The Betrayed (26 page)
Authors: Kate Kray
‘Can I see him? Alone?’
‘Through there,’ said Eddie, gesturing towards the sitting room.
Rosie wanted her moment with Andrew. She wanted – no,
needed
– to know what made an intelligent, affluent, middle-aged man do the heinous things he had done.
Stepping into the room it was as if she was physically pushed backwards. Everything about the place screamed at her to leave – the sight of a hooded man, bound and shaking, the acidic smell of fear hanging in the air like thick mist. She recognised Andrew’s computer on a desk in the corner, and noticed a bed. She instantly knew why Eddie had put that there. Rosie took a deep breath and moved forward. Hearing footsteps, Andrew looked up.
‘Please…’ came the muffled voice, ‘please…’
The sound he made was weak, pitiful. Rosie noticed a dark stain on the front of his trousers – he had wet himself. She leaned forward, took hold of the top of the hood and slipped it off his head. Andrew’s pupils shrank as the light hit them… then grew as he saw who it was.
‘Rosie! Oh, thank god.’
The last time she had looked into those eyes, there had been a softness, full of what she thought was love. That was now replaced with fear. Thinking back, she realised that they never really had
anything
in common. But still, blinded by love, she had fallen for his smooth words and thin veneer of respectability. She had been a fool.
‘Why?’ she whispered. She had rehearsed the questions in the car… but now, face to face with him, she could only manage this three-letter word.
‘Why?’ said Andrew, clinging tightly to the pretence and shaking his head. ‘Why, what? Who are these men? What’s going on, darling?’
Rosie flinched. ‘Don’t darling me, you bastard!’ At that moment, the dam holding back her feelings broke. ‘I
trusted
you. How could you do that to Ruby?’
‘No, no! You’ve got it all wrong.’
Rosie walked over to the laptop and opened a file of images. The photos of Ruby began to flash across the screen.
‘Is that what this is all about?’ Andrew blinked and forced out an unconvincing laugh. ‘Pictures!’
Within seconds, a sharp slap whipped hard across his face.
‘I know what you did, Andrew. Ruby told me.’
‘You don’t understand,’ he yelled. ‘She’s lying! It was her, she wanted me to…’
Instinctively lifting her hands to her ears to block out the lies, Rosie screamed: ‘She’s a
child
! She’s
twelve years old
! An innocent
child
.’
Returning to the laptop, Rosie deleted the images of Ruby – she never wanted to see those again – and opened another file of pictures. Watching the stream of his sickening souvenirs of years of abuse of children, Andrew was no longer able to protest his innocence. His head drooped towards the floor.
‘Turn it off,’ he murmured, ‘please.’
‘This why you go to Thailand. You
pig
!’ Rosie screamed. ‘You think I’m just a common little trollop that you picked up from the gutter. Someone you could take advantage of. Then, when you got bored of me, you went after my daughter.’
‘It’s not like that,’ he whined.
‘What you did,’ said Rosie, almost drunk with rage, ‘is worse than murder. You’re worse than an
animal
. It flies in the face of natural instincts. You think I’m so stupid that you could get away with it?’
‘Please! Listen to me!’
‘No,
you
listen to
me
,’ Rosie said. ‘I can’t stop what’s going to happen, even if I wanted to.’
‘Who are those men?’ Andrew was unnervingly still.
‘Eddie Mullins, my brother-in-law… my husband’s twin brother, Ruby’s uncle. And Harry, Ruby’s godfather.’
‘Oh, Jesus…’ muttered Andrew. Finally, the pieces had fallen into place. ‘Please, you have to help me. Listen to me, I –’
‘Help you?’ Rosie exclaimed, in a voice halfway between a scream and hysterical laugh. ‘Did you listen to my daughter when you…
raped
her? You fucking
animal
!’
‘Please, Rosie…
please
help me,’ Andrew pleaded. ‘Look, I
know
you. You’re a good person.’
Rosie walked to the door and, after composing herself, turned to him again. ‘What’s going to happen to you, Andrew… I don’t want you to get it confused with revenge. It’s not. It’s about justice… for Ruby. Goodbye, Andrew.’
‘No!’ he screamed, ‘Wait! Wait!’
As soon as Rosie had left, Eddie and Hate-’em-all entered.
‘This ain’t no courtroom. We’re judge, jury and prosecutor, and we’ve found you guilty,’ said Eddie. Noticing the laptop, still running the slideshow, he told Harry:‘Shut that sick shit off, will you?’
‘Please, let me just…’ Andrew’s now timid voice tailed off.
‘I’m not triumphant in what I’m about to do,’ Eddie continued. ‘I feel no remorse, no anger.’ He took a breath before continuing. ‘I sentence you to death, and I’m going to tell you why.’
‘Please… please…’
‘There is a line, Mr Brook-Fields. No one can see it, but everyone knows it’s there. And when you took a young girl – a twelve-year-old little girl – you took away her innocence, you crossed that line.’ Andrew’s sobs intensified as Eddie went on:‘I’m not a yob or a common killer, I’m a technician. I enjoy my job. You’re an intelligent man, been around the block. Do you know what’s inscribed in stone outside the Old Bailey? Do you?’
‘Well, answer him!’ said Harry, landing a hard blow directly on the bridge of Andrew’s nose. It made a dull cracking sound.
‘No!’ screamed Andrew, blood beginning to seep from his nostrils.
‘Well, I’m going to tell you. It says “Defend the children of the poor and punish the wrongdoer.” Did you know that? “Defend the children of the poor and punish the wrongdoer.” And that’s why we’re here – to punish the wrongdoer.’
Hate-’em-all removed his jacket, unclipped his gold cufflinks and slowly rolled up his double-cuffed shirtsleeves. Meanwhile, Eddie put a CD into the stereo and pressed ‘play’. The opening bars of Pavarotti’s performance of
Nessun Dorma
filled the room.
‘You’ll like this, being an educated man,’ Eddie said, turning up the volume to a deafening level. He took off his jacket then slowly unbuttoned and removed his crisp, white shirt. Next, he let his trousers fall and, after carefully pinching the creases together, placed them over the back of the chair.
Harry cut a thick line of cocaine on the desk by the laptop, and Eddie, now in just his boxer shorts and socks, bent over and vacuumed it up with a loud, prolonged sniff. As he did so, Andrew caught sight of the formidable Celtic cross and the name ‘Johnny’ tattooed on Eddie’s broad, hairy back.
‘Look… Eddie, isn’t it? Eddie, I’m not a monster. You’ve got it all wrong,’ he shouted over the blaring music, which was reaching its climax.
Hate-’em-all did a line himself as Eddie opened a lock knife with a three-inch blade. He cut through the gaffer tape holding Andrew’s legs.
‘No, stop… please!’ screamed Andrew, as his trousers were pulled off him.
The track ended, and, just as Puccini’s
O soave fanciulla
started to play, Eddie looked up at him and said, ‘The time for talking is over, Andrew. You are now in the teeth of the devil, and God help you.’
Sitting in the car outside, Rosie could hear frantic shouts and screams drowning the beautiful sound of Pavarotti’s voice. When the music changed, she recognised the melody instantly – it was from
La Bohème
, the opera she had been to see with Andrew. She looked over at the bungalow… she knew what Eddie and Hate-’em-all were doing to Andrew. They were taking turns at him.
Rosie started the engine of the car and pulled away. She hadn’t driven more than a few hundred yards when she turned into a lay-by.
‘Oh my god,’ she muttered, clutching the steering wheel as tightly as she could. She looked down at the clock on the dashboard. Andrew revolted and disgusted Rosie. He might even have been evil, but Rosie knew that if something didn’t happen soon, she’d be responsible for taking Andrew’s life, and didn’t that make her equally as evil? She stared out at the country road, weighing the anger and resentment she felt against his life.
‘Where are you?’ she said, out loud.
She slotted the gear stick into first and gunned the engine. As the car reached the end of the lane she slowed down to a crawl. An unusual feeling washed over her… a strange mixture of horror and relief.
Parked either side of the narrow road were no less than six police cars, and a menacing armoured truck, its windows shielded by metal cages. More than a dozen armed policemen – elite specialist firearms officers, carrying MP5 machine guns, Glock 19s and Tazers, and dressed in black overalls, body armour, bullet-proof vests and helmets, were on stand-by ready and waiting to climb into the vehicles. A few of them raised their weapons when they saw Rosie’s car approaching.
‘Easy,’ came a familiar voice, and the guns pointed at Rosie were slowly lowered.
She looked over and instantly recognised the man sitting inside one of the cars: it was ‘Harris’. Their eyes locked as Rosie pulled up alongside him, and slowly wound down her window. For a moment they just stared at each other.
‘Are you following me?’ she eventually said, with a slight smile.
‘What makes you think that,’ ‘Harris’ replied. ‘No, Mrs Mullins,
not you
. But we are about to close in on your family, as a matter of fact. The boys have been naughty again… very naughty. They’ve been shifting some serious amounts of cocaine recently.’
‘Cocaine?’ Rosie muttered. It was no real surprise that they had been up to their old tricks again. That was who they were.
‘Yes, cocaine,’ he said. ‘We’ve been watching Eddie’s office for quite some time now, in fact. Sharon, his secretary, is actually an undercover WPC.’
Rosie stared defiantly at ‘Harris’ before speaking again.
‘So,’ she said, ‘are you going to nick me, or what?’
‘No, Mrs Mullins. We’ll need to talk to you, of course. Take a statement. But that can wait.’
Rosie’s mind was racing. As the police had been following her for a while now, they would, at least, know that she was not involved in the drug trafficking… but what they were about to discover at the bungalow would be far more than they were looking for.
‘So I’m free to go?’
‘Harris’ nodded. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said, as he started his engine, ‘we know where to find you.’
Seconds later, the convoy of blue-and-white cars was speeding towards the bungalow.
Rosie knew Eddie and Hate-’em-all would go down for a very long stretch. With kidnapping, GBH and sexual assault added to the drugs charges, that would add up to a lot of years. And as for Andrew, there was enough evidence on that laptop for him to be removed from society for a long time – one less paedophile on the streets. He wouldn’t easily forget the punishment doled out by Eddie and Hate-’em-all, either.
And what about her? What about Rosie Mullins? She had done something that was taboo in the underworld – she’d betrayed the Mullins name. If that was discovered, it would never be forgiven. Or forgotten. The Police might have
followed
her to the scene of the crime, but that was just a detail. Johnny and Eddie didn’t worry about details. They would see it as the ultimate betrayal… would they ever forgive her?
But Rosie could worry about that tomorrow. For the moment at least, she was free. Free from them all.
And that was something.
Published by
an imprint of John Blake Publishing Ltd,
3 Bramber Court, 2 Bramber Road,
London W14 9PB, England
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