‘I told you,’ said Kit. ‘I’ve been down on the coast, taking the air.’
‘For a couple of days, wasn’t that the deal? Not a fucking
week
.’
‘Things came up.’ He thought of Bianca. ‘Important things.’ He wasn’t ready to tell Rob about her, not yet. Rob had a stick up his arse, best let him get
that
out of the way first. ‘You get the car fixed up?’
‘What?’ Rob stared at him.
‘What’s wrong with you? The cunting
car.
I asked you to fix it.’
‘Right, yeah, that.’ Rob swiped a hand through his hair as if the car was the
last
thing on his mind. ‘Yeah, it’s done. It’s over at the yard, locked up tight. Didn’t want to risk parking it out on the street again and having to do the same damned job a second time.’
‘Good.’ Kit sipped his juice, still staring at Rob. ‘Anything else I should know about? You tapped up our boys in the Bill, got some stuff about Michael?’
‘Yeah, I did that. I’ll talk that through with you later, OK?’
‘Sure.’
Kit glanced around the restaurant. It was packed: Saturday night. The tills were ringing. All was right with the world. Except he wasn’t where he wanted to be. Soonest, he was going to get Bianca up here with him. She could get a manager in at Dante’s, and then they could be together properly. He was completely smitten. He was half-smiling, wanting to ask Rob,
You ever been in love, mate?
But he didn’t want to make himself look like a soft-centred cunt. He had his image to protect.
‘So, everything else running smooth?’ he asked.
And then Rob told him about Simon, and how Daisy had been approached on the road, scared half out of her wits.
Kit’s smile died on his face. He grew very still.
‘You got Reg out at the Marlow house, right?’ he said at last.
‘Reg and two more of the boys. Taking no chances. Daise and Ruby have been climbing the walls.’
‘Let’s get over there then,’ sighed Kit.
‘My God, where have you
been
?’ asked Daisy frantically when Reg ushered Kit into the sitting room. She and Ruby had been sitting huddled by the fire. They were wearing black, both of them. Ruby, it suited. Daisy, without her usual sunny array of bright colours, looked dreadful.
Kit was beginning to feel bad. There he’d been, having a sexual marathon with Bianca, happy as a pig in shit, and all
this
had been kicking off.
‘I’m home now,’ he said, and Daisy rushed forward and hugged him, hard.
Kit pushed her back a step. Her eyes were brimming with tears.
‘You OK, Daise? They didn’t touch you?’ he asked, thinking that if any of the Danieri bastards had laid a hand on his sister then they’d be sorry.
Daisy shook her head. ‘No, I’m fine. I was so
scared
, that’s all. The instant I got back here, I called Rob, told him what happened, and he came straight over. Kit,’ Daisy’s voice trembled, ‘we’ve had to send Jody and the twins away. Rob said it would be safest. I didn’t
want
to do it. I can’t believe it’s even necessary. But—’
‘Rob’s right,’ said Kit.
‘They’re stashed in one of our safe houses,’ said Rob.
Daisy didn’t know what was happening to her normally secure, orderly world. Suddenly it seemed to have tilted, spilling her over into chaos. A new year and a new job in Mum’s store, she’d thought: well, she’d blown
that.
Then Simon, dying. Hideous, the shock of it. And almost worse, horrifically painful, she was being parted from her babies. She felt like she was going mad. She literally
hurt
when she thought about them
.
She was coming to realize what it truly meant, to be Kit Miller’s kin.
‘Could I at least phone through, check they’re OK?’ she pleaded.
Kit shook his head. ‘Better not, Daise. It’s too bloody easy to put a tap on a line, and who’s to say there isn’t one on this house phone? Safest to keep your distance. For you,
and
for them.’
He glanced at Rob, who gave him a bleak look in return. ‘Poor Daisy was fucking traumatized,’ he said. ‘They must have been watching her all along. Maybe Ruby too, and this house. And who’s to say they’ll stop at scaring them, next time?’
Only then did Kit look beyond Daisy to where Ruby sat. His mother. Michael Ward had loved her, and he remembered the letter Michael had left for him, to be opened in the event of his death:
Don’t be an arsehole. Give your mother a chance.
‘You all right?’ he asked her roughly. To his annoyance, he found that he actually cared. He didn’t want her frightened, or hurt.
Ruby nodded. She was made of tough stuff, he knew that. Well, she must be hard as fucking nails – after all, she’d abandoned him, her own kid, when he was even younger than Daisy’s twins.
‘It was suicide, right? Rob filled me in,’ said Kit, going over to his mother and sitting down beside her. He didn’t reach out, touch her hand, kiss her or anything.
‘What we’re thinking now is it wasn’t suicide at all,’ said Ruby, her face taut with suppressed anger. ‘It could just as easily have happened when the twins and Jody were at the house with him. Do you think the Danieris would care?’
‘You haven’t told anyone about this . . . ?’
‘No. We were waiting for you to come back. We’ve been going out of our minds here, and Rob didn’t have a number to reach you on . . .’
‘I know.’ He felt like shit about that. There he’d been, happily getting his end away, and Daise and Rob and Ruby had been suffering a shedload of grief.
‘They did it,’ said Daisy, pacing around, her colour high with agitation. ‘Kit, they
killed
him.’
‘They said that?’ asked Kit. ‘They rigged it to look like suicide?’
‘They made it obvious. And the implication was that they could just as easily kill me, too. I thought they were going to. I really did. God, Kit, it’s been absolute murder. I’m a wreck, I haven’t slept,’ sobbed Daisy. ‘He was the boys’
father.
’
Kit was struggling to take all this in. That his brother-in-law had got himself wasted was a big shock. Granted, Simon Collins was a prick, but the poor bastard hadn’t deserved to die. And Daisy . . . the thought of the Danieri boys cornering her, throwing such a scare into her made him livid.
‘Maybe it’s time I had a chat with Vittore,’ he said.
Ruby’s eyes opened wide at that. ‘No! Kit, don’t go near him.
Promise
me you won’t. This is exactly what Bella was afraid of, that things would escalate. If you go and see him, it can only make matters worse.’
Kit didn’t agree, but he didn’t say so. Daisy could have been badly hurt. And her kids could have been killed, and their nanny, along with their father. All because of
him.
Tension gripped him as he thought of what
could
have happened, while he was elsewhere having a bloody good time.
‘Look,’ he said finally. ‘What we’re going to do is this: Reg and the boys will stay here with you, OK?’
‘Won’t Rob stay too?’ asked Ruby.
Kit looked at Ruby, at Daisy. He knew Daisy had a soft spot for Rob. He didn’t think Rob felt the same, and that was sort of a relief. As Daisy’s brother, he felt protective of her, and he wasn’t entirely sure yet how he would feel if something should develop between his number one man and his own sister.
‘No,’ he said finally. ‘I need him. Ruby . . .’ He couldn’t bring himself to call her ‘Mum’ . . .’There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you. Do you know where Michael was going, what he had planned to do, on the day he died?’
He didn’t expect her to say yes, but she did.
‘He was planning to call in on Joe,’ said Ruby, wishing so much that he’d hug her, kiss her cheek, show
some
sort of feeling for her and not just for Daisy. But he wouldn’t. She knew that.
Kit frowned. ‘Your
brother
Joe?’
Ruby nodded.
‘He didn’t say what for?’
‘No. He didn’t.’
42
‘Yes! Yes! Yes!’ screamed Maria.
‘Hey, hold it
down
, will ya?’ said Fabio, laughing and thrusting and trying to get a hand over her mouth all at the same time.
Oh, this was better than any scenario he could have dreamed up, and he had dreamed up a
lot.
Over the years, the images he cooked up in his own head had been his only comfort. He
knew
Mama’d never wanted him. Time and again he’d heard her say how sure she was that he had been a girl, carrying all the way round, not at the front. He was sick to
death
of hearing her say that.
‘But instead there he was, this scrawny little thing with a big dick,’ Bella would say, shaking her head as if the bottom had dropped out of her world when Fabio popped out of her cooze. ‘A
boy
, not a girl.’
Time and again. He was so
sick
of being the disappointment, the non-girl. Embarrassingly, Mama had dressed him as a girl at first. Vittore and Tito had never failed to see the funny side of that, fucking
bastards.
He’d been done up in pink booties and a hat, even the
nursery
was pink, painted in readiness for the expected female.
‘Oh God, oh, Fabio . . .’ moaned Maria loudly, thrashing around on the bed beneath him.
Jesus, he should have known she’d be a screamer. Couldn’t the noisy mare pipe down? They were in a cheap hotel way off the beaten track, but he didn’t want to disturb the other guests, he didn’t want to call any sort of attention to them. That would be stupid. And he wasn’t stupid, no matter what the rest of the family might have to say about it.
When Mama’d sent him to school, she hadn’t cut his hair, so it hung down past his shoulders like a girl’s. Oh, how Vittore and Tito – and all his classmates – laughed. In desperation he himself had hacked the long strands off with a knife he stole out of art class. A wallop from Mama for doing that, but at least she seemed to get the message. He was
not
a girl. Thereafter, she kept his hair short.
Then who should arrive on the scene but Bianca. Before
her
, he’d been the stand-in, the stunt double, his mother – Jesus, she was demented – using him as a sort of dummy, a replacement for what he
should
have been at birth. Once Bianca came, things got worse. Instead of this
weird
attention, he got no attention at all. He was sent out to play, forgotten; what small place he had was taken up. There was no more room in the boat, and he was tossed out, shoved into the water to take his chances or drown.
He hated Bianca, but knew she had to be tolerated. The odd punch or two he managed to land on the little
principessa
was reported straight back to Mama, and Astorre had taken his belt to his youngest son at her insistence. Fabio hated Vittore, because Mama adored him so much. And he hated Tito too, swaggering about the place, impressing everyone with his bulky good looks and his largesse.
He hated them all.
But now he was having his revenge. He and his boys were shifting the Jamaican’s gear around the family clubs, around Vito’s, Fellows and Goldie’s, but they were not giving Vittore so much as a taste. Not a
hint.
Fabio was making his own wedge right under Vittore’s nose, but discreetly, carefully.
And this! Oh, this was the best thing of all.
He looked down at her, naked, sweaty, dishevelled. Maria was
quite
a handful. And it was pretty obvious that Vittore had not only been knocking her around but also letting her down in the bedroom department. Which was a crying shame. In Fabio’s opinion, a woman like this needed a good seeing-to on a regular basis. And he was just the man to do it.
‘Ah!’ yelled Maria as she came, her excitement pushing him over the edge too. They locked together in an ecstatic clinch, then Fabio drew back and flopped onto the disarranged, cheap and rather scratchy sheets of the bed.
Gasping in a breath, he looked around the room and lit a cigarette. It was a pest-hole, this hotel. The wallpaper was peeling, there was a brown damp stain on the ceiling over by the window. The sheets were clean, though not the fine thousand-thread Egyptian cotton he was used to. But at least the place was off the Danieri patch and rented rooms by the hour. What more could he want?
To rub Vittore’s nose in this
, he thought, glancing back at Maria, who was now snuggling up against him with puppyish zeal.
But he couldn’t. Vittore would kill him if he knew. So this revenge had to be a private one, gloated over in secret.
‘Do you love me, Fabio?’ she was asking him now.
‘Yeah. I do,’ he lied. Well, he loved the fact that he was screwing Vittore’s wife. He loved
that
, for sure.
‘And you’ll talk to Vittore, like you promised?’ she asked, kissing his shoulder.
‘Of course,’ he lied again.
43
‘Well, say it,’ said Kit.
‘What?’ asked Rob.
‘That it’s my fault, what happened to Simon,’ said Kit.
It was late on Sunday night and Kit and Rob were in the little office behind the restaurant. Kit slumped down in the chair behind the desk that Michael Ward had once occupied. He could still smell the faint aroma of expensive cigars and Dunhill cigarettes in here: the ceiling was stained brown from all the years of nicotine. It was like Michael’s ghost was in attendance, too.
Rob pulled up a chair and sat there and looked at his mate, his boss. He said nothing.
Kit went on: ‘I turned up drunk at Tito’s funeral. I provoked Vittore. And now we’re in the shit because of it.’
Rob cleared his throat. ‘Look, you were a mess. You were in mourning for Michael. Shit, I thought you were
never
going to pull out of it. And maybe you haven’t, even now. These things take time.’
Kit eyed Rob speculatively.
‘I behaved like a complete arsehole,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘God’s sakes,
you
didn’t go to fucking pieces.’
‘Yeah, but I got a big family. Sisters, brothers, a mum – and a dad. He’s an awkward, cantankerous old son of a bitch, but he’s been there for me all my life. It’ll break my heart when he goes. You never had any of that, did you?
Michael
was like a dad to you. The two of you were that close. And when you lost him – and especially losing him that way . . . well, it’s understandable you’d go to pieces. Anybody would.’