Читать книгу The Annie Carter Series Books 1–4 - Jessie Keane - Страница 63

It was April and Annie was trying to put her cares behind her by throwing a special party. Her birthday fell on a Friday that she had scheduled for one of her regular parties, so she decided that she would make it extra-special for all the gents in attendance. There would be six additional girls, friends of Jen and Mira, to entertain the revellers. There would be birthday cake and champagne, and a reduction on the door. Fifty pounds would get you in for an afternoon of bliss.

She was going for a pink theme. She had pinned up pink balloons and streamers, there were pink tablecloths on the bar section and on the buffet. The cake itself was a masterly confection of pinks and white. There were pink flowers in profusion. Even the bloody champagne was pink. Perhaps she had overdone it?

‘No, it looks gorgeous,’ Mira assured her when they were ready for the off. ‘And so do you. Happy birthday, Annie darling.’

Mira air-kissed either side of Annie’s immaculately made-up face and slipped a small carefully wrapped package into her hand. Annie looked at it in surprise.

‘From Jen and Thelma and me,’ said Mira. ‘We hope you like it.’

‘Oh – well, that’s so nice of you,’ said Annie, touched.

She still couldn’t get used to receiving gifts. Max had been lavish with them, and the Limehouse tarts had surprised her once or twice with very small presents, but she was so used to getting the shitty end of the stick when she was growing up that she wondered if she would ever be blasé about such things. As a child, Annie got the knocks – Ruthie got the presents. Funny how she still half-expected it to be that way.

She unwrapped the long slender package and found a ladies’ gold Rolex watch inside. She looked up at Mira.

‘That’s bloody lovely,’ she said. ‘Thanks, Mira.’ She looked over at Jen and Thelma, seated on the Chesterfield, watching with beaming smiles. ‘Thanks, Jen, Thelma. It’s gorgeous.’

‘It’s engraved,’ said Mira. ‘Have a look.’

Annie took out the beautiful thing and turned over the dial.

From the girls to Annie with love.

‘Some of the old boys call you the Mayfair Madam,’ said Jen. ‘We thought about having that put on it, but “Annie” seemed better.’

‘Help me put it on,’ said Annie, delighted, and Mira did so.

‘Okay girls – let’s get ready now,’ said Annie, moving over to the door where Joshua was ready with pink champagne for the drinkers or pink grapefruit juice for the teetotallers.

The bell rang.

The party was on.

‘Any movement?’ asked the sergeant as he joined his young constable outside in the rainy street. Talk about April showers. What a fucking job! He envied the toffs inside having a bloody good time. A fucking sight better than standing out here with the rain dripping off your arse.

‘Fifteen gents gone in there so far,’ said the constable. ‘Look, there goes another one. Looks busier than normal.’

For weeks they had been keeping Annie’s apartment block under surveillance – ever since that weird bloke had come into the station and told them about what was really going on in there. Sergeant McKellan and his three constables had taken it in shifts to watch and record every arrival and departure. They’d noted what time the mail was delivered, when the rubbish was emptied and when the milkman came. They’d noted – with some surprise – that there were people going into the block who seemed of good standing in the community.

As the weeks went past, a pattern had emerged. There was a major shindig once a month, and individual visits during weekdays. Over seven weeks, he and his men had clocked over a hundred men and a regular selection of between three and ten high-class trollops coming and going.

They’d checked the rubbish over and found an awful lot of empty bottles. Malt whisky, champagne, fine wines, exquisite brandies, had all been consumed on the premises. Annie Bailey was running a well-stocked bar up there.

Selling liquor without a licence, thought Sergeant McKellan, shivering in the chilly downpour. Bloody good liquor too. These people were supposing to be setting a good example, not having a fucking good time at a high-class knocking shop.

Jesus, they’d even seen a Cabinet Minister going in there, but they’d have to keep quiet about that. The sergeant curled his lip in disgust. These people were supposed to be his betters. And they behaved like this.

Monitoring the rubbish had turned up a surprising quantity of used condoms and tissues, too. Sergeant McKellan thought that there was no limit to the depravity of the upper classes. He felt badly let down by them.

As the wet, dismal weeks went by, his grievance against the toffs became more intense. He already had a warrant to search the premises because of the illegal liquor sales, but he wanted more than that. He wanted to stop this operation in its tracks, and that meant waiting and watching out in the cold and the wet. They’d gone inside once or twice and questioned Annie Bailey’s neighbours. There had been music and voices, that was all they’d say. Nothing to complain about, really, although one regal old Dame in the apartment underneath Annie Bailey’s select knocking shop had clutched her Pekinese dog to her scrawny chest and said in plummy tones that she suspected something was ‘going on’ up there. Something nasty.

‘There goes another one,’ said the constable as a distinguished silver-haired gentleman entered the block.

A taxi swerved into the kerb and decanted a blonde woman, a big black woman, a small dark-haired woman, and an obvious queer.

‘Fuck, this is turning into a bloody orgy,’ said Sergeant McKellan.

‘Yeah,’ said the constable wistfully.

The constable sneezed and fished out his handkerchief. Loitering around this corner, they were constantly frozen to the marrow. His trousers were wet six inches up the leg. He felt he’d never again get warm. Inside, there would be drinks, food, lovely women … heaven on fucking earth, he thought. He fumbled out his Vicks inhaler and took a snort up each sore, red nostril. His sergeant watched him.

‘You want to put some Vaseline on that nose, Constable,’ he said.

‘Yes Sarge,’ said the constable gloomily. He nodded across the road. ‘Look. Two more.’

Sure enough, two more gents entered. Looked decent types, too. One was swaggering along, his expression arrogant, looked like a barrister. The other one …

‘Fucking hell,’ said Sergeant McKellan. ‘That bugger’s wearing a dog collar. He’s a man of the sodding cloth!’

What was the world coming to? A regular orgy of depravity, thought Sergeant McKellan with pious disgust. He’d soon sort out this little lot. Oh yes. A Black Maria pulled into the kerb beside them and three more officers piled out from the back of it. Time to get on with it, he thought with relish.

‘Come on, lads,’ he said, and led the way across the road.

Annie opened the door with a smile on her face and found Sergeant McKellan standing there. Her smile dropped. She slammed the door shut.

A heavy hand thumped upon it.

‘Open up! Police!’

Fucking hell, thought Annie.

Behind her, there was a scene of pandemonium as lords and tarts scattered in all directions. Dolly, to her credit, stepped up and said: ‘What the fuck’s going on?’

Annie had gone pale. Joshua dropped his tray of glasses and pink champagne spread in a sticky ooze over the costly Aubusson rug. He legged it over to his bar and started cramming bottles into boxes.

Dolly went to the door. ‘What do you want?’ she shouted.

‘I am an officer of the law,’ said Sergeant McKellan. ‘I have a warrant to enter these premises.’

‘We’re going to have to let them in,’ said Dolly to a stricken Annie, ‘or they’re going to break the bloody door down.’

Annie straightened herself up and nodded. The game was up. She put her bag aside – crammed full of notes from all the punters – and opened the door.

‘Thank you, miss,’ said the sergeant, and showed her the warrant. ‘Are you Miss Annie Bailey?’

Annie nodded. She felt pole-axed with the shock of it.

‘Miss Bailey, we have reason to believe that you are selling liquor without a licence on private premises, and that you are running a disorderly house here too.’

‘This is a private party,’ said Dolly in Annie’s defence. ‘It’s Miss Bailey’s birthday.’

‘We’ll see,’ said the sergeant, and the constables elbowed past the two women to get a better look at what was going on.

‘Who are you, sir?’ one asked an elderly gentleman sitting quietly in a club chair talking to Ellie.

‘Mickey Mouse,’ said the old gent staunchly.

The constable got out his notebook and licked his pencil with a sigh. Rain was dripping off the poor soul. Annie almost felt inclined to offer the lad a drink.

‘Mickey Mouse is it, sir?’ the constable looked pained. ‘And your address, sir?’

‘Disneyland, Constable,’ said the old gent. ‘Where else?’

Another of the constables went off into one of the bedrooms and came back out with screams ringing in his ears. He looked shaken.

‘Think you ought to see this, Sarge,’ he said.

Leaving a constable guarding the main door into the apartment, in case anyone thought they might make good their escape that way, Sergeant McKellan went into one of the bedrooms and found on the bed, a middle-aged, naked man, all hairy legs and huge belly, hastily covering up his private parts. A glamorous blonde was zipping herself back into her dress. On the bedside table Sergeant McKellan found packets of the new contraceptive pills, boxes of tissues, bottles of baby oil and tins of Crowe’s Cremine.

‘What’s this?’ he asked, picking up a tin and sniffing it, suspecting illegal substances.

Mira tossed her blonde hair back out of her eyes. ‘It’s make-up remover,’ she said.

Annie stood shattered in the doorway but she gave Mira an approving glance. They all knew that the cream was the best sexual lubricant going.

The police proceeded to the next bedroom and found Jen in her red, cutaway undies, scrabbling off a bed where a man, naked except for his socks, reclined. He had an erection you could have balanced a plate on. It wilted when its owner saw the police looming in the doorway.

‘What the fuck’s the meaning of this?’ he said with all the authority of old money.

‘May I ask you, sir, to stop whatever it is you are doing and get dressed,’ said Sergeant McKellan formally.

‘This is a bloody poor show,’ huffed the man, but he got off the bed and started to dress.

The sergeant had seen enough. He went back into the drawing room and confronted Annie.

‘May I ask if I might see your handbag, miss?’ he asked, indicating the Hermès bag that Annie had dropped on to one of the club chairs.

Annie numbly picked up the bag and handed it to him. She knew she was in deep shit now, and there was nothing to do but go along with it. Sergeant McKellan opened it and found it bulging with money.

He refastened the clasp and said, ‘Annie Bailey, I am arresting you for running a disorderly house and for selling liquor without a licence …’

And that was it. I’m sunk, thought Annie through a fog of terrified gloom. Sunk without a fucking trace. Who the hell did this? Who would hate me enough to do it to me, on my bloody birthday too?

Billy stood in the rain and watched as they started to empty Annie’s party guests out of her flat and into the Black Maria. Lots of them. Then the girls. And finally, Annie herself. Looking beautiful, as always. His lovely Annie. Oh, how he adored her. He was sad he’d had to do this, but she had to learn. It was for her own good. He turned away, feeling sad but justified in his actions. She would be better for it, he thought. In time.