‘I can assure you, Salvatore, that no one will interfere with our business. I own fucking everyone of importance, from the police, to the Customs, to the fucking High Court Judges. I can access anyone needed.’
Salvatore Ferreira nodded; he had expected no less. He had made his point, he could be magnanimous now. ‘I believe you, Michael. But I had to ask, you understand that?’
Michael took a large sip of his brandy and, shrugging nonchalantly, he said carefully, swallowing down the raw anger that was threatening to overwhelm him, ‘Of course I do, Salvatore. I would do the same in your position. Now, I thought I would take you to one of my clubs in the West End.’
Salvatore was watching him closely, and Michael knew this was some kind of test.
‘I like the English girls. Proper blondes!’
Michael sighed heavily, rolling his eyes in mock annoyance. ‘I had a feeling you would say that!’
Chapter Seventy-Three
Jack Cornel believed himself to be an intelligent man – if he had been allowed to have a decent education, he knew he could have made something of himself. His biggest problem was his arrogance, which he had worn like a shield since childhood. All his life he had sought arguments with anyone that he felt might be looking down on him. He had a huge chip on his shoulder. He hated to be treated like a nobody. His father had been a well-known drunk and his mother an even bigger one. The Cornel boys had grown up in a filthy council flat, the result of haphazard parenting, and had to live with the stigma of having the Cornel name.
They had not just witnessed violence – they had been the recipients of it since they could remember. It had been a hard upbringing. Jack had tried to protect his younger brother from his parents’ viciousness and their complete disregard for the two children they had somehow created.
His father had finally beaten his wife to death when the two boys were thirteen and ten respectively. They had then had to try and survive in the care system. Too old for adoption, and much too disturbed for fostering at a residential care home, they had eventually been placed in a lock-down facility that catered for children either sent there by the courts for serious offences or, like the Cornel brothers, because no one knew what to do with them. It was a severe and harsh environment, and they stayed until eventually the social workers released them one after the other on to an unsuspecting public. By then they were past redemption, inured to pain and, without the skills to adapt to society, they had lapsed into the world of petty villainy. Burglars, thieves and liars, they had simply existed, until Jack shot a Dooley. That one act had made him believe he was now capable of moving them up in the world, thereby making a real name for themselves. Jack Cornel saw this as his chance to shine, and he was determined to make the most of the opportunity. He had assured his brother Cecil that, with Dooley’s murder behind them, they were finally on the road to public recognition and wealth.
Chapter Seventy-Four
Declan was watching the Cornel brothers as they drank themselves stupid in a private club Michael had acquired a few years previously, in lieu of a heavy debt. They were with a couple of young lads, both up-and-coming Faces, who knew exactly what was wanted from them. The Cornels had walked into the club with the lads, without a second’s thought, and that alone proved just how gullible they were. They were not even on their own home turf.
It was pitiful. The Cornel brothers actually believed that Michael Flynn was going to arrive here at some point, with the Colombians in tow. As if that would ever happen! As if anyone truly in the know would think that a man like Michael Flynn would actually come to a shithole like this, and bring his overseas guests with him.
He had told the bar staff to give them what they wanted, and to make sure the drinks were large and plentiful – the drunker these prats were the better. The Dooleys had made a major fuck-up by not paying the Cornels out for their brother’s murder. The fact that they were on remand didn’t really mean anything – they were running everything from the prison, business as usual. Rumour had it that they had a problem with the brother who had died, but so what? No one in the world they lived in would swallow something so outrageous. It was their brother, for fuck’s sake! And that needed sorting out. It was a piss-take, an insult to them as a family, and especially when it was perpetrated by people like the Cornels – a pair of prize cabbages, whose combined IQ was equivalent to a fucking mongoose.
Whatever the rights and wrongs of the situation, Declan blamed the Dooleys’ tardiness for the Cornels thinking they were on course for the big time. Now the Cornels were his problem, and that wasn’t something he would forget in a hurry. The Dooleys owed him. He was doing their dirty work for them after all, and he was going to make sure they compensated him for his aggravation. It was going to be a very expensive oversight on their part.