by Jessie Keane
What happened?
For a long moment he couldn’t even think straight. Then his eyes fell on Aysha, sitting hunched on a couch opposite, her face wet with tears. And he was sitting on another one. Christ, there were probably fleas in here, the dogs were scratching, wandering around, slobbering everywhere.
‘Connor? Oh God, I thought they’d killed you!’ Aysha burst out.
Connor tried to sit up straighter, tried to focus. His head was one screaming, writhing mass of pain. His shirt collar was damp; someone had hit him, and he was bleeding. One of the dogs, an ugly black-and-white bruiser, sniffed his leg and he feebly booted it away. He could hear voices, talking in another room.
Then a door opened and in came a squat, massive bear of a man, grey-bearded and mean-eyed. He had a small pursed mouth and a stare that could freeze hot water. His eyes fastened on Connor sitting there. Then on Aysha.
‘So here’s the kids,’ he said. ‘The girl I ain’t seen before. But you, you’re Fearless Flynn’s boy,’ he said. ‘You’re Connor. Looks like we meet again.’
It was Jeb Cleaver.
I’m a dead man, thought Connor.
160
Coming in behind Jeb was a smaller, older version from the same shallow end of the gene pool. Also bearded, wearing boots – and carrying Connor’s own pickaxe.
Bill came over to Connor and looked down at him. ‘Shauna Flynn’s boy, right?’ He grinned with blackened teeth at Aysha. ‘And the girl too.’ He reached down, grabbed Aysha’s arm and hauled her to her feet. ‘Her we’ll save for later,’ he said, leering at her.
‘No! Christ, let go of me!’ she screamed. ‘Connor—’
‘Shut up! We’re going,’ said the older Cleaver, and dragged her from the room. The dogs followed.
‘Now I’m going to break you up,’ said Jeb as the door closed after his dad and Aysha. Jeb gave Connor a broad smile. ‘Piece by piece.’
Connor winced as he touched the sore spot behind his ear. It was still bleeding. He felt dizzy.
‘That hurt? Don’t worry. You won’t be feelin’ it for long,’ said Jeb, coming closer.
Christ, what was happening here? ‘I was in the church . . .’ Connor started, dazed.
Jeb nodded. ‘A little clue there on the stone: something blue – a nice touch, don’t you think? Shauna liked that, she said the useless Milo cunt had always said she liked the place, so why not bury her dog there? So we cut the mutt’s throat and put it in there. Might have put the Milo girl to rest there too, but the mood was on us so we had some fun with her instead. All on your mum’s say-so. Real dark horse, your mother.’
Connor took this in, staring at Jeb’s brutish, uncaring face. ‘It’s true then. She was behind it all.’
‘Shauna wanted the job done and we were willing.’
Christ, thought Connor.
Jeb let out a low whistle. ‘Used to be the best fuck for miles around, that Shauna. And in return? She wanted Claire Milo gone so she could have Josh Flynn for keeps. But she’s let me down, your mother, and I’ve been thinking of ways to get even. And what would hurt her most? Some shit happening to her baby boy and girl, I reckon.’
Connor felt like he wanted to puke.
‘All I done for her,’ said Jeb. ‘Sorted things out, lots of things. Including that little hairdresser of yours she wanted rid of. Now she thinks she can blow me out like I was nothing? So let’s see what she makes of this, yeah? Knees first,’ said Jed, and surged forward, swinging the pickaxe high.
161
The kitchen was as disgusting as the lounge, but Aysha barely noted any of it as Bill Cleaver dragged her in there and slammed the door after them. He went to the back door, yanked it open, said: ‘Get!’ and the dogs swarmed outside. He shut the door after them and then stood looking at her. Aysha shrank back.
‘You piece of shit!’ she said, her face wet with terrified tears.
Bill only grinned at that and crossed the room. ‘See you in a second, girly,’ he said, and went back out into the hall.
The minute he was gone, Aysha started yanking open drawers. Forks, spoons, knives but too small to be any use. She looked on the worktops. Threw open the cupboards, banging her shin on a toolbox. ‘Fuck!’ she yelped, and bent and rubbed her leg and then lifted the lid and looked inside. No good. Well, maybe. Then she saw something else, in the far corner of the worktop. She grabbed what she needed, gathered her courage, and surged out into the hallway.
Connor saw the pickaxe coming down and lurched to one side, out of the way. The axe buried itself in the sofa. Jeb swore, spat, then took another swing as Connor staggered, dizzy, trying to get to his feet and away.
‘You’ll just make it harder for yourself,’ said Jeb, shaking his head. ‘The punishment’s due, boy, so take it. We’ll send your ma a little something to remember you by, but the rest? We’ll let our old porkers have you. Yeah, we’ll feed you to the pigs. How about that?’
Connor was swaying, his legs unsteady. He saw the axe coming at him again and shoved aside a dirty, dusty old chair and went sprawling against the wall.
Thunk!
This time the wall got it, right beside Connor’s head. Jeb yanked the thing back out. Plaster dust flew, and bits of shredded wallpaper. Connor tried to lever himself to his feet once again, but the room was spinning and he couldn’t seem to get his legs to work.
‘Stay still, cunt face,’ said Jeb, and he was grinning, enjoying this as he drew the pickaxe back for the third time.
Can’t move, thought Connor. Can’t do it.
He watched the pick swinging back.
This is it then.
Back it went . . .
‘Now take your punishment, boy,’ he heard Jeb say as if from a great distance away.
Gonna die here tonight . . .
Then, at the top of the arc, the pickaxe stopped moving. Jeb froze there, his eyes wide. A thin trickle of blood came snaking down the side of his thick neck, staining the front of his filthy shirt a dull red. Slowly, he pitched forward and hit the wall beside Connor. Then Connor saw the meat chopper attached to the back of Jeb’s neck, its blade buried deep, cutting his spine clean in half.
Connor looked up, trying to focus. He saw Aysha standing there, weaving back and forth. She looked like she was about to throw up. But she’d stopped Jeb Cleaver.
Then with a roar Bill came thundering into the room and threw himself at Aysha. She went down hard, the head of the Cleaver clan’s hands locked around her throat.
162
Christ, the bastard’s killing her, thought Connor.
His brain felt scrambled. Aysha’s face was going purple. Bill was sitting on her chest in grief and fury, having seen that she’d killed his son, and was now throttling the life out of her.
Got to do something.
But he couldn’t. All Connor could do was watch in horror as Bill killed his sister.
Must do something.
Couldn’t, though. Couldn’t get up. Soon, maybe, but by then it would be too late.
Shit.
Then he saw there was a hammer in Aysha’s hand. She swung it up in a desperate move. It clunked against Bill’s head and he swayed to one side. Blood was running down from his forehead, where the hammer had struck him.
Aysha felt the world reeling around her as the force of Bill’s grip on her neck increased. Fighting for air and unable to get it, in panic she swung the hammer back again at the big man. It smacked into Bill Cleaver’s temple this time, but he had a head like granite. He ducked sideways, wincing, but didn’t release his grip.
Consciousness fading fast, Aysha gave it one last desperate shot. This time she aimed for his face. There was a crunch as his nose was broken wide open. Blood gushed down over his mouth. But he still didn’t let go. She could hear choking noises coming from somewhere and realized that it was her making them. She swung again. The hammer hit him right between the eyes with an almighty dull thunk. Blood started pulsing down over his face in a steady stream, blurr
ing his features.
Then in slow motion Bill toppled sideways and lay stretched out on the dirty old carpet. Aysha, free at last, took in a whooping breath and sat up, both hands on her throat.
‘Holy shit! Oh Christ! That bastard,’ she croaked.
Aysha crawled and then staggered to her feet and gave Bill another hard swipe around the head. Then again, and again. Finally, Connor was able to lurch to his feet and grab her arm.
‘He’s done for,’ he gasped out.
Still eyeing Bill with loathing and fear, gasping, shaking, Aysha kept hold of the hammer and leaned hard into Connor, nearly upending the pair of them. They stood there swaying like drunks out on a Friday night.
‘You OK?’ Aysha choked out, coughing, clutching at her throat.
‘I’ll be fine,’ said Connor, trying to raise a smile and failing. ‘Just give me a mo.’
‘D’you think he’s dead?’ asked Aysha, looking at Bill’s blood-soaked form with a shudder. Shock setting in, she let the hammer fall to the floor.
‘I should fucking hope so, after that,’ he said.
163
The woman was acting weird.
Shauna could remember them saying that to the police when they arrived. The men, the ones who had been working, joking between themselves, clearing the river of weed, dredging the channel deeper so that boats could pass unimpeded and the river no longer was a flood risk in rainy periods on this stretch – they had told the police that she was behaving oddly.
Weird as nine pence, that one. Screaming and yelling and crawling about on the ground.
The dredger had unearthed a body. A skeleton, actually. First one, then – to the men’s horror – another. And two rusted shotguns. All wrapped in a crumbling tarpaulin, weighted down. Shauna thought that this should never have happened; Ciaran and Rowan Cleaver should have lain there forever in their watery grave.
She was acting funny. Seemed very upset.
Wouldn’t anyone be upset, seeing a sight like that? Of course they would.
‘I’d better go home,’ Shauna had said to Chloe when she had pulled herself together. But by then of course the harm was done. They had seen her acting weird, on her knees, saying no, no, no, it shouldn’t happen, it shouldn’t be this way.
‘But won’t the police want us as witnesses?’ Chloe said.
Shauna ignored that. She drove home in a daze and sat in the half-dark in her kitchen as night closed in, wondering where the kids were, what they were up to. She made herself a strong cup of coffee and lit a cigarette and noticed that her hands were still trembling. She glanced down. Her tapestry-covered high-heeled shoes, her favourites, were caked in mud and grass clippings, ruined. She kicked them off, uncaring. Her feet were mud-covered too. No matter.
Ah, what the hell. The whole thing was over anyway. Josh was dead. The kids didn’t even seem to like her and they wouldn’t do a damned thing for her. And now the bodies had been discovered. How long would it be before the police pieced it together? She’d been acting weird, the men were right. They wouldn’t forget that and neither would that gobby, snobby cow Chloe.
Chloe would tell them that the woman they were talking about was Shauna Flynn who’d once owned the property next door that backed on to the river where the bodies were found.
Should have taken them downstream somewhere, thought Shauna. But then – that night – she and Josh had been desperate, in a panic, thinking that it would be good enough, that no one would ever find them.
But they had.
Shit.
She put the big Magnum, the same one she had used to kill the Cleaver brothers, on the kitchen counter and looked at it. She’d been going to finish Claire Milo and her daughter, and then Jeb – but really, what was the point? She didn’t seem to have any control over anything any more. Everything she did turned out a bloody disaster. And Josh was gone. Claire had been right, what she said: Shauna had won the battle, for sure. But in the end, Claire had won the war.
Slowly, Shauna drained her coffee and stubbed out the remains of her cigarette. Looked around her beautiful, expensive and empty home. You had a good view of the driveway from where she was sitting. Saw everyone coming and going, right down to the gate on the road. She liked that.
She was tired now, tired to death. Yes, she could say that Josh had done it. She could get rid of the gun. She could say it was him, not her, who shot Ciaran and Rowan dead, but she was too exhausted to even speak the lie.
So fuck it.
Fuck it all.
She was still sitting there in the dark hours later when headlights lit the drive. A car had stopped at the gates. There were blue lights flashing. Now the intercom was buzzing, someone was speaking. Shauna stood up, went over to the intercom and pressed it, to let in the police.
Then she went back to the counter, picked up the Magnum, took careful aim, and shot herself in the head.
164
Connor and Aysha had cleared away the mess at the Cleaver place. Once they were done with it, that hell hole had probably never been so clean. They had hauled the bodies out on to one of the pickups, then they had buried Bill and Jeb way out in the woods, far away, working long into the night despite all their cuts and bruises to make sure the bastards would never be found. After that, they’d pushed the pickup into a flooded quarry and watched it sink out of sight.
The dogs?
Aysha hadn’t liked to do it, but Connor had said someone would pick them up, so they had taken them halfway up country and then set them loose. They had no collars, nothing to identify them as Cleaver dogs, and that was good. The alternative would be to keep them locked inside the house to starve, or leave the doors open and risk the dogs tracking to Bill and Jeb’s grave, unearthing their remains and eating what was left of the bastards. They made an anonymous phone call days later to the RSPCA concerning the maltreatment of pigs on the farm, and left it at that.
When they got back to Connor’s flat in the early morning, they took turns to wash the blood away in the shower, and drank brandy to steady their shattered nerves. Connor settled Aysha in the spare room for the night, and fell into his bed, but his mind was full of nightmares, he couldn’t rest. He got up early next morning, showered again – he still felt dirty from all that he’d done – and made coffee. It was then that the doorbell rang. He answered the intercom.
‘Police, sir. Can we come up?’ said a male voice.
Shit!
‘Yeah. Come up.’
Aysha came out from the bedroom, her eyes full of guilt and fright, pulling on a robe one of Connor’s girlfriends had left there. They stared at one another as there came the sound of heavy boots on the stairs outside. Had someone spotted them loading the bodies? Or dumping the truck?
‘Oh Christ,’ said Aysha, looking sick.
‘Say nothing,’ he told her, feeling pretty sick himself.
He opened the door and two youngish policemen came into the flat, removing their hats.
Jesus, here it comes . . .
‘Mr Connor Flynn, is it?’ asked one of them.
‘Yeah, that’s me.’
‘And this is . . . ?’ They looked at Aysha.
‘My sister.’
The policeman who’d spoken first said: ‘I’m sorry, sir, miss . . . we have some bad news.’
And then he told them the shocking news.
Their mother, Shauna Flynn, was dead.
165
Six months later . . .
Finally it was time for Dad’s headstone to be installed. The mason said the ground was settled enough, and that they were doing it today. If Connor wanted to come tomorrow, see the finished article in place, then that would be fine.
Connor made two calls and then he drove down to the cemetery, walking along in the sunshine until he reached the area where the gypsy graves were situated.
There, he stopped and stood in front of Dad’s big black granite headstone.
JOSH ‘FEARLESS’ FLYNN
KING OF THE GYPSIES
NEVER FORGOTTEN
was picked out in gold Gothic script. Carved beside his name was a pair of bare-knuckle fighters, arms raised defensively. Dad was dead and gone. Mum too. Hard to take in. But he had to. Shauna wasn’t at rest in the Flynn plot, though: she was in with the Everetts.
Then Benedict and Aysha arrived. Aysha looked well now; she’d been shattered these past few months after hearing about Mum’s suicide. It had hit her the hardest, but Connor thought, shocking though it was, it had worked out for the best. Had Shauna lived, she would have done a lot of time in prison for the murders of Ciaran and Rowan Cleaver, and that wouldn’t have suited her at all. Mum had been a wicked woman. He knew that now, and accepted it. Poor Dad had been worth a hundred of her.
‘I’m not mad at Dad any more for trying to find some happiness with someone else,’ said Aysha as the three of them stood there staring at the headstone. It was magnificent; awesome.
Connor sent her a glance. ‘No?’
‘After what you told me about Mum and those fucking hillbillies? After all she did, and all she wanted them to do? No. I don’t know how the hell Dad got hooked up with her, but I do know he was sorry he did.’
‘Sod all we can do about any of it now,’ said Connor. Aysha had been sickened when he’d filled her in on what Shauna had done to Claire, and she had softened toward Claire and her daughter as a result, outraged at their mistreatment. The Henley house was up for sale now; the proceeds would be split between Connor and Aysha, and he was looking forward to the day when it was off their hands for good. Neither of them wanted to keep it. First and last, it had been Shauna’s house, not Josh’s, and not theirs.
‘He was a good man, wasn’t he? Dad?’ said Aysha.
‘The best,’ said Connor.
