by Anna Smith
‘I’ll be there. But you don’t need me there for that.’
‘Just get here. You want to see your son again, don’t you?’
‘Joe, stop that. Don’t speak like that. I’m on my way.’
He hung up, and immediately Sharon could hear Vinny’s voice in her ear.
‘Stay calm, Sharon.’
She put her car into gear and drove off.
‘How can I stay calm? That bastard’s got my son. I was afraid he would pull a stunt like this.’
‘Don’t worry. We’re on it.’
‘Get my son out of there before you do anything else.’ Her voice croaked. ‘I don’t care what happens to me. Just get my son out of there safely. Please. I’m driving there now.’
‘Stay calm. Don’t speak to me any more. We’re listening to everything you are doing, and we’re with you.’
She heard nothing else and could feel her head pounding and the blood pumping in her neck as she drove out of the car park and down to the main road towards the back road that would lead to Knuckles’ yard. She had been here so many times over the years for various reasons, mostly to check over the staff and security. She had never really gone into the shipments to check things physically, Knuckles had staff to do that, but she had always been impressed with the different ways the dealers and smugglers came up with to camouflage the cargo. Sometimes it was hidden in plastic or metal tubing, others inside the lining of mattresses, and the last time it was in containers of powdered baby milk.
She could see the cut-off on the road coming up and felt sweat sting under her arms. She’d escaped her own execution once, and got away from Frankie Martin. But now, she had nothing except the promise of the police. If they screwed up and got rumbled, she’d be the first to go. If that was to happen, she had no control over it now, but all she prayed for was that Tony didn’t witness her death. She felt cold clamminess in her hands on the steering wheel and gripped it as hard as she could, feeling herself start to panic. Calm down, she told herself. Breathe. You can do this. You have to.
Chapter Forty-Six
Knuckles Boyle went into the office at the back of the warehouse, where Tony was playing a game on his mobile.
‘You’re never off that bloody thing,’ Knuckles said. ‘Shouldn’t you be reading or studying or something?’
Tony looked at him, bemused, and he realised that the boy was probably surprised to hear him say that, because he’d never encouraged him to study or even taken an interest in his schoolwork. But something had changed in Knuckles over the last day, and despite his fury over Sharon’s humiliation of him as she’d robbed him over the years, something niggled in his gut now at what he was about to do. Christ almighty! He didn’t have time for a crisis of conscience, he’d told himself as he’d talked to his men, making sure the shipment was on its way without any problems. At the end of the day, Sharon had robbed him. She’d been plotting to get away from him for a while, judging by the amount of money she’d squirrelled away, so she was going anyway – whether he’d decided to bump her off a month ago or not. Today was the first time he’d actually questioned himself about that, and he’d come to the conclusion that he’d been right. She had to go because she knew too much. It would have been impossible to just pay her off and tell her to move out, because she was in a position to bring them all down. The problem is she still was. As long as she lived and breathed, she could ruin him and his organisation. So he told himself that whatever twinge he was having in his conscience now, it had to be shoved to the side. Business was business. She had to go. Nothing had changed. And maybe, realistically, he should look at getting out himself before it was too late. He had pots of money, even without the fortune Sharon had stolen, though he was still determined to get all of that back before he disposed of her. He looked at Tony, Sharon’s voice from their earlier conversation ringing in his ears. He didn’t want his son around to witness any of this.
‘Right, Tony,’ he said. ‘Get your coat. Jimbo will take you back to the house. No point in you hanging around here doing bugger all.’
Tony looked up at him.
‘Will Mum be there?’
Knuckles glanced at him, and then busied himself with his mobile.
‘Not at the moment. You know what she’s like. You just get back there, and Jimbo will order you a takeaway for your dinner. I’ll be home later.’
From the side of his eye, as he scrolled down his phone trying to look busy, Knuckles could see Tony giving him a long look that said he didn’t believe him, or that he wanted to know more. But there was no room for this shit.
‘Come on then, lad! Chop, chop!’
Tony stood up and took his jacket from behind the chair and put it on as he walked to the door. Knuckles went behind him and crossed the warehouse to speak to Jimbo quietly. Then he beckoned Tony over.
‘Off you go now. I’ll talk to you later.’
He watched as Tony looked a bit surly, then walked off behind Jimbo towards the car.
*
As Sharon drove up the deserted country road, she could see the long low sprawl of the warehouse in the distance. She hadn’t passed any cars on the road, and that freaked her out a bit. She’d been hoping to see some sign of undercover cops or anything that would give her the comfort of knowing they were close by. Her gaze travelled the breadth of the landscape, but she could see nothing. There was a derelict farmhouse and outhouses a couple of hundred yards away, so maybe they were in there. But it looked too far away to give her any faith that they could spring into action and help her once Knuckles decided what he would do. As she got closer to the gates she could see a couple of Knuckles’ thugs on patrol.
‘I’m only about fifty yards away from the entrance now. Can you hear me?’
She was relieved when Vinny’s voice came back.
‘Yeah. We hear you. And we’ve got your exact location. Don’t speak any more now.’
‘Okay.’
She didn’t want to say she was crapping herself because she couldn’t see any sign of them, as it was all a bit late for that. She took a sip from a bottle of water and drove towards the entrance. The boys recognised her and one of them spoke on a walkie-talkie, then he and his mate pulled open the big steel wire gates. As she drove through, she could see in her rear-view mirror that they didn’t close them again. The shipment must be coming at any minute. She drove up to the entrance and parked the car, and as she was switching off the ignition she spotted Knuckles coming out of the warehouse into the fading late-afternoon light. She saw him looking straight at her, his eyes dark and his forehead knitted in a frown. She took a breath, steadied herself and got out of the car. She glanced around, wondering if anyone was going to approach her and frisk her. She stood at the car, about thirty feet away from Knuckles, and said nothing. Then Jamie came out of the warehouse and looked at Knuckles, who nodded him to go towards her. This was it. If he found anything, there would be no discussion, no last-minute blaming of each other, no rows. She’d be shot dead on the spot. She braced herself. Jamie motioned her to raise her arms. She did. She could feel him frisk along her arms, then her waist, and then he caught her eye as he made her turn around and felt around her waistline and the top of her thighs back and front. He turned to Knuckles and shook his head. She let out a breath. Knuckles walked slowly towards her until he was standing a few feet away. As he walked, she could see the outline of his revolver shoved into the waist of his trousers.
‘So. You’re not a ghost then, Shaz?’ he snarled.
‘That’s no thanks to you,’ she snapped back, sticking out her chin, defiant. She knew Knuckles wouldn’t expect anything else.
He glared at her without speaking, then she saw him look her up and down.
‘You stole my fucking money.’
Sharon raised her eyebrows. ‘You tried to have me murdered by your thugs.’
He puffed. ‘You think that makes us even?’
Sharon looked at the ground, feeling the adrenalin pumping through
her body, trying her best to buy time, because this could blow up at any minute. She knew the short fuse Knuckles had if he was under threat.
‘You know something, Joe,’ she said, trying to sound calm and hurt at the same time, ‘we’ll never be even. No matter what. You tried to have me murdered. We have a son together. We had a life, a family. And you sent me out of our house that day to my death. We will never be even.’
Knuckles said nothing, but she could see the red rise in his neck.
‘You were nothing when I met you. I gave you a fucking life you’d never have had.’
‘Don’t give me that shit, Joe. I had your back every bloody day and night. I took our son to visit you in bloody jail when he was a little boy, and spent the rest of the week explaining to him that you were on a fucking business course and would be away for a while. I protected you. I hid your money, everything you did.’
For a long moment he stood there and said nothing.
‘Yeah, you hid my fucking money all right.’ He shook his head. ‘So cut all this crap and hand over all the information you took so I can get my money back. Every last fucking penny of it.’
‘Where’s Tony? I want to see him.’
‘I sent him home. He’s fine.’
‘I want to talk to him.’
‘No. You’ve already talked to him. The talking is over.’ He put his hand out. ‘Give me the USB drive with all the shit on it that I need. Hand it over.’
She stood looking straight at him but said nothing. Then they both heard the sound of the truck coming in towards the gate. He looked over her shoulder and she turned her head to see it.
‘My shipment.’
‘I know,’ she replied. ‘It was me who organised it. It was always me who organised it, went to Amsterdam, did all the work so you wouldn’t get your hands dirty.’
‘Shut it. Stay where you are. Don’t move.’
As the truck pulled up, Knuckles walked across to it and Sharon watched as the driver jumped down from the cabin and came to the back of the truck. He shook Knuckles’ hand, and two more men appeared from the warehouse and approached the truck. Sharon watched, wondering what was going to happen next. Was he going to unload the gear and then bump her off? Where were the bloody cops? She tried not to look away from the truck in case she aroused any suspicion. The driver talked away to Knuckles as he undid the bolts and locks and bashed a couple of levers so he could slide the locks down and release the doors. Sharon could see the doors begin to open. Then, as the other two men from the warehouse dragged the doors fully open, they stepped back coughing. She took a couple of steps towards where everyone was standing, then she saw Knuckles in front of the wide open doors, his face drained of colour.
‘Fucking hell!’ she heard him shout. ‘Fucking hell!’
He covered his nose with his hands. And as the foul, sickly stench came towards her, she put her hand to her face as she took a step closer. She was only a few feet away now, and in the darkness of the truck she could see it was full of various boxes and furniture. But as she strained her eyes, she gasped when she saw the body of a pale little boy lying still on the floor in the arms of a young woman. Beside him lay a little girl held by a young man, all of their faces white with the pallor of death.
‘For fuck’s sake!’ Knuckles screamed. ‘How the fuck did they get in there! Jesus fucking wept! Fucking refugees! Get them out of here!’
His words were barely out when suddenly a battery of lights blazed and sirens blared as cars and vans sped up towards them through the gates and screeched to a halt. Knuckles and his cohorts had no chance to see what was happening; they stood, dazed and confused, looking from the corpses in the truck to the armed police now piling out of their vehicles and racing towards them pointing their rifles. Sharon looked on, shocked, rooted to the spot as she saw the cops roughly take the men and make them kneel on the ground. Then Knuckles turned around and looked straight at her, his eyes full of menace and rage. She stared him down, defiant. And just as she did, he staggered back as a bullet hit him square in his head and he crumpled to the ground. All the officers dropped to the ground, screaming, ‘Get down, get down!’ their weapons raised. Sharon dropped to the ground. This wasn’t mean to happen. Or if it was, nobody told her. She could hear an officer radioing for an ambulance, as she saw Knuckles lying on his back, blood seeping out of his head and running down his face, his eyes wide open in shock. Somewhere inside her, she wanted to go over and kneel beside him, to speak to him one last time. But she couldn’t. He was gone.
Chapter Forty-Seven
Kerry watched as the car that had picked up Sharon from the warehouse came speeding towards her. At that moment, her mobile rang, and she saw Danny’s name.
‘Danny. How did it go?’
‘It’s done. Jake dropped him. I let him do it. He wanted it as much as any of us. Single bullet in the head. Perfect.’
For a second, Kerry didn’t answer. Her first instinct was happiness; Knuckles Boyle, the bastard who had her brother executed, who sent gunmen to his funeral where her mother died in a hail of bullets, was dead. She hadn’t fired the gun, but she felt as though she had. She hadn’t told Vinny it would happen, and she hadn’t told Sharon. She hadn’t issued the order to kill, but she knew that unless she’d told Danny not to, then it would go ahead. And now, she saw the pale, shocked face of Sharon as she got out of her car. Kerry had stood by and allowed the father of her child to be gunned down. She braced herself.
‘Good job, Danny. I have to go. I’ll see you later. Tell Jake well done.’
She put the phone on the dashboard as Sharon came around the front and threw herself into the passenger seat.
‘Jesus Christ, Kerry!’ Her voice quivered. ‘You could have told me.’
Kerry’s face was impassive, her voice controlled.
‘No I couldn’t, Sharon. That’s not how it works.’
‘But we’re supposed to be partners.’
Kerry was silent for a moment, then she looked at Sharon and could see her face was about to crumple.
‘We’re partners now, Sharon. But what happened to Knuckles was personal. I couldn’t let that go. My mother died in my arms because of him. He was never going anywhere but straight to hell. And if the cops hadn’t weighed in when they did, you’d probably be dead by now. You must know that yourself.’
Sharon said nothing, sniffed and wiped the tears from her cheeks. She nodded.
‘I know. It was . . . It was just something about him today. He was still the same angry, vicious bastard with that look in his eyes, but it was as if he had softened when he talked about Tony. Maybe I was just imagining it, but part of me – and I hate myself for this – part of me wanted him to say he was sorry for trying to get me murdered and ask me to go back to him, to be a family again. Somehow I thought maybe he was ready to change.’ She shook her head. ‘I know he wasn’t. But I . . . I just feel awful.’
Kerry squeezed her arm.
‘You’ll be fine. Come on. Let’s take you to your son.’ She tapped the driver on the shoulder. ‘Give Eddie directions from here. It’s over now, Sharon. This is a new beginning.’
They drove out of the car park and onto the main road in silence, then Sharon spoke.
‘There were dead people in the back of the truck when it arrived. Christ! It was awful. The smell. Two little kids . . .’
‘What? What you talking about?’ Kerry said, bewildered. ‘Dead people?’
‘Yes. Refugees, they must have been.’
‘Christ almighty! How did that happen?’
‘It happens, I suppose. You see it on the news. They must have stowed away when the driver wasn’t looking. But they must have suffocated. Jesus! There was a wee boy in a woman’s arms, and a little girl held by her father, probably. All of them dead. And the stench of death . . . Jesus!’
‘What did the cops say?’
‘I don’t know. It all happened so quickly. The doors were pulled open and I saw the shock on Knuckles’ a
nd the guys’ faces. Then suddenly the cop cars come racing up with guns pointing, and then, before anyone knew what was happening, Knuckles got hit. Then the car came for me.’
‘Did you see Vinny?’
‘I don’t know. They all had ski masks on. Like a SWAT team or something.’
Kerry nodded slowly and looked out of the window at the landscape as they headed along the motorway.
*
Cal and Tahir waited with Jack in the hall of the Casey house. He had gone to Jack after the news emerged on TV about the dead refugees in the back of a truck from Europe believed to be carrying a shipment of smuggled cocaine. He’d been with Tahir when the news had come on, and although they didn’t see pictures of the perished family, Tahir had become hysterical. It took Cal all the strength he could muster to control him and stop him from going to the barber shop to kill the Turk. Cal had pleaded with him to wait until he spoke to big Jack, that he would know what to do next. And anyway, they had to wait to have the names of the refugees or anything that would identify them. He was heartbroken as he watched Tahir go to pieces. Now they sat outside after talking to Jack who had promised them a meeting with Kerry Casey. Cal wasn’t sure what she would say, but if she fobbed them off then he would take things into his own hands.
Tahir and Cal sat in the study and looked up as Kerry came in. She nodded to Cal, and glanced at Tahir, giving him a sympathetic look. She went around the table and put her hand on his shoulder. Then she stretched her hand out and he stood up.
‘Tahir. I’m Kerry Casey. I’m so sorry for your loss.’
Tahir’s eyes filled with tears and he wiped them with his sleeve as she motioned him to sit down. She sat opposite him and Cal, then glanced from one to the other.
‘Jack has told me everything you told him, so we are trying to run down who exactly is behind the smuggling and how this happened. We’ll find out.’
‘I want to kill the Turk,’ Tahir said, sniffing. ‘He is like a murderer. He took my money and told me he would bring my family safely – a safe passage, he said. And now this. I will never see them again. I tried phoning the Turk but he won’t take my calls. Bastard.’
