Annie lay back on the pillows, winced, turned on her side again and thought: Those bastards!
They had reduced her to this; her, Annie Carter, mob boss, madam, Mafia queen. And here she was, confined to bed and having to shit into a bedpan. A slow seething anger started to coalesce in her beaten, aching guts then. Eyebrows and Baldy. She knew them.
And now? They’d be sorry.
58
The brunette was right; next day, Annie felt a little better. The night had been bad. When she turned over, the pain woke her and then there was too much noise to get back to sleep, people talking and laughing, people crying out, some mad old lady trying to get into bed with one of the other women in the ward and the nurses having to come running. Annie didn’t know what time that happened, maybe three; and then when things died down again, when they’d ushered the old dear back to her own bed and finally she did sleep, there was another nurse, at six in the bloody morning, nudging her awake to take a painkiller.
Christ, I’ve got to get out of here.
She was given a brisk bed bath at nine, and then breakfast was wheeled in. She didn’t touch it. Felt sick to her stomach to even look at food, to even think about it. And then at eleven, DCI Hunter and DS Sandra Duggan came to see her.
‘Oh Gawd, look what the cat’s dragged in,’ she moaned, closing her eyes. When she opened them, they were still there; Hunter looking solemn, DS Duggan looking suspiciously pleased to see her come to this.
‘What happened, Mrs Carter?’ asked Hunter, ignoring her remark. ‘Ask too many questions or something?’
Or something, thought Annie.
‘The nurse tells me that you have bad bruising and a cracked rib,’ he said.
‘Give that boy a coconut,’ said Annie, propping herself up a bit, wincing.
‘Who did it?’
‘Two men. Don’t know their names.’
‘Could you describe them?’
‘No.’ A vision of Eyebrows and Baldy flashed into her brain. She could describe them perfectly well, but she didn’t have to. ‘I couldn’t. It all happened too fast.’
‘The nurse said you were left in the hospital car park.’
‘I got nothing to tell you,’ said Annie tiredly.
‘Hm,’ said Hunter. ‘You’re sure?’
‘Positive,’ she said, and closed her eyes.
‘You want us to notify anyone for you? Any relatives?’
Annie thought of Ruthie and shook her head. Whatever was going on, it had already brought grief down on Ellie’s head, and her own. She didn’t want Ruthie getting dragged into the mix too.
‘You can tell Mrs Brown at the Shalimar. If she’s interested. And the hotel I’m staying at, they must be wondering what the fuck’s going on.’
She gave him the hotel’s name and address and closed her eyes. When she opened them again, Hunter and Duggan were gone. And she needed to get to the loo; no way was she using a fucking bedpan again. She levered herself to the side of the bed and her head started swimming like a bastard. She tottered to her feet, grabbed at the metal headboard and just about stopped herself going sprawling to the floor.
‘You want to take it easy, love,’ said the gummy elderly woman in the next bed. Her teeth grinned from a glass on the bedside table. ‘Call the nurse, she’ll help you.’
Or sit me on that ruddy contraption again.
Annie ignored the advice and somehow got to the foot of the bed. ‘Where’s the loo?’ she asked the woman.
‘Over there,’ she said.
Annie launched herself across the room, and with her head reeling, her guts in pain and her legs unsteady, she made it. In the loo, she did what she had to do and then washed her hands and looked at her reflection.
Jesus, the state of you! she thought.
Her face was grey-toned, as if her warm Barbadian tan had never been. She was sheeny with sweat, her eyes dark-shadowed with anguish. The hospital gown was the least flattering thing ever made in the whole of creation. She turned away in disgust, and staggered back to the ward, back on to the bed, which had felt like a hard stony horror all night, but now felt like absolute bliss. She fell into it, dragged the covers over, and fell asleep.
59
Tonight, Dave Waterman was going to get laid. Sabrina, one of the dancers at the Blue Parrot where he worked as a doorman, had been giving him the come-on for weeks now, and they’d gone on one date, then another, and now it was the third date, and that was pay-off time, was he right or was he right?
He grinned at himself in the mirror as he splashed on the old Paco Rabanne, spruced himself up for the big event. Granted, he was no oil painting. He had a big dish of a face and nothing seemed to shift those blackheads on his nose, but he was big in all the departments that mattered and he worked out, kept himself fit – needed to in that job, all sorts of nutters out on a weekend spraying champagne at each other and sniffing lines of coke in the bogs, you had to be able to handle yourself.
He waggled his thick eyebrows and hummed along to the radio, it was the Quo, he loved them. Wondered if he should get something done about those eyebrows, met in the middle, that was a bad sign, wasn’t it, meant you had a short fuse? Well, he did have a short fuse, that much was true. He hoped Sabrina was going to put out tonight, or he’d be very annoyed.
The doorbell rang and he grabbed his jacket and tore off down the stairs, opened the front door; she was early.
It wasn’t Sabrina, though.
Dave stared at the two men standing there. They were very well-groomed, wearing identical smiles, and one of them held a snub-nosed automatic in his hand. Dave felt his bowels turn to liquid as he stared in disbelief at the gun.
‘Hi,’ said the one holding it. He sounded American. ‘We’re takin’ a little trip. Come on.’
Evan James was looking in the mirror too, and thinking that having acne as a kid had scarred him badly, but that was also good, because his bald head, mean eyes and scarred skin meant that he looked ferocious, and he was.
He’d just been in the showers at the boxing club, and he’d had a good bout tonight, beaten the crap out of his opponent, and his trainer had said he could almost go pro, he was that promising.
Now here he was, drying off, getting dressed, stuffing his shorts and gear into his bag and trotting off to the door of the club, calling out cheerio to the kids pounding the punchbag, but they were intent, head down, training hard, and didn’t hear him, and that was OK.
He went outside into the early-evening rain and trotted over to his car, and it was then that two well-dressed men approached him. One of them showed him a gun.
‘What the fuck?’ he said aloud, staring at it, mesmerized.
‘Let’s take a ride,’ they said.
‘Hit him again,’ said the one who seemed to be in charge of proceedings, the one with the American accent and the gun in his hand.
The other one hit Evan again, as instructed. Evan’s bloody head, which was already looking like a squashed watermelon, bounced around on his shoulders. He was tied to a chair in the depths of Smithfield meat market, and Dave Waterman was beside him, also tied to a chair, and looking pretty well done over, his features damned near unrecognizable, so Sabrina wasn’t going to get laid tonight, not by Dave anyway. Not tonight, and not, he was beginning to suspect, at any time in the future either.
‘This is nothing personal, guys,’ said the American. ‘This is just a lesson in manners, you understand me? And also, a lesson in who not to pick on, not ever.’
Neither man responded. Blood and urine was dripping on to the concrete floor.