Father and Son (27 page)

Den’s head is shaking wildly. “It’s not what you
think… it’s…”

“It never is, love.
He didn’t mean any harm
…
never knew a thing
…
loved his mum
…”

“No, no… Not John, it wasn’t like that.”

“I know exactly what it was like, believe me. Your
boyfriend and his family are pretty well known in these parts. I know what they’re
capable of, and I’m not the only one. But that’s all too late. Oh,” she says, “throw
your phone into the fire.”

Den hesitates.

“Or I’ll shoot you in your gut. And if I go a
bit high you’ll have a burst lung and no one to phone for an ambulance.”

Den tosses the phone onto the coals and watches
as licks of green and blue flames curl around it.

Then she looks at the laptop again. Tony Ray
shifts on his stool, his torso pulled to one side, as if a sudden blade of pain
has run through his side. His face is gripped in agony, and spittle trickles
from his mouth as he begins to shake.

“He’s having a heart attack,” Den says. “Are you
sure about John? What about Lanny Bride? Where’s he in all this?”

“I’m sure,” Alice says.

“It doesn’t have to end like this.”

“
You have kids?”

Den shakes her head, squeezing her eyes together, desperate not to
cry. “You don’t want this, Alice. Please. I’m sorry, I’m so, so sorry… But don’t
let it end like this.”

“It ended for me when my baby died.”

“So why not just kill him? And why… why all
this
!”
she says, looking again at the screen.

“Because I didn’t want to die in a room with
that animal,” says Alice, watching now as Tony Ray squirms with pain.

Right.

Gripping her armchair with both hands Den swings
a leg out. A year of taekwondo classes channelled into one kick. Her leg arcs
through the air so fast she flies out of her seat, her whole body lifting up,
before her foot crashes into the side of Alice’s head.

Then they’re on the floor, a flurry of arms, heads
smashing into each other. The gun clatters to the floor and skids out of reach
beneath the coffee table. A year of taekwondo, and every moment of every class,
each kick and punch and grunt a means of forcing John Ray out of her system.

It’s not much of a fight. Alice claws and bites
and scratches, arms flaying out, a vile, pathetic scream in her throat. But Den
is practiced, focussed. Half a minute and she’d landed three clean blows to the
side of Alice’s head. Then she leaps back, up-ends the coffee table, and gets
behind it, grabbing the gun.

She kneels there, feeling the heat from the fire
on her back. Panting heavily, she waits until she gets her breath back. Alice
is now curled up on the floor,
her legs up against her
stomach, hands covering her face. She gulps in great breaths of air and sobs
quietly to herself, the contents of the upturned Dom Perignon bottle trickling
out onto the floor beside her
.

Den looks in the chamber of the gun. One bullet.

It had been for Alice
.

Den gets to her feet, the gun in her hand, tries in vain to stop
shaking. Something takes her attention. She picks the laptop up off the floor,
brings it close to her face, straining to make sense of the dark patterns on
the screen.

Then she sees him: John, standing in the doorway, slowly raising his
arms.

Baron storms out
of Oaklands Nursing Home and through the steel security gate, which is now wide
open, a uniformed officer stationed there. Nobody knows, he tells himself. How on
earth can
nobody
know?

The car park is full, blue-tops and CID cars at all angles, half a dozen
of them. There’s another officer posted on the entrance to the road. At least
the Super’s stayed at Millgarth this time. No good having brass here now, they
just add to the confusion, and there’s enough of that already.

He rubs his head until the scalp hurts, trying to get some oxygen to
the brain, trying to make sense of everything, to think fast.

Steele jogs out to join him, shaking his head, fag already in his
mouth.

“Have you tried absolutely everybody in there?” Baron asks him as he
approaches.

“They don’t
know
!” Steele says, shaking his head in
disbelief, patting every pocket he’s got but not finding a lighter. “Nobody’s
got a clue who this bloke is. We’ve even asked the bloody inmates.”

“Residents.”

“They’ve got a career criminal living on the ground floor, and
someone’s let him out with a bloody dry cleaner.”

“And Holt, the moral crusader.”

“How many dry cleaners in Leeds?” Steele asks.

“Nearly a hundred. List’s coming through now,” he says, nodding
towards an unmarked Ford Focus behind them, inside it two DCs, phones pressed
to their ears, laptops balanced on their thighs.

Shit. Shit.

“It’s Holt,” Baron says.

Steele isn’t so sure.

The driver’s door of the Focus opens.

“Bit of a weird one, Sir,” says one of the DCs from inside.

“It’s all weird today. Nothing but.”

“The manifest from the ferry? Email just came in. John Ray was
driving the van.”

“
Yes!
” Steele hisses, his whole body jerking as the air
forces its way through his gritted teeth.

The young DC isn’t so jubilant.

“Someone else knows, an’all.”

Baron’s face never slips.

“The ferry company. They’re saying someone accessed the same file a
couple of weeks ago. Downloaded the manifest. We’re not the only ones looking
for John Ray, Sir.”

Baron thinks. He looks at his watch. “Right. Let’s get his face on
the news.”

He takes out his phone, about to fast-dial the Super.

It rings. He doesn’t recognise the number. A landline, local.

“Who’s that?” Steele asks.

“Only one way to find out…”

It’s Den.

John’s arms are beginning
to ache. He’s standing in the doorway, hands held out in front of him at chest
level, palms open as if in peace, or as if they might afford him some sort of
protection.

To his left, about four paces away, his father is slumped on a
stool, staring at the floor. He’s lashed to a barrel with a white sheet and his
skin is grey. In front of them both, perfectly triangulated between father and
son, is Graeme Thornton.

“We’re going out live, are we?” John asks, looking at the video
camera on a tripod next to Graeme.

“Audience of one,” Graeme says, his head turning to John as he
speaks, but his gun pointing at Tony. “Two if you count me.”

“You walk out of that supermarket,” says John, “the baby in your
arms. And the mother’s still in there, buried in the rubble. Was this her
idea?”

“You hear that, Alice?” Graeme says, raising his voice. “He wants to
know whose idea this was!”

John shakes his head. “It doesn’t matter.”

“You got that right.”

“What
does
matter, Graeme?”

“Justice,” Graeme says, as he moves a step closer to the old man,
the gun in both hands, held out at arms’ length.

“You’ve got the wrong man tied up over there.”

John feels cold sweat dripping from his armpits. The rattle in his
lungs is making it difficult to breath steadily, and his heart is at three
beats a second, perhaps more.

Graeme takes his time, searching for the right words.

“Do you know how much I wish it’d been me that took the blast?” The
gun never wavers in his hands as he speaks. “Iraq, Bosnia, Ulster, and I never
copped a bullet. Every gunshot, every mortar, all I could think about was his
tiny face, the eyes hardly open, mouth as big as the end of your thumb. Little
grinner he was, from the start.”

“You’ve got the wrong person,” John says.

Graeme chuckles, indulgent, tolerant.

“You couldn’t get to Lanny,” John says, “so you’re taking Dad
instead.”

Again, nothing from Graeme…

*

The industrial estate is up ahead. Nothing much, a dozen units,
perhaps. She drops down the gears, braking hard as she turns. Not a soul about
on a Sunday, the steel grills down on every unit. Then she sees it: a van in
the far corner, and next to it the bright green Kawasaki.

She parks three units down, slipping from the car as quietly as she
can, the gun in her hand. One bullet. That’s all she’s got, the bullet that Alice
Carr was going to use to end her own life.

She inches her way along the wall as far as the van. Three long, deep
breaths, then she looks in through the driver’s side window. Just visible in
the back is the body of a man, legs and arms heavily bound with tape, his head
against the floor. John’s shoes? Can’t see, it’s too dark inside. The man is
either unconscious or dead. Instinctively she feels for her phone, then
realises she doesn’t have it.

She hears a voice. Relief floods through her body, sending her
light-headed: John isn’t dead. His voice is coming from an open doorway just
along the wall,
Carr’s Dry Cleaning Services
above it in neat,
functional letters.

She creeps forward, gets to the door, sensing that John is standing
just inside. She presses herself up against the wall, gun in both hands, and listens…

“Jeanette? Did she deserve to die?” John asks, hoarse, exhausted.

He can’t be more than a couple of feet away from Den, who is flat
against the wall outside, desperately trying not to make a sound.

“She begged me,” Graeme says. He sounds a little further off, but
not much. “Cried like a baby. John’s innocent, she said!”

“
She
was innocent,” says John. “You killed her anyway.”

“If I hadn’t killed her, she might have gone to the police and I’d
never have got you and your daddy down here. I had no choice.”

“She did nothing!”

“Call it collateral damage. Happens all the time in war. Just like
it did to my baby boy. And now, John Ray, you know what it feels like to have
the person you love dead in your arms.”

“I’d only known her a week.
She’s
not the person I love!”

But Graeme’s not listening. “I held him in my arms as he went cold.
My own son. The bomb? It was a mistake, a fuck-up, sorry lads! Well, they’re all
fucking sorry now.”

“Got Lanny have you?”

“You think you’re gonna blame it on Lanny Bride? Then what? I let
your daddy go?”

“You think Lanny
wasn’t
involved?”

Tony Ray’s head is now resting on his chest. If he can still hear
anything he’s showing no signs of it.

“Dad?” John says. “The Semtex? Joe and Lanny, right?”

No response. But Tony begins to rock backwards and forwards very
gently on the stool.

John looks at Graeme. “I want to phone Lanny.”

“Nice and slow,” says Graeme, watching as John pulls his iPhone out
of his pocket, the gun still trained on his dad.

John dials, holds the phone to his ear, his chest heaving.

“Lanny? It’s me. 1990, Leeds bombing. Semtex. Who was in charge? Tell
me now.”

And Lanny tells him.

The phone drops to the floor. And the tears are already streaming
down his face.

Tony Ray raises his head a fraction. “
Hijo, no me acerques
,” he
says, his Spanish little more than a croak.
Son, don’t come near me
.

He says it again, straining to get the words out.

Then, finally, he lifts his head until he’s looking at John. His
lips quiver and his eyes are glazed; the same eyes that used to shine with fun,
father and son reading the
Beano
together at the kitchen table, that
ridiculous Spanish accent making his words sound nutty and exotic; the same
eyes that beamed with childlike pleasure when a pile of toys appeared in the
living room,
where did all those come from!
; the eyes of a liar.

He says it a third time: “Don’t come near me, son,” and this time his
eyes flick to the side, almost imperceptibly, as if he’s trying to look behind
his head.

John sees it: a wire taped to the blue barrel, running all the way
down the side, then onto the next barrel, and the next; finally all the way
back to Graeme, and up into his pocket.

“Dad?”

But the old man’s eyes are closing.

“
Dad!
”

Graeme steps over and slams the but of the gun into the top of the
old man’s head.

“Don’t die on me now, Tony. I’ve got something for you.”

“
Dad!
Dad!
”

But Tony Ray is delirious, sinking fast.

“I brought the shipment in,” John says, feeling the tears running
down his face. “I drove the van. It was me.”

Graeme shakes his head, laughs.

“I know you did. You were the courier. The last name on the list. I got
you all in the end, but I wanted you two last. Alive.”

He grabs Tony Ray’s thin grey hair, yanks his head up and pushes the
gun deep into the sallow flesh of his cheek.

“Tony Ray. You miserable cunt. It was your job, your shipment, your
contacts. Now
you’re
gonna know what it’s like to watch your son die in
front of you.”

He drops the old man’s head, arms swinging round, the gun suddenly
pointing at John.

A single shot.

John feels himself falling backwards, spinning to the ground, the ringing
in his ears unbearable. He’s screaming, but as he hits the floor he can’t hear
a thing.

When he opens his eyes, he sees Graeme Thornton standing there, gun
still in his hand. But his arms have dropped, as a dark red stain spreads
across his chest. For a second he seems at peace. A youthful vitality returns
to his face, as if the blood is a welcome sight, a relief, a final deliverance.

Then his eyelids flutter and his breath crackles with blood.

His legs sag beneath him. As he begins to fall forwards his hand
follows the wire up into his pocket.

A blinding white light fills the place.

And it’s all over.