Ruthless (27 page)

She looked again at the beaded curtain, still swinging after Precious and her companion had passed through it. For safety’s sake all the private dancing rooms were monitored from the room upstairs. She couldn’t help wondering what went on in those VIP rooms. Quickly she crept up the stairs, returned to her room and closed the door. Maybe one evening she’d sneak a peek in the monitor room, take a look at what went on.

60

‘You
bastards
!’ shouted Dickon.

There was a rusted bridge strung between two tall unused warehouses down in a disused part of the old docks. It was this bridge that Dickon, second cousin of the Delaney twins Orla and Redmond, found himself hanging from one dark night.

He was dangling upside-down, suspended by a rope tied around his ankles. The whole black and grimy night world was whirling around him, and his head felt as if it was about to be ripped off. Up on the bridge above him were several beefy types, all suited and booted and wearing black overcoats. One of them, grinning like a pirate, was now holding a knife. Dickon could see the thing sparkling in the moonlight.

‘Shit!’ he yelled, and thrashed about wildly. It didn’t help. His hands were bound, his feet were tied, he’d been dragged out of his nice warm lodgings and he was now dangling over this scary space like a landed cod, his thin hair blowing in the cold evening breeze. All right, he knew he was no angel. He was a small-time house burglar and sometimes – just occasionally, mind – he liked to touch up a kid or two. He couldn’t help himself, couldn’t be held responsible. He got these urges. He didn’t deserve
this.

Max Carter placed the knife against the rope. It was all that stood between Dickon and a high-impact headache if he should fall forty feet to the hard cobbles below.

‘OK, let’s get down to business,’ said Max.

‘I didn’t do it!’

‘Didn’t do what?’

‘If I’d known the woman was anything to do with you, Mr Carter, I wouldn’t have gone near. Ask Moira! I don’t do women,’ wailed Dickon.
‘He
wanted to get her, not me.’

Max drew a breath. ‘Who’s Moira?’

‘My landlady.’

‘Right. So where’s Redmond Delaney?’

That took a minute or two to sink in. ‘Redmond? What? Well . . . I ain’t seen him. Nobody has. Not in years.’

‘Wrong answer,’ said Max, and started sawing at the rope.

‘Wait!’ screamed Dickon.

Max stopped sawing. ‘God’s honour, Mr Carter, he ain’t been around in years, no one’s seen him, and you can
cut
that rope but I ain’t seen him, that’s God’s truth, that is.’

‘He set a bomb on a car. On Annie Carter’s car.’

Dickon was shaking his head. ‘No! It couldn’t have been him.’

‘Or you’re covering for him,’ said Max, handing the knife to Steve so that he could think this over. Now Steve applied himself to the rope.

‘No! I ain’t!’

Steve swiped the blade down, cutting into Dickon’s scrawny calf. Dickon screamed.

‘You tosser, you better start telling the truth or you’re well and truly
fucked
,’ snarled Steve, waving the knife and throwing off droplets of blood from its razor-like tip.

‘I’m telling the truth! On my life!’

Max sighed and leaned against the bridge, gazing down at Dickon as Steve started sawing again. Was there anything in the world worse than a nonce?

Yeah, there was. A filthy little nonce who’d been within a hundred miles of his – admittedly adult – daughter. Like this one obviously had.

The rope was fraying now, quite badly.

‘Start talking,’ said Max, his mind consumed with disgust at the thought of Layla being anywhere near this scum. And that car blowing up. His wife –
ex-wife
, he reminded himself, and Layla’s mother – could have been inside it. He felt rage at that, ungovernable, unstoppable. Layla being pursued through a park, barely escaping. Who knew what could have happened to her, if she’d been caught?

‘I don’t know nothing . . .’ Dickon cried.

Steve sawed and the rope frayed.

‘Only about Rufus Malone . . .’

Screaming, Dickon plunged forty feet to the cobbles below and hit them with a wet, meaty
whack.

Steve stared down there for a long moment. Then he drew back. ‘Oops,’ he said.

He handed the knife to Max.

Max shook his head. ‘That’s a bit inconvenient,’ he said, tucking the knife away.
Rufus Malone?
he thought.

‘Can’t stand nonces,’ said Steve.

‘Let’s sort
that
mess out and get on to the next one.’

61

‘Precious,’ said Layla next day as they sat on the bed chatting. They’d made up, they were friends again.

‘Hm?’

‘I need your help,’ said Layla.

‘To do what?’

‘To . . . well, do myself up a bit. You know?’

Precious grinned and clapped her hands together. ‘Really?’

‘Yeah, really.’

Precious jumped to her feet. ‘About bloody
time
,’ she laughed. ‘I thought you were never going to ask. Get your hair washed, I’ll be back.’

Layla washed her hair and then Precious returned with a bag-load of stuff and sat her down in front of the mirror. She started pulling a broad-toothed comb through Layla’s dark locks, then coating it in a strong-smelling solution.

‘What’s that?’ asked Layla suspiciously.

‘Setting lotion,’ said Precious, and then she carefully wound Layla’s hair on to huge rollers, put a plastic hood over her head, and told her to sit there and shut up until it was dry, and here was a magazine to pass the time.

‘Jesus, is this going to take long?’ complained Layla.

‘You heard the old phrase about suffering to be beautiful?’ said Precious with her sweet, patient smile. She settled on Layla’s bed, and opened her textbooks. ‘Read your magazine.’

Layla did as she was told. An hour passed, then Precious set her pen aside, took the curlers out, brushed Layla’s hair through, back-combed the top, smoothed it down, doused her in hair spray.

‘Don’t look yet,’ said Precious, teasing away with her comb.

‘Gawd,’ said Layla, choking.

‘Patience.’ Precious made a final adjustment, then turned Layla round to face the mirror.

Layla could only stare. A stranger was staring back at her. Oh, it was her
face,
but surrounding that face was a big puffy cloud of dark, lustrous hair. Rather like her mother’s. Only it wasn’t her mother’s. It was
hers.

‘Holy shit,’ said Layla breathlessly. ‘Well, that’s . . .’ She stammered to a halt, unable to think of a word to describe it.

‘Nice, yeah?’ Precious turned and shouted: ‘China! Destiny!’

China and Destiny crowded into the doorway of Layla’s room. Layla noted that Destiny had a black eye that she had tried – not very successfully – to cover with make-up. Marital relations were still strained.

‘What do you think?’ asked Precious.

‘Fabulous,’ said Destiny. ‘Layla, you look amazing.’

‘Fab-los,’ said China, nodding. ‘But no . . .’ China made painting motions in front of her perfect little face.

‘No make-up,’ said Precious. ‘You’re right. Spoils the effect, no?’

‘I don’t like make-up,’ said Layla. They had a point, though: her hair now looked as if it belonged on some other woman, someone glamorous, exotic. Not her, plain old Layla Carter. ‘Lipstick, I hate that. Tried it once. Too
jammy
.’

‘We can kit you out with a matt one,’ said Precious.

Layla stood up, bewildered, overwhelmed. Peered at the stranger in the mirror again.

‘No,’ she said. ‘I don’t think so . . .’

Ellie appeared in the doorway behind Destiny and China.

She caught Destiny’s chin in one hand as Destiny tried to turn her face away. Stared at Destiny’s blackened eye. ‘What the hell happened
here
? Walked into another door, did we?’

‘Ellie . . .’

‘Take a couple of days out,’ said Ellie. ‘You’ll frighten the fucking punters, looking like that.’

‘Oh, come on,’ pleaded Destiny. ‘I can’t afford to skip work.’

‘No.’ Ellie released Destiny’s chin with a sigh. ‘But you can’t work marked up either. Give it a couple of days, we can cover what’s left of it then.’ She turned to Layla. ‘Visitor, Layla. Your brother again.’

Shit,
thought Layla. Her heartbeat accelerated. She wasn’t ready for this.

‘How many times? He is
not
my frigging brother.’

Layla pushed her way out through the throng. Alberto was there, Sandor looming beside him.

Alberto smiled, came forward, hugged her. Seemed not to even
notice
her bloody hair, she realized. All that effort, and for what?

‘Hi, Layla. How are you?’

‘Peachy,’ she snapped.

‘Your mom told me about the business at your office. You’re getting tired of sitting around here, I guess.’

‘You guess correctly.’

‘Can’t you give Ellie a hand with the accounts?’

And do poor old dried-up Miss Pargeter out of a job she loves?
‘No, I can’t.’

The tetchiness of her tone was starting to penetrate. ‘Something wrong?’ he asked.

‘Nothing.’ Layla folded her arms, looked at the floor. Anything was better than looking at him, he was just too damned handsome.

‘I wanted to see you, to
assure
you that we’re going to sort this out.’

As if this could be ‘sorted out’. She’d killed someone. Layla shuddered again at the memory.

‘We’re tracking down the twin, Redmond Delaney,’ said Alberto. ‘The woman’s off the scene, but we want to be certain he is too. Until then . . .’

‘Until then, I’m stuck here,’ Layla finished for him.
Off the scene.
That was one way of putting it. Very decorous. So much better than
dead as a doornail.

‘Yeah. You are. So try not to give your mom a hard time over it. She’s looking out for you, doing what she thinks is best.’

Yeah. By sending me away.

‘Well . . .’ Alberto paused. Sandor shifted subtly. Layla was still looking at the floor. ‘If you need me for anything, just pass the word along.’

‘OK.’

He was going. She wanted to fling herself at him, to feel his arms holding her. She remembered him lifting her up when she was little, twirling her around the room while she shrieked with laughter. She had never felt so safe, so loved, as she had in those moments with him.

But now she was grown up and her feelings were more complicated. And this was too damned
awkward.
Because she’d loved him all her life. But
not
the way he loved her.

‘Layla?’ he said.

Layla lifted her gaze. Alberto was staring at her. He had Constantine’s eyes, she remembered them even now – eyes of a bright, armour-piercing blue. Like his father, he was tanned, strong, authoritative, startlingly good-looking – and probably had about a million women queuing up to date him.

‘What?’ she asked, dry-mouthed.

‘What the fuck have you done to your hair?’

Layla raised a hand self-consciously to her head. ‘Um, nothing. Just primped it up a bit.’

‘Right.’ He was still staring. ‘Well . . . I’ll see you then. Layla?’

‘Yeah?’

‘It’s . . . nice,’ he said, staring at her quite oddly. Then he leaned in and kissed her cheek.

Layla pulled back as if she’d been burned. ‘OK. Thanks,’ she said, and turned quickly away, went back into her room.

Precious was there, with China and Destiny. They were all grinning.

‘What?’ asked Layla sharply.

‘He noticed the hair!’ they chorused.

But Layla’s expression was gloomy.

‘So he noticed it. He’d be hard put
not
to, wouldn’t he. Suddenly I’ve got big hair, of
course
he notices it. So what?’

‘So
what
?’ Precious was looking at her like she’d gone mad. She pulled Layla into her arms and hugged her. ‘Layla. Honey. This is what is called
making progress
.’

62

‘It’s a shit-hole,’ said Max succinctly.

They were sitting around the table upstairs in his old mum’s place. For sentimental reasons, he’d never been able to get himself to sell Queenie’s gaff; so it had stood empty over the years, serving only as a quiet, private meeting-place for the boys.

The gang was all here – what was left of it. Max at the head of the table, and that ugly little cigar-smoking goblin Jackie Tulliver on his left, with whip-thin, blond and mean-eyed Gary Tooley on his right, along with bulky dark-haired Steve Taylor.

There were others here too tonight. Alberto Barolli sat at the other end of the table, a couple of his goons close by and Sandor at the door. Annie Carter sat beside Alberto.

‘It’s a crappy little club in Soho. And I do mean crappy. It’s run by one of the Delaney leftovers – a cousin called O’Connor. Pretty tough bastard, by all accounts.’

‘I thought the Delaney clubs were burned out years ago,’ said Alberto.

‘The good ones were,’ said Annie.

Feeling restless, she got up and moved to the window. It was getting dark outside and the rain was pouring down, the streets were slick with it, cars hissing past, headlights flicking on. People were hurrying along under umbrellas.

‘This is just a remnant,’ said Max.

‘The Delaneys were always aware that you did business with my family, covered the doors on our clubs in the West End,’ said Alberto. ‘They hated the Carters. And any of them that are left, I bet they still do.’

‘Yeah, they won’t be laying out the welcome mat,’ said Max.

‘With Dickon missing, this O’Connor could be expecting a visit,’ said Steve.

‘He’s right to expect a visit, because he’s fucking well going to get one,’ said Max. ‘They’ll probably turn the muscle away. Even Jackie.’ Max flashed Jackie Tulliver a conciliatory grin. Jackie might not be muscle, but he was brainy, and he was quick. Then Max’s eyes went to Alberto. ‘Might let you and me in, just us.’

‘And me,’ said Annie.

‘You what?’