No Escape

by Arlene Hunt

Genres: Crime Fiction

Synopsis

'Irish crime writing at its best' John Connolly

BREAKING FREE ONCE WAS LUCKY. THIS TIME, THERE MAY BE NO ESCAPE...

Leo Kennedy was always meant to enter the family business, where deals are made in dark corners and crossing the wrong people can get you killed. But, years ago, he surprised everyone by leaving it all behind and choosing a life on the straight and narrow - at a heavy cost.

Now, he's back in Dublin to receive a mysterious inheritance, and trying to ignore the increasingly loud hum of gang violence in the city.

Meanwhile, as tensions escalate between Leo's toxic family and rival gang the Wards, trafficked sisters Yulia and Celestine are desperately trying to free themselves from Duchy Ward's violent clutches.

Leo immerses himself in plans to open a restaurant and turn his life around once more, failing to notice the signs that his return is all part of a trap set by his father to bring him back into the fold. And this time, there may be no escape...

'Gripping from the start ... from one of Ireland's most compelling crime writers' Brian McGilloway

'An utterly gripping, gritty, addictive page-turner ... I couldn't put it down' Louise Phillips

Release date: February 6, 2020

Publisher: Hachette Books Ireland

Print pages: 352

Sample

In an almost deserted car park fifty-six miles east of Cherbourg, France, a battered green van with a long wheelbase pulled in and drew alongside a Scania lorry with Irish registration plates. The driver of the van, a swarthy man with a bad complexion, got out, his movements rocking the van on threadbare tyres. He rubbed his back, scratched a buttock and lit a foul-smelling cigarillo with a wooden match.

The driver of the lorry also got out. He was in his early fifties, short, with a wiry build and a thin, pinched face that looked fox-like from a certain angle. His name was Murray.

The van driver shook Murray’s hands, his breath pluming on the frigid air as he muttered a greeting in broken, halting English. He took a bulky Manila envelope from the dash of the van and stood to one side smoking while Murray checked the contents.

‘This it?’ Murray said, frowning. ‘I thought I was collecting twenty.’

The van driver shrugged. ‘This we got.’

Murray shook his head, resealed the envelope and climbed up into the cabin. He stowed it in the lockbox under the sleeping platform and jumped back down. ‘Right, let’s go.’

The van driver unlocked the rear door and barked an order. Murray stood a little way back, watching, as the six women and eight men climbed out and stood shivering on freezing tarmac.

Some carried rucksacks, some black plastic bags tied with elastic bands. The rest had little more than the clothes on their backs. Some of them would understand English, the majority, Murray knew, would not, not that it mattered.

Mixed bag, he thought sourly, sizing them up with a practised eye. Mostly Middle-Eastern, though not all. He squinted closely at the women and knew Arthur would bitch and moan about the selection. Not his problem, though, was it? At the end of the day his job was to get them into the country undetected, nothing more, nothing less. If Arthur had any objections he could do the next run himself, see how he fared.

He spat to one side, glanced at his watch, noted the time and motioned to the group to follow him to the rear of the lorry as the van rattled out of the car park and on into the night.

‘English?’ he asked.

A woman wearing a denim jacket with a fur-trimmed hood raised her hand slowly.

‘Right,’ Murray said. ‘Tell them to take a piss now if they need to go. Once they’re on board they stay put until we reach where we’re going, got all that?’

The woman rattled off what he’d told her in her own language. The men understood immediately what was required of them and moved around to the other side of the lorry, but some of the women remained huddled together looking around them, confused and a little frightened.

Murray sighed. ‘Jesus … there’s some bushes over there if you’re feeling delicate.’ He pointed, then clapped his hands. ‘Move it!’

When everyone was done he unlocked the rear doors of the lorry. The trailer was filled with fridges and washing machines in cardboard boxes, stacked to the roof. The bottom fridge on the right was a shell and easy to slide out, revealing a gap in the stacks that led to the front of the trailer. One by one, fourteen fully grown adults crawled through until they reached a space so tight there was barely room to stand, let alone sit. Murray came up the rear, carrying a torch in his mouth and a small drill in his right hand.

‘Move in, move in, tighter.’

The group pressed tighter. He heard muttering and assumed the woman was relaying his words. A man he could not see retorted angrily.

‘What did he say?’

‘He say there is no room.’

‘Yeah, well tell him this isn’t fucking Shangri-La!’

Murray shoved the last person in, slid the wooden partition into place and drilled it shut, leaving them in pitch dark. He rapped on the wood with his knuckles.

‘Tell them to be quiet, okay? Everyone needs to stay quiet.’

By the time the lorry rolled up the gangplank and onto the ferry some hours later, several of the fourteen had been sick and one woman had fainted from exhaustion and the unbearable heat.

Among the women were two sisters, one a teenager, the other a little older. The older girl was called Yulia. Yulia had stolen money and sold everything she owned to finance this journey, fleeing a past littered with violence and abuse. The younger girl, her sister, was called Celestine. She was mute.

Yulia hugged Celestine tight and whispered futures for them, ones full of hope and dignity. This was a test, she told Celestine, trying not to breathe the rancid air too deeply, a final hurdle before freedom.

‘Don’t be afraid,’ Yulia said, stroking Celestine’s hair. ‘Everything is going to be all right. We will find our aunt, and we will work hard and stay out of trouble. You’ll see, Celestine, I promised to take care of you and I will. No one will hurt us ever again.’

But she was wrong.

So very wrong.

Twenty-three hours later the same lorry rattled across a cattle grid and drove into a walled courtyard behind a single-storey stone farmhouse. The farmhouse was old and had stood for over two hundred years a quarter of a mile back from a secondary road that saw little traffic.

It had thick walls, small windows, a steeply pitched roof and two chimney stacks. From the outside it looked much the same as it had always done, but inside it had been modernised with no expense spared.

Francis ‘Stonewall’ McCabe watched the lorry on camera from inside the farmhouse. He was forty-five years old, massively built with broad, sloping shoulders and no real neck to speak of. In his bare feet he stood shy of six feet four, his hair was black/brown, thick and worn longer than was considered fashionable. His eyes were so dark in certain light they appeared black, evidence of the Spanish blood that ran through his veins from his maternal side.

He waited until Murray reversed the lorry into a huge concrete shed before he pushed back his chair. Immediately two dogs got to their feet.

They were Caucasian shepherds, bred to protect flocks of sheep from wolf and bear attack on high mountain terrains; intense creatures, loyal, territorial, fearsome. Stonewall doubted there would be any trouble with the delivery, but he was not a man who liked to leave things to chance. The very presence of the dogs often rendered even the most vociferous objectors silent.

He opened the back door as Rally, Murray’s nephew, drove up in a Renault Trafic van with Duchy Ward in the passenger seat. The men got out, nodded to Stonewall and followed him across the yard into the shed.

‘Where’s Arthur?’ Duchy asked, looking around.

Stonewall pulled the huge door shut. ‘Your guess is as good as mine.’

A muscle bunched in Duchy’s jaw. ‘He should be here, taking care of business.’

Stonewall glanced at Murray, who got the message and unlocked the trailer. He crawled through and unscrewed the partition. Minutes later the ‘cargo’ emerged, blinking into the light. Stonewall looked them over. They were a sorry sight – soiled and stinking, dehydrated and weak.

‘Any of them speak English?’

‘The one with the hood,’ Murray said. ‘Maybe some of the others.’

‘Tell them to hand over their phones.’

Murray told the woman with the hood and she translated to the group. Several of the men started talking angrily and waving their hands.

‘Voz!’ Stonewall snapped, and the dogs began to bark. The men fell silent, cowed.

‘Par!’ Stonewall said. The dogs stopped.

The display ended the discussion. Rally went around with a plastic bag and collected phones and a laptop. He handed the bag to Stonewall, who carried it to a metal cabinet on the far side of the shed and put it inside.

‘I thought there was supposed to be twenty,’ Duchy said. ‘Where’s the rest?’

Murray shrugged. ‘This was all that turned up.’

‘Fourteen ain’t twenty.’

‘I can count, Duchy, same as you,’ Murray said, starting to feel hard done by. ‘I collected what was there.’

Stonewall walked around the group, inspecting them like they were cattle at a mart, calculating. He singled out a blonde, who kept her eyes downcast, put his finger under her chin to lift her head. The kid standing next to her bared her teeth and growled.

Stonewall laughed. ‘Relax, little wolf, I’m not going to hurt her.’ He touched the blonde’s face again. She had incredible green eyes and exquisite bone structure: cleaned up, she’d be worth more to them than the rest combined.

‘I’ll take this one to Lakeside,’ he said.

‘They should go for auction, the lot,’ Duchy said.

‘Arthur likes to take the pick of the litter.’

‘Arthur ain’t here, though, is he?’

‘But I am.’ Stonewall turned and looked at him, his voice carrying an edge. ‘I’m taking this girl.’

Duchy took a step towards him. Instantly the dogs growled.

‘If you have a problem,’ Stonewall said, calm as you like, ‘take it up with your brother.’

Duchy looked at the dogs, raised his hands and stepped backwards, a tight little smile on his lips. ‘No, you’re quite right, big man. No need for hostilities, is there?’

‘All right.’ Murray clapped his hands. ‘You lot come with me, there’s a shower and a toilet this way. If you have clean clothes you should change into them. Come on, let’s get a move on.’

Stonewall reached for the blonde. Immediately she backed away, babbling ninety to the dozen. He glanced towards the woman with the hood. ‘What is she cackling on about?’

‘They are two.’

‘Two what?’

‘They are sisters, they want …’ she clasped her hands together ‘… be together.’

Stonewall looked at the younger girl. She was fourteen, fifteen maybe? Heavy-set, with acne and dull sludge-coloured eyes that were watching him like a hawk.

‘No,’ he said. ‘She stays here.’

The woman spoke rapidly to Yulia, who if anything became more frantic as Stonewall reached for her again. His fingers had barely brushed the fabric of her coat when the younger girl leaped at him, snarling and clawing.

Stonewall slapped her across the side of the head with an open hand. It was a hard, stinging blow and it all but flattened her. ‘Take care of this,’ he told Murray.

‘On it.’

Yulia tried to keep hold of her sister. Stonewall, who had little patience for hysterics, grabbed the straps of her backpack and lifted her clean off her feet. He wrapped his arms around her waist and carried her to the door, kicking and screaming, with the dogs trotting at his heels. Rally opened it for him and he left.

‘All right,’ Murray said. ‘Let’s get—’

The girl was on her feet and running after Stonewall. Murray grabbed her and grunted in surprise as she smashed an elbow into this chest. Grimly he held on, but small as she was, she was like an animal, swinging her fists wildly. Murray managed to grab her wrists, but she sank her teeth into his left hand and clamped down hard.

‘Rally!’

His nephew ran back.

‘Grab her legs.’

Rally grappled with the girl’s legs, getting several kicks for his trouble. He yanked them out from under her, throwing her onto the ground. Between them they managed to wrestle her onto her front and twist her arms behind her back.

‘Get the tape.’

Rally ran to the workbench and returned with a roll of duct tape. They fastened her hands, her feet, and finally Murray slapped a piece of tape over her mouth, taking care to avoid her snapping teeth.

‘You’re bleeding,’ Rally said, nodding to his arm.

‘You think?’ Murray said. ‘She bit me!’

‘Yeah?’ Rally looked a little closer. ‘You’ll need to disinfect that. Did you know the human mouth is full of microbes and bacteria and all kinds of weird shit?’ He looked absurdly proud of himself. ‘Scientific fact, I read it.’

‘Where?’

‘Scientific journal of science,’ Rally said, deadpan.

Murray glared. Somedays he wished he had never agreed to work for his uncle, Malachy Ward: somedays he wished he’d had the foresight to turn down the offer of easy money; because it wasn’t easy, was it? There was nothing easy about this life, least not for the likes of him.

He dug his knee into the wriggling girl’s spine until she stopped moving.

No, he thought, dragging her to her feet, there was nothing easy about this at all.

Mariposa Ward was playing a hand of patience in her office when she heard a car driving up the service road to the rear of Lakeside, the private members’ club she ran with her husband, Arthur Ward.

She got up, looked out the window, left the office and went to the top of the stairs where she leaned over the balcony. ‘Stefan?’

She heard scuffling from somewhere below and, moments later, Stefan, the mansion manager, wandered into view with a tea-towel draped over his shoulder. He was a small man, with loose jowls and perpetually watery eyes. He wore one of several toupees that fooled nobody, and if anyone were to enquire, he claimed he was fifty-five; and he had been, once.

‘You bellowed?’

‘Francis is pulling up round the back. Let him in, will you?’

‘What did your last servant die of?’

‘I stabbed him in the neck for giving me cheek.’

‘It was a merciful release in that case.’

Mariposa laughed and went back to her office, changed quickly from her dressing gown into a bright silk kimono and reapplied her lipstick. She was older than her brother by less than a year. Like Francis – she refused point blank to call him Stonewall – she was tall, with masses of coarse dark air she dyed a shade darker still. She had a long face, with dark eyes set above a slightly hooked nose. She tilted her head back. She was still a handsome woman, she thought, patting her hair, in the right light, under the right circumstances.

She hurried downstairs and found Francis towering over Stefan, with a tiny blonde wearing a green backpack standing by his side. The girl was trembling and had clearly been crying. Mariposa recognised the look: fresh meat.

‘Francis!’ She stood on tiptoe and kissed his stubbly cheek. ‘Where have you been hiding? I haven’t seen you for weeks.’

‘I’ve been around, here and there.’

She glanced at the woman, smiling. It was not a nice smile; Mariposa had many qualities, but she had never managed to pull off nice. ‘And who do we have here?’

‘This is Yulia. She arrived earlier today.’

‘Does she speak English?’

‘A little.’

‘Yulia, such a pretty name.’ She caught the sour whiff of Yulia’s clothes and wrinkled her nose. ‘Welcome to Lakeside, my name is Mariposa.’

Yulia stared at her, tearfully.

‘Well, you must be exhausted from your travels. Stefan, why don’t you show Yulia upstairs, help her get settled in and I’ll be right behind you. Pop her in with Jade, maybe.’

She waited until Stefan had hustled Yulia away before she turned her attention back to her brother. ‘What’s up with her?’

‘There was a kid with her, I had to split them up.’

Mariposa pressed her hand to her chest. ‘A baby?’

Stonewall shook his head. ‘Younger sister.’

‘Oh.’ Mariposa waved her hand, losing interest immediately. ‘Come have a drink.’

‘It’s three o’clock in the afternoon.’

‘Exactly, so it’s bound to be cocktail hour somewhere.’

She led him to the lounge and threw open the doors. It was dark inside, the heavy velvet drapes pulled against the fading daylight, and traces of cigar smoke still lingered in the air from the night before. Mariposa switched on the lamps behind the bar and waved her hands at the mirrored shelves. ‘Name your poison.’

‘I’ll have a beer.’

Stonewall removed his coat and sat down on a stool. Mariposa plucked a bottle of Heineken from a fridge beneath the counter, opened it and set it on the bar before him. Next, she dropped a square cube of ice into a wine glass, added a generous helping of gin and a dash of lime juice.

‘Salut,’ Stonewall said.

‘Salut.’

Mariposa took a hefty gulp and coughed. She had been a bit heavy-handed with the gin. She put the glass down and leaned both hands on the counter, a wolfish grin on her scarlet lips. ‘So,’ she said. ‘Any gossip?’

‘Gossip?’

‘Yes, Francis, news. How are things out there in the great beyond?’

‘Same as it ever was.’

She narrowed her eyes. Honestly, sometimes it was like pulling teeth. ‘How is Duchy settling back into civilian life?’

Stonewall tilted his head backwards to look at her. ‘Like you care.’

‘I never said I cared.’

‘Yeah, I know, but you should have gone to his welcome home party. People noticed you weren’t there. He noticed you weren’t there.’

‘So?’ Mariposa took another sip, smaller this time. ‘I’m supposed to forget everything he’s said about me over the years?’ she said sourly, feeling a spark of indignation.

Like his younger brother Arthur, Duchy had been a career criminal from the time he was old enough to walk. His career stalled when the van he was driving broke down outside Birmingham, puttering to a smoking stop on the hard shoulder of the A38. Unfortunately for Duchy it was stuffed full of illegal Chinese immigrants at the time, two of them heavily pregnant. The judge, a son of second-generation immigrants himself, took one look at the police photographs and tossed the book squarely at his head so Duchy spent eight of a fourteen-year sentence as a guest of HM Prison Birmingham, during which time he’d managed to get himself stabbed in the guts and almost died.

Now he was back on Irish soil, with a mousy English wife called Cally, who, Mariposa heard, had an arse so wide you could land a helicopter on it.

‘Duchy reckons he’s a changed man,’ Stonewall said. ‘He told everyone at the party a priest was called to give him last rites in prison – he reckons it’s what saved his life.’

Mariposa patted her pockets, located her cigarette case, snapped it open and put one between her teeth. She lit it and inhaled the smoke as deeply as her lungs allowed before she spoke again. ‘Bollocks,’ she said. ‘Francis, come on, you don’t believe any of that dog and pony show, do you? Duchy bloody Ward? The man’s an out-and-out thug.’

Stonewall shrugged and sipped his beer.

‘What about you?’

‘What about me?’

‘Christ, Francis, it’s a simple enough question.’

Her brother put the beer down and studied his massive hands. The backs were hopscotched with scars and old puckered injuries, long faded, never forgotten.

‘Francis?’

‘I don’t know,’ he said after an extended silence. ‘Some days I’m okay.’

‘And others?’

‘Not as much.’ He looked at her. ‘I’ve been thinking maybe I should go see Belle?’

‘Belle?’ Mariposa was surprised. Belle was their grandfather’s sister, a wizened old crone living in squalor on the outskirts of the city. ‘What for?’

‘She might be able to do something about the dreams. Chester used to say she had powers.’

‘Chester was a drunk and she’s a fraud, Francis. I’d rather eat glass than spend an afternoon with that old bag.’

‘Maybe you’re right.’ Stonewall stood up. ‘I got to go. Tell Arthur I said hello.’

‘Tell him yourself. You see him more than I do these days,’ Mariposa said, tapping her nails against the side of her glass.

Stonewall put on his coat and left.

Mariposa drained her drink. Belle, Christ, what was he thinking? People said time heals all wounds, but not for Mariposa; for Mariposa time was fertile ground for all manner of hatred and resentment.

She left the glass on the counter and went upstairs to the third floor. Stefan had put the girl in a room at the end of the hall, next to the linen closet. She was sitting on the bed, with her hands in her lap, her bag open on the floor by her feet.

‘All right?’ Mariposa asked Stefan, who shrugged.

‘Clothes, an iPod, nothing else.’

‘Yulia, is it?’ Mariposa said. ‘We need to get a few things straight here, all right? This is a private members’ club – that means I set the rules and you follow them. You work for me now, all right?’

‘Please … Celestine?’

‘Her sister,’ Stefan said. ‘She keeps asking about her sister.’

‘Oh, don’t worry about her, she’s … she’s going to work same as you. Well, not the same as you but—’

Yulia sprang off the bed and made a break for the door. Mariposa reacted fast; she caught her by her hair and swung her into the wall so hard she crumpled onto the floor.

‘Listen to me, sweetheart,’ Mariposa said. ‘I’m a very nice lady and this is a very nice place. If you play by the rules you can make some good money here. If you don’t play by the rules, well, there are other places I can send you, places that don’t understand the true value of a pretty face.’

She squatted over the girl and grabbed her face, her blood-red nails digging into the girl’s skin. Yulia’s terrified eyes met her own.

‘You’re mine now, you understand? You’re my property.’ The grip tightened. ‘I treat my property well, I look after it. You behave yourself, you earn your keep and you’ll earn your freedom. You’ll even get to see that sister of yours from time to time. Think of this as an opportunity and behave yourself. You don’t want me as an enemy, my girl, best keep that in mind.’

She patted Yulia on the cheek, stood up and left the room.

Stefan helped Yulia to her feet and tutted when he saw marks on her skin. She had such a pretty face, he’d hate to see it bruised.

‘Come on, lovey,’ he said. ‘Let’s go get you cleaned up. What size do you think you are? A six? Come on, come with Stefan and let’s see what we have.’

‘I’m leaving you.’

Leo Kennedy lifted his head from the pillow and squinted at the Amy-shaped shadow standing in the door of their bedroom. She was dressed, fully dressed he noted, and wearing an expression he had recently grown accustomed to, one of mild disdain with a hint of despair.

Not a good look for a fiancée.

‘What?’

‘I’m leaving you, Leo, it’s over.’ She put her hands on her hips. ’I can’t do this anymore.’

Under normal circumstances, a man hearing this combination of words might react by, say, getting . . .