by Jessie Keane
‘Damn,’ he said, touching his lip and wincing. ‘Should have used the bloody cosh first.’
‘Yeah. Maybe that would have been better,’ said Aysha, her voice breathless.
‘You OK?’
‘Fine,’ said Aysha, but her legs were like jelly. She stared down at Joey, who looked to be unconscious. ‘What the hell are we going to do with him?’ she asked, rummaging in her bag. She found tissues, handed them to Benedict. He dabbed at his lip.
‘Let me make a call,’ said Benedict, and went through to her sitting room and picked up the phone.
Aysha stood there, staring down at her husband. Jesus, was I mad? What did I ever see in a loser like him?
Now Joey looked pitiful. A scruffy overgrown boy. She could hear Benedict talking on the phone, then he came back out into the hall, stuffing the tissues, stained red, into his pocket. His split lip was still seeping blood.
‘Open the door, I’ll pull him,’ said Benedict.
Aysha opened the door. Benedict got his hands under Joey’s armpits and dragged him out, bumping him down the front step and leaving him on the cold pavement.
‘What, we’re just going to leave him there, spark out?’ asked Aysha. Not that she cared, but he could have a head injury. She thought of Dad, dying from a punch to the head, and shuddered. All right, Joey had treated her like dirt, but she couldn’t be so callous as to let him lie there and die, all alone.
‘He won’t be there for long.’
‘Oh?’
‘Someone’s coming to clear the rubbish away,’ said Benedict. ‘The family of one of the blokes he shopped.’
‘Jesus.’
‘Let’s get back inside,’ said Benedict, seeing that a car was moving at the top of the road. He took her arm, ushered her into the flat.
‘Let me get that stain out of your suit before it dries,’ she said, leading the way into the kitchen.
‘Fuck the suit,’ said Benedict, and pulled her to a halt, turning her and kissing her. ‘Ow,’ he said, pulling away sharply.
Aysha stiffened in surprise. Then she started to smile. ‘Hurts a bit, yeah?’
‘Bastard smacked me right in the gob,’ said Benedict, getting the tissues out again and dabbing at the cut. His eyes met Aysha’s. ‘Shit. I may have to get a little inventive here. Kissing may be temporarily out of the question.’
‘Right.’ Aysha’s smile faded. She liked him so much. Fancied him, too. But . . . ‘I don’t want to disappoint you.’
‘How could you do that?’ he tugged her into his arms.
‘Easily.’
‘How? Come on, talk to me. Don’t keep it all inside, that’s not good for you.’
Aysha hitched in a breath and spat it out. ‘Look. I’m not very good at all the sex stuff. I just don’t get it. I’m sorry.’
She felt a hot blush of shame as she said that; she was a failure as a woman.
‘Well, perhaps you’ve just never had the right bloke to do it with.’
‘Joey said—’
‘Joey? That gormless fucker? Look. He’s history,’ said Benedict. ‘So let’s see, shall we? Where’s the bedroom?’
133
‘Oh God. Oh Jesus Christ,’ said Aysha, laughing and naked and breathless an hour later.
‘I never knew you were religious,’ said Benedict, lying back equally naked in Aysha’s big double bed, hands behind his head, looking very pleased with himself. He turned his head and smiled into her eyes. His lip was swollen and looked painful, but he didn’t seem to care. ‘Frigid, yeah?’
Aysha shook her head. She was still laughing, still fizzing with desire after the first ever climax of her life. ‘I didn’t realize.’
‘Realize what?’
‘He was always in too much of a hurry. And too fucking clumsy.’
‘And now, as I said, he’s history.’ Benedict propped himself up on one elbow and looked at her. ‘You’re a beauty, Aysha Flynn. I’ve always thought it.’
‘Yeah? Well, you’ve looked better.’ Aysha touched a gentle hand to his cut lip. All that time with Joey, she had thought the lack of chemistry was her fault. She smoothed a hand over Benedict’s chest. And Joey had never made her laugh in bed. He hadn’t even made her smile. But Benedict had made her laugh, made her scream in orgasm, made her feel full of joy. And since Dad’s death? She truly hadn’t ever thought she’d laugh again.
‘Since the first day you came into the office, I’ve wanted this,’ he said.
‘I thought you were a flash git,’ she said. ‘A real office-wallah.’
‘Charming.’
‘And Joey turned me off men.’
‘Guessed as much.’
Aysha’s face grew serious. ‘What do you think they’ll do to him?’
‘Honey, it’s best not to ask questions like that. You won’t like the answers.’
Aysha cuddled in against him. ‘This is so nice,’ she said, and her hand wandered down and smoothed over his cock.
‘I’ve created a monster here, haven’t I?’ Benedict laughed. ‘Give me a few minutes, for God’s sake.’
‘OK,’ she sighed and lightly slapped his chest. ‘Then I wanna see some action, buster – all right?’
Lesley Deveney got a call from Shauna Flynn. A day later, she was on a flight to the States, to see what she could find out about Claire Milo, the woman in the photos with Josh. Josh usually stayed at the Waldorf Astoria, but he had visited overnight at the brownstone apartment block on East 76th Street. So Lesley loitered outside there, looking at the list of residents on the entry phone system. W. Humbert, I. Patton, J. Cleeve, F. Barlow, C. Milo, P. Schuster.
C. Milo.
This time, she rang the bell for the caretaker and a smiling grey-haired black man came to the door wearing crisply pressed khaki coveralls.
‘Help you, ma’am?’ he asked.
‘I’m looking for a friend of mine,’ said Lesley. ‘This is her. Claire Milo.’ She got out the clearest photo of the blonde’s face. The caretaker looked it over, thrusting out his lower lip as he thought it over. ‘She does live here, right?’
He tapped the brass plate bearing the residents’ names. ‘Sure she does. Real nice lady. That’s her, C. Milo, right there.’
‘OK if I go on up?’
‘You’d be wasting your time.’
‘Meaning?’
‘Your friend’s stuff’s still here, but she ain’t. Last I saw of her, her daughter Suki – sweet girl – told me she was taking a vacation. Had a bereavement, I was told. Had some hard thinking to do and some things to sort out.’
‘A vacation to where?’ asked Lesley. She’d come all this way, and the Milo woman had gone somewhere else.
‘England. That’s what I heard.’
Fuck it.
134
On the morning of his father’s funeral, Connor rose early. He couldn’t sleep. He’d loved Josh so dearly that this was going to be a very hard day for him. Mixed in with his grief over losing his dad was something horrible, deeply distasteful. The thought that Dad had been playing away. He still could scarcely take it in. But the photos were concrete proof. And if Josh had been cheating, then he’d been more unhappy than any of them could ever have known. Connor hated the thought of that, but it was something he’d always been aware of at gut level. Josh had been looking for something else, something more than his wife, his family, could give him.
Connor showered, shaved, dressed and then sat at his kitchen table drinking coffee. Soon, he’d collect Aysha and go on over to Mum’s place in Henley and together they would attend the burial near Winchester. Josh would be laid to rest beside his Romany parents in the Flynn family plot.
It was still so hard to take in the fact that Dad was gone. Every time Connor allowed himself to dwell on it, he felt choked up, unable to function.
Connor glanced up at the kitchen clock. It was time. He straightened his black tie and checked his Hugo Boss suit was dust-free in the hall mirror; then he took a breath to calm himsel
f, and left the flat.
It was awful. Winter was gripping the countryside. The day was black as Satan’s arse, cold rain swooshing across the graveyard and wind seeping into every exposed pore. Inside the church it was cheerless and the ceremony seemed to go on forever; outside, as the mourners assembled beside the family plot in readiness for Josh ‘Fearless’ Flynn’s burial, the sleety rain came down even harder.
Shauna seemed calm, but Aysha was in tears. Benedict was at her side, supporting her, holding an umbrella over her to shield her from the worst of the weather.
So that’s happened at last, thought Connor, watching his sister and his partner from the other side of the grave as the priest said the last words of blessing for Josh’s eternal soul. Well, this fucking awful day was yielding some good news after all. Aysha and Benedict? He’d always felt they’d be good together. When Connor questioned Benedict about his cut lip, Benedict told him about Joey showing up; they’d had a ruck but he’d dealt with it, and Connor was pleased about that, too. Fucking little weasel had finally got what he deserved.
Now the ceremony was over. The priest hurried away and the mourners were picking their way over the tussocky mounds of grass toward the gravelled pathway leading to the lych gate, all of them hunched against the probing wind. Connor turned away from his father’s grave, anguished, and then he saw something that made him freeze to the spot.
There was a middle-aged blonde woman dressed in black, standing out by the lych gate, her gaze fixed on Josh’s grave.
It was her. It was that bitch, Claire Milo.
He stared, thinking it couldn’t be. But it was. The shoulder-length bobbed pale hair billowing in the breeze. The big eyes. Fuck’s sake, it was her, the woman in the photos with Dad. He moved forward then and her eyes drifted away from the grave and fastened on him, standing there, staring right back at her. Any minute, Mum was going to see her and there’d be hell to pay. He surged forward, making his way toward her. She saw him coming and turned on her heel and started to hurry away.
Yeah, bitch, you can run but I can run faster.
He couldn’t get over the fucking nerve of her, showing up here today. He jogged through the groups of mourners, passing Aysha, who looked at him in surprise. Once he was out on the pavement, he caught sight of her, down the road, getting into a car. He started to run. He wasn’t going to lose her now. He ran full-pelt to the car and got there just as the engine was starting. It was a big black S-Class Merc and there were tinted windows so all he could see in the back of the car was an outline, a pale face turned upward to stare at him in alarm. Another one too. There was someone else in there with her.
Yeah, be afraid. I’ll throttle the life out of you if I get my fucking hands on you, you cow.
He wrenched at the door handle but it was locked. He pounded on the window and she shrank back as if he was a madman. At that moment, he felt like one. She was here, besmirching his dad’s memory, reminding him that Dad had a secret life, one Connor had until recently had no clue about. Then the other passenger leaned forward, said something to the driver. He floored the accelerator, and the engine roared into life.
The Merc swung out and was gone.
135
‘What were you doing, earlier? You were hurrying, what for?’ Shauna asked him when he met up with her a few minutes later.
‘Thought I saw someone I knew. An old mate of mine.’ He couldn’t tell his mother that Dad’s bit of fluff had pitched up here, today of all days.
‘Let’s get back to the house, it’s fucking freezing,’ said Shauna, shivering.
All the mourners were getting into their cars. Shauna got into the limo, and Connor sauntered back to where Benedict was unlocking his BMW, Aysha at his side.
‘It went off OK then,’ said Benedict. ‘Sad day. I’m sorry, mate. It’s awful.’
‘What were you running for?’ Aysha asked Connor. Her face looked bleached white with grief, her eyes dark and intense, just like Mum’s.
‘I’ll tell you later,’ said Connor, and hoped that she’d forget it, hoped that this was a one-off and that Claire Milo would never dare show her face around his family again.
136
‘See this?’ said Connor.
It was days after Dad’s funeral. Connor had thought it all through over yet another long sleepless night. Finally he’d contacted Mad Dog Cunningham, one of his and Benedict’s street boys. Mad Dog was so named because he had bulging Marty Feldman eyes that swivelled wildly in his head like a hound with rabies. Connor had torn his father’s image out of one of the shots the private dick had taken, and given Cunningham what remained of the print. A nice, clear shot of the blonde woman.
‘So who’s the skirt?’ asked Mad Dog.
‘Her name’s Claire Milo. I saw her the other day. Maybe she’s here, in London, maybe at a hotel, or maybe she’s renting somewhere. Put the word out. Find her.’
‘Bit old for you, I’d have thought.’
Connor gave him a look.
‘No offence. Know you got an eye for the blondes. I’ll pass the word along.’
‘Yeah. Good. And less of the fucking lip, OK?’
Connor called in on Mum next day, see how she was doing. Shauna seemed OK. Today, she seemed more angry than grieving.
‘That bastard. I can’t believe he’d do that,’ said Shauna as they sat in the kitchen having coffee. ‘A hole-in-the-corner affair. It’s so bloody sordid.’
Ah, fuck. Connor had been wishing she wouldn’t mention it. It pained him. He couldn’t take sides, not against Dad. He’d always looked up to his father, the king of the gypsy fighters. And now the poor bastard wasn’t here to defend himself.
‘Cheating on me with that dirty bitch,’ Shauna spat. ‘That fucking Milo cow. After all these years.’
Connor still couldn’t bring himself to tell Mum that the Milo woman had been at Dad’s funeral. Mum would kick off in spectacular style, and her temper was something no one would put a match to without standing well back first.
‘You got nothing to say about it?’ Shauna demanded.
‘What the hell can I say, Mum?’ Connor burst out in exasperation. ‘It was a fucking shock. Didn’t seem like Dad at all. But he did it.’
‘I got a call from Lesley Deveney this morning. The detective.’
‘And?’
‘She went back out to the States to find her. That whore.’
‘Right.’
‘She’s left her place. According to the doorman the Deveney woman talked to, she’s over here.’
‘Right.’ Somehow, Connor kept his face expressionless. Of course the Milo woman was here. He’d seen her, with his own eyes.
‘If I ever see her scheming face, I’m going to rip it off,’ said Shauna. ‘I’ll tear her bloody blonde hair right out of her fucking stupid head.’
‘She won’t come near,’ said Connor. ‘She must know what our reaction would be.’
‘She better not.’
‘She won’t.’
But she’d been at the funeral . . .
‘I hope he rots,’ Shauna spat out.
Connor shook his head. ‘No. You don’t mean that.’
‘He betrayed me, Connor.’
Connor stood up. He couldn’t take this.
‘I’ll catch you later,’ he said, and left.
He went to Aysha’s place, and wasn’t too surprised when Benedict opened the door to him.
‘Hi,’ said Benedict, in jeans and shirtsleeves, toast in hand. ‘Aysh!’ he called out. ‘It’s Connor. Come in, mate.’
Connor went in. Aysha was in the kitchen, having breakfast. She gave her brother a peck on the cheek. ‘You want tea? Toast?’ she offered.
‘Nah. I came by because I have something to tell you.’
‘Oh? What, then?’
‘Maybe you’d better sit down for this.’
‘Blimey, this sounds bad,’ said Aysha, frowning.
‘What’s this about?’ asked Benedict, following him in.
/> ‘It’s about Dad,’ said Connor, and he pulled out a copy of one of the photos of Josh and Claire Milo, snapped right there in the New York street. He put it on the worktop in front of Aysha. Benedict looked over her shoulder at the print. Aysha stared at it. Slowly, she sagged back on to a kitchen stool.
‘Oh God,’ she said faintly.
‘But – fuck it – that’s Josh,’ said Benedict.
‘Dad was having an affair with this woman. Claire Milo. When he was in the States.’
‘I don’t believe it,’ said Aysha. But really? She did. And she thought it explained a lot.
137
Jeb Cleaver was still furious. He stalked around the farm in the icy downpour, doing his work with the hogs, giving his old dad nothing more than the bare minimum of conversation. He couldn’t shake off the rage he felt at Shauna’s nerve. So the bitch thought she could just dump him, did she? Chuck him, as if all these years meant nothing at all. Damn, she’d got that wrong. Hadn’t he been her helper, her bedmate, through all their lives? He had. And now she thought she could call it off, just like that?
Big mistake.
Jeb had waited so patiently, too. One day Josh Flynn was bound to leave her, he knew. She was a strong woman and some men couldn’t hack that. He could, of course. He knew how to master her. But Shauna had run Josh Flynn ragged, Jeb had seen it all happening from the sidelines. Poor cunt hadn’t had a leg to stand on. She’d ruled the roost, had him firmly under the thumb.
And now Josh was dead.
Which should have left the way clear for him.
Jeb trudged through mud and rain, fed the pigs, watched them grunting and shoving each other to get to the feed. So the father was gone, out of reach. But that still left the son, didn’t it. That still left the sexy dark-haired daughter. Shauna lived for her kids. Lived through them. If anything should happen to them, wouldn’t she be in a tear then? Wouldn’t that break that ice-cold heart of hers?
He toed one of the big sows with his mud-spattered boot and she grunted and turned with a snap of her jaws. He jerked his leg back with a grin. Fucking pigs’d eat the lot. Meal and fruit and ale waste, any damned thing. Even people – if they stood still long enough.