Get Even (49 page)

It was an old Irish custom and they both laughed as Jack said jovially, ‘If the fucking horse comes in, I will be disinterred the next day! So, what’s the state of play with Happy Harold then?’

Reggie shrugged. ‘Ray is Ray, and he won’t change while he has a hole in his arse.’

‘He’s a fucker, that’s what he is. Now, I am going to tell you something else and you can do what you like with this information after I am dead and gone, OK?’

Reggie nodded and that’s when Jack told him the story of the Wheelans and of Ray being their hired torturer. He also told him that he was his broker as Ray still liked to keep his hand in. Once he had finished his tale, Reggie was quiet for long moment. Then he said viciously, ‘The snidey cunt. The Wheelans? Are you sure?’

Jack nodded and he looked suitably serious, even though he knew he had given potentially explosive material to a man who would not hesitate to use it.

He watched as the colour slowly drained from Reggie’s face.

Jack sat back in his chair, satisfied he had done what he had set out to do: bring down Ray Donovan. He had lit the blue touchpaper. Now all there was to look out for was the explosion. And this particular explosion would be earth-shattering for a lot of the people involved.

Sharon had been to see the boys and she was tired out. It had not been a good visit. She had lost her temper with them, and they had been suitably chastised. They still seemed to think that it was a big joke and that they would be out and about in no time. Nowhere in them did she see remorse for taking another man’s life and that was what had tipped her over the edge. Her shouting had bought the POs running and the other prisoners on their visits had enjoyed the cabaret. She knew her sons would be livid with her for making them a laughing stock, but at this moment she didn’t really give a flying fuck about that. They frightened her.

As she poured herself a much-needed glass of wine, Ray burst in through the front door and she heard him screaming Kathy’s name, following with heavy footsteps as he crashed up the main staircase. Putting her wine down, Sharon started to walk out of the kitchen when she heard the screaming. When she got up to her daughter’s room she could not believe her eyes. Ray – Kathy’s dad Ray, who worshipped the child – was battering her. She forced her body between them and finally managed to push Ray away. He looked like a man demented.

‘What the fuck are you doing?’

She was hugging her terrified daughter to her now, trying to make sense of what she had seen.

‘Tell her, Kathy. Go on, tell her what I found out today!’

Kathy was sobbing too much to make any sense and, looking Ray squarely in the eye, Sharon said quietly, ‘You tell me what this is about, please.’

Ray laughed then, a nasty, vicious laugh. ‘It’s a fucking whore we bred, Sharon. A whore who is shagging Barton. Fucking Barton, the cunt! The two-faced, dirty, fucking bastard of hell that he is.’

Sharon was so shocked she could not form any words. All she could think was that her lovely girl had lowered herself to sleep with a man old enough to be her father, and whose wife had always been a friend to them. Ray could see the shock and the horror on Sharon’s face and found it in himself to feel a moment’s pity for her.

She turned to her beautiful daughter and, pulling her face up to look her in the eye, she said calmly, ‘Is this true?’

Kathy was nodding, the tears were overflowing and she had strings of snot hanging from her nose. She looked twelve again, just as she had when she could not get her own way as a little girl. Her tears would always guarantee that Ray would eventually relent and give her whatever she wanted.

‘I will fucking kill him!’

Then Sharon started laughing.

‘What the fuck is so funny?’

She could see the bewilderment on Ray’s face and that just made her laugh harder. She knew there was a tinge of hysteria in her voice and she used all her willpower to try to keep from screaming out loud.

‘Like father like daughter! You know, I was always frightened that one of the boys would be gay like Lenny. But now that means nothing, does it? No one has to hide who they really are any more. Except you, of course, eh, Ray?’

He was looking at her in complete and utter amazement.

‘She obviously inherited your lying, scheming, fuck-anything-with-a-pulse gene. Because she sure as hell didn’t get it from me! You fucking hypocrite. As for Barton, she is seventeen – he could be her fucking grandfather! Another fucking whore, like you. Did it ever occur to you that he might have taken advantage of her? How many little girls have you chatted up, Ray? They were all someone’s daughter or sister. This isn’t about our Kathy, this is about you! Barton has pissed on you from a great height and you can’t fucking stand it, can you? Well, now you know how I feel.’

He stormed from the room and she shouted after him, ‘Smash him up, smash his fucking face in. Go on! That’s your answer to everything!’

When the front door was given a resounding slam, Kathy sat up and, putting her arms around her mother, she waited to be comforted.

Instead, her mother gave her a stinging blow across the face and threw her away from her. Behind her, Annie gasped.

‘Oh no you don’t, lady. You slept with the husband of one of my dearest friends, a woman who has always shown you nothing but kindness and respect. You little whore. Your father was right about that much, anyway. What have I bred? Two murderers and a fucking whore. Not much to show for a lifetime of love, is it? That was my only job, loving and caring for you all. The only thing that mattered. And how have you repaid me, eh? You have trampled on my love and thrown it back in my face. Well, do you know something? Fuck you! Fuck you all!’

She turned into an embrace with Annie, putting her head on the old woman’s chest and she cried like she had not cried since the night she had found out about Lenny and Reggie. This time, though, she wasn’t crying for her sons, her children. She was crying for herself and the abortion her life had become.

Annie was a wise old bird and she held Sharon tightly until the crying subsided. Then she slowly walked her down the stairs and through to the kitchen and, pouring her a brandy, she urged her to drink it for the shock.

Kathy lay on her bed feeling desolate. For the first time in her life her mother had turned her back on her. And that hurt more than she would ever have believed possible.

Reggie had heard that Ray was looking all over the Smoke for Barton and that there had been some kind of altercation. Ray had been everywhere, demanding if anyone had seen that ‘cunt and ex-friend Barton’.

Reggie turned up at the house and Sharon was evidently pleased to see him. She filled him in on the latest developments and saw the genuine shock on his face when he heard that Kathy had become embroiled in something so sordid, and with Barton of all people. He understood Ray’s ire – he would feel the same; it was a double whammy. He sat at the table with Sharon and Annie and tried to calm Sharon down.

‘He was a man demented, Reggie. I have never seen him so angry before.’

Annie was quiet; she knew when silence was the best medicine. Let the girl get it out of her system.

‘When I met him he was so different to how he is now. He was the sweetest, most gentle man I had ever been with. But then, what did I know? I had only ever had Lenny and we know how that turned out, don’t we?’

She was crying again. Reggie motioned to Annie to leave them, and she gratefully went back to the gatehouse and her own front door. As for Kathy! Well, she could hang as she grew for the time being. She was disgusted with the child.

‘I fucking hate him now, do you know that, Reggie? He made my boys into what they are: murdering fuckers who have no remorse for that young lad whatsoever. That was Ray taking them into the Life at such young ages. But I am as much to blame, because I let him. I let him!’ She was sobbing once more.

Reggie took a deep breath and said, ‘There is something you need to know, Sharon.’

The timbre of his voice relayed his seriousness to her and she stopped crying and, looking into his eyes, she said quietly, ‘What? What now?’

Reggie Dornan held her hands in his and said gently, ‘Ray worked for the Wheelans. Remember Lenny and his outside deals? Well, Ray was their hired torturer. He was the one who took people out if they had crossed them.’

His words were sinking in and she was shaking her head in denial.

‘No . . . No, not that. I can’t believe that . . .’

But she was remembering some of the things that had bothered her over the years, the little things that Ray had said that had hit a nerve. Once they were discussing Lenny’s death with the boys when they were teenagers, and Ray had said that their dad had been wearing a dark-blue suit. At the time she had thought he had read the police report, or she had mentioned it, but deep down she must have registered that he had known more than he was letting on and she had assumed he was trying to protect her.

Now, looking into Reggie’s eyes, she realised that what he was saying was the truth. She had brought her husband’s murderer into her home, she had mated with him and she had handed him Lenny’s sons on a plate. She could not believe that her whole life had been built on another lie. A big, fat, stinking lie that made so much sense even as she tried to deny it to herself. She put her hand over her mouth and she groaned in actual pain.

‘What have I done, Reggie! Oh God, what the fuck have I done?’

He stood up and hugged her to him and he said sadly, ‘That’s just it, Sharon. You haven’t done anything, darling.’

She was staring ahead as if in a trance and he poured her another brandy and helped her to take a swallow as her hands were shaking too much to hold the glass herself.

‘You know what is going to happen now, don’t you, Sharon? You understand that this has to be redressed?’

His words penetrated her brain and she nodded. ‘He is a murderer for hire, Sharon. He tortures for money but, from what I can gather, he loves every second of it. He tortured Lenny and took him out, darling. Did you know Lenny had been paralysed – that he couldn’t move while he felt every cut and every blow? Jack paid off the Filth so it was reported as a mugging. He had to, I understand that. It’s part of the game. But, to think that Ray came to you, to all of us, as a wilting fucking virgin, like butter wouldn’t melt . . . And, all the time, he knew what he had done.’

Sharon felt physically sick at that knowledge. She had slept with Ray – she had given him rights over the sons of a man he had murdered. She had borne him a child, a daughter that he had infected with his fucking filth.

‘I am going to fucking kill him. I am going to remove him from the earth, Sharon. I don’t care that he is Kathy’s dad. She is better off without him.’

Sharon looked at the man she had alternately loved and hated over the years, but who she knew would always be a true friend to her and her kids. She had been duped twice in her life and each time by a man she had adored with all her heart. Was it her? Did she attract this trouble to her door? She had slept with two men who had both been living fucking lies. God, what was wrong with her?

She grabbed the front of Reggie’s shirt and said seriously, ‘I want to be there. This time, I
need
to be there. He destroyed my boys – Lenny’s boys – and his own daughter. He blamed
her
, not fucking Barton. I want him dead, I want him fucking gone from our lives. I need him gone now, before he infects us even more with his viciousness and his fucking hate.’

Reggie nodded and she could see that he understood her. He kissed her gently on the forehead and said quietly, ‘You can have that, darling. You deserve it.’

Then, calling Kathy down to look after her mother, he slipped out of the house. He had had to tell her; she had a right to know the truth about the man she had been married to for sixteen years. He had been the cause of her living a lie once – Reggie was not going to be the cause of that again. He owed her that much.