Dirty Game

‘This is a bloody poor show,’ huffed the man, but he got off the bed and started to dress.

The sergeant had seen enough. He went back into the drawing room and confronted Annie.

‘May I ask if I might see your handbag, miss?’ he asked, indicating the Hermes bag that Annie had dropped on to one of the club chairs.

Annie numbly picked up the bag and handed it to him. She knew she was in deep shit now, and there was nothing to do but go along with it. Sergeant McKellan opened it and found it bulging with money.

He refastened the clasp and said, ‘Annie Bailey, I am arresting you for running a disorderly house and for selling liquor without a licence …’

And that was it. I’m sunk, thought Annie through a fog of terrified gloom. Sunk without a fucking trace. Who the hell did this? Who would hate me enough to do it to me, on my bloody birthday too?

Billy stood in the rain and watched as they started to empty Annie’s party guests out of her flat and into the Black Maria. Lots of them. Then the girls. And finally, Annie herself. Looking beautiful, as always. His lovely Annie. Oh, how he adored her. He was sad he’d had to do this, but she had to learn. It was for her own good. He turned away, feeling sad but justified in his actions. She would be better for it, he thought. In time.

56

At the police station they allowed her just one phone call. Annie thought long and hard about it, and called her cousin Kath. She didn’t even think of calling Redmond Delaney, her business partner. You didn’t involve the gangland boys in police business. As far as the Upper Brook Street business was concerned, she was sole owner and would take sole responsibility when the shit hit the fan. Which it had.

‘Oh, it’s you,’ said Kath, sounding put out. ‘What do you want?’

‘I’m in the shit, Kath,’ said Annie as an impassive female officer looked on in the interview room.

‘What’s that to me?’ asked Kath coldly.

Annie gripped the receiver more tightly. She hadn’t expected a warm greeting from Kath, but this was an even cooler reception than she had anticipated. Kath had chosen sides, and she had chosen Ruthie. Being married to Jimmy Bond, one of Max’s boys, who else would she choose? Mrs Max Carter, or that cheating whore Annie Bailey?

No contest.

Still, Annie had instinctively turned to family. Big mistake. She ought to have known better, really. But she was in a panic. She’d never been nicked before. It was bloody frightening. You’d think, at a time like this, that you could turn to those who should be closest to you.

‘Look, Kath, I know you haven’t got much time for me,’ said Annie.

‘Ha! You can say that again.’

‘But I’m in a jam. I’ve been arrested, and I need a brief. Can you get me one?’

‘Why me?’

Annie lost it. ‘For fuck’s sake, Kath! How long will it take you to call a solicitor and get him to come down here?’

‘There’s no need to take that tone with me,’ said Kath.

‘Sorry.’ Annie clutched at her head. Out of the corner of her eye she could see the female officer smirking. ‘Sorry, Kath. But do this one thing for me, will you?’

Kath reluctantly agreed that she would. As Annie put the phone down she felt that she had never been more alone. She put her head in her hands. They had taken all her belongings from her. Even Mira’s Rolex, her rings, a gold heart-shaped locket on a chain that Max had bought her and which she never took off. All taken. They’d even told her to take off her bra and her stilettos.

‘You’d be amazed the number of girls we get hanging themselves by their bra straps in the cells,’ the female officer had told her cheerfully, standing by while Annie self-consciously removed her bra and shoes and jewellery. ‘And we had one in last week tried to dig through the cell wall with the heel of her shoe. Nutty as a fucking fruit cake, she was.’

Much longer in this place and Annie felt that she would be nutty too. Everyone else who’d been at the party seemed to have gone long before they let her out, but one of the kind souls had at least stumped up for her bail. Thank God, she thought. She didn’t like the idea of being in this hell-hole an instant longer than necessary.

She gave her statement and Kath – God bless her – sent the brief down. He looked about ten years old, but he seemed to know his stuff. He left, and then she was locked up.

‘Don’t worry,’ her brief had said. ‘Bail will be posted, you’ll soon be out.’

But it was many hours later when the cell door opened and she was told she could go home.

‘Someone likes you,’ said the female officer, not unkindly. ‘Bail’s in place. You can go. Don’t leave the bloody country though, and you’ll be required to check in to your local police station once a week until your case comes to court.’

‘All right,’ said Annie. Her head ached. She felt shattered and sick at heart. Some birthday.

But somehow, she felt she deserved this. She had done wrong, and she was going to be punished. Annie knew that she had done more wrong than could ever be put right. She had sat in that barren cell and thought about her mother, who had never loved her. Annie had given her a lot of trouble over the years. Hitting back in the only way she could, being a brat to punish Connie for her lack of affection.

And Ruthie. Ruthie, the favoured one. She’d punished Ruthie for that, too. Punished her by ruining her marriage, ruining her life. The poor cow.

And now Annie knew that she had been caught out, and that she would be punished. Which was good. Then maybe … maybe she could start to wipe the slate clean.

It was all over now, her and Max Carter.

She knew it was all over with Ruthie too. All those pitiful attempts at reconciliation. Who was she kidding? Would she have forgiven Ruthie, had the boot been on the other foot? Not in a million years. And Ruthie was not going to forgive her, not ever. She had lost her sister. It was done. Time to move on.

She walked out of the police station with her little bag of jewellery in her hand. She walked smack into Kieron Delaney.

‘How did you know I was here?’ Annie asked him coldly. She was looking up and down the busy road for a cab. She didn’t want to talk to anyone right now, and especially not to him.

‘Redmond told me,’ said Kieron. ‘Are you all right?’

‘I’m fine.’ Bloody taxis, never one around when you wanted one. She was wearing a thin shift dress and it was fucking freezing out here.

‘Come back to the flat with me,’ said Kieron.

‘No.’

Didn’t I already tell him several times to fuck off? wondered Annie.

‘Oh come on. Where the hell else are you going to go?’

‘That’s my business,’ said Annie sharply. At last she spotted a cab approaching.

She hailed the cab and got in without another word to Kieron.

She wondered where to go. The Upper Brook Street apartment was off-limits. It was probably still crawling with police, probably cordoned off as a crime scene.

There was only one place in the world that would forever be home.

* * *

It was just like old times, thought Annie. Darren and Aretha and Ellie and Dolly and her, all around the kitchen table in the Limehouse parlour, drinking tea and keeping Ellie from eating too many biscuits. Chris out there in the hall, in his seat by the door.

‘How bad is it?’ asked Dolly, getting straight down to brass tacks.

Annie sipped her tea and sighed. ‘Pretty bad,’ she admitted. ‘The brief reckons I could be looking at a two- year stretch. I was caught red-handed running a disorderly house. No argument. He reckons it’s best to plead guilty, get the two years, then appeal.’