Scarlet Women

Should have brought Tony in with me, she thought. Tony’s appearance tended to galvanize people in a helpful direction. But Annie didn’t want to come over all heavy here. She just wanted to know what had happened two nights ago; she didn’t want to go busting heads if charm and negotiation could do the business just as well.

‘That’s Ray over there,’ said Pippa helpfully, surprising her.

Annie turned. A man in a purple uniform with flashy gold epaulettes had just stepped out of the lift. He walked with authority, shooting his cuffs as he came. He looked at Annie, half smiled, nodded to Pippa.

‘Can I help?’ he said.

He was a short man in his early fifties, full of bouncy East End confidence. He had dark curly hair turning grey, an elfish face etched with laughter lines, and he took in everything about Annie at a glance. She could see him briskly categorizing her. Expensive-looking female punter in a black silk suit. She could see pound signs flicking up in his sharp, acquisitive eyes.

‘Can you spare a few minutes? I’m Annie Carter. Did Claire tell you I’d be coming?’ said Annie.

‘Yes, she did. Of course,’ he said in his Cockney twang.

‘Can we talk in the lounge, get some privacy?’ Annie continued, aware that Pippa was sitting behind the desk, looking bored as tits, with her ears flapping like Dumbo’s.

He nodded and led the way in. The lounge was spacious and decked out in soothing greens, pinks and golds. No fire in the grate—too late in the day and too warm for that anyway; instead there was a display of tasteful dried flowers. Lots of big couches. Lots of table lamps casting a cosy glow, side tables stacked with newspapers. It was a proper little home from home for the weary guest.

Ray politely motioned that she should sit on one of the big couches, and he sat down opposite her, at a discreet distance.

Annie got straight to the point. ‘You were on duty the night Aretha Brown was murdered,’ she said.

This seemed to jolt him, but he must have been expecting it. There was a sudden wariness in his eyes. He looked down at the carpet, then up at her again. Nodded.

‘She was here, visiting a friend,’ said Annie carefully.

He nodded again, but he half smiled and his eyes said: A friend? Is that what prossies are calling their clients now?

‘Did you see her arrive?’

‘No, I didn’t.’

‘Did you see her leave?’

‘Yes. I did. Look, I went through all this with the police. What’s your interest here? You a reporter?’

‘Do I look like a reporter?’

Ray gave her a quick once-over. ‘No, you don’t.’

‘You’re an East Ender, Ray. Which part?’

‘Bethnal Green.’

‘Then you’ll know my husband’s friends and business acquaintances, the twins.’ Annie watched as Ray’s expression froze. ‘You know the twins, Ray?’

Everyone from that area knew the twins. Reggie and Ronnie. The Krays.

Ray swallowed nervously and Annie could see that he’d made an important connection.

‘You’re Max Carter’s wife,’ said Ray.

Widow, thought Annie, but she let it go.

Ray looked at her. ‘The Krays are a spent force now,’ he said. ‘They’ve been banged up for over a year for doing Jack the Hat and Cornell.’

‘You think so?’ Annie asked him.

Annie knew different. Even behind bars the Krays were making a fortune off their firm. They had legitimate sponsorship arrangements going with many businesses—debt collection agencies were a favourite—and these businesses set up deals from which the twins got a cut of the profit in return for use of the Kray name. She was doing something very similar with her own firm now, using Max’s and Jonjo’s considerable clout in the business world to make a legitimate living in security.

‘Aretha—the girl who died—was a friend of mine,’ she told him.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

‘It was a horrible thing that happened to her. And her husband Chris is a friend too. He’s in the frame for this. I don’t like people doing bad things to my friends. And I don’t believe Chris would harm Aretha. So I need to find out anything I can about what happened that night, so that I can do something about it, okay?’

Ray nodded.

‘So,’ said Annie. ‘You saw her leave, but you didn’t see her arrive?’

He looked down, nodded again.

‘So, when she left. She left alone?’

‘Yes, she was alone.’

‘Did she seem all right?’

He shrugged. ‘She seemed fine. Happy. It was tipping down with rain and I said she ought to take a taxi, and she said she wasn’t made of money.’

Annie’s heart clenched with pain. If Aretha had taken that taxi straight home, and not walked the short distance to the corner around which Chris was parked up, waiting for her, then she would probably be alive right now.

‘Has she come here before?’

‘No, she was a new one here.’

Annie looked at him. ‘Room two hundred and six. Mr Smith. I’m assuming that’s not his real name.’

Again the shrug. ‘Lots of men sign in anonymously and pay cash when they check out. Wouldn’t you, if you were going to use a brass? He might be a man of some importance—probably is; this is a classy place, the prices we charge, I’m telling you. He might have a reputation to consider. He might be married. He wouldn’t want to draw attention to himself.’

‘Did you see this “Mr Smith”?’

Ray shook his head.

‘Did anyone?’

‘The police asked that too. But we see hundreds of people in a day here. No one remembers him.’

Anonymous and invisible.

‘He checked in and the time was recorded, yes? So someone spoke to him then, face to face,’ Annie persisted. ‘Who? Claire? Pippa? The other one, Gareth?’

‘I’ll find out,’ said Ray.

Annie sat back, waiting.

‘You want me to do it now?’ asked Ray.

Annie gave him the look. ‘You got anything else pressing?’

Ray got up and left the lounge. Through the half-open door Annie saw him in a huddle with Pippa at the reception desk. Watched him come back into the lounge, sit down again.

‘Yeah, that would have been Gareth,’ he said. ‘Mr Smith checked in at eight thirty-three in the morning three days ago. He booked in—with Gareth—for the one day and overnight, but no one saw him leave the next morning.’

‘Hold on,’ Annie told him. ‘No one saw him leave? He paid his bill, yes? Spoke to whoever was on reception? But no one saw him?’

‘No one remembers seeing him. As I say, we—’

‘—see hundreds of people in a day. What about the doorman?’

Ray shook his head. ‘People come in and out all day. Whoever’s on the door don’t know their names and barely even notices their faces unless they give a good tip, and you don’t get too many of those. And if this guy wanted to remain incognito, he wouldn’t be doing that, for sure.’

Annie stood up. ‘Gareth Fuller, wasn’t it?’ she asked.

‘Yes.’

‘And he’s here when?’

‘Actually he’s not,’ said Ray. ‘He left yesterday.’

‘Left?’

‘Manager fired him. Bit of a slacker.’

‘His address then?’

Ray went to get Gareth’s address.

Annie looked around the lounge and wondered what had really been going down between Redmond Delaney and Constantine that they had to meet here. Constantine slipped the Carters three grand a month to keep troublesome elements out of his clubs up West, save him the bother of importing his own muscle from across the pond. Maybe Redmond was undercutting the Carters, and Constantine’s true intention was to work out a better deal with him, or start a lucrative bidding war between the two rival gangs.

Damn, she had thought he was on her side. It hurt to discover that he might not be. And now this. She had to help Chris. She couldn’t just let him take the rap: she knew he was innocent. She wandered back out into reception.

Trouble, every way she looked. Nothing new there, though. She was used to digging deep, standing alone. If truth be told, she was getting tired of it, but it was what she usually had to do.

Ray came over and handed her a piece of paper with Gareth Fuller’s address on it. She thanked him and slipped him a fiver.

‘If anything else occurs to you, anything at all, you call me, okay?’ she told him.

‘Sure,’ he said, and smiled.

He wouldn’t call. She knew it. But she was more interested right now in Gareth Fuller, who had checked Mr Smith in, and checked him out—and who probably wouldn’t even remember what he looked like.

Chapter 10

Next morning at eight there was a knock at the Palermo’s main door. Annie was up and dressed. She went down the stairs and opened up. The club was quiet for once, peaceful. Too early for the builders.

The bald, portly man standing there peered at her with watery blue eyes, squinting past a curl of cigarette smoke. He threw the stub on the pavement and ground it out with his heel.

‘Detective Sergeant Lane,’ said Annie, looking up and down the street. There was nobody about, but still…

‘We’ve charged him,’ said Lane.

Shit, thought Annie.

‘Can I have a few words?’ he asked.

‘Sure,’ said Annie, and ushered him in, up the stairs, into the flat. She closed the door, indicated that he should take a seat. He did. He looked an utter bloody mess, corpulent and red in the face, his stubby fingers stained with nicotine, his white nylon shirt yellowish and sweat-stained and straining over his belly. He didn’t smell exactly fresh. Annie sat as far away as she could get and thought about Chris, charged now. Poor bastard.

‘I thought the rule was that we were never seen together,’ she said irritably.

He shrugged. ‘You’re helping the police with their inquiries,’ he said.

‘Fair enough. What’s the new DI like?’

‘Like a bear with a sore arse. Just got divorced and transferred in and now I’m stuck with the picky bastard. I’m telling you, that sod’s suspicious by nature.’

‘But he’s got no reason to be suspicious of you, has he?’

‘None at all. I’m squeaky clean.’

Which was ironic, since DS Lane always smelled like he hadn’t bathed in a month. If we have to have bent coppers on the firm, can’t we at least have clean ones? she thought. But the boys had assured her that Lane was a very useful contact. She’d have to open a window the minute he’d gone. Either that or fumigate the fucking place.

‘What have you got?’ she asked.

‘She was at the Vista Hotel visiting a Mr Smith in room two-oh-six,’ said Lane.

‘I know that.’

‘But it fits the MO of the other two that got done.’

‘Not the same hotel?’

‘No, different hotels every time. This is the poshest one yet; our boy’s stepped up a notch on the social ladder. The other two got done outside three-star places in the East End. But same meat, different gravy. Prostitutes calling and getting killed for their trouble. Same pattern, same method. You really think Chris Brown didn’t do these?’

Annie swallowed a sharp stab of revulsion at his casual tone, his relaxed manner. He didn’t care that Aretha was dead. Or the other two. He didn’t care that Chris was innocent. He just had a curiosity about the case, an interest in the puzzle it represented. And he thought they’d already solved it.

‘Did you find any trace of him on the other women? Any reason to believe he did those two as well as Aretha?’ asked Annie coolly.

‘No. None.’

‘But he’s been charged for doing Aretha.’

‘Yeah. Look, I got to admire your loyalty, but let’s face it, the man’s going down.’

‘The wire could get lost,’ said Annie.

‘What?’

‘The cheese wire. Could go missing.’ Annie was staring at him.

‘And what difference would that make? There’re still the cuts on his hands, there’s still his blood on the vic. Hunter’s on it and trust me he won’t let it go. You could lose the fucking suspect on this one, and everyone would still be one hundred per cent convinced that Chris Brown did it.’

‘He couldn’t kill Aretha,’ said Annie.

‘No?’ Lane gave an unpleasant smile. ‘If my old lady was out tomming—hell, even I could do it. Think you’ll find men don’t like that sort of thing.’

‘He knew Aretha was on the game before he married her.’

‘Yeah? I find that hard to believe.’

‘It’s true.’

‘Then he’s a tolerant bloke and my hat is off to him, it really is. I’m just saying, most men would consider offing the old woman if she was out porkswording the whole neighbourhood. Ew, think of the stuff you could catch off it. And it was fucking with knobs on, let’s not forget. When I saw the stuff in that bag of hers, I damn near blushed.’

‘He didn’t do it,’ said Annie. ‘I want you working hard on this, finding out who did. I want to know about these other two girls. I need to see copies of the case files.’

He screwed up his face. ‘Tricky.’

‘I don’t care how fucking tricky it is, you do it.’ If there was any sort of link between the two other girls and Aretha, then maybe some sense could be made out of all this. Maybe they could find not only Aretha’s killer but their killer too. Find the bastard who’d killed them, nail him good. Or her. Best not forget that. A woman could have done this too. By doing all that, maybe she could get Chris out of the frame.

‘Look, I’ll give it my best.’ Lane stood up.

‘Do that,’ said Annie, standing up too. Christ, she was going to have to air this place with a vengeance. ‘You’ll be well rewarded.’

‘That’s always nice to hear,’ he smirked, showing yellow tombstone teeth.

‘So you don’t rate the new DI?’ she asked.

‘Hunter?’ He shrugged. ‘He’s a pain in the arse, the miserable bastard, but he’s a good cop. And there ain’t many of them about, as you know.’ He gave her a lopsided smile.

God, he was repulsive. On balance Annie preferred hard-eyed and tight-lipped DI Hunter to this rancid tub of lard. The immaculate and sourfaced Hunter might look at her as if she was lowlife, but at least he was straightforward in his intentions and she felt he simply couldn’t be bought. You had to admire that. If you cut DI Hunter open, the words HONEST COP would run right through him like BLACKPOOL runs through a stick of rock. Slice DS Lane open and all you’d find would be the stench of corruption.

‘Hey,’ she said sharply. ‘Don’t take this lightly. And don’t let me down.’

The smirk vanished. ‘I said I’ll do my utmost. But I can’t part the fucking Red Sea or nothing. My name ain’t Moses.’

Annie stared at him. Then she crossed the room and opened the door. Tony was standing silently outside it, at the top of the stairs, waiting to usher the copper out. Neither of them had heard him come up. Tony could move like a ghost, and he could move fast too, for a big man. Lane looked at Tony’s huge bulk and swallowed hard.

‘Do your best, okay?’ Annie reminded him. ‘Let me down and you’ll be sorry.’

Annie cleared up, ushered in the builders for another day of hammering and banging, and gladly took her leave of the club. Tony drove her in the Jag over to where Gareth Fuller, the Vista’s former employee, lived. It was a dump in a block of flats. Washing flapped on badly strung clothes-lines. Rubbish swirled in the summer breeze on each of the outside landings as Annie and Tony walked up five flights of stairs.

The graffiti-strewn lift was working, but judging from the stink emanating from it, someone had been using it to piss in. So it was the stairs, or being lowered down off the roof with a fucking rope, Tony complained—could you believe people had to live this way?

‘Pardon my French, Boss,’ he added politely as they hit the top landing. Then, ‘Oh fuck,’ he blurted as he looked ahead.

Annie looked ahead. DI Hunter was standing outside a battered-looking door halfway along the grimy landing, his arm raised to knock on it. His head turned in their direction. Distinctly, they saw him mutter something under his breath and then return his attention to the door.

‘Wait here, Tone,’ said Annie, and she left Tony by the top of the stairs and strolled off along the landing to where Hunter, the warm updraught riffling through his dark hair, was still tapping at the door. ‘Hello, Detective Inspector,’ she said when she got to the door. She looked at the peeling paint-work. ‘How’s tricks?’

He looked at her, his face pinched tight with disapproval. He looked away. Knocked again at the door.

He wouldn’t be half bad looking if only he didn’t scowl so much, she thought.

A dog was barking in there. A high-pitched yap yap yap. It could drive you mad, a dog like that—pity the neighbours.

‘No one in?’ she asked. ‘Apart from Fido?’

‘What are you doing here?’

‘Same as you,’ said Annie. ‘Trying to find out what the hell’s been going on.’

He half turned towards her. Gave her the old beady brown eye again. ‘Don’t get smart with me, Mrs Carter. I know what you are, I know about you.’

‘Oh?’ Annie looked at him.

‘You know, I once worked for DCI Fielding, and do you know what his big ambition was? To nail Max Carter.’

‘Really,’ said Annie. ‘Well, he left that too late. Max is dead.’ She glanced at his left hand. He was wearing a gold wedding ring, but Lane had said he was divorced. ‘Hey, how’s your wife, DI Hunter?’ she asked him with deliberate cruelty.

His lips tightened. ‘In Manchester,’ he said. ‘The last I heard.’

‘Trouble on the domestic front?’

His eyes flared. ‘Just what the hell are you doing here?’

‘I told you, same as you. But in the meantime, we’re here outside this damned door. Which needs opening, by the way.’

‘Mrs Carter. This is police business, and best left to us.’ And he turned and knocked on the door again.

‘That lock don’t look up to much,’ said Annie. There was a pause. The dog barked on, yap, yap, yap. ‘A good kick could probably sort that door out,’ she suggested helpfully.

‘That’s breaking and entering, Mrs Carter,’ he said, giving her the look again.

‘Well,’ said Annie, ‘I understand your reservations, you being an officer of the law and all that stuff. But if you were to walk along to the end there, busy yourself in some way, my colleague there,’ she nodded to Tony, ‘could have it open in no time. And then we could move this along, because no one is going to answer this damned door. And that dog’s doing my head in.’

DI Hunter gave her an appraising stare. Looked at Tony, standing there all polite and besuited, big as a barn door with his bald head polished to the colour of oak from the summer sun, the gold crucifixes glittering in his ears. Looking as if he could demolish the building, never mind the door.

‘Don’t think I approve of this, because I don’t,’ said Hunter.

Annie nodded. Hunter walked off. Tony approached.

‘Open it, will you, Tone?’ she asked.

Tony pulled back and gave the door a kick just below the lock. It bounced open and the dog’s volume shot up by a few decibels. A Yorkshire terrier appeared in the doorway, yapping frantically but wagging his little stump of a tail. Tony observed the animal with disfavour.

‘God, I hate dogs.’

‘You a cat person, Tone?’ asked Annie. She could see DI Hunter coming back now, not hurrying.

‘Can’t stand them either. You know if you drop down dead, they’ll eat you? How’s that for loyalty? Shows their true nature.’

‘Thanks, Tone,’ said Annie, and Tony went back along the landing to stand at the top of the stairs again.

‘Hiya,’ she said to the dog, whose tail went into overdrive.

She nudged the door further open with her foot, and wrinkled her nose as a waft of something unpleasant hit her from inside the flat. DI Hunter was back. There was a brief tussle over who should go through the door first, so they pushed into the flat’s lounge together, the dog backing up on its haunches and still doing that irritating high-pitched yap-yap-yap business.

The smell of shit was suddenly overwhelmingly strong. Urine was slowly dripping on to a faded, threadbare carpet in the centre of the room. Above it, there was a young man hanging from the light fitting, flex twisted tight around his neck, dead eyes bulging, his tongue lolling swollen and black from his mouth.

Chapter 11

Annie was sitting with her head in her hands at Dolly’s kitchen table. She still felt as though she was going to throw up. It was nearly lunchtime of the same day, the day on which she and Hunter had discovered that Gareth wouldn’t be providing any evidence this side of eternity.

Dolly was busy ferrying covered plates of sausage rolls, tuna vol-au-vents and sandwiches through from the kitchen to the front parlour, in readiness for the rush. This only ever used to happen on Fridays—party day—but now it was something she tended to do most days of the week. Along with the bar, it kept the punters happy and kept them coming back for more. Plus, it added a bit to the takings. Everyone was a winner. All except Annie, who took one look at the tuna vol-au-vents and had to take a hasty trip to the loo.

Mungo Jerry was belting out ‘In the Summertime’ from the little trannie over the sink. Dolly was hurrying about the place, absorbed in her various tasks. Annie sat down again, flinching at the smell of warm sausage rolls. She envied Dolly that facility, to be content in your own four walls and to shut out the chaos. She had seen Dolly perform this act of denial before; it seemed to come naturally to her.

Lucky cow, thought Annie, wishing she could do the same.

Annie knew that this capacity for turning a blind eye to trouble came from Dolly having been kicked out of the family home in disgrace and left to suffer alone through a really bad backstreet abortion. Under circumstances like that, you’d have to build stout barricades in your brain to stop yourself from going mad, and this was obviously exactly what Dolly had done.

Ellie was mopping the floor and giving Dolly dirty looks because she’d just done that bit, for Chrissakes, and here was Dolly trotting around on her clean floor like a ruddy racehorse.

‘Someone certainly got out of bed the wrong side this morning,’ observed Dolly as Ellie irritably redid her work on the floor.

Annie looked up at Ellie. Ellie had been at Dolly’s place a long time, since before it had been Dolly’s place at all. She’d been there when it had been Annie’s, and there before that, when Aunt Celia had been running the show. It was no secret among them that the knocking-shop paid protection to the Delaneys, because the Delaneys ran Limehouse. It was no secret either that Ellie was the Delaney insider, which had caused them all a problem or two over the years, but Ellie had come to know which side she was batting for.

Annie knew Ellie was loyal to the house now before all else. She’d been on the game for years, the chubby-chasers had loved her ample curves, but she had not long since started displaying all the worrying signs of someone who couldn’t hack fucking for a living after all. Scrubbing herself, trying to get the scent of sex off her. So now she cleaned houses. She cleaned here, and she cleaned at Kath’s place. Made a really good job of it too. Liked to see a place all spick and span.

‘Jesus, you look just about ready to hurl,’ said Dolly to Annie as she passed by. She stopped and stared at Ellie too. ‘And you. What a face on you. You miserable mares.’

‘Doll, I have hurled,’ said Annie. ‘And if you’d seen what I’ve seen this morning, so would you.’

Rosie, one of Dolly’s new working girls, wandered into the kitchen in a transparent powder-blue peignoir and fluffy slippers. She was a small, pretty blonde with dynamite curves and a relaxed attitude. Yawning, she filled the kettle and switched it on, jigging sleepily away to the beat. She sent Annie a vague smile.