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Prologue

The pain was finally easing and the woman sighed with relief.

She glanced at the clock once more. Its ticking was heavy in the quiet of the room. Her long fingers picked at the candlewick bedspread, then the warmth of her bedding made her relax once more with the anticipation of the long sleep.

Her old granny had bragged about the long sleep, the only time a woman ever lay down without consequence, she said. Meaning that the grave alone could finally give you any kind of rest. It was a truth she had not understood for a long time. Had not wanted to believe that a time would come when you were so tired of living that death actually seemed inviting, so you didn't care about leaving the people you had spent your life looking out for, had spent your life taking care of. It had seemed almost unreal then, imagining herself with the criss-cross lines of old age, the paper-thin yellowed skin of regret, for a life lived without any kind of thought for the future when the future was important. The future was eventually all about what you had really done, not what you wished you had done. Then, to crown it all, the final realisation that sex was nothing more than a primeval urge, an impulse, a bodily function like shitting or farting, not love.

She sighed again, heavily, the rattling of her bony frame reminding her how fleeting life really was.

Too much had happened in her life and it had finally tired her out, she was sick of fighting, she was ready to rest. She wanted to see her girl, her baby girl at last. See her Colleen. Take care of her.

It was time for her final sleep all right, she knew that much. But until she had seen all her children, made them understand her decision, she would wait until the time was right.

'I will break your fucking neck if you don't stop cunting me around.'

The words were spoken quietly, not in anger, but they were laced with a malevolence that only a fool would choose to ignore. When Pat Brodie threatened, it was always done in an almost friendly fashion. It was his eyes that told the person he was talking to that he meant business. That he would destroy them without a second's thought, and smile while he did it.

Mikey Donovan kept his temper under control with difficulty; he was doing this man a favour and a half, and they both knew it. But cocaine was a sacking offence for people who worked for the Home Office, especially screws, and he had been supplying it for a while. Now there was a dearth of it and Brodie was not impressed. What did he expect him to do, magic it from thin air?

Pat Brodie was a handful, and although Mikey knew that he had a lot on his mind, his mother on the verge of snuffing it was affecting him badly, but even amiable and pleasant-natured Mikey had had enough. Brodie was one powerful man, built like the proverbial brick shithouse and he was also far above the intelligence levels of the usual blaggers Mikey came across. Add to that a natural cunning and a psychotic personality, and you had one dangerous bastard to contend with. He was in for the alleged murder of his brother, and that alone spoke volumes.

Hard fuck did not even cover it, as far as Mikey was concerned, and he had seen his fair share of those over the years. No, Brodie was that totally unexpected quantity; he was an intelligent lunatic and they were as dangerous as they were rare.

'You had better have worded me good for a compassionate visit, Donovan, because I need out, and if I don't get bail, I am going to hold you personally responsible.'

Mikey sighed, he had not expected any less.

Brodie knew he was stronging it and he knew that no matter how much Donovan might feel the urge to retaliate, he wouldn't. He was a screw, and like most screws in hard nicks, he knew how far he could go.

The faint smell of cold tea and buttered bread reminded her of summer days long gone. She closed her eyes and allowed the memories to wash over her.

She could feel once more the oppressive summer heat of years gone by, a heat so intense that it had caused the petrol fumes to hang on the air. She could smell the different aromas of Sunday lunches cooking along the street. The roast was expected by the men, and no matter that the kitchens would all be as unbearably hot as her own and that standpipes were being used everywhere because of the usual summer drought, the women would still be expected to produce a huge meal for three o'clock on the dot. For after the pubs turned out the men would meander home in a state of inebriation and with a raging hunger brought on by drinking steadily from ten-thirty that morning.

She knew beef was the preferred meat of the day, but the smell of chicken and pork was just as popular when money was tight and someone had done a dolly at an abattoir, making the meat available when by rights they shouldn't have enough poke to put a fucking sandwich together. It was all about paper, as her old man used to say. On paper things looked different, paper was just another excuse to scam, whether it was meat, clothes, whatever. Thanks to those little bits of paper no one went without. Except the people who owned the goods being bartered, of course, and they didn't count. After all, didn't they have enough?

She smiled then, remembering those lazy days. Then she remembered her husband had lived off paper and that it had caused a lot of aggravation when he had died, been murdered. In fact, she had been left boracic lint, and that had caused its own set of problems. She had ended up with two more kids, just to feed the ones she had already acquired. Her mother had made it her life's work telling her how she had fucked up. Then she had decided that she was the perfect daughter, but only because she had been scared of her own company. And that woman had loved Lance so much it had been almost a mania with her from his birth; she had adored him from the off. But she had never liked him, her own son, and she had always felt there was something sinister about him, even when he had been a baby. And she had been right.

She could hear her boys laughing as they kicked a football around the sparse grass of their backyard, see her daughters sitting on the back doorstep in their Sunday finery, pouring out imaginary cups of teas for their dolls and feeding them imaginary cakes made from dandelions and buttercups. Their thick blond hair brushed into tidy ponytails and their chubby childish knees scuffed with scabs that had been picked over leaving small bloodstains on their long white socks. The high-voiced laughter of her girls until the ball the boys were kicking would inevitably find its way over to them, knocking their carefully prepared picnic flying. She could remember the fat tears in her twin girls' eyes, her poor little daughters' bewilderment at the male presence that always managed to disturb the games, and her own relief at their brothers' hearty kindness as they picked up the brightly coloured plastic tea set, and assorted dollies and tried, in their overly masculine way, to set it all right once more for them.

Pat Junior, the eldest, always the leader, his rough but kindly ministrations being copied by the other boys who knew it was expected of them. Pat loved those girls and he took great care of them, his brothers as well, in his own haphazard way. Colleen's death had taken him hard and she knew how he felt; it had nearly destroyed her, but she had learned a great lesson from it, they all had.

Poor Colleen had been far too good for this world; an old saying that had been proved only too true.

Kathleen and Eileen, the twins, adored their brother Pat, as had Colleen, and he would hug them and make them laugh once more, before going back to the game of football with the girls' adoring eyes turned to him as always. He was a good boy, and he was a good man, whatever anyone might try to say about him. He was his father's son all right, and for that she would always love him.

Now her Shawn was another good lad, as was Shamus, and she knew she would get a good look at them before she finally went for the long sleep.

The long sleep was such a wonderful thought; she was tired, bone weary in fact. Her mind was once more back in the present and now she could smell the faint odour of her own body; her sweat was sweet, almost like almonds. She knew it was the drugs she was on, the smell emanating from her pores a constant reminder of her old age and her pain-racked body.

There was nothing left of her now, the once voluptuous curves were nothing but bone and sagging skin. She smiled, she actually looked like her granny. Oh how history repeated itself.

She glanced at the photograph in a heavy silver frame that stood on her bedside table; in the photo she was a young woman with her eldest son in her arms, and a belly full of arms and legs. She knew now something she had never known back then.

She had been beautiful, really beautiful, and she had wasted it. Wasted the only thing she had ever really had going for her. Because in those days a woman's looks were all she had.

Her stepfather's rough, cigarette and whisky-soaked voice came to her, laughing as he said, 'You are sitting on a fucking goldmine, girl, remember that.'

Her mother had gone off her head at him, screaming at him not to put those thoughts in her mind. She hated him, she realised now. Her mother had tied herself to a man who wasn't, as her granny would always say with a drink in her, worth a wank.

She tore her eyes away from the offending photo, unable to bear looking at the woman she had once been, and comparing her with the cancer-riddled wreck she was now.

But her life had been eventful, if nothing else.

She closed her eyes and retreated again into the past, which was becoming more and more real to her with every passing hour.

Patrick Brodie was still waiting patiently for word that he could visit his dying mother. He didn't hold out much hope, though his brief had pointed out that he was only on remand even if they were making out like he was already sentenced. He would love to hold her in his arms once more. Feel her familiar embrace one last time.

She had been a game old bird, and a good mother, despite everything that had happened to her in her life.

He remembered her as he always did, in her heyday, shouting the odds, putting his father in his place. Cooking her gargantuan meals and always with a cigarette in her mouth.

She was such a character, and he had loved her more than anyone else, even after all the problems with her men after his father's untimely demise.

His father's murder had hit them hard, but his mother most of all. She had lost more than a husband, she had in effect lost the only person who had ever really valued her other than her kids.

His father's death had been the catalyst for all their problems and the hardships, and he saw that now. It had turned Pat into the man he was, made him the man he had become. The man who was awaiting trial for the murder of his brother, his own flesh and blood. A murder for which he had not one iota of remorse, only sorrow that he had not done it earlier. Got shot, got rid. Eradicated him as you would any kind of predatory vermin. They couldn't prove it, and no one was going to talk, he was as sure of that as he was sure of his own name. Everyone knew he had done the dirty deed, but no one could prove it. In this country you needed evidence, not circumstances, and he was confident of a 'not guilty' verdict.

He had watched his dad die, seen it in glorious detail, and had learned very early in life that in this world, their world anyway, it was all about the survival of the fittest. His father had let his guard down, had not thought things through, a mistake he had never made himself. Seeing your old man's brains all over your mother's jumper tended to stay in your mind, and the reason for it happening tended to make you determined never to make the same mistake.

It had lodged in his bonce, it had made him wary, made him cold, but it had also made a child into a man well before his time. It had made him embrace skulduggery and chicanery with a fervour his father would have been proud of.

As a kid, he had only tried to help his mother look after his siblings, he had never realised then that it would become his way of life. A bit of hoisting here, a bit of burglary there, gravitating as the years went on to other kinds of illegal activities to keep them all clothed and fed, a roof over their heads, the tallyman off the doorstep, and a few bob for his poor mum to go out and have a good time. It had been a means to an end, that was all.

That he would like the world he had been catapulted into, that he would rise in it and make a name for himself, had not been on the agenda. That he had eventually given his dead father's name some kind of meaning, after all that had happened, was just coincidence. How could he have known all that would happen?

His mother had tried to keep him in line, taken the strap to him, had threatened him and tried to keep him out of trouble. Even though she had inadvertently brought a lot of it on them all, with her choice of men, with her choice of lifestyle. She had been a girl though, there was no doubt about that. And, in fairness, she had traipsed around the prisons, visiting one or the other of them.

He sighed, he was only on remand in Belmarsh and they still had him locked up like a lifer. Double A grade, like some kind of fucking terrorist. How they had the nerve to sanction other countries about their penal laws when they treated their own as guilty before there was even a trial, he did not know. Innocent till proven guilty? A fucking joke or what?

There was no reason not to let him out to see his mother, but he knew they would find a way to keep him there if they could. They hated him, and they had good reason to. He hated the system, and whenever he had been banged up he had fought it with every bone in his body.

He breathed in deeply, feeling the familiar anger welling up inside him once more, the anger that had always been there, that had caused him to do terrible things, but he could also feel his determination not to let it spill over until he had seen he woman who had borne him, who had loved him.

Then he would let it explode once more, and feel the release wash over him and the peace descend as always.

Until the next time.

Eileen lit a cigarette and, taking a deep pull on it, she blinked back the tears that were threatening to spill over.

A few minutes earlier she had sponged down her mother's body and the sheer devastation of it had moved her profoundly.

She was like a skeleton, her poor arms and legs were stick-like, her chest was sunken and bruised all over from bleeding under her skin, and the scar from her mastectomy was vicious in the half-light.

She already looked dead and Eileen knew that it couldn't be long before she went. But even though she knew it would be a happy release for her mother, the thought of her never being there ever again was terrifying.

She depended on her so much, needed her so desperately that even though she knew it was selfish, she prayed her mother pulled through as she had before. Paulie, her husband, knew how hard this was for her. He alone knew she had come off the drink so she could nurse the woman who had cared for them all.

She watched through the kitchen window as her twin sister Kathleen made sandwiches and talked to anyone who would listen to her. Poor Kath, as she was known, it would hit her hard as well.

That bastard Lance was dead but would never be forgotten by any of them, no matter how hard they tried to push him from their thoughts.

His death had been the finish of their mother, even though Eileen knew she had hung on until she knew he was finally gone.

He was to be buried in a pauper's grave, no service arranged, no nothing, and she knew that everyone in their world would wonder why. They would be expecting pomp and circumstance, assuming he would be laid to rest like all the others. They would expect a big do, even though he had died, allegedly, at the hands of his older brother. Nothing had been proved yet, and she hoped that nothing ever was.

Lance had crossed the line, and the heinous nature of his offence had sent shock waves through the whole family. She also knew that the reason he had died would never be forthcoming from any of them. It was another secret, and they were used to secrets, being secretive was second nature to the Brodies.

Let people guess, let them wonder, she didn't care any more.

It was over, it had happened, and it had been dealt with.

Christy, unlike his brother, Pat, was in a squad car being driven into London. He had been questioned about Lance's death as had the rest of his brothers and sisters. Too much had been swept under the carpet with his family, and even though he knew his mother thought it was all for the best, he also knew without a shadow of a doubt that old scores would soon need to be settled. Whatever she thought, and no matter how much she had begged them all not to react to circumstances and events. Once she was gone, it would be open season and they all knew that.

He expected the rows to start, though Patrick would probably put a block on them.

Shawn sipped at his tea and watched as his sister Kathleen made sandwiches with a speed that denoted years of practice. She had lived with their granny and Lance, and been used as a gofer for most of that time. Women were strange in that way, loyal but strange.

He smiled at her sadly and she stopped what she was doing to grab his hand and smile down at him. These two were close, even in a family as close as they all were.

His skin was so dark against hers, yet she never saw that, none of them did. He was the baby and they all doted on him. Most of them anyway.

His father had wandered into their lives and then wandered back out again, turning up periodically, not really a part of the family, but accepted all the same.

His earliest memory was of his mother's smiling face, and his brother Patrick taking him from her arms as she got herself ready for work. He had been about three years old, and he could still smell her particular smell. Cigarettes and Estée Lauder, he had never been able to forget the aroma of safety that smell had always engendered in him.

He wasn't silly, he knew it had been hard for her when she had produced him, but he also knew that she had never cared what anyone thought. His brothers and sisters had loved him more if anything, yet he had been conscious of his colour from an early age, though mostly only when he left the comfort of his home. Now though, it didn't matter, times had changed, and things were different. And he was dreading the death of the woman he loved like he loved no other.

Lance was the only one in the family he had never cared for. He had been a bully and a vicious bully at that, but Shawn knew that his silence had been right and when it had finally come to a head, he was glad that he had not been the one to cause it.

Like his sister, he had suffered at his hands on more than one occasion.

He had seen him in the mortuary, identified the battered body that had not suffered enough, the sneaky bastard lying in peace, and he had finally relaxed knowing that his tormentor was gone for ever.

He smiled as he remembered the scandalised expression on the faces around him as he had hawked in his throat and spat on the corpse of his older brother. 'That's him, the ponce.'

He had said it with as much hatred as he could muster, and he had enjoyed the shock-horror it had caused. They were such a close family, put on such a united front, no one would have believed the undercurrents and the feuds their closeness covered up. Now though, all his thoughts were with the woman upstairs in her bed, and he felt the wetness of his tears as they slid down his face and was amazed to realise he had been crying all along.

Kathleen held on to the hand that had steadied her as a child, that had washed her, brushed her hair and hugged her and the feel of its trembling and the warmth of the papery skin, were almost too much to bear.

This woman had given them life, had taken care of them all, visited the boys in every prison in the country come rain or shine, advised her daughters on every aspect of their lives and even when times were so hard there was hardly a bite to eat in the house, had provided them with a meal through the sale of the only asset she possessed. Her strength had communicated itself to them all at some time or another, she had solved her children's problems with a quiet dignity, or screaming anger, depending on the circumstances and her mood. She had stopped war from erupting, and welcomed back black sheep over and over again. She had held them together with the sheer force of her will and her overpowering love. What would happen to them all now? Who would keep them all together, make sure they didn't fall apart, didn't rake up the past and cause murders?

She had always been the voice of reason, had been the one who smoothed over quarrels and made sure that they remembered they were family. Stopped the fights before they began and reminded them that, at the end of the day, each other was all that any of them really had. As close as they were, they had all fallen out big time over the years.

She had been the voice of reason. She had stopped Patrick from murdering on more than one occasion. She had glossed over trouble with a smile, and she had forced them all to lie, if necessary, for the greater good of the family.

Now though she was dying, and none of them was going to find it easy to live without her.