whatever means you could—who gave a damn how?
Soon Aretha was coining it. Aunt Louella, who was a fierce Christian, found out about it and was furious. They argued, Aretha left and moved in with Annie’s aunt Celia, who ran a quiet and orderly establishment in Limehouse before Annie and then Dolly took over the reins. And the rest was history. Aretha had settled right in as the house’s resident dominatrix, its biggest earner.
But now look, just look.
Aretha lay in the morgue. Her husband was being held and probably being charged right now for her murder. It was an unholy mess.
Dolly looked sick about all this. ‘That poor woman’s got a world of grief to get through. They were still quite close, you know. Even though she disapproved of what Aretha did, she made a point of never losing touch with her. Maybe thought one day she’d bring her back into the fold. Very religious lady, Louella.’
Annie nodded. She knew that Louella lived on the Carter patch, her patch. Max would have paid a call, sent flowers, helped out the bereaved in any way he could. When you ran an area, when you owned an area, there was a certain etiquette to be observed, certain dues that always had to be paid. Even Redmond Delaney, who owned these Limehouse streets and the streets of Battersea, even he would understand that. And now that Annie was in charge of the Carter manor in Bow, she was determined to fulfil her obligations too.
‘Give me her address, Doll. I’ll go and see her.’
‘Yeah, okay,’ said Dolly, and stood up and went to the drawer where she kept her books.
‘And I want to know who Aretha was with last night. And where.’
Dolly’s expression was irritable.
‘You’re like a dog with a fucking bone, Annie Carter,’ she grumbled, coming back to the table with books, paper and pen. ‘I wish you’d drop it. I don’t like this. I don’t like it at all. You ought to leave it to the brief. That’s my advice.’
Ross, the young heavy on front of house, knocked at the kitchen door. He poked his head around it and looked disapprovingly at Annie.
‘Tony says a guy just handed him this,’ he said, holding out a scrap of paper.
Annie looked surprised and then suspicious. It was late. Who would want to contact her here, tonight? Who would even know she’d be here?
She stood up and took it. ‘Thanks, Ross.’
She sat back down at the table and spread out the piece of paper. Looked at it. Numbers.
‘Jesus H. Christ in a sidecar,’ she murmured.
‘What is it?’ asked Dolly, craning forward.
Annie sat back, shaking her head, her mouth twisted in a bitter smile.
Dolly looked at her. ‘Come on! What is it?’ She peered interestedly at the note. ‘Numbers? Haven’t you had some of these before? There was a name for them, I remember. Pizza somethings.’
‘Pizzino,’ said Annie.
‘That’s the feller. Oh!’ Dolly’s eyes widened. ‘It’s from that Mafia bloke. Barolli. Well, come the fuck on, what’s it say?’
‘What’s it say?’ Annie stared back at her in outrage. ‘Look, Doll, mind your bloody own will you? I can’t think about him now, how the fuck could I? Poor Aretha’s dead because of some psycho, and he thinks he can just waltz back into my life, after three months of nothing, with a note?’
‘Well, when you put it like that…’
‘There’s no other way to put it, Doll.’ Annie screwed up the note and lobbed it angrily into the sink. She took a calming breath and nodded to Dolly’s notebooks. ‘Right, Doll, let’s get back to business.’ She stood up. ‘I’m going to phone Jerry, get him down the station to speak to Chris.’
Jerry Peters was Annie’s brief from way back: a tall, overweight man with a shock of fluffy ginger hair, a florid complexion and a brilliance in legal matters that belied his shambolic looks. ‘While I do that, dig out Aunt Louella’s address. And—yeah—everything you’ve got about Aretha’s last client, and where she met him.’
‘Ah,’ said Dolly awkwardly.
‘What do you mean, “ah”?’
‘Fact is,’ said Dolly, her eyes downcast, ‘I don’t actually know who her last client was. A woman phoned in the booking, said room two-oh-six at the Vista in Park Lane and the time, asked for Aretha, and the client paid Aretha, so…’ Her voice tailed off.
‘You didn’t know this woman? You didn’t even take a name?’
Dolly looked up, her expression unhappy. ‘Sorry,’ she said, ‘no.’
‘Shit,’ said Annie.
Chapter 5
Mira Cooper would forever remember the first time she set eyes on Redmond Delaney. She’d been sitting in the luxuriously ornate dining room at Cliveden with Sir William Farquharson, married ex-member of the House, when they’d shown Redmond and his party to a nearby table.
He was just the most exquisite man she’d ever seen: tall and lithe, with red hair, lime-green eyes, smooth skin and an air of command about him. He was with a group of five others, and a darkhaired stunner was paying him a lot of attention. Redmond’s attention, much to the brunette’s visible annoyance, was fixed upon Mira, whose beautiful blonde looks had always been her fortune.
Chatting to William as they ate, her eyes were constantly drawn back to Redmond—and she couldn’t help but compare the two. William was short, pot-bellied, balding and plain. Redmond Delaney, however, was a god.
Oh yes, she remembered it all: being in the pool the following afternoon, wearing her best silver bikini, hoping he’d be there. And he was. Sir William was lounging on one of the chairs at the side of the pool, talking to another old man and smoking a Havana cigar. Mira’s heart almost stopped when Redmond appeared at the edge of the pool. He slipped off his robe and dived in, swimming a couple of powerful laps until he ended up leaning against the side of the pool, right beside her.
‘Nice day,’ he said.
She flicked a flirtatious glance at him. She knew how to use her looks to good effect. He saw her stunning blue eyes widen slightly, saw her pupils dilate, and that was good. She liked the look of him and she was determined to let him know it. He was a handsome man, a striking man. He wasn’t old or pot bellied—and he had to be rich to stay here; she knew that.
‘Lovely,’ she said, and smiled.
‘Staying long?’ he asked, glancing over at Sir William, who was deep into his conversation, noticing nothing, certainly not the way her eyes were playing with the younger man’s, certainly not the way her nubile body was half turning towards this new kid on the block.
‘Until the weekend,’ she said, smiling.
He smiled back at her. ‘Good. I hope we’ll meet up again.’
‘We might,’ she said playfully.
‘I think we should.’
‘That’s very forward of you.’ Her eyes were dancing; she was enjoying this.
‘I am forward,’ he said, ‘in most things. My name’s Redmond, by the way.’
‘Are you a businessman?’ she asked him, entranced by his soft southern Irish accent.
‘Yes.’ It was true, more or less. He owned the streets of Battersea and a little pocket of
