ISOLATED
Manchester, 2014
Later that same evening, long into the night
Foley was finally alone.
The holding cell in the police station looked and felt exactly the same as it had when the teenage Dean Foley had been repeatedly banged up for finishing too many conversations with his fists. And for starting them that way too. He thought he had come too far to be back but clearly that wasn’t the case. And he would have at least the rest of the night to decide how he felt about that.
His high-priced brief had been and gone. Arriving with his usual anger and arrogance, throwing profanities and threats around the interview room like grenades, telling the detectives they would just get up and walk out, that they had nothing. His usual tactics, but this time they didn’t work. They just stared at him, watched the show. This noted, he shifted his approach. Argued his case, Clarence Darrowed himself through every loophole. Like the well-paid legal whore he was, thought Foley, he tangoed nimbly round every tenuous legal definition, contorted himself into every possible position to dazzle them. Nothing. He didn’t scare them anymore. They had Foley bang to rights. His brief was a sideshow distraction. He could huff and puff as much as he liked, no way was he blowing their house down. Once he realised that he checked Foley was being looked after to the letter of the law and left.
No joy catching the eyes of his payroll boys and girls either. They wouldn’t look at him, speak to him, from which he drew two conclusions. Firstly, they didn’t want to give themselves away, secondly and most importantly, he was fucked and they weren’t going down with him.
So, back in the cell, belt, shoes, watch, money, everything gone. Stripped of his assets. No special privileges. Alone. With only his thoughts for company.
Get used to the solitude, Mick had said through the flap in the door as he’d passed by earlier, you’re going to have plenty of it.
He had shouted in return, given a full rundown on what he would do to him once he got out of here – and he would be getting out of here – then what he would do to his family and . . . But Mick was long gone by then. So Foley, spent and exhausted, slumped back down on the bench.
Now he had time to think. Plenty of time to think.
Mick Eccleston. Betrayed by Mick Fucking Eccleston. Betrayed.
‘Betrayed . . .’
The word sounded overly dramatic spoken aloud. Like Shakespeare or Game of Thrones or EastEnders or something. But it was the right one. The only one. Betrayal. And by someone he trusted. No, not someone – the person he trusted more than anyone else. The one person he believed would never betray him. It was unreal. Like his life had skipped the rails and he was in some upside-down dream world. He wanted to wake up, for everything to go back to normal again. But that wasn’t going to happen.
Betrayed by a man he had come to regard as a brother. Again, that sounded dramatic but it was true. His own brother – his real one – was long since gone. Spirited away into foster homes and adoption, where their father couldn’t get at him anymore.
Dean had gone into foster care too, separated from his brother, because it hadn’t been determined whether he had helped his father with the abuse or been trying to prevent it. But Dean didn’t want to live in foster homes. Or with his father. So he set out on his own.
His mother had left when he was little. Well, not left, because he could never remember her being there much. Just kind of drifted away. He could remember her smell: dead flower perfume and economy gin. Her taste, when she pushed her face up against his and gave him a great slobbery kiss: sweat, hardened powder and thick cheap lipstick. He would always rub it away when she had gone. Remove any mark of her, open the door of any room she had been in to get rid of the fumes. She was always going out, always looking for something his father could never provide, she said. One night she went out and didn’t come back. Nine-year-old Dean felt plenty of conflicting things about his mother. When she disappeared he just felt relieved, but mostly because his dad had told him that’s what he should feel.
‘Gone off with a fancy man,’ said his dad at first. That changed over the years to, ‘Gone to live in Spain’, ‘Went to see her sister and never came back’, ‘Just didn’t want to know us no more’. It wasn’t until years later that Foley realised his father had been interviewed repeatedly by the police about his mother’s disappearance. Sweated for as long as they could legally hold him. Assaulted with telephone directories and rubber pipe in places that hurt but didn’t scar. Then let go, only to be brought in again and again, whenever they thought they could turn the screws on him. She never turned up. Dead or alive. Being able to prove nothing, they eventually, reluctantly, left his father alone to get on with his life.
‘Never trust the police, son,’ his bitter father’s bitter mantra. ‘They’re a bunch of cunts.’
Young Dean took those words to heart.
His father had plenty of other words for Dean too.
‘You’re fucking nothing. You’ll always be fucking nothing.’
‘Best part of you dribbled down your mother’s leg.’
‘Should have drowned you at birth.’
Years later, Dean had driven his Bentley to his father’s house to show him what he had made of himself. His father wouldn’t let him in. ‘You’re still a fucking nobody. Always will be.’ Slammed the door on him.
He was the only man Foley couldn’t hurt. So he hurt everyone else instead.
Dean Foley was an angry kid. He made that work for him. Eventually he learned how to channel it and became an effective, angry man.
His empire was quickly built. And he needed a right-hand man.
Enter Mick Eccleston.
Mick was perfect. Hard when he had to be, clever when he had to be. Deaf, blind and dumb when he had to be. He became the brother Dean had lost.
They did everything together. Everything. And now this. That’s why it hurt so much. More than he could show. He had never had a meaningful relationship with a woman. Sometimes he saw one who made him feel things he couldn’t articulate, connected on some lizard level. Put images in his mind of what he wanted to do to her body. So he would. And sometimes pay her afterwards. But nothing more than that. Nothing that would get in the way of his work. Or his relationship with Mick.
He thought of what he had said earlier. About shooting someone in a Deansgate bar and getting away with it. About digging more than one grave for revenge. About what Mick had done to him. About what he would do to him as a result of that.
And he thought.
And he thought.
And he thought.
And when the morning arrived and the officer opened the door for his hearing and looked at him, both of them pretended not to notice the tears.