Declan watched as Michael did as he was told and, leaving him to it, he dragged Steven Golding out of basement, walked him down the lane, and forced him into the boot of Michael’s Mercedes.
He sat in the car and waited until the ambulance had arrived before he drove sedately though the London traffic to the scrapyard. Declan guessed that the nut case wanted Michael to kill him. He had done what he had set out to do, and now he wanted to die. It was all so fucking mental. His punishment could be arranged, only at a later date. He wasn’t getting away with this that easily, not by a long chalk.
Chapter One Hundred
and Thirty-Eight
Timothy Branch arrived at the hospital, aware that he would be expected to smooth everything over for Michael Flynn, and to make sure that Michael could get on with the business at hand with the minimum of fuss.
When he saw young Jessie Flynn he was, for the first time in his life, speechless. The girl was lying on a bed in intensive care, and Michael Flynn was standing beside her bed, holding her hand. He looked seriously ill too – his face was devoid of colour, even his lips were white.
But Jessie, young Jessie, was a terrifying sight.
‘Fucking hell, Michael, I’m so sorry. I’m so very sorry.’
And he meant it. Michael could hear it in the man’s voice.
‘He fucking planned this, Timothy. He shackled her to a bed, and he left her there to rot. Her heart gave out. The infection in her blood weakened it. Twenty-two years old and she had a massive fucking coronary. I got there too late. I was too late to help her.’
Michael started to cry again.
Timothy Branch automatically put his arm around the man’s shoulders; he couldn’t even imagine the pain that he must be feeling. To lose a child was hard enough for anyone, but to know she had been murdered – had died a slow and painful death – had to be unendurable.
‘Listen, Michael, I will sort this, don’t worry. I swear to you.’
Michael nodded. He appreciated the man’s promise – for the first time he actually felt that the man was trustworthy. But it was the way Jessie had died. Even a fucking no-mark like Branch couldn’t help but be affected. Just looking at her broken body was hard enough.
‘That bastard soaked her with cold water, he starved her, he fucking held her there with home-made manacles. You should see her poor legs. The fetters were so fucking tight they rubbed away every piece of her skin – they even scraped against her bones. She must have been in absolute agony, Timothy. My baby lived her last few weeks on this earth in excruciating pain, waiting for me to find her, to help her. But I was too late.’
Detective Inspector Timothy Branch would never have believed that he would feel any kind of pity for Michael Flynn, but he did. He felt the man’s pain as if it was his own. No one should ever have to see a child like this. It was outrageous – it took a certain kind of hate to be capable of harming another person so wickedly. Child murderers, rapists, were capable of such viciousness, of such cowardice, because they were cowards. They bullied the weakest people in society, little children and anyone who was smaller or weaker than them. Now Jessie Flynn, whose father was the hardest man in Europe, let alone London or the UK, who was responsible for every earn available, was dead. Murdered.
If this could happen to Michael Flynn’s child, what chance did anyone else have? This just proved that no one was immune to hatred. As a police officer, Timothy had always known that – he had seen so much mindless violence, so many pointless murders. But when something like this happened to a man like Michael Flynn, a man who was by all accounts at the pinnacle of his power, it was food for thought. Here he was, crushed and weeping as he looked at his daughter’s bruised and broken body. It was an eye-opening situation.
Michael Flynn looked at Timothy Branch, and he smiled eerily. ‘I’ve got him though, Timothy, I’ve got the fucker, and I will make him pay. Don’t you worry about that.’
Timothy Branch didn’t answer him. He just stood there, silently thanking the Good Lord that it wasn’t his child lying there dead.
Chapter One Hundred
and Thirty-Nine
As Josephine heard her husband running up the stairs, she checked her make-up in her dressing table mirror, pleased to see that she looked perfect.
She sat up straighter in her chair, and turned off her DVD player. She knew that Michael hated her films, especially that she watched the same ones over and over again.
As he came into her bedroom, she was ready for him, she had a half smile on her face, and she looked towards him quizzically. It was a look she had practised and perfected over the years. There was no way she would lower herself to ask him why he had not bothered to get in touch with her. She still had her pride.