Isn’t she worried by the thought of a murder having been done there? wondered Annie.
Obviously Caroline wasn’t. Maybe Caroline was so ambitious that she would even consider murder to clear a path for herself. Who knew?
‘OK, drive on,’ she said, and the driver took her on over to the Shalimar.
One of the cleaners let her in; no bouncers in yet, it was too early for that. She went through the nearly empty club and up the stairs to Ellie and Chris’s flat.
‘Hello?’ she called ahead, not wanting to surprise anyone. Chris was already pissed off with her, and Ellie too.
Down below, the Hoover started up just as she reached the kitchen door. Chris was sitting at the table, reading a paper. The front page showed French troops pouring into Rwanda.
‘Hi, Chris,’ she said.
He looked at her with a mixture of embarrassment and surly dislike.
‘Now what the fuck?’ he asked.
‘It’s OK, Chris, I’ll take it from here,’ said Ellie, appearing at her shoulder.
Chris stood up, folding his newspaper. He brushed past Annie, then she and Ellie went into the kitchen. Ellie closed the door while Annie sat down at the table.
‘Look,’ said Ellie, her face set. ‘I told you-’
‘I didn’t mean to just show up, but I had to see you,’ interrupted Annie. ‘The police told me you’re organizing the funeral.’
Ellie’s face relaxed into sad lines. She let out a sigh, her shoulders slumping.
‘Yeah. That’s right.’
‘Christ, it’s the pits. Dolly’s funeral.’
Ellie came over to the table and sat down opposite Annie. Her brows drew together. ‘Yeah. It’s bad. Like a nightmare. And you know what? I’m thinking, if that can happen to Dolly, who everybody loved so much, then what about me? Is this about you? I know you got trouble. Am I a sitting duck here? Or is this about the clubs, the Carter clubs? Is someone making a point? Is this a takeover bid? You get all sorts in here these days, pushing drugs, you know. I could be in serious bother.’
‘You’ve got Chris here with you. Dolly had no one.’ Annie swallowed hard, thinking of Dolly, alone in the flat, and of someone climbing the stairs to kill her. ‘Look, Ellie – I want to help out. Any way I can. With the funeral.’
‘There’s no need.’
‘I want to. The headstone. Flowers. Anything.’
‘God, I don’t know. I don’t even like you being here. Mr Carter-’
‘I’ve seen Max. I saw him yesterday.’
Ellie’s eyes widened. ‘Fuck! Did you?’
‘Yeah. I did. And there’s trouble. Big trouble. You’re right.’
‘Chris said it was something about the Mafia bloke you were married to once. The one who died. He wouldn’t say more than that.’
Annie looked Ellie straight in the eye. ‘Ah, what the hell. He didn’t die, Ellie. He’s alive.’
Ellie went pale. ‘What I told you in the hospital? I meant it. I don’t want to know the details. I got enough going on, without that.’
Annie slumped forward, then winced and straightened. ‘Yeah. I understand.’ She looked up at Ellie. ‘So the funeral’s Friday?’
‘Yeah,’ said Ellie, and told her what time, and where.
‘I’ll be there.’ Annie pushed herself wearily to her feet. ‘Meantime, if you want anything, need anything, just give a shout. I’ll be at the Holland Park place, you’ve got the number.’
Ellie stood up too. ‘No offence, but the last thing I need is your help. You’re bad news around here, ain’t you heard? The best thing I can do is keep clear. For all our sakes.’
Annie went back to Holland Park, feeling even more like Billy-no-mates. Well, had she really expected Ellie to change her mind and lay out the welcome mat, be friends again?
She paid the cab at the door and went inside the house. It was huge, empty, echoing; the chequered floor threw back her footsteps as if mocking her, while over her head, the chandelier worth a fortune dangled, massive and glinting with crystal droplets.
Mafia money.
Hadn’t Max once told her that the police never rested over Mafia money? Well, this place was built on Mafia funds. Constantine had owned this house; then he’d passed it on to her after his ‘death’.
She went into the study, threw aside another dust sheet and sat down on a big tan leather Chesterfield. She kicked off her shoes and gingerly lay down on the sofa to rest her aching body. But her mind refused to be still.
Constantine’s death…
Only Constantine wasn’t dead. She’d known it for years, and kept it to herself. Omerta was the code the Mafia lived by, and that extended to Mafia queens too. No one ever broke that code. Secrets were never to be shared, not with loved ones, not with a living soul. Not even with husbands. Not even with Max Carter. She’d sworn an oath, unbreakable. She’d had no choice but to be quiet.
The parcel bomb, planted on the night of Lucco’s wedding.
Ah shit.
She would never, ever forget it. She relived it in her dreams sometimes. A night full of laughter and celebration, that had quickly turned into a screaming, howling wall of grief.
Montauk, Long Island.
A soft summer night in the States.
A night of terror.
69
Montauk, Long Island, USA, August 1971
It started with the explosion. Or, rather, it finished. Annie’s life with Constantine Barolli, her married life with him, finished right there, on the day of his eldest son Lucco’s marriage to his dull little second cousin Daniella from Sicily.
It was a hot August night and the party was clearly going to go on into the small hours. The mariachi band was playing, the oceanfront house in the millionaire’s playground of Montauk was heaving with happy, laughing guests.
Annie stood alone on the deck, just a little light spilling out from inside the house, not much, and she thought of that later, realized that her eyes had played tricks on her. She was standing in the darkness by the edge of the terrace, and she was five months’ pregnant with Constantine’s child, and she was tired; she was relishing the cool breeze blowing in off the Atlantic Ocean, which stretched out, black as oil, to the lighter grey of the horizon.
Then the French doors opened and Constantine stepped out.
He smiled at her and picked up a present from the pile on the trestle tables just beside the door. Later, at ten o’clock, Constantine, the Godfather, the Silver Fox, would hand out the presents to Lucco and his new bride; but for now he was smiling at Annie and shaking the present as he lifted it from the table.
‘Hey, wonder what’s in this one?’ he said, and then it happened.
The explosion. Sudden, shocking; a mind-crippling upswelling whumph of sound and sensation.
She felt herself blown off her feet, lifted over the rail and dumped on to the sand of the beach, all the air punched out of her. She couldn’t hear, and her brain couldn’t offer up any logical reason for why she was lying there, staring at a seashell while black things rained down around her, scorched things, and fire was erupting on the balcony above her; the whole deck was quickly turning to matchwood.
To the world at large – more importantly, to the FBI and to other rival families and to those who worked even more closely against him – that was the point at which Constantine Barolli died.
70
London, January 1989
It was Alberto, Constantine’s youngest son and now Il Papa, the Godfather, the head of the Barolli family, who finally broke the news to Annie during one of their rare, brief, secret meetings. Alberto was on the run from the FBI, but sometimes she was passed a note, a pizzino, and then he appeared. Sometimes he even brought his girlfriend – Annie and Max’s daughter Layla – with him, a rare treat and something Annie lived for, and she was disappointed to find that on this occasion Layla wasn’t present.