The Broken_A gripping thriller that will have you on the edge of your seat

by Casey Kelleher

  Gem eyed his team that were dotted around the club, watching as they discreetly went about their business of selling Gem’s gear. Not the shit that Gem shafted Daniel Byrne with. The shit that Daniel had brought in here was laced with PMA, a chemical notable for its high toxicity. It was supposed to fuck punters’ heads up. Make them sick and paranoid for up to 36 hours after they’d taken it.

  Now Gem was in charge of the merchandise being sold in the club, he was only dealing in the best quality drugs available.

  Grade A.

  That way, he’d have free rein of the place. There would be no comeback or problems, and Alfie Harris need never get wind that the drugs were still being sold here.

  Though there was one last bit of business that he needed to sort out before he could relax.

  One last deal that still needed to be settled.

  Eyeing the security camera, he homed in on Nancy Byrne as she crossed the club and made her way down the steps towards the office. He looked up at the clock. Dead on midnight and not a second later. Punctual as ever. He smiled.

  A few minutes later, Nancy walked into the office.

  Standing up, to show his manners to the lady, Gem offered her a seat.

  ‘Nancy! Glad you could make it!’ he said, sitting back in the office chair, enjoying the sense of superiority that it gave him.

  Taking the seat, Nancy placed the bag on the table.

  ‘I take it that it’s all there?’ Gem said smugly. Knowing that he’d stuck to his side of the deal and done exactly as Nancy Byrne had asked him to. It was payday. Time to reap the rewards of a job well done.

  Sliding the bag across the desk, Nancy didn’t speak. Instead, she waited as Gem Kemal took his time looking inside. Watching his eyes scan the contents, before they narrowed.

  Gem shook his head.

  ‘What the fuck is this?’ he said, annoyed. ‘This is not what we agreed. We said a hundred thousand. There’s not even a quarter of that here?’

  ‘It’s £20k,’ Nancy said bluntly. Not bothering to try and dress it up. Personally she didn’t like Gem Kemal one bit.

  ‘But this is not what we agreed, Nancy? You don’t get to make the rules up as you go along. We had a deal, remember?’

  ‘Oh, I remember,’ Nancy said, her eyes flashing with fury. ‘But you fucked that deal when Alfie Harris’s daughter got caught up in the firing line. You were supposed to set Daniel up. That was the deal. You said you would make sure that Alfie Harris dealt with him. What you didn’t say was that an innocent kid would get hurt in the process! Megan Harris nearly died!’

  ‘I thought you were supposed to be the smart one?’ Gem said, leaning back in the chair and eyeing the woman with disdain. Losing his patience now.

  When Nancy Byrne had approached him, and asked him for a way to get rid of her brother, Gem had seen a golden opportunity to get the job done without having to get his own hands dirty in the process. All he’d had to do was lay out the bait. Daniel had snatched up the opportunity with both hands, getting Jenson Reed to distribute the gear without so much as a second thought. ‘What did you think would happen? That Alfie Harris was just going to go after your brother for simply changing suppliers? Of course not. We had to put someone in the club at risk. How else were we supposed to alert Alfie Harris to the fact that the distributor had been changed? Of bringing shit to his doorstep. He doesn’t get involved in the drugs side of the business. Your father and Alex had always taken care of that. He needed to know what was happening.’

  ‘Oh, well he soon found out what was happening, didn’t he? Jesus, Gem! You almost killed a child!’

  ‘Well that was unfortunate. That wasn’t the plan. The dodgy batch was supposed to make a couple of people sick. Dehydrated. Maybe given one or two people a minor seizure.’

  ‘A “minor seizure”? Megan Harris was in a coma for over a week and just because she’s come around now doesn’t mean she’s out of the woods yet. The doctors still haven’t determined if there are any long-term effects. She’s a fucking kid, for God’s sake. She nearly died. You deliberately set out to poison someone?’

  ‘Oh come on, Nancy. This is fucking Ecstasy you’re talking about. Everything’s poisonous if you take enough of it,’ Gem spat, drumming his fingers on the desk then. Beyond agitated now. ‘And who the fuck’s fault is it that Megan Harris came to the club in the first place? She shouldn’t have been there. How could I have foreseen that? It was unfortunate that it was the girl that took the tablet, Nancy. But Megan Harris more than served her purpose and, what’s more, she’s okay. Where’s your brother now, huh? Answer me that.’

  Nancy shook her head. She had no idea. She’d handed him over to Alfie Harris, and knew better than to start asking any questions about her brother’s fate.

  It had been two whole weeks now. There had been no sight or sound from Daniel.

  Her brother was gone for good. That was all that mattered.

  Gem was right. It was what Nancy had planned all along. From the second that she’d set this deal up with him, she had known that her brother was going to be written out of the equation once and for all. She hadn’t been able to kill him when she’d had the opportunity, but she’d made damn sure that someone else would.

  ‘You see?’ Gem nodded, glad that he’d made his point now. ‘You got what you wanted, and so have I. Megan Harris lived. And I want my money.’

  ‘Well, this is all I’m prepared to give you. I’m not paying you a hundred grand when you almost killed an innocent child. That was never part of my plan. That was your error. Your fuck up. You’re lucky that you are even getting this,’ Nancy said, staring at the man with her steely green eyes, her expression deadly serious – not prepared to move so much as an inch on her final offer. ‘This is the only deal that I’m giving you. Take this money and you can keep all the contacts and use the drop-off points that Daniel gave you. I never wanted to be part of the drugs side of my father’s business. You can have it all. Or, you can decline my offer and choose to go to war with me instead.’ Nancy sat back in her chair then, resolute in what she was saying, showing the man that she didn’t fear him one bit. ‘But I warn you, Gem, I fight dirty. The second that Alfie Harris finds out that you were in on this too, that you were the one that set Daniel up, that you were the real man responsible for almost killing his daughter, you’d not only lose all of this, but you’d lose your life too.’

  Gem shook his head. The gall of Nancy Byrne, the cheek of the woman. It was almost fucking hilarious. She had him though, and she knew it too.

  Not accepting Nancy’s deal was too big a risk to take. Twenty grand was better than nothing, he supposed. Besides, he had full rein in the club now to do as he pleased. He had the Byrnes’ old contacts regarding the import and export for the gear he was intending on bringing in, and he had their drop-off points too.

  He was all set to go.

  ‘You know what you are, Nancy, you’re just like your father. Fucking ruthless,’ Gem said as he slid his hand over the bag of money and pulled it towards him.

  Nancy smiled then, getting up from her seat.

  ‘Well, I can’t disagree with that, in fact, I’ll take that as a compliment!’ she said, before getting up and waltzing out of The Karma Club.

  Her business here finally dealt with.

  Glad that she’d never have to do business with a low-life like Gem Kemal ever again.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  ‘Thank fuck you’re here. I’m sorry to call you back home, Nancy, when you’re busy working but she just keeps asking for you. She’s acting bat-shit crazy,’ Michael said as he led Nancy and Jack Taylor through to the lounge where he’d managed to persuade Joanie to sit down quietly, pacifying her with the fact that her granddaughter was on the way over. ‘Do you know what I caught her doing last night? Climbing out her bedroom window. Stark bollock naked she was too. She was away with the fairies, Nancy, I tell you. She kept saying that someone was coming to get her, and she had to get away. Then this
morning, poor Colleen went to take her in a nice pot of tea, only to find Joanie had barricaded herself in her bedroom. She’d pushed some of the furniture up against the door. Christ knows where she got her strength from, she’d been that determined. It took me over half an hour to persuade her to let me in, and when I did…’ Michael closed his eyes then. Genuinely worried about the state of his wife’s mental health. ‘She just wasn’t right at all. Crying and shaking. Repeating herself over and over again, that convinced someone’s after her. I think she’s lost her mind,’ he said with all sincerity, before opening the lounge door.

  Nancy nodded, glad for the heads-up from her grandad. She’d been so consumed with sorting out the flat over at Bridge Street that she hadn’t been home much at all this week. She made a mental note to keep more of an eye on her nan.

  Though as she stepped into the front room, nothing could have prepared her for the state her dear old nan was in.

  ‘Nan! What happened to you?’ Nancy gasped. Taking in the vision of the woman sat huddled under a blanket in the armchair in the corner of the room. Her mottled skin now black and blue.

  As if she’d been beaten?

  Nancy looked at her grandfather and her mother questioningly.

  ‘She had a bit of “an episode” and then fell down the stairs,’ Colleen said, shaking her head sadly.

  ‘I didn’t fall, I was tripped. Someone tripped me up on purpose,’ Joanie screeched, forcefully.

  ‘Who, Nan?’ Nancy said protectively.

  Joanie shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I can’t remember. I think I saw a foot. But I can’t remember now,’ she said, shaking her head. Her expression looking vacant. The woman was clearly confused.

  ‘Me and your grandad don’t know what to do with her, Nancy. It’s like she’s just gone into self-destruct mode now. She’s constantly falling down or tripping up. It’s only a matter of time before she really hurts herself.’

  Nancy nodded at Colleen in agreement. Her nan was getting on now. In her early seventies, she wasn’t able for all these accidents to be happening.

  ‘What are we going to do with you, Joanie?’ Michael Byrne said, sitting down next to his wife and, for the first time in his entire life, he started to openly cry.

  Such a rare, genuine show of emotion that Nancy felt like crying too.

  ‘She’s just not herself any more; these past weeks she’s rapidly gone downhill,’ Michael sobbed. Scared now. Having watched the gradual decline of his bolshy, vibrant wife to virtually nothing. In her place sat this mere shell of a person. Confused and vulnerable. A complete stranger.

  ‘I don’t know what to do with her, Nancy. It’s like she’s not here any more. She can’t remember much, and she keeps having accidents. Falling over and getting dizzy spells. It’s like she’s lost her mind. As much as me and Jimmy didn’t get on, I wish to God he was still here. Your nan can’t cope without him.’

  Michael Byrne was blubbering like a baby. No longer caring what his family and Jack Taylor all thought of him as he broke down in tears. So consumed with guilt that, at first, he’d found Joanie’s immense suffering somewhat amusing.

  Though now it was starting to scare the life out of him.

  She wasn’t right at all. This couldn’t just be grief surely? Both in their seventies, maybe this was it for the woman. Maybe this was the start of what was to come. Old age finally setting in? Dementia? Fuck knows what it was, but Michael Byrne just wanted his Joanie back to the way she used to be. He never in his lifetime ever imagined saying that, but there it was. The truth.

  He’d give anything in the world right now to hear the woman scold him for something that he supposedly had or hadn’t done. For her to shoot him one of her scathing looks.

  But he doubted he’d ever see that old Joanie again.

  ‘She pushed me down the stairs,’ Joanie said, suddenly awakening from her trance and pointing her trembling frail finger at Colleen.

  ‘Oh Joanie. Please,’ Colleen said sadly, shaking her head. ‘Don’t you remember what happened? You thought you heard Daniel come home? You were running down the stairs, weren’t you? That’s when you fell.’

  The sound of her grandson’s name set Joanie off then.

  ‘Daniel. Where’s my Daniel gone? Haven’t you found him yet?’ she said, looking up expectantly at the faces in front of her.

  Nancy shook her head sadly, before looking over at Jack.

  ‘I’m sorry, Joanie. We’re still doing all we can to find him. No one’s seen him. We’ve got no leads,’ Jack said, not sure that the woman even understood what he was telling her.

  ‘I told you, Nan, he’s probably gone off somewhere for a while. You know what he’s like. He’s probably met up with some friends and got caught up having fun somewhere. You know how spontaneous he can be,’ Nancy said, though she knew no one in this room was buying her story. Not really.

  Daniel had been missing now for weeks. No one had seen or heard a thing from him. Jack Taylor had been keeping an eye on the missing person’s report that Joanie, Michael and Colleen had all insisted be filed. Only, they had no leads. No clues as to where he might be, or what might have happened to him.

  Nancy knew that she couldn’t leave her family in limbo, forever wondering what had happened to Daniel. Soon she’d have to get Jack to concoct a story about him being seen abroad somewhere. Jack could pretend that they found intelligence suggesting he was living somewhere exotic.

  Her family might believe that.

  That Daniel had just gone off somewhere. That was the kind of selfish crazy shit her brother would do. Though Nancy knew the only place her brother would be visiting right now was Hell, and she was glad about that.

  ‘What about my Jimmy? Where’s my Jimmy?’

  Nancy shook her head then, thinking she’d misheard her nan, but she knew she hadn’t.

  She looked at Colleen.

  ‘Did she bang her head?’ Thinking that maybe the woman had a concussion.

  ‘She took quite a fall, Nancy, but she’s been saying things like this a lot the past few days. It’s as if she forgets, you know, that he’s gone…’ Colleen said quietly. ‘I stopped telling her any different as she always finds it too upsetting.’

  Nancy’s eyes filled with tears as she sat down next to her nan and took her hand.

  ‘Nan? Dad passed away. He died, Nan… you remember that don’t you?’ Nancy was worried as she saw the realisation sweep across her nan’s face. Her lip began to tremble. An almighty wail escaping her mouth.

  ‘What’s happening to me?’ Joanie cried then. The fear written all over her face. ‘My Jimmy’s dead. My boy. How could I forget that? I’m losing my mind. I’m going mad.’

  ‘I think you need to go and call the doctor, Colleen,’ Nancy said, realising the severity of the situation. That her nan might be right.

  Guessing that Joanie was having some sort of a mental breakdown, Nancy wasn’t sure what they were dealing with yet, but she knew that they couldn’t deal with this on their own. Her nan needed help. Professional help.

  ‘We don’t need a doctor. I’m perfectly capable of looking after her. She’s just having a bad morning, that’s all. She’ll be all right after she gets some proper sleep,’ Colleen said, looking visibly hurt that they had to call for help. As if Nancy was insinuating that Colleen wasn’t doing a good enough job of looking after the woman.

  ‘And you’re doing a great job, Colleen,’ Jack Taylor said, butting in and trying to play Devil’s advocate. ‘Anyone can see that. But Joanie isn’t well, Colleen. She needs a doctor.’

  ‘She’s going to end up killing herself if we don’t do something soon,’ Michael added in full agreement, for once thinking only about Joanie and what would be best for her.

  ‘We can get someone in to help me. A carer. Someone to keep an eye on her when I’m doing the household chores; maybe she won’t have any more accidents then…’ Colleen said. Worried now that if Nancy called a doctor they’d all find out what Colleen had b
een doing. That she’d been drugging the woman. She’d been filling her head full of stories too. Telling her that the people who killed Jimmy would be coming for her too. She might have been responsible for a couple of Joanie’s falls as well. But it was nothing that the older woman didn’t deserve. Joanie might look weak and frail now, but Colleen knew full well what the woman was really capable of.

  ‘If you call a doctor out, they’ll take her away. They’ll put her in some institution somewhere. You can’t just give up on her like that,’ Colleen said, doing her best to sound indignant about Nancy’s decision; but, seeing the determined look on her daughter’s face, Colleen knew that Nancy wouldn’t be swayed now that she had made her mind up.

  ‘It won’t be forever, Colleen, but she needs help. Now.’

  Colleen nodded, defeated. ‘I’ll go and make the call.’

  ‘I’ll come with you and make some tea or something. Anything to make me feel useful,’ Michael said, glad to tear himself away from the sight of his wife for a few moments. He needed to pull himself together.

  ‘I’ll give you a hand, Michael,’ Jack Taylor said, guessing that Nancy wanted to be on her own with her nan. ‘We’ll leave you two for a bit. See if you can calm your nan down before the doctor gets here.’

  Nancy smiled then. Appreciating the gesture.

  Joanie did too. Waiting for everyone to leave the room before she spoke.

  ‘What’s the matter with me, Nancy? It’s like I’m going mad. I keep forgetting everything. But how could I forget that, eh? How could I forget my own son?’

  Nancy didn’t speak. She couldn’t, not without the answers her nan needed to hear.

  ‘I can’t remember trying to climb out of the window, or falling down the stairs. I mean, I get confused. I thought that Colleen might have tripped me up, but that woman’s done nothing but be kind and good to me.’ Looking down at her bruises on her arms and legs, feeling the pain from the swollen limbs. ‘I’m going mad, aren’t I?’ Colleen and Michael were telling the truth. They must be.