When Annie got back to the Shalimar, the place was in uproar. Chris was out on the pavement, twitchily smoking and pacing around. A Samsonite suitcase and a couple of bags were on the pavement beside him, and one of the bags was split open. They were her bags, she realized. And that was her suitcase.
‘What’s up?’ asked Annie, paying off the taxi and approaching.
She glanced from Chris to the bags. They were Louis Vuitton, and one of them was wrecked, spilling a couple of lightweight dresses out on to the wet dirt. She bent, tucked the items back in, gathered up the bags. She had known Chris was unhappy having her here for some reason, and it was clear he was chucking her out of the club, but he didn’t have to go and break her damned bag.
‘What’s up?’ Chris turned to her with a snarl on his lips and his eyes spitting venom. ‘You’re up. You, coming back here. For fuck’s sake, I told her, I warned her, but did she listen?’
Annie stepped back, shocked by this onslaught. This was Chris. He’d always liked her. Now, he was staring at her as if he’d like to kick her straight up the crotch.
‘What are you doing, breaking up my bloody bags?’
He looked down at them. ‘I didn’t do it.’ He flicked his head up and let out an angry snort of smoke. ‘They chucked them out the top window. Go and have a fucking look, you cow,’ he said, and turned his back on her.
Annie flinched in surprise. Aggression from Chris was shocking. He was one of hers, one of her oldest and best allies. Now he was looking at her like he hated her guts. She went into the club, taking her bags and case – which was still intact – with her. She held her breath and looked around – but everything was OK. In fact, it all looked neater than neat in here. Chairs cleaned, carpets immaculate, bar lit up ready for trade. Not a soul about down here, though. No bar staff, no hostesses, no DJ warming up his decks, nothing.
Which was odd.
When she’d left the club, everything had been running like clockwork, getting ready for another busy evening. Now, the place looked dead. But she could hear noises coming from upstairs, angry voices, shouts, cries.
Annie went across the empty club space and turned left. A girl in tears hustled past her, shouting something over her shoulder. Annie left the case and bags at the bottom of the stairs and trudged on up, getting a bad feeling about this. When she got to the top she saw Ellie standing in the hallway, arms wrapped around herself, turning this way and that, her eyes frantic. They settled on Annie, and then Ellie let out an angry breath like a bull about to charge and vanished through the door to the right, the one that led into the kitchen.
Letting out a sigh, Annie followed, and it was then that she saw, and understood. All Ellie’s glassware, her precious crystals, were in bits on the floor. The dresser with all the crystals on it had been tipped over. The kitchen table was a pile of splinters, the chairs were matchwood. Food had been scooped out of the cupboards and now sauce and ketchup decorated the formerly pristine walls. Ellie, the neat freak, stood in the middle of it, tears pouring down her face.
‘Oh shit,’ said Annie, halting in the doorway.
‘Look at this! Just look. They done the office too – poor Miss Pargeter’s going spare in there. Her papers are all over the damned place. And the girls’ changing room, and some of the bedrooms . . . yours included. They tossed your stuff out the bleeding window, said if I let you stop here they’d come back and do it all over again, only worse.’
Annie gulped in a breath. ‘They? Ellie, who?’
Ellie shrugged. ‘I don’t know them. They had masks on.’
‘Didn’t Chris try to stop them?’ asked Annie.
Ellie turned to her in temper. ‘Don’t be fucking stupid! There were six of them, bloody great blokes in boiler suits with pick handles. He’d have only come off worst.’
‘This is because I’m here?’ said Annie numbly, staring around at the devastation that she had brought down on Ellie’s head.
‘Yeah,’ said Ellie tearfully, picking up a beautifully crafted glass swan with its wing missing. ‘I should never have let you stay. All this is my fault.’
‘I’ll go,’ said Annie.
Ellie turned brimming eyes on her. ‘Chris is hopping bloody mad at me over this.’ Ellie’s stare hardened. ‘Christ, it’s you, isn’t it – you attract trouble like flies on shit.’ Ellie gulped. ‘Where will you go?’
‘I don’t know. Over to Holland Park maybe. Or a hotel. Anything.’ And it’s best you don’t know where, with all this kicking off.
Ellie stared at her. ‘Whatever you’ve done, it must be something pretty bad.’
‘I haven’t done a thing.’
‘Maybe they shot Dolly because of you.’
‘What?’
‘Who knows?’
‘I’ll go,’ said Annie. Her brain was spinning. Then she had a thought. ‘Ellie, did you think any more about what I asked you? If there was anything you knew about Dolly’s family, or friends, or anything . . . ?’
Ellie rushed at her and for a moment Annie thought she was going to get a belt around the ear. But Ellie stopped inches away. Breathing hard, she stared into Annie’s eyes.
‘You come back here and all I get is trouble!’ she burst out. ‘Chris is mad at me, he thinks this is my fault because he said I wasn’t to let you stop here, but I insisted. I told him, whatever she’s done, she’s still my mate. And now look! It’s a fucking disaster!’
‘Ellie . . .’ It was a disaster. There was no arguing with that.
‘Fuck off out of it!’ shrieked Ellie. ‘Just. Fuck. Off. You hear me? Just go.’
Annie nodded. She went out of the wrecked kitchen and along the hall.
At the top of the stairs, Ellie called: ‘Wait!’
Annie stopped walking. Turned.
Ellie stood there in the hall, clutching her head as tears washed her mascara down her face. She blinked at Annie, and then she blurted out: ‘Doll’s family. They used to live Limehouse way, I remember she told me that once. Quite a way from Celia’s place. And they were Catholics. You know . . . you heard about her dad interfering with her?’
Annie nodded. She remembered – vividly – her Auntie Celia once telling her about that, and that Doll had suffered through a nasty backstreet abortion because of it.
‘Well,’ said Ellie, ‘there’s more. Back in the sixties at the knocking shop, I . . . I heard Dolly telling Celia that she wanted a hit on her dad.’
‘You what?’ Annie’s mouth dropped open.
‘It’s the truth. I heard her say it. Well, I overheard her.’
Annie remembered Ellie as she had been then, insecure, always skulking in hallways, listening at doors.
‘What else did you hear?’
‘That she wanted the Delaney family to see to it. You know what? Once I asked Doll why she didn’t go to church, to Mass, like Catholics always do. You know what she said?’
Annie shook her head.
‘She said it was because the church told lies. It said there was beauty in the world, and there wasn’t. I never forgot her saying that.’