Stay Dead - [23]

Somehow she got herself up on to the edge of the bed and hauled herself to her feet. It was then that she felt wetness and saw her nightie was soaked with blood. Another hot bolting spasm of agony shot through her and as she tried to stand up she felt something warm drop down between her legs.

Gasping, crying, she got the pot out from under the bed and crouched over it, and then it happened: the baby came away and fell straight into the pot with a sticky, stomach-churning slurp. Staring at it, Dolly nearly screamed but she didn’t, she couldn’t rouse the rest of the household, what would they think?

She’d been quite far along. In her innocence, she hadn’t known what the fuck was happening, but she could see it was a girl, fully formed and hanging by the cord, still joined to her. Horror gripped her then. It was a girl, a real child, and they’d sluiced it out of her like it was nothing.

‘Oh Jesus, oh angels,’ said Dolly, crying, desperate. She looked at the poor little kid’s face and nearly fell to the floor in shock. She’d committed a mortal sin, this was a human being and she’d killed it.

Another cramp sent the afterbirth sploshing down on to the floor. Dolly let out a scream then, she couldn’t stop herself.

Presently, as she stood there staring down at the abomination in the pot, there was a tap at the door. She cringed with panic. ‘Who is it?’ she shouted.

‘It’s me, it’s Sar. You all right, Doll?’ came her sister’s voice.

Christ, she couldn’t let poor little Sarah see this!

‘Fetch Dad will you, Sar?’ she called, and stepped away from the pot, wetness trailing down her legs and making her shiver with revulsion. She toed the pot under the bed and got back between the sheets, feeling blood sticking to her, messing up the bed. It was a horrible thing she’d done and she was shivering now, bleeding, feeling sick at what had just happened.

Dad was up within a couple of minutes, and came in the room, closing the door behind him. He stood there, and said: ‘Has it come away then, Doll?’

Dolly couldn’t bear to look at him. She nodded, swiped at her tears.

‘Under the bed,’ she said, and Dad moved forward, delicately stepping around the afterbirth, and pulled out the pot. Dolly heard him draw in a sharp breath.

‘Doll?’ he said.

Dolly turned her head and stared at her father. His grizzled face looked sweat-sheened and white; he looked like he was about to puke his guts up and Dolly knew why: he’d seen what she had seen – that the tiny dead girl had his face – the same chin, the same nose, everything.

‘You all right then, girl?’ he asked, and his voice shook.

Something hardened in Dolly then. She stopped crying, and nodded. ‘I’m fine,’ she said. ‘But the sheets are dirty and so’s my nightie, I’ll need clean.’

He was nodding too. With a shudder his eyes went back to the tiny dead thing in the pot. ‘I’ll see you all right,’ he said.

Before he’d taken her to that ugly cow in Aldgate, Dolly would have believed that.

Now, she didn’t.

23

London, June 1994

‘Fuck, it’s you,’ said the man.

Annie turned. It was the day after she’d got to Ellie’s. She’d overslept so she had a quick bath, dressed, skipped breakfast, said hello to Chris, Ellie’s husband, who was sitting at the kitchen table and who grunted a reply. She braced herself and took a cab over to the Palermo Lounge to see what was happening there.

Answer? Not much. The big double red doors were closed, the neon sign was switched off, there were police tapes strung up and a beat copper was standing there, staring impassively into the middle distance. And now this other man had arrived, one she recognized. He was about six-three, with straight dark hair and dark hard eyes that endlessly scanned everything around him. He was formally dressed in a black suit, white shirt and tie. His downturned solemn trap of a mouth didn’t lift in a smile.

‘Oh! DCI Hunter,’ she said vaguely, and went back to staring at the front of the building.

He stood there with her, silent for a moment. Then he said: ‘I thought you might show up. A bit of a shock, yes? You knew her well.’

‘I’ve known her for years,’ said Annie, and she had, since way back in Limehouse when Auntie Celia had held sway over the best whorehouse in the district and Dolly had been the brassiest of the brasses who worked there. Dolly had come a long, long way since then. They all had. And to see it end like this was damned near unbearable.

‘And how is Mr Carter?’ asked DCI Hunter.

Annie’s face was set as she turned her head and started at him. Years, the Bill had been trying to pin stuff on Max. But he was always too sharp for them. Too sharp for her, too. She wondered what he was up to right now, and again her mind filled with images of tangled limbs, hot and heavy sex, some anonymous younger woman greedily, eagerly, taking her place. Quickly, she dragged her mind away from that. There was nothing she could do about it.

There’s nothing you can do about this, either, said a voice in her head.

But she couldn’t, wouldn’t ever, believe that. She’d come back to find out what had happened here. And she meant to do that.