Scarlet Women

Bobby’s heavily madeup face and spidery false eyelashes would give you a hell of a fright if you came across him in a dark alley.

Bobby Jo didn’t own the club, he just managed it. Gave the punters what they wanted.

‘Which is very often lesbian action, as you see,’ he told Annie with a light shrug. ‘I know, it’s a mystery.’

Annie nodded. Several tables away, Tony was reading his paper. He glanced up occasionally, checked out Annie and Bobby Jo, checked out the lesbian action, shook his head gently, got back to the paper. One of the girls, a hard-eyed brunette, was glaring at him.

‘Can you tell your man not to read the paper? It looks bad. It upsets the girls, and that don’t take a lot, believe me. Plus, we don’t want to give the punters the impression that the acts are boring, now do we? Not at the prices we charge.’

Annie caught Tony’s eye, nodded at the paper, shook her head. With a sigh, Tony folded the paper and slipped it inside his jacket.

‘Thanks,’ said Bobby Jo.

‘So tell me about Teresa.’

‘I’ve done all this with the Bill,’ said Bobby Jo.

‘Yeah, but you’ve heard about the latest case?’

‘The black girl done up West? Yeah, I heard. Fucking shame.’

‘Friend of mine.’

‘Oh?’ The ferocious painted mouth turned down in an expression of sympathy. ‘Sorry.’

‘Thanks. So tell me.’

Bobby Jo told Annie about Teresa’s enterprising spirit, that she had been caught on several occasions handing out business cards (‘Fucking business cards, I ask you, that girl’) in the club, advertising her services as an escort.

‘I mean you don’t do that, do you? Work for one business and set yourself up in another, in the business’s time? Ain’t that unethical or some fucking thing?’

‘Yeah.’ Annie wondered how much these girls got paid for parading up there on the stage pretending they were batting for the other side. Not much, she guessed. A little more wedge would come in dead handy. A little sideline—keep the wolf from the door. Sadly, Teresa’s little sideline had got her killed.

Annie looked at Bobby Jo. A big, lean man in women’s clothing. Bobby Jo was narked with Teresa because she’d been promoting her own business on his firm’s time. Maybe his boss had leaned on him to come down hard on her, and somehow it had got out of hand? But again, why go so far as to kill her? A sharp warning, maybe. Even the sack. But a terminal solution? No. And there were two other girls who’d gone the same way. Val Delacourt and Aretha. Which suggested someone who was developing a distinct pattern, not a one-off. Didn’t it?

‘She get on with everybody, did she?’ asked Annie. ‘Any cat-fights? I know what these girls can be like.’

Bobby Jo gave a low rumble of smoker’s laughter. ‘I’ve had the filth crawling all over the place asking me all this. Big tall bloke, dark hair, face like an undertaker.’

‘Hunter,’ said Annie.

‘That’s the one. I’ll tell you what I told him. These girls always have enemies. They scrap like wild dogs over the best-paying punters. They worry over who’s got the best tits, the flattest stomach. There’s no sisterhood in here, my dear. Far from it.’

A weary-looking hostess came wobbling over on ridiculous heels and put their drinks on the table. Orange juice for Annie, a bottle of Krug in a bucket of ice for Bobby Jo.

‘Perks of management,’ he said, pouring the champagne and giving the girl a wink as she departed. He held the bottle up. ‘Sure I can’t tempt you?’

Annie shook her head.

‘Your loss.’

‘What about her friends?’

‘Teresa? She didn’t do friends. She was a chippy little cow, rubbed everyone up the wrong way.’

‘She must have. After all, someone went and killed her.’

Bobby Jo was looking at Tony, sitting there peacefully watching the act.

‘I like the muscle,’ he said to Annie. ‘Thinking of getting myself a minder.’

‘What, you think you need one?’ Annie sipped her juice.

Bobby Jo turned back to her. His perfect teeth flashed in a shark-like grin. His eyes were like little black stones behind the dense false eyelashes.

‘These are dangerous times,’ he said. ‘People getting themselves killed, what’s the world coming to? It makes a person nervous. You want to watch yourself, Mrs Carter, poking around in this sort of thing.’

‘I’ll bear that in mind.’ Annie finished her juice and stood up, thinking that she really didn’t like Bobby Jo at all—in fact he gave her the creeps.

Tony rose too.

‘Thanks for the refreshments, Bobby Jo. If you hear anything of interest, let me know. You’ve got my number,’ she said.

‘Sure,’ said Bobby Jo, and sank some more Krug.

Half an hour later, Annie was sitting in Teresa Walker’s mother’s front room. It was shabby, dated, but very clean. Teresa’s mother was obviously poor, but proud. Like Aretha’s Aunt Louella. Also, like Louella, this woman looked totally crushed by what had happened.

Teresa’s mother had long, faded and brittle-looking red hair, a skull-like, careworn face, and pale denim-blue eyes that looked washed to grey by all the tears she’d shed. Tatty old slippers on her feet. Shapeless clothes hanging off her tall, thin frame. A woman who’d had the shit well and truly kicked out of her.

There were pictures up on the mantelpiece above the bare hearth—pictures of a big laughing girl with a shock of red hair. Teresa certainly wouldn’t have looked like that now. Not after some lunatic had got hold of her.

Annie introduced herself and sat down opposite Mrs Walker. Tony was waiting outside in the car. The woman picked up a Bible from the arm of the chair and clutched it tightly, constantly stroking her bony fingers over it.

‘Mrs Walker, I need to know everything you can tell me about Teresa,’ said Annie.

‘I went through all this with the police.’ Mrs Walker sat opposite Annie and looked at her in confusion. ‘Are you connected to the police?’

‘I’m not connected to the police, Mrs Walker. There have been three…’ Annie suddenly found she couldn’t bring herself to say murders, not in front of this poor broken woman who looked as if insanity was only a moment away. ‘…incidents like the one involving Teresa. The last one involved a friend of mine. I want to find out who did this horrible thing. I don’t want to hear about anyone else having to go through the same thing that me and you are going through right now. I’m in a position to look into these things, let’s just say that.’

‘You said your name was Carter?’ Her expression was suddenly agitated. ‘Oh my God. You’re one of those Carters,’ said Mrs Walker. ‘You’re to do with them gangsters.’

‘The Carter family look after their friends, Mrs Walker. Always.’

Mrs Walker jumped to her feet. The Bible hit the floor. She looked frantically down at it, then at Annie. In that moment, she looked truly demented; the grief was eating her soul like a cancer.

‘No! No, it was by associating with people like you that Teresa ended up as she did.’

‘That’s not true, Mrs Walker,’ said Annie.

‘I want you out of my house! You and your kind never do anything for nothing. I know how it all works,’ said Mrs Walker.

Annie stood up.

‘Mrs Walker, if I can find out who killed your daughter, and Val Delacourt, then—’

‘That little tramp.’

‘You know Val Delacourt?’ Annie’s attention sharpened. ‘She didn’t work with Teresa, did she?’

‘No, she didn’t. Not at that disgusting place run by that weirdo. Oh, I knew all about that place, don’t you worry. Teresa thought she’d get into glamour modelling by working there. I told her it was beneath her, but she wouldn’t listen.’