…
‘That’s what I’m asking our tame coppers, right now. Not getting any answers yet, but I’ll keep asking.’
‘Who the hell would do this?’ said Annie, suddenly springing to her feet, clutching at her head. ‘What had she- I mean, what’s been happening with her? Was there a man involved with her, anything like that?’
Even as she said it, Annie thought that it was a stupid question. Dolly had never, to her knowledge, had much time for men. She had a troubled past, and Annie knew that men had been a large part of that trouble. So far as she knew, her friend had been happiest living a celibate life.
‘I’m asking the questions. I thought of that. But you know Dolly. Don’t seem like her style somehow.’
Annie was pacing around, pulling the phone cord along with her. ‘What the fuck?’ she raged, feeling helpless, thinking that this couldn’t be happening.
‘You want me to do anything?’ asked Tony.
Annie was having flashbacks. Dolly drinking gin and tonic in the bar, laughing at some off-colour joke one of the punters had told. Dolly hauling Annie’s arse out of bed after she’d split from Max back in 1980, pulling her back to her feet with the force of her will, making her carry on even when she didn’t want to. She felt her eyes fill with hot, painful tears – and she never cried. But this was Dolly. Dolly was her best mate. And now… oh fuck, how could this be? – Dolly was dead.
Annie blinked hard, gulping back her tears until all she felt was that cleansing rage again. She kicked the coffee table, hard. Then again. Then again. Shells skidded over the surface and dropped to the floor. Anger rushed through her in an unstoppable tide. Whoever did this, they were finished. She would see to it.
When she spoke again, her voice was harder, steadier. ‘Ask the questions, Tone. Ask as many as you can. See nobody rests. Keep doing what you’re doing.’
There was a silence at the other end of the phone, all those thousands of miles away, in London. Then he said: ‘What you going to do?’
Annie drew in a breath.
Composed herself.
‘I’m coming back,’ she said.
For long moments after the man in the wheelchair killed himself, Max stood there in awe. He’d heard of it, but never seen it up close and personal. This was the type of loyalty these people commanded, with their omerta, their code of endless silence. To death and beyond.
He stared down at the corpse still half-propped in the chair, leaning way over to the left. The bullet had been high-calibre, and there was a lot of damage; death had been a certainty, no chances taken. Blood and bone and brain matter had spewed out of the shattered skull in a fountain. Rather than talk and disgrace himself, betray the Mafia code he’d sworn to uphold, the man had taken his own life.
