Lawless - [9]

Ten… Why had he asked her to wake him at ten? He couldn’t even remember doing that, and he knew that was bad. This whole drinking thing was bad.

The alarm was still blaring away. He reached out, thumped the switch to off. Silence fell, except for the steady background hum of traffic out on the main road. And then it came back to him, all of it. Today was the day of the funeral. Today was the day that Tito Danieri got planted.

‘Coffee,’ she said, and slapped a mug down beside the alarm clock.

Kit pulled himself into a sitting position, rubbed his hands over his face. He looked at them, briefly. Both his palms bore pale ugly scars, but they were as much a part of him now as his teeth or his hair. He was used to them. Then he looked around the bedroom. It was flooded with light, fabulous and airy just like every other room in his house, which was a tall and fiendishly expensive Georgian place a stone’s throw from Belgravia. No more poky bedsits for him: he’d made it. Or rather, Michael had made it, and then had made him. Once he would have been so thrilled with all this. His own house, after growing up in rat-hole council orphanages and then making his own way out on the streets. Now, he barely even cared.

He reached for the coffee.

‘So what are your plans for today?’ asked the girl, sitting there naked on the edge of the bed. She was pretty, blonde, but he still couldn’t remember who the hell she was.

I have to stop this, he told himself. The drinking. The women. Maybe after today, I’ll be able to. Who knows?

‘Going out,’ he said, wincing as scalding-hot and sour-tasting instant coffee scorched his lips. He put the mug down. Looked at her.

‘Only I thought maybe we could spend some time together? I’m not on till eight.’ Her tone was hopeful.

One of the dancers? Oh yeah. And her name is… Susie.

‘Sorry, Susie,’ he said. ‘Busy.’

The girl’s cheeks coloured. ‘I’m not Susie,’ she spat. ‘My name’s Alison.’

‘Sure.’

‘I just thought… after last night…’ she said, her voice trailing off. She was wounded by his indifference. She looked at the man in the bed, so handsome, so well-muscled; he was like a hard-looking version of that famous actor, Omar Sharif. His skin was the colour of warm caramel, his face very still in repose, as noble and serene as an emperor’s – but his eyes, unlike Omar’s, were that fabulous, unexpected bright cornflower blue. She was already halfway in love with him, and he didn’t even know her name… and now, looking at him, she didn’t think he remembered that they had made love last night either. And maybe they hadn’t. For sure, she had been making love: but now she could see, with painful clarity, that for Kit it had been anonymous, mindless sex.

Alison got off the bed. ‘You know what? You’re a bastard.’

‘I’m sorry…’

‘Yeah! Tell it to the fucking marines,’ she said, and hurried off into the bathroom.

Kit sat there in the bed, alone, and thought of the day ahead.

The day of Tito’s funeral.

Something to look forward to, after all.

8

‘Well, Astorre, how are we going to get through this?’ Bella Danieri asked the framed black-and-white photo of her late husband on the mantelpiece. No answer came. Of course it didn’t. Astorre had been gone for ten years now, he didn’t have to go through the excruciating pain of burying their eldest child, his favourite son, Tito. She was thankful for that.

Bella picked up the photograph and kissed the still, silent face. He’d been no looker, her Astorre. Bulging-eyed and over-excitable, Astorre had been a bruiser of a man, bludgeoning his way through life. He was camorristi, one of the much-feared Camorra, a powerful Naples urban underworld organization. And he’d been doing well in the city of his birth until the feud with Corvetto forced the Danieris out of the district of Villaricca.

Astorre had dragged himself and his Italian émigré family from those dangerous Naples gutters to the even meaner streets of London, pushing aside all those who would attempt to hold him back from enjoying his due: a comfortable life of crime.

He had achieved his goals too; he’d mixed with the best of the best. The resettled Danieris had dined with MPs, celebrities and minor aristocracy. Their eldest son Tito had taken over the reins after Astorre’s passing, extending their criminal empire still further. Tito had proved himself a skilled puppet-master, building on Astorre’s talent for business, blackmail and subtle mayhem, ensuring that the family would always be safe. Too many people in high places stood to lose their easy life of privilege should the authorities ever bring trouble to the Danieri family door.

Bella stood and looked around at this room, stuffed full of the possessions accumulated over a lifetime. The Danieri family had thrived in exile. At first, of course, life had been a struggle, but now they owned this big town-house with its many rooms, placed squarely and elegantly here in Little Italy, in the heart of Clerkenwell. They were safe, secure, among their own kind, and reasonably content with that.

Bella preferred to keep her family close, under her control. She didn’t like Bianca being away so much, down on the south coast, but she kept her adopted daughter’s room just as she left it, so that it was always ready for her return.