by Martina Cole
She nodded slowly, watching him as he gazed at her with that look he had, the one that made her feel like the only woman on the planet. She loved that look and loved the way it made her feel. He tried to open her dressing gown and pull her legs apart, and she wondered how many times he had done that to her and she had been receptive to him and enjoyed his attention.
But not now. She couldn’t.
‘Will you stop it, Davey, what’s wrong with you? After what’s happened, how can you even think about sex?’
Davey sat back on his hunkers and she saw that he was irritated with her, because he couldn’t distract her from what was troubling her; he took her refusal as a rejection of him personally. He really had a big ego, and that had always made her laugh in the past. Now she pushed him away and went to pour herself a glass of wine, savouring the taste.
‘Who do you think could have let the shooter in, Davey? That’s what is bothering me. Who the fuck could have done that?’
He shrugged and she watched as he went back to the sofa and sat down.
‘Anyone who had access to the back door keys, I suppose. And that means anyone who works there. You know as well as I do that most of the girls who work in the clubs would sell their own mothers for a fucking score.’
Eilish sighed sadly. ‘I suppose so, Davey. Though, in fairness, most of the girls are only there to get a few quid for their families.’
Davey finished his beer. ‘Exactly what I’m saying, darling. Imagine if one of them got offered a big payday. Imagine what they would do for that.’
Eilish nodded her agreement and watched as Davey went out to the kitchen to get another beer. She drank her wine down and refilled her glass from the bottle on the coffee table. She still felt so het up after last night’s events, and she knew that this was probably due to shock. She had never really understood that expression, until now, when she was experiencing it for herself.
Davey came back and tapped his bottle against her glass in a cheers motion and then, sitting at her feet, he settled back against her legs. Grabbing her hand in his, he placed it on his head and she automatically started to caress his hair. She glanced at the clock and saw that it was nearly noon. She took another deep gulp of her wine and she tried to force herself to relax.
Davey knelt up again and, looking at Eilish with concern, he said, ‘I promise you this will pass, darling. What happened was tragic and brutal, but you will get past this.’
Eilish heard the doorbell and, as Davey turned away from her to answer it, she smashed her wine glass into his face with all her strength. It was a large balloon glass and she had chosen it for maximum damage. Standing up, she kicked him away from her. As he lay on the floor, pumping blood everywhere, she stepped over him and went to let her father and Roy in.
She had worked out exactly who had opened the door for the shooter. Now she was looking forward to finding out who had paid him to betray, not just her, but everyone and everything that she cared about, past, present and future.
Chapter One Hundred and Thirty-five
Diana and Gabriel had finally got home, both relieved to be away from Lorna.
Diana had given her the meds she needed and settled her down enough to be able to leave her. Lorna just sucked the joy out of everything around her, and it was so difficult to be in her company for any length of time without it rubbing off somehow.
As Gabriel pulled on to their drive, he was yawning loudly. They were both shattered. The day had been a very long and stressful one, and they had both had no sleep the night before.
Diana had a bad feeling about the latest events and she couldn’t shake it off. There was something she was missing, and she just could not put her finger on it. Lorna and her usual lunacy had not helped, but what else could they do? Someone had to mind the mad bitch.
As they got out of the car, Gabriel saw something glinting out of the corner of his eye and he instinctively threw himself on top of Diana to protect her, as he had always protected her.
They were both shot in the head at point-blank range.
They didn’t stand a chance.
Chapter One Hundred and Thirty-six
Davey had bled to death in the boot of Roy’s car and Angus was fuming about it.
Eilish had somehow managed to cut into his carotid artery, and he had bled out in no fucking time. If she had severed it immediately, it would have been evident by the blood pumping out and spraying everywhere, like a sprinkler system on a well-manicured lawn. So not only did he not have the satisfaction of torturing the treacherous cunt, he also couldn’t ask him who had been behind the shootings.
His mother had given him a few ideas, and he had been looking forward to matching those up with the names that Davey would have provided, if his daughter had not seen fit to glass the ponce – the so-called love of her fucking life – at the last minute.
He shook his head in anger. ‘Typical fucking woman, eh, Roy? She had to get her ten pence in first, and now we are no better off than we were before.’
They were on a smallholding in Essex, by the marshes, that had been abandoned years before. It stood in seven acres and it had no near neighbours anywhere, so it was the perfect site for what they wanted. There was a roughcast bungalow on the land and numerous outbuildings, all in different states of disrepair. It was owned by an old friend who was quite happy to let them use it, provided they cleaned up after themselves.
Angus began to punch the dead body of Davey Proctor, over and over again, in his anger and frustration.
Roy pulled him away from the body roughly. ‘For fuck’s sake, Angus, what are you doing?’
Angus pulled away from him, shouting angrily. ‘What the fuck do you care? He’s already dead.’
They both started to laugh then at the absurdity of it all, and they were still laughing heartily when the first bullet hit Angus in the face.
As Angus dropped to the floor, Roy turned and felt the impact as a bullet slammed into his face. Unlike Angus, he didn’t die instantly and, as he lay on the filthy floor, he felt the cold steel of a gun being pushed against his temple.
He knew that it was finally all over for them.
His last thought was that they had had a fucking good run.
Chapter One Hundred and Thirty-seven
Eilish was devastated to learn from Sky News that her grandmother and Gabriel had been shot down in cold blood by an unknown gunman.
She desperately tried to contact Roy, because she knew that he had a mobile – unlike her father, who didn’t trust technology. She rang Sean, who was still at the lap-dancing club, trying to make sense of all the carnage.
He told her that he’d just heard the news and he would be with her as soon as possible. ‘Have you spoken to Dad, Eilish?’
She started to cry again. ‘I told you, I can’t get hold of Roy. His phone just keeps ringing.’
Sean tried to reassure her. ‘All right, darling, calm down. I will be with you as soon as I can, OK?’
He ended the call, and she wiped her eyes and wondered who could possibly want her granny dead. This had to be a part of what had happened earlier, a part of something much bigger. She should have seen it coming – in fact, they all should have. She hoped that her dad found out everything from Davey, so they would at least know who and what they were dealing with.
Eilish looked down at her beautiful hardwood floor, and she once again busied herself scrubbing away the blood left by Davey Proctor. She was glad that she had left her mark on him now, especially if he had been involved in her granny’s murder too. The news had said that her grandmother and Gabriel had been killed, execution style, and they were calling it a gangland hit. They were also adding the murders in the club into the mix. Diana was, according to Sky News, ‘The Mother of Gangland Boss and King of the Club Scene Angus Davis’.
Her father would be so angry about his mother’s death being publicly disrespected like that. Her granny had been wonderful to her all her life and, even though she had heard all th
e stories about her, she didn’t care, because she had always been just her granny, and she had loved her dearly. She knew that she was like her, and she loved it when people pointed that out. It pleased her to know that she shared so much with such a dynamic woman – a woman who had been ahead of her time, and who had broken down barriers by making herself a force to be reckoned with in a world where women had been seen as no more than wives or girlfriends or mistresses.
Her granny had been a ruthless enemy, and a respected businesswoman, in the days long before fucking feminists and women’s lib. Eilish wanted to be like her in every way, and she had already started to make a name for herself in their world by emulating her and remembering everything her granny had taught her. She could be as ruthless as needed; she had proved that again today. She had served up Davey Proctor, the love of her life, the father of her unborn child, without a second’s thought, once she had realised what a fucking snide he really was. She had told her father as soon as she had known the truth, and she had waited patiently for him to come and take the piece of shit away.
She was crying again because the Sky News reporters were still outside her grandmother’s house, and she had such wonderful memories of being there. The camera was static and just showing the front of the property while the presenter talked complete bollocks. She knew that if her granny was here, she would be saying sarcastically, ‘Fiver says they will have a picture of the fucking Krays up in a minute, because they’ve got fuck-all else to talk about.’
She had always known her worth, and she had earned it honestly.
Eilish was going to do exactly the same.
Chapter One Hundred and Thirty-eight
Sean pulled up outside his sister’s flat, and the first thing he noticed was Davey Proctor’s brand-new Mercedes Sport sitting there like a beacon.
He would have to get rid of that fucking thing, sooner rather than later. It was an eye-catching motor, which of course suited a cunt like Davey Proctor right down to the ground.
He made a quick call and arranged for the offending vehicle to be taken away and left in one of the long-stay car parks at Heathrow Airport. At least that way his sister would eventually get it back. He knew that it was registered to the club, so it wasn’t as if the wanker had actually owned it.
He buzzed himself in and made his way up to his sister’s flat.
All he kept thinking was, what a fucking mad few days. And if he knew anything, they weren’t over yet.
Chapter One Hundred and Thirty-nine
A woman walking her two pugs found the bodies of Angus and Roy.
It turned out that she had driven out to the marshes, as she sometimes did, and had let the dogs off their leads. They had run off as usual, and she had been alerted that something was amiss by their incessant barking.
When she finally caught up with them she had understood the cause of their panic.
Two dead bodies.
Even as a lay person, she knew neither of them had come to what might be classed ‘a natural end’. It had taken her mind a few seconds to process what she was actually seeing.
It was bloody carnage.
She had been forced to drive over a mile just to get a signal on her mobile phone so she could finally alert the authorities.
She had been shaking like a leaf the whole time. Seeing the blood all over her pugs’ coats, because they had been investigating their find, made her feel physically sick.
The police had been wonderful though. But she regretted ever finding this place where she’d thought her dogs could run in peace and tranquillity and she could enjoy the solitude of the early morning, before she had to set out on her busy day.
Chapter One Hundred and Forty
Eilish was still in shock at the news of their father’s death.
He had been executed, the same as his mother and Gabriel. Roy had been killed with him, and Davey had been found in the boot of the car, though it seemed that he had bled to death.
How could such a huge catastrophe have happened to them in such a short space of time? That they had all been executed so ruthlessly was bad enough, but knowing that whoever had been behind it had planned it down to the last detail frightened Eilish. She was convinced that she and Sean would be next. Whoever had been behind this was determined to make sure that the Davis family were completely wiped out.
Sean seemed to believe that his grandmother and his father had been taken out because of their strong ties to Abad and his businesses. As he kept trying to convince her, if anything was going to happen to them, it would have happened at the same time as it had to everyone else.
He argued that bringing in Hamid Fazilla had been the last straw for someone interested in their business, because the people concerned had obviously wanted Abad’s contacts and access, and it had looked like he was giving them to someone else. Whoever these fuckers were – and he vowed to his sister that he would find them – they were just cleaning house. And in reality, Angus would have done exactly the same in their position.
Now that Diana and Angus Davis were out of the way, along with poor Abad and everyone else, they didn’t need to come after anyone else in the family. Eilish could see his logic, but she still had a feeling that something didn’t add up. As Diana always said to her, people only did to you what you let them.
The police had offered her a ‘detail’, as they called it, meaning two PCs in a panda car sitting outside her flat. She had refused it with the scorn it deserved. She had already engaged her own security, and she felt much safer knowing that they were watching her back as opposed to two fucking plods. She had more faith in the fucking journalists who were camped out like eco warriors and weren’t half as well dressed.
She had to sit and wait and think things through, until everything started to make sense.
Chapter One Hundred and Forty-one
As she drove through the gates of her childhood home, Eilish felt the usual feeling of depression wash over her. But she had to see her mother, there was no excuse not to. At the end of the day, Lorna had been married to her father for a long time.
They still couldn’t bury anyone because of the ongoing inquiries, and that annoyed her. She couldn’t bear to think of her flesh and blood lying in a mortuary, like sides of fucking beef, until the police in their infinite wisdom allowed their carcasses to be released. The only ray of light right now was that it looked like Mariah might pull through, though she wasn’t talking yet.
She couldn’t help but see the irony of her mother’s security men that her father had arranged, not just because he was a Face but because his wife was a fucking grade-A lunatic. If only they had understood, as kids, that the things she had told them and expected from them had been the ramblings of a deranged mind. She knew that her father and grandmother had always protected them when Lorna had been on her more manic episodes, and that was when they had been grateful for the company of their grandmother and the stability she had given them.
Lorna came out of the front door and waited on the drive for her daughter to walk over to her.
‘Hi, Mum. How are you feeling?’ Eilish attempted a smile but she felt heartbroken.
Lorna, though, grinned widely – that manic grin that told anyone who knew her well that she was teetering once more on the edges of madness.
‘I’m good, Eilish, never felt better.’
Eilish closed her eyes and took a few deep breaths to stem her anger and the retort she wanted to give. She followed her mother into the house and, in the kitchen, she accepted a glass of white wine. She knew it was never a good sign when her mother drank. It meant she was off her exercise and diet regime, and that meant that she wasn’t taking her meds. It was a vicious circle.
When she thought now of how Lorna had made them all run for hours around their land, or made them cram for exams until they were ready to drop, she felt such anger and resentment – and not just at her mother but also her father, because he should have done something about it, a lot sooner than he had. He shou
ld have listened to his mother, who had tried to be a constant in her grandchildren’s lives. Even though she had been insulted and pushed away by Lorna, she had just kept in there, no matter what, so that she could still see them all.
She wondered why Diana hadn’t just outed the fucker and been done with it. After all, no one could have blamed her. She knew that her father loved her mother, and that he loved them all too. Unfortunately, that had not been enough in the long run. The damage had been done, and he was as much to blame as her mother – if not more, if you listened to Sean.
Eilish sipped her wine elegantly. ‘We need to start thinking about the funerals, Mum.’
Lorna nodded. ‘If you say so, love.’
Eilish forced a smile she didn’t think she had in her. ‘Well, do you want to come with me and Sean to choose the coffins and plan the services?’
Lorna sipped her wine quickly. In reality, she was gulping it, and they both knew that. But like so much in this family, no one would say it out loud. Lorna was staring out over the gardens and Eilish could see she was already far away from her and reality.
‘Mum, did you hear me?’
Lorna put her wine glass down. ‘To be totally honest, Eilish, I think you and Sean should be in charge of that. Because, you know me, I’ll get it all wrong.’
‘It’s your husband’s funeral, Mum. Surely you must want to be a part of that? You were together for years, and you loved each other so much.’
Lorna looked at her daughter and she said honestly, ‘Truthfully, Eilish, I don’t know what you want from me. Angus is dead and that’s sad, I know, but you also know that I’m not capable of arranging funerals and things like that. I really don’t care, love. I don’t care about anything any more. You do it with Sean and send a car, and I will go. I promise I will pay my final respects. But truth be told, I feel nothing, darling. There was a time when I would have killed for that man, but that was long ago.’
