Jessie Keane - Ruthless

Annie moved away from the body and stood staring, arms wrapped around herself, trying to stop the shaking. Every muscle in her body was trembling with the aftershock. She couldn’t tear her eyes away from that face – a face she’d hoped never to see again: the hated face of Orla Delaney.

There had been a time when a gangland map of London would have shown the Richardsons and the Frasers in control of the South, the Regans the West, the Krays ruled Bethnal Green, the Nashes the Angel, while the Carters had Bow and the Delaney mob ran Battersea, with a foothold in Limehouse down by the docks.

The Delaneys made the mistake of trying to expand their Limehouse territory, which meant stepping on Carter toes. One by one the Delaneys had paid for it, too. Until all that was left were the twins, Orla and Redmond. They had targeted her, made it personal. She’d known she would never be safe while they were alive. And then finally, finally, she’d thought they were gone forever. She had believed that Constantine had finished them. A plane crash. It was in the papers. Their plane had gone down in the Irish Sea. No survivors. That was back in 1970, a year she would never forget. Constantine had told her it was done. The nightmare was over. And she’d believed him.

But… this was Orla . There was no mistaking that face.

She could hear Layla retching weakly in the bathroom. A chilling bolt of horror shot through her as she thought of what could have happened tonight. If she hadn’t woken, Orla would have slit her throat. And then she would have moved on and done Layla too.

Annie gave a violent shudder and thrust the images of bloody mayhem from her mind.

‘What are we going to do?’ asked Layla at her shoulder.

Annie half-turned. Layla’s face was white and tear-stained with shock. Her eyes were darting everywhere, she was trying not to look at the corpse but her eyes seemed to be pulled back to it, time and again.

‘Oh God, I did it, I shot her,’ she said, starting to cry in earnest.

Annie hesitated for a moment. Then she put an arm around her daughter’s trembling shoulders. ‘You saved my life,’ she said simply.

Layla nodded, glancing uneasily at Annie. Tonight, they were united – if only in fear and desperation. Layla stepped away, shrugging off her mother’s embrace.

‘What are we going to do…?’ she moaned.

Try to figure out what the fuck she was doing here after all this time. How she could have survived, thought Annie.

Orla Delaney should have been long dead.

Yet here she was, dead on Annie’s bedroom floor – at Layla’s hand.

Annie looked at her daughter, concerned. Layla was so straight. She even dressed straight – all those dull beiges and pale greys. Her hair pulled starkly back, never worn loose. Her face with its constant half-angry expression, never enhanced with make-up. Layla would not raise a hand to anyone. She had fired the gun in panic, not meaning to harm, not meaning to kill. But she had. And it had shaken her to the core, Annie could see that.

‘We have to get rid of the body,’ said Annie.

Layla stared at her mother as if she was mad. ‘No,’ she said, ‘we have to phone the police.’

‘That’s the last thing we should do,’ said Annie.

‘What are you saying? ’ A strained half-laugh emerged from Layla. ‘She came in here with a knife . The police will understand…’

Annie was shaking her head.

‘Understand? We’re in possession of an unlicensed firearm. They’re not going to understand that, Layla. If she’d gone for us with the knife and we’d knocked her out, overcome her, that’s just about excusable in a court of law. But this?’

‘No, no…’ Layla was talking rapidly now. ‘No, wait. We were provoked…’

‘Yes. We were. But we killed her. With a gun we shouldn’t have had in the first place. That’s not reasonable force. The law wouldn’t see it as such.’

‘Do you think Rosa heard the shot?’ asked Layla suddenly.

‘No I don’t. She’s deaf as a post.’ Annie stared down at Orla. How had she managed to get inside the building without triggering the house alarm? Hadn’t Rosa set it, as she usually did?

‘No, I… I’m going to phone the police…’ Layla was saying breathlessly, stumbling to the phone by the bed.

She picked up the phone and started dialling. Annie crossed the room quickly, snatched it from her hand.

‘No.’ She grabbed Layla’s shoulder and shook her. ‘You want to spend the next part of your life banged up in a cell?’

‘It won’t come to that.’

‘Layla, honey, it will .’ Annie stared into her daughter’s terrified eyes. ‘Phone the police and I promise you, one of us is going down for this.’

‘One of us? You didn’t shoot her.’

Annie shook her again. ‘Listen. If you insist on doing this crazy thing, I swear I’ll wipe your prints off that gun and put mine all over it. I’ll say it was me who pulled the trigger, not you.’

Layla slumped on to the bed and put her head in her hands. She was quiet for long moments, then she let her hands fall into her lap. Her eyes slid to the dead woman.

‘You said her name was Orla…?’ she asked unsteadily. The hot iron scent of blood was making her feel sick again. She’d killed someone. She couldn’t get to grips with it, couldn’t begin to believe that it had happened.

Annie sat down on the bed too.

‘Orla Delaney. She used to run a gang with her twin brother. I thought she was dead, years ago.’

‘She was going to kill you. She really was.’

Annie nodded.

Layla swallowed hard. ‘OK. So we can’t call the police. What do we do?’

‘We call Steve Taylor. We need his help with this. He’ll clean this up,’ said Annie.

Steve worked for Max on the security side of things. She knew he would report back to Max, but she didn’t see what else she could do.

Layla turned to Annie, incredulous. Her mother never seemed fazed, no matter what life threw at her; she remained clear-headed, able to think things through. Confronted with a crisis, Annie Carter simply moved up into another gear – a gear most people didn’t even possess.

‘OK,’ said Layla finally.

‘Good.’ Annie dialled Steve’s number.

While she waited for him to pick up, Annie’s eyes rested on the corpse. Once Steve got rid of Orla’s body and dumped Max’s gun, would that be an end to this?

Yes. It would. She told herself that, refused to even contemplate any other outcome.

This would finish it, once and for all.

Oh yeah? asked that niggling voice in her head. But if Orla’s here, if she survived the plane crash that was supposed to have wiped out the Delaney threat… where’s Redmond?

She shivered. Orla was bad, but her twin was truly the stuff of nightmares.

‘H’lo?’ said Steve’s voice at last, fogged with sleep.

‘It’s Annie,’ she said, and she told him what had happened.

‘I’m on my way,’ he said.

Annie put the phone down. She went to Layla, squeezed her shoulder reassuringly.

With nothing to do but wait, they both stood in silence, looking at the body on the floor.

How did she survive? wondered Annie. She stared at the dead, glazing green eyes. Orla, how did you do it? Or is it true that the devil takes care of his own?

‘You don’t think this could have anything to do with what happened to me in the park, do you?’ Layla blurted.

Annie’s eyes whipped from the corpse to her daughter. ‘What?’

‘Oh Jesus, maybe I should have told you…’ Layla was clutching at her head.

‘Told me what ?’ Annie demanded.