‘Dunno. I wasn’t listening,’ said Annie, and walked over to the bar and found another switch. The blue neons flickered and flared into life.
‘I said don’t touch.’
Annie was looking around her. Over to the right were the private dancing rooms behind gold beaded curtains. And to the left? The stairs up to Dolly’s flat. Her eyes went there, and stayed.
‘You’re sure you want to do this?’ said Hunter, watching her face.
Her eyes met his. ‘There’s nothing there, right? She’s gone.’
Hunter nodded and turned to lead the way. He unclipped the rope at the bottom of the stairs and started up. Annie followed, not wanting to. All right, she wasn’t going to see Dolly there, but this was where she’d died. If spirits did linger, then surely Dolly was up in the flat now, waiting for them, waiting for her. Waiting for someone to find her killer, take revenge, let her rest.
Hunter stopped at the top of the stairs and pushed open the flat door, which was covered in grey dust where the technicians had collected fingerprints. He stepped inside. This room was brighter than downstairs, with an outside window; but the light filtering in through the closed curtains was drab. Hunter flicked on the overhead light and everything came to life. Pink everywhere, Dolly’s favourite colour. Cushions and doilies and stuff, this was very much a woman’s room. And…
‘Fuck,’ said Annie faintly, her eyes fixed on the rug in front of the gas fire. The off-white sheepskin was soiled with a dinner-plate-sized splodge of blood. Dolly’s blood. There were streaks of blood on the wallpaper beside the hearth, on the mirror over it, and on the fireplace itself. There were little numbered pointers that had been placed here and there by the crime scene boys.
‘You all right?’ he asked.
‘Fine. I’m fine,’ said Annie, drawing in a shuddering breath. Now, at last, she could believe it. Dolly really was dead. Here was where it had happened, where some creep had snatched her life away. Grief and anger warred inside Annie. Anger won, just. It took an effort of will to hold her voice steady, not to shout or cry. ‘You got any idea who did this? Why they did it?’
‘Well, it wasn’t robbery,’ said Hunter. ‘The safe in the office hasn’t been opened, and all Thursday’s takings were still in there, untouched. The keys were in her handbag. So was her cash, and credit cards. Nothing taken out of the bag at all, so far as we can see.’
Annie nodded. It would feel better if money had been the motivation. The fact that it wasn’t made it more personal. Or maybe this was just some random nutter at work. Then she had a horrible thought.
‘She wasn’t…?’ she started, and then found she couldn’t say it.
But Hunter understood. ‘No evidence of sexual assault. It was quick, Mrs Carter. Almost instantaneous. We’ve fingerprinted all the staff and Ellie and Chris Brown, and if you would come down to the station later we’ll take yours too.’
‘I haven’t been here recently,’ Annie pointed out. ‘And my dabs are on your files, anyway.’
Hunter gave her a long look. He knew her history; she’d been busted for running that disorderly house in Mayfair. ‘I’d like to take them again, even so.’
‘You’re looking at the nearest and dearest, right?’ said Annie. ‘Close friends, close family. You look to them first to find killers.’
‘Sadly, we do.’
Annie stared at him steadily. ‘You’ve already checked whether I’ve been back here in the past few months. Checked with the airlines?’
‘Yes. I have. And you have, haven’t you? Brief stops in London, then on to the States or up to Scotland. What were you doing up there, Mrs Carter?’
Annie shrugged. ‘Just playing tourist. I like it up there,’ she said, hoping he’d drop it, hoping he hadn’t delved too deeply into any of it.
He was moving around the room, looking at the rug, the door. He bent down and stared closely at the blood on the hearth. Then he looked up at her. ‘You’re sure you know nothing about her relatives?’
‘Nothing at all,’ said Annie, stifling a wave of guilty irritation. Of course he’d had to check. What else did she expect? And she’d fronted it out, anyway. It was OK.
‘Any lovers at all? However far back in the past? Anyone?’
Annie shook her head. ‘You know her background, don’t you?’
‘Refresh my memory,’ he said, standing up.
‘I first knew Dolly when she worked at Aunt Celia’s. They called it a massage parlour, but that’s just a fancy name for it. It was a whorehouse near the docks in Limehouse. In those days, Dolly was aggressive, rough around the edges. Then time moved on and she softened a bit…’
Annie was thinking back to those times, thinking of the friends she’d made in that most unlikely of places, thinking of Darren, and Aretha, Ellie and Dolly. Back then, she and Dolly had been at each other’s throats. They had been enemies first, friends later.
‘You’re smiling,’ said Hunter, watching her face curiously. ‘What is it?’
‘Nothing. Just thinking that those were good times.’ Now the smile was gone and she just looked sad.
‘In a Limehouse knocking shop.’ His tone was cynical.
‘Believe it or not, they were. The best.’
‘Paying protection to the Delaney mob, I believe.’ Hunter eyed her sharply. ‘What about them? Is there any connection now?’
Annie bit her lip. Not too long ago, she’d had trouble with the Delaneys – and at that point, she’d thought they were done for. And most of them were. Tory, Kieron, Orla… Once, the Delaney gang had been powerful and frightening. They were now part of the past. But… she knew that the scariest Delaney of all was still alive.
Redmond.
She felt a shudder go straight through her at that thought. A big Irish Catholic family, the Delaneys had struck terror into the streets at one time. All gone now, history – except Redmond. And the thought of him could still frighten her. She’d seen him in the flesh a few years ago. Hadn’t thought it was possible. She’d been off her head at the time, and had half-believed that she’d dreamed his being there… but afterwards she had known. Afterwards, she found proof of it. Redmond wasn’t dead. He was alive.
‘There’s no connection that I can think of,’ she said. And she hoped, prayed, that was true.
25
Annie was ticking things off her mental checklist. She had checked in with Ellie; she had forced herself to visit the scene of Dolly’s appalling murder at the Palermo; she had called in at the cop shop and let them take her prints again; and now she was on her way to the Blue Parrot. She wasn’t looking forward to it, but it was something that had been chewing at the edges of her brain, gnawing at it the way a rat would chew on a piece of rancid meat.
Calls from Gary.
The calls from Gary were what seemed to have brought about the change in Max. Assuming the calls were indeed from Gary, as Max claimed, and not from some grasping little tart intent on stealing him away from her. So, if Gary was calling Max – why so frequently? With Max out of reach, the only way to find out was to speak to Gary.
Tony was nowhere to be found, Chris was still out and about on some sort of business, so Annie took a cab over there. It was late afternoon, and still raining. The sky was a grey upturned bowl darkening steadily into night, the traffic was thick, swooshing through the streets, headlights cutting through the gloom, wipers running at top speed.
Fucking England, she thought.
As the cab wove its way through the traffic, she thought of Layla and Alberto, her daughter and her stepson, cruising the Caribbean; they might be fugitives but they were in love and free as birds. She couldn’t help envying them; it broke her heart to think that she and Max had been like that once – obsessed with each other, always wanting to be together. Now… Annie’s throat clenched with misery… now, he couldn’t seem to wait to get away from her. And he didn’t even do her the courtesy of being upfront about it. He just went.