Father and Son (29 page)
John makes his way over to the Porsche. Two cars down he sees DI
Steve Baron sitting at the wheel of a dark blue Audi. Baron had been at the
back of the chapel. Now he’s watching as John prepares to leave.
John stops, nods to Baron. They haven’t seen each other since that
day, when both John and Den had been dragged from the wreckage by the police,
Den with no more than a few cuts and bruises, John faring a little worse.
There’s
someone in the van!
she had shouted as they got her clear of the fire.
“How you doing?” Baron says, as he gets out of his car.
“Well, I won’t be playing the viola for a while.”
Neither of them moves, content to have their conversation across the
bonnets of two parked cars.
“A few of the old-timers down at the station wanted to send a wreath
to your dad’s funeral. But they didn’t know when it was. Said I’d ask.”
“I had a mass read at The Holy Rosary. There’ll be no service.”
Baron nods. It had been a massive blast. There was nothing left of
Tony Ray to bury, and precious little of Graeme Thornton. The whole block had
been destroyed.
“How’s Alice Carr?” John asks.
“You know about the attempted suicide?”
John nods.
After Den left, Alice Carr had watched on screen as the father of her
child was shot in the chest; then, as he began to fall forwards, the screen
went blank. After that she went calmly upstairs to the bathroom, took a small
photograph of a newborn baby from her purse, kissed it, then swallowed every
tablet she could find in the cabinet.
“Will she be…” John begins to ask.
Baron shakes his head. “Got herself a great lawyer. It was all
Thornton’s fault, apparently.”
John takes one last draw on his cigarette then flicks it onto the
ground in front of him, where it smoulders for a second before absorbing the
rainwater from a puddle and dying.
“Y’know, Jeanette believed she’d led the killer to Sheenan and
Roberto. She died just like they did, weighed down with the guilt of someone
else’s death.”
“The good is oft interred with their bones,” Baron says. “There’s
nothing you can do about that, John. It’s over.”
And he’s right. The case of the Leeds Bombing has been closed, and
the memories will fade and be lost to time. Apart from one: a young man
emerging from the wreckage, a baby in his arms, a look of vacant horror on his
face. That will never fade.
“See you around, Inspector,” says John.
Baron raises a hand as the tall, indomitable figure of John Ray
turns away with untypical caution.
Yes, goodbye
, Baron says to himself
as he watches John lower himself into the passenger seat of the Porsche.
I’ll
be seeing you
.
They pull up right
outside the big glass doors of the showroom.
“How much did that cost to get fixed?” Connie says, admiring the
repaired front end of the Porsche as Freddy helps John out of the car.
“Enough,” he says, straightening up and following her inside. Freddy
has already disappeared into the office.
“Gypsy Kings again?” he says, the music low in the background.
“That jazz you’re always playing?” she says, as the two of them come
to a halt in the middle of the sales floor. “I don’t think it sells many cars.”
“U-hu?”
He listens to the cheerful, jangly guitars. Car-buying music? She’s
probably right.
“Second hand Boxters,” she says, as if to change the subject. “I’ve
got one coming in. I think we could move up a bit. We’ve got the reputation,
and we’ve been selling a lot of…”
Freddy comes out of the office. The tie and shirt have been replaced
by an Arctic Monkeys
Suck It And See Tour
t-shirt, and he’s got his
jacket over his shoulder.
“Going somewhere?” John asks.
Nothing.
“Come on, Big Fella, spit it out. How bad can it be?”
Freddy stops, blows out his cheeks, doesn’t know where to start.
“I’m leaving,” he says, looking past both of them, towards the doors.
John takes it in his stride. He should have seen it coming. But he
hadn’t.
“Good for you, mate. Any plans?”
“Not really,” Freddy says, his body drooping slightly with relief.
“Travel a bit, see the world, y’know.”
“Taking Rob’s advice? I don’t blame you.”
Freddy looks up at the high ceilings of the showroom. He’d been here
with John at the start, opening the doors for the first time, popping the champagne,
balloons everywhere. It had seemed like a new beginning. Now he needs to get
away.
“After everything that’s happened, I just…”
“You don’t have to explain,” says John, walking across to Freddy and
extending his hand. “You’re doing the right thing. Come here, you twat.”
They embrace, hold each other close, a couple of seconds, no more.
“Sorry about your dad,” Freddy says, his voice craggy, ready to
split.
“I know.”
“He was…”
“Yeah, I know. I know what he was.”
Then both men are searching for a way to end it, their emotions,
painful and awkward.
Freddy turns to Connie and gives her a bear hug. The two of them
sway like desperate lovers who never want to let go. She already knew he was
going, must have done.
And then there’s nothing else. Freddy gets a carrier bag of his bits
and pieces from inside the office, gives one last sigh, and he’s heading for
the big glass doors for the last time.
“Hey,” John says. “Catch!”
Freddy stops as the doors glide open. He turns just in time to see a
set of keys flying towards him. Almost fumbles them, dropping his jacket, but
holding onto the keys.
“Lomax’s said they’ll give you sixty percent of the book price,”
John says.
Freddy considers the keys in his hand, then glances at the silver
Porsche, right outside the doors, as he picks up his jacket.
“You want me to drop it off?”
“It’s yours, you dummy.”
Freddy nods slowly: “Right.”
Connie and John watch as he gets into the Porsche, fires it up, and reverses
carefully out onto the road.
“You think he’s gonna trade it in?” John says.
There’s a massive eruption as 3,800cc of German engineering roars to
life. And then Freddy is gone, leaving half the rubber of the tyres behind him.
“Not a chance.”
Five minutes later they’re both outside draining the last drops from
their tiny coffee cups and smoking. Through the glass they can just make out
the music playing inside.
“Gypsy Kings?” he says. “Yeah, it’s good. Oh, and another thing, I’m
leaving as well.”
She stops, cigarette halfway to her lips.
“What?”
“Like Freddy,” he adds. “I’m moving on.”
“
You
? And what am I supposed to do here on my own?”
“You don’t need me. You know that.”
“But it’s half yours.”
“Not any more. It’s yours.”
She shakes her head, infuriated, angry.
“Why?”
He reaches in his pocket for another cigarette, but he’s out. “Dad
bought this land with your family’s money. Consider it a debt repaid.”
“Half. I own half.”
He runs a hand through his thick black hair.
“I rebuilt this place after my brother was killed, for all the wrong
reasons. But you? You didn’t come here for the wrong reasons, Connie. You came
to make a fresh start, to get away from your family. And you did.”
He looks up at the sign above the entrance, his father’s name in
lightning-blue neon:
Tony Ray’s Motors
.
“Second-hand sports cars?” he says. “Yes, it’s a good idea. And
another thing, I mean, if you’re in the market for advice, when Detective Sergeant
Steele calls, take him up on the offer.”
“What offer?”
“The offer of a drink.”
“And what makes you think…”
“He’s interviewed me three times in the past week, and he’s never
shut up about you. A copper’s not a bad choice, y’know. I can vouch for that.”
“I’ll bear it on mind.”
“
In
mind.”
“Yeah, whatever.”
He looks down Hope Road, sees the White Horse at the end, boarded up
now, his dad’s old local, the place his men idled away their lives.
“So what are you going to do?” she asks.
“I’m going home.”
“Where’s that?”
He glances for the last time at his father’s name above the door. The
letters distort, merging into one another until all he can see is a confusion
of bright light.
“I’ll let you know.”
He makes his way slowly down to the end of the road.
Just around the corner Den is waiting in her old white Astra.
“You ready to go?” she says as he settles in beside her.
“Yep, I’m ready. Got a fag?”
“No.”
“Good. I’ve been thinking of giving up.”
END
If you enjoyed
FATHER
AND SON
please consider leaving a review at your Amazon store:
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the mailing list:
For various kinds of help with plot, local
details, and reading early drafts, thanks to Maureen Barlow, Stephen Barlow,
Claire Gosnel, Felicity Toyles, Christine Barlow, Susana Zas, David Faulkes,
Eduardo Alverez, Sam Bridges and David Howes.
For consistently excellent proofreading,
thanks to
Mike Faulkner
.
John Barlow was born in 1967 in West
Yorkshire, England. He left school to become a musician, playing piano and
organ in bars and clubs. He then studied English Literature at Cambridge
University, followed by a PhD in Language Acquisition at Hull University.
He held teaching posts in a number of
universities, before moving to Spain to write full-time, and currently lives in
the Galician city of A Coruna with his wife and two sons.
Apart from his own writing, he works as a
ghost writer, journalist and translator. He has written for the
Washington
Post
, Slate.com,
Penthouse
and
Departures
magazine, among
others, and he is a feature writer for award-winning food magazine
Spain
Gourmetour
.
See more at:
www.johnbarlow.net
Mailing list: [email protected]
Previous books by John Barlow
Hope Road
(novel, John Ray #1)
US
UK
Islanders
(novel for younger readers)
UK
US
What Ever Happened to Jerry Picco?
(novel)
US
UK
Everything but the Squeal
(travel/food)
US
UK
Intoxicated
(novel)
Eating Mammals
(3 novellas)
The John Ray novels are about criminals,
their families, and their victims.
The Ray family has always been synonymous
with crime. Spanish immigrant Antonio ‘Tony’ Ray built up an impressive
criminal operation in the north of England after arriving in the UK in the 60s.
But now Tony Ray has retired.
John Ray is the younger of Tony Ray’s two
sons and the ‘straight’ one of the family. But after witnessing the fatal
shooting of his brother Joe, a career criminal, John decides to return home and
take-over the family business, a car showroom on the backstreets of Leeds.
The LS9 series follows the lives and
careers of those people connected to the Ray family, and will eventually
comprise nine novels.