The Betrayed: A shocking, gritty thriller that will hook you from the first page

by Casey Kelleher

  The Betrayed

  A shocking, gritty thriller that will hook you from the first page

  Casey Kelleher

  Contents

  Part 1

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Part 2

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Part 3

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  A Letter from Casey

  Also by Casey Kelleher

  The Taken

  The Promise

  Acknowledgments

  For Mum and Dad

  For Everything

  x x

  Part One

  1982

  One

  ‘Fuck me!’ Opening his eyes, Michael Byrne gasped for air, exhausted, as the young girl straddling him peeled herself away from his perspiring body, satisfied that she’d successfully tended to his needs.

  Standing next to the bed, completely stark bollock naked – clearly confident with her young firm figure – she lit a fag and smiled down at him with glee.

  ‘Well, I wasn’t expecting that!’ She’d just given grandad the fuck of his life and had been pleasantly surprised at his stamina. The man was at least fifty, but there was clearly life in the old goat yet, as the bugger had really made her work for her money tonight. ‘You’re not bad for an old boy!’

  Grinning at the compliment, Michael Byrne could see that the girl meant it too. He was glad he still had it in him, if he was honest. Being married to Joanie, he was amazed his dick hadn’t completely wilted away and lost all its purpose for the amount of use his frigid wife ever got out of it.

  Michael wrinkled his nose in distaste as the stale smell of cigarette smoke began to fill the room. Joanie would go ballistic if she found out someone was smoking in her precious house. Panicking for a second, he almost asked the girl to put it out.

  What was he thinking? He chuckled to himself as he watched the girl bend over, leaning down to flick the ash from her fag into one of Joanie’s tacky-looking trinket boxes. Cigarette smoke? Fuck me. That would be the least of his worries if Joanie walked in here now. He could just see his stuck-up wife’s horrified expression at the thought of her husband and this young tart writhing around in their marital bed.

  That only made him smile all the more.

  By rights, he should have a guilty conscience. He’d wronged Joanie over the years – a lot – but bringing a tom back here to their home, to their bed that they both slept in, was an all-time low. He didn’t feel so much as a pang of remorse for his actions though; in fact, if anything, he felt bloody fantastic. Every thrust, every shudder with Lorna had only been enhanced and heightened by the fact that if his wife Joanie had known what he was up to, she would have done her nut. Just the thought of pissing his wife off had been all he needed to get his todger up and get himself going. In fact, he’d thought about Joanie the entire time.

  The stuck-up cow. Parading around in her silk dressing gown, with a face full of fancy creams and potions that clearly didn’t bloody work. Joanie was far too precious about herself to ever think about loosening up and having a bit of fun.

  Still, she had her uses. Just the thought of her had enabled him to put on the best performance of his life tonight, and he felt amazing for it.

  ‘What are you looking so smug about?’ Lorna asked, glad to see such a satisfied customer. She was hoping that she’d get a tip for her services.

  ‘That, my girl, was something else altogether. I could do it all over again.’ Grabbing at her waist as he pulled her back on to the bed, Michael tried his luck for an encore performance.

  ‘Bloody hell, Casanova! Slow down,’ Lorna said, resisting his pull and wagging her finger at him playfully. ‘I need a wee. You be a good boy while I’m gone, okay, then maybe I’ll think about it.’

  Michael enjoyed the spectacular view of Lorna’s tiny pert buttocks as she strutted out of the bedroom in all her naked glory. Listening out as she took a piss in the bathroom, he heard her turn on the shower. At least she was hygienic. It made a change from the usual prostitutes that he picked up. Filthy most of them. Physically and morally. Though that was often what attracted him to them in the first place. He liked women who didn’t have any objections with his explicit demands in bed. He could be as rough and as dirty as he liked and the girls not only let him, but they enjoyed it too. Or at least they acted as if they did.

  Lorna being one of them. The girl certainly wasn’t fussy, but then again, neither was he. He couldn’t afford to be anymore. The older he was getting, combined with his lack of funds, meant that these days he took whatever was on offer, and Lorna tonight had been the pick of the bunch.

  Still, she was bloody good at her job.

  Hearing a loud crash in the bathroom, some toiletries crashing to the floor, Michael imagined the girl rummaging through the bathroom cabinet, helping herself to some of Joanie’s expensive perfumes.

  Fill your fucking boots, love! he thought jovially.

  When his wife finally bothered to grace him with her company again, Michael would just make out that she must have taken her belongings with her, either that or he’d imply that she must be getting on a bit. Losing her memory.

  She hated it, did Joanie: being reminded that she was getting on now too. That would teach her for just upping and abandoning him yet again to go and pander to their precious son. Cleaning his flat and cooking his meals as if the lad was some kind of an imbecile and couldn’t do it all himself. The woman did his nut in running around for the man, just because he was ‘busy working’.

  Working. If that’s what you called pimping out girls and being a general thug.

  The next almighty crash from the bathroom made Michael jump: the bang too loud to be Lorna just rooting around, being nosey. ‘You all right in there, Lorna?’ he shouted, wondering if he should perhaps muster up the energy to get out of bed and check on her.

  Fuck it!

  Throwing the blankets back from his naked body, about to go and investigate, he heard Lorna coming back along the corridor towards the bedroom.

  Relaxing back down onto the bed, he wondered if he could get another erection. Fully exposed now, he began rubbing his cock vigorously, so that Lorna would be under no illusions about what he wanted from her when she returned.

  Only when the bedroom door burst open, it wasn’t the lovely Lorna that caught sight of his flaccid penis.

  ‘Oh put it away, for fuck’s sake!’ Jimmy Byrne spat, his huge frame almost blocking the entire doorway
as he looked down at Michael with an expression of pure disgust.

  Mortified at being caught red-handed, Michael pulled the cover over him, as he realised Jimmy wasn’t alone. His sidekick, Alex Costa, stood behind him in the hallway. He seized Lorna roughly by her arm, before Jimmy caught hold of the naked girl and launched her back into the room, throwing her down into a heap on the bed.

  Realising the severity of the situation, Lorna spoke up then.

  ‘I wasn’t stealing anything, Jimmy. Honest. I was just looking,’ Lorna cried, unaware of what the fuck was going on here. The last thing she’d expected tonight was her boss to burst in on her while she’d been helping herself to some of the expensive-looking perfumes in the bathroom of some punter’s house.

  Only now it was slowly dawning on her that this wasn’t just some punter’s house at all.

  Jimmy knew Michael.

  The old man was her only hope to smooth things over for her.

  ‘Tell him, Michael, I wasn’t stealing anything, was I? I was just looking…’ Lorna pleaded, looking at Michael for some reassurance.

  ‘Get dressed,’ Michael muttered. Sitting upright in the bed, he pushed the naked girl away from him.

  Pulling the covers up around him as if they were some form of a shield, concealing his nakedness, as a sickly sensation of dread twisted around inside his stomach, he braced himself for what he knew was coming.

  Lorna nodded, confused as she registered the fear that was now spread across the older man’s face.

  Jimmy wasn’t here for her, she realised. He was here for him. The old man. And judging by the tension in the room, Michael was in a world of shit.

  Watching as Lorna pulled on her skimpy, cheap lace knickers, Jimmy shook his head impatiently.

  ‘Get your fucking things, and leave, before I launch your scrawny, dirty arse out the fucking window!’ he bellowed.

  Lorna was lucky she didn’t get a clump too after he’d just found her thumbing her way through the things in the bathroom.

  Petrified, running around the bedroom gathering up the clothes from where they’d been strewn all across the bedroom floor, Lorna didn’t need to be told twice.

  Jimmy stood in silence and waited.

  Looking at her now, her body on show, he couldn’t help turning his nose up in distaste as he eyed the telltale track marks that trailed their way up the insides of her forearms, dotted with scabs and small purple bruises. The insides of her pasty white thighs bruised too.

  ‘I’ll be dealing with you later,’ he warned, and he meant it too. Lorna was a skag head, and Jimmy couldn’t abide that in the girls that worked for him. It was one of his rules. They stayed clean.

  Lorna was out now. The girl wouldn’t work again anywhere this side of the river, he’d make sure of that.

  But first of all he needed to deal with this useless excuse of a man.

  About to pull her tights on, to cover some of her modesty, Jimmy roared at the girl.

  ‘Get the fuck out! NOW!’

  Naked, she ran. Legging it past Jimmy Byrne as fast as her feet would carry her. Whatever Michael Byrne was in the shit for wasn’t her problem and she certainly wasn’t sticking around to find out the details. She didn’t even care that she hadn’t got her money, well aware that she was lucky to be leaving unscathed at all.

  ‘I’ll see her out,’ Alex Costa said, before following the bird down the stairs, knowing that Jimmy would want to ensure that the light-fingered little mare didn’t try and rob anything else on her way out. Not that she’d have the balls to do that now that Jimmy was here.

  * * *

  The two men were alone. The room completely silent as Jimmy stared down at Michael, a deranged look in his eye.

  ‘I was right to have one of my men keep an eye on you. I knew it would only be a matter of time before you were up to your old tricks again. Only, I have to say, I never factored on even you being stupid enough to bring some swanky little whore back here.’ Jimmy was seething, trying to contain the anger that was threatening to explode out of him.

  That’s when the fear really crept in for Michael. He was alone with his psychotic monster of a son.

  ‘To my mother’s fucking bed!’

  ‘It’s not what it looks like, son,’ Michael said, wincing as the barefaced lie shot out of his mouth – feeding his son’s temper.

  Jimmy’s angry expression turned thunderous. ‘Bollocks! This is exactly what it looks like. What did you do? Lower your standards to match your morals?’ He glared at Michael. ‘And to add insult to injury, you brought one of my girls back here? What the fuck do you think you’re playing at?’

  Jimmy could feel the vein throbbing in the side of his head, the tightness of his jaw as he ground his teeth in pure annoyance. If his mother had come back here, for any reason, and caught that girl, it would have broken her heart. Let alone if she found out that he was making money from his own father getting his nuts in with one of his girls.

  His mother didn’t suffer fools gladly, but she’d put up with his father’s philandering for way too long. The sight of Lorna would have tipped her over the edge. His mother would have had to burn the bed, and fumigate all the carpets to get rid of any contamination from the little skank. This really was the ultimate fucking insult, and one which Jimmy was intent on making his father pay for dearly.

  ‘I’m sorry, Jimmy. I know you won’t understand, son,’ Michael said, his voice quivering as he spoke, as he tried to justify his actions. ‘But me and your mother, well, we don’t have sex anymore. We haven’t done for years. She doesn’t like it, son. Never has.’ Michael was almost crying, well aware of how pathetic he sounded as he desperately tried to talk himself out of this awkward situation.

  ‘She’s so caught up pandering, I mean, looking out for you, I just get neglected, son. I know it’s hard for you to realise that.’

  Joanie wouldn’t give two shits, not really; the woman was too busy catering to Jimmy’s every need to care what her husband was up to. What did she expect him to do? Live like a bleeding monk?

  ‘That girl meant nothing to me, Jimmy. She’s a means to an end, that’s all. Nothing.’

  ‘She worked for me!’ Jimmy shook his head. ‘Talk about shitting on your own doorstep.’ One of his girls being brought back here and used to humiliate his own mother certainly didn’t mean just ‘nothing’.

  ‘You’re a cunt, Dad! You always have been and you always will be,’ Jimmy sneered, staring down at the man as if he was seeing him for the very first time. Old and pathetic. He’d spent a lifetime despising the way he treated his mother while he was growing up. For not being the father that Jimmy had wanted him to be.

  All Michael had ever cared about was himself. Every month on payday it had been the same. The man would go missing for days on the trot, spending all his hard-earned cash on booze and loose women. Leaving Jimmy and his mother at home to fend for themselves.

  Nothing ever changed. He was still humiliating Joanie, shaming the family name. If anything, the man was only getting worse.

  ‘I’m sorry, son,’ Michael said, knowing that his words meant nothing. He’d gone too far this time. ‘I had too much to drink, son. I wasn’t thinking. I’m sorry.’

  Jimmy shook his head slowly.

  ‘I don’t know what else you want me to say. What else can I do?’

  ‘What I want you to do is to have a bit of respect for my mother. Your wife,’ Jimmy said, his voice surprisingly steady considering that he felt like he was about to implode. ‘What I want is for you not to bring toms back here to roll about in the bed that my mother sleeps in.’

  ‘I would have gone somewhere else, a hotel or something, only I’m skint.’ Michael gulped down the bile in the back of his throat. He wanted to say that he couldn’t afford it. Not now that Jimmy and Joanie were keeping his finances down to a minimum. Only he wasn’t a complete imbecile; he knew that right now wasn’t the time or the place to start arguing with Jimmy about money. The best thing for him
to do was keep his mouth shut and not dig the hole he’d got himself into any deeper.

  So he shut up. But his silence wasn’t going to help him now either, it appeared.

  ‘Well, Dad. This time you’ve ran shit out of luck,’ Jimmy said, as he pulled out the metal baseball bat that he’d brought with him for this very occasion.

  There would be no more chances.

  ‘Please, son, don’t do this, yeah? Think of your mother.’ Michael squirmed as he scampered rapidly to the back of the bed, holding his arms out in front of him as if to shield the blows that were about to rain down upon him.

  His eyes flickered to the doorway behind Jimmy, then to the bedroom window as he searched for an escape route.

  Jimmy could read the man’s mind quicker than Michael could think. His dad wasn’t going anywhere. ‘That’s just the problem, Dad. I am thinking of my mother. It’s a fucking pity that you didn’t, though.’

  The last thing Michael Byrne saw was the look of hate pouring from his son’s eyes as Jimmy brought the baseball bat down upon his head. The last sound a sickening crack of steel connecting with his skull, a deafening ringing sound in his ears.

  Then nothing, only darkness, which, for Michael Byrne’s sake, was probably a good thing. He couldn’t contend with the wrath of his son, Jimmy.

  Not many men could.

  Two

  ‘Is that you, Michael?’

  Drying her hands on a tea towel as she heard the front door close, Joanie Byrne rushed over towards the kitchen doorway, suddenly full of hope that her hapless excuse of a husband had finally returned home after almost a week on the missing list.

  Her head was pounding because of the man. She’d been worried sick about him and overthinking everything. It was typical really. The man didn’t even have to be in a fifty mile radius and yet he could still cause her no end of grief. Knowing Michael, he’d been holed up somewhere with some brash little tart, hungover from his alcohol infused bender. Joanie knew the score by now. She’d been married to the man for long enough. Thirty years. Michael would never change. She’d accepted that a long time ago, and for the sake of her Jimmy she’d chosen to turn a blind eye to their sham of a marriage and just put up with it.