Scarlet Women

‘Then where do you know Val from?’

‘She’s one of the Delacourt tribe.’ Now Mrs Walker’s bony little face was full of contempt. ‘Everyone around here knows the Delacourt family, and it’s no surprise one of theirs came to grief, believe you me.’

But one of yours did too, thought Annie. She didn’t say it.

‘They live in the next street,’ said Mrs Walker, sniffing and folding her arms. She told Annie which number. ‘Rough lot. Bringing the whole area into disrepute. Horrible people.’

Annie said the address. She remembered it from the case notes that Lane had supplied her with.

‘That’s the place,’ said Mrs Walker. ‘Although I wouldn’t go round there, if I were you.’

‘Can you tell me anything else about Val?’

‘Only that she’s a whore,’ said Mrs Walker.

Annie cocked her head questioningly. ‘You mean that she worked the streets?’

Mrs Walker nodded emphatically. ‘With her own brother as her pimp. That family’s no good. Robert. Peter. Val. They’re all bad.’

On the way back to Dolly’s, Annie asked Tony to cruise past the Delacourt house. It was a pebbledashed estate house almost identical to Mrs Walker’s, but there the similarity ended; this house was grimy and the windows were dressed with filthy nets. A threadbare settee had been dumped out on what passed for the front lawn. A dog barked constantly from inside. A big one, by the sound of it. All the lights were on. There was a heavy, constant thump of a boom box from within.

‘Nice place, Boss,’ sniffed Tony.

‘You know the Delacourts?’ asked Annie.

‘No.’

‘We’ll call tomorrow,’ said Annie, and Tony drove on, back to Dolly’s.

Layla was at the kitchen table, filling in her colouring book. Dolly was there with her. The kitchen door was closed, but Annie could faintly hear sexual activity from upstairs, grunts and gasps of pleasure. Ross was on the door. It wasn’t right, leaving Layla here, and Annie knew it, but Kath would have burst a blood vessel if she had asked her to baby-sit again so soon.

Layla grinned up at Annie in delight when she came in. Guilt crushed Annie’s guts in a vice.

Her darling little daughter. Max Carter’s child. And all the more precious for that, because she had loved him so very much. The merest touch from Max had raced through her veins like a drug. And then she thought of Constantine—glossy, polished, alluring Constantine. She felt the same high, the same delicious giddiness she had known with Max, whenever she was near to him, and it worried her. She couldn’t afford distractions like that, not right now.

‘Mummy?’ said Layla, as Annie and Dolly exchanged glances over her innocent head.

‘Yeah, darling?’ said Annie, ruffling Layla’s silky hair.

‘What’s a whore?’

‘Well, you can’t wonder at her picking up things,’ Dolly said when Annie turned up at her place next morning, having spent a lousy night churning everything around, unable to rest.

‘Not things like that, for Christ’s sake,’ said Annie. She pulled out a chair and slumped down at the kitchen table, bumping against Ellie’s bucket. Ellie gave her an exasperated look.

Annie gave her a look right back.

‘Do you really have to do that right now?’ she demanded.

‘Listen, don’t get all stroppy with me, I’m not the one who leaves her child in a knocking-shop and then bawls the place down when the poor kid picks up a fruity phrase or two.’

‘Shut the fuck up, Ellie.’

‘Well pardon me. And what nice language to hear from a mother.’

Ellie was right. She couldn’t keep dumping Layla on Dolly, and she couldn’t keep on dumping her on Kath either. Layla came skipping in from the hall, trotting around in Ellie’s wake as she mopped the floor.

‘Layla, honey, don’t get in Ellie’s way,’ Annie sighed.

‘It’s all right. I don’t mind her,’ said Ellie, chucking Layla under the chin indulgently. ‘You’re a little sweetie, ain’t you petal?’

Rosie came hurrying through in a leather mini and see-through white chiffon blouse with no discernible bra underneath it. She clocked Dolly standing there drinking tea, Ellie mopping, Annie at the kitchen table and Layla skating around the room, slipping and sliding, having a great time.

‘It’s like Clapham Junction in here,’ she said with a lazy grin, throwing a flirtatious smile over her shoulder at Ross, who was sitting in the hall beside the front door, waiting for punters.

Ross winked at her and grinned right back.

Jesus, this was no place for a child.

‘I’ve gotta go,’ she said, and scooped up Layla and hustled her out of the door, passing a semi-dressed, dark-haired and sharp-faced Sharlene in the hall, giggling with an older man who was just coming downstairs doing his shirt up.

Back at the club, she found chubby, vile-smelling DS Lane waiting for her, his white nylon shirt stained yellow under the armpits, smoking a fag and chatting to the workmen who were trying to hoist the new sign into place.

Annie glared at him. He stank of stale sweat. Jeez, didn’t the noxious bastard ever take a bath?

‘What the hell do you want?’ Annie asked, glancing sideways to where Layla was still sitting in the car, chatting excitedly to Tony.

‘Phewee, who bit you up the arse this morning?’ he enquired.

Christ, she thought. Bent coppers with body odour, prostitutes in see-through blouses and now workmen who stormed past her and vanished into the club, saying they couldn’t get on because ‘the effing plaster’ hadn’t arrived on time.

They brushed past her and Lane, gaily calling each other cunts and stomping around inside in their hobnail boots. This wasn’t the right atmosphere to bring a child up in either, and she was going to have to do something about it pronto.

‘Well?’ she prompted Lane in agitation.

‘I gotta take those files back. Someone’s noticed they’re gone.’

Annie swallowed her pride and her reluctance to be parted from Layla. She phoned her sister Ruthie, who was living over in Richmond, to ask if she would look after Layla for a while.

‘How long’s a while?’ asked Ruthie.

‘Two, three weeks?’ guessed Annie, and explained what was going on.

There was a pause. Annie could picture Ruthie there at the other end of the phone, her neat blonde hair, her kind and unremarkable face. A lovely woman, Ruthie. A good woman, and Annie needed her now.

‘I know I shouldn’t ask, I know I’ve no right to,’ she hurried on.

‘Oh, don’t come over all humble, it don’t suit you.’ Annie could hear the laughter in her voice. ‘Course I’ll look after her.’

And so it was arranged, as easy as that: Tony drove her and Layla and all Layla’s things over to Ruthie’s. All Annie’s anxieties were resolved when Ruthie opened the door. Ruthie had two kittens, and Layla was instantly entranced, but she still cried and clung to Annie when she had to leave. There were tears in Annie’s eyes too, as Ruthie hugged Layla and told her that Mummy had business to see to, it would be fine, it wouldn’t be for long, and could Layla help her name the kittens?

Annie kissed her daughter goodbye, and walked away with tears streaming down her face. Things had to be sorted out, and that couldn’t happen until she knew Layla was safe. But Jesus, it hurt to be parted from her. It hurt like hell.