The Ladykiller

by Martina Cole

  ‘Thanks, Pat. What time’s your table booked for?’

  ‘A quarter to eight. Don’t worry about driving me, I’m quite capable of taking one of the motors.’

  ‘Okey doke then, Pat.’

  Willy watched Patrick leave the house and then sat down for a minute. He hoped Kate turned up.

  Kate decided she would meet Willy. If nothing else at least she could find out how Patrick was. The thought of being seen with him in public worried her, though. He looked like a bad accident, did old Willy, lovely as he was inside.

  She had bought herself a new trouser suit. It was deep red and showed off her dark hair perfectly. She slipped it on with a white camisole top underneath, then stepped back from the mirror and admired herself.

  Not bad.

  She pulled up in the car park of Cartella at eight twenty and there, waiting for her in Patrick’s Rolls Royce, was Willy. As she locked her car he walked over to her.

  ‘You look lovely, Kate.’

  She grinned at him, the overpowering smell of his aftershave making her cough. He looked almost presentable in his dinner jacket and she felt an enormous surge of affection for him. As they walked into the restaurant she took his arm. He patted her hand and smiled at her.

  Patrick smiled at the girl opposite him. She really was very lovely. Since he had phoned Kate’s house that night and a man answered, he had gone all out to have a good time.

  He had met Michelle three days before. She was stunning, and he had watched every pair of male eyes assess her as they walked to their table. She was five foot ten, slim, and like her predecessors had enormous breasts. In the white sheath dress she was wearing, though ostensibly covered up, her breasts were actually in full view of everyone because of the way the dress moulded her tanned and healthy body. She had long blond hair and violet eyes.

  For the first time in months Patrick felt he might actually get to like a girl. Michelle was a career woman. She was personal secretary to the managing director of an export firm and Patrick had met her by accident in the man’s office. Unlike her predecessors, she had a brain in her head and her talk stimulated him.

  She chose her own food and Patrick was gratified at her appetite. He hated women who picked at their dinner, worried that every mouthful would be an extra pound in weight. Especially when the meal cost a small fortune.

  But Michelle was the kind of woman who lived life to the full.

  ‘I’ve never been here before. Do you use this restaurant a lot? The maître d’ seemed to know you.’

  Patrick had the grace to blush.

  The maître d’ also knew how many women he had brought here. At one time they had run a book in the kitchen on how long a particular girl would last. Michelle deserved better than that. It was the reason he had never brought Kate here.

  ‘It’s local, you know. I don’t always fancy driving into the Smoke.’

  She chatted on and Patrick watched her, fascinated. She really was a lovely girl.

  As Willy and Kate walked into the restaurant, arm in arm, the maître d’ walked towards them with a happy smile on his face. It was Friday night, the place was packed, and he could hear the cash tills ringing. Pierre, real name Albert Diggins, had a part ownership of the Cartella, and now it was really paying its way, he was a happy man. He walked towards Kate and Willy, wondering briefly what such an attractive woman was doing with such an ugly man.

  ‘Name, monsieur?’

  ‘It’s Gabney. Mr William Gabney. I reserved a table for two.’

  ‘Ah, the special table. I remember the booking, I took it myself.’

  He smiled widely enough to encompass them both and any strangers in the vicinity. Gabney’s was the champagne table that was costing the man a hundred pounds already.

  ‘Please, follow me.’

  He swept out his arm. Kate, stifling a smile, followed with Willy. She was still holding his arm when Patrick Kelly looked up from his steak and saw them. He nearly choked.

  Kate looked into his face and saw her own shock mirrored there. She watched the blonde goddess sitting opposite him get up out of her seat and playfully pat him on the back while he coughed. The action caused the girl’s breasts to shimmy in such a way they caught the eye not only of Willy and every other male diner in the place but also of Pierre, who walked into a chair, doing himself a painful injury.

  Kate didn’t know how she kept her head. Clutching her arm tighter, Willy followed a practically cross-legged Pierre to their table.

  It was only about six feet from Patrick’s and the champagne was already there on ice.

  Pierre made a big deal out of opening it, hoping to entice some of the other diners into ordering the same thing. It was Cristal and Kate sipped the bubbling liquid nervously. She was sitting opposite Patrick and they glanced at one another surreptitiously.

  Michelle knew something was up and looked behind her.

  ‘Do you know that woman or something?’

  Patrick coloured. ‘I know her slightly.’

  Michelle laughed. ‘I think you know her a bit better than slightly, don’t you?’

  He nodded.

  Willy sipped his champagne and watched Kate’s face. He was sorry now he’d brought her here. Kate looked at him and shook her head.

  ‘I’m sorry, Willy, I have to go.’

  She stood up and walked out of the restaurant. In the foyer she went straight into the ladies’ room. She leant against the sink, her face burning with humiliation. She looked at herself in the mirror.

  She looked good, she knew that, but no one could compete with the girl Patrick was sitting opposite. Poor Willy. She had walked out on him in front of everyone.

  Why on earth had she decided to come?

  She splashed some cold water on to her face to try and calm herself down. She put on a film of red lipstick and walked from the ladies’ room.

  Patrick was waiting for her.

  She looked straight into his eyes.

  ‘Hello, Kate.’

  ‘Patrick.’

  She felt as if a hot mist was gradually filling her head. His closeness was making her feel physically ill. She had to use all her willpower not to reach out and touch his hair, the lines of his face.

  She looked down at the floor, unable to face him.

  ‘How are you?’

  ‘Fine. And you?’ Kate marvelled at how normal her voice sounded.

  ‘All the better for seeing you.’

  Her eyes dragged themselves to his face of their own volition.

  ‘I’ve missed you, Kate.’

  Patrick was doing what he’d sworn he would never do. If she walked away now, he would feel humbled and humiliated for the rest of his life.

  Kate looked into his face.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Really. I love you, Kate.’

  ‘What about Titsalina in there then?’ She gestured with her head towards the dining hall. ‘Do you love her as well?’

  Patrick felt a moment’s euphoria.

  She was jealous.

  Kate saw his smile and regretted the words immediately.

  ‘No, actually, Kate, I don’t. It’s you I want. I can’t eat, I can’t sleep, I can’t even bonk since we split up, if you must know.’

  Kate laughed. Patrick could be so comical. Here he was begging her to have him once more, and it had been her fault they had split up in the first place!

  ‘So what are we going to do?’

  ‘We’re going to walk out of this restaurant and go home. Home to my house, Kate.’

  ‘But what about Willy and that . . . girl.’

  ‘I’ll sort Willy out. As for Michelle, she told me to come out here. A clever girl that, she’ll go far.’

  Kate looked into the blue depths of Patrick’s eyes and admitted the truth to herself. She needed this man. When he was there she felt alive, really alive, and she wanted that feeling for the rest of her life.

  ‘I’ve missed you, Patrick.’

  As they stood there
Willy came out to them.

  ‘I’ll drop Michelle off home in the Roller.’

  ‘Thanks, Willy.’ Patrick and the big man shook hands, each grasping the other’s wrists.

  Willy went red. ‘I knew that if you two just saw each other you’d be all right.’

  Kate smiled at him and he went back into the restaurant.

  ‘Right then, shall we go home?’

  Kate took the proffered arm.

  ‘Yes, let’s go home, Pat.’

  In the car park they stopped by Kelly’s BMW. He took her in his arms and kissed her.

  Willy watched them through the window of the restaurant. They fitted together perfectly, like two pieces of a jigsaw. He held up his glass in a silent toast: To Pat and Kate.

  Read on for an exciting preview of Martina Cole’s

  powerful new novel,

  REVENGE

  Coming autumn 2013.

  Prologue

  ‘Hello! Are you not listening to me? My little girl has been missing for three fucking days. I think that might be worth your attention, don’t you?’

  Michael Flynn was so angry he was almost spitting his words out down the phone. Over six feet tall and with a heavy build, he was a big man and, as everyone in the room knew, he was more than capable of great violence. He was paying them for their expertise, which they currently seemed to be sadly lacking in.

  ‘Her mother is giving me serious grief, and that alone is a fucking bugbear! I need to know where she is, people! So I think you lot had better get me the information I need before I start to think you’re all mugging me off. I know she ain’t exactly what you might call a wilting fucking violet and, believe me, when I locate her I will personally launch her into outer space for this. But I want her found, and that is why I am here now. You are the Filth – this is what you do! So you had better start doing it quickly, people. I am not a man who is known for his patience, and I have a very low threshold for idiocy.’ He slammed down the telephone.

  Jamie Gore listened to his boss rant at the policemen in his employ. Everyone knew that Jessie Flynn was about as dependable as a Nigerian marriage broker, therefore she held no importance whatsoever to anyone, especially the police. She could get away with anything – from possession of any substance, including a bomb, should she ever purchase one, and that was all thanks to her father’s influence. He paid the Old Bill handsomely to ignore her; now suddenly he wanted them to make her a priority? He spoke up. ‘Look, Michael, with all due respect, you know your daughter as well as we do, she could be fucking anywhere. She goes on the missing list regularly.’

  Michael Flynn was dark-haired and dark-skinned – he had the Irish gypsy in him there was no doubt about that. He was a handsome fuck, and his good looks were part and parcel of his persona. Both men and women were attracted to him, and he had always used that to his advantage. His startling blue eyes were now trained on Jamie Gore, and the man felt the first prickle of uneasiness at the intensity of his gaze.

  ‘You having a fucking laugh, Jamie? You think I brought you lot here for nothing? My old woman is like a fucking lunatic! My little Jessie is on the missing list! No one, and I mean no one, has seen her for three fucking days! I know she is a lazy mare, I know she lives in her own fucking time-zone, and I know she is the biggest pain in the rectum since records began. But she is still my baby girl. So my advice would be to fucking well find her! Track her down, let me know where she is so I can deliver her back to her mother and then we can all go home.’

  Michael looked around the room, and he knew that every bloke in there was thinking the same thing: Jessie Flynn was probably tucked up in bed with another low life, another fucking no-mark she had picked up on her travels. She was a trollop of the first water, having been sleeping with the enemy since she was fourteen years old. He wondered how many of his own workforce she had serviced at one time or another. It didn’t matter – he still wanted to know where she was. More to the point, her mother needed to know. Josie was deeply concerned for her daughter’s whereabouts.

  Jessie, he felt, was not a girl you could lose sleep worrying about all the time – she stumbled from one disaster to the next (usually the disaster was a man), but she always seemed to come out on top. She came home at some point and her mum would be so pleased to see her there would be no retribution of any kind. That was the trouble. Michael personally believed that she needed a fucking good slap, but his wife would never agree. If Jessie murdered the neighbours with an axe and it was caught on CCTV, his wife would say ‘well, they must have upset her’. Jessie could do no wrong in her eyes.

  He too had indulged her once, when she had been small and still lovable, but that had changed the moment she discovered the power of her sexuality. He had given up trying to force any kind of fatherly rules or regulations on her. Jessie wouldn’t listen to him anyway – she was a girl after his own heart in many respects. She did exactly what she wanted, and she did that with the maximum amount of energy she could muster. But she was a whore, and that fact broke his heart. Not that he could ever let that be known – in his game that would be seen as a weakness.

  He sighed heavily. The men in this room were some of the hardest men in the south east; they all worked for him and were pleased to do so. He was a hard man, everyone knew that, but he prided himself on being a fair man, a decent man in some respects. These were men who were at the top of their particular games, and he used their nous and their instincts for his own ends – and he made sure that they earned a good fucking wedge at the end of the day. Michael Flynn was a one-off; in his world he was a man who was not just feared, but who had also earned the respect of his peers, and who had managed to rise to the top without treading on anyone else’s toes. He had embraced his partners in crime, and made sure that they earned enough to prevent them coveting what he had. Now he had the partnership and the major earn from every Face in the country – well, in Europe if truth be told. And the men he dealt with owed him, respected him for his achievements, and did not begrudge him his percentage because, without him, most of them would never have got as far as they had. He had worked his way up the ladder, realising early on that to keep on top you had to have a loyal and willing workforce, and that if you wanted to earn a place of importance in the criminal world, you also needed a very lucrative and honestly run legitimate businesses, as well as the wherewithal to not only invest heavily into other people’s businesses, but to also be able to offer them a modicum of protection should Lily Law decide to investigate them at any time. Michael had orchestrated all of that himself and, as he was a man who was settled, no one would ever feel the urge, or indeed the need, to try and take his place and run his businesses. He was too shrewd for all that fanny. His legit businesses were huge earners; he could explain away anything he owned. In short, Michael Flynn was virtually untouchable.

  But now he was looking at the men he knew as friends, not just as business associates, and he felt the prickle of shame wash over him. His daughter going AWOL was not something they saw as in their remit but, as they were on his payroll, they had no option but to listen to him and offer their help in any way they could.

  His Jessie’s reputation, such as it was, had preceded her as usual. They assumed she was drugged and/or drunk out of her head somewhere, because that was what she was famous for. Twenty years old, and she was already a legend in her own lunchtime. She had been excluded from every school he had sent her to, and instead she had embraced the underworld from an early age – from the drug dealers, to the scumbags who hung around the council estates, the burglars, gas-meter bandits with the homemade tattoos – she spent her time in filthy squats until he brought her back home to her mother time and again.

  Michael had given up on her completely by the time she was fifteen. He had found her naked on a filthy mattress in a condemned house in Hackney, with a junkie three times her age, who had given her not only a black eye but a dose of gonorrhea as well. He had known then that he had no choice but to step away from he
r emotionally. He loved her, but he could not get through to her. Nevertheless, he had gone back and almost kicked the man to death for doing that to his baby. He had vented his anger, looking around at how she had been living. She was available to any man who tipped her the wink and who she thought would anger her father, and bring shame on him.

  He didn’t understand it. She had a home that was not only full of love for her, but was beautiful. She had everything she desired; she had had the chance to go to a good school, and had a good life ahead of her. But from thirteen years of age she had made it her business to find the lowest of the low, and make a home there with them for herself, and she had broken her mother’s heart in the process. Unlike him, her mother still felt she could turn her life around, redeem herself. But Michael refused to get involved anymore; she was his Achilles heel, his only real weakness. Her antics were common knowledge in his world, and it was only his status that stopped people from gossiping openly about her.

  He had tried everything, and she had fought him every step of the way. She was his daughter, and he would protect her as much as he could but, in his darkest moments, when he heard about her latest escapades, or the police informed him she had been arrested once more, he had wished her dead, and he hated himself for that. Seeing the suffering she caused his wife made him resent Jessie because she had a mother who was all love, and who had never once even raised her voice to her. Jessie had broken her mother early on. She still cared what happened to her daughter; she hoped that she would come home one day and it would be forgotten, and they would live a normal life together, like everyone else. Michael knew better. He just provided Jessie with the means to live her life, but at least her need of money allowed him to police her in some way.

  Jessie had given birth to a child at sixteen, but the child was no more to her than a doll she dressed up on special occasions. She left him to be brought up by her own mother. Michael loved the bones of his handsome little grandson, who had more of the Flynn family in him than whoever had been the fucking piece-of-dirt culprit. Not that Jessie had any fucking idea of her son’s parentage, of course; the poor child had simply been a whodunit and, with Jessie, that meant it could have been literally anyone. Oh, he’d accepted the reality of his Jessie a long time ago. He might love her, but he didn’t like her one bit.