Jessie Keane - Stay Dead

Ellie put down two more mugs of steaming tea and a plate of biscuits. Sarah let go of her mug long enough to scramble in one of her raincoat pockets and pull out a yellowed scrap of paper. She shoved it across the table to Annie.

Annie unfolded it; it was nearly torn down the middle, from being folded up for so long. She read:

Railway tragedy

Samuel Farrell, who worked as a shunter on British Rail, was killed in a freak accident late yesterday. He leaves behind a wife and five children.

Annie read it, refolded it, shoved it back across the table. It was similar to the piece that Jackie had discovered and given to her. Sarah put the paper back in her pocket and clung on to the warm mug once more.

‘Nigel said I shouldn’t speak of it, not to anyone, that it was all filthy lies, but I have to now. He’s long dead, our dad, and now poor Dolly is dead too. I suppose what he did to her sent her the way she went, into the way of life she led. I don’t think it was her fault, although Nigel says it was, that we’re all responsible for our own actions.’

Nigel’s got a bloody lot to say for himself , thought Annie.

‘She was always good to me, Dolly,’ said Sarah.

‘She was a diamond,’ said Ellie.

‘To think of her ending that way, I don’t like it. And I just wanted to tell you, if there’s anything I can do, anything , you’ve only to say.’

Nigel’s not going to like this , thought Annie.

‘Thanks,’ she said.

‘I got married, you know,’ said Sarah. ‘But we divorced. Because I couldn’t be a wife. I couldn’t do that . I couldn’t do anything.’

When Sarah had gone, Annie went along to the office. Chris wasn’t there any more but Max was, thumbing idly through a set of accounts. He looked up as she came and stood in the doorway, arms folded.

‘Profit margins good?’ she asked.

‘Always,’ he said, with that glinting, piratical smile that still made her stomach flip, annoyingly. It would be best, she thought, not to be infatuated with her husband if he was going to kick her arse out the door. Which he probably was, she thought in a sudden rush of gloom. So they’d had sex. So what? That proved nothing. She knew he was mad at her. Mad enough to spit, mad enough to take their wedding licence and tear it into tiny shreds, set light to the bits and chuck the ashes in the Thames.

‘So where’s Caroline gone?’ Annie asked him.

‘That’s what I was wondering.’ He stood up. ‘Let’s see if we can find out.’

‘Suppose Gary was a Mafia hit,’ said Annie, as Max drove away from the Shalimar.

Max threw her a look. ‘Unlikely. And too much like what happened to Jackie.’

‘But not completely out of the question.’

‘I dunno. What makes you think that?’

‘God, I don’t know. I feel like my head’s coming off.’ Annie closed her eyes tight, opened them, then said: ‘Gina was losing her mind and phoning Gary, and Gary was passing the glad news on to you about Constantine being alive and me visiting him. Maybe they’re thinking Gary is a loose thread that needs tying up.’

‘Yeah, but if that’s right then we’re all for it, ain’t we? You and me. You, because you know where he is. Me, because I might get it out of you – if I haven’t already got it out of Gina.’

Annie stared at him. If Max had got it out of Gina, then wouldn’t he have acted on that information already? Gone up to Scotland and done something drastic? He didn’t have that info, she was sure of it. She was pretty certain that Gary had died before he got around to passing it on to Max.

‘You haven’t. Have you?’ she asked, to be sure.

‘Nope.’ Max accelerated toward a delivery van that was blocking their path, then swerved out and overtook with a honk of the horn.

‘Christ. You still drive like a fucking lunatic,’ said Annie, her right foot automatically stamping on a non-existent brake, her hands clutching her seat.

‘You can get out and walk if you like.’

Annie loosened her grip as he veered around an obstacle. She dragged her hands through her hair. ‘All right, this doesn’t look like Mafia style, but who really knows? As for any threat to us, forget that. That’s rubbish. Alberto wouldn’t have it. We’re Layla’s parents.’

‘Fucking Redmond. That sick bastard just won’t die like the rest of that family.’

‘Maybe Redmond found out that Gary was getting calls off Gina,’ said Annie. ‘Maybe he found out the content of those calls. When Constantine arranged that “accident” way back for Redmond and Orla – maybe Redmond knows about that. Maybe he even knows Constantine’s still alive. Maybe he was trying to beat Constantine’s whereabouts out of Gary before he realized Gary didn’t know, and finished him.’

Max threw her a sombre look and swerved the car into the pavement. ‘Maybe he did beat Constantine’s whereabouts out of Gary. And then he finished him.’

Annie looked at Max in horror, but they didn’t have time to talk about it, not now.

They’d arrived at the Blue Parrot.

Inside the club, things were hotting up for the evening. All the girls were in, getting ready, and a hush fell over them as Annie stepped into the doorway of their dressing room while Max carried on into the office.

‘I’m looking for Caroline,’ she said. ‘She’s not at the Palermo. Do any of you know where she is right now?’

There was a long silence. Then one of them, a tall corn-gold blonde, her eyes alight with interest, said: ‘Is it right, what we’ve been hearing on the news? That Gary Tooley’s dead?’

‘Yeah, it’s right.’

‘Christ!’

‘He was such a bastard,’ said another – shorter, dark-haired, pouty-lipped. ‘I heard he got knifed or something.’

Max stepped into the doorway behind Annie and she felt a seismic shift in the girls’ postures and attitudes. Breasts pushed out, stomachs in. Smiles suddenly super-bright. Irritating. ‘So you don’t know where Caroline is?’

‘I got her old home address out of the book in the office,’ said Max to Annie.

‘We ain’t seen her,’ said a girl with Schiaparelli-pink streaks in her ash-blonde hair and dangling pearl earrings that brushed her equally pearly shoulders. ‘Not that we want to. She was after Gary from the get-go, she was bloody shameless. Thought she was better than the lot of us, she did. Started queening it about the place after he slipped her one.’

‘Girl, you were after him too,’ the blonde reminded her with a smirk. ‘You’re just mad because she got him and got bumped up the ladder to take over the Palermo after Dolly Farrell got done.’

The pink-and-ash girl blushed. The blonde had hit a nerve. ‘And look how that turned out,’ she shot back. ‘Dolly Farrell’s dead, Gary’s dead. You ask me, that place is cursed .’

‘You know what I think? I think it could have been Caroline up there in Dolly’s room who answered Pete,’ said Annie when they were back in the car. ‘Maybe she was there talking to Dolly, telling her to fuck off out of it and let her take over the club. Maybe Gary had hinted to Dolly that she ought to be put out to grass and let his fancy piece be in charge, and Dolly – being Dolly – would have told them both to go fuck themselves.’

‘You seriously think Gary or Caroline could have done the job on her?’ asked Max, flicking her a glance as he drove them over to Caroline’s old place.

‘Yeah. Maybe a combined effort. And by the way, where’s Tone? I thought I said I wanted my driver back.’