Jessie Keane - Lawless

And then he simply couldn’t help himself. The laughter exploded out of him as if suppressed for a whole lifetime. He laughed until his sides ached, while his mother sat there and stared at him in abject shock and horror. Presently he staggered to his feet, left the room, went out into the cold night and got back into the car, still laughing, feeling lighter than he had in years.

He drove to the club – once called Tito’s, then Vito’s. First thing tomorrow he was going to have a new sign put up proclaiming it Fabio’s. He parked, went inside. Ignoring the hostesses and the patrons he made his way upstairs to the room where once Tito’s sex palace had been installed, and then Vittore’s dull little room of beiges and browns and ochres. Dull, dull, dull!

Fabio swiped the mustard-coloured cushions off the Habitat sofa and onto the floor. He was still laughing, he couldn’t stop laughing. It was over, it was all over at last. Everything was his now. He went to the drinks tray and poured himself a triple whisky, then moved into the centre of the room and shouted it out loud.

‘ All hail King Fabio! ’

And then he raised his glass in a toast to himself, the survivor, the least likely to succeed. And look, just look at what had happened: he’d done it, walked past two graves to do it. Three, counting poor stupid Maria. Just look at the huge favour Miller had done him tonight; he ought to go over there and kiss that fucker.

‘To me!’ he roared out happily, and he drank the whisky down in one gigantic hit.

‘You think Fabio’s going to come up against us again?’ Rob asked Kit as they sat in Kit’s living room.

Rob didn’t like loose ends. Vittore was done for, but there was still Fabio. And Gabe. Rob couldn’t help wondering whether he’d been right in thinking the guy was such a loser that the worst punishment would be to let him live. He only hoped he wouldn’t have cause to regret the decision to let him go.

‘Why should Fabio bother?’ asked Kit. He had the sling off now, his left arm was getting stronger. ‘Bianca says he always hated Vittore and despised her, what should he care if she’s out of the family fold and Vittore’s dead as toast?’

‘Never did like that little tit,’ said Rob.

‘Let it go,’ said Kit.

There’d been pieces in the paper about gangland violence, shots heard late at night and a businessman called Vittore Danieri and some of his employees had vanished, seemingly without trace.

‘How’s your mum doing?’ asked Rob.

Kit glanced at his watch. ‘I’m just off to see her. Come if you want.’

Rob shook his head.

‘Daisy’s with her,’ said Kit.

‘Dunno.’ Over these past weeks Rob had felt himself getting on far too well with Daisy. Maybe it was time to step back from that. She was a posh bolshy cow, there was no doubt about that. She’d always want to be in charge.

‘Ah, come on.’

‘What are you two deliberating about?’ asked Bianca, coming in from the hall and sitting down next to Kit.

Rob watched them, thinking what a striking couple they made. Bianca so pale, Kit dark like his mum. Kit kissed her cheek, grabbed her hand and held on.

‘Rob’s scared of Daisy,’ he told her, sending a smile up at his number one man.

‘Scared? In what way?’ Bianca looked puzzled. There were big dark shadows under her eyes and a strained thinness to her lips. Rob thought that the news about the Danieris, the stark facts about her real family, the knowledge that it was Kit who had finished Tito – all that had eaten into her and was hurting her still.

‘Scared in the way that he finds her fucking irresistible,’ said Kit.

‘I didn’t say that,’ said Rob.

‘You didn’t have to.’ Kit looked at Bianca. ‘You going to be OK here on your own for an hour or so?’

He worried about her. She’d had some terrible shocks and upsets, and while she seemed to have taken it all with her customary nerve, he wondered what the true impact of it all was going to be. Somewhere out there, maybe she still had real family, people who had been missing her for years. And he suspected that she still felt something for Bella Danieri, who was now mourning her favourite son. Bianca must be in turmoil.

‘I’ll be fine,’ she told him. ‘You two go, I’m going to have a snooze.’

When they got out to Ruby’s place, it was to find an excited Daisy waving the Roy Orbison LP around and asking when the twins and Jody could come back, everything was all right now, wasn’t it?

Rob wasn’t sure about that. And he was winded by seeing Daisy again. Every time, the shock of her physical impact on him damned near took his breath away, but still he resisted it. What else could he do? It would be a bloody disaster, he knew it.

Kit was smirking at him. The bastard knew Rob had the hots for his sister. ‘Soon,’ he told Daisy.

‘And we nearly forgot about this,’ she said. ‘Didn’t we?’

‘What, the handwriting?’

‘Of course the handwriting. Kit, you know about this, don’t you?’

Kit nodded. ‘I do.’

They went into the sitting room where Ruby was shuffling through a box of magazines and cards. She looked up, saw Kit and Rob there with Daisy, smiled and stood up.

This time it wasn’t her who opened her arms hopefully. This time was different. Kit came straight over to her and hugged her, hard. It hurt his shoulder a bit, but he didn’t care.

‘You OK?’ he asked, thinking that he could have lost her, never got the chance to make it up. This woman – his mother – had talked him back to life. She had proved her devotion, when he hadn’t even truly been there to see it.

‘Absolutely fine,’ said Ruby, hugging him and trying not to cry. He’d come for her, rescued her. Her son. Her beloved boy.

‘Good. What’s all this then?’ Kit cleared his throat and indicated the box. He saw birthday greetings, Christmas wishes, Valentines…

‘We thought maybe Mum night recognize the writing on the LP sleeve,’ said Daisy.

‘I don’t know,’ said Ruby. ‘I don’t think so. I’m going through my old cards to see if I could match it up to anything.’

‘You and Michael did share contacts for quite a while,’ said Kit.

‘Yes, we did.’ Ruby sat down again, picked up a handful of the cards. ‘Stupid to keep them all really. Just clutter. Old things, old memories. Look at this…’

She pulled out a dog-eared copy of London Life. The date on its tattered cover was May 1941 and there were three women depicted there, dressed in lingerie and gas masks.

‘They’re Windmill Theatre showgirls,’ she said. ‘The one in the centre’s Vi – my friend who’s now Lady Albermarle. She was so glamorous. She was everything I ever wanted to be.’

Ruby put the magazine aside and thumbed through the cards.

‘I really don’t think I’m going to find anything here,’ she said. She’d been looking for nearly an hour now, comparing the writing on the record sleeve to the jottings in the box. Privately she thought it was a waste of time, but she was doing it to please Daisy, who seemed to be chewing at this thing like a dog with a bone, determined to solve the riddle of Michael’s death.

Ruby was becoming more philosophical now. She didn’t think the mystery would ever be resolved, that they would eventually be forced to let it go, let him rest. It was silly to-

‘Oh,’ she said suddenly.

‘What?’ asked Kit.

Ruby’s eyes were moving between the record sleeve and a Christmas card. There was a fat red robin on the front of it, and Season’s Greetings printed in glittery script.