The roads of Seaburn were familiar to Bronson now. He’d spent hours driving through them, up one way, down another. He’d been thinking about Daniel, of how he was obstinate and unstable, and how he’d refused to reveal the location of the cocaine.

  And then Bronson had found himself at Scott’s house, afraid to get out of the car. If he released the seatbelt, if he opened the door, he was going to Scott’s home. If he was there, he’d ring the bell. And if it was answered, he was going to ask Scott to take over the Daytons. He gagged at the thought, but it refused to leave him alone. Bronson didn’t understand Daniel’s motivations anymore, but Scott was a Dayton to his core and he would never betray the family name.

  Right now, he trusted Scott with his future more than Daniel.

  A van rumbled down the road. There were no parking spaces and it stopped in the middle of the street, its brake lights blinking out. Bronson sat up, his eyes swelling as Monica jumped from the driver’s seat. She waddled to the rear doors and flung them open.

  “Bloody hell,” Bronson whispered.

  Lily stumbled into the sea air, crying, wiping tears away as fast as they fell. Monica raised her fist as a warning and Lily cowered under the threat. Pushing her to the pavement, Monica showed her the gun again before locking the van.

  A seagull screeched from a rooftop. Bronson’s hand went to the door handle, but he froze. If he ran to Lily’s defence, he was likely to be shot.

  Monica barked out an order and they marched down the street. The van blocked Bronson’s view, but there was only one place they could be going.

  The glove compartment of his car was empty. He’d decided against bringing a weapon as a show of trust, but that trust had been betrayed. Given he had been moments from betraying Daniel, the irony wasn’t lost on him.

  Bronson slipped from the car and jogged to the back of the van. He peered around it in time to see the door of Scott’s house close. He needed another way in.

  The back lane was narrow, overlooked by towering houses on either side. There was a river of sky above him, but the sun was hidden by the buildings and the air was cool. Bronson side stepped the refuse collecting in the gutters and counted down the houses. He arrived at Scott’s backyard with its thigh-high fence and stole inside.

  Bronson squinted through a window. The room beyond was dark. He saw movement, vague shadows drifting through the murk, but nothing else. He searched for a weapon. A roll of dirty blankets lay by the fence with a string of grey bandages unravelling in the wind. No half bricks. No metal pipes. Nothing he could use.

  Pulling out his mobile phone, he rang Daniel, cursing when the call went to voicemail. Tapping the phone against his chin, he had another idea, but Masani and Gilbert didn’t pick up, either. Bronson was on his own.

  “Can I help you with something, dear?” Scott’s elderly neighbour leaned over the boundary wall. Up close, he saw the deep folds of her wrinkles and the brilliance of her blue eyes.

  Bronson shook his head. “Just waiting for a friend.”

  “A friend? Crouched down like that?” she asked. “Do you think I came over on the last banana boat?”

  “I’m waiting for Scott,” he said, glossing over the casual racism.

  Her face lit up and she clutched her gnarled hands to her chest. “Oh, he’s such a sweetheart, isn’t he?”

  “Who? Scott?”

  “Always a kind word,” she said, her dentures sliding at odds with her jaw. “A lot of the young ones don’t talk to us pensioners. He says, it’s a shame. We have so much to offer.”

  Bronson was lost. “Who does? Scott?”

  Her eyes flamed, the blue changing to red. Bronson was sure she was frowning, but it was difficult to tell under her wrinkles.

  “Are you certain you’re his friend, dear?” she asked. “You don’t sound like you know him at all.”

  “It’s okay, Mrs Clearby. I’ll take it from here.”

  Scott’s shoes scraped along the concrete of the yard as he entered. He closed the gate, sliding in the bolt with a clunk. He rattled it, checking it was secure.

  “There you are, dear,” Mrs Clearby said. “I caught a gypo trying to break into your house.”

  “I know who he is. Why don’t you go back inside?”

  Fixing her loose teeth, she fled into the house. Moments later, her curtains fluttered and Bronson knew they were being watched.

  “I wasn’t expecting visitors,” Scott said.

  “You’ve got her fooled,” Bronson said, standing up.

  “It’s a quiet street. Best to keep on everyone’s good side.”

  “She’ll turn on you when she finds out who you really are.”

  “I don’t know what you mean.” Scott frowned, tilting his head to the left. “I thought you and I were friends now.”

  Skirting along the boundary wall, Bronson closed in on the fence, hoping to jump it to freedom. It was a few steps away, low enough to jump. Bronson watched Scott watching him. He remained ill, but there was growing strength in his body. Fighting wasn’t an option for Bronson. It would waste time and the outcome was uncertain.

  Sunlight broke through a gap in the buildings and shone on Scott’s face. “I guess we won’t be going on any more dates to the cinema, then. Not to worry. I’ve made some new friends.”

  Angel Maguire strolled along the back lane, spitting a lump of gum at a nearby seagull. Her glasses were gone. Her clothes were stylish and modern. She walked with a lightness to her step. Angel was a new woman, though the madness was still etched on her face.

  “Surprise,” she said, linking arms with Scott. “We’re together at last. The Daytons and the Maguires.”

  “A marriage made in hell. I should have known.” Bronson propped himself against the wall, closing his eyes. “He killed two of your men.”

  Scott shook his head. “Not quite. I gave them to you and Daniel, remember? I suspect they’re bobbing along a lakebed by now, but not by my hand.”

  Angel batted her eyelids. “Scott is worth ten of my men. User 57PPTop$. Scott contacted me through Tyne-der with a very naughty proposal. He was looking for love, too. As soon as he joined me, I didn’t need anyone else. He told me all of your secrets, including the one where you kept my merchandise.”

  Scott ran a hand over his head. “When Daniel torched the coke, or I thought he did, I saw the Daytons going down in flames. He was never going to let me back into the fold. I needed a new life and you were my bargaining chip.”

  “Me?” Bronson asked.

  “You stole Angel’s cocaine, didn’t you?”

  Bronson spat on the ground, but a bitter taste in his mouth remained. “Daniel was right about you all along. I fell for your crap. I should never have doubted him.”

  He ran for the fence, vaulting over it, but Angel was too quick. Her arm slammed into the side of his head, forcing him down. He landed on his face. His vision blurred while lights flashed behind his eyes. Rolling onto his back, Bronson held his head, stickiness oozing between his fingers. The sky above was far away. A seagull pitched on the eddies of the wind and vanished into the sun.

  Scott’s moon-like face appeared above him. “Did you honestly think I’d forgive you for what you did to me? Clive got his punishment. Now it’s time for yours.”

  Bronson’s tongue was mushy in his mouth. The world gyrated beneath him. Not just the physical world, but all the false assumptions he’d based his life on.

  “It’s time to pay for your sins,” Scott said.

  Chapter Forty

  Scott stood in the doorway, eyeing the Alsatian with distrust.

  “Relax,” Eleanor said, stroking the dog’s head. “He’s well trained. I returned to the Cellar after your brother almost destroyed it. All that remained was this poor dog. I couldn’t find Henderson anywhere.”

  The Alsatian was like stone. Its back was rigid, its head proud as Eleanor tickled it behind the ears. Scott saw the welts on its muzzle. Fur was missing from its hindquarters. Like him, the dog was thin and had seen its fair share of fights.

  Eleanor sat at the head of the eight-seater table in a high back chair that looked more like a throne. By her glass was a brown vial of pills. Shaking one out, Eleanor swallowed it with a gulp of wine, looking up when she noticed Scott staring at her.

  “They’re for my nerves,” she said by way of explanation. “I need all the help I can get now my house has turned so ugly. Speaking of which, where is Angel?”

  “Preparing a surprise for you,” Scott said, taking a seat and finding it uncomfortable.

  “That belongs to Hope. I’d hoped she might come home and rescue me from this nightmare, but I have to conclude, it’s unlikely,” Eleanor said, draining her wine.

  The napkins were made of cloth, not the paper kind Scott was used to. He laid one over his lap, assuming it was the right thing to do. A bowl of green soup was waiting for him and he selected one of the many spoons.

  “What happened to her?” he asked.

  “I’m told, she’s working.” The words hung in the air, heavy and loaded. Eleanor ran a finger around the rim of her glass. The fine lines around her eyes darkened into scars from a lifetime of treachery. “I’ve been in this game a long time. Longer than your departed father, in fact and I’m beginning to wonder if there is something rotten in my household.” She looked at him from under hooded eyes. “Angel brought you here, but I need to know are we friends, Scott?”

  Scott nodded. “We’re working together, yes.”

  “Then I have something for you.” Eleanor reached into her clothes and produced a folded piece of paper.

  Scott opened it and whistled. “A cheque? For fifty thousand pounds?”

  “It’s for a day centre in Bologna. They look after people like my daughter.”

  “You want to send Angel to a nut house?” Scott asked. “Out of sight, out of mind. Why is it signed to me?”

  “She doesn’t listen to me anymore,” Eleanor said, her words becoming increasingly slurred, “but I’ve seen how she looks at you. You have to help her before it’s too late. I suspect she killed her sister in a deranged need to rule. I don’t want her hurt. Angel is my family, but if she isn’t stopped, she’ll kill us all.”

  The door opened and Angel sloped in, wearing a red dress that was too tight.

  “Don’t you look lovely, dear,” Eleanor said, tapping her walking stick on the floor.

  Angel avoided her mother’s stare and fixed her attention on Scott. Her eyes travelled over his body and when Scott looked at her, she blushed.

  Scott returned to his soup. The sweats were over and his tremors only came at night when he was forced to revisit the Playground in his nightmares. His appetite was building into a constant hunger, but there were some things he simply couldn’t stomach.

  “Don’t you like pea and ham soup?” Angel asked. “I could find you something else?”

  “I’m sure Scott is fine with what he’s been given,” Eleanor said with a knowing look. “Why don’t you tell us why we’ve been kept waiting for your presence?”

  Angel took a seat and hunched over a bowl, spooning green liquid into her mouth. “It’s another surprise.”

  Scott caught the look between mother and daughter, and leaned into his chair.

  “I know what you’ve been doing. I heard his screams,” Eleanor said. “What you haven’t done is explain how it helps to get the cocaine back.”

  Scott placed a hand on Angel’s knee as she ate. The spoon missed her mouth and she frantically mopped at the green spillage with a napkin.

  “Let me tell your mother what you’ve been working on,” he said. “It’s simple, really. There are only a handful of places the cocaine can be. Angel has eliminated the scrapyard and the home of its two owners. She has also searched the home of a man called Bear. It’s not there, either.”

  Eleanor raised her eyebrows at her daughter.

  “The last place it can be is Five Oaks, but it’s a big place and Daniel rarely leaves for long,” Angel said.

  She gently squeezed Scott’s hand under the table. Her grip was clammy and did little for Scott’s appetite.

  “So we put a man on the inside. A spy,” he said, smiling thinly at Angel.

  Eleanor shifted in her seat. She scooped up the soup with her spoon and let it dribble back into the bowl. “Why not storm the house?”

  “Do you want this cocaine back or not?” Angel spat. “My friend Panwar isn’t just there as a spy. He’s with a woman called Lily. Panwar will deliver her to us as soon as I tell him to. We’re going to ransom her for the merchandise.”

  Scott tried to hide his smile. Angel might have her plan, but he had his and they differed wildly. Bronson’s unexpected appearance at his home had prevented Scott from checking if his new guest had arrived, but he trusted Monica to complete her task. If everything had worked accordingly, Lily was already kidnapped. She would be sitting with Monica right now, subdued and afraid. How surprised she’d be when she realised her dead ex-husband wasn’t as dead as she’d believed. As soon as Scott tied up a few loose ends here, he’d join her and take back what he saw was rightfully his.

  Five Oaks and the throne.

  “I’m not like my brother,” Scott said to Eleanor. “If he thinks he’s under threat, he’ll torch your merchandise for real. Better to play a long game.”

  “Why don’t I call Panwar now? Then we can really get this party started,” Angel said.

  Wriggling his hand from her grip, Scott wiped it on his trousers and propped his elbows on the table. He saw the rejection in Angel’s face and threw a smile in her direction. It was a cliché, but it was true. Women liked bad guys. Angel’s problem was that she didn’t know how bad Scott really was.

  “Give Panwar time to set up,” he said. “You’ve devised a smashing plan. Let’s not ruin it by being hasty.”

  Angel glowed, pressing fingers into her hot face. “It’ll mean spending more time together.”

  “I can live with that,” Scott said, glancing over the paintings of the hunting dogs on the wall. “You know, I’m going to be a father soon. If my child turns out to be anything like Angel, I’d be delighted.”

  Eleanor tapped the table next to Scott’s full soup bowl. “She’s highly strung, but I think you bring out the best in her.” Eleanor’s wine bottle was almost empty. Her cheeks were flushed and she swayed in her chair. “Please tell me you’re giving me a reason to buy a wedding hat.”

  “Mother,” Angel said, wafting a hand in front of her face in embarrassment, but she couldn’t hide her smile. “Stop it.”

  “Of course, she’s never been the same since the accident,” Eleanor said.

  The smile fell from Angel’s face. “Don’t talk about that.”

  “Why not, dear? It explains an awful lot.”

  Angel grabbed a knife. “We have Bronson. We have a plan. What do I have to do to make you like me?”

  Scott didn’t react to the threat in the air. He had his own knife secreted under his napkin.

  “You never do anything for me,” Angel shouted and stormed out of the room, slamming the door.

  “Like I say, highly strung.” Eleanor stretched over the table, taking Scott’s untouched glass of wine. “You see why we need to get rid of her.”

  The Maguire house was crumbling. Scott had known it the moment he had met with Angel on its front step. With her in control, the empire would weaken, but Scott knew gaining a seat at their table gave him an opportunity to weaken it further. By the time he was back at Five Oaks, his enemies would be finished.

  “You were telling me about an accident,” Scott said.

  “Hope and Angel were playing outside with a football. They must have been six or seven.”

  “I was six,” Angel said, returning to the room. Bronson lurched in after her to the sound of Eleanor’s gasp. He pushed a trolley laden with plates, guiding it with his left eye. His right eye was swollen shut under a black bruise. His mouth was taped shut and he was bare-chested.

  Not long after his arrival at the Devil’s Playground, Clive had paraded Scott through its dimly lit corridors. White faces appeared in doorways, laughing at his latest pet.

  Scott took the wine glass from Eleanor and toasted Bronson’s capture.

  “I was in the middle of a perfectly good story,” Eleanor said to her daughter. “It really is typical of you, isn’t it? Playing your sick games so everyone will notice you. It’s time you grew up.”

  Angel turned to Bronson. “Do you like that? The way my mother hates me?”

  “So Hope and Angel were playing football,” Eleanor continued. “Hope was gifted at sports, but one of them accidentally kicked the ball into the pond.”

  “It was Hope,” Angel said.

  “Well, silly Angel wades in to retrieve it, but she stumbles. We had netting over the water to stop the kids falling in. Angel crashed right through it. She was fat even then. I rushed outside to all hell breaking loose. Hope is standing by the pond, calm as you like, but this one. She’s screaming and shouting. Her head’s bobbing under the surface. She’s caught in the net, you see?”

  Angel hovered by her seat, but didn’t sit. Her eyes were wet and her hands trembled as she ran them through her blue hair. “It was an accident.”

  Eleanor flapped her words away. “I went to her aid, as I have always done and I slipped. Hit my head off the concrete base. I remember how pink the water became and how the goldfish swam around me as I struggled to breathe. Odd how memories stay with you.”

  The soup was stone cold. No one was eating. Scott pushed his bowl away, like he had with his own memories and cast a sideways glance at Eleanor. She was polishing a spoon with a napkin, her fingertips whitening with the force.

  “Anyway, I suffered brain damage from the fall. My right leg is as useless as it is painful and I have my silly daughter to thank for that.” Eleanor inspected her reflection in the back of her cutlery. “All Angel was left with was a fear of water. She can’t even swim.”

 

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