‘So…’ Hunter was watching Annie’s face ‘… despite her early setbacks, she was a woman to reckon with.’
‘Dolly was strong. She had to be, to survive. Stronger than anyone I ever knew.’
‘And she got on well with the staff.’
‘Have you heard different? I certainly haven’t. The one thing I do know? Everyone who worked for her loved Dolly.’
‘That’s what I’ve been hearing too.’
Annie ran an agitated hand through her hair. ‘I just thought… well, I had this thing stuck in my head and I thought that this awful thing happening to her… getting shot, being killed… I just thought that it could be coming from anywhere, couldn’t it? A punter she upset, a supplier, a member of staff, who knows?’
‘I keep coming back to the idea of a lover,’ said Hunter.
‘Dolly didn’t have lovers. She didn’t rate men at all, and God knows that is no surprise. She had no kids, no family that she wanted to know of, no nothing. Her friends were her family. Me, and Ellie.’ Annie swallowed hard. ‘That’s all she had. And I suppose she must have been lonely sometimes, but that never occurred to me when she was alive. Poor cow.’ Annie shuddered and looked at Hunter. ‘Or maybe it could be coming from somewhere in her past. She had a horrible past.’
His eyes held hers. ‘Leave it to the police, Mrs Carter.’
‘Of course,’ said Annie. ‘I’ll do that.’
52
‘You said there was more,’ Redmond growled down the phone at Gary Tooley.
Days had passed since their meeting. He was beyond impatient now.
‘There is. I know there is. But the old bint, you don’t know when – or if – she’s going to call again. She’s crazy, unpredictable. I have to wait.’
‘I paid you five grand,’ said Redmond.
‘Yeah, and I gave you the stuff you wanted for that.’
‘It’s not enough.’
‘Tough.’
‘What use is that information to me? Barolli’s dead. This mad sister of his? Let the old bitch suffer and die at her own pace. Do I care?’
‘I don’t know what you want from me. I’ve told you-’
‘I want more. You said there would be more, and I want it.’
Gary heaved a sigh. ‘As I said-’ he started, and Redmond slammed the phone down.
Gary put the receiver back on the cradle with a satisfied smile. He hoped he wasn’t pushing this too hard. In fact, he already had the information Redmond wanted, but Gary wanted him hungrier, willing to part with even more dosh this time.
Ten grand, he was thinking.
Yes, Gary already knew these things, but he was holding on, keeping his powder dry, building up Redmond’s interest and anxiety until he was desperate for a word on all this. Gary was playing a long game. Oddly, that batty old cow Gina Barolli hadn’t phoned him for a while now, but that didn’t matter – he had what he needed. That crazy-eyed cunt Delaney might be snapping at his heels, but he could handle him.
He was sure of it.
Ten grand for the big one, for the best and most shocking thing of all.
The news that Constantine Barolli was alive.
53
Annie lay in bed that night and thought about Dolly’s past. She fell asleep and dreamed of chasing a murderer through a church with Hunter, and then the murderer morphed into Darren, who had been her friend, camp as a row of pink tents and dead, long dead. Then he was laughing and joking with Ellie as they both sang along to ‘Summer Holiday’. At first they were in the church and then the church became upstairs in Auntie Celia’s old knocking shop.
Halfway through the song, the flesh started to melt off Darren’s face and Dolly popped her head around the door – not Dolly as she had been then, a rough and uncouth brass, but the Dolly she had been just recently, well-groomed, middle-aged.
Dolly told them it was the heat coming off the lines, nothing to worry about, but Darren just kept melting like a candle, his eyes vanishing under strings of waxen flesh, his cheeks dissolving, his mouth slanting to one side like a stroke victim’s, and the music just went on and on, pounding into her head, louder and louder, and then Annie woke up abruptly, panting, sweating, shooting up in the bed to stare wild-eyed into blackness.
She flicked on the bedside light, pushed her hair out of her eyes and looked at the big empty bed and wished that Max was here with her. You got used to a person being there, and Max’s presence had always been so reassuring. With him around, you felt nothing could go too badly wrong. Without him…
Christ! Where is he? What’s going on?
Earlier, she had tried the Prospect villa number again; still, he wasn’t there. And he hadn’t even phoned home.
Anxiety gripped her. What if he was planning to leave her, and the next time she saw him it would be just so he could tell her goodbye? The terror of that crushed her chest like a vice. More than anything she longed to go home, to go back to being in Barbados with Max, happy, unworried.
But she had to stay here in London. She was needed here. Dolly’s death could not go unpunished and the truth was she didn’t trust the law – not even Hunter, who had been useful in the past, had even once pulled her cut and bleeding from a near-terminal wreck – to handle the job of tracking down Dolly’s killer.
She knew she was needed elsewhere, too: the pizzino, the note, hastily passed to her in the street. Come at once.
Well, she couldn’t. Not now.
They know, she thought. That’s what this is. Everyone knows.
And… oh shit, Max knows too.
She reached for a bottle of mineral water, poured herself a glass and drank half of it down in one swallow; she was parched. She looked at the bedside clock; a quarter to four in the morning and already outside the traffic was starting. Soon it would be daylight and the birds would sing and London would come heaving back to her feet after the night’s rest and start her frenzied daytime dance again.
But Dolly would still be dead.
Annie squeezed her eyes tight shut.
Ah, Jesus, why her? Come on, God, if you had to take somebody, why’d you have to take Dolly?
There were no answers.
It was just the heat coming off the lines.
Crazy, crazy dreams. What the hell did that mean?
She had no idea. She lay back down, flicked off the light. Thought of old friends, dead friends. Darren and Aretha and Billy… and now Dolly had joined them.
They’re up there now, in heaven, singing ‘Summer Holiday’…
That thought at least made her smile. Her eyes closed. This time, she slept and the nightmares stayed away.
54
Annie left the hotel next morning and got a cab over to Ellie’s. The cleaners were in, hoovering up the debris and collecting champagne corks from the excesses of the night before.
Annie went upstairs and walked straight into Chris.
‘Hi, Chris,’ she said.
He just grunted. Avoiding her eyes, he swept past her down the stairs. Annie walked on into the kitchen. It was all shipshape again, although the dresser with its crystals was gone. Everything else was neat and tidy, as Ellie liked it. Ellie herself, elegantly dressed in a navy skirt suit and white blouse, was sitting at the table drinking tea. When Annie appeared, she missed her mouth and slopped tea on to the table.
‘I see I’m still getting the bum’s rush off everyone,’ said Annie with a grim smile.