Scarlet Women. Jessie Keane
when you put it like that…’
‘There’s no other way to put it, Doll.’ Annie screwed up the note and lobbed it angrily into the sink. She took a calming breath and nodded to Dolly’s notebooks. ‘Right, Doll, let’s get back to business.’ She stood up. ‘I’m going to phone Jerry, get him down the station to speak to Chris.’
Jerry Peters was Annie’s brief from way back: a tall, overweight man with a shock of fluffy ginger hair, a florid complexion and a brilliance in legal matters that belied his shambolic looks. ‘While I do that, dig out Aunt Louella’s address. And—yeah—everything you’ve got about Aretha’s last client, and where she met him.’
‘Ah,’ said Dolly awkwardly.
‘What do you mean, “ah”?’
‘Fact is,’ said Dolly, her eyes downcast, ‘I don’t actually know who her last client was. A woman phoned in the booking, said room two-oh-six at the Vista in Park Lane and the time, asked for Aretha, and the client paid Aretha, so…’ Her voice tailed off.
‘You didn’t know this woman? You didn’t even take a name?’
Dolly looked up, her expression unhappy. ‘Sorry,’ she said, ‘no.’
‘Shit,’ said Annie.
Mira Cooper would forever remember the first time she set eyes on Redmond Delaney. She’d been sitting in the luxuriously ornate dining room at Cliveden with Sir William Farquharson, married ex-member of the House, when they’d shown Redmond and his party to a nearby table.
He was just the most exquisite man she’d ever seen: tall and lithe, with red hair, lime-green eyes, smooth skin and an air of command about him. He was with a group of five others, and a darkhaired stunner was paying him a lot of attention. Redmond’s attention, much to the brunette’s visible annoyance, was fixed upon Mira, whose beautiful blonde looks had always been her fortune.
Chatting to William as they ate, her eyes were constantly drawn back to Redmond—and she couldn’t help but compare the two. William was short, pot-bellied, balding and plain. Redmond Delaney, however, was a god.
Oh yes, she remembered it all: being in the pool the following afternoon, wearing her best silver bikini, hoping he’d be there. And he was. Sir William was lounging on one of the chairs at the side of the pool, talking to another old man and smoking a Havana cigar. Mira’s heart almost stopped when Redmond appeared at the edge of the pool. He slipped off his robe and dived in, swimming a couple of powerful laps until he ended up leaning against the side of the pool, right beside her.
‘Nice day,’ he said.
She flicked a flirtatious glance at him. She knew how to use her looks to good effect. He saw her stunning blue eyes widen slightly, saw her pupils dilate, and that was good. She liked the look of him and she was determined to let him know it. He was a handsome man, a striking man. He wasn’t old or pot bellied—and he had to be rich to stay here; she knew that.
‘Lovely,’ she said, and smiled.
‘Staying long?’ he asked, glancing over at Sir William, who was deep into his conversation, noticing nothing, certainly not the way her eyes were playing with the younger man’s, certainly not the way her nubile body was half turning towards this new kid on the block.
‘Until the weekend,’ she said, smiling.
He smiled back at her. ‘Good. I hope we’ll meet up again.’
‘We might,’ she said playfully.
‘I think we should.’
‘That’s very forward of you.’ Her eyes were dancing; she was enjoying this.
‘I am forward,’ he said, ‘in most things. My name’s Redmond, by the way.’
‘Are you a businessman?’ she asked him, entranced by his soft southern Irish accent.
‘Yes.’ It was true, more or less. He owned the streets of Battersea and a little pocket of Limehouse. He did business. Not legitimate business, but it was business anyway.
‘I’m here with—’
‘Sir William. I know.’
Mira was silent for a moment, but her eyes spoke volumes. ‘Billy has a sleep after dinner,’ she said at last.
‘Does he?’
‘For an hour.’
‘You know what? A person could do a lot. In an hour.’
‘Yes. That’s true.’
‘What’s your name?’
‘Mira,’ she said. ‘Mira Cooper.’
She flicked her leonine blonde mane and was off, streaking across the pool, her blood fizzing with excitement. Oh yes, she remembered everything. The good bits…and the bad.
She’d told him all about herself, something she had never done before, not with any man. That she had once worked in a high-class brothel run by her friend Annie Carter—who’d been Annie Bailey then—in the West End of London. She told Redmond that, while they lay naked together in his sumptuous Cliveden suite.
‘I don’t want you seeing Billy again,’ he said as they lay back against the pillows, him lazily playing with her splendid breasts, her lightly caressing his flat, well-toned stomach. ‘Not after this week.’
She turned her head, looked at his face. ‘He’ll be upset,’ she said.
‘Fuck him,’ he said.
She grinned at that. Knelt up on the bed and straddled him.
‘I’d rather fuck you,’ she said, and bit his nipple quite hard.
‘Okay,’ he said, smiling up at her. ‘Do it.’
Annie was in church. She never went to church except for the usual stuff—funerals, christenings and weddings. Apart from those, she normally wouldn’t have been seen dead in such a place. She hadn’t been raised that way.
Her mum, Connie Bailey, had never even sent her or her sister Ruthie to Sunday school. Other kids had attended, collected those neat little stamps with pictures of Jesus to stick in books and get a gold star, got those little raffia crosses from the vicar on Palm Sunday. Annie and Ruthie had spent Sundays wondering whether this was going to be the day when their mother finally up and died on them. Choked on vomit, drank herself into oblivion, take your pick. Their mother had been a drunk, and Dad was nothing but a faint memory.
So, no church. No giving thanks to the Lord, because excuse me but what had there ever been to give thanks for, really? Annie and Max had been married in a no-fuss, no-frills ceremony in Majorca, and Layla had been christened there too. The Church of England, into which Annie had been born, was foreign to her.
But now here she was.
In church.
And a choir