Disobey (39 page)

Knowing he didn’t have a choice, Patrick Doyle slowly got out, watching as Father Ryan quickly sped away.

2

Awkwardly, Patrick climbed into the back of O’Sheyenne’s car. As he did so he immediately lurched backwards, scrambling in desperation to get out of the seat – but he was shoved back in by O’Sheyenne.

‘It’s a fine thing when a man doesn’t introduce himself. Patrick, meet Connor Brogan. You remember him, don’t you?’

Patrick’s heart pounded as he glanced to the side. There next to him was the beaten and blood-drenched body of Connor Brogan, a local man from the village, barely recognisable in his naked swollen form.

Wanting to turn away but trapped by the mesmerising horror of it all, Patrick noticed Connor’s hands were tied and a coarse gag cut deeply into the sides of the man’s mouth.

O’Sheyenne leant over Patrick, grabbing hold of the unconscious man’s hair to lift his head up and slapping him hard in his face.

‘Will you not say hello, Connor? Have you lost your manners as well as your balls?’

Patrick began to tremble. His voice was weak. ‘Mr O’Sheyenne, please, I’d like to go home.’

Donal chuckled. ‘So you shall, Dorothy, but not before we attend to some business. I could do with a fine young lad like you working for me … what do you say?’

Patrick looked down, shaking his head. ‘Thank you for asking and … I … I appreciate it and all, but I’d rather not.’

O’Sheyenne raised up Patrick’s chin with his finger, staring into his eyes. ‘When I say,
I could do with a fine young man,
what I mean to say, Patrick, is you’ll be working for me whether you like it or not. We wouldn’t want you to end up like Connor here, would we?’

Inside the Brogans’ house, Patrick stood trembling as Donal dragged Connor under his arms and, without much effort, pulled him up onto one of the wooden chairs.

Connor’s head immediately slumped forward as Donal walked back to the far end of the room before he took a run up to strike Connor hard in the stomach with the chain he held in his hand.

Seeing that there was no reaction or even a flinch, Donal dropped the heavy chain back into his bag. He wiped his brow, taking the sweat which ran down the bridge of his nose onto his sleeve. It didn’t take a doctor to tell him Connor would be lucky if he made it through the night.

Putting back on the shirt he hadn’t wanted to get dirty, Donal winked at Connor’s wife who was sitting wide eyed and frozen with fear in the corner of the cosy tiled kitchen.

‘I must say, Mrs Brogan; you’ve certainly got a nice place here … What’s that you say?… No, I still can’t hear ye.’ Donal stood with his hands on his hips, bursting out into raucous laughter. ‘Oh, don’t look like that. I’m only playing. I ask you, what’s a man got if he hasn’t got his sense of humour?’

Donal roughly pulled away Mrs Brogan’s gag. She immediately began to scream.

‘God forgive you, Donal O’Sheyenne. You’ll be sorry for this; don’t think you can get away with it. I’ll make sure they lock you away. If anything happens to …’ The hard slap across her face stopped her saying any more.

Donal grinned at Patrick, who was standing terrified in the corner.

‘So, what have you got to say now, Paddy; still not keen on working for me?’

Turning his attention to the crying baby in the corner, Donal bent over to look at the child. ‘Now then, what’s the craic, young man? You’ll wake the dead with that yelling.’ Picking up the infant he was met by Mrs Brogan letting out a tirade of panic and terror.

‘Take your hands off him!… You hear me, O’Sheyenne! You leave him be. Or … or …’

Almost throwing the baby into Patrick’s arms, Donal swivelled round to face the woman. His face thunderous. ‘Or what? What are you going to do?’

Tears flowed down her face. ‘Just leave him …
Please
.’

‘Leave him? I think I’ll be taking him, don’t you?’

Hysterical now, Mrs Brogan cried out, causing the baby to scream louder. ‘No … No you can’t! He’s my baby, O’Sheyenne.’

O’Sheyenne smirked. ‘Whose baby?’

‘Mine … he’s mine.’

O’Sheyenne pulled up a chair next to Mrs Brogan as he lit a cigar. ‘That might have been the case at one time, but the thing is, Mrs Brogan, you didn’t keep up the repayments; even after the first warning I gave you, and now look where we are.’

Clancy Brogan’s eyes flashed with angry desperation. ‘We paid you everything you asked us to. We gave you
everything
we had, O’Sheyenne; when we picked him up from the convent you told us it would only be three payments.
Three.
You lied to us.’

O’Sheyenne nodded. ‘So I did, Mrs Brogan. So I did.’

Talking through her tears, Clancy continued. ‘How did you expect us to keep paying you every week? We’re just an ordinary couple; you know that, O’Sheyenne. We could hardly put food on the table over the winter, let alone keep up with your demands.’

Looking bored, O’Sheyenne studied his nails. ‘Me heart bleeds for you, so it does. But the way I see it is; how much do you want this child?’

‘You know we want him. No-one could love him more than we do.’

‘Then you should’ve thought of that before you threatened to go to the Gardaí.’

‘We wouldn’t have done it; it was … it was just my husband’s way of trying to make you stop … Wasn’t it enough for you we gave the baby a good home?’

‘There was many a couple who wanted him, Mrs Brogan; who would’ve paid a higher price, but as Connor was a childhood friend of mine me sentimental side got the better of me; I put you at the top of the list. And look at the thanks I get.’

‘I’ll find the money. I will, just …’

Mrs Brogan’s voice trailed off as Donal O’Sheyenne put one hand over her mouth, placing the other on her leg. He pushed up her paisley blue dress; his fingers moving along her thigh, twisting inwards; pressing into her pale flesh.

Glancing at Patrick, he gestured with his head. ‘Go on, get out of here.’

Patrick didn’t move. Although he was terrified, he wanted to stay and help Mrs Brogan, though he wasn’t quite sure how.

‘I said, go!’

Patrick still didn’t move – that was, until he heard the warm voice of Mrs Brogan, talking to him softly through her tears. ‘Off you go, son. You need to get out of here.’

‘But …’

There was a deathly fear in her voice, but Clancy Brogan gave Patrick a small smile. ‘I’ll be fine … This is no place for ye.’

With tears in his eyes, Patrick put the baby back in the cot. A moment later he began to run.

Donal grinned, feeling Mrs Brogan’s legs trying to close together. He jammed his knee between them, pinching her inner thigh. ‘Don’t play hard to get. I can feel you want it.’

Panic-stricken, Mrs Brogan screamed. ‘Get off me, you bastard!… Get off me!’

Donal ignored her cries; keeping her legs open he rammed his fingers up into her crotch, enjoying the touch and smell of her as she screamed with newfound terror.

Ten minutes later, Donal zipped up his trousers. ‘Can I trust you not to say anything, Mrs Brogan?’

Mrs Brogan stared at him in contempt. She whispered hoarsely. ‘You can do nothing of the sort, O’Sheyenne. I’ll
not
be silenced by fear.’

Donal nodded his head. ‘That’s what I thought and that’s why you give me no option.’ Bizarrely, Donal’s eyes filled with tears. ‘Now would you just look at that, Mrs Brogan? Tears.’

Kneeling down, Donal faced her. He glanced sidelong at the lifeless body of Connor.

‘To be sure, your husband was a good man and it’d be a lie to say I won’t miss him, but I can’t have people talk me business. A man could get into trouble for that. You do understand, don’t ye?’ Donal paused deep in thought, before smiling manically.

His eye lids narrowed, eclipsing and casting a dark shadow into his green eyes. ‘It’s a shame you won’t keep your mouth shut but no matter – there are other things that silence a person apart from fear.’

With a sudden movement, Donal leapt forward, grabbing Mrs Brogan by her throat. With no time to react, she was instantly overpowered by Donal’s strength as his hands gripped tightly round her neck. Frantically her hands scratched at his, desperate for some relief from Donal’s tightening grip.

With her eyes bulging, Donal, not once taking his stare away from hers, watched Mrs Brogan’s eyes turn from white to bright crimson.

Feeling the life drain away, Donal released his grip and uncere-moniously let go of her body, allowing it to drop to the tiled floor.

Putting on his hat, he walked over to the cot. He wrapped his wet coat round the baby before carrying it out into the storm-filled night.

3

The battering rain that soaked into Patrick Doyle’s brown coat as he ran along the uneven road made no difference to him. Neither did the charges of lightning that illuminated and struck the tops of the swaying sycamore trees; all he wanted was to get as far away from the Brogans’ house as possible.

Wrapping his oversized raincoat around his lean body in the hope of stopping the baying wind chilling his already cold bones, Patrick took a quick glance behind him. The road was empty; the village just outside Sneem in County Kerry where he lived had a population of just under a thousand and public transport was nearly non-existent, so he knew the chance of anyone coming along was slim.

Glancing over his shoulder again, Patrick saw the distant glare of car lights coming over the horizon and the shape of the familiar Mercedes. The sight filled him with terror. It was O’Sheyenne.

Frantically, he picked up his speed; his heart racing faster and faster as the rain, pocketed by the Kerry wind, swirled in the air, battering his face.

Patrick knew he couldn’t outrun the car and get to the side lane in time; petrified, he threw himself into the hedgerows, feeling the gorse cutting at his skin.

The car hurtled past; O’Sheyenne hadn’t seen him as he raced along the road, sending up a spray of water. After waiting another five minutes, Patrick began to run. He was nearly at the church now and it was almost as if what he’d seen back there in the Brogans’ house hadn’t been real.

Desperately trying to distract himself from the images of the Brogans in his head, Patrick thought about his dad, Tommy Doyle; the man he’d once looked up to. The man he’d once been able to trust. But since his mother’s death from an accident ten years ago, his father had drowned himself in whiskey and self-neglect.

His father was a hulk of man who had at one time been hailed a hero as one of Ireland’s finest champion boxers, but now his days were spent drinking, and his nights bare-knuckle fighting to earn the money which barely put food on the table but always put the drink in his belly.

Even though Patrick had only been six when his mother had died, he missed her so much. Even now he didn’t truly know how she’d died. He’d been told she’d fallen down the stairs and broken her neck, but there were various stories and rumours around the village as to how it’d really happened. He’d heard she’d been drunk. He’d heard she’d been sleep-walking. But, worst of all, he’d heard his father had had something to do with it.

With the church coming into view, Patrick shook himself from his thoughts, falling into the heavy wooden doors and flinging them open to be greeted by a sea of heads turning towards him.

‘Patrick Doyle, what’s the meaning of this? Do you not know what it is to be in the house of God? If you’re not here to attend choir practice then kindly leave.’

Patrick, giving a weak smile to Mary, stood trembling, suddenly painfully aware of his own appearance. His black hair hung soaked and matted over his forehead. His sodden second-hand clothes clung to his body and bubbles of rain water squirted out in tiny streams from the hole in his shoes. He was desperate to tell Father Ryan what had happened after the priest had driven off. He needed to tell him about the Brogans, but he was unable to find the words.

‘Well? Are you staying or leaving?’ The harsh tone of Father Ryan’s voice echoed round the church.

With Patrick not forthcoming, Father Ryan grabbed him by his arm, pulling him to the back of the church.

‘I’m speaking to you, Doyle. What have you to say for yourself? What’s going on?’

Patrick stammered, ‘I … I … er …’

Father Ryan slammed down the prayer book on the back of the wooden pew, making the young children in the choir pews jump with fright. ‘Speak up, boy; I haven’t got time for this.’

Patrick paled. ‘It’s O’Sheyenne.’

Hearing the name, Father Ryan shoved Patrick even further away from everybody’s hearing. He lowered his voice to a whisper. ‘What’s happened?’

‘After you left, Mr O’Sheyenne … Mr …’

Much to the frustration of Father Ryan, Patrick stopped, fear preventing him from saying anything else.

‘For God’s sake, boy, tell me.’ Matthew Ryan paused, then caught sight of something on Patrick’s coat. With trepidation, the priest spoke. ‘What’s that?’

Patrick looked down in horror at the bloodstain on his coat. It must have come from Connor when he was next to him in the car. But before he was able to answer the priest, the doors of the church were thrown open.

Standing, swaying in shock, was one of the villagers.

‘Quick! I’ve just passed the Brogans’ house. Their door was open … I think they’re both dead.’

As the cutting Irish wind whipped round his face, it seemed to Patrick Doyle that the whole of the village, led by a tight-faced Father Ryan, had decided to find out what was going on; an unholy candlelight procession of curious onlookers followed him down the road towards the Brogans’ tiny cottage.

The lane down to the cottage was slippery and Patrick could feel his feet moving faster and faster as he hurtled along the road. Images of the Brogans and O’Sheyenne flashed in his head, combining together in a confusing mix of panic.

He ran whilst the rain continued to splinter down, causing him to lose his balance. He scrambled up, feeling, yet not reacting to, the sting of his hands as they grazed and bled from the hard stony ground. He was first to arrive at the Brogans’ house; even though he’d seen the horror of it all only an hour or so before, looking at the bloody scene again made Patrick freeze at the door then turn to be sick.