Jessie Keane: Lawless

This is a nightmare , thought Bella Danieri. She couldn’t believe that she wasn’t asleep and dreaming this horror. Her boy Tito was dead. In the small hours of that same morning, she sat with Fabio and Vittore in her kitchen. Maria had come in, briefly – she knew she wasn’t welcome, she was never welcome at any family occasion – and she’d hugged Bella and said she was so sorry about Tito, was there anything she could do?

‘Go to bed,’ said Bella, shrugging off her daughter-in-law’s embrace as if she were an annoying insect to be swatted aside.

Maria stiffened, glanced at Vittore; he nodded and she left the room. Presently they heard the door across the hallway close loudly, and Bella slopped brandy into three glasses.

‘Who did it?’ said Vittore into the sudden silence. ‘That’s what I want to know.’

Fabio glanced at his older brother. ‘He had a lot of enemies.’ Even you, brother dear. And me. Neither of us could wait for him to be out of the way, so that we could have our turn.

But he didn’t say it; Vittore would flatten him if he did. Instead, he sipped the brandy and stared at Mama Bella. Earlier, when Vittore had confirmed the news, she had sobbed and shrieked and clutched at her chest. Now she seemed calmer.

‘I want to know the answer. Whoever did this is a dead man,’ said Vittore.

Bella took a swig of the drink. It warmed her, but not enough to reach the chill that had settled over her soul as Vittore spoke. Vittore wanted revenge. He wanted to find who had killed Tito, and take vengeance on them. But that would place him, Vittore, her favourite boy, in danger. She didn’t want that. She had just lost one son. She didn’t want to lose another, most particularly not the one who was so precious to her.

‘There is something I have to say to you both,’ she told them.

‘Oh? What is it, Mama?’ asked Fabio.

Bella looked from one to the other. Vittore so masculine, so imposing; Fabio so handsome. Her boys. Then her eyes dropped to Fabio’s grazed and bloody knuckles. She guessed that someone had paid for bringing bad news to Fabio; this was the way it worked in the Camorra.

‘It could have been anyone who did this,’ she said shakily. ‘One of the establishment, someone Tito crossed over a business deal or a woman.’

‘Tito crossed a lot of people,’ agreed Fabio.

‘It could have been Miller – Michael Ward’s number one,’ said Vittore. ‘Maybe he believed we carried out the hit on his boss. That’s a possibility.’

‘Or it could have been any one of a dozen others,’ said Bella tiredly, shaking her head. When her eyes met Vittore’s again they were full of command. ‘Now I’m telling you. Both of you. There will be no reprisals. I won’t have more bloodshed.’

‘But Miller-’ said Vittore.

‘ We don’t know who did this ,’ said Bella, steel in her voice.

‘Mama-’ started Vittore, coming to his feet.

‘ No! ’ Bella stood up too. The fists she rested on the table were shaking, but her eyes flashed with fire. ‘I’ve lost one child this night, do you think I will risk another? I mean it, Vittore. No reprisals .’

Fabio drank down his brandy and eyed the two of them, staring at each other across the table.

‘Swear to me,’ said Bella.

‘What…?’ Vittore was almost twitching with suppressed aggression.

‘Swear it,’ she repeated, glancing down at Fabio.

He shrugged. ‘All right, Mama. If it means that much to you, I swear. No reprisals.’

Her gaze turned to Vittore. ‘And you? Vittore?’ she prompted.

He heaved a sigh. ‘No reprisals, Mama. I swear, all right? I swear it.’

Bella nodded. After a second she sank back into her chair. Looked at her boys, her two remaining living sons, and asked herself, Are they lying, to please me?

She suspected they were. But she had done this much. She thought of Kit Miller, and his mother. There was one more thing she could do, to make sure that no other sons ended up on a mortuary slab. She’d had years of this, of the killing, the crooked deals, the stress and the lust for revenge, and she was tired of it all. Then her mind turned with soul-wrenching sadness to her daughter; this would break her heart.

‘Someone ought to go in the morning and tell Bianca,’ she said.

Vittore nodded. ‘I’ll do it,’ he said.

‘Blood will flow.’

Ruby Darke would never forget those words, coming down the phone line at her. It was like a witch’s curse, she thought later, because blood did flow, oh yes indeed. But she didn’t know, not then. She just picked up the phone, like you do, like thousands of people do, every day. They pick up, and bang. Their world changes for ever. ERNIE’s snatched their premium bond numbers out of the pile. Or someone they kissed goodbye only an hour ago is dead, heart attack. The fates roll the dice, and we are all helpless pawns on the great game board of the uncaring universe.

Ruby didn’t expect either good news or bad, not that day. But when she looked back, that was how it all started: with the phone

the witch’s curse…

ringing in her Victorian villa in Marlow.

She was hurrying through the hall, the spring sunlight making pretty patterns as it shone through the stained-glass panels beside the front door. She threw a casual remark back at her daughter Daisy, who was in the kitchen with Nanny Jody, feeding Matthew and Luke, Daisy’s year-old twins.

‘Hello?’ Ruby unclipped an earring, smiled her automatic professional smile.

She hadn’t genuinely smiled since last November, not since Michael Ward had been found shot dead in an alleyway. She thought about him every day. Mourned him bitterly. Missed him so much. Even though she knew what he’d been, she’d loved him.

On the surface, Michael had been a businessman, giving generously to charities, stumping up for the Aberfan disaster, raising donations for the Hackney Road Queen Elizabeth Hospital for Children. But underneath the façade? He was a crook, the feared leader of one of the big organized gangs who ‘ran’ the streets of London, like the Krays had, and the Richardsons, the Regans, the Nashes and the Carters… Some of those gangs were off the scene now, and there were new developments: the Maltese were muscling in, the Mafia was cruising around, looking tasty, and then there was Tito Danieri’s lot, his camorristi , who should have been sweating it out in Naples but were here instead, causing trouble. Ruby wanted no part of that world.

Ruby and Michael had been in their forties when they met, too old to be called boyfriend and girlfriend. But they’d been passionate, committed lovers and she felt she’d buried a part of herself when she’d lost him. Slowly, though, she was coming back to some semblance of normality, telling herself to get on with it, that life had to go on regardless how much it hurt.

In the aftermath of Mike’s murder she’d ceased to care about the business – Darkes department stores, the chain she had built up from a single corner shop originally run by her dad – but now she was forcing herself to take up the reins again. As it had done so often in the past, work provided solace, kept her sane. Helped her to cope with her loss, just as it had when her twins were taken from her at birth.

She was lucky, she had to keep telling herself that. Against all odds, thirty years after she was separated from them, Daisy and Kit had come back into her life. Daisy, who’d been brought up by her biological father and his wife, had found it easier to forgive than Kit, who’d never known what it was to have a family. Even after he’d learned how she was forced to give him up, he couldn’t stop blaming her for abandoning him. While everyone else had rallied round after Michael’s death, Kit had kept his distance. That hurt her terribly.