Revenge (44 page)

Chapter One Hundred
and Thirty-Eight

Timothy Branch arrived at the hospital, aware that he would be expected to smooth everything over for Michael Flynn, and to make sure that Michael could get on with the business at hand with the minimum of fuss.

When he saw young Jessie Flynn he was, for the first time in his life, speechless. The girl was lying on a bed in intensive care, and Michael Flynn was standing beside her bed, holding her hand.
He
looked seriously ill too – his face was devoid of colour, even his lips were white.

But Jessie, young Jessie, was a terrifying sight.

‘Fucking hell, Michael, I’m so sorry. I’m so very sorry.’

And he meant it. Michael could hear it in the man’s voice.

‘He fucking planned this, Timothy. He shackled her to a bed, and he left her there to rot. Her heart gave out. The infection in her blood weakened it. Twenty-two years old and she had a massive fucking coronary. I got there too late. I was too late to help her.’

Michael started to cry again.

Timothy Branch automatically put his arm around the man’s shoulders; he couldn’t even imagine the pain that he must be feeling. To lose a child was hard enough for anyone, but to know she had been murdered – had died a slow and painful death – had to be unendurable.

‘Listen, Michael, I will sort this, don’t worry. I swear to you.’

Michael nodded. He appreciated the man’s promise – for the first time he actually felt that the man was trustworthy. But it was the way Jessie had died. Even a fucking no-mark like Branch couldn’t help but be affected. Just looking at her broken body was hard enough.

‘That bastard soaked her with cold water, he starved her, he fucking held her there with home-made manacles. You should see her poor legs. The fetters were so fucking tight they rubbed away every piece of her skin – they even scraped against her bones. She must have been in absolute agony, Timothy. My baby lived her last few weeks on this earth in excruciating pain, waiting for me to find her, to help her. But I was too late.’

Detective Inspector Timothy Branch would never have believed that he would feel any kind of pity for Michael Flynn, but he did. He felt the man’s pain as if it was his own. No one should ever have to see a child like this. It was outrageous – it took a certain kind of hate to be capable of harming another person so wickedly. Child murderers, rapists, were capable of such viciousness, of such cowardice, because
they
were cowards. They bullied the weakest people in society, little children and anyone who was smaller or weaker than them. Now Jessie Flynn, whose father was the hardest man in Europe, let alone London or the UK, who was responsible for every earn available, was dead. Murdered.

If this could happen to Michael Flynn’s child, what chance did anyone else have? This just proved that no one was immune to hatred. As a police officer, Timothy had always known that – he had seen so much mindless violence, so many pointless murders. But when something like this happened to a man like Michael Flynn, a man who was by all accounts at the pinnacle of his power, it was food for thought. Here he was, crushed and weeping as he looked at his daughter’s bruised and broken body. It was an eye-opening situation.

Michael Flynn looked at Timothy Branch, and he smiled eerily. ‘I’ve got him though, Timothy, I’ve got the fucker, and I will make him pay. Don’t you worry about that.’

Timothy Branch didn’t answer him. He just stood there, silently thanking the Good Lord that it wasn’t
his
child lying there dead.

Chapter One Hundred
and Thirty-Nine

As Josephine heard her husband running up the stairs, she checked her make-up in her dressing table mirror, pleased to see that she looked perfect.

She sat up straighter in her chair, and turned off her DVD player. She knew that Michael hated her films, especially that she watched the same ones over and over again.

As he came into her bedroom, she was ready for him, she had a half smile on her face, and she looked towards him quizzically. It was a look she had practised and perfected over the years. There was no way she would lower herself to ask him why he had not bothered to get in touch with her. She still had her pride.

He stood before her, like an avenging angel, and she could see that he wasn’t his usual self. In fact, he looked terrible. His clothes were crumpled as if he had slept in them, and he was badly in need of a shave. She looked him up and down, very slowly, taking in his dishevelled appearance, and letting him know she had noticed it.

‘I thought I heard you, Michael, but it’s been a while so I wasn’t holding out too much hope of seeing you.’

He didn’t say anything to her, and she looked at him straight in the eyes.

‘Is that all you’ve got to say to me, Josephine? My mother is dead. I assumed that even
you
might have worried about how I was coping with that! She was murdered, remember?’

Josephine could hear the antagonism in his voice, the sarcasm that was dripping from every word he spoke. She wasn’t going to say anything that would give him reason to attack her again, as he had the last time she had seen him. She had not been willing to accept his conduct then, and she wasn’t prepared to accept it now. Even if he did have a right to call her out about her behaviour, that didn’t mean that he should do it. They were married and, no matter what had happened to them in the past, they had always loved each other.

‘I’m sorry about your mum, Michael. Of course I am. How can you even say something like that to me?’

She sounded so offended, so insulted by him. It was crystal clear to him now just how devious she actually was – had always been. He gave a low, mocking laugh. He was seeing her with fresh eyes. She looked wonderful – why wouldn’t she? Her whole life was taken up with her appearance, with repairing her make-up, making sure her eyebrows were plucked and shaped, that her lipstick was faultless. Her hair looked salon-perfect twenty-four/seven, and her nails were coloured, shaped and buffed with a diligence that had to be seen to be believed.

‘You’re a piece of work, Josephine, do you know that? In case you were wondering, your only daughter’s dead. Jessie had a massive heart attack today. Twenty-two years old, and her heart gave out. The man who had taken her, who had contacted
you
, if you remember, that man who you ignored, basically
tortured
our Jessie to death. She died in fucking agony waiting for someone to find her. Now she is gone from us, Josephine, like my old mum.’

Josephine knew that Michael was telling her the truth, but it was hard to take it all in.

‘I am waiting for some kind of reaction from you, Josephine. I just told you that your only child is dead, and nothing. Not a fucking word.’

He stood there, looming over her, and waited for her to say something – anything – to acknowledge her only child’s demise. But she didn’t say a word.

‘Do you know what, Josephine? Patrick Costello said something to me many years ago, and I never understood the real meaning of it until recently. You were just at your hoarding stage, and I was really worried about you, about your mental health. He knew that, and we were out one night, and he said to me, “Always remember this, Michael – people only do to you what you let them.” I didn’t understand what he meant until recently. He was a wise fucking man in some ways – mad as a fucking Russian road map – but he had you sussed out right, lady.’

Josephine could not believe that her Jessie was dead. It wasn’t something she had ever contemplated, but now a part of her was relieved. It meant that Jake would now be wholly hers – hers and Michael’s. He was the son they had never had.

‘I can’t believe what you’re telling me, Michael. My baby girl, my Jessie is dead. Poor Jake. He’s an orphan. We are all he’s got left.’

Michael shook his head angrily. ‘Oh, save it for someone who cares! Jake will survive, I will see to that. But I’m warning you now, Josephine, you are going to the nut farm, and this time I’m not going to stop it. If you don’t go, then I will turn my back on you completely. Do you hear me? I’m deadly serious this time. I will
never
forgive you, Josephine, for what happened to our Jessie – for not even
trying
to let me know immediately when you heard from that cunt who was holding her hostage. You put yourself first as always, and I know now that you always will. You’re going to end up a lonely old woman because I’m finished with you. Any love I had for you – and I loved you with all my heart – has died. It’s gone.’

Josephine jumped from her chair, and she tried to grab her husband’s hands. She couldn’t live without him, without her Michael. He was the only thing that she really cared about.

But he pushed her away from him, unwilling to even touch her. ‘I’m arranging with your shrink that if you don’t go into hospital voluntarily in the next five days, I will have you sectioned. I can do that, Josephine, and I fucking will if I have to. Don’t bank on your latest shrink to get you out of it. I pay him, and he will do whatever I ask him to.’

She sat back in her chair, panic overwhelming her. He meant every word he was saying, and she didn’t know how she could stop him. He turned away from her in disgust.

At the door, he turned back to look at her, and said sadly, ‘Jessie is dead, and you don’t even seem able to fucking take that onboard. She died a death I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy and you’ve not even asked me anything about her at all. I know that you won’t even bother to go to your daughter’s fucking funeral, but you
will
go to the nut house this time, Josephine.’

She looked at her husband, her handsome husband, who had always stood by her no matter what, and suddenly she felt so very lonely and frightened. She had pushed him away for years. She had known that he would never have done the dirty on her – he was too decent, too nice a person. She had relied on that, she had relied on his love for her.

He was still standing there, in the doorway, watching her intently. ‘By the way, I’m burying Jessie with my mum. They were close and I want them to be together. I can’t stand the thought of our Jessie down there in the ground all alone.’ He swallowed back the tears once more. ‘There was a lot of my mum in Jessie. I realise that now.’

He walked out of the room, and she heard him walking away from her, his tread heavy as he went down the stairs. She could hear Jake’s shrieks of excitement as he was picked up and thrown in the air by his granddad. But it meant nothing to her – all she cared about was that her husband was going to walk away from her. She was finally without his protection, and it terrified her. Every time one of her doctors had recommended that she needed serious treatment, needed to be hospitalised, she had made sure that Michael replaced them. He had always tried to do whatever she wanted him to do. He had always done everything in his power to make her happy.

She put her head in her hands. She had never felt such a feeling of despair before in her whole entire life. She wouldn’t cry, though, even though she wanted to. She
couldn’t
, she could
not
let
anything
interfere with her make-up. She stood up quickly and, pulling out the small padded stool from underneath the dressing table, she sank down on to it. She stared at her face for long moments in the mirror, automatically checking her make-up, and she sighed with relief as she saw that it was all still in place. It was her mask. It was the façade that she showed to the world. But, deep down inside, she knew that she had not faced the real world for years. She registered suddenly that her daughter was really gone. That her Jessie would never again ring her, or come to visit her son. Her Jessie, her baby girl, was dead.

She closed her eyes in distress. Michael was right. She honestly didn’t care enough about anyone; all she was really bothered about was Michael’s threat of putting her into a mental institution. She wasn’t a fucking fool. If she went into one, she knew that it would be a long time before she would ever get out again.

Chapter One Hundred
and Forty

Michael drove through the gates of the scrapyard slowly. The old boy who worked the night shift was a stickler for fucking social etiquette. Michael waved at him in a suitably friendly fashion, and he saw his gratified smile. He sighed in annoyance. He was a nice old geezer, a Face in his younger days, but that didn’t warrant all this fucking babysitting and smiles every time he drove into the yard. Declan had always said, it takes two minutes of your life to recognise a good worker, and that recognition would guarantee their loyalty for twenty years. He was absolutely right, of course. But tonight Michael wasn’t in the mood.

He parked his Range Rover next to his Mercedes and, as he got out and stood on the tarmac stretching, he was gratified to hear that whoever was in the boot of his Merc was making one hell of a racket.

Declan came out of the Portakabin doorway. He looked huge against the lights. Declan had gradually got bigger and bigger over the years, and it was only now that Michael was really noticing that.

‘Drink first?’ Declan was miming drinking a cup of tea with his little finger raised up like an old biddy.

Michael laughed despite himself. You couldn’t not like Declan Costello – the man was a genuine diamond. Even at a time like this he could bring a smile to Michael’s face.

‘Pour me a large brandy, but first up, open this fucking boot.’

Declan took the Mercedes keys from his trouser pocket, and opened the boot quickly.

Steven Golding was lying there, and he blinked as his eyes adjusted to the sudden light. He trained his gaze on Michael warily.

Michael looked around him. He was aware that there was no way this man could escape from the scrapyard’s premises. There was a very high brick wall surrounding the place for a start, and the barbed wire that had been placed on the top of it years before had always been a very good deterrent. The gates were electric, and they too were very high. The nightwatchman had a large German Shepherd who wasn’t that enamoured of new people. There were also three other large dogs – two Dobermans and a Rottweiler bitch, which roamed the grounds during the daytime. The people who owned them worked there. It suited everyone to let the animals run free. There were people who came in ostensibly to look for a specific part for a specific car, who were quite capable of going on the rob. The hounds made sure they didn’t feel the urge to come back later, when it was dark.

He looked once more at Steven Golding; it was patently obvious that the man wasn’t going to climb out of the boot by himself. Michael laughed again, this was a fucking joke.

‘Do you know something, Steven? I never knew there was anyone in your house that night. I really believed it was empty. I wasn’t happy about burning people’s possessions, you know? But it was for Patrick Costello, and I wanted to prove myself to him. I wanted to make something of myself. I wanted to be able to give my mum a few quid, make her life that bit easier. She had brought me up all on her own since I was a baby. I never would have dreamt of harming anyone. It was Patrick Costello who wanted that. He could be a very petty man, a very vicious man.’

Steven Golding was still lying in the boot of Michael’s Mercedes. It was a fucking big boot, and Steven Golding was more than comfortable it seemed.

‘If you had just come to me, if you had fucking had the sense to call me out, confront me, I would have done anything to make amends – I swear that to you. I’ve never really got over it. Even now I still wake up sweating. But I did learn how to put it aside. If I hadn’t managed to do that, I would have ended up as big a fucking headcase as you are.’

Steven Golding looked feral. The man had no saving graces at all, from his rotten teeth to his pock-marked and scarred skin. He was obviously a loner. Michael knew that the man was mentally ill, and that he had been in and out of different institutions for the best part of his life. That was sad. But Michael couldn’t change anything that had happened, even if he had wanted to. Steven Golding looked exactly what he was – a broken-down, disillusioned fantasist, who had been deprived of his whole family as a teenage boy. He was quite obviously madder than a fucking bull with a red-hot poker up its arse, and had managed to infiltrate every aspect of Michael’s life, eventually destroying not just his only daughter but his mother as well.

‘Do you know what, Steven? Stay where you are.’

Michael shut the boot noisily. Then he walked leisurely to one of the outbuildings. It was a shed that had been constructed over twenty years before from a job-lot of corrugated iron, and it was where they kept most of the flammable liquids.

Michael went inside and he felt around for one of the petrol cans that he knew would be there. He felt the weight of it in his hand, and then he shook it gently, relishing the noise of the liquid as it moved around.

He walked back to his Mercedes, calling out to Declan, who he knew had been watching everything from the Portakabin window. When Declan appeared, he gestured to him to open the boot once more. Declan Costello, as always, was more than happy to oblige.

Steven Golding was still curled up. As Michael opened the petrol can and started to pour it all over him, Golding attempted to get up and tried to get out of the boot. Michael Flynn punched him back down. The stench of petrol fumes was heavy in the air.

Steven Golding was terrified, and Michael could see that. His eyes were bulging out of his head with the fear of being burned alive.

‘Answer me one last thing – would you have harmed my grandson?’

Steven Golding shook his head. ‘Of course not. I would have left him alone.’

Michael snorted with derision. ‘Why didn’t you just come after me?
I
was the culprit, for fuck’s sake!’

Golding looked him in the eye as he said, ‘Too easy. I know you will suffer much more over your Jessie and your mum’s death. Guilt is a very destructive force.’

Michael didn’t answer him. After all, who could argue with the truth? He took a book of matches out of his pocket and, smiling slightly, he said steadily, ‘The truth is, Steven, I’m actually going to enjoy this.’

Steven Golding tried to get out of the boot, and Michael Flynn hammered him over and over again until the man couldn’t move. Michael felt the man’s face collapse beneath his fists and he still didn’t stop battering him. He carried on hitting the man until he was completely spent.

He picked the book of matches up from the ground and tore off a match. Lighting it, he used it to ignite the whole pack, which he threw casually on to the man’s chest.

As the whole car went up in flames, Declan shouted, ‘What the fuck are you doing, Michael? Your car! What about your fucking car?’

Michael Flynn stood watching the man responsible for the vicious murders of his mother and daughter squirming and screaming in pain without blinking. Then he looked at Declan Costello and, laughing loudly, he said, ‘Relax, Declan, for Christ’s sake! I reported this car stolen hours ago.’

Declan went back into the Portakabin and came back with two large drinks. He handed one to Michael, and he stood beside him as Steven Golding was burned beyond recognition.

When the car finally blew they were both sitting side by side on the steps of the offices.

‘It’s over, Michael.’

Michael sipped his brandy, savouring the taste. ‘Do you know the worst of it for me now, Declan? I wish that cunt had been in the house that night. I wish I had burned him to death with his sisters and his mum and dad. So what does that make me?’

Declan put his arm around his friend’s shoulders and, sighing heavily, he said, ‘
Human
, Michael. Unfortunately, that’s what it makes you –
human
.’