Martina Cole - Revenge

Copyright 2013 Martina Cole

The right of Martina Cole to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First published in this Ebook edition in 2013 by Headline Publishing Group

Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the publishers or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.

All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Cataloguing in Publication Data is available from the British Library

Cover design Robin-Angel Photography/Getty Image

Epub conversion by Avon DataSet Ltd, Bidford-on-Avon, Warwickshire

eISBN 978 0 7553 7564 6

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Contents

About the Author

Martina Cole is the acknowledged queen of crime drama. Her most recent novel, The Life , was a No. 1 bestseller in hardback and paperback and is one in a long line of No. 1 bestselling and phenomenally successful novels she has to her name.

Several of Martinas novels have been adapted for the screen, most recently The Take and The Runaway which were shown on Sky One to remarkable reviews. In addition, Two Women and The Graft have been adapted for the stage; both were highly acclaimed when performed at the Theatre Royal Stratford East, which also staged Dangerous Lady in 2012, celebrating twenty years since Martinas debut novel was published.

Martina Cole is a phenomenon. She continues to smash sales records with each of her books, which have sold in excess of eleven million copies in total. In 2011 Martina surpassed the 50 million sales mark since records began and was the first British female novelist for adult audiences to achieve this.

Martinas hard-hitting, uncompromising and haunting writing is in a genre all its own no one writes like Martina. 2013 sees the publication of this, her twentieth novel, and with Revenge she is back and better than ever.

Praise for Martina Cole:

A blinding good read Ray Winstone

Intensely readable Guardian

An extraordinarily powerful piece of family drama Daily Mirror

Gritty novel from an author who knows intimately the world she writes about Express

Her gripping plots pack a mean emotional punch Mail on Sunday

Cole has the amazing talent of making characters appear larger than life Sun

By Martina Cole and available from Headline

Dangerous Lady

The Ladykiller

Goodnight Lady

The Jump

The Runaway

Two Women

Broken

Faceless

Mauras Game

The Know

The Graft

The Take

Close

Faces

The Business

Hard Girls

The Family

The Faithless

The Life

Revenge

About REVENGE

BE SURE YOUR SINS WILL FIND YOU OUT.

Michael Flynn is untouchable in a world of power, money and violence. He fights for what he wants and he takes it, whatever the cost. He learns the rules of the Life from the best and when his mentor, legendary Face Patrick Costello, is taken out, no one questions that Michael Flynn is his natural successor. For Michael, loyalty and crime pay.

Michael rises to heights beyond anything the criminal underworld has seen. He owns everyone and he ruls his empire with an even but fierce hand. No one would dare challenge him.

Then the unthinkable happens.

Perhaps Michael Flynn is not so untouchable after all, and he must learn that...

WITHOUT THE SHEDDING OF BLOOD THERE CAN BE NO FORGIVENESS OF SINS.

For Darley and Adele,
with all my love

Prologue

The Lord shall smite thee with madness

Deuteronomy 28:28

2012

Hello! Are you not listening to me? My little girl has been missing for three fucking days. I think that might be worth your attention, dont you?

Michael Flynn was so angry he was almost spitting his words down the phone. Over six feet tall and with a heavy build he was a big man and, as everyone in the room knew, he was more than capable of great violence. He was paying them for their expertise, which they currently seemed to be lacking in. In fact, they were irritating the arse off him with their stupidity.

Her mother is giving me serious grief, and that alone is a fucking bugbear. I need to know where she is, people! So I think you lot had better get me the information I need before I start to think youre all mugging me off. I know she isnt exactly what you might call a wilting fucking violet and, believe me, when I locate her I will personally launch her into outer space for this. But I want her found. You are the Filth this is what you fucking do! You locate errant fuckers. So you had better start doing it quickly. I am not a man who is known for his patience, and I have a very low threshold for idiocy. He slammed down the telephone.

Jamie Gore listened to his boss rant at the policemen in his employ. Everyone knew that Jessie Flynn, Michael Flynns daughter, was about as dependable as a Nigerian marriage broker; therefore, she held no importance whatsoever to anyone, especially to the police. She could get away with anything from possession of any substance, including a bomb, should she ever purchase one, and that was all thanks to her fathers influence. Hed paid the Old Bill handsomely to ignore her over the years; now suddenly he wanted them to make her a priority? Bit of a turnaround there. He spoke up. Look, Michael, with all due respect, you know your daughter as well as we do, she could be fucking anywhere. She goes on the missing list regularly...

Michael Flynn was dark-haired and dark-skinned, he had the Irish gypsy in him there was no doubt about that. He was a handsome fuck, and his good looks were part and parcel of his persona. Both men and women were attracted to him, and he had always used that to his advantage. His startling blue eyes were now trained on Jamie Gore, and the man felt the first prickle of uneasiness at the intensity of his gaze.

You having a fucking laugh, Jamie? You think I brought you lot here for nothing? My old woman is like a fucking lunatic! My little Jessie is on the missing list! No one, and I mean no one , has seen her for three fucking days ! I know she is a lazy mare, I know she lives on her own fucking time-zone, and I know she is the biggest pain in the rectum since records began. But she is still my baby girl. So my advice would be to fucking well find her! Track her down, let me know where she is so I can deliver her back to her mother and then we can go home.

Michael looked around the room, and he knew that every bloke in there was thinking the same thing: Jessie Flynn was probably tucked up in bed with another lowlife, another fucking no-mark she had picked up on her travels. She was a trollop of the first water, having been sleeping with the enemy since she was fourteen years old. He wondered how many of his workforce had serviced her at one time or another. She was a beautiful-looking girl, with the morals of a fucking alley cat. It didnt matter he still wanted to know where she was. More to the point, her mother needed to know. Josephine was deeply concerned for her daughters whereabouts.

Jessie was not a girl you could lose sleep worrying about all the time she stumbled from one disaster to the next (usually the disaster was a man), but she always seemed to come out on top. He made sure of that. She came home at some point and then her mum would be so pleased to see her there would be no retribution of any kind. That was the trouble. Michael personally believed that his daughter needed a fucking good slap, but his wife would never agree. If Jessie murdered the neighbours with an axe and it was caught on CCTV, his wife would say, Well, they must have upset her. Jessie could do no wrong in her eyes.