‘Ex-wife,’ said Annie, her heart in her mouth. The atmosphere in the small, crowded lobby was thick with danger. She glanced at Alberto. He was dead calm. Then at Max. He seemed to be enjoying himself, the mad bastard.
‘… and Mr Barolli here, we’d like a word with Benny. Clear it all up.’
A tall man in his fifties with a shock of ginger-grey hair, bushy eyebrows and the brick-red face of the perpetual drinker had emerged from the main body of the club. He was flashily dressed in a double-breasted wide grey pinstripe and an expensive pair of light grey leather shoes that looked Italian. He stood and stared with arrogant assurance at the group.
‘All right. Frisk ’em – all three of ’em,’ said Benny O’Connor.
It was a very thorough frisking. Annie shut her mind to it as the hands travelled up and down her body. She kept her eyes to the front, not meeting Max or Alberto’s gaze. Alberto and Max were worked over too, more roughly. ‘They’re clean,’ one of the heavies told Benny.
‘Good,’ he said. ‘Follow me.’
Annie glanced over her shoulder as he led them through a door beside the cloakroom. Alberto’s men were standing in the lobby. Steve, Gary and Jackie were there too, watching. Benny O’Connor’s men were lounging against the cloakroom counter, but one peeled away from the bunch and followed them through the door beside the cloakroom. Annie caught Steve’s eye as she went through it. He winked. Then the door closed on them. They were inside a Delaney sanctum, and anything could happen.
The office consisted of a desk and several chairs at the far end of the cloakroom. The check-in girl, a sweet-faced middle-aged woman with dyed blonde hair showing black at the roots, was in there with them, hanging up coats, storing away tickets, sometimes glancing across.
‘Dora?’ said O’Connor.
Dora stopped what she was doing, looked at him.
‘Fuck off for a bit, yeah?’
Dora fucked off.
‘Now,’ said Benny, seating himself grandly behind the gargantuan desk in a big executive-style leather-backed chair. ‘What can I do for you people?’
Max turned, studied the muscle-head blocking the door. Then he returned his attention to Benny.
‘We’re looking for Redmond,’ he said.
‘Redmond?’ Benny’s eyes were cold but his lips were smiling. ‘As in Redmond Delaney? We ain’t seen that bastard in years. Last we heard, he was missing, presumed dead. Took off in a plane and it vanished over the Irish sea.’
‘Only, things have been happening,’ Max went on.
‘What sort of things?’
‘Things like people trying to snatch my daughter.’