Scarlet Women

‘Come on. Let’s go up to the flat,’ Annie shouted back.

They went back out of the double doors at the top of the stairs and Annie unclipped the rope barrier, ushering Dolly through and up the smaller set of steps that led to the office and to Annie’s flat. Once inside, it was quieter. The deep jungle beat of the bass kept going, but at least up there they could hear themselves think.

‘Drink?’ offered Annie, as Dolly cast an interested eye around the flat.

‘Yeah, thanks. Hey, this is nice.’

Annie shrugged as she went over to the drinks tray on the sideboard. ‘I ain’t done much to it yet. Been concentrating on the club itself.’ And other things. She poured out a sherry for Dolly and orange juice for herself.

‘Take a seat,’ she said, and Dolly sat down on the couch, taking her drink from Annie.

‘So,’ said Annie, sitting opposite Dolly and putting her drink aside. ‘How’s the business?’

‘More punters than we can handle.’

‘That’s good. Girls okay?’

‘Oh, fine. Rosie’s a nice girl. Too tired to shit, but so likable that you can’t take offence at it. That Sharlene’s sharp as a tack, but she’s pretty honest and she’s a good worker, so I can’t complain.’

‘Gave you a bit of a scare though, didn’t they?’ said Annie with a faint smile.

‘Hm?’ Dolly was sipping the sherry.

‘I mean, when we thought something might have happened to Rosie. And before that, when they were arguing the toss over who was going to take that escorting job, you remember?’

‘Oh, that. Yeah. Sure.’

‘Because you knew who one of them was booked to see,’ said Annie. ‘And you’d made it clear to them that you didn’t want to take the booking.’

Dolly’s face had gone very still. She took another sip of the sherry and looked at the carpet.

‘Because,’ Annie went on relentlessly, ‘you were afraid for them. Because you knew what had happened last time you took a booking from that person, and you didn’t want to risk that happening again. When Rosie took that booking and went out, you thought she was toast. You were white as a sheet, terrified.’

Dolly raised her eyes and looked straight at Annie. Annie stared back at her. Dolly. Her dearest friend, the one person she would always turn to in a crisis. Big-mouthed and immaculately dressed in her suits, her bubble- permed blonde hair always neatly coiffed, her manicure and make-up always perfect. Dolly wore the mantle of the successful madam with ease and authority.

But here was the crunch, the point at which Dolly would stop and turn away. Dolly still had to pay her dues. And she paid them to Redmond Delaney.

‘I don’t know what you’re on about,’ she said, and looked puzzled as she sipped the sherry again.

‘Come off it, Doll. Shit, I’ve taught you all I know and you still know fuck-all. But you do know this. You know exactly what I’m talking about. I’m talking about taking an escort booking for Redmond.’

Dolly choked.

She went bright red, coughed, spilled sherry down her powder-blue skirt and on the couch. With an unsteady hand she put the glass on to the coffee table and rummaged around in her handbag for a hankie. She coughed into it, then looked at Annie with streaming eyes.

‘What the hell?’ she managed to wheeze.

‘You heard.’ Now Annie’s eyes were hard. ‘Sharlene wanted to take the booking, but she thought Rosie had beaten her to it. So did you. It scared the crap out of you. Just as well Rosie didn’t. I can’t see Rosie hacking the rough stuff. I think we both know by now what a night out with Redmond involves, and it ain’t pretty.’

‘Annie…’ said Dolly desperately.

‘Don’t give me any bullshit, Doll,’ she snapped, and Dolly recoiled. ‘You went to a lot of trouble to lose any information about that last escort booking that Aretha took, didn’t you? You said a woman placed the booking, was that true? Or was that just more smokescreen, more fucking lies?’

Dolly had gone very pale. She sat there looking very small on the couch, the hankie bunched in her fist, her bag clutched against her like a shield. Annie felt bad, having to do this to her.

‘No,’ she said at last. ‘That wasn’t a lie. A woman phoned through the booking. I told the police that, you know I did.’

‘Yeah, and of course they couldn’t trace the number. Because it was made from a phone booth in the arse end of nowhere. Who was the woman, Dolly? Did you know?’

Dolly was swallowing convulsively.

‘No,’ she said.

‘I said no more bullshit.’

‘I didn’t know her,’ yelled Dolly straight back.

‘The fuck you didn’t. You knew her then and you know her now. You just won’t say it out loud.’

‘I can’t,’ said Dolly, suddenly dissolving into tears. ‘For the love of God, Annie, how can I? He’d kill me, you know he would; you know what they’re capable of.’

Now it was Annie’s turn to be still. What Dolly had just said was as good as a confession in her book.

‘Yeah,’ said Annie. ‘Okay. So say nothing, Doll. Keep yourself safe—even if some other poor bitches are put at risk because you’re so concerned with covering your own arse. You saw what associating with them done to Mira, and that boy Gareth, just because he was a friend to her. And you believed that Redmond did for Aretha. If that poor little bitch Rosie had done that escort job, she could have come back in bits. She could have been dead meat. You knew how it was going to go, Doll. I only had to look at your face when you thought Rosie’d taken that booking. You were shitting yourself. If he’d done it before, you knew that one of these days he’d do it again.’

‘I couldn’t tell you,’ sobbed Dolly, tears cascading down her face.

‘Okay. Well, I’ll tell you then. Redmond Delaney damn near did for Mira but didn’t quite succeed. She was a messy loophole and he wanted her closed up neatly—that was why he was so hopping mad when he heard she was at your place; that was why he sent in the troops to get her. Gareth? I’m guessing he tracked her to the boy’s flat, but Gareth knew what had happened to her with Redmond, how low he’d brought her down, and he wouldn’t grass on her, wouldn’t tell where she was. He paid with his life for that. How am I doing so far?’

Dolly said nothing.

‘And then,’ said Annie, ‘Aretha. Our friend. Yours and mine. A specialist in S & M, and that’s what he liked, that’s what he wanted. I know the history of the Delaneys, Doll, and I guess what happened to them as children twisted them up good and proper. That’s their only excuse for being like they are. It ain’t much of one. But Redmond was happy to let the Bill fit up Chris for it.’

‘What could I do?’ demanded Dolly through her tears. ‘You tell me! Go up against that lot? You must be fucking joking! I had to keep quiet. There was nothing else I could do—not if I wanted to get out of it without getting my neck stretched too.’

Annie understood Dolly’s point of view. She knew how scared and how horrified, how powerless she must have felt, to find herself embroiled in something as messy as this. Dolly had backed away, buried her head in the sand. You couldn’t blame her for that.

The rage burned in Annie again—rage against these monsters who thought they had the right to use women so badly. Monsters who thought it was perfectly okay to piss and shit on a girl, as long as they were paying for the privilege. Monsters who drew no line at the level of abuse—who beat them and terrified them and finally killed them, as if the girls were to blame and not their own sordid, twisted natures.

She had once believed that Redmond was not a sexual being. Later, she had suspected he might be queer. She had never expected him to be a woman-beating sadist.

‘It was Orla Delaney, wasn’t it?’ said Annie. ‘Orla made the call for Aretha’s booking, and it was Orla who phoned again on the night you thought Rosie had taken a booking with Redmond.’

Dolly shot her one swift, ashamed glance. Then she bit her lip and nodded, and let the tears fall once again.