Lawless - страница 2

Earlier in 1975

The late Michael Ward and Tito Danieri had been business partners, barely tolerating each other but rubbing along well enough as they poured their own money and a big government grant into the refurbishment of a group of derelict cotton warehouses in the Albert Docks. Now it was the evening of the launch, and all the VIPs were assembled there, cooing over an elaborate model of the projected finished article.

There would soon be designer shops, restaurants, a docklands railway – everything that was needed for smart young execs to live the ‘café society’. Everyone was impressed. There were drinks, nibbles and hostesses shimmying around among the excited crowds, handing out smiles and nourishment.

It was a fun night, and Tito pressed a lot of flesh and charmed a lot of women with his bulky prosperous silverback looks, ice-blue eyes and dashing grey beard. Michael Ward – his business partner – of course, wasn’t there, because Michael Ward was dead.

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.

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.