mother. There was one more thing she could do, to make sure that no other sons ended up on a mortuary slab. She’d had years of this, of the killing, the crooked deals, the stress and the lust for revenge, and she was tired of it all. Then her mind turned with soul-wrenching sadness to her daughter; this would break her heart.
‘Someone ought to go in the morning and tell Bianca,’ she said.
Vittore nodded. ‘I’ll do it,’ he said.
‘Blood will flow.’
Ruby Darke would never forget those words, coming down the phone line at her. It was like a witch’s curse, she thought later, because blood did flow, oh yes indeed. But she didn’t know, not then. She just picked up the phone, like you do, like thousands of people do, every day. They pick up, and bang. Their world changes for ever. ERNIE’s snatched their premium bond numbers out of the pile. Or someone they kissed goodbye only an hour ago is dead, heart attack. The fates roll the dice, and we are all helpless pawns on the great game board of the uncaring universe.
Ruby didn’t expect either good news or bad, not that day. But when she looked back, that was how it all started: with the phone
the witch’s curse…
ringing in her Victorian villa in Marlow.
She was hurrying through the hall, the spring sunlight making pretty patterns as it shone through the stained-glass panels beside the front door. She threw a casual remark back at her daughter Daisy, who was in the kitchen with Nanny Jody, feeding Matthew and Luke, Daisy’s year-old twins.
‘Hello?’ Ruby unclipped an earring, smiled her automatic professional smile.
She hadn’t genuinely smiled since last November, not since Michael Ward had been found shot dead in an alleyway. She thought about him every day. Mourned him bitterly. Missed him so much. Even though she knew what he’d been, she’d loved him.
On the surface, Michael had been a businessman, giving generously to charities, stumping up for the Aberfan disaster, raising donations for the Hackney Road Queen Elizabeth Hospital for Children. But underneath the façade? He was a crook, the feared leader of one of the big organized gangs who ‘ran’ the streets of London, like the Krays had, and the Richardsons, the Regans, the Nashes and the Carters… Some of those gangs were off the scene now, and there were new developments: the Maltese were muscling in, the Mafia was cruising around, looking tasty, and then there was Tito Danieri’s lot, his
