take a peek at what happened down there. It was such an opulent place, like a palace, all tricked out in acres of gilt and faux tiger skin, with dark polished wood bars, cosy banquette seating areas and chandeliers dripping with crystals and tiny droplets of gold.

Away at the back of the room, behind a gold beaded curtain, she saw people moving. The VIP rooms for the private dancing were through there. Precious had told her about the private dancing.

‘We have strict rules here,’ she’d said to Layla. ‘No touching’s the most important. The girls don’t touch the clients, and neither the clients nor the girls touch themselves. Let’s keep this all decent. The girls dance. The client watches. That’s it.’

But Ellie had warned Layla off going downstairs. ‘I don’t want you in the club, Layla. You’ll only get some lairy banker trying to chat you up, then I’ll get grief off your mum and dad. You stay up here.’

Yet here Layla was, breaking the rules. It gave her a bit of a thrill, actually. She saw Precious, long dark hair flowing, wearing a midnight-blue dress that clung to her beautiful body, go through the beaded curtain with an older man. China was at a table, chatting to a group of men and a couple of women.

Destiny was at the bar, talking to a man who a moment ago had been drinking on his own. There was a gold bucket overflowing with ice on the bar, two bottles of Moët et Chandon chilling in there. Junior, behind the bar, opened one of the bottles, poured out two glassfuls. Destiny smiled and tossed her blonde hair, looking around.

Layla sank back into the shadows by the staircase, but not before Junior’s eyes met hers. He grinned and wagged a finger at her.
Naughty naughty.
He knew Ellie wouldn’t want her down here.