The Forgotten_An absolutely gripping, gritty thriller novel

by Casey Kelleher

  ‘I’ll be careful,’ Jess said, recognising the concern on Kyle’s face. Though right now she didn’t need concern, she needed to move her arse, and fast.

  ‘Sit tight, I won’t be long.’

  She was gone then. Running down the pathway at the side of the road, making a point of keeping in close to the large wall that lined the block of flats so she wouldn’t be spotted.

  Reaching the main entrance of the flats then, she scanned the grey drab concrete stairwell, eyeing the floor numbers above the lift until one of them lit up.

  Third floor.

  Jess took the stairs. Kicking off her shoes so that she could run faster, careful where she stepped.

  This place was disgusting.

  Christ knows what she was walking in, the floor sticky and stained a mass of yellow and browns. The acrid stench of piss on puke that lingered in the air. As long as she didn’t step on glass, or worse, a needle, then she didn’t care. Above her head, she heard the balcony door open.

  Hurrying, to catch up.

  The door still swinging wildly just as she got there, she peered out through the tiny crack where the two doors met.

  Eyeing the woman as she stood outside one of the doorways. Jess made a mental note. Flat number 9.

  Struggling to retrieve her key from her back pocket, the woman gripped the child tightly as she finally managed to push the door open widely.

  Finally, she was in. She turned then, taking one last look around the flat’s walkway as if to make sure that no one was watching her, causing Jess to duck inside the stairwell once again. Worried that she’d been somehow seen, she stayed still, pushing herself up against the wall, out of sight. She held her breath, petrified that the woman would come looking for her, her heart beating rapidly now. Pounding as if it would burst out of her chest.

  It felt like forever had passed when in reality it could have only been minutes at the most. Jess looked out again.

  The door of Flat 9 was firmly closed, no sign of the woman now.

  She hadn’t seen her.

  And more importantly, she hadn’t wanted to be seen.

  Jess smirked then, as she made her way back down the dingy stairwell.

  Her plan today hadn’t been completely ruined, she figured.

  Whoever it was that had taken Scarlett, might have royally fucked up her original idea. There was no denying that, but maybe, just maybe, not all was lost.

  In fact, the more Jess thought about it the more she was inclined to think that whoever this fucker was who had just taken Scarlett had actually done her a favour.

  Because now, they’d be the ones having to do all the hard graft. They’d be the ones having to physically look after the kid. Feeding her, and taking her to the toilet, and putting up with her whingeing.

  And to all intents and purposes, they’d be the ones taking the rap too, if the plan went tits up and the police ended up tracking this woman down.

  In actual fact, thinking about it, things couldn’t have worked out much better.

  All Jess had to do now, was make sure she got to Nancy with her ransom before whoever this fucker was did.

  It was that easy.

  And she was certain that Nancy would pay through the nose to get Scarlett back.

  Of course the woman would.

  Today, she’d had the most precious thing in the world snatched away from her.

  She’d be frightened, terrified, in fact.

  A feeling that Jess had known too, once, only too well.

  Jess grinned to herself then, as she ran to the car where Kyle was waiting for her.

  An eye for an eye and all that.

  The way she saw it, Nancy Byrne owed her big time and it was high time that bitch finally paid up.

  Thirty-Two

  Sitting back on the bed, she scanned the tiny room.

  A bed, a chair. That was it. Other than that, the room was bare.

  It was getting dark now and the curtains were drawn.

  She didn’t like the dark.

  At home, she had a little night light by her bed. In the shape of a mermaid. Sometimes her nanny Joanie would press it and it would play her a funny song.

  Here, her only focus was the small stream of yellow that shone in through the gap underneath the bottom of the bedroom door.

  Every now and again, she saw movement. The light broken up by a black shadowy figure.

  The bad woman.

  She was out there. Moving around. Scarlett could hear her. Only just though.

  The woman was so quiet that for a while Scarlett had wondered if she’d been left in this place all alone.

  She was scared of the lady.

  The woman wasn’t very nice, and she’d hurt her arm when she pulled her away at the park. Dragging her up and out of the sandpit.

  Dragging her into the back of her car.

  Her arms were still hurting now. Both of them bound together tightly. The rope cutting into her wrists. Making her skin red, and hot as if it was burning.

  She’d given up trying to wriggle free.

  She wanted to scream. To call out, shout so loudly so that her mummy and daddy could hear her. So that they could come and get her, and make the bad lady go away.

  Only, she couldn’t shout. The bad lady had put tape across her mouth. She’d pulled it so tightly that it was pinching at her skin.

  Her mummy and daddy didn’t know where she was. They weren’t going to come and save her.

  She started crying again. Leaning back against the cold wall behind her.

  Thinking about home now.

  Home with her parents. With Nanny Joanie and Grandaddy Michael too.

  Grandaddy Michael.

  He’d be looking for her. He’ll be worried about her now.

  He told her not to move. Not to leave the sandpit. He said that he wouldn’t be long.

  But he did take long.

  And Scarlett had done as she was told. She hadn’t moved. Even when the bad lady tried to take her.

  Her grandaddy would probably be cross with her now. When he saw that she wasn’t there.

  But it wasn’t her fault.

  It was all the bad lady’s. She’d taken her and forced her into a car. Made her lie down on the seat, and when Scarlett had tried to scream for help and kicked out in a bid to escape, the woman had screamed at her to be quiet.

  Then she’d stuck something sharp in her arm that made Scarlett scream out in pain.

  She couldn’t remember anything else. Only that she’d woken up here.

  But she didn’t know where here was. All she knew was that she didn’t like it.

  She was scared, and all by herself.

  Just her and the bad lady.

  Shivering now from the cold and shock, unable to pull the blanket up around her because her hands were tied. Scarlett closed her eyes.

  Her body exhausted, and trembling wildly.

  Maybe she could just go to sleep?

  Maybe when she woke up, she’d realise that this was all just a bad dream.

  Like the dreams she sometimes had about the scary monsters or the hairy spiders, or the ones where she thought she’d lost her mummy and daddy somewhere and she woke up in her bed crying out for them.

  Those dreams always seemed so real and frightening, even though when she awoke her mummy told her that they hadn’t been real at all.

  Maybe this wasn’t real either. Maybe it was just a nightmare.

  She squeezed her eyes tightly together and counted to ten.

  Opening them again.

  Her eyes blinking through the darkness. The curtains still drawn, the small ray of light still beaming in from under the door.

  Then she started to cry.

  It was real.

  She was still here.

  Still scared and trapped in this house with the bad lady.

  Thirty-Three

  ‘Argh, my head’s killing me,’ Daniel Byrne said, coming out of the bathroom, looking like death warmed up. His face shin
ing from all the special ointments and lotions that he had to apply daily to stop his scaly, scarred skin from cracking open.

  ‘Did you sleep?’ Marie asked, knowing that he had.

  She’d checked on him when she’d come in a few hours ago. Standing at the end of the bed, watching him sleep, as she so often did.

  He was so peaceful when he slept.

  It reminded her of all the time she spent with him at the hospital, when he was in a coma, and she’d sit at his bedside. Just the two of them.

  ‘A little,’ he said, rubbing his head, the pain behind his eyes excruciating. ‘I need some more of my pills.’

  Today was a bad day.

  He could feel it already.

  His anxiety building inside him. His body and mind already exhausted.

  He’d been in bed for most of the morning, though he felt more fatigued now than he had when he’d first lain down.

  Tossing and turning and flitting in and out of sleep.

  When sleep had finally come to him, he’d found himself trapped inside his nightmares.

  Now he remembered, he remembered it all. Over and over again. Every waking minute of the day, and in his sleep too.

  It was as if, now, his brain was forcing him to relive every moment of his horrific ordeal. As if it was on repeat.

  The fire. The torture.

  How his sister Nancy had set him up. Handing him over to Alfie Harris, like a lamb to the slaughter. The pair of them leaving him in that derelict warehouse to die.

  ‘I’ll get them for you,’ Marie said, nodding, glad that Daniel wanted his meds again.

  Happy to assist, like the dutiful girlfriend, she went to fetch them from the kitchen cupboard. Coming back carrying a glass of water too.

  She handed the tablets to Daniel and watched as he swallowed them down in one big gulp.

  ‘Thanks,’ Daniel said. Slumping down on the sofa and trying his hardest to hide his irritation that Marie was still hanging around the flat, despite the fact that he’d been in bed for most of the day. She still sat here waiting for him.

  It was pathetic really. How she hung on his every movement. His every word.

  Yet she seemed unable to take the hint that he just wanted to be on his own.

  Apart from the medication, Daniel wished that she’d just fuck off home and leave him alone. He was struggling today as it was.

  But Marie didn’t take hints. The woman had skin a rhino would have been proud of.

  She knew that her only use to him was the medication too. That’s why the evil cow dangled the pills just within his reach. Making out as if she could only get a couple of days’ worth at a time.

  Painkillers, sleeping pills. High-grade stuff, stuff the doctors had tried to wean him off.

  It was Marie’s way of staying relevant. Of thinking that she was indispensable in his life. Always there lurking in the background, obsessed with him. Suffocating him.

  She’d mistaken him for a fool.

  Whoever this Robert Parkes was, that she thought she knew, it wasn’t him.

  He was Daniel Byrne.

  His father had been the notorious Jimmy Byrne.

  He knew everything now.

  How he’d been well on his way to firmly setting himself up on the gangland scene. Working with Gem Kemal to bring in drugs to The Karma Club nightclub. They had been set to make a fortune together.

  Daniel had been about to prove himself to the world, to that bitch of a sister of his too.

  He’d been about to take it all from her.

  His father’s business, everything the man had worked for. He’d been about to show her and everyone else that he was capable, just as much as Nancy was.

  Only Nancy hadn’t liked that idea one bit.

  And once she found out that he had murdered their dad, she’d done everything in her power to wipe him out. Handing him over to that psycho Alfie Harris so that the bastard could torture him, set fire to him. Leaving him like this, a mere shell of a man.

  But even that couldn’t keep Daniel down.

  Marie didn’t have a clue who or what she was dealing with here.

  Daniel didn’t have the slightest interest in her. He never had. Remembering his past relationships now. He could never be interested in Marie, because he was gay.

  All of this, this grotty little flat, his paltry boring life, none of it belonged to him.

  That’s why he’d never settled, that’s why he’d always felt as if he didn’t belong here.

  ‘Are you not going to ask me about my day then?’ Marie said, interrupting Daniel’s thoughts. Unable to keep her secret from Daniel a minute longer.

  ‘How was your day?’ Daniel said, bored now of playing Marie’s games. Of all this pretending to be cordial and polite when deep down he couldn’t stand the woman.

  Just being around her made his skin crawl.

  She was everything he hated in a woman. Needy and desperate and weak.

  He was going to have to get rid. He decided. Marie Huston might find herself having a tragic accident. That’s the only way he’d truly be shot of the woman.

  This charade had gone on for long enough.

  Fuck knows how, but he’d have to sort out his own way to get his hands on some meds himself.

  He’d do this on his own, without her.

  ‘You know what you were saying the other day about wanting to get your revenge on your sister?’ Marie said, her eyes boring into Daniel’s, not noticing the way the man’s jaw was locked, how he was gritting his teeth.

  His eyes had glazed over, barely listening to her as she spoke. Well, she’d soon have his full attention.

  ‘What about it?’ Daniel said, wishing now that Marie would just let all this shit about his sister drop.

  He was sick of all her questions about Nancy. Where she lived, where she worked. Of Marie trying to find out every last detail. It was as if, suddenly, Marie Huston was just as obsessed and occupied with Nancy as he was.

  ‘I want my fucking vengeance on the woman, Marie. I want to hurt that bitch, just like she’s hurt me.’ Isn’t that what he’d said? After one too many drinks. Still in shock at his memory returning, of him finally remembering the truth of what had happened to him.

  He’d opened up to Marie, that was the problem. In a moment of his own weakness, he’d bared all his family’s secrets.

  Marie knew it all. Every last sordid little detail.

  Only now she wouldn’t let it go. Like a dog with a bone, she was just gnawing away at him. Acting as if because she now knew everything, that, somehow, she had become part of it.

  As if by Daniel confiding in her, they’d somehow got closer.

  When in actual fact, he couldn’t have felt further away from her as he did right now.

  She repelled him.

  Her neediness and desperation made him feel physically sick.

  ‘Well, I’ve done it,’ she said smugly. Sitting down on the sofa next to him. Her hand twitching with excitement as she restrained herself from reaching out and grabbing his. ‘I’ve got you your vengeance.’ That crazy look in her eyes as they sparkled brightly now.

  She was drinking him in, desperate to see his reaction.

  To hear his praise.

  ‘What the fuck are you talking about?’ Daniel shook his head inching away from the woman. She was too close. Invading his space.

  He had no idea what she was going on about either.

  She wasn’t making any sense.

  ‘I told you that I’d help you in any way that I can, Daniel. Didn’t I?’

  She got up then.

  Nodding for Daniel to follow her.

  A sickly feeling of dread in the pit of his stomach at whatever it was Marie was about to reveal she had done. He followed her to the spare bedroom.

  Marie smiled then, as she reached out for the door handle.

  This was going to fix everything.

  This would make everything right between them again, she thought smugly.

&nbs
p; When Daniel saw what she had done for him.

  What lengths she would go to, to keep him happy.

  The risks she’d taken.

  And he’d be thankful to her forever for getting it for him.

  She opened the bedroom door.

  Smiling as she watched the expression on Daniel Byrne’s face as she switched the light on, and flooded the room with a bright yellow hue.

  Disturbing the sleeping child.

  ‘Holy fuck!’ Daniel said, his mouth wide open in surprise.

  As he took in the sight of the small child lying on the bed. Her hands and mouth taped up.

  Squinting at the bright lights, she looked up at Daniel and Marie, her eyes suddenly becoming wide with fear.

  ‘Is that who I think it is?’ Daniel said, unable to believe what he was seeing.

  ‘It is indeed,’ Marie said triumphantly. Daniel needed vengeance and Marie Huston was determined to help him get it.

  Now he knew that Marie would do anything for him. Anything at all.

  All his secrets were safe with her.

  They were in this together now. Until the very end.

  ‘You said you wanted to make your sister pay for what she’d done to you. Well, here’s your golden ticket. Daniel, meet your niece, Scarlett Byrne.’

  Thirty-Four

  ‘This is it!’ Jack said, pulling up just down the road and staring over at the average-looking two-up two-down set in the middle of a dingy little council estate in Clapham.

  They were so close now to getting Scarlett back.

  ‘We need to play it carefully, Nancy. I know you just want to wade in there and break the man’s legs, but we need to make sure that if Scarlett is in there, that she isn’t in any danger. We don’t want to cause this arsehole to do something that might hurt her.’

  Wincing at Jack’s words, not even able to comprehend that someone would be capable of hurting a child. Her child. Nancy nodded. Jack knew her too well.

  Break the man’s legs? If that animal so much as laid a finger on a hair on her baby’s head, she was going to strangle the last breath out of the bastard with her own two hands.