Scarlet Women (28 page)

Cyrus’s fingers were now clamped around her wrist in a frenzy of desperation. His weight was jerking her forward and for one crazy moment she thought she was going to join him in a one-way ticket to the bottom. Then the vicar had the sense to grab Cyrus’s arm and heave.

Cyrus came up, a little.

He was babbling and crying about how he wasn’t ready to die, and Annie thought bitterly that the girls he’d killed had probably said much the same thing.

Ought to just let the sick bastard go
, she thought, and was tempted to do it.

But instead she pulled and struggled, and somehow the three of them dragged Cyrus blubbering and shouting back over the wall and on to the flat roof of the church tower, where he lay sobbing, his arms over his head. They stood around him, panting,

choking, trying to breathe.

‘Fuck
that
,’ said Annie, watching Cyrus Regan with disgust.

The vicar gave her a pained look. So did Hunter. At last the two bobbies arrived on the scene, gasping for breath as they burst out of the door at the top of the stairs.

‘Holy
shit,
I wouldn’t want to do that again in a hurry,’ said one. He looked down at Cyrus. ‘Thought he was a goner,’ he said to the assembled company.

Hunter looked at Annie, standing gasping against the wall.

‘You okay?’ he asked.

She nodded.

He turned to the two uniforms. ‘Get him down the station. For questioning.’

‘He’s talking,’ said the voice of DI Hunter when Annie picked up the phone three hours later.

She was in her robe, having soaked in the bath to recover from the trauma of going against her better judgement and actually
rescuing
a sick little parasite like Cyrus Regan instead of letting him top himself.

She’d have been perfectly happy to let him go. But there Hunter had been, hanging on like a dog with an oversized stick. And really, he had a point. They had suspicions, they had form, but what they didn’t have until Cyrus talked to the police was a confession, and until they had
that
, the police had no real case against him and he couldn’t be locked up where he couldn’t hurt any more women.

Annie sat up on the couch, all attentive.

‘And saying what?’ she asked.

‘Saying that he murdered Valerie Delacourt and Teresa Walker.’

Oh thank Christ.

‘Uniformed division’s been checking out his flat. They’ve already found a garrotte, and that’s gone off to the lab boys. Also some pretty sick photos of girls with flame tattoos high up on their inner thighs.’

‘
Another
garrotte,’ she said, having a horrible sinking feeling about where this was going. ‘You’ve already got the one that was used on Aretha.’

‘He claims to know nothing about the murder of Aretha Brown. I believe him.’

‘No,’ said Annie.

‘Nothing links Regan to your friend’s murder. I’m sorry.’

‘
No
,’ said Annie again, shaking her head. This wasn’t what she wanted to hear.

‘Look. There were personal items and blood traces from the two girls at his flat and in his car. Nothing on Aretha Brown, though. But in Chris Brown’s car—’

‘Both you and I know that Aretha must be all over that car. Fuck me, she was in it often enough,’ objected Annie hotly.

‘On the night of her murder, he called the police from a phone box in a very agitated state,’ said Hunter patiently. ‘When uniformed got there, they found Aretha Brown’s body still on the pavement
where he’d apparently “found” it, and parked nearby was the Zephyr. They found Chris Brown sitting in the car, the garrotte on the front seat beside him with his wife’s bloodstains—and his—on it. He’s tied in tight to this killing, Mrs Carter, whether you like it or not. Cyrus Regan isn’t.’

‘You’re saying it was a copycat? That Chris saw the stuff in the papers about the first two girls, and thought that would be a good way to polish off the wife he loved? Are you serious?’

‘Crimes of passion happen, Mrs Carter. More often than you’d believe.’

‘Wait up. That don’t explain the tattoos. Aretha had a flame tattoo just like the other two.’

‘She was a working girl, Mrs Carter. It’s entirely possible that she met Cyrus Regan, if not in the soup kitchen then probably at the church where her aunt sang in the choir. She was actually
married
at that church, wasn’t she? Maybe she met up with the choirmaster to arrange the music for the ceremony. Do you agree that’s possible?’

‘Okay, it’s possible,’ allowed Annie grudgingly.

‘He paid these girls to have the tattoo done; isn’t it possible he paid Aretha Brown and she had it done too?’

Annie was silent. Yeah, it was
possible.
The twisted little shit. But probable? She didn’t know. She wasn’t happy about any of this.

‘We’re thinking now that this was a premeditated
act of violence by a man who’d been pushed too far by his wife. Yes, a copy of the first two. He did this, thinking that when we nailed the killer of the two street workers, we would see this new case in the same light, and pin it on whoever
their
killer was,’ said Hunter.

Annie sat back with a sigh. Her relief at Hunter finally catching up with Cyrus had been shortlived. They were still trying to fit Chris up with this. It was all wrong. To plan a copycat killing would take a level of deviousness she was sure Chris did not possess. But at least she
knew
who had killed the boy, Gareth, and that it hadn’t been suicide; she knew who and she even knew why.

It creased her that she couldn’t tell Hunter about it. She couldn’t turn grass, not even if she was just itching to do so.

‘Look—thanks for your help today,’ said Hunter, surprising her.

‘I wanted to let him fall,’ said Annie.

‘I know. But then, Mrs Carter, no confession.’

‘I know. That’s why I held on. Been divorced long?’

There was a silence. ‘I’m guessing DS Lane told you about that.’

‘Just heard it somewhere. As you do.’

‘How about you? Been widowed a long time?’

He knew the answer to that. He had to. ‘Not too long,’ she said.

‘I haven’t been divorced long either. It’s tough.’

‘Yeah, but you’re tough too. You’ll cope.’ Better than Chris was going to cope, having lost his wife and
still
about to be banged up for something he didn’t do.

‘I have to go,’ said Hunter.

‘Chris didn’t do it,’ said Annie.

‘Prove it,’ he said, and put the phone down.

That was what she intended to do. She dialled the number of the Limehouse knocking-shop with dread and determination in her heart. Spoke to Dolly, then hung up. She was going to rattle a few cages and see what emerged. Then she went and got dressed, and was brushing out her hair when someone started banging at the main door of the club.

She went down the stairs and paused at the door. ‘Who is it?’ she called out.

‘Gentleman to see you, Boss,’ said the voice of the boy who was on duty outside. Not Barney. This was the day-boy.

Annie opened the door. There was a small, portly man standing there. He had a goatee beard, calm grey eyes and the gloss of extreme wealth. Everything about him shouted
expensive
—his clothes, his smooth skin, his demeanour. Her heavy, standing behind him, made him look like a highly polished gnome.

‘Hello my dear,’ he said, smiling slightly. ‘Do you remember me?’

Annie did. She smiled right back.

‘Of course I do.’ She stepped back and let him in. And wondered what the hell was going on for Sir William Farquharson to come knocking on her door.

‘Mira Cooper,’ said Sir William when she’d taken him upstairs and got him settled on the couch.

Annie sat down opposite. Sir William was a small man, his feet barely touching the ground in front of the couch, but he had a regal bearing about him. She waited for him to go on.

‘You remember your wonderful establishment, Mira worked there. We had some stupendous times there, didn’t we?’ he asked.

Annie nodded and smiled, still wondering,
What is he doing here?

Back in the day, Sir William had been one of her best clients: married, of course, but paying out a fortune at her knocking-shop up West for drinks, cigars and the best tarts in the business. He had always asked for Mira. Had taken her to Cliveden with him; Mira had been so happy, so excited, she remembered that. Thinking of Mira now, and Mira then, made her want to cry.

‘What you probably don’t know, Mrs Carter,’ Sir William went on, ‘is that Mira and I continued
our association even after…well, after that little unpleasantness.’

He means after the Bill closed us down.
‘I didn’t know that.’

He shrugged. ‘Well…we tried always to be discreet.’

Yeah, or Lady Fenella would have kicked your arse.

‘Mira was a lovely girl,’ he said wistfully. ‘I set her up in a flat in Mayfair; we had such lovely times together. I enjoyed treating her to things, and she was such a happy soul, so amenable.’

He paused.

‘Go on,’ prompted Annie.

‘When I travelled on business she often accompanied me. Mira was a complete delight. I took her back to Cliveden several times.
Three
times, I think it was. And on the third time, of course, she met
him
there. Redmond Delaney. They say three times a charm, don’t they? Well, for poor Mira I’m afraid that it could have been a curse. And of course,’ he gave a tight, sad little smile, ‘then I lost her. I have few illusions about myself, Mrs Carter. I’m getting old. I’m short. I’m nearly completely bald. No oil painting.’

Redmond was tall, stunningly handsome, vigorous. Also, rich enough to show a girl a really good time.
No contest.

‘You’re a lovely man, Sir William,’ said Annie. ‘And Mira was lucky to have you.’

‘And
you
are very kind.’ He paused, seemed to gather his thoughts. Then he went on: ‘I was concerned for her. I’d heard things about the man. Bad things. I knew he was a villain. I tried to dissuade her from seeing him, but she wouldn’t listen. I think she was actually in love with the man.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Annie.

‘I saw her in town sometimes…I could see that at first she was happy. Radiant. And then she seemed to wilt, like a crushed flower.’ Sir William looked down at the carpet, then back up at Annie’s face. ‘I was worried about her. So I hired a private detective to watch them both, to try to see what was happening with my poor Mira.’

Annie waited.

He went on: ‘I had a very bad feeling about that man,’ he said firmly. ‘An
extremely
bad feeling.’

Yeah, well, you wouldn’t be the first
, thought Annie.

‘He saw other women, you know.’ Sir William looked at Annie acutely. ‘When Mira was with me, I saw no one else.’

Except your wife
, she thought.

‘Why would anyone want more than Mira?’ Sir William was shaking his head as if in puzzlement. ‘She was…exquisite. Perfect in every way.
Mrs Carter, I’m talking to you about this because you have an understanding of the situation, and you have connections. I can’t talk to the police about it. I have my position to consider.’

‘This private detective,’ said Annie. ‘Did he see something the police should know about?’

Sir William nodded slowly.

‘What did he see?’

‘He saw Redmond Delaney checking in early one morning at the Vista Hotel in Park Lane. Nothing much happened for the rest of the day. Then, in the early hours of the following morning, my man was in the park opposite the main entrance and he saw a black girl, obviously a prostitute—forgive me, my dear, but apparently her style of dress made it obvious—leaving the Vista.’

Annie’s heart was in her mouth.
Aretha.
‘Go on,’ she said urgently, leaning forward.

‘It was a foul night. Hot, clammy, raining. But he clearly saw a tall woman with long red hair running up behind the black girl. Then the rain started coming down harder. It was a real summer storm, there was thunder and lightning. Visibility was obscured. By the time it was clearer and he could actually see what was going on, the red-haired woman was gone and the black woman too.’

‘Oh fuck,’ whispered Annie.

‘If the papers are to be believed, the black woman…’

‘Aretha,’ said Annie.

‘
Aretha.
She must have been lying on the pavement. My man couldn’t see her down there, of course. As I said, visibility had turned bad. Look, Mrs Carter—Annie—I can’t be involved with the police. It can’t come out that I was trying to keep track of Mira, to see that she was well, because I was frightened for her. I knew of this man, the type of dealings he had a hand in. I know he’s a wicked man.’

Annie was silent, taking it all in.

‘My detective watched the hotel again the next day. Police everywhere, swarming over the place like flies. He went back there the following day too, and
you
were there, asking the receptionist questions. And Redmond Delaney was there, meeting up with another man.’

Constantine.

The perpetrator sometimes felt an overpowering urge to return to the scene of the crime, Hunter had told her. But the crime had been this redhaired woman’s. Redmond had suggested the Vista as a meeting place, not Constantine. And Redmond and Orla were twins.

They moved as one
, she thought.

‘Would this detective stand up in court as a witness?’ asked Annie.

‘No,’ said Sir William shortly. ‘I am sorry, my dear, but that’s out of the question. And I have to
warn you—any mention of my involvement in this would have to be suppressed. Vigorously.’ Sir William stood up. He handed her a business card with his number on it. ‘And now I have to go. Contact me if you need to on this number, but give it out to no one else, is that clear? Do what you will with this information, but no mention of my name. You understand? Leave me out of it.’

Christie were giving ‘Yellow River’ their all from the club’s brand-new sound system when Dolly arrived early that afternoon in a state of high excitement. It hurt Annie to see how happy Dolly looked, because she knew she was about to destroy her happiness.

‘Fuck me, this is fantastic!’ Dolly enthused at the top of her voice as they stood halfway down the stairs and watched the DJ at his deck, familiarizing himself with the levels in the club.

The dancers were rehearsing in T-shirts, hot pants and leg warmers inside their gilded cages around the dance floor. The bar staff were in, setting up, and when they swung through the door into the kitchens, Annie and Dolly could see a hive of activity in there. The whole place smelled of new beginnings and fresh hope. The electricians were testing the strobes, showing the dancers in a
mad series of bright flickering images as they boogied along to the beat. Above the bar, the red neon ‘
Annie’s
’ sign glowed warmly.

‘I hardly recognize the old place,’ yelled Dolly in Annie’s ear.

‘Come on. Let’s go up to the flat,’ Annie shouted back.

They went back out of the double doors at the top of the stairs and Annie unclipped the rope barrier, ushering Dolly through and up the smaller set of steps that led to the office and to Annie’s flat. Once inside, it was quieter. The deep jungle beat of the bass kept going, but at least up there they could hear themselves think.

‘Drink?’ offered Annie, as Dolly cast an interested eye around the flat.

‘Yeah, thanks. Hey, this is nice.’

Annie shrugged as she went over to the drinks tray on the sideboard. ‘I ain’t done much to it yet. Been concentrating on the club itself.’
And other things.
She poured out a sherry for Dolly and orange juice for herself.

‘Take a seat,’ she said, and Dolly sat down on the couch, taking her drink from Annie.

‘So,’ said Annie, sitting opposite Dolly and putting her drink aside. ‘How’s the business?’

‘More punters than we can handle.’

‘That’s good. Girls okay?’

‘Oh, fine. Rosie’s a nice girl. Too tired to shit,
but so likable that you can’t take offence at it. That Sharlene’s sharp as a tack, but she’s pretty honest and she’s a good worker, so I can’t complain.’

‘Gave you a bit of a scare though, didn’t they?’ said Annie with a faint smile.

‘Hm?’ Dolly was sipping the sherry.

‘I mean, when we thought something might have happened to Rosie. And before that, when they were arguing the toss over who was going to take that escorting job, you remember?’

‘Oh, that. Yeah. Sure.’

‘Because you knew who one of them was booked to see,’ said Annie. ‘And you’d made it clear to them that you didn’t want to take the booking.’

Dolly’s face had gone very still. She took another sip of the sherry and looked at the carpet.

‘Because,’ Annie went on relentlessly, ‘you were afraid for them. Because you knew what had happened last time you took a booking from that person, and you didn’t want to risk that happening again. When Rosie took that booking and went out, you thought she was toast. You were white as a sheet, terrified.’

Dolly raised her eyes and looked straight at Annie. Annie stared back at her. Dolly. Her dearest friend, the one person she would always turn to in a crisis. Big-mouthed and immaculately dressed in her suits, her bubble-permed blonde hair always
neatly coiffed, her manicure and make-up always perfect. Dolly wore the mantle of the successful madam with ease and authority.

But here was the crunch, the point at which Dolly would stop and turn away. Dolly still had to pay her dues. And she paid them to Redmond Delaney.

‘I don’t know what you’re on about,’ she said, and looked puzzled as she sipped the sherry again.

‘Come off it, Doll. Shit, I’ve taught you all I know and you still know fuck-all. But you
do
know this. You know
exactly
what I’m talking about. I’m talking about taking an escort booking for Redmond.’

Dolly choked.

She went bright red, coughed, spilled sherry down her powder-blue skirt and on the couch. With an unsteady hand she put the glass on to the coffee table and rummaged around in her handbag for a hankie. She coughed into it, then looked at Annie with streaming eyes.

‘
What
the hell?’ she managed to wheeze.

‘You heard.’ Now Annie’s eyes were hard. ‘Sharlene wanted to take the booking, but she thought Rosie had beaten her to it. So did you. It scared the crap out of you. Just as well Rosie didn’t. I can’t see Rosie hacking the rough stuff. I think we both know by now what a night out with Redmond involves, and it ain’t pretty.’

‘Annie…’ said Dolly desperately.

‘Don’t give me any bullshit, Doll,’ she snapped, and Dolly recoiled. ‘You went to a lot of trouble to lose any information about that last escort booking that Aretha took, didn’t you? You said a woman placed the booking, was that true? Or was that just more smokescreen, more fucking
lies
?’

Dolly had gone very pale. She sat there looking very small on the couch, the hankie bunched in her fist, her bag clutched against her like a shield. Annie felt bad, having to do this to her.

‘No,’ she said at last. ‘That wasn’t a lie. A woman phoned through the booking. I told the police that, you know I did.’

‘Yeah, and of course they couldn’t trace the number. Because it was made from a phone booth in the arse end of nowhere. Who was the woman, Dolly? Did you know?’

Dolly was swallowing convulsively.

‘No,’ she said.

‘I said no more
bullshit.
’

‘I didn’t know her,’ yelled Dolly straight back.

‘The fuck you didn’t. You knew her then and you know her now. You just won’t say it out loud.’

‘I
can’t
,’ said Dolly, suddenly dissolving into tears. ‘For the love of God, Annie, how can I? He’d
kill
me, you know he would; you
know
what they’re capable of.’

Now it was Annie’s turn to be still. What Dolly
had just said was as good as a confession in her book.

‘Yeah,’ said Annie. ‘Okay. So say nothing, Doll. Keep yourself safe—even if some other poor bitches are put at risk because you’re so concerned with covering your own arse. You saw what associating with them done to Mira, and that boy Gareth, just because he was a friend to her. And you believed that Redmond did for Aretha. If that poor little bitch Rosie had done that escort job, she could have come back in bits. She could have been
dead meat.
You knew how it was going to go, Doll. I only had to look at your face when you thought Rosie’d taken that booking. You were shitting yourself. If he’d done it before, you
knew
that one of these days he’d do it again.’

‘I
couldn’t tell you
,’ sobbed Dolly, tears cascading down her face.

‘Okay. Well, I’ll tell
you
then. Redmond Delaney damn near did for Mira but didn’t quite succeed. She was a messy loophole and he wanted her closed up neatly—that was why he was so hopping mad when he heard she was at your place; that was why he sent in the troops to get her. Gareth? I’m guessing
he
tracked her to the boy’s flat, but Gareth knew what had happened to her with Redmond, how low he’d brought her down, and he wouldn’t grass on her, wouldn’t tell where she was. He paid with his life for that. How am I doing so far?’

Dolly said nothing.

‘And then,’ said Annie, ‘Aretha. Our friend. Yours and mine. A specialist in S & M, and that’s what he liked, that’s what he wanted. I know the history of the Delaneys, Doll, and I guess what happened to them as children twisted them up good and proper. That’s their only excuse for being like they are. It ain’t much of one. But Redmond was happy to let the Bill fit up Chris for it.’

‘What could I do?’ demanded Dolly through her tears. ‘You tell me! Go up against that lot? You must be fucking joking! I
had
to keep quiet. There was nothing else I could do—not if I wanted to get out of it without getting
my
neck stretched too.’

Annie understood Dolly’s point of view. She knew how scared and how horrified, how
powerless
she must have felt, to find herself embroiled in something as messy as this. Dolly had backed away, buried her head in the sand. You couldn’t blame her for that.

The rage burned in Annie again—rage against these monsters who thought they had the right to use women so badly. Monsters who thought it was perfectly okay to piss and shit on a girl, as long as they were paying for the privilege. Monsters who drew no line at the level of abuse—who beat them and terrified them and finally killed them, as if the girls were to blame and not their own sordid, twisted natures.

She had once believed that Redmond was not a sexual being. Later, she had suspected he might be queer. She had
never
expected him to be a woman-beating sadist.

‘It was Orla Delaney, wasn’t it?’ said Annie. ‘Orla made the call for Aretha’s booking, and it was Orla who phoned again on the night you thought Rosie had taken a booking with Redmond.’

Dolly shot her one swift, ashamed glance. Then she bit her lip and nodded, and let the tears fall once again.