Traitor in the House

by Caz Finlay

  ‘No problem,’ he replied. ‘Always happy to help.’

  ‘That’s not what you said last night,’ she said with a laugh.

  ‘Well, I was just about to eat my tea, Boss. But it was fine.’

  ‘I would have asked someone else, but I needed someone I could trust.’

  ‘I know that,’ he replied sincerely.

  ‘So, did you find out anything worthwhile?’ Grace asked. She would speak to Leigh later but she wanted John’s take on events first.

  ‘We didn’t find out much about Sol Shepherd, or that woman who was murdered. But I got chatting to the barmaid and I did find out something interesting about a mutual acquaintance of ours.’

  ‘Oh? Who?’

  ‘Joey Parnell.’

  Grace sat forward in her seat. ‘The guy who’s been causing problems for Cartel Securities?’

  John nodded. ‘Apparently, he was a regular of Jezebel’s a few years back. None of the girls could stand him. He was a bit too rough, if you know what I mean? Usually the bouncers wouldn’t have that sort of thing, but Parnell seemed to be untouchable and he got away with whatever he liked. He even split one of the girls’ lips open one night but he was allowed to walk out without a scratch. The bouncers would just ignore him, as though they were under orders to leave him alone.’

  ‘How did his name come up?’

  ‘When I was asking about Sol and about Melanie. The girls assumed Parnell was a buddy of Sol’s because of the special treatment he got. And then when I asked if anyone stuck out as having a thing for Melanie, apparently the few times she was there at Jezebel’s, Joey acted like he already knew her. He stopped going to the place after Melanie left though.’

  ‘That all sounds a bit dodgy,’ Grace said.

  ‘It could be,’ John replied with a shrug. ‘But everything about Joey Parnell, Sol Shepherd and Jezebel’s is dodgy. From what me and Leigh were told, Melanie had her fair share of enemies. She had a raging crack habit and was barely able to perform on the nights she worked. Maybe it was just a dissatisfied punter? Or her pimp had enough of her?’

  ‘Does Leigh know about Joey Parnell?’ Grace asked.

  ‘No. I got that from the barmaid. I thought I’d tell you and then if you decide to tell the plod, that’s your call, Boss.’

  ‘Thank you, John,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry if I put you in a difficult position last night.’

  ‘You didn’t,’ he said and then he coughed. Grace could have sworn she saw him blush slightly.

  ‘Anything else I need to know about last night?’ she asked.

  ‘No, Boss,’ he said. ‘That’s all I found out.’

  Grace studied his face. She knew John well, and she knew he was hiding something from her.

  Grace was at home with Michael and their youngest children when Leigh phoned to ask if she could drop by. Michael had glared at her when she’d asked him if he objected but he’d reluctantly agreed. Grace reminded him that Leigh was in their debt and they’d had police visiting their house before. It was no different with Leigh. It would look much worse for her if word ever got out that she was visiting them at home.

  ‘I hope she’s not planning on staying long, Grace,’ he said as the doorbell rang.

  Grace walked past him towards the door. ‘You’re really sexy when you’re angry, you know?’

  He grinned at her. ‘Just make it quick. You promised the kids we’d build a den,’ he said as he picked Oscar up and hoisted him over his shoulder.

  ‘Den, Mummy!’ Oscar squealed.

  ‘Soon, baby,’ she said as she kissed the top of his head. ‘Mummy just needs to do a little work first.’

  ‘Oh Muuum!’ Belle whined from behind her. ‘You were supposed to be on my team.’

  ‘And I will be, angel. I’ll be really quick. Promise.’

  ‘Come on, monsters,’ Michael said as he shepherded their five-year-old daughter down the hallway. ‘Let’s go and find our den-building gear, eh? Mummy will join us soon.’

  Grace walked to the door as her family disappeared out of sight.

  ‘So, do you think Parnell has anything to do with all of this?’ Grace asked after she had told Leigh what John had discovered.

  Leigh stared at her for a few moments, as though digesting the information. ‘Why didn’t he tell me last night?’ she asked. ‘John? Why didn’t he tell me about Parnell?’

  ‘Well, to be fair, he works for me, not you. He was just doing his job.’

  Leigh nodded absent-mindedly. ‘I suppose.’

  ‘So, Parnell?’ Grace asked again.

  ‘Well, it looks like he was definitely connected to something to do with Sol and Melanie, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Seems so. So what happens now then?’

  ‘I’ll look into Parnell. See if he has any history of similar offending. Where is the link to Sunnymeade though?’ Leigh shook her head. ‘We’re still missing something.’

  ‘Did you look into Nerys’s friend, Stuart? Or Steven?’

  ‘Yes. I went through the interviews and one of my detectives interviewed a Stuart Halligan a few days after our second victim was found dead. He was at Sunnymeade at the same time as our victims and he did know them but he claimed he was never friends with them. Nothing else of note though and he had a cast-iron alibi. But given this recent information, I wouldn’t mind speaking to him myself too.’

  Grace wondered if police officers often felt constrained by process and procedure. Every single thing they did had to be done by the book or a conviction could be jeopardised, especially if the perpetrator had a good lawyer. Grace thought how infuriating it must be when they knew who the perpetrator was but couldn’t prove it. She wasn’t used to having to operate within such parameters herself.

  ‘I hope you didn’t mind too much when I asked John to go with you last night?’ Grace said. ‘But something came up.’

  ‘Not at all,’ Leigh said. ‘He came in very handy actually. I can see why you like having him around.’

  Grace watched as Leigh Moss sipped her tea. Slowly all of the pieces of the puzzle were starting to fall into place.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Grace sat down beside Michael on the sofa and he handed her a glass of Barolo.

  ‘Tell me about Joey Parnell,’ she said to him as she took a sip of her wine.

  Michael frowned. ‘He’s a prick.’

  ‘Well, I gathered that, but I was hoping for a little more,’ she said with a smile.

  ‘What do you want to know?’ he asked as he lifted her fingers to his lips and kissed them gently.

  ‘Who is he? What’s his back story?’

  Michael leaned forward and put his glass down on the coffee table before sitting back with a sigh. ‘He ran one of the biggest door firms back in the Nineties. He did security for The Blue Rooms back when Tommy McNulty owned the place. At one time, he ran a good little operation, but he started to get greedy and began stepping on toes that he shouldn’t have. Eventually, he ended up pissing off the wrong people one too many times and his firm was taken over. He was lucky he didn’t end up in the Mersey in a pair of concrete wellies.’

  ‘Whose toes did he step on?’ she asked.

  Michael ran a hand over his beard and leaned towards her before he answered. ‘Tommy,’ he said. ‘Parnell started believing his own hype that he was as hard as nails. Then he and some of his bouncers started selling coke on the side, which Tommy got wind of and wasn’t happy about. It got sorted but Joey kept on pushing the boundaries until…’

  ‘Until what?’

  Michael closed his eyes and shook his head. ‘Are you sure you want to know all this?’

  Grace assumed this was going to have something to do with her ex-husband Nathan, as most things from back in those days did. ‘Yes,’ she replied.

  ‘He was caught banging some stripper, but she also happened to be a certain person’s favourite bit on the side.’

  ‘A certain person being Nathan?’ she said with a roll of her eyes.
>
  He nodded.

  ‘So Nathan caught him with his bit on the side?’

  Michael swallowed. ‘Not exactly. Me and Sean did. Joey was supposed to be working but we caught him banging this girl and doing coke off her tits in Nathan’s office. But we worked with Nathan then, and … well, we didn’t know you, obviously.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t care about any of that now,’ she assured him, suddenly realising why he had been looking so uncomfortable. She supposed the fact that he had once defended the honour of her then husband’s mistress might make him feel like he had somehow betrayed her – but he was right, she hadn’t known either him or Sean back then.

  ‘We gave him a good kicking and took him to Nathan and Tommy to deal with. The stripper incident was the last straw really. Tommy was prepared to be a bit more lenient, but Nathan had been looking for an excuse to get rid of Joey, and that was the perfect one. Tommy backed Joey’s biggest rivals to take over and together they orchestrated a massive takeover. Joey put up a bit of a fight but half of his own bouncers had even had enough of him and defected to the rival firm, so he didn’t stand a chance. If I recall, Joey ended up being put in intensive care after one particular nasty fight at The Blue Rooms – which me and Sean might have been involved in. Then he just seemed to disappear.’

  ‘Until about eight months ago?’ Grace asked.

  ‘Seems so.’

  ‘Any idea why he’s come back?’

  ‘Revenge?’

  ‘Twenty-odd years is a long time to wait for revenge. Besides, Nathan and Tommy are both dead now. Who would he go after for revenge?’

  Michael raised an eyebrow at her.

  ‘What?’ she asked. ‘Not you and Sean?’

  ‘Maybe,’ he replied with a shrug. ‘And John? As far as he was concerned we were all working with, or for, Tommy and Nathan, and maybe he holds us equally responsible.’

  Grace leaned back and took a sip of her wine. ‘Revenge, though? I’m not sure I buy it. I don’t doubt he probably hates your guts, but there must be more to it than that. To come back after all this time? What’s changed for him?’

  ‘I don’t know. He’s in league with some of our competitors, I know that much. That prick Karl Morgan has got into bed with him, as well as some small firms who wouldn’t usually bother us. But they could cause us some headaches if they all got their act together.’

  Grace frowned. She had fired Karl Morgan, the owner of Trident Securities, from The Blue Rooms a couple of years earlier because he was unreliable and much like Michael had described Joey Parnell, was more interested in getting his leg over than doing his job.

  ‘Eight months ago is around the time we started negotiating the merger with Luke and Danny, isn’t it?’ Grace said.

  ‘Yes. They already told us they had some problems with Parnell though. But do you think either of them have anything more to do with him coming back?’ Michael asked.

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe?’

  ‘Really?’ Michael asked with a flash of his eyebrows. ‘I thought you rated the pair of them. You and Luke seem to get on particularly well,’ he said as he took a swig of his wine.

  ‘I do rate them. I don’t think they’re up to anything, but maybe there’s a connection is all I’m saying. And I do get on with Luke. I like the way he thinks.’

  ‘I’d noticed.’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  He put his glass of wine down and held his hands up in surrender. ‘Nothing,’ he insisted. ‘I just noticed how well you get on with him, that’s all.’

  ‘Oh, don’t start with him now,’ she said as she rolled her eyes. ‘It is possible for me to have a close relationship with a man without there being anything going on, you know,’ she snapped. ‘Besides, he’s almost young enough to be my son.’

  Michael pulled her into his arms as he started to laugh. ‘Calm down. I’m just playing with you,’ he said as he kissed her. Grace kissed him back but she knew that he wasn’t entirely joking. His first wife, Cheryl, had cheated on him with almost every villain in Liverpool and he hadn’t found out about it until he’d gone to prison. Grace knew than an experience like that left a mark – even if you tried your best to fight against it.

  She pulled away from him. ‘You do know you can trust me, don’t you?’ she said.

  ‘Of course I do, Grace,’ he said before he pulled her back to him and kissed her so hard she didn’t have a chance to speak any further.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Stacey had just finished her shift in Sophia’s Kitchen and was putting on her coat when her mobile phone started ringing. She saw the withheld number and her heart sank. She had six missed calls too. If she didn’t answer, he would keep calling until she did. She slipped into Grace’s empty office to answer it.

  ‘Hello,’ she answered.

  ‘Stace,’ Simon said.

  She took a deep breath. ‘Simon! I thought I told you not to—’

  ‘Stace,’ he interrupted her. ‘I need your help, babe.’

  ‘I’m not your babe,’ she hissed. ‘And why the hell would I help you?’

  ‘I’m in deep shit, Stace. There are some people after me.’ He sniffed and she wondered if he was crying.

  ‘And why are you telling me?’

  ‘Because they’re going to kill me, Stace. I really need your help.’ He did start to cry then. ‘Please?’ he pleaded.

  Stacey leaned back against the wall. Simon Jones had been a part of her life for six years, since she was eighteen. She had met him on her first day of college and he had seemed so sophisticated and charming, he’d swept her off her feet. For the first two years, despite him persuading her to drop out of college and cutting her off from her friends, things had seemed perfect. Then she’d started to see the real Simon. He was jealous, cruel, petty and a typical narcissist. He cared about nobody and nothing but himself. But by then she was so deep in his clutches, she felt she had no means of escape. She couldn’t go back to Liverpool to Danny and Luke and prove that they had been right all along. Prove that she really did need them. Prove that she couldn’t look after herself. By the time she had discovered who Simon really was, she was too far gone. She was completely under his control and she could see no way out. The more she started to dislike him, the more of his true self he revealed. Until she found out the awful truth that he bought and sold women like a used-car salesman did cars. He would hold it over her constantly – that he could do the same to her if he chose to. When Danny and Luke had finally found out what was going on, they had driven up to Manchester and forcibly removed her from Simon’s house, with a threat to Simon that they would kill him if he ever came near her again. For all his presentation, Simon was a coward, and he would never have challenged her brother or Luke. He was too focused on his own self-preservation to ever take on anyone who might give him a fair fight.

  Now here he was asking for her help. God, he really was a narcissistic prick.

  ‘Why on earth would I help you?’ she snapped.

  ‘Because you love me, Stace. You’re my girl. There was only ever you. You know that,’ he said, suddenly all charm again.

  Her curiosity was piqued. ‘How exactly do you think I could help you?’

  ‘Come and meet me. We can run away somewhere together? We always talked about living somewhere hot and sunny. We could go to Spain?’

  She laughed. ‘With what? I don’t have a pot to piss in, do you?’

  ‘No, but your brother does,’ he said.

  So that was his game. ‘Go to hell, Simon,’ she spat. ‘If you ever contact me again, I’ll be telling my brother all about what you did to me. I’ll tell the police too. You disgusting piece of shit!’ she screeched and then she threw the phone onto the floor.

  She leaned against the wall and held her hand to her mouth as she started to sob. She wiped her eyes as she saw the door open. It was Luke and she wasn’t sure if she felt more relieved or mortified that he of all people was here to witness her at her most vulnera
ble.

  ‘Stacey. What’s wrong?’ he said, his face full of concern as he walked into the room and closed the door behind him.

  ‘It’s okay. I’m fine,’ she said as she wiped her eyes.

  He placed a hand under her chin and tilted her face to look at him. ‘You don’t look fine,’ he said softly as his dark eyes burned into hers. She felt her stomach contract. Her head was a swirl of emotions, stirred up firstly by Simon and now by Luke looking into her eyes. He was igniting something in her that she had tried to suppress since she was thirteen years old and he had first visited her in that children’s home and taken her out for the day. It was all too much. She would only ever be like a little sister to him, and that hurt her almost as much as reliving her past with Simon.

  ‘I’m fine, honestly,’ she said as she brushed past him. ‘Just heard some news about someone I used to know, that’s all.’

  Luke looked at her and she knew he could tell she was lying, but thankfully he didn’t press her on the matter.

  ‘I only called in to see if Grace was here, but it looks like she’s gone for the day. Let me give you a lift home?’

  ‘No. It’s fine. I can get the bus,’ she said.

  ‘Stacey, I’m not letting you get the bus home on your own, especially when you’re upset. Now, grab your things, and let’s go. Please?’ he said as he held out a hand to her.

  She nodded but didn’t take his outstretched hand. ‘Okay.’

  He picked her phone up from the floor and handed it to her. Then he pulled her into one of his infamous bear hugs and kissed the top of her head. God, why did he have to be so bloody lovely?

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Leigh Moss turned off her computer and leaned back in her chair with a sigh. She had spent most of the afternoon looking into Joey Parnell. What she’d found out only served to increase her suspicion. Eleven years earlier he’d been sentenced to two years in prison for an assault on his seventeen-year-old girlfriend that had left her with a broken jaw. Joey had been forty-one at the time. There had been an allegation of rape too but the CPS hadn’t proceeded with a charge due to a perceived poor chance of securing a conviction. Joey had been living in Manchester at the time and had done his time in Strangeways.