Scarlet Women

off me?’ She dragged a hand through her hair. ‘Look, I’ll catch you later,’ she said, and hung up the phone.

Then she went to the sideboard and rummaged in the drawer, ignoring the phone when it rang again. It would be him. And, right now, she was too damned angry, too hyped up by all that had happened to her to speak to him. She found Sir William’s business card and waited for the phone to stop ringing. Then she dialled the number on it.

He picked up at once. ‘Hello?’

‘How tall was the red-haired woman, did your man say? Aretha was a six-footer.’ And Orla Delaney’s only five foot six.

‘Is that you, Mrs Carter? Well…he said she was at least as tall as the woman she was clearly following. Perhaps taller.’

‘Over six feet tall? That’s big for a woman.’

‘Nevertheless, that’s what he said. He particularly noticed the woman’s height, because it was unusual, just as your friend’s height was unusual.’

Orla really didn’t do it.

Annie thought of Teresa Walker’s mother. Tall. Gaunt. Red-haired. Sitting there stroking her Bible, a mad gleam in her eyes. Aretha was connected to Teresa and they shared a mutual love of money. Yeah. At last. She had it.

‘Thanks, Sir William, that’s all I wanted to know.’

‘A pleasure, my dear. If I can be of any further assistance…’

He hung up. She dialled through to the police station, but Hunter was out.

Annie stalked around the apartment, thinking. She had escaped death thanks only to Hunter’s sharp thinking, to his nose for trouble. She couldn’t just sit here, watch some telly, eat a meal, behave normally. She had to do something.

She looked at the roses. She picked out a bunch of twenty, wrapped them in yesterday’s newspaper. Picked up her keys and her bag, and left the flat, left the club. Out in the street, she hailed a cab and told the driver where she wanted to go.

The house at Harrow was quiet, as usual. But this time there was no heavy on the door, and that surprised her. She knocked, and the white-coated nurse opened it.

‘Ah,’ she said, as Annie pushed past her.

‘Yeah, me again,’ said Annie, already trotting up the stairs.

‘I have to talk to you,’ said the woman, following Annie up.

‘Look, I don’t want to hear about bad nights and bad days and all that shit. I’ve had a pretty bad day, too. I’ve had a pretty fucking bad year, actually, don’t give me earache, I don’t…’

Annie had flung open the door at the top of the stairs and now she stood frozen in the doorway, looking at the empty bed. She turned and stared at the nurse as she reached the top of the stairs.

‘What the…?’ started Annie.

‘That’s why I wanted to talk to you,’ said the woman.

‘Where the hell is she? Has she run off again? Jesus, you people are supposed to be watching her!’

Then a worse thought occurred. Had Redmond somehow managed to track Mira to this address? Had he found Mira? Had he taken her away?

‘We have been watching her, I assure you.’ There was a glint of something other than hostility in the woman’s eyes now. ‘Look, I’m sorry. She didn’t make it.’

‘Didn’t…’ Annie echoed faintly. She turned and looked at the empty bed again. She shook her head. ‘No…’

‘I’m sorry,’ said the nurse, and there was compassion in her eyes. ‘I don’t think she wanted to go on. She… she must have been hoarding up sleeping pills, stashing them away…’

‘You what?’

‘She…she overdosed. We lost her during the night.’

Annie looked down at the red roses clutched in her arms. She looked at the empty bed. At the nurse.

‘No,’ she said again.

Mira, she thought. For God’s sake, couldn’t you have just held on? You came through so much, why did you have to give up now?

‘I’m sorry,’ the nurse said again, her eyes avoiding Annie’s.

Annie took a breath. She looked down at the roses again; roses for life, for love. Neither of which Mira was going to know about, not any more. She held them out to the nurse with a gesture of barely suppressed fury.

‘Here. You have them.’

‘Oh, I don’t…’

‘Take them.’ Annie slapped the flowers into the nurse’s arms.

She took one last look at the empty bed, swallowed hard past a sudden choking lump in her throat, then went past the nurse and back down the stairs.

‘Thank you,’ the nurse’s voice drifted after her, but she was already down in the hall, going out of the front door and down the path to the road, her heart like a block of ice in her chest, her head full of hatred.

She didn’t blame that stupid nurse for this. Redmond had killed Mira, as surely as if he had throttled her during one of his loathsome sex games, as surely as if he had put a gun to her head and pulled the trigger. And he’d got away. He’d got away.

Chapter 51

At eleven the next morning, Tony drove Annie over to Soho in a borrowed Rover.

‘This is dog rough,’ he complained the minute she got in. ‘I hate this fucking car, pardon my French, Boss. The Jag had class. Look at this cheap trim, and what colour do they call the exterior, what is that, beige or something? Beige with a black roof, that looks like a frigging abortion. They call this a “compact executive” car. Well it don’t look very executive to me.’

‘It’ll do for now,’ said Annie. It was obvious that Tony was feeling no after-effects from his experiences with the Delaneys, and that was good. ‘We’ll get another car, a better one.’

That seemed to placate him. Annie explained what they were doing today. They pulled up outside the tattoo parlour. Annie thought of Pete Delacourt, the tattooed freak, another victim of Redmond’s obsessive pursuit of Mira Cooper. She had relived time and again that moment when she’d found him dead in the Delaney yard.

They walked around the side until they reached the back entrance to the Alley Cat club. They went in, went to the dressing room they knew he’d be in. Tony opened the closed door, and they walked in on Bobby Jo, all glammed up in long red wig and sparkly blue dress, getting busy with a blonde club hostess wearing nothing but a frilly skirt, stockings and high-heeled shoes.

‘What the fucking hell?’ demanded Bobby Jo, while the girl let out a screech and covered her oversized naked breasts with her hands.

‘Sorry to interrupt your knee-trembler, Bobby Jo, but I want a word,’ said Annie. She turned her attention to the girl. ‘Out,’ she said.

The blonde shot past Annie and Tony like a bullet. Tony closed the door after her, leaving them with one enraged drag queen, a visibly wilting hard-on pressing up against the front of his sequinned frock.

‘You’ve got a fucking nerve, coming in here again,’ Bobby Jo started in, looming over Annie.

Tall and red-haired. But not a woman at all.

‘Tone,’ said Annie, and stepped back.

Tony hit Bobby Jo square on the jaw. Bobby Jo shot back against his dressing table, scattering blusher and foundation. He jumped up again, though, and came at Tony with an inexpert swing. Tony blocked the blow easily