Michael sighed heavily, rolling his eyes in mock annoyance. ‘I had a feeling you would say that!’

Chapter Seventy-Three

Chapter Seventy-Three

Jack Cornel believed himself to be an intelligent man – if he had been allowed to have a decent education, he knew he could have made something of himself. His biggest problem was his arrogance, which he had worn like a shield since childhood. All his life he had sought arguments with anyone that he felt might be looking down on him. He had a huge chip on his shoulder. He hated to be treated like a nobody. His father had been a well-known drunk and his mother an even bigger one. The Cornel boys had grown up in a filthy council flat, the result of haphazard parenting, and had to live with the stigma of having the Cornel name.

They had not just witnessed violence – they had been the recipients of it since they could remember. It had been a hard upbringing. Jack had tried to protect his younger brother from his parents’ viciousness and their complete disregard for the two children they had somehow created.

His father had finally beaten his wife to death when the two boys were thirteen and ten respectively. They had then had to try and survive in the care system. Too old for adoption, and much too disturbed for fostering at a residential care home, they had eventually been placed in a lock-down facility that catered for children either sent there by the courts for serious offences or, like the Cornel brothers, because no one knew what to do with them. It was a severe and harsh environment, and they stayed until eventually the social workers released them one after the other on to an unsuspecting public. By then they were past redemption, inured to pain and, without the skills to adapt to society, they had lapsed into the world of petty villainy. Burglars, thieves and liars, they had simply existed, until Jack shot a Dooley. That one act had made him believe he was now capable of moving them up in the world, thereby making a real name for themselves. Jack Cornel saw this as his chance to shine, and he was determined to make the most of the opportunity. He had assured his brother Cecil that, with Dooley’s murder behind them, they were finally on the road to public recognition and wealth.

Chapter Seventy-Four

Chapter Seventy-Four

Declan was watching the Cornel brothers as they drank themselves stupid in a private club Michael had acquired a few years previously, in lieu of a heavy debt. They were with a couple of young lads, both up-and-coming Faces, who knew exactly what was wanted from them. The Cornels had walked into the club with the lads, without a second’s thought, and that alone proved just how gullible they were. They were not even on their own home turf.