by Martina Cole
Michael Flynn looked inside, and whispered to his friend, ‘Fucking hell, Declan, this place is like something from fucking Z Cars!’
He moved quickly to the back door and, turning the handle slowly, he was relieved to find that it wasn’t even locked. This fucker obviously didn’t think anyone was going to find him. Stepping into the room, he held his breath, and listened carefully. The place smelt of neglect and poverty.
Declan followed him in, and he shut the door carefully behind him. The place felt totally empty, as if it hadn’t been occupied for a long time.
Michael whispered huskily, ‘Listen, Declan, can you hear that?’
Declan Costello listened to the house, straining his ears for any sound whatsoever. He shook his head slowly. ‘No.’
Michael rolled his eyes in annoyance. He walked slowly across the kitchen. There was a door that was open which led into the hallway and, to the side of it, there was another door. Michael guessed that it led to a cellar. These old places were built to last, and they were also built with farmers in mind – a cellar was essential, an important storage facility, especially in the winter months.
Suddenly the two men heard music. It was very loud, and out of place in the grand scheme of things. It threw them both for a few seconds. Michael recognised the melody – it was ‘Almaz’ by Randy Crawford. The whole thing was getting more bizarre by the second and, when they heard the basement door being unbolted, they both slipped into the darkness of the hallway.
Michael could feel the thrumming of his heart as he waited for the man to emerge from the basement. He was holding his breath, frightened to even breathe in case he gave himself away. All he wanted was to find his Jessie, his baby, and to finally prove to her that he loved her no matter what. Then he wanted to destroy this cunt, this man who had somehow snuck past him, had somehow got the better of him, had threatened his family, his life.
The door opened slowly. It was obviously a very heavy door, and it wasn’t easy to negotiate. Declan and Michael waited with bated breath for Steven Golding to come into the kitchen, and to finally enter their orbit.
He did so slowly and, as he turned to face the men he knew would be waiting for him, he grinned amiably, saying cheerfully, ‘I’ve been waiting for you, and so has Jessie.’
Chapter One Hundred
and Thirty-Seven
Steven Golding looked so much smaller than Michael had expected. He was almost puny. It was hard to believe that this was the man who had caused him so much grief, who had been so fucking elusive. It was a joke, surely?
Golding laughed. ‘You’re too late, Mr Flynn. We waited for you, but you never came. Now your little Jessie is dying, I’m afraid.’
Michael stepped towards the man, intent on murder, and Declan grabbed him. ‘Stop it, Michael. That’s what he wants. Let’s find Jessie first. I wouldn’t believe a word this slippery fucker says.’
Michael knew that Declan was right, he couldn’t do anything until he had found his daughter.
Steven Golding shrugged. ‘Be my guest, she’s down there.’ He gestured towards the basement door. ‘She’s been down there since day one.’
Declan grabbed the man by his throat, and dragged him unceremoniously down the basement stairs behind Michael. The music was much louder inside the room, and it added to the surreal feeling that was enveloping them.
Declan was unsure for a few moments if he was actually seeing what was before his eyes. The stench alone was bad enough, but Jessie, if that really was Jessie, was like something from a horror film.
She was so bloated, and her feet, her lovely little feet, were almost devoid of skin. He looked at Michael; he could see the man’s disbelief at what he was witnessing. He too was wondering if this was some kind of joke, even though they both knew that wasn’t possible.
The photo Michael had been sent had been bad enough but, in the hours since then, it was obvious that Jessie had deteriorated. She looked dead already.
Declan went to the CD player and, kicking it with all his might, he watched as it rose up into the air, and then hit the wall. The ensuing silence was almost deafening.
Michael looked at his daughter, at the condition she was in. It was like a fucking nightmare, beyond anything he could ever have imagined. This was his baby girl – no matter what had happened in the past, she was his only child, and he loved her with a passion.
‘Oh my fucking God. Oh dear God. Please don’t do this to me . . .’ Michael was trying to pick his daughter up in his arms, trying to comfort her. But she was unresponsive, her eyes were closed. Michael was openly crying, sobbing in despair.
Declan punched Golding in the side of his head, and he watched as the man skidded through the shit that was everywhere, and sprawled on the floor. Then grabbing him back up, he bellowed into his face, ‘Where’s the fucking keys, you fucking piece of shit!’
He was already pulling the man’s jacket off him, and searching his trouser pockets. He finally found a set of keys in the man’s jacket and, calling out Michael’s name, he threw them to him.
As he did so, Jessie let out a long slow breath and opened her eyes. She tried to follow the sound of her father’s voice, as he shouted loudly, ‘Jessie darling, Jessie, it’s me, your dad. Stay with me, love. Please . . .’
Declan screamed at his friend with annoyance, ‘Will you unlock her, Michael? For fuck’s sake! We need to phone a fucking ambulance! Get her some help! Pull yourself together, man. She needs you!’
Michael seemed suddenly to understand what was needed from him. He was visibly shaking as he picked up the keys from the floor and, taking out his mobile phone, he called for an ambulance. He was as coherent as possible, and he gave the address of White Farm, quickly and succinctly. He also explained the seriousness of his daughter’s condition. Then he turned to Declan. ‘It’s not a key we need. He’s fucking screwed these fuckers into place. We need a spanner.’
He turned on Steven Golding then, and, after kicking and punching him to the floor, he grabbed him by his prematurely grey hair and, pulling him back on to his feet, he pushed his face into his and demanded, ‘You shackled her, so you can fucking get her loose.’
Both Michael and Declan watched as Golding dropped to the floor. He then crawled through the filth and, pulling himself up with difficulty, he took a spanner from the windowsill, and he held it out to the men like an offering.
‘It’s too tight, I can’t undo it. Her blood has dried all over it. Now it’s like fucking glue.’
He was still taunting them. Declan moved quickly to stop Michael from attacking him once more. ‘This is like suicide by cop, Michael, but the ambulance will be here soon, remember? Get her free, get her help, and I will keep this cunt on ice, OK? I’ll take him to the scrapyard. You’ve got Branch to smooth your path with the hospital et cetera. He will make sure this doesn’t bite anyone’s arse. All you need to do is get her help, OK?’
Declan watched as Michael did as he was told and, leaving him to it, he dragged Steven Golding out of basement, walked him down the lane, and forced him into the boot of Michael’s Mercedes.
He sat in the car and waited until the ambulance had arrived before he drove sedately though the London traffic to the scrapyard. Declan guessed that the nut case wanted Michael to kill him. He had done what he had set out to do, and now he wanted to die. It was all so fucking mental. His punishment could be arranged, only at a later date. He wasn’t getting away with this that easily, not by a long chalk.
Chapter One Hundred
and Thirty-Eight
Timothy Branch arrived at the hospital, aware that he would be expected to smooth everything over for Michael Flynn, and to make sure that Michael could get on with the business at hand with the minimum of fuss.
When he saw young Jessie Flynn he was, for the first time in his life, speechless. The girl was lying on a bed in intensive care, and Michael Flynn was standing beside her bed, holding her hand. He looked seriously ill too – his face was devoid of colou
r, even his lips were white.
But Jessie, young Jessie, was a terrifying sight.
‘Fucking hell, Michael, I’m so sorry. I’m so very sorry.’
And he meant it. Michael could hear it in the man’s voice.
‘He fucking planned this, Timothy. He shackled her to a bed, and he left her there to rot. Her heart gave out. The infection in her blood weakened it. Twenty-two years old and she had a massive fucking coronary. I got there too late. I was too late to help her.’
Michael started to cry again.
Timothy Branch automatically put his arm around the man’s shoulders; he couldn’t even imagine the pain that he must be feeling. To lose a child was hard enough for anyone, but to know she had been murdered – had died a slow and painful death – had to be unendurable.
‘Listen, Michael, I will sort this, don’t worry. I swear to you.’
Michael nodded. He appreciated the man’s promise – for the first time he actually felt that the man was trustworthy. But it was the way Jessie had died. Even a fucking no-mark like Branch couldn’t help but be affected. Just looking at her broken body was hard enough.
‘That bastard soaked her with cold water, he starved her, he fucking held her there with home-made manacles. You should see her poor legs. The fetters were so fucking tight they rubbed away every piece of her skin – they even scraped against her bones. She must have been in absolute agony, Timothy. My baby lived her last few weeks on this earth in excruciating pain, waiting for me to find her, to help her. But I was too late.’
Detective Inspector Timothy Branch would never have believed that he would feel any kind of pity for Michael Flynn, but he did. He felt the man’s pain as if it was his own. No one should ever have to see a child like this. It was outrageous – it took a certain kind of hate to be capable of harming another person so wickedly. Child murderers, rapists, were capable of such viciousness, of such cowardice, because they were cowards. They bullied the weakest people in society, little children and anyone who was smaller or weaker than them. Now Jessie Flynn, whose father was the hardest man in Europe, let alone London or the UK, who was responsible for every earn available, was dead. Murdered.
If this could happen to Michael Flynn’s child, what chance did anyone else have? This just proved that no one was immune to hatred. As a police officer, Timothy had always known that – he had seen so much mindless violence, so many pointless murders. But when something like this happened to a man like Michael Flynn, a man who was by all accounts at the pinnacle of his power, it was food for thought. Here he was, crushed and weeping as he looked at his daughter’s bruised and broken body. It was an eye-opening situation.
Michael Flynn looked at Timothy Branch, and he smiled eerily. ‘I’ve got him though, Timothy, I’ve got the fucker, and I will make him pay. Don’t you worry about that.’
Timothy Branch didn’t answer him. He just stood there, silently thanking the Good Lord that it wasn’t his child lying there dead.
Chapter One Hundred
and Thirty-Nine
As Josephine heard her husband running up the stairs, she checked her make-up in her dressing table mirror, pleased to see that she looked perfect.
She sat up straighter in her chair, and turned off her DVD player. She knew that Michael hated her films, especially that she watched the same ones over and over again.
As he came into her bedroom, she was ready for him, she had a half smile on her face, and she looked towards him quizzically. It was a look she had practised and perfected over the years. There was no way she would lower herself to ask him why he had not bothered to get in touch with her. She still had her pride.
He stood before her, like an avenging angel, and she could see that he wasn’t his usual self. In fact, he looked terrible. His clothes were crumpled as if he had slept in them, and he was badly in need of a shave. She looked him up and down, very slowly, taking in his dishevelled appearance, and letting him know she had noticed it.
‘I thought I heard you, Michael, but it’s been a while so I wasn’t holding out too much hope of seeing you.’
He didn’t say anything to her, and she looked at him straight in the eyes.
‘Is that all you’ve got to say to me, Josephine? My mother is dead. I assumed that even you might have worried about how I was coping with that! She was murdered, remember?’
Josephine could hear the antagonism in his voice, the sarcasm that was dripping from every word he spoke. She wasn’t going to say anything that would give him reason to attack her again, as he had the last time she had seen him. She had not been willing to accept his conduct then, and she wasn’t prepared to accept it now. Even if he did have a right to call her out about her behaviour, that didn’t mean that he should do it. They were married and, no matter what had happened to them in the past, they had always loved each other.
‘I’m sorry about your mum, Michael. Of course I am. How can you even say something like that to me?’
She sounded so offended, so insulted by him. It was crystal clear to him now just how devious she actually was – had always been. He gave a low, mocking laugh. He was seeing her with fresh eyes. She looked wonderful – why wouldn’t she? Her whole life was taken up with her appearance, with repairing her make-up, making sure her eyebrows were plucked and shaped, that her lipstick was faultless. Her hair looked salon-perfect twenty-four/seven, and her nails were coloured, shaped and buffed with a diligence that had to be seen to be believed.
‘You’re a piece of work, Josephine, do you know that? In case you were wondering, your only daughter’s dead. Jessie had a massive heart attack today. Twenty-two years old, and her heart gave out. The man who had taken her, who had contacted you, if you remember, that man who you ignored, basically tortured our Jessie to death. She died in fucking agony waiting for someone to find her. Now she is gone from us, Josephine, like my old mum.’
Josephine knew that Michael was telling her the truth, but it was hard to take it all in.
‘I am waiting for some kind of reaction from you, Josephine. I just told you that your only child is dead, and nothing. Not a fucking word.’
He stood there, looming over her, and waited for her to say something – anything – to acknowledge her only child’s demise. But she didn’t say a word.
‘Do you know what, Josephine? Patrick Costello said something to me many years ago, and I never understood the real meaning of it until recently. You were just at your hoarding stage, and I was really worried about you, about your mental health. He knew that, and we were out one night, and he said to me, “Always remember this, Michael – people only do to you what you let them.” I didn’t understand what he meant until recently. He was a wise fucking man in some ways – mad as a fucking Russian road map – but he had you sussed out right, lady.’
Josephine could not believe that her Jessie was dead. It wasn’t something she had ever contemplated, but now a part of her was relieved. It meant that Jake would now be wholly hers – hers and Michael’s. He was the son they had never had.
‘I can’t believe what you’re telling me, Michael. My baby girl, my Jessie is dead. Poor Jake. He’s an orphan. We are all he’s got left.’
Michael shook his head angrily. ‘Oh, save it for someone who cares! Jake will survive, I will see to that. But I’m warning you now, Josephine, you are going to the nut farm, and this time I’m not going to stop it. If you don’t go, then I will turn my back on you completely. Do you hear me? I’m deadly serious this time. I will never forgive you, Josephine, for what happened to our Jessie – for not even trying to let me know immediately when you heard from that cunt who was holding her hostage. You put yourself first as always, and I know now that you always will. You’re going to end up a lonely old woman because I’m finished with you. Any love I had for you – and I loved you with all my heart – has died. It’s gone.’
Josephine jumped from her chair, and she tried to grab her husband’s hands. She couldn’t live without him, without her M
ichael. He was the only thing that she really cared about.
But he pushed her away from him, unwilling to even touch her. ‘I’m arranging with your shrink that if you don’t go into hospital voluntarily in the next five days, I will have you sectioned. I can do that, Josephine, and I fucking will if I have to. Don’t bank on your latest shrink to get you out of it. I pay him, and he will do whatever I ask him to.’
She sat back in her chair, panic overwhelming her. He meant every word he was saying, and she didn’t know how she could stop him. He turned away from her in disgust.
At the door, he turned back to look at her, and said sadly, ‘Jessie is dead, and you don’t even seem able to fucking take that onboard. She died a death I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy and you’ve not even asked me anything about her at all. I know that you won’t even bother to go to your daughter’s fucking funeral, but you will go to the nut house this time, Josephine.’
She looked at her husband, her handsome husband, who had always stood by her no matter what, and suddenly she felt so very lonely and frightened. She had pushed him away for years. She had known that he would never have done the dirty on her – he was too decent, too nice a person. She had relied on that, she had relied on his love for her.
He was still standing there, in the doorway, watching her intently. ‘By the way, I’m burying Jessie with my mum. They were close and I want them to be together. I can’t stand the thought of our Jessie down there in the ground all alone.’ He swallowed back the tears once more. ‘There was a lot of my mum in Jessie. I realise that now.’
He walked out of the room, and she heard him walking away from her, his tread heavy as he went down the stairs. She could hear Jake’s shrieks of excitement as he was picked up and thrown in the air by his granddad. But it meant nothing to her – all she cared about was that her husband was going to walk away from her. She was finally without his protection, and it terrified her. Every time one of her doctors had recommended that she needed serious treatment, needed to be hospitalised, she had made sure that Michael replaced them. He had always tried to do whatever she wanted him to do. He had always done everything in his power to make her happy.
