Having ruled out Holland Park, the Palermo and the Blue Parrot, she’d booked herself into a hotel. Only now that she was back in London and the reality of Dolly’s death was beginning to sink in, the last thing she wanted was to be all on her own in a hotel room. For a moment she considered going to stay with her sister Ruthie in Richmond, but then dismissed the idea. Ever since they’d been kids their relationship had always been difficult, edgy.
In the end she’d told the cab driver to forget about the hotel and take her to the Shalimar club instead. First things first: she needed to touch base with Ellie, who together with her husband Chris Brown, ran things at the club. Ellie had been Dolly’s friend too. Once, she’d been a working girl just like Dolly, and they’d lived together at Aunt Celia’s Limehouse knocking shop. They’d both worked for Celia, and then for Annie. Ellie would understand how devastated Annie was feeling.
‘Here we are then,’ said the driver, pulling into the kerb outside the Shalimar. He was a big bluff Cockney in a red anorak who’d chatted to her all the way from the airport. She couldn’t remember a single word he’d said, and she didn’t know what she’d said back to him either. Her mind was fogged with grief and weariness.
Annie paid him and got out into the rain, dragging her case and hand luggage with her. The cab pulled away. Almost instantly she was drenched, and she stood there with the cold rain battering down on her upturned face, looking up at the Shalimar sign, grey now in the noonday gloom, all its bright red neon lights turned off. She looked up and down the soaked street, traffic nudging along, jostling pedestrians with umbrellas held low against the gusting downpour, trying to avoid the puddles on the glimmering wet pavement. For better or worse, she was home.
‘Annie?’ asked a female voice.
Annie turned, and there was podgy, dark-haired Ellie, standing in the rain clutching a pint of milk, her neat two-piece burgundy suit darkened with moisture around her shoulders. Dolly, Ellie and Annie – over the years they had become a trio of mutual cheerleaders. Now, one of them was gone. Annie watched as Ellie’s face crumpled.
‘Christ,’ said Ellie, and threw herself sobbing into Annie’s arms. ‘Can you believe it?’ she choked out. ‘Dolly!’
Annie hugged her tight in the pouring rain.
15
Gina Barolli looked out of the window and saw the car coming up the drive toward the big sprawling villa, churning up a yellow dust-cloud as it came.
So it was done. It was put right.
Two of their best had gone to correct the mistake she had made; she couldn’t remember their names and that was annoying, but they had gone, she knew that, and she knew that everyone was very agitated and angry about it all.
She couldn’t remember what her mistake had been.
She knew she’d made it, yes of course she did, she wasn’t a fool, even if the people here treated her like one sometimes. Shouting at her, saying why did she do that, why did she make these stupid mistakes?
Ah, none of it mattered now anyway. The car was coming, and she craned out of her wheelchair, using the windowsill as a support, to see it pull in at the front of the building where the lavender grew thick and violet-blue, heavy with bees and a delicious fragrance. A man got out, black-haired, darkly tanned. She didn’t recognize him and that puzzled her. Where were the other people, her people? He looked like one of the Cosa Nostra, the brotherhood; but she didn’t know him. Two more men followed – bigger, bulkier men than the first one. She didn’t recognize them, either.
Or… she didn’t think so.
Of course, sometimes nowadays she didn’t know anybody, and that irritated her; so perhaps he was one of hers after all. Who knew?
God, old age was a curse; things slipped away from you – your strength, your health, even your mind, until finally what was left? Nothing except a pile of bones in a casket. But – and now Gina smiled to herself, a secret, triumphant smile – sometimes you could cheat old age. Sometimes you could even cheat death.
Then the smile faded as she remembered. The mistakes. Oh yes. Lots of them. Her big, dreadful mistakes. Suddenly she grew agitated, trembling, trying to hoist herself from the chair. No, perhaps the man wasn’t one of her own. Now she remembered what had been happening but it was all a jumble, none of it clear. She’d been phoning someone in London. She knew she had. But who? She couldn’t remember. And then this man had started calling the number she’d left – this number, and she had said she would meet, talk. She’d been putting him off because she had no idea what this was all about, but she knew it couldn’t be good.
The only thing she remembered clearly was the furious reaction when they found out what she’d done. She’d heard shouting outside her room and women sobbing – someone calling the nurses silly bitches, demanding to know why they hadn’t done as they’d been told and kept her away from the house phones, telling them they were fired. But when they came in to see her, their voices were calm, telling her what to do. Stall him some more, this Max Carter person.
That was his name. Max Carter. She’d remembered!
So she’d stalled him. Told him she would meet him to discuss it here, then here, then here. And she hadn’t shown up, and then Antonio…
She’d remembered that too! Antonio!
Antonio had said, We will sort this, once and for all. We will go out, Bruto and me, and Bruto will pretend to be poor old Gina in her wheelchair, and all will be well. Tell him the old amphitheatre, and we will finish him there, Antonio told her, his voice as patient and soothing as if he was talking to a naughty child. Yes, she had made some silly mistakes, maybe a lot of them, but there was nothing too impossible to sort out. He was going to sort it.
Gina frowned as she heard doors slamming downstairs, raised voices, the sounds of a struggle, things crashing to the ground. Anxiously she twisted around in the chair to look at the open doorway leading out into the hall. She tried to get up from her chair – she hated the thing, she spent so many hours confined to it – but she was too weak. With her skinny, shaking, blue-veined hands she fumbled with the chair’s wheels, and managed to turn it so that she was facing the door.
‘Fidelia!’ she called in her querulous voice, a voice that had once made people snap to attention. Once she had been respected, even feared, because of her family connections. Not any more.
Fidelia didn’t come.
Suddenly, all was deathly quiet in the villa. Stillness. Silence. And then she heard it. The stealthy tread of footsteps approaching. Frozen there, her heart stuttering in her chest, she clutched at the blanket over her knees and anxiously watched the open door.
‘Fidelia?’ she called again, quieter, her voice trembling.
Then a man stepped into the doorway. He was carrying a gun. He was compact, muscular, with black hair and dark navy-blue eyes. He was aiming the gun steadily, straight at her. As he moved, he left faint bloody footprints on the marble floor. Two other men appeared behind him, both of them armed, both of them looking dangerous.
‘Who are you?’ she asked the one in front, her voice hardly more than a whisper.
‘I’m Max Carter,’ said the man, coming into the room. ‘You wanted to speak to me, didn’t you.’
‘No, I… it was a mistake. That’s all.’ She looked bewildered, then she remembered. A faltering smile lifted her lips back from her yellowing teeth. ‘Antonio has put it right.’