‘Oh! DCI Hunter,’ she said vaguely, and went back to staring at the front of the building.
He stood there with her, silent for a moment. Then he said: ‘I thought you might show up. A bit of a shock, yes? You knew her well.’
‘I’ve known her for years,’ said Annie, and she had, since way back in Limehouse when Auntie Celia had held sway over the best whorehouse in the district and Dolly had been the brassiest of the brasses who worked there. Dolly had come a long, long way since then. They all had. And to see it end like this was damned near unbearable.
‘And how is Mr Carter?’ asked DCI Hunter.
Annie’s face was set as she turned her head and started at him. Years, the Bill had been trying to pin stuff on Max. But he was always too sharp for them. Too sharp for her, too. She wondered what he was up to right now, and again her mind filled with images of tangled limbs, hot and heavy sex, some anonymous younger woman greedily, eagerly, taking her place. Quickly, she dragged her mind away from that. There was nothing she could do about it.
There’s nothing you can do about this, either, said a voice in her head.
But she couldn’t, wouldn’t ever, believe that. She’d come back to find out what had happened here. And she meant to do that.
‘You got any leads on this?’ she asked him.
He gave a tight little smile. ‘None that I am inclined to share with you.’
Annie shrugged. She’d find out anyway. From way back, before the Carter gang became almost legit, running not only the three London clubs but also a lucrative security firm whose territory encompassed a hefty chunk of central London and deep into Essex, they’d had tame coppers tucked away in the Met, people who were on their payroll and kept them up to speed with whatever was going down.
‘She was shot, I was told,’ said Annie.
‘If you know anything else about this, you should tell me,’ he replied, neither confirming nor denying it.
‘How the hell would I know anything? I’ve been abroad.’
‘Disgruntled customer? Lover?’
‘Dolly didn’t have lovers.’
‘She was never married?’
Annie pursed her lips. She felt she was giving away more than she wanted to, but perhaps he could help. Perhaps he could even nail the lowlife who’d done this. ‘Dolly didn’t care for men much,’ she said.
‘Women then?’
‘Dolly? Nah. Dolly was no lezzie. Dolly was…’
Had been…
Self-sufficient best summed it up, Annie supposed. Some people might say she had a cold core, but that wasn’t the case. Once you were in with Dolly, you were in for life and she’d do anything for you. But… no lovers, male or female. She liked cats, Annie knew that. But not kids. She could vividly remember one of the girls’ sisters bringing in a tiny baby to the Limehouse knocking shop, and all the girls cooing over the infant – but not Dolly. Never Dolly. She didn’t want to hold the child and she seemed uninterested in it. If anything, she seemed relieved when the girl left and took the kid with her.
