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Brown Dog Books - Nick Connor

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120 pages

English

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Description

Nick is an innocent stranger, working in a shop and going out with his friends - living for the weekend. On the whole an ordinary, mundane, boring life in many ways, but he's content.Myles is an ex-IRA member, now a notorious Irish gangster - feared by all the gangs in the UK and Ireland. Murder, kidnapping and extortion are his livelihood; he is not to be crossed.How could these two people and worlds possibly collide?Nick's phone rings ... 'Time's up!' is the ominous message from a deep Irish accent.Jealousy, an allegation and ultimatum, an intended execution; Nick's life has been turned upside down, but how will it play out? Can Nick survive? Or has fate already been written by a so-called chance encounter?

Sujets

Thriller

Informations

Publié par	Brown Dog Books
Date de parution	24 juin 2021
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781839523137
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	1 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0200€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

First published 2021 Copyright © Nick Connor 2021
The right of Nick Connor to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the written permission of the copyright holder.
Published under licence by Brown Dog Books and The Self-Publishing Partnership Ltd, 10b Greenway Farm, Bath Rd, Wick, nr. Bath BS30 5RL
www.selfpublishingpartnership.co.uk

ISBN printed book: 978-1-83952-312-0 ISBN e-book: 978-1-83952-313-7
Cover design by Kevin Rylands Internal design by Andrew Easton
Printed and bound in the UK
This book is printed on FSC certified paper
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
DEDICATION
I dedicate this to my truly amazing mother Shirley Eileen Connor (Sharp) I will forever love, cherish and miss you, You will always be in my heart. May 7 th 1936–March 18 th 2020 Never to be forgotten! xx
CHAPTER 1
LATE 1990S
Deep in a leafy suburban village on the outskirts of Guildford was a stately mansion set in acres of land. A flickering light in a top window could be seen; the TV shone, and the change of scene or picture was the cause of the flashing light. It was getting late, approaching 10.30, and the BBC news had just finished. The weather was awful, a constant barrage of rain beating down on the window and the odd rustling of trees as the wind blew inconsistently.
Inside a large room sat two men in their late fifties. Patrick turned to Myles. They had just heard the official announcement that the IRA were laying down their arms and would no longer use terrorism as a mechanism of voice; they would campaign legitimately for what they believed in. On the whole, it was a welcome response and a massive cue to seal this agreement for the Labour government and rubber-stamp the leadership qualities of Tony Blair. It was later to be known as the Good Friday Agreement. They stared at each other momentarily, then a grin started to form on Myles’ face. He had a plan; he knew Patrick’s next words, or at least the gist of them.
Myles’ family already had a reputation in the UK for violence and intimidation, a few jobs and hits in the criminal underworld. People knew not to mess but they never stepped the game up in the area as their focus was political direction towards legitimate English targets for the cause. The police were aware of the gang and some jobs they were believed to have done, and a special task force was trying to bring them down, but to date they had no substantial leads. Just hearsay and rumours.
“Now what the hell are we gonna do?” Patrick demanded in a concerned way.
Patrick was a cousin of Myles’ and had memories of Bloody Sunday so had no care for the English and would lose no sleep over intimidating and racketeering on the English shores. He saw innocent brothers shot that infamous day and didn’t forget.
Myles paused, looked around the room, then glanced back with a smirk and caught Patrick’s gaze. Patrick had a scar across his right eyebrow, a constant reminder of his terrorist days; a bit of shrapnel from a stray bullet and, worst of all, from his own man. They call that friendly fire. What’s so friendly about that? Myles often thought. Needless to say, the soldier in question had a lot to answer for and was squeezed out of the mainland operations the IRA were doing at that time. Those days were long gone and for the better, Patrick often thought. It was a pointless war, deep down, that no one could ever win, and the only losers were mothers on both sides burying their sons.
“We’re gonna make even more fucking money! We’ve got the infrastructure, set-up, manpower, the finance, the contacts, the experience to intimidate these English bastards. They’re gonna pay us back in other ways; financially, I mean. We just need to step up our activities,” Myles said in a controlled and reassuring way in answer to Patricks question.
“You know what I want done. As from tomorrow, I want you to push the buttons; tell the other units they are to become self-sufficient divisions. I want fortnightly reports, proposal jobs they’re working on. No job gets signed off without my say-so though. I sanction all jobs, all hits. That is a must! No private jobs, no skimming for themselves. I’ve got lawyers, finance people in place, linguistics, any relevant person I can provide for them. I’ve got people in the police, judges, local councillors and journalists all reporting to me or at my beck and call. They only have to say what they need for a job and I will get it. No cock-ups and no links or trail back to them or me, you understand?”
“Dad, you wanna drink?” Eileen called from behind the door. She knew not to enter when Dad was doing business, best she did not know some stuff. She longed for her dad’s attention, but he spent most of his spare time with his sons. Eileen was spoilt from a money perspective and Myles would do anything for her, but something was missing from her point of view. She wanted love and affection, and to be the centre of attention.
“Just a whiskey, love, with ice. You and ya ma OK?” Myles answered back, going through the motions in regard to how they were.
“Is Conor in there with you?” Eileen asked, fully expecting a yes.
“Yes, he’s on the computer!” Myles said, a bit annoyed. Myles was getting exasperated with Conor always on the computer.
“Conor, you want anything?” Eileen said, poking her head into the room.
“Ei-Ei-Eileen, I’ll have a glass of milk. p-p-please,” Conor answered in a stuttered manner.
Now Conor was a whizz-kid with computers and occasionally would hack in to get info for some of the family jobs. In his late teens he was the good-looking one of the family but was also dyslexic a bit, so lacked confidence talking to anyone.
Eileen was Myles’ only daughter and he treated her like a princess. Like many father-daughter relationships he worshipped his girl, and would keep her safe no matter what he would need to do; that was his duty today, the next day and always. When Eileen was growing up and going through her doll-princess phase he had an artist come in and paint a magical fairyland mural on all the walls of her bedroom, including a tower with a princess at the top. Added to that were pictures on the walls of scenes from Walt Disney films like the Seven Dwarfs skipping to work on a bridge over a river and, probably her favourite film at the time ( Pinocchio ), the scene of Geppetto carving out the puppet and attaching strings. He always did and got whatever she wanted; she was spoilt to the highest level, but most dads have that doting nature and especially as she was their first and only girl. There was a special bond between father and daughter; unconditional love and pursuit for total happiness for her.
Eileen, nineteen, was the middle of three children; Seamus the eldest at twenty-five, and Conor the youngest at just eighteen. The family business had kept them to themselves and they were reclusive in a lot of ways, only mixing and socialising with immediate family and a handful of friends. The Irish had a way of keeping themselves to themselves and looking out for one another. Myles had close ties and links to a few other Irish families that now resided in the UK, brought about from his involvement and running of the most feared and ruthless divisions of the Irish Republican Army. Despite his heavy involvement in planned raids and executions during the conflict with the British government, he was never indicted for any single activity. He had been on MI5’s radar, but he could never be linked and during the last few years of the struggle he had been very remote, knowing this day would finally come. He had been an unofficial “godfather” in Belfast and the surrounding areas for the past fifteen to twenty years.
The only other person high up in his firm was outside the Irish clan and that was Jack in London; now Jack had great connections and was notorious in the London underworld. He dealt with a lot, as a lot of business was conducted on the streets of London. Myles trusted him implicitly and gave important jobs for him to organise and carry out with his crew.
Eileen went down to the kitchen where her mum was doing some traditional Irish cooking, a kind of stew. The ingredients only the selected few knew, passed down from generation to generation, with the odd tweak made from one mother to another.
“Dad wants a JD and coke. I think I’ll do him a double, save my legs later in the evening.” Nearly forgetting, she went on, “Oh, and Conor wants a glass of milk. Mum, Dad’s only ever got time for the boys or business, I never have quality time with him,” Eileen said in a sad voice.
“Oh, Eileen don’t take it to heart. He doesn’t have time for me either and I’m his fucking wife!” Judith said in a condemned manner, knowing it was too late to change Myles (and god, she had tried).
She went on, “You won’t change Myles; he is driven to keeping us safe and would lay down his body and soul in the process, you have to accept that. You’ve never wanted for nothing and now he is educating you all, and we’re not badly off.”
It was true what Eileen said though, Myles spent all his time with the boys, drinking, gambling, illegal dog fighting and one of their favourite pastimes: frequen