Jessie Keane - Black Widow

‘That’s right.’

‘He must be creaming a good bit off the business, to afford to run two houses,’ said Constantine.

‘You think he’s cheating the firm? So do I. I think he’s been dipping into the takings.’

‘And what are you going to do about that?’

‘I’ve no idea, yet. I looked at the books but there’s nothing obvious there. But then, I don’t know the clubs like Max did. I don’t know what the takings would normally be. Jimmy does the books.’

‘So you have access to them?’

Annie gave a bitter smile.

‘Oh yeah. And I’ve looked at them. I haven’t understood them, but I’ve looked at them.’

‘I could have our consigliere check them over for you,’ he said.

‘What’s that, like an accountant?’

‘An accountant, a lawyer, a counsellor. A good, solid man,’ Constantine nodded.

A good solid man in the pay of the Mafia. Annie looked at him and wondered yet again what the hell she was doing here.

‘So you think this man is robbing you, and setting himself up as…what? As a rival for the Carter manor?’

Annie shook her head in irritation. ‘Look. Who cares? All that matters is my daughter. Once I’ve got her back, I can sort Jimmy.’

‘You remember you told me about the kidnapping? That Jeanette was conscious throughout?’

Annie nodded.

‘My sources tell me that Vita Byrne-Jeanette’s sister-was shopping in Palma the day before the kidnapping took place.’

Annie swallowed, heartbeat accelerating.

‘Only, I think that could be significant-don’t you?’

Annie thought about that, frowning. The one thing that characterized Jeanette most strongly was her inability to keep her fat mouth shut. If she’d known her sister was on the island, she would have blabbed all about it to Annie. Wouldn’t she?

She remembered now that Jeanette had borrowed Rufio’s car the day before the hit and taken off to Palma, alone. She hadn’t talked about it when she got back to the villa, except to say that she’d been shopping. Solitary trips did seem out of character for Jeanette, but at the time Annie had been so delighted to get rid of her for a day that she hadn’t given it a second thought. If Jeanette had gone into Palma to meet up with her sister, if it was all completely innocent, then why hadn’t she told Annie about it?

‘You said you thought the line was being tapped, when you were in the villa after it happened?’ asked Constantine.

Annie nodded. Even thinking about the aftermath of the hit made her break out in a sweat.

Then he was silent, staring at her face.

‘Look, you’ve got something on Jeanette, what is it?’ prompted Annie anxiously. ‘Is it to do with this sister of hers?’

‘Do you know Jeanette’s family?’ he asked.

Annie shook her head. But knowing Jonjo’s taste in women, she wasn’t expecting them to be the Windsors of Buck House.

‘She’s got two sisters and a brother. The sisters have both done time-petty stuff-and the brother has a record for smash and grab, drug use, demanding money with menaces. You really don’t know the family?’

She shook her head again.

‘Oh, but I think you do,’ said Constantine. ‘The brother’s called Danny.’

‘No, I don’t know him.’

‘One of the sisters is called Vita.’

‘Nope. Doesn’t ring a bell.’

‘What about the other sister then? She works at Dolly Farrell’s massage parlour. Where you’re living right now. Her name’s Una.’

By the time she got to the Palermo at ten past eleven, Annie felt as if her brain had been plugged into the mains and fried.

Una.

Jeanette and Una were sisters.

Jeanette, Una, and Vita. Plus Danny, the brother.

There were similarities. The girls had the same broad faces, the same slight overbite. The same big tits too. Una was the taller, but Jeanette was tall too, as tall as Annie.

It was no surprise to her that Una had done time. Una was a hard, vicious bitch, and Annie didn’t think for a minute that she would be above a bit of petty larceny. Well, fair enough. She’d done the crime and done the time and that was an end to it.

But was it?

What about the other sister, the one called Vita? This one she knew absolutely nothing about. And motor mouth Jeanette hadn’t ever mentioned her sisters or her brother Danny, not once. In all the times that they had lounged about together, her and Annie, side by side under the warming Maj orean sun, Jeanette-who could shoot the breeze for England-had not once mentioned her family, or that her sister Vita was on Majorca too.

Tony parked the car near the club and she sat in the back and looked at the seedy frontage. No one had the keys now except her, so she expected to see the boys loitering about outside.

But no.

But then , maybe they were doing the same as her, sitting in their cars waiting for her to emerge. The weather was cold and wet: who wanted to stand shivering their balls off in a doorway? And she had said no group arrivals, keep it discreet. Well, they were only taking her at her word.

At a quarter past eleven she got out of the car. She crossed the road with Tony and unlocked the door to the club and they went in.

The club was silent.

No strippers parading their wares around the stage. No weary, scruffy punters giving the poor long-suffering hostesses a furtive feel.

Annie walked down the stairs into the empty club, her steps echoing. She stood in front of the stage, looking up at the faded red velvet curtains, at the big linked gold MC at the highest point, where the drapes met. Tony stayed up at the top of the stairs to greet the boys while she looked around her. The club was more than silent, it was dead. An air of sadness, of better days long gone, permeated the place.

Maybe she’d been wrong to close it, but seeing the pest-hole it had become had damned near broken her heart. She remembered the great acts Max had hired to perform here, Tony Bennett and Johnnie Ray and Billy Fury-all those solid gold acts that in the end had become too expensive.

She had closed the clubs on instinct, on impulse. Put people out of work. Dried up a good source of income. Pissed off Jimmy Bond.

She sat down at one of the little circular tables, and waited.

At twelve o’clock Tony came downstairs, looking unhappy.

‘Don’t look like they’re coming, Boss,’ he said.

‘No,’ said Annie, although she wasn’t surprised. And the irony of Tony calling her ‘Boss’ for the very first time didn’t pass her by, either.

Some ‘Boss’.

Jimmy Bond had put his cards on the table, had called her bluff. Had taken the kids off Kath. Had sent Annie Carter a message, loud and clear.

He was the boss of the boys and the manor now, not her.

She went back up the stairs and out the door with Tony, locking it behind her. The light was going, the grey weather was turning day into night. People were turning on their car headlights. In the distance, a woman walked away, a woman with a blonde Afro hairstyle. Could be Jeanette. Vita’s sister. Una’s sister. Danny’s sister. And why not? She lived just round the corner, in her little love nest with Jimmy. All very cosy, one big happy family plus Jimmy Bond.

It was all starting to add up.

And what it was starting to add up to was igniting a cold fire of fury in her belly, a stark and sickening realization in her mind. She had believed Jimmy’s attitude toward her to be nothing more than male posturing; she’d been sure he was acting up because she’d put his nose out of joint by coming back to rule the roost.

But now there were all these new connections.