Stay Dead (33 page)

Nothing.

Max put the phone back on to the cradle, looked at the address she’d scribbled down, then picked up the phone again. Waited.

‘Steve?’ he said. ‘We just had a call from Jackie Tulliver, he’s in the shit. Go to . . .’ Max reeled off the address. ‘He was in his motor, watching Redmond
Delaney’s place, but it sounds like Delaney dragged him out of a phone box near there.’

Annie eased herself off the bed and started putting on the clothes she’d worn yesterday.

‘What are you doing?’ asked Max.

‘Coming with you.’

‘No, you’re not.’

Annie stopped moving. ‘Yes, I am. I asked him to find Redmond.’

‘Why, for fuck’s sake?’

‘Because it was the Delaney mob who Dolly asked to do a hit on her dad. Turns out he died in a railway accident, but I’m thinking, was it an accident? I don’t know, but Redmond
can give answers to that. Max, this is
my
mess, not yours.’

Max let out a sigh. ‘Well, hurry the fuck up then,’ he said.

When they got to the address Jackie had given them, Steve was already there, standing beside Jackie’s old car. The empty phone kiosk was ten yards away. There were large
detached houses on this side of the road, and a dense stretch of oak woodland on the other. Jackie’s car engine was still running, headlights blaring; the driver’s door was open, the
light inside the car was on. Steve took out a heavy-duty torch from his own car.

‘There’s no blood in here,’ said Annie, peering into the car’s messy interior. Jackie’s car reflected its owner’s character; outside it was OK, but inside it
was littered with sweet wrappings, empty beer cans, carrier bags and inches of dust, leaves and other crap.

‘I’ll have a look around,’ said Steve, and went off first to the phone booth and then into the wooded darkness on the other side of the road.

Annie looked at Max. ‘What if Redmond took him inside the house?’

‘Why would he do that? Just as likely Steve’s going to trip over Jackie, stiff as a board and stone-dead any minute, back there.’

‘Christ.’ Annie shuddered. If Jackie was dead, then it was her fault. ‘You heard Jackie screaming, same as I did.’

‘That might not have been Delaney.’

‘Bullshit.’ Annie leaned against the warm bonnet of the car, her legs shaking. Her hands were shaking too. That soul-chilling scream had sent a bolt of fear right through her –
fear for Jackie. Taking a handkerchief out of his pocket, Max wrapped it around his fingers and leaned in and switched the engine off, then took the keys out of the ignition. The lights went out as
Max closed the car door and locked it, wiped the keyhole, pocketed the keys. Annie pushed herself away from the car and started walking.

‘Where you going?’ said Max.

‘Where do you think?’

Max came and placed himself in front of her. ‘No, you’re not.’

‘Look – if he did this—’ she started, stepping around him.

Max grabbed her arm. ‘You don’t know he’s done anything.’

‘I know he’s fucking evil. I know
tha
t.’

Steve came back, the torch throwing a wavering cone of white in front of him. He reached them and flicked off the torch. ‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘The phone was off the hook,
that’s all. No sign of a struggle.’

‘He could be inside the house. We can’t just
go
,’ said Annie, shaking her head as if to clear it. ‘Jackie’s done what I asked, he’s found Redmond.
We’re
here
. So you can do what you fucking well like, but I’m going over there and I’m going to speak to him.’

Redmond himself opened the door. Not a housekeeper, not a servant, not a henchman – although there was a man coming in through the back door into the kitchen at the end
of the hall when they arrived at Redmond’s house. He was tall, stooping, dark-haired, scruffy and mean-eyed.

Annie was instantly struck by how little Redmond had changed since she’d seen him last. He still had those killer-cold green eyes, that long, pale, perfectly symmetrical face, the neatly
trimmed red hair. Last time she’d seen him he was wearing a priest’s cassock; this time he was in dark slacks and an expensive-looking cream shirt. He was devastatingly attractive as
always.

Annie thought of all that he had been in the past, and all that Jackie had told her about Redmond and the female parishioners. And she was suddenly very glad that she had Max and Steve standing
right behind her. The sight of Redmond gave her the dry heaves.

‘Mrs Carter! And Mr Carter, I see. And a friend too. What a pleasant surprise,’ said Redmond smoothly.

‘Cut the fucking bullshit, Redmond,’ said Max, before Annie could open her mouth. ‘Where’s Jackie Tulliver?’

‘I sent Jackie to find you,’ said Annie.

‘Did you?’ Redmond looked perfectly composed, the picture of innocence. ‘Please, come in.’

Feeling like a fly stepping on to a spider’s web, Annie crossed the threshold of Redmond Delaney’s home.

Is Jackie in here somewhere?
she wondered. The same thought was obviously crossing Steve and Max’s minds, because Steve said, ‘Mind if I take a look around
the place?’

Redmond shrugged, seeming perfectly relaxed. Whether he said yes or no, it was obvious Steve was going to do it anyway. ‘Of course. Although you won’t find your missing friend here,
I’m afraid.’

Steve didn’t reply, he just left the room. They could hear his footfalls as he climbed up to the first floor, could hear the old boards creaking as he moved about up there.

‘Please – sit down,’ said Redmond.

‘I’ll stand, thanks,’ said Max. He planted himself against the wall beside the door and pulled out a gun and pointed it in Redmond’s direction.

Redmond’s eyes opened wide in surprise, but he made no comment.

‘This is Mitchell,’ said Redmond, as the stooping man came into the room, sent a long look at Max and the gun, and took up a position on the other side of the door. ‘He keeps
house for me. Sees to things. You know. Mrs Carter . . . ?’ Redmond indicated a seat on the other side of the fire.

Annie sat down, and so did he. The atmosphere in the room was suddenly thick with a palpable air of menace.

‘What did you want to find me for, Mrs Carter?’ asked Redmond.

‘My friend’s been killed. Dolly Farrell,’ said Annie bluntly.

‘Killed? What, you mean an accident?’

‘No accident. She was shot in her flat over the Palermo club. She was managing it for us, for the Carters.’

‘I see. I’m sorry for your loss, Mrs Carter, but I don’t understand how you expect me to help with this.’

‘You knew Dolly – didn’t you?’ asked Annie.

‘Oh, from years back. She was an acquaintance, occasionally an employee, back then.’

‘In the Limehouse knocking shop,’ she said, remembering that Redmond’s language was always formal and polite. He might be an arsehole, but you’d never guess it when you
spoke to him.

‘That’s correct,’ he said.

‘Her father abused her.’

Redmond was silent for a long while. Then he said: ‘Yes. I knew about that.’

‘And Dolly asked the Delaney family to do away with her father.’

‘Yes, that’s right too.’

‘Only my friend Jackie’s turned up stories of an accident on the railway where Dolly’s dad worked. And I just wondered . . . was it an accident?’

‘What does any of that matter now?’

‘It matters because someone might be upset at what happened to the old tosser. They might have gone looking for revenge. They might have targeted Dolly.
Did
the Delaneys organize
that “accident”?’

‘God moves in mysterious ways, his wonders to perform, Mrs Carter.’ Redmond gave a chilling smile. ‘Yes, your Aunt Celia brought Dolly Farrell to me, wanting me to do something
about her father. She explained the situation – it was quite distressing. A kiddie fiddler. A filthy nonce. Is there anything lower? Anything worse?’

Annie shook her head. No. There wasn’t. ‘So . . . what happened?’ she asked.

‘I said, “Let his co-workers decide his fate. Let’s tell them what he is, what he’s done.” Of course they were in uproar. You can rely on the masses for hysteria, I
find. One person on his own? Not so bad. An angry group of people? Lethal.’

‘And so?’ Annie prompted. She could hear Steve upstairs, going from room to room.

Fuck it
,
Jackie, where are you?

But she kept her focus on Redmond. She had to hear the rest of this.

‘They all agreed, all of Sam Farrell’s railway workmates, that he was scum and must go. Arthur Biggs was the train driver, but he was reluctant. He said the guilt would be on his
shoulders,
he
was the one who would back the engine on to Sam Farrell; even if all the others swore it was an accident,
he
was the one who would do it.’

‘He objected?’ said Max.

‘Strenuously,’ said Redmond. ‘But his co-workers rounded on him and said he had to. So . . . he did.’

Christ
, thought Annie.

‘And so,’ said Redmond with a sigh, ‘the people who had once been Sam Farrell’s friends attacked him, and the locomotive backed into him. Crushed his chest and stomach as
flat as a pancake. Killed him.’

‘And then Arthur Biggs was so tormented with guilt that he hung himself,’ said Annie, thinking of what Sandy had told her, and that she had to find the Biggs family and speak to
them.

‘Did he? I didn’t know that.’

Steve was coming back down the stairs in his size elevens, the treads creaking under his weight as he did so. He caught Max’s eye, shook his head, and then went off further along the hall
and started looking in the downstairs rooms. Mitchell sent a look at Max; Max stared him down. Mitchell left the room, went along the hall toward the kitchen.

‘Tea, anyone?’ asked Redmond, and he stood up.

‘No thanks,’ said Annie and Max together.

Then all the lights went out.

Utter blackness descended. Annie froze in her chair. Something brushed by her leg, there was a scrabble of movement, and then someone grabbed her arm. She let out a shriek.

‘It’s me,’ said Max, and then Steve was in the room and the wavering light of the torch was blinding Annie. Steve cast the beam around. ‘That other geezer shot past me
out the back door,’ he said.

So – no Mitchell.

Steve cast the torch’s beam around the room.

And no Redmond, either. He was gone.

‘That bastard makes my skin crawl,’ said Max as he started the car and drove them back to Holland Park.

‘Me too,’ said Annie. She wasn’t convinced that Redmond had told them the complete truth about what had happened to Sam Farrell. Redmond was a game player. You couldn’t
trust a word that came out of his mouth.

Steve had searched everywhere in the house and the grounds, but Jackie wasn’t there. So where the hell
was
he? And what had made him scream that way? Annie shivered to think of it,
what could have happened to him. All right, he was a walking disaster, drunk and disgusting most of the time, but he’d been making an effort to shape up over this last week or so, and
he’d been on her side when no one else seemed to be.

She thought of Redmond, sitting there like butter wouldn’t melt. But she
knew
that bastard of old, just like Max did. That cool polished exterior hid a squirming worm-fest of
nastiness that could be unleashed at a moment’s notice. Priest, pervert or crook, Redmond’s basic personality never changed. He was disturbed, and disturbing, and there was history
between them. Bad history. Annie could never forget that it had been Constantine who had tried to kill both Redmond and his twin sister Orla back in the seventies. And it had been Annie’s own
daughter, Layla, who had finally put a stop to Orla’s sad, twisted life.

‘Are you going to come in?’ asked Annie when Max pulled up outside her house.

‘What, to hear more tall tales?’ Max sighed.

Annie looked at him in exasperation. Before Jackie’s phone call, Max had been about to make love to her. She knew it. Now he was cold again.

‘We can talk,’ she said. ‘Can’t we?’

Truthfully, she didn’t want to be alone, not after this evening, not after hearing that godawful scream and staring into Redmond’s expressionless eyes.

He shrugged. ‘If you want,’ he said, and got out of the car.

Annie got out too, shutting the door after her, crossing the pavement, starting up the steps. There was something, a bundle of rags, something like that, near the door, lit by the carriage light
over it.

‘What the f—’ she started, coming to a halt as her feet met a puddle of dark oil.

They had found Jackie.

Jackie could almost have been asleep. He was sitting, legs sprawled open, his back to the navy-blue double doors of the house, his head slumped forward on his chest.

He’s asleep
, she told herself. Or drugged? She was hoping against hope that this could be true.

Max passed her where she stood frozen on the steps. And then she realized. It wasn’t oil at her feet, it was
blood
, and it had flowed down the steps from Jackie’s body. Unable
to move, too
shocked
to move, she watched as Max crouched down by Jackie, lifted his head and then . . .

‘Oh, holy
shit
!’ said Annie, her hand flying to her mouth and bile surging into her throat. Jackie’s neck had been slashed open and his shirtfront was soaked through
with blood. She could smell the coppery stench of it now; it hit her in a wave.

Max let Jackie’s head fall back down on to his chest. It was like releasing a puppet’s strings, Annie thought. There was no life left in Jackie; he was dead.

‘Stay there a minute,’ said Max, and got out his key and opened the door.

Jackie fell back across the threshold and lay there, inert. With Annie’s body blocking anyone’s view from the road, Max dragged Jackie into the hall, then motioned for Annie to come
on in. She did, stepping around the dark waterfall of blood, gagging, her feet leaden, her heart pounding dully in her chest.

She closed the door behind her, flicked on the hall lights and looked down at Jackie. The brilliance of the chandeliers only served to highlight the awful pallor of his face, the deep wound
across his neck, the half-open lids showing filmed-over eyes that saw nothing.