Scarlet Women (26 page)

First thing next morning she phoned Ruthie to speak to Layla. But Ruthie had a question for her first.

‘I’ve seen a man hanging around, watching the place,’ said Ruthie worriedly. ‘What’s going on, Annie?’

Annie took a breath. ‘He’s there for your protection. There’s been a little trouble. Nothing to concern you, it’s just insurance.’

‘Right. I see.’

‘You okay?’

‘Fine. Just…I’d forgotten what it was like. All the gang stuff. This reminded me.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Annie. ‘It’s necessary, just for now.’

‘You want to speak to Layla now?’

‘Yeah. Please.’

‘You’re all right?’

Annie had to smile. Ruthie was still her big sis, still looking out for her.

‘Yeah. I’m great,’ she said, and then Layla came on the line, chattering at her, blowing her kisses down the phone, and for a few blissful minutes she was just a mother again,
Layla’s
mother, and it was bliss, it was wonderful.

At eleven Tony drove Annie over to a large mock Tudor villa in Harrow-on-the-Hill to see Mira. She was admitted by a grey-haired woman in a white coat, obviously a private nurse. The interior of the house was clean and quiet, with chequered black and white tiles in the hall, and glossy aspidistras as big as Triffids placed around it.

Annie was led into a big conservatory where the tiles were the same as the hall, and the greenery even more pronounced. It was like taking a trip up the Orinoco in there. A huge grapevine, clusters of black grapes dangling from its lush foliage, was twining around the top of the conservatory, casting welcome shade from the midday sun.

The door was open into the garden; somewhere a blackbird was singing. There was a wicker table with a tea tray on it, and several comfy-looking chairs. In one of them was Mira, still looking scrawny but at least clean, with her hair washed and her face scrubbed. She wore a clean set of oversized pyjamas. Her hands were bandaged. Her eyes looked lucid, as they hadn’t done before.

‘Hi, how are you doing?’ asked Annie, as the white-coated woman quietly vanished back inside the main body of the house.

‘I’m fine,’ said Mira, although she clearly wasn’t. She tried to smile, but it faltered.

Annie sat down. ‘You wanted to see me,’ she said.

‘Yes,’ said Mira. ‘I did.’

Silence.

Then Mira said in a small voice: ‘I think…I can’t really remember too well what I did, but I think I tried to hurt you. I’m sorry.’

‘It’s okay,’ said Annie hastily. It hadn’t been Mira anyway; it had been the drugs. ‘You want to tell me what’s been going on?’

And, haltingly, slowly, Mira started to tell her about her descent into hell.

Falling in love with Redmond Delaney. Then, the abortion. The despair quickly smothered by the drugs, and then the drugs taking over her life. His love—if he had ever loved her at all, if he was
capable
of love—then turning to irritation, to violence, to twisted cruelty, so that she had to get out because she was in fear for her life.

‘Christ, Mira,’ said Annie when she paused for breath.

‘He was abused as a child,’ said Mira. ‘He told me about it. Him and Orla. God, that can really fuck a person up. I should know, Annie.’

Annie knew about this; she had talked to Orla about it, years ago. A normal life was beyond Orla. What little affection she had, she lavished upon Redmond.

‘With Orla, she’s distant, can’t let anyone near her,’ Mira went on, ‘but Redmond is different. Once he has you, he can’t bear to let you go. He hit me, throttled me, suffocated me because he loved me. He said I was his, that if I ever left him he would kill me, and I believed him. He’d learned that controlling whoever he loved was the only way to be certain they didn’t hurt him. But now I have. I’ve hurt him. I’ve left him. And he’ll get me for it, I know he will.’

‘He won’t get you,’ said Annie. ‘You’re safe here.’

Mira gave her a tired smile and leaned back in her chair.

‘You know, it wasn’t so bad on the streets,’ she went on. ‘At least I was free of him. I used to go down the Sally Army some nights and sleep there. Other times a doorway would have to do. There were always church types who wanted to help, volunteers coming round with chat and blankets, and there’s a soup kitchen run by St Aubride’s in the hall beside the church. I used to go there—a lot of us did.’

Annie paused in pouring the tea. Aretha’s Aunt Louella sang in the choir at St Aubride’s. She had
questioned the vicar there. They had buried Aretha there.

‘Did the vicar run the soup kitchen?’ asked Annie.

She remembered what Dolly had said about him falling down drunk at Aretha’s reception, and how he had vilified prostitutes.

‘I suppose he had a hand in it, but the volunteers were working the coalface.’

Annie thought about the vicar. A little grey man who had simply blended into the background. One of those men who could walk into a room and out again, causing not so much as a ripple; afterwards, you would not remember what he looked like. No one would.

Annie took a breath and pushed a full cup towards Mira. ‘Did Val go to the soup kitchen?’

‘Yes.’ Mira took a sip of the tea. ‘And Jackie too. We used to go in there for the soup and bread, get warmed up, then back to the bridge under the Mile End Road. Rizzo didn’t like it much.’

‘Fuck Rizzo,’ said Annie. ‘Did you ever see Teresa Walker there?’

Mira looked blank.

‘Big, loud-mouthed, red-haired girl.’

‘Oh,
her.
Yes. Couldn’t miss her, could you?’

‘Mira, Teresa Walker’s dead. So’s Val Delacourt. They were both garrotted.’

Mira’s gaunt face lost even more of its colour. ‘I know,’ she said weakly.

‘My friend Aretha was garrotted too.’

But Aretha wouldn’t have been on the streets, she wouldn’t have been frequenting soup kitchens, so what am I proving with this?
Annie wondered.

But there
was
a connection. The soup kitchen was attached to St Aubride’s church. Louella sang in the church choir. The vicar had officiated at Aretha’s wedding, showing himself up for a bigot in the process.

There was a connection. Someone hated prostitutes and wanted to kill them.
Had
killed three of them.

‘You know what?’ Mira’s face was blank, hopeless. ‘I’ve realized something about myself. I’m poison. Everyone around me gets hurt. I just attract shit. Gareth never did anything…’

Annie sat up straight. ‘
Who
did you just say?’

‘Gareth,’ said Mira. ‘Gareth Fuller.’

Holy shit,
thought Annie.

‘He was a good friend to me. I moved in with him, he was so gentle, such a complete no-hoper, the poor thing, wouldn’t hurt a fly…and someone hanged him.’ Suddenly, Mira started to cry.

‘Hush, it’s all right,’ Annie said soothingly, fishing out a tissue and pressing it into Mira’s hand. She was thinking:
Jesus, it’s all connected. It’s all linked.

‘It’s not bloody all right,’ said Mira, her face twisted with woe. ‘It’s me, isn’t it? Everything I touch, I ruin.’

‘That’s bollocks,’ said Annie.

‘Is everything all right? I hope you’re not tiring her too much?’ asked the white-coated nurse, appearing suddenly and hovering anxiously beside her patient while shooting hostile looks at Annie.

‘No! I’m fine, I’m fine,’ Mira sniffed, trying to compose herself again.

‘You want me to go?’ Annie asked Mira. ‘I can come back later.’

‘No, stay.’ Mira looked bleary-eyed up at her nurse. ‘She stays,’ she said firmly.

‘All right, but try not to upset her,’ tutted the nurse, and departed briskly once again.

‘You all right?’ Annie was holding on tight to Mira’s bony, bandaged hand.

‘Yes.’ Mira blew her nose, got herself back together again. Her hands were shaking. The drugs weren’t out of her system yet, they couldn’t be. Poor cow, how low she’d sunk.

Annie squeezed her hand.

‘Tell me about Gareth,’ she said.

‘He was so nice. Completely useless, but nice. You know?’ Mira rubbed at her eyes like an exhausted child. ‘We were sort of friends. I moved in with him. I thought he’d be like all the other men, want sex in return for a roof over my head and a few fixes.’

Christ, she really hit rock bottom
, thought Annie.

‘If he had I wouldn’t have minded,’ Mira went on. ‘I expected that. But he didn’t. Well, he was so spaced out most of the time that I don’t think he could have managed sex anyway. What he seemed to want from me was company. We sort of looked out for each other. He had a job at one of the hotels up West, working odd hours. Some early morning shifts, some late evening, just filling in, you know? He had a little dog, thought the world of it. Dinky the dog.’

Annie thought of the dog barking endlessly in distress, of Tony breaking the door of the flat down, of her piling in there with Hunter and finding the pitiful remains of Gareth dangling from the light fixture in the centre of the room.

Poor bastard.

‘
He
was looking for me. But Gareth wouldn’t have told Redmond where I was. And look what happened to him!’ Mira was off again, crying softly now, the tears wrenching at her body, making her gasp and shudder. ‘It’s me! I’m just no good.’

‘For fuck’s sake, Mira!’ Annie burst out angrily. ‘You can’t blame yourself for what other people do. And you
are
good.’

‘I’m not!’

‘Yeah, you are. You were always good to me. And you gave me this—you, Jen and Thelma.’
Annie indicated the Rolex on her wrist. ‘You needn’t have bothered but you did and that was kind of you. I was really touched.’

‘That was just money,’ sighed Mira through her tears. ‘I had plenty of that then.’

‘No, you took trouble. You got it engraved. You’re a good kind person, Mira, whether you’ll admit to it or not.’

Mira half smiled at that. Then she frowned again. ‘I haven’t told you about Pete, either.’

‘Pete?’

‘Pete Delacourt, who runs the tattoo parlour beside…’

‘The Alley Cat club,’ finished Annie for her, feeling a sick swaying in her stomach as all this unfolded.

Mira looked at her in surprise.

‘You know Pete? Only he was good to me, took me in for a while, got me some work…’ She wrinkled her nose. ‘Well, he got me in with Rizzo, his brother. He ran the little patch under the canal bridge on the Mile End Road. Rizzo kept me supplied, got me punters.’

‘Oh yeah, he’s a fucking saint, that Rizzo,’ said Annie grimly. She was totting up the score so far, and it wasn’t looking good. Association with Mira was obviously a dangerous thing. Gareth was dead. And Pete was missing, forcibly removed from his little parlour and probably propping up a new motorway bridge by now.

But how could this tie in to Val, Teresa and Aretha? Right now, she just couldn’t see it.

‘I tried to write his name, didn’t I? I wrote it in my own blood…’ She looked down at her bandaged hands. ‘I remember doing that…and trying to hurt you, I was just so desperate, I had to get out, had to get away. I knew he’d come for me, he always said that, that I was his and that no one else would ever have me, that he’d kill me if I tried to leave him…’

‘Redmond can’t get you now,’ said Annie. ‘You’re safe here.’

Mira looked at Annie with tired, red-rimmed eyes.

‘Oh, Annie. We both know I’m not safe anywhere. Not from him. And you shouldn’t have crossed him, not for me, not for anything. Because now you’re not safe either.’

On Monday Annie went to the cop shop and asked for DI Hunter at the front desk.

‘He’s busy,’ said the desk sergeant.

‘I’ll wait,’ said Annie, and sat there for nearly an hour.

Finally she was ushered through to an interview room. Hunter was there, alone. No DS Lane to fug up the place with his BO.

‘So what can I do for you?’ he asked, indicating the chair.

An honest, upright cop. She looked at him and thought once again that he was worth ten of Lane’s sort—although scummy cops like Lane could be useful, she had to admit that. She wouldn’t have known any more than the bare bones of the case against Chris without Lane’s help, but she still despised him.

‘Where’s your friend?’ she asked, indicating
the empty chair beside him on his side of the desk.

Hunter looked her straight in the eye. ‘Suspended.’

‘Oh?’

‘Yeah, turns out he was taking bribes,’ said Hunter. ‘Passing information around in exchange for cash.’

‘Really?’ Annie kept her face expressionless with an effort.

‘Really. And we can’t have that, now can we?’

‘No way.’

‘So.’ His eyes were still fixed on her. ‘What can I do for you?’

Annie swallowed. ‘I have a friend,’ she said, ‘who has told me things. Important things. About Teresa Walker and Val Delacourt.’

He eyed her sceptically. ‘Like?’ he prompted.

‘Like where they used to hang out together. The tattoo parlour next door to the Alley Cat club. And the soup kitchen at St Aubride’s.’

‘Peter Delacourt, who owns the tattoo parlour, has gone missing,’ he said. ‘Do you know anything about that?’

‘Only what you do. I went there with Rizzo his brother, but he was long gone.’

Hunter was quiet for a moment, digesting that.

‘And what’s this about the soup kitchen?’

‘Val and Teresa used to go there on a regular basis.’

‘So?’

‘Can you check out the vicar? He ran it.’

‘The
vicar
?’ Hunter’s mouth dropped open. ‘So he runs a soup kitchen to try to help out these unfortunates. I’d call that a Christian act. So what?’

‘So would it hurt to do that? Check his background? He’s a creepy little guy who gets drunk and says inappropriate things to working girls and he’s got easy access to them through the soup kitchen.’

‘Well they can’t shoot you for inappropriate language.’

Annie felt anger building in her gut. ‘Look, I know you’re an upright honest citizen and you think a cleric’s got to be above suspicion, but excuse me,
I
have other ideas. These girls, these
women
, deserve the protection of the law as much as anyone else.’

He looked at her coolly. ‘They have the protection of the law, Mrs Carter. That’s the purpose of the law.’

‘Well it’s not doing a very good job of it, is it?’ demanded Annie. ‘Val and Teresa are dead. Aretha’s dead too, and poor bloody Gareth. Not a very great effort on your part so far.’

‘Can we stick to the point? The vicar. Do you have anything else on him? Anything concrete, I mean?’

‘Concrete? No. All I know is that the vicar’s a
bigot who hates working girls, and maybe we should be checking him out. What do you think?’

‘Was there anything else?’

‘You haven’t found a thing to link Chris to Val and Teresa, have you?’ she guessed.

‘Same MO,’ he said.

‘He didn’t do them. I know the man. I’d trust him with any woman.’

‘Except possibly his wife?’

‘He didn’t kill Aretha. He
loved
Aretha.’

‘So you say.’ Hunter stood up, indicating that their interview was at an end. ‘Thank you for the information, Mrs Carter. We’ll follow it up.’

And she was dismissed, just like that. Annie went out of the station and down the steps to the Jag, feeling that she’d like to kick the crap out of something or somebody—preferably Hunter. Tony folded his paper and looked at her expectantly.

‘Where to, Boss?’ he asked.

‘The Palermo,’ said Annie.

It wasn’t the Palermo any more, not really. It was no longer the place it had been: Max’s favourite, the jewel in the Carter crown.

It was all coming together now.

Outside the club the new neon sign was up and it shouted ‘
ANNIE’S
’. The doors had been repainted bright pillar-box red. No trace of her hideous ‘present’ remained. Inside, they were laying the
heavy-duty carpet in a non-dirt-showing shade of dark brown. Then, on down the newly painted staircase and into the club itself. She went down, looking around.

The bar refurbishments were complete. The see-through resin dance floor was installed, and there was an electrician beside it tinkering with the underfloor lighting so that it flashed green, blue, red. The strobes overhead were in darkness. The three small circular platforms for the dancers, enclosed in their gilded ‘cages’, were set up ready for the pro dancers to shake their stuff. The deep-chocolate-brown banquettes, still in their plastic coverings, were being positioned around low tables so that people could sit comfortably, chat, drink, and eat chicken and scampi in the basket.

Over the next few days the newly hired kitchen and bar staff would come in, set up the cellar and restock the freezers in readiness for opening night. The new bouncers—skilled security boys straight off the firm: good solid dependable men—would be looking around, familiarizing themselves with the layout of the place. New waiting staff and cloakroom people would be in, picking up their new uniforms, getting to grips with the job. The DJ would come and set his decks up and start checking sound levels.

And then…opening night.

She ought to have been looking forward to that,
but in the midst of all this other shit she didn’t have the heart. She went up to the office and shut the door, blocking out the pungent smells of new furnishings and freshly dried paint.

She sat down behind the desk, thinking of Lane’s suspension and thinking,
Damn it.
She’d never get more inside info on Gareth Fuller or Aretha or Chris’s situation now. If Lane had been caught in the act, the Bill would have tightened up their systems, and that was bad news for her. Then the phone rang. She snatched it up.

‘Yeah?’

‘It’s me. Dolly.’

‘Oh. Hi, Doll. You okay?’

‘Yeah, but it seems weird, you not popping in.’

‘Can’t, Doll. Redmond would blow for sure if I did. It wouldn’t be pretty.’

‘Yeah, I know that. Maybe I’ll come over and see you then.’

‘Yeah, why not? Any time. Will you come to the opening?’

‘I’d come to the opening of a fucking envelope,’ said Dolly.

‘We’ll have some celebs in,’ said Annie.

‘Even better. Can I bring the girls?’

‘Course you can bring the girls.’

‘How’s that nutter friend of yours, then?’

‘Mira? Doing better. She’s not out of the woods yet by a long chalk, though.’

‘Listen, I’ve got to go,’ said Dolly.

‘Yeah. Catch you later.’

She put the phone down, thinking about Hunter. Would he follow up on what she’d told him? Maybe. Maybe not. She wanted to tell him about Redmond Delaney, but she couldn’t. She just
couldn’t
bring herself to grass, no matter how much she wanted to do it. No, the pigs would have to find out about Redmond for themselves.