The Annie Carter Series Books 1–4. Jessie Keane

Max Carter’s sister-in-law.’

      Annie snorted. ‘Kieron, you fool, I’ve told you the story. I’ve no influence with the Carters.’

      ‘They could have burned your aunt’s place to the ground after that business with their brother,’ he pointed out.

      ‘But they didn’t.’ Although it had crossed her mind. It had obviously crossed Celia’s, too. Celia had been so panicked by it all that she had fled.

      ‘Ah, but they could have. You and your gang of workers could have been dust and ashes.’

      ‘Shut up, Kieron.’ Annie was uncomfortable with this line of conversation. She didn’t like being on some invisible line between the two gangs, but somehow this was where she had ended up. It was an unnerving place to be. All she could do was keep her head down, do her job, and hope for the best.

      ‘And I wonder why they didn’t,’ considered Kieron, busy with the charcoal. ‘Not because you were there, I suppose?’

      ‘Kieron, you’re dreaming,’ sighed Annie.

      ‘Am I though?’ Kieron grinned. ‘You see, what I’m thinking is that you will plead for me.’

       ‘What?’

      ‘If I ever get into trouble, if on one dark moonlit night I get grabbed and people want to do unpleasant things to my poor sweet innocent young body, you’ll be there putting in the glad word with your brother-in-law – won’t you, Annie Bailey? You’ll come to my rescue.’

      ‘What, and stick my own stupid head above the parapet to be shot at?’ She had to smile back. What a nutcase he was.

      Kieron looked at her. ‘Word is that Max Carter might be persuaded by you.’

      ‘By me?’ Annie turned her head away from his gaze. ‘Forget it, Kieron,’ she said glumly. ‘Max isn’t interested in me.’

      But that look, she thought.

      Something electric, something almost visceral in its power, had passed between Max Carter and her on the day of Eddie’s funeral. Something she couldn’t bear to think about.

       22

      Max got the shock of his life when Ruthie said she wanted to go back to her mother’s. He was so used to her being apathetic and accepting, but this was the worm turning in a big way, and it startled him.

      ‘What the fuck for?’ he asked.

      He sat on one of the big couches in the drawing room at his Surrey place. She sat on the other one, her legs pulled up beneath her. They were miles apart, in every way. She’d got thinner still. And she’d done something to her hair, it was no longer mouse but almost blonde. He didn’t like it. Only brunettes had ever done anything in the bedroom department for him. Not that there was a fucking thing happening in their bedroom anyway, he thought bitterly.

      ‘She’s not very well,’ said Ruthie with a shrug, her eyes not meeting his. She took a sip of her brandy.

      ‘She’s pissed as a fart most of the time, if that’s what you mean,’ said Max.

      God, he despised drunks. He watched Ruth drinking the brandy, relishing it almost like a lover’s kiss, and wondered if she was going the same way. He’d done a few discreet checks around the place when it seemed the drinks cabinet was emptying too fast. He’d looked at the empties, sounded out the housekeeper and got Ruthie’s minder to mark a few bottles.

      If Ruthie was a drunk, she was a smart one. He knew she’d spotted the marks and kept the bottles topped up with water so that her real consumption was masked. But he smelt it on her breath sometimes, when he got close enough, which was bloody rare. Sometimes she concealed the alcohol tang with mints. She wasn’t a fool. But she couldn’t hide her bleary eyes or the way she staggered sometimes when she stood up. He looked at her, his wife, his Ruthie, and felt more miserable than he’d ever felt before.

      ‘I just think I should spend some time with her, that’s all,’ said Ruthie mulishly. ‘She isn’t coping very well on her own. Of course, if she could come and stay here with me, I wouldn’t have to go, would I?’

      ‘She isn’t moving into the annexe,’ said Max.

      ‘But Max …’

      Christ, not this again! Ruthie was always banging on and on about the same old thing. Max stood up. He was bored to the fucking back teeth. You could only say sorry so often before you started to feel that sorry ought to be accepted. He had apologized for what had happened with Annie, over and over again. But Ruthie was unforgiving. She used his guilt over the incident to beat him with whenever they argued. And they always argued. Fuck her, he thought. He’d had enough.

      ‘Look, do whatever you want,’ he said, ‘but leave that fucking annexe alone, you got that?’

      Not waiting for her to reply – he didn’t need any more bloody earache – he left the room.

      He tore across the hallway, grabbed his coat, then shot out the front door and into the car.

      Even if his wife was in the process of leaving him, even if Eddie was dead, life had to go on. Max knew it. He was too tough to just give up and lie down. But he had too much other shit going on right now to go ahead with the job he’d been planning.

      That was why he called the boys together that night in the office of the Blue Parrot and told them that the heist was definitely put back for next year. They didn’t like it, but fuck them, they’d do as they were told. He gave them their orders and told them to bugger off. Jonjo didn’t attend, he was out somewhere with another blonde. Max knew he’d have to weather that particular storm later on, Jonjo was keen to get the job done and he was going to be upset at the delay. But fuck him, too. Max sat alone late into the night in the office above the club, listening to Johnnie Ray seeping up through the floorboards.

      The Prince of Wails, they called him. Johnnie went all through his repertoire and ended with ‘Cry’. You had to hand it to the man, he could sell a tune. Better than these new boys, The Beatles or Billy J. Kramer and the Dakotas or Freddy and his Dreamers. Max preferred the songs from his twenties, the good balladeers like Sinatra, like Ray and Darin, those you simply could not beat.

      The music was so emotive. When he listened to Johnnie Ray pouring his heart out in song he thought of Annie Bailey standing in the graveyard when they’d planted poor little Eddie.

      She’d looked more beautiful than ever. Polished, somehow. Grown up. No longer the dolly bird, but a woman in a chic suit, her dark hair neatly groomed. She’d looked almost odd among the rough crowds. She’d shone out like a beacon. Their eyes had met. There had been a spark of the old magic there. In the depths of tragedy, he’d felt a treacherous sexual arousal. Useless. His wife’s sister.

      What a fucking disaster his life was turning out to be.

       23

      The phone was ringing as Annie shot past it on the stairs. Chris, sitting like a well-fed Buddha just inside the door reading the Daily Sketch, reached out but she shook her head and snatched it up. It was Friday. Party day. She had decided that her parties would be held at lunchtimes, when all the other women in the road would be busy in their kitchens – too busy to take an interest in what was going on here. She was wound up fit to burst.

      ‘Good morning, Miss Bailey,’ said Redmond Delaney.

      ‘Ah, Mr Delaney,’ said Annie, hopping from one foot to the other in her impatience to get on. ‘Good morning.’

      ‘I hope you are well?’

      ‘Very