Father and Son (11 page)

“John,” she says.
“I don’t want any elephants in the room.”

“OK, let’s round up those elephants.”

“Are you involved in anything dodgy?”

It’s a fair question.

“No.”

“No more funny money? Stolen cars?”

“Nope.”

He had been, though. Back in the old showroom, as he stood and
watched the life drain out of his brother, he’d taken stock of his own life. University
degree, decent career, the prodigal son who’d made a success of himself… Suddenly
it felt like it had been an act, a conceit against himself, a pointless waste
of time. So he made a decision, the worst one he’d ever made.

“Sure?”

“Hundred per cent legit,” he says, “white sheep of the family again.”

When he died, Joe had been working with a new supplier of counterfeit
banknotes, great quality, almost indistinguishable from the real thing. John,
confused and disorientated by the murder of his brother, took over the contract,
doubled the order. It was his first foray into serious crime, and his last.

It wasn’t about being a criminal, though. He’d never wanted that. What
he wanted was to escape, to leave everything behind, make a fresh start. He
wanted a yacht. That had been the dream. Him and Den in the Mediterranean, living
on a 60-foot motor boat bought with dodgy money. He really had been out of his
mind.

She takes a drink from her bottle of Grolsch. “I’ll have to take
your word for it,” she says, trying to see behind his golden eyes, a bit less of
a glint in them now, a year on, but still
John
.

The scam with the fake money and the sports cars had gone wrong.
Freddy got caught up in it. John had never asked him to get involved; it was
Freddy’s own fault, and he did four months for it. As for John, he’d managed to
extricate himself from the mess in time.

Problem was, he had then told Den the whole thing, from start to
finish. She should have turned him in. But she didn’t. She left him, left her
job, everything, and moved away.

“Just out of interest,” she says. “The money you made illegally last
year. Still got it?”

He shakes his head. “Blew most of it.”

“On what?”

“You were sitting in it ten minutes ago.”

She stifles a laugh.

“Nice symmetry, though,” he adds. “Most expensive Porsche I could
find. Hundred and twenty K.”

“You’re joking!”

He goes all serious. “It’s got torque vectoring and seven gears.
Seven! And it does nought to sixty in less time than it takes me to uncork a
bottle of wine.”

“Now you’re giving me the horn.”

“It’s got one of those as well, oh yes…. Whole thing was a waste
of money, of course. I hardly ever drive it. Just one mistake after another
with me.”

There had only been one mistake, though, and that was Den. He didn’t
care about the money. He should have told her sooner, as soon as he knew she
was special. She would have forced him to choose. And he’d have chosen her, no
contest. But he didn’t tell her soon enough. She was the best thing that had
ever happened to him, and he blew it.

“So,” she says, changing the subject. “Tell me about the adorable
redhead.”

“Investigative journalist,” he says, “only known her a few days.” He
opens his eyes wide, as if he’s scared. “But the sex is boom-boom!”

Jets of frothy beer shoot from her nostrils.

“Bloody idiot!” she says, wiping her face and inspecting the front
of her t-shirt for beer. “Why is she in Leeds, I mean.”

“She’s writing something about Dad. She got in contact with me. We
met, had a drink, y’know.”

“Oh, I know you, Mr Ray… But, your dad? Really?”

“Why not?”

She pulls out a smartphone.

“How about you start thinking with your brain instead of your cock.
Jeanette Cormac’s the name, yes?”

Thirty seconds later she’s reading from the screen.

“By-lines on some impressive cases, mainly organised crime and
politics.” She thumbs down the list, already shaking her head. “High-end stuff.
Contemporary. Your dad? Nah. He was interesting in the ’80s. Not now. These
days she interviews people like Bernard Sheenan.” She holds up the phone. “Ten
days ago. Right before he was murdered. Funny, that.”

The gumbo arrives, steaming in two enormous bowls.

“God, I haven’t had this for a while,” he says, glad to put all
thoughts of Bernard Sheenan out of his mind.

“I’d forgotten, you think with your stomach as well.”

“What?” he says, fork in hand, inhaling deeply as he looks for the
perfect place to dig in.

“She’s a heavy duty crime journalist. She’s in your flat, in your
family’s business, and you have no idea why. You’re a fool.” She takes up her
fork. “It does smell good, doesn’t it!”

He puts the first forkful of gumbo into his mouth. The flood of
tastes makes his cheeks sting. For a second he is overwhelmed. This was the
first meal they’d had together, a late night bowl of gumbo after a long evening
talking, just him and Den, a few days after his brother’s death. The smell of
warm blood had still been in his nostrils, the knowledge that nothing would
ever be the same.

His phone rings.

“Shit,” he says, chewing fast, twisting about in his chair as he
pulls out his phone. “Freddy. I better take it.”

He listens, the occasional ‘yes’, but mostly he listens. A minute
later the conversation is over.

“There were no new faces in the Park Lane last night,” he says, flipping
the phone shut. “Nothing unusual. But there’s good news.”

“Oh yes?”

“He just saw three police cars outside. Looks like they already know.
Saves me a job.”

She nods slowly. “So what’s Freddy doing back at the Park Lane
tonight?”

“Said he was on his way to the Grand.”

“The theatre? Freddy?”

“That’s what I thought.”

“What was he going to see?”

“Dunno.”

“Didn’t think to ask? Perhaps you wouldn’t make such a great copper
after all.”

He shakes his head, ready to tuck into his gumbo again. “Freddy’s
got nothing to do with this.”

She smiles. “Thought you said he was in the frame?”

He pushes his dish away, takes a long swig of beer.

“John?” she says, putting her fork down. “I had a termination.”

He freezes, lets the words sink in. Feels his chest heave, his eyes
closing.

“Six months ago,” she whispers. “An abortion. I’m sorry. I didn’t
know what to do… I wanted to tell you, but…”

She reaches out for his hand.

But it’s not there. It’s in the air, ordering another drink.

Phone. Door.
Voices.

Three sounds, all hurting his ears.

Den?

Someone’s thumping on the door so hard it’s echoing inside his head,
deep and dangerous, like the thunder of crashing waves.

Did she come back with him last night?

The phone’s ringing.

He opens an eye, sees the bare wooden floorboards an inch away. His
head is half on a cushion crammed between a sofa and the coffee table. He’s
still in his shirt and trousers, and his body, sprawled on the floor, is aching
and cold.

They’re shouting his name, clear and loud.

Must have crawled off the sofa last night, too tired to get up
again. Cold. Very cold now, shivering as the first waves of nausea hit him. No
need to look around: there’ll be an empty bottle somewhere close by. The
self-disgust is worse than the hangover.

Den?

They’d tried to talk it through last night, awkward and tearful,
their food ignored in front of them. But what was there to talk about? Then
back home in the car, hardly a word. A brief kiss on the cheek as he dropped
her off. He watched as she got out and walked up the drive. She turned, looked
back, just for a second.

Now this.

The phone stops ringing. The banging too.

They’re telling him to open the door.

He props himself up on his elbows. Through the three huge windows he
sees the sky, flecked with ribbons of white cloud that catch the sun. Sometimes,
on days like this, the early morning clouds have a blush of yellow from the
sun’s first rays. But not today.

The banging starts again.

He squeezes his eyes together, takes a breath, then pushes himself
up off the floor, doing what for a haggard, hungover forty-five-year-old is a
pretty decent attempt at springing to his feet.

He opens the door.

“Mr John Ray?”

Pale
face, drab suit. Copper.

John nods. He knows the face. Detective Sergeant John Steele,
sarcastic bastard, reckons himself a bit of a wit. A wit with a warrant card?
Bad combo.

“Can we come in?” Steele says, all deference now the door’s finally
open. Behind Steele are a couple of uniforms, big fat blokes, faces like Spam. They’re
on the tail end of a night shift. Friday night, the worst. Now all they want is
their eggs and bacon. Not this shit.

John turns, padding wearily over to the kitchen area to make coffee.

“No need for that,” Steele says, standing just inside the door, “you’ll
be needing your jacket, though.”

“Eh?” says John, patting his pockets, then pulling open a drawer, desperate
for a fag.

“Jacket. It’s on the floor.”

“What’s this about?”

Steele folds his arms, his face straining to keep the satisfaction
in check.

It’s been a year, but he hasn’t forgotten John Ray. There was
something dodgy with those sports cars, the whole thing stank. They couldn’t
prove anything though. Let it go, they’d been told, we’ve got the convictions we
need. So John Ray got off scot-free. Steele knew it, Baron too, and neither of
them could do a thing about it.

“John Ray, I am arresting you for the murder of Roberto Swales. You
do not have to say anything, but anything you do…”

John looks up to the ceiling, runs his hands through his untidy
black hair, and groans.

*

There’s a plastic cup on the table in front of him, its contents too
hot to drink. His mouth is dry. They’d let him use the toilet, and he managed
to gulp down a few mouthfuls of tepid water from the sink. But now he’s thirsty
again.

Opposite him is DI Steven Baron, short-cropped hair, one of those light
blue suits he wears, cut a little too tight, almost a uniform, no room to move.
So far he’s been polite, friendly even. But that’s just his way. The two men
know each other well enough, and their relationship is not forged on
friendliness.

Next to Baron sits DS John Steele, proud owner of the city’s most
punchable face. Pinky and Perky. Christ, this is a bloody joke. Only it’s not.

Baron speaks towards the digital recorder at the end of the table.

“I ask you again, Mr Ray, would you like to have your legal counsel
present before the interview begins? If you prefer, we can provide legal
representation for you.”

John stares into the space in front of him, says nothing. This is
bullshit. It’s just Baron making a point, a bit of revenge for all that stuff
last year. John was lucky there, and he knows it. But going after him for
Roberto’s murder? No way. This is Baron’s little game.

“I don’t want a solicitor,” he says in the end, as if it hardly
matters one way or the other.

Baron sits back, tries to stifle a yawn, but it creeps out of him just
the same.

“Late night?” John asks.

“All night,” Baron says. “We never stop in this place. And you?”

“Last night? I was home by eleven. On my own.”

“And where had you been?”

You don’t want to know, Inspector. I was out with your ex-lover. The
woman you sacrificed your marriage for.

“Dinner with a friend. Caribbean Kitchen, up on Roundhay Road.”

Baron nods.

“Well, DS Steele and I have been up all night trying to find the
killer of Roberto Swales, who was an old family friend of the Rays, I believe.”

He places a large glossy photograph on the table. John’s stomach
lurches. He manages to keep down the bile, but only just. The photo is of a
man’s back, the torso blackened down one side, as if it’s been burned. A tattoo
extends right across the back: two boxers in action, classic pose, gloves held
out in front of them, heads up, Queensbury rules. Surrounding the image is a
wreath, and at the bottom:
ABAE 1972 M-W FINAL
.

He hasn’t seen it for thirty years, more. Roberto used to take him
and Joe swimming when they were kids, the open-air pool at Ilkley. Everyone’d
stare at the tattoo, then look quickly away. In those days only thugs and
nutcases had tats, especially ones like that.

“Thing is,” Baron says, his hands flat on the table, one on each
side of the photo, as if he’s admiring it, “the Amateur Boxing Association of
England didn’t have a middle-weight final in ’72. Bloke called Henderson won by
default.”

“I know,” John says. “He was crap. Turned pro, lost five of his
first seven. Retired with a detached retina.”

Baron nods. “The other finalist was remanded for armed robbery just
before the final, never got to fight. His name? Roberto Swales.”

John’s hardly listening. He’s back in the Lido at Ilkley, hot summer
days as a kid. The other children in the pool would shy away from the big muscle-bound
man with the tattooed back. Their mothers’d shy away too. But over the course
of the afternoon people would warm to him, to his strange, cock-sure voice and
the way he had of making sure you were all right when you swallowed too much
water or stubbed your toe. Come teatime Roberto would be refereeing games of
water-tag, or teaching children how to dive, their mothers looking on benignly.
Or not so benignly; he was a good-looking guy in those days.

“Friend of yours, wasn’t he?” Baron says.

“When I was a lad, aye.”

“Seen Mr Swales recently?”

“Last time I saw Rob alive was a year ago.”

“And dead.”

John looks straight at Baron. Who’ll blink first? The silence in the
room hangs over them like a heavy blanket, and neither man speaks.

It takes a discreet cough from Steele to get things moving again.

“Why don’t I tell you?” Baron says. “You saw him yesterday morning
at seven a.m. There’s CCTV of you turning down towards the Park Lane, and you
pull out onto Vicar Lane forty minutes later. Oh, and you’ve got a speeding
ticket from a camera on the Ring Road, ten to seven. See? Up all night, we’ve
been. Now, let’s start again, shall we?”

John picks up the coffee. Takes a sip. It’s scalding but at least
there’s sugar in it. Another sip, desperate to get something into his stomach.
He lets the silence run on again. Think, John: if you lie now, there’ll be more
lies down the road. Baron’s not the enemy here.

He puts the coffee in front of him.

“They asked me to go down there yesterday morning, when they found
him, see if I could find anything out.”

He feels like he’s going to be sick. The hangover, Den, the thought
of Roberto slumped forward in the chair, head caved in… He looks around for a
bin, can’t see one. A second later, the nausea recedes, but not completely.

“Private eye, are you?”

“I sorted something out for Lanny Bride last year, if you remember.
When his daughter was murdered.”

Steele snorts with derision.

“We’d’ve got to him sooner if it weren’t for your meddling.”

John doesn’t take the bait. “Well, we’ll never know that for sure,
will we?”

“What we do know,” Steele says, “is you go running to Lanny every
time he clicks his fingers, like a trained poodle. That kind of stuff doesn’t sit
too well with a jury.”

Baron inclines his head a touch. Steele shuts up.

“So,” the Inspector says, “you get a call from Lanny and you race
down there to sort the mess out?”

“Not Lanny. Someone else.”

“Name?”

John says nothing.

“You haven’t spoken to Lanny, then?”

“Nope.” John holds up his iPhone. “Check.”

“We’ve just been down to the Park Lane,” Baron says. “Already got new
floorboards at the back, new carpet, the works. All in vain, because they didn’t
dispose of the body properly. Very poorly done.”

“It’s a dying art, dumping bodies,” Steele chips in.

John’s not having any of it. Steele thinks he’s gonna wind him up?
He ignores the comment, keeps his head turned to Baron. Pay Steele not
attention, that’ll rile him.

“Tell us what you know,” Baron says, as if the preliminaries are
over, the pecking order established.

John doesn’t give a toss about pecking orders. He could peck these
two to bits without breaking a sweat. That’s why they hate him, plus the fact
that he’s Tony Ray’s son. But that’s all in the past, and at the moment John needs
to get something out of his system, the plain, gut-churning horror of seeing
violent death for a second time in his life. First his brother, now Roberto.
Two deaths he’ll never get over, not entirely. Three, if you count his own unborn
child, the one he never got to see.

He’s hardly got the strength to lie. So he tells Baron what he found
when he walked into the wine bar. The flat, metallic smell that hung on the
air, Rob’s heavy body sagging in the chair, the bullets to the leg and arms,
the glistening pools of blood that had collected on the top of his crumpled
head. He tells them how he vomited in the toilet, had a cigarette out the back.
Everything. Almost.

“There was wine soaked into his clothes,” Baron says. “Did you notice
that?”

John hasn’t mentioned the champagne. Doesn’t know why, perhaps wary
of hearing some quip from Steele about the high life. But as for the rest, he’s
told them the truth, and in doing so he’s got over the worst of it. The death
of Roberto has been sent to another part of his mind, boxed up and nailed shut,
the place where his childhood memories are stored. As for his own aborted
child, that was done for him, its memory boxed up before he knew anything about
it. Can he complain? Not really, not after what he did to Den.

He blows on his coffee, still hot but drinkable, and wipes a cuff across
his mouth. Three long breaths. And then he’s had enough. Enough mourning. Time
to sort this out. If Baron and his sidekick want to have a go too, that’s fine.
He’ll tell them what they need to now. Within reason.

“Wine?” Baron says again.

“From the bottle,” John says. “I guess they used a bottle, y’know,
on his head. The bottle must’ve smashed.”

“Eventually,” Steele adds, still trying to niggle John. “Took a bit
of a pummelling.”

“If I took a bottle to your head, it’d crack in the end, however
thick the skull is.”

Even Baron can’t resist a wry smile at that one.

Steele isn’t laughing, though.

“A bloke’s been tortured and beaten to death,” he says, “and you’re
cracking jokes about caving in people’s heads with champagne bottles?”

“It wasn’t a joke. Just an observation. I could cave your head in.”

“Playing the hard man, Johnny boy?”

Baron ignores Steele. “There was something about the Park Lane
today,” he says, waving his fingers in the air slightly, as if to aid his
memory. “It was different, somehow. I’ve been in there a couple of times. I
remember a lot of single malts behind the bar, quite an impressive collection. The
whiskies were still there this morning. But something had changed, the bar
didn’t feel as warm, didn’t have the same glow, that touch of luxury. Can’t for
the life of me think what it was, only that it wasn’t there today. It looked
empty. Any ideas?”