‘None of mine were worth having,’ sniffed Orla. ‘Except Redmond. He sends you his regards.’
‘He must be a comfort to you.’
Orla shrugged. ‘All we have is each other.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Annie.
‘Ah, don’t be,’ said Orla. ‘It’s enough. We make the best of it.’
God, what a life. Annie looked at Orla and thought how brave she was. Had such horrors happened to her, would she be so strong? She doubted it.
Orla moved quickly off the subject of her family after that; it was obvious to Annie that it hurt her even to mention it. Instead she talked of lighter things – how Elizabeth Lane was becoming the country’s first female High Court judge and how David Bailey, the famous fashion photographer, had just got married with Mick Jagger as his best man.
Max came back in, greeted Orla with cool civility and then retired to the bedroom. Orla took the hint and got up to go, and Annie thanked her warmly for coming.
‘A pleasure,’ said Orla, and left – a cold, quiet woman with a damaged past and no future.
‘What’s up, lovey? You look sad,’ said Max, coming in and leaning over the back of the sofa to kiss her neck.
‘It’s just Orla,’ said Annie. ‘I feel sorry for her.’
‘Well don’t,’ advised Max. ‘The Delaney twins are a pair of vipers, not to be trusted – or pitied.’
Annie frowned. So for all that had happened, Max still hadn’t changed his mind about the Delaneys. She didn’t suppose he ever would. She stood up and went into his open arms. He kissed her, and she relaxed into his embrace.
‘I’ve got something to tell you,’ she said against his lips.
‘And I’ve got something to tell you,’ said Max. ‘I thought we’d take a holiday. Now you’re clear of the courts.’
Annie stared at his face, dark and brooding and intensely sexual. He loved her, she knew that now. He’d done things for her that had proved it to her, once and for all.
‘That sounds good. So what did you have on Judge Bartington-Smythe?’ she asked, smiling.
Max’s blue eyes were suddenly wide-open, the picture of innocence.
‘Come on, Max, give. Was he shagging his housekeeper, or entertaining rent boys?’
‘So you think I’d try to pervert the course of justice, is that what you think?’ Max pulled her closer into him, smiling.
‘I
‘Anywhere you want. The sky’s the limit. Now what do you have to tell me?’ asked Max.
Annie told him. Max gave a shout of laughter and kissed her again for a very long time. No further words seemed necessary.
67
After leaving the hotel, Orla’s driver took her to the florist. She bought one dozen blood-red roses. Then Petey drove her to the cemetery and pulled up outside the gate.
‘Go for a walk, Petey,’ said Orla as she got out of the car. ‘I want to be on my own.’
He looked unhappy, but it wasn’t his place to question what a Delaney told him to do. He strolled off. Orla went into the church and lit candles for Tory and Pat, so that she could phone her mum in Ireland tonight and tell her that she’d done it. Then she walked out through the deserted graveyard until she came to Tory’s grave. No resting place here for Pat, she thought. By all accounts he was feeding the fishes. Carefully she bent and removed the dead blooms and replaced them with the bright new blooms.
As she did so, she spoke to the dead brother who had abused her and ruined her young life.
‘So here we are again, you and me, Tory Delaney. Me alive and you dead as a plank of wood. Bet you wish those positions were reversed, now don’t you?’
The priest, Father Michael, was going into the church and he paused when he saw Orla Delaney away in the distance tending her brother’s grave. A devout girl, that Orla – and generous in her donations to the church fund. God knew what her family got up to, but it was not his job to judge them, only to minister to their needs. Not that they ever made much call upon his services. Certainly Orla never set foot inside the confessional, which grieved him; but it was her decision.
He watched Orla finishing her weekly task of refreshing the blooms on her brother’s grave. Ah, she was a good girl. And then his jaw dropped as he saw Orla, right there on her brother Tory’s grave, lift her hands to the heavens and dance.
68
At the same time as Orla Delaney was amazing Father Michael, Ruthie Carter was boarding a train at Waterloo. She opened the door to the first-class carriage and just before she stepped inside she took off her engagement and her wedding rings. The elderly porter put her luggage in the compartment and waited for his tip. She put the two rings in his outstretched hand.
‘What the …’ He looked at them, then at her face.
‘Keep them or sell them, I don’t care which,’ said Ruthie. ‘Either that or I’ll throw them in the rubbish bin, it’s up to you.’
The porter looked at the rings. They looked expensive. There were diamonds, and gold, and a large cabochon-cut emerald that caught the light like green fire. He shrugged and slipped them into his pocket. Ruthie boarded the train, and the porter shut the door after her.
She was going to have an adventure.
She’d never had one before.
Now the world was opening up to her at last.
69
‘Notes,’ said Detective Inspector Fielding.
Constable Lightworthy had almost been nodding off behind the wheel. He didn’t know why they were here today, watching Billy Black again, who was loitering on his usual corner outside The Grapes public house.
They’d been watching Billy for months, looking for something, anything, with which to nail Max Carter, to tie him in to the Tory Delaney killing or the department store job – or anything else they could stick him with.
Lightworthy was sick of all this. The DCI was gnawing away at it like a dog with an effing bone. Even the Super was running out of patience with him.
‘Notes, sir?’ he asked, straightening up.
‘He’s always scribbling in notebooks,’ said Fielding, straightening up suddenly in the passenger seat. ‘Rubbish at the front, facts at the back.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘So where does he keep them? Start the bloody car,’ said Fielding. ‘I’ve got to get a warrant.’
