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  Lydia raised her glass to meet the mouth of the bottle. The bubbly sloshed into the flute and foamed. She necked half of it before Rory could offer a strawberry. There were no placemats on the table so she set her glass back on the existing ring of moisture she'd left on the unfinished Mexican pine.

  "So, are we going with the old bastard or the slick guy?" Rory asked.

  "The old bastard."

  "Dead on. I like him, but if he mentions my teeth again, I might have to set him straight." He threw a slow motion hook into the air. It passed over the top of the bottle.

  "McGoldrick's veins are full of piss and vinegar. He's a good man to have on your side, so long as you've a thick skin. Powerful isn't the word for it."

  "So what am I going to do with all this money?"

  "What all you boys do. Squander it on cars and WAGs."

  "Yeah, I suppose a chunk of it will go on that. But I don't want to end up skint after my legs go. Too many eejits have done that. I need to invest or something."

  "Don't ever say that to a journalist. It'll fuck your reputation."

  Fuck. Casual swearing was one of her getting tipsy tells. Champagne got the job done pretty fast.

  "I'll have to give the financial advisor a shake," Rory said. "If I can find his number."

  "You're not so hot on the bills and banking side of things, then?"

  "Nah. I've no interest. So long as the bank machine spits out cash every time I stick my card in, there's not much else I need to know."

  Lydia raised her glass. "To the bottomless bank machine."

  Rory raised his and then they knocked back their drinks. Rory poured fresh ones. Lydia fiddled with her phone. No texts. She checked the time. The hours were steadily ticking by. When were the bastards going to arrive?

  "God, we got through that fast," Lydia said.

  "Goes down too easy, doesn't it? Will I open another one?"

  "I think I need something less fizzy. I'll get the hiccups if I stay on this stuff."

  Rory sprang out of his seat and made a beeline for the drinks cabinet. "Vodka and orange juice? It'll count towards our five-a-day."

  Lydia had to stay alert but a drunk Rory might be easier to get information from. And she needed to arm herself with info. Like the code to his alarm system. Maybe she could convince him to go out and pass on the information when the bastards finally called. And maybe a little Dutch courage would help her too. More alcohol seemed like the answer. Not the best but an answer nonetheless. The champagne had awakened a thirst she knew she should suppress. Or should she? Lydia gave Rory the thumbs-up.

  "Make mine a double."

  ###

  Cormac dumped a mug of cold water on Sporty Spice's face. The young thug gasped into consciousness. His eyes settled on Cormac's and he tried to move. Found himself bound by the strips Cormac had torn from a bed sheet. He writhed on the living room floor seemingly unaware that he was no relation to Houdini. Cormac settled into an armchair and waited for the idiot to wear himself out.

  He'd ordered the others to stay in Donna's bedroom until he'd worked a few things out. John was still half out of his mind on the pill cocktail Donna had fed him and offered no argument. Mattie, pale and anxious, barely acknowledged him. Donna hadn't let him off so easily.

  "What the fu..." She took a deep breath. "What have you brought to my doorstep, Cormac?"

  "The kid doesn't mind if you curse."

  "You're not funny."

  "I'll get you protection. You'll be safe."

  "Safe? I'm hiding in my bedroom because my ex has been fighting God-knows-who in my living room. You think I'm ever going to feel safe here again?"

  "I'll help you find a new—"

  "Get out of my sight."

  "Maybe you should get John ready to go? We might need to leave here quickly."

  "Maybe you should fuck off, Cormac."

  And he really should have fucked off but that would mean abandoning his second dead body of the day. Self defence or not, the tally didn't sit well with him.

  At last, the trussed up hatchet man gave up his struggle with a grunt.

  "Where the fuck's Paul?"

  Cormac blinked. The dopey bastard had given up his partner's first name without a second thought. Amateur.

  "I left him in the kitchen."

  "Is he all right?"

  "He's had better days."

  "My head hurts."

  "A pistol-whipping will do that to you. Suck it up."

  "I'm going to kill you."

  "Aye, yeah."

  Sporty Spice opened his mouth to share some new nugget of wisdom. Cormac slid off his chair and shoved a pair of rolled up socks into the goon's big mouth. His gag reflex sent him into a spasm. He fought too hard to pull oxygen in through his nose and his panic-stricken face reddened. Cormac slapped him hard. Distracted him from his hissy fit. Sporty Spice's teary, hate-filled eyes narrowed. He started to breathe normally.

  "Give the shite-talk a rest, big lad," Cormac said. "I'll pull this gag out of your mouth in a second but all I want to hear is answers to my questions. You go off on one and I'll fucking smother you."

  Sporty Spice nodded.

  Cormac unplugged him.

  "What's your connection to Big Frank?"

  "He's a mate."

  "A mate that pays you?"

  "Sometimes. If something needs done, like."

  "Were you here to kill me?"

  "No, mate. I swear. Frank just wanted us to track you down."

  "With hammers?"

  "That was Paul's idea. ‘Just in case,' he said."

  "What's your name?"

  Sporty Spice's eyes darted to the left. "Pearce."

  Cormac pounded his fist into Sporty Spice's stomach. The lying bastard's legs shot up. A heavier blow might have folded him in half. He coughed and his eyes streamed.

  "Tell the truth."

  "It's Shane. Shane Morgan."

  Both names? This fellah's softer than shite. "That's more like it, Shane. Stay honest and we'll get through this rightly. Is Frank still in Belfast?"

  "I think so. He didn't say."

  "What about his family."

  "Don't know."

  "What do you know, Shane?"

  "A big job went wrong. It was your fault. Now Frank's trying to fix things."

  "How'd Frank get in touch with you?"

  "He didn't. He phoned Paul and Paul brought me in on it."

  "Wait there."

  Cormac went to the kitchen. He looked down at aul' Paul. Dead Paul. He hadn't been as tough as Cormac had first thought. A bit of a tussle – an angry one, granted, but still just a fight – and the man clocked out. Cormac averted his gaze from the unnatural angle of Paul's neck. Went hunting in the dead man's pockets. He found a battered phone in the jeans. Clamshell design. Cormac could hear grit grind in the hinge when he flipped it open. The display was dimmed by a fine layer of dust, the buttons grubby and stiff. He checked the call records. The contact name TONER topped the list of received calls.

  "Very sloppy, Big Frank." He hit a button to return the call.

  Frank picked up on the second ring and launched right in.

  "Was our info sound?"

  Cormac didn't answer. He wondered where the "info" had come from.

  "Paul? Are you there?"

  "Hiya, Frank."

  "Who the fuck's this? Kelly? Is that you?"

  "Afraid so."

  "Put Paul on the phone."

  "He's... what's the word? Indisposed?"

  "You still at your ex's flat?"

  "Why don't you come and find out?"

  Frank took a deep breath. Cormac suspected a torrent of abuse was headed his way. He hung up.

  Chapter 11

  A footballer should never marry a girl with the potential to earn more money than them. The beautiful game attracts alpha-males. They can't cope with a woman that brings home more bacon than they do.

  Rory Cullen, CULLEN: The Autobiography

  "I
'm getting death threats, Lydia."

  Rory's voice, usually a little too loud for most situations, was barely audible. He sounded like a pubescent boy confessing to some shameful deed. A drunk pubescent boy. He sat at the Mexican pine table, a half-empty glass of vodka with a dash of orange juice within hand's reach. Lydia willed him to reach for it again. He was three or four drinks ahead of her and his were much stronger than hers. She'd seen to that, topping up his glass regularly. Outside, the evening cold descended and the natural light faded. The gang would make their move under the cover of darkness. It made sense. She could almost feel the bastards approach.

  "Death threats, Lyds."

  Lydia held her tongue. Waited for him to tell her the full story before reacting. Death threats to footballers were not uncommon. Fervent fans, high-rolling gamblers, scorned glamour models... off the pitch the high-profile players trod a minefield. Most of them led to nothing, just the product of frustration or obsession in the majority of cases. But it only took one crazed fucker to cause a major problem – just one opportunist to follow through and end a life.

  "Most of them have been hand-delivered to my door."

  Shit. Major problem.

  "The last one came with a bullet."

  A bullet. The favoured theatrical accompaniment to a Northern Irish death threat. John, in his hideous habit of making light of his country's past, had joked about sending bullets to his mother-in-law in his speech on their wedding day. His side had laughed. Hers shared an almost tangible awkwardness. She should have taken that speech as an omen.

  Lydia's mind revisited the scene at the holiday cottage. Balaclavas, harsh Belfast accents, a well-practised ease about the whole situation. She didn't know if the men who held her family were IRA, UV-whatever or simply Northern Irish gangsters. It didn't matter. They had guns and they had kidnapped her family.

  "How long has this been going on?" At the back of her mind, Lydia blamed Rory for her family's situation. If he'd acted faster, spoken to somebody about the threats before now, would the bastards have moved on to her?

  "A few weeks now."

  "And you still thought it was a good idea to go to Belfast?"

  "To get out of this house for a week or two?" Rory swirled the dregs of his booze, sniffed at the rim of his glass and set it down on the table. "I thought it was a great idea."

  If you're too fucking stupid to make the connection between bullets and Belfast, maybe.

  Lydia buried her hands in her hair and rested her elbows on the table. She stared at her unfinished vodka and orange juice and concentrated on not puking.

  "What'll I do, Lydia?"

  She spoke to her glass, afraid she'd explode if she looked at him. "Fucked if I know."

  "I shouldn't have left Chelsea."

  Lydia curled her fingers. Her nails dug into her scalp and threatened to break skin.

  "Those bastards are crazy," he said.

  "Your old team?"

  "No, no, no. The fans. Well... no, not the fan fans. The dirty, stinking bastards that pretend to be fans but are just after a ruck. Hooligans, you know? And I really let them have it in my book. Said they were wankers and scumbags. The fucking firm. They're—"

  Lydia thumped her hands down onto the tabletop. Rory's bullshit ceased.

  "Wise the fuck up, Rory. You realise you're talking about the football bogey men, don't you? The Headhunters? I mean, come on. Is that who you think tracked you down to hand deliver bullets? Cut through the media hype and all that's left of that gang is a bunch of pot-bellied lager louts that can't even get into their team's grounds anymore. Head-bangers, more like."

  Rory's face reddened. "I suppose you think the IRA's gone away too."

  "How can you even compare...?"

  Balaclavas, shotguns, kidnapping. Her kid. Mattie. John... It all mounted in her mind. Weighed her down. Lydia wanted to vault the kitchen table and strangle the shit out of Rory. Bang his empty head off every wall in the house. Squash his eyes into the back of his skull with her thumbs and kick out his crooked teeth. Her temperature rose and her breath hitched.

  And she puked into her drink.

  ###

  Mattie screwed up his face like Cormac had just offered him a shit sandwich. "You left him alive?"

  He was looking at Shane, still tied up and struggling on the floor. Donna was helping John to the door. They were headed for Donna's car at the front of the building but it was slow going. Mattie had hung back a little, to check out the result of the earlier commotion no doubt.

  "Yes, he's alive." Cormac didn't draw Mattie's attention to the dead body in the kitchen area. He couldn't tell for sure if the kid could see aul' dead Paul from where he was standing. The breakfast unit might have obscured the view. "That's a good thing, Mattie. I don't want to have to kill anybody." Wasn't Paddy an exception? "And when I do have to I'm not particularly proud of myself. Whatever these guys might have done, they're still people, mate."

  Mattie looked unconvinced but Cormac stepped down from his soapbox. They needed to move. He motioned for Mattie to leave. They checked on Donna and John's progress from the landing. The injured man cursed with each movement. They were only halfway down the stairs. Cormac willed them on. He hopped from foot to foot for a few seconds but knew it was pointless to tell them to get a move on. Donna was being sensibly cautious with a badly hurt patient. There was no way Cormac could rush her on. Then he had a thought. He left Mattie on the landing and returned to the apartment.

  Shane had managed to get to his feet. With his ankles and wrists still bound, the effort had done him little good. He looked helplessly at Cormac. Cormac couldn't resist. He went to Shane and swept the legs out from under him. The hogtied thug hit the ground hard. Cormac knelt beside him and patted down his pockets, in search of a mobile phone.

  "You may as well lie there until Frank comes, Shane. Get some rest."

  "He's going to kill me." Shane's voice was thick with self pity.

  "Nah, mate. That'd be a waste of manpower. He'll put you straight to work."

  "Do you think so?"

  Does this eejit actually want you to comfort him? Cormac found the phone and scooped it out of a zippered pocket in Shane's tracksuit trousers. He stood up and took a step away from Shane. "Well, yeah. Big Frank's going to need all the muscle available to him. Especially since aul' Paul's dead." Cormac relished the horrible shock on the prone man's face. Fuck you, you low rent hood.

  "You killed Paul?"

  "Did you not think he was awful quiet, Shane?"

  And at that, big, hard, hammer-wielding Shane burst into tears.

  Cormac was stunned. Shane's reaction seemed so pathetic and weak. Childish, even. Surely the man knew that his chosen line of work carried the threat of fatal consequences? Most of the career criminals Cormac had encountered had a vacuum of spirit in common that years of living by a brutal code had instilled in them. But this big lump, trussed up and crying on the floor, must have been new to the game. Maybe he was still getting to grips with the rules. For a moment, Cormac wondered if it wouldn't be a kindness to put him out of his misery after all. It was a thought that strengthened his resolve to let Shane live.

  Cormac used Paul's battered phone to call Shane's immaculate, top of the line handset. He set Paul's on the mantelpiece then found a hold option on Shane's to mute the phone and held it to his ear.

  "Tell you what, Shane. I'll light a candle for your boyfriend next time I'm at mass."

  Shane spat a glob of watery snot at Cormac's shoes. "Fuck off."

  The exchange came through loud and clear. Cormac nodded to himself and slipped Shane's phone into the breast pocket of his jacket.

  "All right, Mattie. Time we were leaving."

  He'd sensed Mattie hovering at the door. The kid was transfixed by the weeping wreck on the floor. At the sound of Cormac's voice, he snapped out of his wide-eyed stare and nodded tightly. His mouth had shrunk to a puckered slit, like he'd bitten into a lemon.

  They left the apart
ment building and Cormac got behind the wheel of Donna's car – the silver Seat Leon. Donna was in the back with John. She asked him if he was in much pain and he hissed a barely audible response through his teeth. Mattie got in to the passenger seat and spared his father an over-the-shoulder look of concern.

  Cormac took Shane's phone from his coat pocket, tapped a button to switch to loudspeaker mode and set it on the dashboard. The crude bugging device picked up Shane's continued struggle for freedom. The bound thug had been too busy crying to notice Cormac's setup so there was a good chance they'd get an early warning of Big Frank's arrival.

  Somebody had leaked information about him to these animals and Cormac needed to find out who he could trust.

  Chapter 12

  I don't really get why my transfer fee was so controversial. Clearly I'm worth every penny. In any case, I'm sure some other player will top it at the next transfer window. That's football.

  Rory Cullen, CULLEN: The Autobiography

  Lydia reread the text message.

  "Callin in 2 mins. Make sure u can talk."

  She stood in the hallway and cocked her ear. Rory was in the living room watching one of his Chelsea matches from last season. The volume blared. He'd never hear her voice over the racket.

  Her mobile phone screeched out that ridiculous Lady Gaga chorus. She wouldn't be able to listen to any of the mad bitch's music again. The Pavlovian response would be too much. She thumbed the green button.

  "We're here. Get the door opened."

  She recognised the voice. It was the man who had greeted her at the cottage with a sawn-off shotgun and kicked off the nightmare.

  "How—?"

  The line was dead.

  Lydia put away her phone and took a brief moment to steady the shakes. When she had a handle on herself, she went to the living room.

  Rory was perched on his sofa, primed to spring to his feet and yell instructions and abuse at the recorded match playing out on his jumbo-sized TV. He didn't register Lydia's presence until she stepped into his line of sight. She gave him a nervous wave and he craned his neck to look around her. Then he realised what he was doing and shifted his focus to her.

  "You all right, Lydia?"

  She needed to get the security code. Keep it simple.