Revenge
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Synopsis
BE SURE YOUR SINS WILL FIND YOU OUT.
Michael Flynn is untouchable in a world of power, money and violence. He fights for what he wants and he takes it, whatever the cost. He learns the rules of the Life from the best and when his mentor, legendary Face Patrick Costello, is taken out, no one questions that Michael Flynn is his natural successor. For Michael, loyalty - and crime - pay.
Michael Flynn rises to heights beyond anything the criminal underworld has seen. He owns everyone and he rules his empire with an even but fierce hand. No one would dare challenge him.
Then the unthinkable happens.
Perhaps Michael Flynn is not so untouchable after all, and he must learn that...
WITHOUT THE SHEDDING OF BLOOD THERE CAN BE NO FORGIVENESS OF SINS.
Release date: October 24, 2013
Publisher: Headline
Print pages: 512
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Revenge
Martina Cole
Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
About the Author
Praise for Martina Cole
Also by Martina Cole
About the Book
Dedication
Prologue
Book One
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Book Two
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter Forty-Six
Chapter Forty-Seven
Chapter Forty-Eight
Chapter Forty-Nine
Chapter Fifty
Chapter Fifty-One
Chapter Fifty-Two
Chapter Fifty-Three
Chapter Fifty-Four
Chapter Fifty-Five
Chapter Fifty-Six
Chapter Fifty-Seven
Chapter Fifty-Eight
Chapter Fifty-Nine
Chapter Sixty
Chapter Sixty-One
Chapter Sixty-Two
Chapter Sixty-Three
Chapter Sixty-Four
Chapter Sixty-Five
Chapter Sixty-Six
Chapter Sixty-Seven
Book Three
Chapter Sixty-Eight
Chapter Sixty-Nine
Chapter Seventy
Chapter Seventy-One
Chapter Seventy-Two
Chapter Seventy-Three
Chapter Seventy-Four
Chapter Seventy-Five
Chapter Seventy-Six
Chapter Seventy-Seven
Chapter Seventy-Eight
Chapter Seventy-Nine
Chapter Eighty
Chapter Eighty-One
Chapter Eighty-Two
Chapter Eighty-Three
Chapter Eighty-Four
Chapter Eighty-Five
Chapter Eighty-Six
Chapter Eighty-Seven
Chapter Eighty-Eight
Chapter Eighty-Nine
Chapter Ninety
Chapter Ninety-One
Book Four
Chapter Ninety-Two
Chapter Ninety-Three
Chapter Ninety-Four
Chapter Ninety-Five
Chapter Ninety-Six
Chapter Ninety-Seven
Chapter Ninety-Eight
Chapter Ninety-Nine
Chapter One Hundred
Chapter One Hundred and One
Chapter One Hundred and Two
Chapter One Hundred and Three
Chapter One Hundred and Four
Chapter One Hundred and Five
Chapter One Hundred and Six
Chapter One Hundred and Seven
Chapter One Hundred and Eight
Chapter One Hundred and Nine
Chapter One Hundred and Ten
Chapter One Hundred and Eleven
Chapter One Hundred and Twelve
Chapter One Hundred and Thirteen
Chapter One Hundred and Fourteen
Chapter One Hundred and Fifteen
Chapter One Hundred and Sixteen
Chapter One Hundred and Seventeen
Chapter One Hundred and Eighteen
Chapter One Hundred and Nineteen
Chapter One Hundred and Twenty
Chapter One Hundred and Twenty-One
Chapter One Hundred and Twenty-Two
Chapter One Hundred and Twenty-Three
Chapter One Hundred and Twenty-Four
Chapter One Hundred and Twenty-Five
Chapter One Hundred and Twenty-Six
Chapter One Hundred and Twenty-Seven
Chapter One Hundred and Twenty-Eight
Chapter One Hundred and Twenty-Nine
Chapter One Hundred and Thirty
Chapter One Hundred and Thirty-One
Chapter One Hundred and Thirty-Two
Chapter One Hundred and Thirty-Three
Chapter One Hundred and Thirty-Four
Chapter One Hundred and Thirty-Five
Chapter One Hundred and Thirty-Six
Chapter One Hundred and Thirty-Seven
Chapter One Hundred and Thirty-Eight
Chapter One Hundred and Thirty-Nine
Chapter One Hundred and Forty
Epilogue
Chapter One Hundred and Forty-One
Chapter One Hundred and Forty-Two
Read an extract from GET EVEN
God be merciful to me a sinner.
Luke 18:13
Sharon was drinking a glass of wine and wondering how her wonderful, charmed life had been reduced to this. She had once been the envy of all her friends. But the reality could not have been more different to the illusion.
She closed her eyes and pictured her first husband, Lenny Scott, in her mind’s eye. She had started going out with him at thirteen and married him at seventeen, much to her parents’ chagrin. But they had been so happy together – they had had two sons and that had cemented their relationship.
Then he had been brutally murdered, found tortured and battered to death one night – and that was it.
That same night she had also uncovered his secret – the secret he had kept from her and everyone around him for so many years. A secret that would have caused untold aggravation and upset in the world of Faces, affecting her boys’ lives into the bargain, if it had ever been revealed.
But what good had keeping the secret done them really? Today she had visited her sons in prison, and they had acted like being there was just a game. They had killed someone and they thought it was funny. How had she allowed that to happen? How had she not realised that they were broken and turning into fucking thugs? Because that was all they were. They weren’t even true Faces; they had just beaten a man to death for no reason. She couldn’t believe that her two boys, who she had had such hopes for, could have turned out so wrong.
She swallowed down her tears, because tears were useless. Life was shite, really. No matter how great you thought it was, it could always creep up and bite you on the arse when you least expected it. Well, fuck it! She had never known the reason behind her Lenny’s death. She had lived all these years in ignorance – until tonight the one man left in her life that she trusted had told her the truth. And now there was no going back.
She gulped at her glass of wine. She needed the alcohol to get through this. Tonight she was going to right some wrongs. No matter what danger it might bring to her door, there was no stopping what was about to happen.
Young Lenny Scott and his little brother, Liam, were laughing raucously together. They were a handful, as the POs would say – protected, not just by their father’s name, but by the man who had become their stepfather; the boys knew this as well as the POs did. They more or less had a free pass – it was galling, but it was the truth. Being on remand for the first time was an adventure, but one of the older prison officers, Eric Marks, could tell from experience that they were not as hard as they thought they were.
The younger one was not taking to prison life quite as easily as his older brother. Liam Scott was not cut out for the regime prison insisted on: slopping out, eating at set times, early fucking nights. Unlike his older brother, Lenny, he appeared to be losing interest in this ‘adventure’ on an hourly basis. The fact that their mother had cunted them into the ground in front of everyone on a visit earlier that day had not helped matters either. Now they were being laughed at – just not to their faces. They might be in for murder, but they had clout and that could guarantee them a short sentence. It was such a waste, because they were clever, handsome, well-educated lads, and with a few quid behind them. Shame they didn’t think about that – and their mother who had buried their father after he had been killed. Eric would lay money that that horror had left its mark on her, and probably on those lads as well.
He sighed heavily. Twenty years in this job and he was still continually disappointed in Mother Nature. Murderers, he had decided early on in his career, were a breed apart. Some of them had good reason, or were provoked, but he still saw so many lives ruined thanks to a drunken fight or a drugged confrontation that had got out of hand. And then there were the young Lennys and Liams of the world who simply thought it was all a joke.
One thing Eric would give their mother – she, at least, knew that what they had done was wrong and she had told them as much that afternoon in the visiting room. Maybe, just maybe, there was hope for these lads yet. Not that he would hold his breath, of course.
Sharon’s daughter, Kathy, was frightened and ashamed. Everything had blown up in her face, and she finally realised the seriousness of what she had done – and what she had caused.
She felt the tears coming again, hot and wet. She had always been a good crier, and normally that was enough to make her dad give her what she wanted. But not tonight. Tonight she had known what it was to go too far; her mum and dad were not going to make it all right again as they normally did when she fucked up. This time her actions could cause actual murder. Worst of all, her father would never look at her in the same way again. She had let him down badly, and her mum. Her dad had always given in to her – it had been her mum who had been the bad bastard, telling her a big resounding ‘no’ when she didn’t think she deserved or had earned whatever it was Kathy decided she wanted. Now she saw that all these years her mum had been trying to look out for her; Kathy had hated her for that when Sharon had simply been trying to help her daughter to help herself.
Kathy picked up her mobile and tried the number again, but there was no answer. She threw the phone at the wall in frustration. It was so unfair. Well, fuck him! He was always ignoring her calls so let him deal with her father himself. After all, that’s what she’d had to do.
Reggie Dornan was so angry he felt that he could take on Man Mountain Dean with one hand tied behind his back and come out on top. He had been mugged off, betrayed in the worst possible way, and there was no chance he was taking this lying down. Tonight was the end. And please God in His heaven it all worked out because that would finally make him feel that he had seen through his promise to look after Lenny Scott’s family. He owed Sharon because he had broken her heart once. Oh, he owed her fucking big time. He would do everything in his power to make sure that Lenny Scott would be remembered. And Reggie Dornan always paid his debts.
Sharon held Kathy in her arms but she was still furious with her; her daughter was a spoiled brat and that needed to be addressed.
‘I am so sorry, Mummy. Please believe me. I am so very sorry.’
Sharon looked down at her beautiful face. Kathy was just like her father: what she wanted she took, no matter who got hurt or who might have to pay the price for her enjoyment.
‘You’re not really sorry, Kath! You are just sorry it all fell out of bed.’
She pushed her daughter away from her and left her crying bitter tears. It amazed Sharon how dispassionate she could feel at her daughter’s obvious distress. But, then, was it really surprising after what she had heard this night? Her daughter’s predicament was nothing to her right now. Maybe tomorrow, if it all worked out, she would have the time and energy to try and help her out of the corner Kathy had finally painted herself into. But now she had other things on her mind.
Downstairs, Sharon looked around her beautiful home – the house she had furnished and decorated with such love and care. It was as if the place was mocking her, making her see that material objects meant fuck-all in the grand scheme. Oh, hindsight was a fucking wonderful thing. She’d had only two men in her life: one had been murdered and the other . . . Well, that remained to be seen. As her old mum used to say, where women were concerned, they never got mad if they were clever – they went one better and they got even.
When the call finally came she felt such relief that she could have wept. After all these years, she was finally in control of her own life. She only hoped it wasn’t too late. One thing she did know for sure was that she was going to see this through to the bitter end. It was all she could do for herself and her children. She wanted payback for what had been done to her and hers.
She felt a calmness wash over her. This was what she had been waiting for. She would do what needed to be done – no matter the consequences.
2012
‘Hello! Are you not listening to me? My little girl has been missing for three fucking days. I think that might be worth your attention, don’t you?’
Michael Flynn was so angry he was almost spitting his words down the phone. Over six feet tall and with a heavy build he was a big man and, as everyone in the room knew, he was more than capable of great violence. He was paying them for their expertise, which they currently seemed to be lacking in. In fact, they were irritating the arse off him with their stupidity.
‘Her mother is giving me serious grief, and that alone is a fucking bugbear. I need to know where she is, people! So I think you lot had better get me the information I need before I start to think you’re all mugging me off. I know she isn’t exactly what you might call a wilting fucking violet and, believe me, when I locate her I will personally launch her into outer space for this. But I want her found. You are the Filth – this is what you fucking do! You locate errant fuckers. So you had better start doing it quickly. I am not a man who is known for his patience, and I have a very low threshold for idiocy.’ He slammed down the telephone.
Jamie Gore listened to his boss rant at the policemen in his employ. Everyone knew that Jessie Flynn, Michael Flynn’s daughter, was about as dependable as a Nigerian marriage broker; therefore, she held no importance whatsoever to anyone, especially to the police. She could get away with anything – from possession of any substance, including a bomb, should she ever purchase one, and that was all thanks to her father’s influence. He’d paid the Old Bill handsomely to ignore her over the years; now suddenly he wanted them to make her a priority? Bit of a turnaround there. He spoke up. ‘Look, Michael, with all due respect, you know your daughter as well as we do, she could be fucking anywhere. She goes on the missing list regularly . . .’
Michael Flynn was dark-haired and dark-skinned, he had the Irish gypsy in him there was no doubt about that. He was a handsome fuck, and his good looks were part and parcel of his persona. Both men and women were attracted to him, and he had always used that to his advantage. His startling blue eyes were now trained on Jamie Gore, and the man felt the first prickle of uneasiness at the intensity of his gaze.
‘You having a fucking laugh, Jamie? You think I brought you lot here for nothing? My old woman is like a fucking lunatic! My little Jessie is on the missing list! No one, and I mean no one, has seen her for three fucking days! I know she is a lazy mare, I know she lives on her own fucking time-zone, and I know she is the biggest pain in the rectum since records began. But she is still my baby girl. So my advice would be to fucking well find her! Track her down, let me know where she is so I can deliver her back to her mother and then we can go home.’
Michael looked around the room, and he knew that every bloke in there was thinking the same thing: Jessie Flynn was probably tucked up in bed with another lowlife, another fucking no-mark she had picked up on her travels. She was a trollop of the first water, having been sleeping with the enemy since she was fourteen years old. He wondered how many of his workforce had serviced her at one time or another. She was a beautiful-looking girl, with the morals of a fucking alley cat. It didn’t matter – he still wanted to know where she was. More to the point, her mother needed to know. Josephine was deeply concerned for her daughter’s whereabouts.
Jessie was not a girl you could lose sleep worrying about all the time – she stumbled from one disaster to the next (usually the disaster was a man), but she always seemed to come out on top. He made sure of that. She came home at some point and then her mum would be so pleased to see her there would be no retribution of any kind. That was the trouble. Michael personally believed that his daughter needed a fucking good slap, but his wife would never agree. If Jessie murdered the neighbours with an axe and it was caught on CCTV, his wife would say, ‘Well, they must have upset her.’ Jessie could do no wrong in her eyes.
He too had indulged her once, when she had been small and still lovable, but that had changed the moment she discovered the power of her sexuality and the harm it could bring to the father she had once adored. He had given up trying to force any kind of fatherly rules or regulations on her. Jessie wouldn’t listen to him anyway – she was a girl after his own heart in many respects. She did exactly what she wanted, and she did that with the maximum amount of energy she could muster. But she was a whore, and that fact broke his heart. Not that he could ever let that be known – in his game that would be seen as a weakness.
He sighed heavily. The men in this room were some of the hardest men in the south east; they all worked for him and were pleased to do so. He was a hard man, everyone knew that, but he prided himself on being a fair man, a decent man in some respects. These were men who were at the top of their particular games, and he used their nous and their instincts for his own ends – and made sure that they earned a good fucking wedge at the end of the day. Michael Flynn was a one-off; in his world he was a man who was not only feared, but who had also earned the respect of his peers, and who had managed to rise to the top without treading on too many people’s toes. He had embraced his partners in crime, and made sure that they earned enough to prevent them coveting what he had. Now he had the partnership and the major earn from every Face in the country – well, in Europe, if truth be told. And the men he dealt with owed him, respected him for his achievements, and did not begrudge him his percentage because, without him, most of them would never have got as far as they had. He had worked his way up the ladder, realising early on that to keep on top you had to have a loyal and willing workforce, and that if you wanted to earn a place of importance in the criminal world, you also needed a very lucrative and honestly run legitimate business, as well as the wherewithal to not only invest heavily in other people’s businesses, but to also be able to offer them a modicum of protection should Lily Law decide to investigate them at any time.
Well, Michael basically owned Lily Law, and it was not fucking cheap. He paid out a serious fucking wedge to the Old Bill, and they, for their part, did fuck-all the majority of the time to earn their crusts. It was one of the things that really irritated him, but they were what his old partner Patrick Costello used to call a ‘necessary evil’. He had worked hard to get them in his pocket, and many of them had him to thank for their additional wages, nice cars, and kids’ educations. Because of that, he held all the major cards: he could negotiate a prison sentence, he could make certain charges disappear, he could fit up anyone who he felt was getting a bit too big for their boots. It was a win-win situation. No one had ever had that much power over the law before. He had orchestrated that by himself, and now he was a man who was settled at the top. No one in his game would ever feel the urge, or indeed the need, to try and take his place and run his businesses. He was too shrewd for all that old fanny. His legit businesses were huge earners as well – he could explain away everything he owned. In short, Michael Flynn was virtually untouchable.
But now he was looking out at the men he knew as friends, not just as business associates, and he felt the prickle of shame wash over him. His daughter going AWOL was not something they saw as in their remit to sort but, as they were on his payroll, they had no option but to listen to him and offer their help in any way they could.
His Jessie’s reputation had preceded her as always. They all assumed she was drugged and/or drunk out of her head somewhere, because that was what she was famous for. Twenty-two years old, and she was already a legend in her own lunchtime. She had been excluded from every school he sent her to, and instead she had embraced the underworld from an early age – from the drug dealers to the scumbags who hung around the council estates, the burglars, gas-meter bandits with homemade tattoos – she spent her time in filthy squats until he brought her back home to her mother time and again. After cracking open a few heads, of course.
Michael had given up on her completely by the time she was sixteen. Once he had found her naked on a filthy mattress in a condemned house in Hackney with a junkie three times her age, who had given her not only a black eye but a dose of gonorrhoea as well. He had known then that he had no choice but to step away from her emotionally. He loved her, but he could not get through to her. Nevertheless, he had gone back and almost kicked the man to death for doing that to his baby. He had vented his anger, looking around at how she had been living. She was available to any man who tipped her the wink and who she thought would anger her father, and bring him shame.
He didn’t understand it. She had had a home that was not only full of love for her, but was beautiful. She had everything she could have desired: the chance to go to a good school, and a good life ahead of her. But, from fourteen years of age, she had made it her business to find the lowest of the low, and make a home there for herself with them, and she had broken her mother’s heart in the process. Unlike her father, her mother still felt her daughter could turn her life around, redeem herself. But Michael refused to get involved any more; she was his Achilles heel, his only real weakness. Her antics were common knowledge in his world, and it was only his status that stopped people from gossiping openly about her.
He had tried everything, and she had fought him every step of the way. She was his daughter, and he would protect her as much as he could but, in his darkest moments, when he heard about her latest escapades, or the police informed him she had been arrested once more, he had wished her dead, and he hated himself for that.
Seeing the suffering she caused his wife made him resent Jessie all the more. Jessie had broken her mother early on. She still cared what happened to her daughter; she hoped that she would come home one day, and it would be forgotten, and they would live a normal life together, like everyone else. Michael knew better. He just provided Jessie with the means to live her life, but at least her need of money allowed him to police her in some ways.
Jessie had given birth to a child at sixteen, but the child was no more to her than a doll she dressed up on special occasions. She left him to be brought up by her own mother. Michael loved the bones of his handsome little grandson, who had more of the Flynn family in him than whoever had been the fucking piece-of-dirt culprit. Not that Jessie had any fucking idea of her son’s parentage of course; the poor child had been no more than a whodunnit and, with Jessie, that meant it could have been literally anyone. Oh, he’d accepted the reality of his Jessie a long time ago. He loved her, but he didn’t like her one bit.
Now her mother was worried about her and, if he was really honest with himself, so was he. He understood her much more than she had ever realised; she was a ponce of Olympian standards, but she had never missed an opportunity to pick up her allowance. She should have been at his offices the night before to pick up the money, but she had been a no-show. That was not like his daughter at all – she craved money like a junkie craved a fix. She spent like a woman with no fucking arms – on clothes, shoes and, unfortunately, men. His Jessie never missed her cash payment; she had her credit cards as well, but he could monitor them, so she knew the value of a pound. Jessie was a druggie, a drunk and a waste of space, but she was never late for her allowance. He made sure that it was far too lucrative for her to turn down.
So where the fuck was she?
Jessie Flynn opened her eyes, and fear enveloped her.
It was pitch dark, and she was aware that she was bound, both her hands and her feet tied. For all her exploits, she had never found herself in a predicament like this. She was racking her brains to work out not only who the fuck she had upset recently, but who would have the guts to do this to her knowing who her father was. She knew, on one level, she was in serious trouble, but she was still having a problem accepting that.
She was Jessie Flynn, for fuck’s sake! Her dad was the biggest Face in town. That had always meant she was immune to aggravation of any kind – even when she caused outrageous problems for herself, those problems were automatically negated by her father’s timely intervention.
She strained her eyes to see where she was being held captive, but the darkness was total. There was nothing to see at all – just a pure blackness. She was actually truly frightened, and that shocked her. She had never felt real fear before – it was an alien concept – and she swallowed down the scream that she could feel building inside her throat. She would never let anyone know that she was scared or worried about anything. All her life she had lived behind a mask of defiance, and she was not going to let this situation freak her out.
She took a few deep breaths to calm herself; her heart was hammering in her ears, and she could hear it so loudly it was like a drum beating in the room. It bothered her more than she liked to admit. It was too quiet, that was the problem; there was no sound other than her own breathing, her own heartbeat.
Instinctively, she knew that was not a good sign. This was not a situation that she could interpret or make any sense of. She was not unused to waking up somewhere strange, without any memory whatsoever of how she had arrived there. She would often see a man asleep beside her and have no idea who he was or where she had come across him. But she would find out eventually; she would talk to them and gradually she would get the gist of how she had arrived in their bed and, somewhere in the back of her mind, she would dredge up something to explain the events of the night in question.
This was different. She was tied up and she was in pain. Her arms felt like they were being wrenched from their sockets, and her ankles were tied so tightly she couldn’t feel her feet.
She felt the fear rising inside her once again, and she fought it down; whoever had done this to her would never get the satisfaction of hearing her cry out into the darkness, or calling for help. She was shrewd enough to know that, wherever she was, crying out for help would be futile. If there was any chance of being heard her mouth would have been taped shut. The silence around her was complete, like the darkness; she was not somewhere random passers-by would stumble across, let alone somewhere that noise would cause people to panic or phone the Filth. She was being held captive for some reason – she just hoped that the reason would be explained to her sooner rather than later.
She was cold, and she could smell the mustiness of the mattress she was lying on – the place was damp, so she could even be underground. The silence and the stench made her think that might be the case. She knew, deep in her guts, that she was not here for any reason that might benefit her.
She closed her eyes tightly because, once more, she was feeling the urge to shout her lungs out, however futile. She needed to use the toilet, she felt a sudden urge to open her bowels; she was coming down fast, and she could feel it. She had not eaten properly for a few days and, now that she was sobering up, she was becoming even more afraid of the dangerous predicament she found herself in. She tried to bring her hands out from behind her back, but she couldn’t. They were tied together so tightly, every movement caused a burning pain. It occurred to her suddenly that she was still fully clothed, so whoever had done this to her did not seem to have touched her in a sexual way. She was not sure that was a good thing either – that would have been something she could understand, could even control. Everything in her life until now had been about using her feminine wiles to get what she wanted.
She took a few more deep breaths, but the panic lingered close to the surface. She closed her eyes tightly and tried to relax her body, but it was hard. Her arms were screaming now; she had probably been tied up for a good few hours, and her trying to move around was causing the pain. She tried to wiggle her fingers – a voice in her head was telling her to keep the circulation going. Tears formed in her eyes, and she blinked them away furiously. She was not going to show her fear to anyone, that was simply not in her make-up.
This had to be a kidnapping. The thought gave her a thrill of anticipation – if that was the case then her dad would pay them and that would be it. Though she also knew her dad would never rest till he had tracked them down – not for taking her hostage, of course, but for trying to have him over. She suspected he wouldn’t actually bother to pay them if it was left up to him – it was her mum who would insist. Her mum was all he cared about really, and his grandson, of course. Her son was the only saving grace Jessie had; her dad couldn’t control her life, so he was determined to control his grandson’s. He loved him though. She saw that, and it hurt her.
She managed to turn over on to her belly, and that eased the pain in her shoulders. She had never
Title Page
Copyright Page
About the Author
Praise for Martina Cole
Also by Martina Cole
About the Book
Dedication
Prologue
Book One
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Book Two
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter Forty-Six
Chapter Forty-Seven
Chapter Forty-Eight
Chapter Forty-Nine
Chapter Fifty
Chapter Fifty-One
Chapter Fifty-Two
Chapter Fifty-Three
Chapter Fifty-Four
Chapter Fifty-Five
Chapter Fifty-Six
Chapter Fifty-Seven
Chapter Fifty-Eight
Chapter Fifty-Nine
Chapter Sixty
Chapter Sixty-One
Chapter Sixty-Two
Chapter Sixty-Three
Chapter Sixty-Four
Chapter Sixty-Five
Chapter Sixty-Six
Chapter Sixty-Seven
Book Three
Chapter Sixty-Eight
Chapter Sixty-Nine
Chapter Seventy
Chapter Seventy-One
Chapter Seventy-Two
Chapter Seventy-Three
Chapter Seventy-Four
Chapter Seventy-Five
Chapter Seventy-Six
Chapter Seventy-Seven
Chapter Seventy-Eight
Chapter Seventy-Nine
Chapter Eighty
Chapter Eighty-One
Chapter Eighty-Two
Chapter Eighty-Three
Chapter Eighty-Four
Chapter Eighty-Five
Chapter Eighty-Six
Chapter Eighty-Seven
Chapter Eighty-Eight
Chapter Eighty-Nine
Chapter Ninety
Chapter Ninety-One
Book Four
Chapter Ninety-Two
Chapter Ninety-Three
Chapter Ninety-Four
Chapter Ninety-Five
Chapter Ninety-Six
Chapter Ninety-Seven
Chapter Ninety-Eight
Chapter Ninety-Nine
Chapter One Hundred
Chapter One Hundred and One
Chapter One Hundred and Two
Chapter One Hundred and Three
Chapter One Hundred and Four
Chapter One Hundred and Five
Chapter One Hundred and Six
Chapter One Hundred and Seven
Chapter One Hundred and Eight
Chapter One Hundred and Nine
Chapter One Hundred and Ten
Chapter One Hundred and Eleven
Chapter One Hundred and Twelve
Chapter One Hundred and Thirteen
Chapter One Hundred and Fourteen
Chapter One Hundred and Fifteen
Chapter One Hundred and Sixteen
Chapter One Hundred and Seventeen
Chapter One Hundred and Eighteen
Chapter One Hundred and Nineteen
Chapter One Hundred and Twenty
Chapter One Hundred and Twenty-One
Chapter One Hundred and Twenty-Two
Chapter One Hundred and Twenty-Three
Chapter One Hundred and Twenty-Four
Chapter One Hundred and Twenty-Five
Chapter One Hundred and Twenty-Six
Chapter One Hundred and Twenty-Seven
Chapter One Hundred and Twenty-Eight
Chapter One Hundred and Twenty-Nine
Chapter One Hundred and Thirty
Chapter One Hundred and Thirty-One
Chapter One Hundred and Thirty-Two
Chapter One Hundred and Thirty-Three
Chapter One Hundred and Thirty-Four
Chapter One Hundred and Thirty-Five
Chapter One Hundred and Thirty-Six
Chapter One Hundred and Thirty-Seven
Chapter One Hundred and Thirty-Eight
Chapter One Hundred and Thirty-Nine
Chapter One Hundred and Forty
Epilogue
Chapter One Hundred and Forty-One
Chapter One Hundred and Forty-Two
Read an extract from GET EVEN
God be merciful to me a sinner.
Luke 18:13
Sharon was drinking a glass of wine and wondering how her wonderful, charmed life had been reduced to this. She had once been the envy of all her friends. But the reality could not have been more different to the illusion.
She closed her eyes and pictured her first husband, Lenny Scott, in her mind’s eye. She had started going out with him at thirteen and married him at seventeen, much to her parents’ chagrin. But they had been so happy together – they had had two sons and that had cemented their relationship.
Then he had been brutally murdered, found tortured and battered to death one night – and that was it.
That same night she had also uncovered his secret – the secret he had kept from her and everyone around him for so many years. A secret that would have caused untold aggravation and upset in the world of Faces, affecting her boys’ lives into the bargain, if it had ever been revealed.
But what good had keeping the secret done them really? Today she had visited her sons in prison, and they had acted like being there was just a game. They had killed someone and they thought it was funny. How had she allowed that to happen? How had she not realised that they were broken and turning into fucking thugs? Because that was all they were. They weren’t even true Faces; they had just beaten a man to death for no reason. She couldn’t believe that her two boys, who she had had such hopes for, could have turned out so wrong.
She swallowed down her tears, because tears were useless. Life was shite, really. No matter how great you thought it was, it could always creep up and bite you on the arse when you least expected it. Well, fuck it! She had never known the reason behind her Lenny’s death. She had lived all these years in ignorance – until tonight the one man left in her life that she trusted had told her the truth. And now there was no going back.
She gulped at her glass of wine. She needed the alcohol to get through this. Tonight she was going to right some wrongs. No matter what danger it might bring to her door, there was no stopping what was about to happen.
Young Lenny Scott and his little brother, Liam, were laughing raucously together. They were a handful, as the POs would say – protected, not just by their father’s name, but by the man who had become their stepfather; the boys knew this as well as the POs did. They more or less had a free pass – it was galling, but it was the truth. Being on remand for the first time was an adventure, but one of the older prison officers, Eric Marks, could tell from experience that they were not as hard as they thought they were.
The younger one was not taking to prison life quite as easily as his older brother. Liam Scott was not cut out for the regime prison insisted on: slopping out, eating at set times, early fucking nights. Unlike his older brother, Lenny, he appeared to be losing interest in this ‘adventure’ on an hourly basis. The fact that their mother had cunted them into the ground in front of everyone on a visit earlier that day had not helped matters either. Now they were being laughed at – just not to their faces. They might be in for murder, but they had clout and that could guarantee them a short sentence. It was such a waste, because they were clever, handsome, well-educated lads, and with a few quid behind them. Shame they didn’t think about that – and their mother who had buried their father after he had been killed. Eric would lay money that that horror had left its mark on her, and probably on those lads as well.
He sighed heavily. Twenty years in this job and he was still continually disappointed in Mother Nature. Murderers, he had decided early on in his career, were a breed apart. Some of them had good reason, or were provoked, but he still saw so many lives ruined thanks to a drunken fight or a drugged confrontation that had got out of hand. And then there were the young Lennys and Liams of the world who simply thought it was all a joke.
One thing Eric would give their mother – she, at least, knew that what they had done was wrong and she had told them as much that afternoon in the visiting room. Maybe, just maybe, there was hope for these lads yet. Not that he would hold his breath, of course.
Sharon’s daughter, Kathy, was frightened and ashamed. Everything had blown up in her face, and she finally realised the seriousness of what she had done – and what she had caused.
She felt the tears coming again, hot and wet. She had always been a good crier, and normally that was enough to make her dad give her what she wanted. But not tonight. Tonight she had known what it was to go too far; her mum and dad were not going to make it all right again as they normally did when she fucked up. This time her actions could cause actual murder. Worst of all, her father would never look at her in the same way again. She had let him down badly, and her mum. Her dad had always given in to her – it had been her mum who had been the bad bastard, telling her a big resounding ‘no’ when she didn’t think she deserved or had earned whatever it was Kathy decided she wanted. Now she saw that all these years her mum had been trying to look out for her; Kathy had hated her for that when Sharon had simply been trying to help her daughter to help herself.
Kathy picked up her mobile and tried the number again, but there was no answer. She threw the phone at the wall in frustration. It was so unfair. Well, fuck him! He was always ignoring her calls so let him deal with her father himself. After all, that’s what she’d had to do.
Reggie Dornan was so angry he felt that he could take on Man Mountain Dean with one hand tied behind his back and come out on top. He had been mugged off, betrayed in the worst possible way, and there was no chance he was taking this lying down. Tonight was the end. And please God in His heaven it all worked out because that would finally make him feel that he had seen through his promise to look after Lenny Scott’s family. He owed Sharon because he had broken her heart once. Oh, he owed her fucking big time. He would do everything in his power to make sure that Lenny Scott would be remembered. And Reggie Dornan always paid his debts.
Sharon held Kathy in her arms but she was still furious with her; her daughter was a spoiled brat and that needed to be addressed.
‘I am so sorry, Mummy. Please believe me. I am so very sorry.’
Sharon looked down at her beautiful face. Kathy was just like her father: what she wanted she took, no matter who got hurt or who might have to pay the price for her enjoyment.
‘You’re not really sorry, Kath! You are just sorry it all fell out of bed.’
She pushed her daughter away from her and left her crying bitter tears. It amazed Sharon how dispassionate she could feel at her daughter’s obvious distress. But, then, was it really surprising after what she had heard this night? Her daughter’s predicament was nothing to her right now. Maybe tomorrow, if it all worked out, she would have the time and energy to try and help her out of the corner Kathy had finally painted herself into. But now she had other things on her mind.
Downstairs, Sharon looked around her beautiful home – the house she had furnished and decorated with such love and care. It was as if the place was mocking her, making her see that material objects meant fuck-all in the grand scheme. Oh, hindsight was a fucking wonderful thing. She’d had only two men in her life: one had been murdered and the other . . . Well, that remained to be seen. As her old mum used to say, where women were concerned, they never got mad if they were clever – they went one better and they got even.
When the call finally came she felt such relief that she could have wept. After all these years, she was finally in control of her own life. She only hoped it wasn’t too late. One thing she did know for sure was that she was going to see this through to the bitter end. It was all she could do for herself and her children. She wanted payback for what had been done to her and hers.
She felt a calmness wash over her. This was what she had been waiting for. She would do what needed to be done – no matter the consequences.
2012
‘Hello! Are you not listening to me? My little girl has been missing for three fucking days. I think that might be worth your attention, don’t you?’
Michael Flynn was so angry he was almost spitting his words down the phone. Over six feet tall and with a heavy build he was a big man and, as everyone in the room knew, he was more than capable of great violence. He was paying them for their expertise, which they currently seemed to be lacking in. In fact, they were irritating the arse off him with their stupidity.
‘Her mother is giving me serious grief, and that alone is a fucking bugbear. I need to know where she is, people! So I think you lot had better get me the information I need before I start to think you’re all mugging me off. I know she isn’t exactly what you might call a wilting fucking violet and, believe me, when I locate her I will personally launch her into outer space for this. But I want her found. You are the Filth – this is what you fucking do! You locate errant fuckers. So you had better start doing it quickly. I am not a man who is known for his patience, and I have a very low threshold for idiocy.’ He slammed down the telephone.
Jamie Gore listened to his boss rant at the policemen in his employ. Everyone knew that Jessie Flynn, Michael Flynn’s daughter, was about as dependable as a Nigerian marriage broker; therefore, she held no importance whatsoever to anyone, especially to the police. She could get away with anything – from possession of any substance, including a bomb, should she ever purchase one, and that was all thanks to her father’s influence. He’d paid the Old Bill handsomely to ignore her over the years; now suddenly he wanted them to make her a priority? Bit of a turnaround there. He spoke up. ‘Look, Michael, with all due respect, you know your daughter as well as we do, she could be fucking anywhere. She goes on the missing list regularly . . .’
Michael Flynn was dark-haired and dark-skinned, he had the Irish gypsy in him there was no doubt about that. He was a handsome fuck, and his good looks were part and parcel of his persona. Both men and women were attracted to him, and he had always used that to his advantage. His startling blue eyes were now trained on Jamie Gore, and the man felt the first prickle of uneasiness at the intensity of his gaze.
‘You having a fucking laugh, Jamie? You think I brought you lot here for nothing? My old woman is like a fucking lunatic! My little Jessie is on the missing list! No one, and I mean no one, has seen her for three fucking days! I know she is a lazy mare, I know she lives on her own fucking time-zone, and I know she is the biggest pain in the rectum since records began. But she is still my baby girl. So my advice would be to fucking well find her! Track her down, let me know where she is so I can deliver her back to her mother and then we can go home.’
Michael looked around the room, and he knew that every bloke in there was thinking the same thing: Jessie Flynn was probably tucked up in bed with another lowlife, another fucking no-mark she had picked up on her travels. She was a trollop of the first water, having been sleeping with the enemy since she was fourteen years old. He wondered how many of his workforce had serviced her at one time or another. She was a beautiful-looking girl, with the morals of a fucking alley cat. It didn’t matter – he still wanted to know where she was. More to the point, her mother needed to know. Josephine was deeply concerned for her daughter’s whereabouts.
Jessie was not a girl you could lose sleep worrying about all the time – she stumbled from one disaster to the next (usually the disaster was a man), but she always seemed to come out on top. He made sure of that. She came home at some point and then her mum would be so pleased to see her there would be no retribution of any kind. That was the trouble. Michael personally believed that his daughter needed a fucking good slap, but his wife would never agree. If Jessie murdered the neighbours with an axe and it was caught on CCTV, his wife would say, ‘Well, they must have upset her.’ Jessie could do no wrong in her eyes.
He too had indulged her once, when she had been small and still lovable, but that had changed the moment she discovered the power of her sexuality and the harm it could bring to the father she had once adored. He had given up trying to force any kind of fatherly rules or regulations on her. Jessie wouldn’t listen to him anyway – she was a girl after his own heart in many respects. She did exactly what she wanted, and she did that with the maximum amount of energy she could muster. But she was a whore, and that fact broke his heart. Not that he could ever let that be known – in his game that would be seen as a weakness.
He sighed heavily. The men in this room were some of the hardest men in the south east; they all worked for him and were pleased to do so. He was a hard man, everyone knew that, but he prided himself on being a fair man, a decent man in some respects. These were men who were at the top of their particular games, and he used their nous and their instincts for his own ends – and made sure that they earned a good fucking wedge at the end of the day. Michael Flynn was a one-off; in his world he was a man who was not only feared, but who had also earned the respect of his peers, and who had managed to rise to the top without treading on too many people’s toes. He had embraced his partners in crime, and made sure that they earned enough to prevent them coveting what he had. Now he had the partnership and the major earn from every Face in the country – well, in Europe, if truth be told. And the men he dealt with owed him, respected him for his achievements, and did not begrudge him his percentage because, without him, most of them would never have got as far as they had. He had worked his way up the ladder, realising early on that to keep on top you had to have a loyal and willing workforce, and that if you wanted to earn a place of importance in the criminal world, you also needed a very lucrative and honestly run legitimate business, as well as the wherewithal to not only invest heavily in other people’s businesses, but to also be able to offer them a modicum of protection should Lily Law decide to investigate them at any time.
Well, Michael basically owned Lily Law, and it was not fucking cheap. He paid out a serious fucking wedge to the Old Bill, and they, for their part, did fuck-all the majority of the time to earn their crusts. It was one of the things that really irritated him, but they were what his old partner Patrick Costello used to call a ‘necessary evil’. He had worked hard to get them in his pocket, and many of them had him to thank for their additional wages, nice cars, and kids’ educations. Because of that, he held all the major cards: he could negotiate a prison sentence, he could make certain charges disappear, he could fit up anyone who he felt was getting a bit too big for their boots. It was a win-win situation. No one had ever had that much power over the law before. He had orchestrated that by himself, and now he was a man who was settled at the top. No one in his game would ever feel the urge, or indeed the need, to try and take his place and run his businesses. He was too shrewd for all that old fanny. His legit businesses were huge earners as well – he could explain away everything he owned. In short, Michael Flynn was virtually untouchable.
But now he was looking out at the men he knew as friends, not just as business associates, and he felt the prickle of shame wash over him. His daughter going AWOL was not something they saw as in their remit to sort but, as they were on his payroll, they had no option but to listen to him and offer their help in any way they could.
His Jessie’s reputation had preceded her as always. They all assumed she was drugged and/or drunk out of her head somewhere, because that was what she was famous for. Twenty-two years old, and she was already a legend in her own lunchtime. She had been excluded from every school he sent her to, and instead she had embraced the underworld from an early age – from the drug dealers to the scumbags who hung around the council estates, the burglars, gas-meter bandits with homemade tattoos – she spent her time in filthy squats until he brought her back home to her mother time and again. After cracking open a few heads, of course.
Michael had given up on her completely by the time she was sixteen. Once he had found her naked on a filthy mattress in a condemned house in Hackney with a junkie three times her age, who had given her not only a black eye but a dose of gonorrhoea as well. He had known then that he had no choice but to step away from her emotionally. He loved her, but he could not get through to her. Nevertheless, he had gone back and almost kicked the man to death for doing that to his baby. He had vented his anger, looking around at how she had been living. She was available to any man who tipped her the wink and who she thought would anger her father, and bring him shame.
He didn’t understand it. She had had a home that was not only full of love for her, but was beautiful. She had everything she could have desired: the chance to go to a good school, and a good life ahead of her. But, from fourteen years of age, she had made it her business to find the lowest of the low, and make a home there for herself with them, and she had broken her mother’s heart in the process. Unlike her father, her mother still felt her daughter could turn her life around, redeem herself. But Michael refused to get involved any more; she was his Achilles heel, his only real weakness. Her antics were common knowledge in his world, and it was only his status that stopped people from gossiping openly about her.
He had tried everything, and she had fought him every step of the way. She was his daughter, and he would protect her as much as he could but, in his darkest moments, when he heard about her latest escapades, or the police informed him she had been arrested once more, he had wished her dead, and he hated himself for that.
Seeing the suffering she caused his wife made him resent Jessie all the more. Jessie had broken her mother early on. She still cared what happened to her daughter; she hoped that she would come home one day, and it would be forgotten, and they would live a normal life together, like everyone else. Michael knew better. He just provided Jessie with the means to live her life, but at least her need of money allowed him to police her in some ways.
Jessie had given birth to a child at sixteen, but the child was no more to her than a doll she dressed up on special occasions. She left him to be brought up by her own mother. Michael loved the bones of his handsome little grandson, who had more of the Flynn family in him than whoever had been the fucking piece-of-dirt culprit. Not that Jessie had any fucking idea of her son’s parentage of course; the poor child had been no more than a whodunnit and, with Jessie, that meant it could have been literally anyone. Oh, he’d accepted the reality of his Jessie a long time ago. He loved her, but he didn’t like her one bit.
Now her mother was worried about her and, if he was really honest with himself, so was he. He understood her much more than she had ever realised; she was a ponce of Olympian standards, but she had never missed an opportunity to pick up her allowance. She should have been at his offices the night before to pick up the money, but she had been a no-show. That was not like his daughter at all – she craved money like a junkie craved a fix. She spent like a woman with no fucking arms – on clothes, shoes and, unfortunately, men. His Jessie never missed her cash payment; she had her credit cards as well, but he could monitor them, so she knew the value of a pound. Jessie was a druggie, a drunk and a waste of space, but she was never late for her allowance. He made sure that it was far too lucrative for her to turn down.
So where the fuck was she?
Jessie Flynn opened her eyes, and fear enveloped her.
It was pitch dark, and she was aware that she was bound, both her hands and her feet tied. For all her exploits, she had never found herself in a predicament like this. She was racking her brains to work out not only who the fuck she had upset recently, but who would have the guts to do this to her knowing who her father was. She knew, on one level, she was in serious trouble, but she was still having a problem accepting that.
She was Jessie Flynn, for fuck’s sake! Her dad was the biggest Face in town. That had always meant she was immune to aggravation of any kind – even when she caused outrageous problems for herself, those problems were automatically negated by her father’s timely intervention.
She strained her eyes to see where she was being held captive, but the darkness was total. There was nothing to see at all – just a pure blackness. She was actually truly frightened, and that shocked her. She had never felt real fear before – it was an alien concept – and she swallowed down the scream that she could feel building inside her throat. She would never let anyone know that she was scared or worried about anything. All her life she had lived behind a mask of defiance, and she was not going to let this situation freak her out.
She took a few deep breaths to calm herself; her heart was hammering in her ears, and she could hear it so loudly it was like a drum beating in the room. It bothered her more than she liked to admit. It was too quiet, that was the problem; there was no sound other than her own breathing, her own heartbeat.
Instinctively, she knew that was not a good sign. This was not a situation that she could interpret or make any sense of. She was not unused to waking up somewhere strange, without any memory whatsoever of how she had arrived there. She would often see a man asleep beside her and have no idea who he was or where she had come across him. But she would find out eventually; she would talk to them and gradually she would get the gist of how she had arrived in their bed and, somewhere in the back of her mind, she would dredge up something to explain the events of the night in question.
This was different. She was tied up and she was in pain. Her arms felt like they were being wrenched from their sockets, and her ankles were tied so tightly she couldn’t feel her feet.
She felt the fear rising inside her once again, and she fought it down; whoever had done this to her would never get the satisfaction of hearing her cry out into the darkness, or calling for help. She was shrewd enough to know that, wherever she was, crying out for help would be futile. If there was any chance of being heard her mouth would have been taped shut. The silence around her was complete, like the darkness; she was not somewhere random passers-by would stumble across, let alone somewhere that noise would cause people to panic or phone the Filth. She was being held captive for some reason – she just hoped that the reason would be explained to her sooner rather than later.
She was cold, and she could smell the mustiness of the mattress she was lying on – the place was damp, so she could even be underground. The silence and the stench made her think that might be the case. She knew, deep in her guts, that she was not here for any reason that might benefit her.
She closed her eyes tightly because, once more, she was feeling the urge to shout her lungs out, however futile. She needed to use the toilet, she felt a sudden urge to open her bowels; she was coming down fast, and she could feel it. She had not eaten properly for a few days and, now that she was sobering up, she was becoming even more afraid of the dangerous predicament she found herself in. She tried to bring her hands out from behind her back, but she couldn’t. They were tied together so tightly, every movement caused a burning pain. It occurred to her suddenly that she was still fully clothed, so whoever had done this to her did not seem to have touched her in a sexual way. She was not sure that was a good thing either – that would have been something she could understand, could even control. Everything in her life until now had been about using her feminine wiles to get what she wanted.
She took a few more deep breaths, but the panic lingered close to the surface. She closed her eyes tightly and tried to relax her body, but it was hard. Her arms were screaming now; she had probably been tied up for a good few hours, and her trying to move around was causing the pain. She tried to wiggle her fingers – a voice in her head was telling her to keep the circulation going. Tears formed in her eyes, and she blinked them away furiously. She was not going to show her fear to anyone, that was simply not in her make-up.
This had to be a kidnapping. The thought gave her a thrill of anticipation – if that was the case then her dad would pay them and that would be it. Though she also knew her dad would never rest till he had tracked them down – not for taking her hostage, of course, but for trying to have him over. She suspected he wouldn’t actually bother to pay them if it was left up to him – it was her mum who would insist. Her mum was all he cared about really, and his grandson, of course. Her son was the only saving grace Jessie had; her dad couldn’t control her life, so he was determined to control his grandson’s. He loved him though. She saw that, and it hurt her.
She managed to turn over on to her belly, and that eased the pain in her shoulders. She had never
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