Scarlet Women

and delivered a better one to Bobby Jo’s nose. Then he followed through with another to the stomach.

Bobby Jo doubled over, blood cascading down his blue dress. Tony brought his knee up and it crunched into the centre of Bobby Jo’s face. Bobby Jo staggered back, floundered against the dressing table, sweeping off more bits and pieces of the trade—his brushes, a pair of falsies, a tub of face powder that plumed up all around them like a dust storm in a desert.

Tony went back in.

‘No!’ burbled Bobby Jo past a mouthful of blood. He shrank back against the table, one of his false eyelashes hanging off, blood all over his face and down his dress.

Tony smacked him again.

Annie watched impassively. She felt sick inside, but the bastard deserved this. This, and more.

When Bobby Jo was on his knees, she nodded to Tony.

Tony drew back.

Annie stepped forward and stood in front of Bobby Jo.

‘Now,’ she said. ‘Tell me why you killed Aretha Brown.’

‘I didn’t, I don’t know what—’

Annie stepped aside and Tony moved back in, twisting Bobby Jo’s arms up behind his back until he shrieked.

‘I didn’t, I didn’t…’ he was babbling, his face a mask of blood and make-up, his red wig askew.

‘You want my friend here to take you apart bit by bit?’ she asked. ‘Because believe me, he will. Until you start telling the truth.’

‘But I didn’t, I didn’t do nothing…’ he sobbed.

Tony wrenched harder.

Bobby Jo screamed.

‘No! Don’t! All right, I’ll tell you! I’ll tell you!’

Tony held him there. Any more lies, he’d get more.

Annie pulled up a chair and stared at the grotesque, ruined face without pity. After all, what pity had he shown?

‘Tell me,’ she said.

‘It…it was that cow Teresa. I was fucking her, you know I was,’ he was babbling.

‘Yeah, I know. Move on.’

‘I’ve got a…a thing going, a long-term thing, with Selma Callow who owns a share of the club. She’s a jealous woman. Wants to keep me all to herself.’

Fat chance of that, by the look of things, thought Annie.

‘So?’

‘Teresa walked in on us once in here,’ said Bobby Jo, tears and blood running in rivers down his face. ‘She was such a little chancer. I told you about her, passing round fucking business cards inside the club, pushing her luck.’ He paused, coughed, spluttered. ‘But I was turking her sometimes so I overlooked the problem…’

She looked at him with distaste. ‘And?’

‘She was friends with this Aretha Brown. Said they met at church or some damned mad thing. Teresa in a church! Crazy. But that’s what she said, and it was her idea, this Brown woman, to blackmail me.’

Aretha and her love of money, thought Annie. ‘Go on,’ she told him.

‘I can’t, I can’t…’ He was panting, doubled over. Tony gave him a tweak. Bobby Jo yelled and straightened up. ‘All right! I thought they’d drop it after a couple of payouts…but they didn’t. They just kept coming back for more. I didn’t know what the fuck to do: if Selma found out I was dead in the water. Out of the best job I’ve ever had; out of the flat she bought me. I’d lose my car. She said if I ever cheated on her she’d see me dead, and I believed her. You don’t know what she’s like. She’s an obsessive bitch, she’s fucking scary. I was frantic. And then…Teresa was killed. I tell you, that was my lucky bloody day.’

‘Keep going,’ said Annie when he slumped again.

‘Think I’m going to be sick…’ he panted, turning his hideous painted face aside and spitting out teeth and blood on to the carpet.

‘Keep going,’ she said again.

‘Jesus…’

‘Keep going.’

‘Teresa was killed like the other one.’

‘Val Delacourt.’

‘That one, yeah. So Teresa was gone, and that was good news. I relaxed. Thought it was all over. Then that Aretha Brown came calling, saying it was not over, that she was going to keep taking payments from me, and she upped them, upped them a lot. I was desperate then, I didn’t know what to do…’

Oh fuck it, Aretha, was the damned money that important, really? Important enough to die for?

Bobby Jo hunched over, and with a convulsive movement was sick. The stench of vomit filled the little room. Gasping, he straightened again. Annie watched him steadily, her stomach knotted up with revulsion.

‘Then I…oh shit…I worked out a plan. The Delacourt woman and Teresa had been garrotted, it was in all the papers, and I thought if I made it look the same, then I could get rid of the Brown bitch the same way and…’ Bobby Jo paused, gasping down a breath, ‘…and the police would think it was the same man who’d done all three. They’d never suspect. I’d be home and dry.’

And Chris would have rotted in prison.

Annie stood up, weary and disgusted.

‘Now you’re going to tell all that to the Bill,’ she said. ‘And you’re going to serve time.’

Bobby Jo was shaking his head, his bloody mouth twisted into a ravaged smile. ‘No! You got this out of me with your pet ape beating lumps off me: that won’t stand up.’

Annie drew in close to the wreck in front of her, her face set with rage. She grabbed the wig and threw it aside. Grabbed the skullcap and his own hair through it. Wrenched his head back.

‘Now you listen to me, you arsehole,’ she spat. ‘You’re telling the police what you just told us. This ain’t negotiable. You die—now—or you confess to what you done. Tell them you fell down the stairs or a jealous husband beat you up, some crap like that. Then you keep your head down, you do your time. Inside or outside, my boys can reach you. Inside or outside, you step out of line just once and I’m telling you— you’re fucked.’

She let him go, breathing hard. She stepped past him to the dressing table and snatched up the phone. She dialled. When it was answered, she said, ‘DI Hunter please,’ and gave Tony the nod.

He let go of Bobby Jo. She put the phone into Bobby Jo’s shaking hand and stood over him while he confessed to the murder of Aretha Brown.

When she got back to the club, the phone was ringing. She picked up. It was Constantine.

‘Okay, what?’ she demanded.

‘What do you mean, okay, what? Where do you get off, talking to me like that?’

‘Fuck you,’ she said, and hung up.

The phone rang again. She snatched it up. ‘I said I had an apartment in Manhattan, that’s all,’ he said. ‘What, did you think I was propositioning you, making some sort of indecent suggestion?’

No, I thought you were tucking me away out of sight of your family. As if I was something shameful, something sordid, to be hidden away.

She couldn’t say that. She was too proud to say that.

‘I wasn’t doing that,’ he said.

‘No? Your family hate me.’

‘I don’t care.’

‘Well I do. Only Alberto’s nice to me, and I’m starting to wonder why, when all the