Jessie Keane - Black Widow

They looked at each other.

Annie stood up and went over to the open safe door. She knelt and pushed it open wide, hoping against hope. She looked back at Jimmy Bond, and he came and had a look too. She held her breath, and looked inside.

Annie’s heart plummeted to her boots.

The safe was empty.

By three that afternoon, Annie was sitting in Dolly’s kitchen, looking at the closed box in the centre of the table. She’d brought Jimmy back here, put the box there on the table, told him to take a seat.

‘So what’s going on?’ he asked, sitting down opposite Annie. He looked at the box. ‘What’s that?’

‘Take a look,’ said Annie.

She was calmer now. For two hours she had raged and vomited and screeched like a wounded animal, and then she had discovered that the Palermo’s safe was empty and raged about that , but now she was calmer. Calm as sheet ice with a wild river crashing beneath it. Holding in her fear, her hatred, her despair beneath a cool shell. Occasionally a shudder racked her guts, made her stop and hold her breath and wonder if she was about to die. Despair, disbelief, grief, and rage would sweep over her like a vicious tide. But she held that in too.

Jimmy shrugged and reached for the box.

‘I didn’t tell you, we did two of the Delaney places last night,’ he told her.

‘Right,’ said Annie flatly.

‘What the fuck …!’ Jimmy had casually opened the box and just as quickly he now flung it down.

The finger rolled out on to the table, the nail like a small delicate shell, the flesh pale blue with one frayed end. You could see the bone in the centre of the digit. The stained cotton wool had come out too, and there was a piece of paper. Annie had already seen it, read it. Now Jimmy looked at her, then picked up the little note. It said in block capitals: ENJOY THE GIFT. CATCH UP WITH YOU A MONTH ON FRIDAY.

‘Someone left that on the doorstep,’ said Annie.

‘Fucking hell,’ said Jimmy.

‘I need help with this, Jimmy. They’re asking for big money, and somehow I’ve got to find it. There was fuck-all in the safe, so I’m going to have to look elsewhere.’

Jimmy sat back. ‘How big?’

‘Half a million.’

‘Jeez.’

‘I thought of selling the clubs,’ said Annie.

‘You can’t do that.’

Annie’s mouth twisted in a ghost of a smile. She looked at the severed finger on the table. So tiny.

‘I can do whatever the fuck I like, Jimmy. Remember? I’m Annie Carter. Max Carter’s wife.’ Widow , she amended to herself. ‘But even if I sold the clubs, even if that’s possible and I don’t think it is , because there must be legalities involved, and where the fuck would I find the paperwork for that? And anyway it wouldn’t be anywhere near enough. So what’s the point?’

‘So what’s the plan?’

The plan, since she didn’t know where Max had his wealth stashed and had very little of her own, was simple-she was going to have to get out there with her begging bowl.

‘Max had friends,’ she said to Jimmy. ‘Powerful friends. Rich friends. I can remember when the clubs were heaving with celebrities and minor royals and members of Parliament, all Max’s friends.’

Jimmy snorted.

‘You really think any of those bastards would help you out of a corner? You got another think coming.’

‘He was in tight with the Americans. They came over and they were doing regular business with Max, he was protecting their venues up West. They were tight.’

Jimmy shook his head.

‘You don’t go cap in hand to those people,’ he said. ‘You’ll be in debt to them forever.’

Annie’s eyes were glittering with purpose as she stared across the table at him.

‘They’re letting me sweat for a month. Playing with me. Taunting me. Sending me bits of my baby girl. Okay. So we’ve got time. Time enough to contact the Barolli family and ask for help. Maybe use the clubs for security. Queenie’s old place too.’

Queenie was Max’s mother, long dead. Killed, it was always said, by the Delaney mob in a hit that had been a step too far. Queenie’s death had sparked a gang war. Annie would never forget it.

Jimmy was shaking his head.

‘You don’t know what you’re suggesting,’ he told her.

‘Yeah,’ said Annie. ‘I do.’

‘No you don’t.’ Jimmy thumped the table. The finger jumped. Annie flinched visibly. Muttering ‘for fuck’s sake’, he picked it up gingerly and placed it back in its box, putting the cotton wool and the note in too, and replacing the lid.

Then he sat back and looked at Annie.

‘You think this is a bad thing?’ Jimmy indicated the box. ‘This is nothing. This is nothing to what the Barolli family would do if you ever tried to shaft them on a deal, I’m telling you. These people are Mafia. Once you’re in debt to them, you’re fucked.’

Annie nodded. Then she stood up, rested her fists on the table, and looked first at the box with its pathetic, fragile contents, and then directly at Jimmy. Jimmy thought she looked, in that moment, crazy. Totally freaked. Capable of anything.

‘Look at me, Jimmy,’ she told him. ‘Two good friends of mine have been hit. My brother-in-law has been hit. My husband too. And now someone is sending me bits of my daughter , my own flesh and blood , Jimmy. Now tell me.’ She leaned in closer. ‘Do you seriously think I give a monkey’s fuck about what happens to me? Do you seriously think I’m afraid of doing business with the Barollis?’

Now she was laughing, and he wondered if she really had gone mad, whether all this had finally made her crack wide open. Suddenly she stopped laughing and her eyes skewered him where he sat.

‘Look at me, Jimmy. I’m dead already, dead and buried. All I want now is for Layla to be safe. Beyond that, who gives a shit?’

‘I can’t okay this,’ said Jimmy.

Annie fumbled at the chain around her neck, couldn’t find the clasp because her fingers were shaking too much. She grabbed the chain and pulled it, breaking it. Max’s ring fell on to the table and lay beside the pitiful little white box containing his daughter’s finger. Annie grabbed the ring and flung it at Jimmy Bond.

‘You think I need your approval? Think again. You get your arse out of here right now,’ she ordered, ‘and tell Constantine Barolli I want a meet and that it’s urgent, like life or death, you got that? Now!’

With Jimmy gone, there was nothing for Annie to do. Seething and restless, she took the box, gold locket, and broken chain upstairs to Dolly’s bedroom. Dolly had let her stay in here, refusing all Annie’s offers to move into one of the other rooms, or even to kip down on the sofa in the front parlour.

‘Stay where you are,’ Dolly had told her. ‘You’ve got enough on your plate as it is, you might as well be comfortable.’

Annie went in, shutting the door behind her, keeping the world out. She lay on the bed with the little box on her chest, and wondered what sort of animals she was dealing with here. Wondered what Layla had suffered, and what she was suffering now.

Maddened, groaning at the images that were crashing about in her brain, she turned her head into the pillow and curled up into a ball and screwed her eyes shut, trying to block it out.

But she couldn’t.

Because Layla didn’t have that luxury.

And if Layla was suffering, then she was suffering too.

Got to get a grip. For Layla.

But there was a horror movie running in her brain and she was caught up in it, unable to get free.

A living nightmare.