Bad Blood

by Kelleher, Casey

  ‘Cassie!’ The relief Nathan felt as he saw her there, crouched in the corner rocking Christopher in her arms, was overwhelming.

  Cassie looked up at him, but she was crying. Tears were cascading down her face. She didn’t look scared or frightened as she had sounded earlier, she just looked sad. She was cradling Christopher in her arms, rocking him backwards and forwards. As Nathan’s gaze left hers and met his brother’s, he was sickened at what he saw.

  The blood had been Christopher’s.

  His face was a mess. Like it had been carved up. Sliced open in several places, his skin was covered in congealed blood. And his eye; Nathan could barely look at it. Bulging, mangled, it looked like it was coming away from its socket.

  He was mumbling the same words over and over, and Cassie was trying to soothe him. Her arms around him, she was comforting him. And Christopher was letting her.

  For the first time in his life, unable to find any kind of control, Christopher had finally broken. He was numb. Void of all feeling. He’d burnt himself out, exhausted from his violent outburst.

  Cassie had seen it in his eyes, and using her years of experience as a trained nurse she had managed to calm Christopher down. Soothing him with her words of reassurance, she had talked him down from his outburst.

  She could see that Christopher wasn’t just unhinged and out of control. He was suffering a mental breakdown. Coaxing him onto the floor and cradling him in her arms, Cassie had been surprised at Christopher’s sudden unexpectedly subdued mood.

  He’d been angry before, but that was Christopher’s mask. She could tell that he was scared, confused. He was like a small injured child, allowing himself to be rocked back and forth into a calmer state of mind.

  ‘What the fuck has happened?’ Nathan asked. He shook his head, trying to take in what he was seeing, but the scene before him was just too surreal.

  Nathan looked at Cassie, but she just shook her head. She couldn’t find any words to explain to him what had just happened. All she knew was that Christopher was in a really bad way. She’d managed to calm him down, to sit with him, but so far the words that had come out of his mouth as she waited for the paramedics to turn up hadn’t made any sense. He kept talking about girls. Saying how he’d hurt them.

  ‘He’s off his head, Nathan, I’ve called for an ambulance. I don’t think he knows what he’s saying. He keeps mumbling about hurting girls? He said he killed them?’ Cassie whispered.

  Then Christopher stared up at him too. His face looked grotesque, his eyeball protruding from its socket and his skin covered in dry blood. And he was whimpering. Nathan stared at his brother in shock, as Christopher suddenly looked very small and very frightened.

  He looked like a broken man.

  ‘I do. I do know what I’m saying.’ Christopher may have appeared to be a million miles away as he stared into space, mumbling to himself, but he was very much right here with them the whole time. Listening. ‘I’m sorry for what I did to the girls. I’m so sorry. I killed them.’

  ‘What did you do, Christopher?’ Nathan bent down now, desperately trying to control his urge to be sick at the sight of Christopher’s mangled face. ‘Tell me, Christopher. You can trust me, you know you can. We’re brothers, yeah? Tell me who you killed.’

  Christopher let out a weak smile. Then a wail, from deep inside him. Everything that he’d held in for all these years – he couldn’t do it anymore.

  ‘You won’t love me anymore if I tell you . . .’ Christopher had snot running down into his mouth as he spoke now. He was a mess. The drugs, the drink, it had all fucked with his head.

  ‘Tell me.’ Nathan held Christopher’s gaze.

  Nathan could hear the sirens directly outside; the paramedics would be here in just a few more minutes. Worried that Christopher might lose consciousness, Nathan needed to keep his brother talking.

  ‘I hate them and it’s all her fault.’ Christopher gulped now.

  ‘Whose fault?’

  ‘Mum’s. She ruined everything. She made me the way I am. It’s her fault that I hate women. Nasty cunts the lot of them. You can’t trust them, Nathan. You can’t trust any of them.’ Christopher was snivelling now. His head was so sore that everything throbbed. He just wanted to go to sleep and make everything go away.

  ‘Christopher, Mum’s dead. She didn’t ask to die. You can’t blame her because things haven’t worked out the way that you wanted them to. She loved us. How can you talk about her like that?’

  Christopher shook his head. He spoke with great sadness now, finally able to tell his brother the truth about everything. ‘Our mother was a lying, cheating whore, Nathan.’

  Nathan stared now, biting his tongue. His face gave nothing away but he could feel the knot of anger forming inside his own stomach at his brother’s words. Still, he tried to remain as calm as possible. He couldn’t even comprehend what his brother was saying. It was wrong, shameful. None of it made any sense. Their mother was a beautiful, caring woman. Her death had been tragic.

  ‘She was leaving him. Said she was going to take Evie with her. Said that she didn’t love him anymore. That she’d been cheating on him. Cheating on him for years, Nathan, not just a one-off.’

  Nathan was sure that Christopher was wrong now. He was obviously in shock, traumatised from his injuries, or high on gear. Probably both.

  Listening to Christopher spouting crap about their mother was hard to take in, but Nathan needed to keep Christopher talking, he needed to keep him conscious until the paramedics got here.

  ‘You must be wrong, Christopher. How come this is the first I’m hearing of it? Dad would have told me. I know he would. Come on, mate, you’ve had a nasty shock. You’re not making sense.’

  Christopher looked up now, staring Nathan straight in the face. Finally he was able to tell the truth about that fateful day. Finally someone would listen to the secret he’d been forced to keep.

  ‘Dad told me not to tell you. He told me not to tell anyone. Not a single living soul. He said that it would destroy our family. That we must keep it a secret. He made me promise.’ Christopher cried now.

  The image of his brother’s huge, beefy frame shaking as he sobbed made Nathan feel uneasy. Christopher never showed any emotion other than anger. Crying was alien to him.

  ‘You should have seen her, Nathan, she was nasty, evil. Her face was all twisted with venom. She was taunting him, trying to hurt him. But she was the one who got hurt in the end. Pushed to her death, she soon stopped laughing then.’

  Shaking his head, Nathan still didn’t know what Christopher was talking about. He really was a mess. The drugs, his temper; it was all too much. Even now, surrounded by blood and chaos, he was still spinning them all a line, stirring the shit pot, fucking with them like he always did.

  ‘Pushed to her death? What are you talking about? Mum fell. It was an accident, Christopher. You’re wrong. How would you even know any of this?’

  Nathan exchanged looks with Cassie. He wondered if it was normal for Christopher to be so disorientated. He wasn’t making any sense.

  Christopher shook his head, then taking a deep breath he said sadly, ‘I was there.’

  ‘You were there?’ Nathan said incredulously. ‘What? You heard Mum confess that she had been having an affair, that she was leaving, did you? Then you saw Dad push her down the stairs? You saw him kill her? It’s a bit far-fetched, Christopher . . .’

  ‘They didn’t realise that I was home. I was in my bedroom. I’d snuck back in to get some of my WWF wrestling cards to swap with Riley James down the road. The next thing I knew they were shouting and screaming at each other. Well, Mum was. I went out onto the landing when I heard what she said to him. She crucified him, Nathan.’

  Standing behind his father, Christopher had huddled against the wall. Only eleven years old at the time, Christopher had watched as his father slu
mped forward. His body language had said it all, he was defeated by the awful revelation that his mother had made. He’d looked like he’d had the air knocked out of him.

  Nathan stared at his brother, unsure now of what he was trying to say. For a story that Christopher was making up, it seemed very detailed.

  Nathan wanted to believe that Christopher’s words were a complete load of rubbish, but he sounded almost convincing.

  ‘I just saw red, Nathan, when she said what she did about Evie. She ripped Dad’s heart out.’

  ‘What’s it got to do with Evie?’ Nathan shook his head now, adamant that his brother was wrong. He was disillusioned, messed up.

  ‘Ask Dad.’ Suddenly Christopher was unsure of his words. Once he said them out loud he knew that there was no way they’d ever be unsaid.

  ‘I’m asking you.’

  Christopher shook his head once more. ‘She’d been having an affair, and Dad was crying, begging her to tell him that it wasn’t true.’

  Nathan felt sick again, trying to think back to the day that his mother had died. To how their father had been. Nathan just couldn’t recall anything other than their father grieving. It had been an accident. Their dad had told them that it had just been an accident. He couldn’t have lied, surely?

  He loved their mother. He didn’t want to believe what Christopher was saying, but something deep inside him was making him feel that maybe, just maybe, Christopher was telling the truth.

  Cassie felt it too. She placed her hand around Nathan’s shoulders now, gently trying to pull him back up as the paramedics pounded at the front door.

  ‘Dad said I wasn’t allowed to tell anyone. Look at the state of me. Keeping it all inside of me is fucking my head up. I can’t do it anymore. I fucking hate her. Why did she do it? Why did she lie? She ruined everything.’

  ‘What did she lie about?’

  ‘You should have seen her, Nathan. She was so vile, so nasty.’

  Nathan stared now, silent. Waiting for Christopher to finish.

  ‘Evie isn’t Dad’s daughter, Nathan. Mum was cheating on him. For years apparently.’ Christopher stared at Nathan now. His face was deadly serious and Nathan knew that he was telling him the truth. ‘She laughed in his face when she told him. Drunk out of her mind, she actually laughed when she told him. I hated her for what she was saying. For doing that to Dad. To all of us.’

  Christopher glanced up now, and stared his brother straight in the eyes.

  ‘So I pushed her. I ran at her and pushed her head first down the stairs.’ Christopher had finally said out loud the words that he’d been suppressing for so long. ‘I killed her, Nathan. It was me. Dad tried to cover it up so that no-one would ever find out what I’d done. Uncle Raymond took me away and Dad lied to everyone. He tried to protect me. Protect all of us.’

  The paramedics came in then and Nathan stepped aside, letting Cassie’s comforting arm slip from his shoulders.

  Holding onto the kitchen worktop Nathan steadied himself as the ambulance crew tended to Christopher, while his brother’s words rang in his head.

  Christopher had killed their mother.

  Their dad had covered it all up.

  And Evie – poor Evie.

  Leaning over the basin, Nathan threw up.

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  ‘So the O’Sheas broke into the bar, not knowing that Harry Woods and his daughter Evie were here babysitting?’ Having raced to the scene of the crime, Detective Chief Superintendent Porter felt like a dog with a bone on hearing the news of the fatal shootout in the Woods family’s bar. Finally Harry Woods had left a trail of his own dirt for everyone to see.

  Except the words coming out of Officer Mansell’s mouth were implying otherwise.

  ‘So you’re telling me that Harry was the victim in all of this?’

  Mansell nodded. ‘They’ve just taken him to the serious trauma unit over at St. Mary’s. He’s in a bad way, Guv; Jimmy shot him. The bloke was like a man possessed. Killed his brother, shot Harry and Terry and then turned the gun on the girls.’

  Porter’s ears pricked up. ‘Terry? As in Terry Stranks? What was he doing here? Were the Woods hiding him all along?’

  ‘No, Guv. He turned up just seconds before me. I saw him try and negotiate with Jimmy, but like I say, Jimmy was a man possessed. He weren’t having none of it. I could see by Kelly Stranks’ reaction that it was the first time she’d laid eyes on her husband. My guess was that he’d been laying low watching the pub. Kelly seemed genuinely shocked to see him. He must have been hanging about outside when he heard the commotion, just like I did.’

  Porter frowned. The story was a bit too cut and shut for his liking. It was almost like Mansell had it rehearsed. Porter had had his suspicions about the officer’s involvement with the Woods family for a while now; still, with no evidence that Harry had Mansell in his pocket, what could he do about it?

  Rubbing his fingers through the stubble on his chin, Porter stepped carefully around Jimmy’s and Micky’s bodies, which were still splayed out on the petrol sodden floor, covered with sheets.

  ‘So you were here the entire time?’

  Mansell shook his head. ‘No, Sir. Only for the last part, when Jimmy opened fire. I saw it all, Sir.’

  Porter frowned. He was slowly coming to the realisation that Harry Woods was going to somehow dig himself out of this mess once again and there was nothing that he could do about it. It irked Porter that Harry always seemed to get away with things. The bloke was like Teflon: nothing stuck to him.

  Porter tried to make sense of the crime scene, as he tallied up what the officer in front of him was saying. ‘So you were the first officer on the scene?’ Porter asked suspiciously, as he eyed up Mansell’s civilian clothing, noting that the officer wasn’t in uniform.

  ‘Well, technically I’m off duty, Sir. I was only walking past when I heard the commotion. I’d parked up down the road to get a kebab, see? I had the late night munchies.’ Watching his superior officer crouching down as he lifted up the black sheeting that covered Micky O’Shea’s lifeless corpse, Mansell repeated his prepared story.

  ‘Late night munchies? It’s almost breakfast time!’ Standing up, Porter eyed Mansell. He’d been dubious of Mansell’s loyalty to the force for a while now. But this story was something else altogether, and Porter knew that his suspicions were right. Mansell was in Harry’s pocket, he was sure of it.

  ‘I know. But my wife’s had me on this strict diet, you see. I was up late watching some films, thought that I’d pop out and treat myself while the wife was asleep. What she doesn’t know won’t hurt her, you know how it is.’ Mansell knew that his reason for being in the area was lame, but there was no way that Porter could prove otherwise.

  ‘No, I don’t know how it is, actually.’ Porter glared at Mansell. ‘So, you were just walking past? Bit of a coincidence, wouldn’t you say?’ Porter eyeballed Mansell now.

  Mansell shrugged. Even if Porter personally didn’t believe him, so what? He had no proof that he was lying.

  ‘Well, coincidences do happen,’ Mansell offered before continuing. ‘And it’s a good job that I did walk by, too. The Woods would have all suffered at Jimmy O’Shea’s hands otherwise. The bloke was like a lunatic. The attack was completely unprovoked.’

  ‘Unprovoked?’ Porter stared at Mansell questioningly, then raised his eyes.

  ‘The O’Sheas were the only ones with the guns.’

  Porter frowned. This was one of the biggest loads of bullshit he’d ever heard.

  ‘I’ve already questioned Evie Woods; she and her sister Kelly have gone down to the hospital with Harry and Terry. Apparently, according to her, she and her father had been babysitting for the eldest daughter, Kelly, this evening. Kelly’s kids are upstairs in bed as we speak. Slept through the whole thing, luckily. Kelly called one of the barmaids in to keep an
eye on them before she left. Anyway, Evie said that she and her dad were just getting ready to leave when the O’Sheas burst in with all guns blazing. Apparently they were trying to turn the place over; they’d heard that Harry Woods’ kids owned the place and they were after the bar’s takings. They didn’t realise that Nathan and Christopher never left any money on the premises overnight. So the burglary was foiled from the off. Only, when Harry confronted them both, Jimmy just lost it. Doused everything in petrol and threatened to set light to the place. Micky, having a conscience and knowing that there were kids upstairs, argued with his brother, so Jimmy shot him.’

  ‘Jimmy shot Micky?’

  Mansell nodded.

  ‘Over a row about kids?’

  Again Mansell just nodded.

  Porter was desperate for something on Woods. Anything at all. But already he could feel the case slipping from his grasp. He shook his head and then stared around the room. The place was soaked in petrol, and there was blood sprayed all over the carpet next to where the two bodies lay.

  ‘Whereabouts were you standing? Surely Jimmy would have tried to shoot you too? And if the O’Sheas were the only ones with guns, how did Jimmy end up getting shot?’

  ‘I was over at the window.’ Mansell pointed over to the smashed window over by the far corner of the pub. ‘I called for backup immediately. By then Jimmy had set the gun on Evie Woods. The girl was terrified. Jimmy was going to shoot her, but Harry was quick off the mark. He picked up Micky’s gun off the floor, he threw himself over Evie in order to protect her. They both opened fire. Jimmy shot first and Harry only shot back in self-defence.’

  ‘Self-defence?’ Porter stared now.

  The story was so far-fetched, and he could almost see the steam billowing out of Mansell’s ears as the officer recited the unconvincing version of events.

  ‘So Harry shot Jimmy?’