The Villain’s Daughter (53 page)

Iris knew that what he actually meant was to
sleep with her
, to use and abuse her in the way that would hurt Terry most. Her stomach made a heaving motion.

‘You’re perverted,’ Guy said. ‘A fucking liar! It’s serious between me and Iris. I love her. I want to be with her. It’s got nothing to do with her being your daughter.’

‘Like hell it hasn’t,’ Terry said. ‘You don’t give a damn about her. You never did. All you ever wanted was to take her away from me.’

‘As if she was ever with you. You think she wants a man like you for her father? You disgust her. You make her sick.’

‘And how do you think you make her feel?’

‘Stop it!’ Iris snapped. She already knew that she’d been used and didn’t need it rubbing in. She looked at Guy. ‘You can stop pretending now. It’s over.’

‘You heard her,’ Terry said. ‘She doesn’t want to listen to your lies.’

‘Or yours,’ Iris said. She stared at Terry’s gaunt face, searching - as she had searched so many times before when she’d studied the photographs of Sean - for some signs of a family resemblance. But now, instead of wanting to find some features they might have in common, she wanted to find nothing. Terry’s eyes were dark, his lips much thinner than hers, his cheeks sunken. Her gaze slid quickly down over the rest of his body. Although he wasn’t as tall or broad as his two sons, he still gave the impression of a sinewy strength. As he lifted the cigarette to his mouth again, she noticed his misshapen knuckles, evidence no doubt of the amount of jaws he’d broken. ‘Guy’s not the only one who’s deceived me.’

‘That wasn’t my fault. Ask your mother. I
wanted
to see you. She was the one who wouldn’t allow it.’

‘He’s lying,’ Guy said. ‘He paid your mother to leave. He was desperate to keep his filthy little secret quiet. That’s all you ever were to him - something dirty to be swept under the carpet, to be hidden away. If he could have drowned you at birth, he would. Even after he got his own son killed, he couldn’t face up to what he’d done. He crawled back to Lizzie and got her to cover everything up. He made her lie to the cops about what really happened that night.’

It was at that moment, as she heard those dreadful words, that Iris realised just how bitter and twisted Guy Wilder really was. She’d heard a different story from her mother and it was a version, despite all the deceit that had gone before, that she was certain was true.

‘He’s the one who’s lying,’ Terry said. ‘It wasn’t like that.’ There was an almost desperate edge to his tone as if he was genuinely distraught at the thought of her believing Guy’s lies.

Iris nodded. She had no desire to take Terry’s side, to take anyone’s side, but she was determined to get to the truth. ‘I know.’

Guy looked at her. ‘So you’re going to trust him over me? You’re going to believe that vicious bastard?’

‘Dad? What’s going on?’

All three of them turned to see Terry’s two sons standing in the doorway. It was Chris who had spoken. Iris took a breath. So now everyone was here. It was like one of those scenes in an old-fashioned drama, an Agatha Christie perhaps, where everything finally came to a head.

‘Thanks for coming,’ she said.

‘What is this?’ Guy said. ‘What the hell are they doing here?’

Iris smiled at him. ‘I thought it might be nice for us all to get together.’

Guy’s face hardened. It suddenly became cold and calculating. ‘You’ve set me up, you bitch!’

Iris didn’t bother to reply. After what he’d done, she didn’t feel the need to justify herself.

Chris Street stared at her. ‘Are you the one who called me? You said it was about Liam.’

‘Yeah, meet your sister,’ Guy said. ‘If you want to know why Liam died, the answer’s standing right in front of you.’

‘They know that already,’ Iris said. ‘Why do you think they hired their thugs to follow me around?’

But Chris Street just looked confused. ‘What thugs? Sister? What the fuck are you talking about?’

‘The boys don’t know about Sean,’ Terry said to her softly. ‘Or about you. I haven’t had the chance to talk to them yet.’

‘Oh,’ Guy said, ‘that’s classic! He hasn’t even got the guts to tell his own kids about you.
That’s
how much he cares about his beloved daughter.’

‘They must know about him,’ Iris said. ‘Guy talked to them. I was threatened - at the flat, at Columbia Road market; they even had someone following me around. And
he
came here.’ Iris nodded towards Danny. ‘He came here and had a go at me.’

Terry, looking bemused, glared at his son. ‘Danny?’

Danny Street was shifting from one foot to another, gazing around the room. He had a shifty nervous look in his eyes and Iris recalled what Vita had told her. If it was true about what he’d been up to in the basement, then perhaps he was only concerned that
his
gruesome secret might be about to be revealed.

‘Danny?’ Terry said again.

Danny slowly focused his attention back on his father. ‘Shit, I don’t know what’s she’s going on about. She’s talkin’ crap. I don’t know nothin’ about any Sean geezer. Yeah, I came here, but it wasn’t to do with her. I was looking for that Toby Grand. The little ponce owes me money.’

Iris frowned, thinking back to that day. Was it possible that she’d made a mistake? He’d never actually mentioned Sean. Perhaps, already on edge, she’d jumped to an entirely wrong conclusion.

Terry took another deep drag on his cigarette. ‘It wasn’t my boys,’ he said. He turned his stony gaze on Guy. ‘There’s only one person who’d have wanted to scare you like that, someone who wanted you to rely on him, to
need
him.’

Iris shook her head as she followed Terry’s gaze. ‘No, tell me that it wasn’t you,’ she whispered. ‘Christ, it was, wasn’t it?’ She lifted her hands to momentarily cover her face. Suddenly it was all so utterly clear to her. ‘
You
hired those men to threaten me!
You
made me believe that my father was in Kellston, that he was in danger, that I needed you to help me find him.’

Guy gave a small dismissive shrug. ‘It was all so easy, babe. You were so fucking desperate to believe that he was back.’

‘You did what?’ Terry growled.

Iris heard the anger in his voice. It was an echo of her own personal rage and frustration and just for a second, for an unexpected second, she felt grateful that he was standing up for her. No sooner had the thought entered her head than she pushed it abruptly away. He might be her biological father, but she refused to feel any kind of connection to him.

‘You heard,’ Guy said.

Realising that one or the other might be about to turn this into a more physical argument, Iris quickly stepped between the two of them again. The settling of their differences could wait until she’d got the answers she needed. ‘But why? Why would you want to do that to me?’

‘It was nothing personal,’ Guy said. ‘I like you, I really do.’

‘It’s just that he hates me more,’ Terry said.

‘And Jenks,’ she murmured, still trying to come to terms with the depth of Guy’s betrayal. ‘What about him?’

Guy grinned. ‘Ah, the Weasel would do anything for money. All I had to do was slip him a few bob and get him to approach you in the pub.’

‘Like mother, like son,’ Terry spat out contemptuously. ‘I might have guessed.’

‘Yeah,’ Guy said, ‘the Weasel came to see my mother a few months back, told her that Terry here was paying him to sniff around some girl in Kellston. He didn’t know who she was of course, but my mother did. Iris O’Donnell, her husband’s bastard child.’ He grinned at Terry. ‘Is that why you killed her, because she wasn’t going to put up with it? Did she threaten to tell your precious boys the truth?’

‘She’s our sister?’ Chris Street suddenly said, as if the fact had only just sunk in. He looked Iris up and down as if she was something he’d scraped off the bottom of his shoe.

‘Half-sister,’ Iris corrected him. ‘And I’m as overjoyed about it as you are.’

‘It’s complicated,’ Terry said.

Guy sneered. ‘Oh, it’s not that complicated. Lizzie was drinking a lot, wasn’t she? That loose mouth of hers could have got you in all sorts of trouble. I mean, shit, she was even talking to me, telling me all about your sordid little affair. She was going to blow the lid on what really happened with Liam, wasn’t she?’

‘I didn’t kill her,’ Terry said.

‘No,’ Guy said. ‘You got someone else to do your dirty work for you. Not that I’m complaining - it’s nothing more than the whore deserved and it saved me the trouble of doing it myself.’

‘What’s he saying?’ Chris asked. ‘What does he mean about Liam?’

Guy’s grin grew even wider. ‘He knows who murdered your brother. He’s always known. And it wasn’t Davey bloody Tyler. No, he was just the poor sod who your daddy took his frustration out on because he couldn’t kill the real culprit.’

Terry threw his cigarette butt on to the carpet and ground it in with his heel. ‘He’s talking shite.’

‘No, he isn’t,’ Iris said, determined to have the whole truth revealed. She glanced over at Chris. ‘My father, the man I once
thought
was my father, was called Sean O’Donnell. He was a good man, a decent man, but he was destroyed when he found out Terry had been having a long-term affair with my mother, and that I was the product of that affair. Sean bought a gun - I don’t think he meant to use it, but that’s beside the point - and went with Tyler to your house. He only intended to rob it but . . .’

‘Is this true?’ Chris said, glaring at his father.

‘What?’ Danny said.

Terry ignored them both. As if his only desire was for Iris to hear his side of the story, he addressed himself purely to her. ‘Did Guy tell you about how I broke his arm? Poor little boy, seven years old. I bet he laid that on thick, didn’t he? Terry Street, the brutal kiddie-beater. What he probably forgot to mention was that I found him in the living room in the middle of the night with a can of petrol and a box of matches. If he had his way, we’d have all been ashes by the morning.’

Guy laughed. It was a nasty brutish sound that sent a chill though Iris. ‘You deserved to burn in hell, the whole bloody lot of you!’

‘Is it true?’ Chris said again, advancing on his father. ‘You let the bastard who murdered Liam get away with it?’

‘Of course he did,’ Guy said, trying to stir things up even more. ‘What kind of justice is that for your brother? Iris’s mother - she’s called Kathleen by the way - made him promise not to tell the law, or go after her husband. And you know what else? Even after everything that had happened, that pathetic excuse for a man still wanted to be with her. He thought more of his slut of a mistress than he did of Liam.’

Chris stared into his father’s face. Suddenly his hands whipped up from his sides and grabbed the lapels of his suit. His eyes flashed with rage. ‘All this time,’ he hissed, ‘and you never said a word.’

Terry took hold of his wrists. ‘For God’s sake, you don’t know the half of it.’

‘He was your fuckin’ son!’

Breaking free, Chris lashed out and caught him with two quick blows to the jaw. Terry staggered back against the cabinet. A tray containing cups and saucers clattered to the floor. Chris launched himself forward again, grabbed Terry and began to shake him. ‘What about Liam? What about Liam?’ Terry tried to fight him off and the two of them, caught in an unholy embrace, staggered around the room, crashing into furniture. A vase of flowers toppled over and smashed, spilling water and white chrysanthemums over the faded carpet.

Iris, unable to control the situation, stood well back. She could understand Chris’s rage: she might have felt the same way if it was her brother who’d been killed and her father who had chosen not to tell the truth about it. Danny was usually the first to resort to violence, but this time he’d been caught unawares. Perhaps he was too out of his head, or too busy worrying about his own secrets, to really comprehend what was going on.

Guy, enjoying the conflict he’d caused, laughed again. Perhaps it was that derisive laugh that reminded Danny Street of what he should be doing. Turning suddenly, he delivered a low ferocious blow to his stomach. Guy doubled over, the breath flying out of him, but as Danny went in to finish the job he recovered enough to grab hold of his legs. There was a brief ungainly struggle before the two of them thudded to the ground.

Within seconds the room had dissolved into chaos. Grunting, spitting, cursing, the four angry men screamed abuse at each other. Fists started to fly haphazardly. It was hard to know exactly who was fighting who. Somehow they had all got entangled in a vicious knot of rage and bitterness.

Iris withdrew to the safety of the corridor. She saw Gerald poke his head out of the door, and then rapidly retreat again. He’d be straight on the phone to the cops, but by the time they got here it would all be over. As she looked back into the room, Iris experienced one of those déjà vu sensations. There was something overly familiar about the scene. It was as if she’d come full circle from that first day, not so long ago, when Guy had come to view the body of his mother. As she witnessed the growing devastation, the smashed furniture, the crushed white petals of the flowers, she could see it all as a fitting metaphor for the wreckage of her own life.

Iris slowly shook her head. There was only one thing left to do. She went through to reception, picked up her coat and her bag, and without a backward glance walked away from it all.

It was a snowy Christmas Eve. As the plane rose up into the sky, Iris took a final look at the city of London. She didn’t know when, if ever, she’d see the place again, and couldn’t put a name to the emotion she was feeling as she gazed down on the myriad of lights beneath her. Exhilaration, relief, anxiety? She wasn’t even sure why she was doing this - except that doing something, going somewhere, was better than doing nothing. William’s offer had come out of the blue and she’d accepted it without a second thought.