Scarlet Women

‘Hey,’ she said sharply. ‘Don’t take this lightly. And don’t let me down.’

The smirk vanished. ‘I said I’ll do my utmost. But I can’t part the fucking Red Sea or nothing. My name ain’t Moses.’

Annie stared at him. Then she crossed the room and opened the door. Tony was standing silently outside it, at the top of the stairs, waiting to usher the copper out. Neither of them had heard him come up. Tony could move like a ghost, and he could move fast too, for a big man. Lane looked at Tony’s huge bulk and swallowed hard.

‘Do your best, okay?’ Annie reminded him. ‘Let me down and you’ll be sorry.’

Annie cleared up, ushered in the builders for another day of hammering and banging, and gladly took her leave of the club. Tony drove her in the Jag over to where Gareth Fuller, the Vista’s former employee, lived. It was a dump in a block of flats. Washing flapped on badly strung clothes-lines. Rubbish swirled in the summer breeze on each of the outside landings as Annie and Tony walked up five flights of stairs.

The graffiti-strewn lift was working, but judging from the stink emanating from it, someone had been using it to piss in. So it was the stairs, or being lowered down off the roof with a fucking rope, Tony complained—could you believe people had to live this way?

‘Pardon my French, Boss,’ he added politely as they hit the top landing. Then, ‘Oh fuck,’ he blurted as he looked ahead.

Annie looked ahead. DI Hunter was standing outside a battered-looking door halfway along the grimy landing, his arm raised to knock on it. His head turned in their direction. Distinctly, they saw him mutter something under his breath and then return his attention to the door.

‘Wait here, Tone,’ said Annie, and she left Tony by the top of the stairs and strolled off along the landing to where Hunter, the warm updraught riffling through his dark hair, was still tapping at the door. ‘Hello, Detective Inspector,’ she said when she got to the door. She looked at the peeling paint-work. ‘How’s tricks?’

He looked at her, his face pinched tight with disapproval. He looked away. Knocked again at the door.

He wouldn’t be half bad looking if only he didn’t scowl so much, she thought.

A dog was barking in there. A high-pitched yap yap yap. It could drive you mad, a dog like that—pity the neighbours.

‘No one in?’ she asked. ‘Apart from Fido?’

‘What are you doing here?’

‘Same as you,’ said Annie. ‘Trying to find out what the hell’s been going on.’

He half turned towards her. Gave her the old beady brown eye again. ‘Don’t get smart with me, Mrs Carter. I know what you are, I know about you.’

‘Oh?’ Annie looked at him.

‘You know, I once worked for DCI Fielding, and do you know what his big ambition was? To nail Max Carter.’

‘Really,’ said Annie. ‘Well, he left that too late. Max is dead.’ She glanced at his left hand. He was wearing a gold wedding ring, but Lane had said he was divorced. ‘Hey, how’s your wife, DI Hunter?’ she asked him with deliberate cruelty.

His lips tightened. ‘In Manchester,’ he said. ‘The last I heard.’

‘Trouble on the domestic front?’

His eyes flared. ‘Just what the hell are you doing here?’

‘I told you, same as you. But in the meantime, we’re here outside this damned door. Which needs opening, by the way.’

‘Mrs Carter. This is police business, and best left to us.’ And he turned and knocked on the door again.

‘That lock don’t look up to much,’ said Annie. There was a pause. The dog barked on, yap, yap, yap. ‘A good kick could probably sort that door out,’ she suggested helpfully.

‘That’s breaking and entering, Mrs Carter,’ he said, giving her the look again.

‘Well,’ said Annie, ‘I understand your reservations, you being an officer of the law and all that stuff. But if you were to walk along to the end there, busy yourself in some way, my colleague there,’ she nodded to Tony, ‘could have it open in no time. And then we could move this along, because no one is going to answer this damned door. And that dog’s doing my head in.’

DI Hunter gave her an appraising stare. Looked at Tony, standing there all polite and besuited, big as a barn door with his bald head polished to the colour of oak from the summer sun, the gold crucifixes glittering in his ears. Looking as if he could demolish the building, never mind the door.

‘Don’t think I approve of this, because I don’t,’ said Hunter.

Annie nodded. Hunter walked off. Tony approached.

‘Open it, will you, Tone?’ she asked.

Tony pulled back and gave the door a kick just below the lock. It bounced open and the dog’s volume shot up by a few decibels. A Yorkshire terrier appeared in the doorway, yapping frantically but wagging his little stump of a tail. Tony observed the animal with disfavour.

‘God, I hate dogs.’

‘You a cat person, Tone?’ asked Annie. She could see DI Hunter coming back now, not hurrying.

‘Can’t stand them either. You know if you drop down dead, they’ll eat you? How’s that for loyalty? Shows their true nature.’

‘Thanks, Tone,’ said Annie, and Tony went back along the landing to stand at the top of the stairs again.

‘Hiya,’ she said to the dog, whose tail went into overdrive.

She nudged the door further open with her foot, and wrinkled her nose as a waft of something unpleasant hit her from inside the flat. DI Hunter was back. There was a brief tussle over who should go through the door first, so they pushed into the flat’s lounge together, the dog backing up on its haunches and still doing that irritating high- pitched yap-yap-yap business.

The smell of shit was suddenly overwhelmingly strong. Urine was slowly dripping on to a faded, threadbare carpet in the centre of the room. Above it, there was a young man hanging from the light fitting, flex twisted tight around his neck, dead eyes bulging, his tongue lolling swollen and black from his mouth.

Chapter 11

Annie was sitting with her head in her hands at Dolly’s kitchen table. She still felt as though she was going to throw up. It was nearly lunchtime of the same day, the day on which she and Hunter had discovered that Gareth wouldn’t be providing any evidence this side of eternity.

Dolly was busy ferrying covered plates of sausage rolls, tuna vol-au-vents and sandwiches through from the kitchen to the front parlour, in readiness for the rush. This only ever used to happen on Fridays—party day—but now it was something she tended to do most days of the week. Along with the bar, it kept the punters happy and kept them coming back for more. Plus, it added a bit to the takings. Everyone was a winner. All except Annie, who took one look at the tuna vol-au-vents and had to take a hasty trip to the loo.

Mungo Jerry was belting out ‘In the Summertime’ from the little trannie over the sink. Dolly was hurrying about the place, absorbed in her various tasks. Annie sat down again, flinching at the smell of warm sausage rolls. She envied Dolly that facility, to be content in your own four walls and to shut out the chaos. She had seen Dolly perform this act of denial before; it seemed to come naturally to her.

Lucky cow, thought Annie, wishing she could do the same.

Annie knew that this capacity for turning a blind eye to trouble came from Dolly having been kicked out of the family home in disgrace and left to suffer alone through a really bad backstreet abortion. Under circumstances like that, you’d have to build stout barricades in your brain to stop yourself from going mad, and this was obviously exactly what Dolly had done.

Ellie was mopping the floor and giving Dolly dirty looks because she’d just done that bit, for Chrissakes, and here was Dolly trotting around on her clean floor like a ruddy racehorse.

‘Someone certainly got out of bed the wrong side this morning,’ observed Dolly as Ellie irritably redid her