by Anna Smith
Silence, just the sound of bloodied sniffing and groaning.
‘Tell me where you took him, Rab. You and Lenny Wilson. We’ve got him too. You’ve no way out.’ He gestured to the big guy to untie Rab’s hands and place them on top of the desk, palms down. Then Jack turned away and took a couple of steps across to Kerry.
‘Kerry. You might want to step outside for a moment.’
Kerry knew what he meant. She had seen more than enough. This ugly scene was also part of who she was these days, as much as the hotels and the property and the big houses and the wealth. This was also part of the deal. She should feel disgusted that this was what men paid by her family did to people when they wanted answers. But she wasn’t.
‘Whatever it takes,’ she said to Jack, then turned and slipped out of the door.
By the time she had crossed the yard she could hear the blood-curdling screams, and the thud of something heavy coming down again and again, and something she’d never heard before but somehow by instinct knew was the sound of bones being hammered and crushed to a pulp.
Chapter Eleven
In another world, this would have been a perfect little afternoon, Sharon thought as she sat opposite Vic Paterson in the clifftop restaurant, watching the afternoon sun twinkling on the ocean. Vic could have been a guilty pleasure, one that she could have relished over an exotic lunch and a few glasses of fine wine, before losing themselves in an afternoon of unbridled passion. For a fleeting moment, she allowed herself the fantasy as she remembered their fiery but brief encounters a few years ago. Christ knows, she could be doing with a bit of risqué sex – it had been so long since she’d enjoyed the attention of a real man who desired her. But that was not on the cards today, or any other day, and she chided herself for even entertaining the notion.
‘What’s on your mind, Sharon?’ Vic sat back, a mischievous smile playing on his lips. ‘You look miles away, darlin.’ He lifted his glass and leaned across a little and spoke softly. ‘And if I may say so, you look every bit as bloody hot as you did when I fancied the pants right off you all those years ago.’
Sharon put her hand up and squared her shoulders.
‘Enough, already.’ She shot him a firm but friendly look. ‘What’s past is past, Vic. Let’s not even go there, pet. Okay?’ She could feel a little flush rise on her neck, and took a gulp of her Sauvignon Blanc. ‘We’ve moved on from all of that. I was just thinking though, how lovely this is here, in this little spot, and how great it would be if we were just a couple of mates enjoying lunch. But we’re not. So let’s keep it simple.’ She looked into his pale eyes, crinkled at the sides. Christ! Vic must be forty-one now and he was still as handsome as ever. ‘Tell me, Vic. You said the Caseys would need your help. So I’m all ears.’
‘Have you talked to Kerry Casey yet? Told her what I’m offering?’
Sharon had called Kerry straight after her first meeting with Vic to tell her how much he seemed to know, and that he would work with them, but that he would want big money. Kerry told Sharon that it was her call, and if she thought they could trust him, then to go ahead and bring him on.
‘I have,’ Sharon said. ‘She doesn’t know you – knows nothing about you, only what I told her. But she is trusting my judgement. And I’m putting a lot of trust in you right now. I seriously hope you would never betray that.’
Vic spread his hands.
‘Shaz. Come on. It was me who came to you. I’ve been in the nick long enough to know that when you get out, you have to stand back and see where you are going to pick up. And that’s what I did. There is nothing for me back in Manchester with all the fucking pricks fighting among themselves, and with Durkin and the Colombians gearing up to demolish the lot of them. I could see how I can be useful to them with my experience and stuff, but I don’t like them. And even before I decided I didn’t like them, when I was getting out of jail, I was hearing all the shit through the grapevine about Knuckles and you and what he was doing.’ He paused, ran a hand through his hair. ‘And, I’ll be honest with you, I did think about you in all of this. I know this is just a meet and talk, but I did think about you. That’s all.’ He folded his napkin and tossed it on the table. ‘Only natural. But I came to you because as I’ve said, you are going to need my help.’
Sharon nodded slowly, clasping her hands on the table.
‘And of course the money, Vic.’
He shrugged. ‘Of course. The money. You haven’t got a problem with that, have you? Has Kerry?’
She shook her head. ‘No. We will sort you out. No problem. But the problem at the moment, Vic, is time. The priority back in Glasgow is getting the boy back to his family. So we can’t do anything out here just now. But as soon as he’s back, then we want to be ready.’
‘You know of course that the Colombian has said he wants everything from the Casey organisation. The lot. And from what I see in the brief time I’m here, he has plenty of bodies to do that. Plenty. I had dinner last night with that Frankie Martin prick, and he strikes me as a slippery fucker. I’ll be watching my back every moment I’m around him, I’ll tell you that. But I have to be with him, listen to his fucking bragging, and make sure I get bedded in.’
‘I understand that,’ Sharon said. ‘So what can you tell me so far? We want to know locations and stuff, where they operate from over here. If we were looking for them, where would we find them? We have enough people here who can look at that discreetly, so we can be ready to give them it with both barrels when the time is right.’
‘I know. Durkin will be easy. He swans around like the fucking coke king, and I’m surprised nobody from his own neck in Dublin has popped him yet. He’ll be easy. But the Colombians have a huge network going here, all of them shit scared of Rodriguez. So if you want to stop them functioning, you have to cut off the head of the snake. Rodriguez. Oh, the snake will still think it can bite you as it thrashes around, but once you get the head, then it’s all over. Everyone who works for him will run for cover. They will have to send someone else from Colombia, but they won’t have the appetite for that. There are too many other powerful mobs down here now – the Russians, for example. They’re as ruthless as the Colombians, and the Albanians.’
‘I understand,’ Sharon said. ‘We’ve a long way to go.’
When they’d finished, Vic paid the bill and they walked out into the narrow street, and Sharon clocked his eyes doing a quick scan of the area. Then they stood for a little awkward moment, and Sharon could feel the electricity between them as she looked up at him, shading her eyes from the sun.
‘I’m going to walk into the village and take a taxi back,’ she said. ‘I’ve got to give Kerry a ring and see how things are.’
*
Kerry was glad to see Danny when he arrived at the house with Jack. She hadn’t slept much last night after getting a glimpse into how Jack went about the business of getting information. By the time she went to bed her mind was too busy with flashbacks and bloodied faces to get much sleep. She’d lain for a while in the darkness thinking how naive she’d been when she left the house last night, thinking she was going to meet this girl Donna who could help them find Marty’s grandson. It had been a baptism of fire, witnessing how swiftly Jack had dealt with some of the people involved, and she’d been impressed how quickly they were able to locate the driver of this Lenny Wilson character. Jack had suggested she go back to the house after they left the scrapyard, and she did, while he and Brady hooked up with another car and two more heavies. They were going to dig out this Lenny Wilson, and Billy Sinclair; when Bolton finally broke his silence he had confirmed what the Pakistani warehouse owner had said – that Sinclair was the only one he’d dealt with.
‘Jack’s been filling me in,’ Danny said, as the three of them walked along the hall towards her study. ‘Sounds like quite a night.’
They went inside and sat around the table. As Kerry poured tea into mugs, she noticed that Jack’s left hand was bandaged.
‘What happene
d to your hand?’ she asked.
‘That wee toerag Wilson had a go at me with a knife. Wee bastard. He didn’t realise how dangerous that would be for him – was hyped up to fuck on coke.’ He shook his head. ‘Anyway, he knows now.’
‘So,’ Kerry said, ‘where are we?’ She flicked Danny a glance. ‘I’m almost scared to ask. Please tell me we’ve made progress.’
‘We have,’ Jack said. ‘But we’ve hit a bit of a wall. Sinclair told us Finbar has been moved from the place he took him to, and is now somewhere else. He says he doesn’t know where. And that he won’t get told until a couple of hours before they’re due to move him again. He says that’s how it’s been working since the boy was taken – says he’s not the only one involved, that there are others too.’
‘Christ!’ Kerry said. ‘Is he being straight?’
‘Prick like him couldn’t lie straight in his bed. But put it this way, the only reason he’s still alive is because he said he will get a call on this in the next day. That’s when he’ll get the address to move the kid.’
‘Poor wee Finbar. Kid must be bewildered and terrified.’ Kerry looked at Danny.
‘That’s why we need to get him out of there. If this bastard is telling us the truth, then we have to wait to see if he gets a call.’
‘Where is he?’ Kerry asked.
‘We’ve got him tucked away. He gave us the information without any problem. He knows he has to play ball with us or he’s a dead man.’
‘He will be anyway,’ Danny said, tight-lipped, ‘when this is all over.’
‘What about this Lenny Wilson?’
‘We’re holding him too,’ Jack said. ‘He’s only a cog in it – a delivery boy. But we can’t afford to turn him loose. I don’t think he’s got any connections higher up than Sinclair, but best if we keep him where he is. He’s a coke-head too, so both of them are strung out to fuck.’
‘Yeah,’ Danny said. ‘Keep Wilson too, until this is over.’ He turned to Kerry. ‘What about this Donna bird?’
‘She’s up in the Thistle Hotel. She’s not going back to the flat. Says she can’t. She wants money for her information. I told her we’ll sort her when we get the boy back, but meantime she stays where we can watch her.’
‘She’s a piece of work, is she not, Kerry?’ Danny asked. ‘Anyone with a scrap of decency would have gone to the cops with their suspicions – not try to make money out of it. But having said that, she did us a turn.’
‘I suppose that’s right that she wanted to make money,’ Jack agreed. ‘But at least she came to us first, and that gives us a shot at trying to get him back before the cops go in all guns blazing and fuck it up.’
Kerry was silent for a moment, then she asked, ‘But how do we know the cops would screw it up? I mean, we can’t be sure of that, can we?’
She let the words hang in the air, knowing it would strike a chord with Danny and Jack who glanced at each other. It was them she had had to convince only a few weeks ago to let the cops in on the bid to bring Knuckles down. That had been successful, and Danny had still got his pound of flesh, being able to take Knuckles out with a bullet to the head in the middle of the operation with armed cops crawling all over it. Kerry hadn’t given serious consideration to bringing police in to get Finbar back, but the clock was ticking. And Vinny’s words were ringing in her ears. She wanted Finbar home, and she wanted revenge as much as Danny and Jack. What their enemies had done here was to strike at the very heart of them by kidnapping a child. There were no depths these bastards wouldn’t sink to. Revenge was for another day, though. This was about the life of Finbar. She didn’t want his blood on her hands.
‘Kerry, you look as though you’re considering other options here.’ Danny looked at her, raised eyebrows. ‘Has your friend Vinny been in touch?’
Kerry knew he wasn’t having a dig at her, but she also knew that Danny would be suspicious that she was being influenced by Vinny, because of their relationship. If he knew that she was carrying his child, Kerry thought, she would lose a chunk of credibility when it came to decision making. But she wasn’t about to admit anything like that.
‘Vinny has been in touch,’ she said to both of them. ‘He’s been to see Marty too, and from talking to Marty afterwards, I get the impression he’s beginning to buckle a bit. I perfectly understand that. We’re not in his shoes, and what he’s going through must be horrendous – especially because he knows his grandson has been kidnapped to get back at us, and he has to hide all that from his family.’
‘Did he say we should think about getting the cops in?’ Jack asked.
‘No,’ Kerry said. ‘But I feel he is thinking about it.’ She paused. ‘Vinny phoned me and we had a conversation and I can tell he has this gut feeling that Marty isn’t telling him everything. Vinny’s words to me were that if anything happens to this kid and we have failed to do everything possible to get him home – he means by not telling the police everything we know – then we will have blood on our hands.’
They sat in silence for a long moment, each of them knowing that Vinny was right. Eventually Danny took a long breath and sat back with his hands behind his head.
‘Then, we have to think about it,’ he said looking from Kerry to Jack. ‘I take it Marty doesn’t know about the latest developments – I mean what we did last night?’
‘No,’ Kerry said. ‘I haven’t told him. I’m not sure if I should tell him, because it’s something else that he has to keep from his family – that’s if we are going to go this alone.’
‘You’re right. Marty doesn’t need to know what’s going on at the moment. And if this bastard Sinc gets a call in the next few hours, then we might even be able to get his boy back quickly.’
Kerry looked from one to the other, but didn’t say anything. From what she had seen of their operation last night, and also when they took Knuckles Boyle out, her men were more than capable of handling anything thrown at them. But her insides niggled. This was about a little boy’s life. If something went wrong, it didn’t bear thinking about.
Chapter Twelve
Marty Kane knew his son was watching him closely for any signs that he was holding back. He had never consulted his son or kept him informed of any of the business he had with the Caseys. But Joe knew that his father was the Casey lawyer, and that he and old man Casey went back decades. So he would be smart enough to know all that entailed. Yet over the years, even once he became a lawyer himself and worked in his father’s firm, Joe had never questioned his role with the Caseys. Marty respected his son for that. As a lawyer, Joe knew that often you had to defend the indefensible, and he would have done that himself many times in murder and robbery, even rape trials. But as the Caseys’ brief, Marty knew he sailed very close to being a gangster himself. He was more than just their lawyer. He was as embedded in the Casey family as every gun-wielding henchman in the firm. That had never mattered to Joe before. Until now.
Marty had gone into his study to get away from the oppressive atmosphere in the kitchen, where he and his wife had sat at the table with Joe and his wife, and their older son Johnny, Finbar’s big brother. He was only five, and the family had so far been trying to keep him away from any newspaper and television reports about Fin’s kidnapping. But they had had to tell him that his little brother had been taken by some bad people, and the poor kid was finding it hard to understand that his father couldn’t bring his brother home. Johnny had been quiet, despite his mother’s attempts to get a conversation out of him. Everyone had sat around, picking at their food, making small talk, when the only thing on their minds was Fin. Marty could see the anguish on every one of their faces.
He was standing gazing out of the window in his study when Joe came in carrying a mug of tea. He closed the door behind him. Marty turned around to see him, then went back to looking outside.
‘You all right, Dad?’ Joe said. ‘You look terrible.’
Marty shook his head but didn’t turn around.
‘Ach, I
just feel sick, son. Looking at your Johnny’s wee face, the bewilderment in it. I can’t take that.’ Marty felt his chest tight with emotion.
‘I know,’ Joe said. ‘But we have to believe that we’ll get Fin home. There’s nothing else for it.’
Marty nodded his head and sighed, but said nothing. They stood in silence for a moment, and then Joe spoke.
‘Dad,’ he said, putting his mug down on the table, ‘look. I haven’t asked you this, but it’s in my mind and I can’t get it to go away.’
Marty looked at him and then back out of the window. He knew what was coming.
‘Dad. Is . . . Is Fin’s kidnapping anything to do with the Caseys? I mean is it something they’re involved in, and you’re their lawyer, so someone is trying to get to them through you?’
Marty had known from the moment Fin was taken that his son would have been suspicious that it was more to do with his father than anything else. But the only time it had been brought up was when they were both talking about court cases or criminals they’d been defending, and Joe had said perhaps the kidnapping was to do with work they had done. The police had also suggested that, but there had been no close questioning. Well, apart from the private chat that Marty had with Vinny the other day. Marty turned to face his son. The last thing he could do was to tell him the truth, and it tore at his heart.
‘Look, son. We both know that we have dealt with a lot of bad people in our lives, and we’ve defended them in court – even if our consciences told us they were guilty as sin. That’s our job. It’s to defend, not judge. But by doing that, who knows who we’ve noised up over the years. Both of us – yes, especially me – have stood on the steps of the High Court when bad men have walked free because of our defence of them. Who knows how many people that may have affected – the victims of their crimes, the families of victims. You know that yourself. There must be as many people out there who despise us as respect us. That’s the way it is.’ Marty was aware he was making a speech as though he had a jury in front of him.
