Lawless - [2]

Tito gave the nod at around twelve-fifteen, and one of his boys hurried off to fetch his coat. He made his way outside into the damp night air with his three minders moving ahead of him. It had been a good night, he thought with satisfaction, puffing on a freshly lit Cohiba. And there would be more to come. He was a millionaire now, a situation that could be improved upon still further. Tito had big plans.

Sorry, Michael, you didn’t live to see this, our night of triumph, he thought.

A shame, really, but they’d never got on. Tito’s friendship with the Conservative peer Cornelius Bray – and other things – had grated on Michael Ward, who was firmly in businesswoman Ruby Darke’s corner. And Ruby and Cornelius… well, there was bad blood there. Lots of it.

Suddenly there was someone standing right in front of Tito, between the boys and himself. He couldn’t see a face, not even in the sickly sodium glare of the street lights. The face was covered. Tito’s eyes widened in shock and his mouth opened to say, What the fuck…?

But there was no time for that. A piercing, awful pain in his chest whipped the breath out of him, crushed any facility for speech.

Stabbed I’ve been stabbed what are they doing why are they such fucking fools…

He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t shout to his minders for help. His mouth drooped open further, the cigar falling to the ground in a small shower of sparks. Tito felt blackness descend like a thick curtain as his legs started to buckle beneath him.

‘Not smiling now, are you, Tito?’ the figure whispered, and then there was more pain, unbelievable pain, as something was yanked from his chest.

It was Miller’s voice! It was him, that cunt Kit Miller!

Knife…

He clawed at Kit, but he was already gone, running off into the deeper shadows. Tito folded almost gracefully to the ground. He barely had time to hear the shouts as his boys realized what had happened, then he closed his eyes and died.

2

One of Tito’s less experienced boys, one of the three who’d been with him at the Docklands launch, was sent to the favourite family-owned nightclub – which Tito had grandiosely named Tito’s in his own honour – to find Vittore, Tito’s brother, while the other two, each of them trembling with shock, said they would call on Tito’s mother Bella, break the bad news. They’d had to leave the scene when the ambulance and the police came. What the fuck – it was too late to do anything for Tito, anyway.

It was gone one in the morning, and downstairs Tito’s was quiet, a man tinkling away a bluesy few notes on a piano, the lighting low and drifts of cigarette smoke creating a drowsy miasma around the couples talking softly at the tables as the hostesses slowly circled them. Donato went through the main body of the club and straight upstairs. One of the boys was on the door there, and he took one look at pudgy Donato’s face and let him through without a word.

Inside the flat it was less tasteful nightclub, more Roman orgy. There were chandeliers and Aubusson carpets, deep sofas and a roaring fire. Five men, all big faces from around Little Italy, were being fawned over by a mob of girls – all of them beautiful, all scarcely wearing a thing.

Everyone was laughing, drinks were being filled and refilled. A fat swarthy-skinned man with his trousers pushed down was in a corner with a blonde woman between his legs, her mouth full of cock. Another man had a girl on his lap, squeezing a handful of naked tit. And another – ah, Jesus, there was Fabio! – he was lounging there with one of the women, a luscious nude brunette, nibbling at her neck, whispering in her ear.

Donato went straight over to him.

‘Fabio!’ said Donato. He was a cruel-eyed youngster, short, stocky, always up for a fight. Now, he looked like a kid who’d had his favourite toy snatched away. He looked like he was about to cry.

Fabio glanced up, still smiling, a curl of smoke coming from the cigarette held loosely in his hand. The voluptuous naked girl with him stared up at Tito’s boy with dead-eyed disinterest. With Fabio distracted, she raised her glass and took a long drink of champagne.

‘Donato?’ asked Fabio, half-smiling, thinking that he’d fuck the girl very shortly. She’d be only too happy to open her legs for powerful Tito’s handsome baby brother; they always were. Across the room was a large gilded mirror, and Fabio could see himself reflected in there: he’d been admiring himself all evening, his glossy black hair, his perfect nose, his olive skin. He was a very good-looking young man, and he loved mirrors.

‘Is Vittore here?’ asked Donato.

As if Fabio hadn’t been hearing that all his life! Is Tito here? Is Vittore here? Always looking over Fabio’s shoulder as they said it, searching for the older brothers, the ones that could be relied upon for good sense – never for Fabio, the youngest. It hurt him, every single time. Like it had hurt him when his mother and father took in his little sister, Bianca, a white-blonde miniature usurper, just three years old, who had instantly become the centre of his parents’ universe. He’d been seven when that happened, and for him it had been a disaster. At least, before