Father and Son (7 page)

She listened, nodding, not judging… and in all that time she didn’t
take any notes. No handheld recorder. Nothing. When he asked her, she tapped
her head.

“If it’s of any use to me, I’ll remember,” she said. “In my line of
work, you don’t want to be leaving information lying around on hard disks.”

Right. Enough reminiscing, he tells himself, throwing on his jacket.
He’s got Freddy to sort out.

He grabs the Mac and makes for the door.

Tony Ray’s
Motors
: the lightning-blue neon sign above the main
entrance immediately catches your eye, a touch of Las Vegas in a drab, poorly
lit backstreet. And the showroom itself, sitting there on Hope Road, is like a
glazed spaceship amid the re-tread tyre places and anonymous workshops that
hide behind high gates and barbed wire.

Forty years ago Hope Road had been the perfect place for Tony Ray to
set up, half a mile from the city centre, but right in the shadows. It hasn’t
changed much, apart from the glass and steel UFO full of second-hand cars.

There are no customers. Nearly five on a Friday afternoon? They
might as well close up, save on the electricity. But Connie wouldn’t hear of
it, and she owns half the business.

“Good afternoon!” she says as John strolls in. “Didn’t expect to see
you today.”

“How’s things?” he asks, kissing her on both cheeks.

Concepción García, the daughter of ‘friends of the family’ from back
in Spain. Twenty-five years old, bright, and with a good head for figures,
Connie arrived last year. Since then profits have doubled.

“We’ve had better days.”

“The Subaru?”

“Couple of people called. Y’know, from the ad. It ran this morning.”

“You got the
Post
?”

“Freddy’s got it.”

At the back of the showroom he sees an opened
Yorkshire Post
and a couple of size ten shoes up on one of the sales desks.

“Right,” he says to Connie. “Could you pop out for a minute, I need
a quiet word.”

She’s gone in a second, cigarette already in her mouth.

Freddy hears the footsteps. But it’s too late. The newspaper flies
out of his hands. John grabs Freddy by the tie and shoves him until the chair
tilts back, halfway to the floor.

“Where the fuck were you last night, big boy?” he says, holding him
there.

Freddy, early twenties, blond hair, big as a bear. He’s wearing a
two hundred quid light grey suit as if it’s a pair of overalls.

“What the…”

“You’re outta jail two minutes and you’re hanging around Lanny
Bride’s place? You twat, I could fucking swing for you.”

John’s breathing is fast, and his golden eyes are wide open. Freddy
can see every trace of red in the bloodshot whites as he is held there, his feet
off the ground.

For a moment John considers letting the chair go, watching Freddy crash
to the floor. Instead, he yanks him back upright, and shoves his face right into
Freddy’s.

“What the fuck’s wrong with you?”

Freddy flexes his neck, stays where he is. He could take John, no
trouble. Same size, same build, half his age. They both know it. But it’s not
about that.

“Jesus Christ!” says John, pulling up a chair and slumping down into
it.

Freddy had been in a bit of trouble last year. They all had. Freddy
got done for supplying counterfeit money. He went behind John’s back, messed
everything up. Did four of a six month sentence for his trouble. First offence.

“I was just having a drink.”

“Is that a bruise?” John says, noticing a raised patch of pink skin
around Freddy’s temple.

“Yeah, walked into a door.”

“Fist-shaped?”

“Something like that.”

“Whatever. Who were you with at the Park Lane last night?”

Freddy looks confused.

“It was just a drink. I know a few blokes down there. That’s all.”

“You know ‘a few blokes’ down there? In Lanny Bride’s bar. You got
any idea how dodgy that sounds?”

John doesn’t care about the bother last year. Freddy had wanted to
prove himself, show he could mix it with the real men. Young lad, thought he
knew it all, so he got himself involved. Now this? It looks like he hasn’t
learned his lesson.

Freddy picks the loose pages of the
Yorkshire Post
up off the
floor.

“Hey, granddad, times are changing.”

Lippy bastard, too. A few months in a category B prison was never
going to change that.

“Look,” he says, holding up a fistful of pages. Both men have calmed
down now, pulses slowing, glad the confrontation is over. “Hold on a minute.”
He ruffles through the pages, dropping them as he goes. They glide down onto
the polished concrete until he only has one left. “There,” he says.

John takes the page, flattens it out on the desk.

There’s a small photo of Lanny Bride looking preppy and surprisingly
young in a dark suit and good-boy hair:
Bride Takes On The High Street
.

“I don’t even want to read this shit,” John says, wishing he had a
cigarette.

“He’s bought a chain.”

“I thought he preferred piano wire.”

“Yeah, funny. Listen, Lanny’s changed. After last year, y’know.”

Last year, Lanny’s estranged daughter was killed. John found the
bloke who did it. Everything changed last year. It was a mess. All of it.

“He hardly knew her,” says John.

“He went mental, you told me.”

“Funny, the guy who did it is still alive, far as I know.”

Freddy nods vigorously. “Exactly.”

“Exactly my arse. Lanny’s an evil bastard.”

Freddy stubs a finger on the newspaper. “Think about it.”

“I’d rather not.”

“The old Lanny? He had burger places, bars, lap dancing, amusements,
car washes… He’s got rid of the lot. It’s all imports from China now. You
know how much he’s worth? Lanny doesn’t need to be dodgy, not now. Word is, if
you’ve got form he doesn’t want to know you any more. He’s kosher.”

John shakes his head. He’s known Lanny Bride since they were kids.
Lanny used to hang around the old showroom. He was best mates with Joe, the two
of them like a couple of yelping dogs waiting to be let off the lead, loving
every minute of it. By the time they were fifteen they’d abandoned school and
were running their own jobs. Thieving mainly, small stuff. But disciplined.
They did things properly, planned everything, never got caught. And Lanny was
the one, he was always going be the star. Smarter, quicker, nastier. Men like him?
It’s in their blood. They don’t
do
kosher. They can’t.

“I’ll read this later,” John says, gathering the various bits of the
Post
off the floor and reassembling them, then stuffing the newspaper
into his jacket pocket.

“Outlets,” Freddy says. “That’s what he’s bought. Chain of outlets.”

“What the hell’s an outlet?”

Freddy smiles. “You see? You’re out of date, mate.”

“Forget that. What about last night?” John says, pulling his chair a
bit closer. He looks over his shoulder. Connie is still outside, huddled over
her phone. “Did you see Roberto?”

“Last night? Yeah. Why?”

“When was the last time you saw him? And let’s have the truth, eh?
Then we’ll have no bother.”

Freddy shifts in his seat. “I’m in there til about nine,” he says,
low voice, no nonsense.

“Where you go before that?”

“Last night? Left here at six, had a few in town, couple a lads I
used to play footy with. They were going off to meet their girlfriends, so I go
get a burger up next to the Park Lane. I call in after that, eight-ish, or a
bit after. Had a few, y’know.”

“Who served you?”

“What the fuck is this!”

“Rob’s dead. Someone killed him at the Park Lane last night.”

For a second or two Freddy stops breathing. He looks like someone
shot him through the heart.

“Lanny doesn’t want the police involved,” John continues. “He’s
asked me to find out who did it. And at the moment, my friend, it looks like you’re
in the frame.”

It takes a while for Freddy to react. He sits back in his chair,
face gradually screwing up as he tries to make sense of it all. Twenty-two
years old? He could be fifty.

“Not a word to anybody,” says John, getting up. “Get your thinking cap
on. Everybody you saw last night. Times, names, whatever you can remember.
Don’t write it down. I’ll give you a call.”

Freddy nods slowly.

Outside, Connie is perched on one of the high stools there, looking
down Hope Road. It’s only a stone’s throw from the gleaming, high-rise city
centre, but it could be another city entirely, another time, dull and uninviting,
and more or less forgotten. Except Tony Ray’s Motors, that is. The new showroom
is ludicrously modern, its twenty-foot-high glass frontage describing an
elongated letter ‘S’ from left to right like a massive crystal snake. On one
side, taking advantage of the overhang of the roof, are three small tables with
stools, a place to take your complementary espresso or have a quiet fag.

“Everything all right?” she asks, offering him a cigarette.

“Fine.”

He lights up and they smoke a while in silence, staring at the long
purple shadow cast at an angle down the road from the nearest of the city’s new
skyscrapers, just a hundred yards away.

One thing you get with Connie, apart from the occasional English
non-sequitur, is discretion; if you don’t want to talk about something, she
won’t ask. Her dad was a crook, but she went to Madrid Business School. She
probably acquired a bit of discretion from both.

John gets the
Yorkshire Post
from his pocket, wrestling with the
pages until he finds the business section. Flattening the paper out on the
table, he tries to ignore the photo of a sneering-smiling Lanny as he reads:

Bride Takes On The High Street

The sale of Yorkwright Holdings to Leeds based businessman Lanny
Bride was finally approved this week, after three months of negotiations. The
sale includes the Gear Depot clothes stores, some thirty in the north of
England and Scotland. Several of Yorkwright’s former shareholders were said to
be uncomfortable about selling the company to Bride, who has long been
associated with the region’s criminal world.

Bride, who has never been charged with any crime, has spent the past
three years in Malta, the base for his thriving import business, supplying the European
retail sector with Chinese goods. Now he has returned to England to oversee his
most ambitious project yet, a plan to bring his new budget fashion stores to
one hundred and fifty British high streets within five years. With his
extensive contacts in the East, few would bet against him.

The takeover will be officially announced at Stamforth Golf Club’s
annual Pro-Am golf tournament tomorrow…

“You seen that?” he says, watching as the newspaper is taken up on
the evening breeze, before fluttering down between them.

“
El Padrino
,” says Connie, watching the loose sheets as they come
to rest on the floor next to her, and placing a foot on them.

“Eh?”

She stubs out her cigarette, then bends down to gather up the
papers.

“
The Godfather
. The second film,” she says, screwing the
paper into a ball. “Michael Corleone promises his wife that the family will be
completely legal in five years.”

“I’m glad Lanny hasn’t taken everybody in.”

She turns, admiring herself in the perfect curvature of the glass.

“I don’t care about Lanny Bride. I had enough of that growing up.
You too, I bet. This is my business now. Ours. We make good money and we sleep
at night. No?”

She flicks her head back a fraction until she’s happy with the lie
of her mass of slightly chaotic, jet black hair. With that she returns to the
showroom, not waiting for an answer. Which is just as well. Something tells
John that Lanny Bride is going to be very prominent in his thoughts for the
next few days. And that’s never a good thing.

The shock of death has worn off by now, replaced by a penetrating
sense of inevitability, a full-bodied weariness in the knowledge that he’s been
dragged back into all this. He reaches into his jacket pocket and pulls out
Roberto’s wallet, wonders what the hell he’s going to do.

The wallet is thick, the leather worn and stretched. There’s a
driver’s licence and a security pass for the underground parking at his flat. Roberto
Swales was his full name. No credit cards, just a wad of cash. Mr Swales was old
style. John goes through everything twice, but it’s mainly receipts and cards
for cabs and food delivery companies. Then, right at the back, pushed down so
far that it’s stuck into the seem of the leather, is a smaller card, thinner
than the others.
The Ministry of Eternal Hope
. What is that?

The address on the card is Roundhay Road, a few miles out of town by
the look of it. The address doesn’t sound familiar. The Ministry, though, that
definitely sounds familiar.

He looks behind him, sees the silver Porsche sitting there in the
showroom, sleek and beautiful yet vaguely ridiculous, a symbol of everything
that had gone wrong with his life last year. He doesn’t even enjoy driving the bloody
thing. It just sits there, depreciating rapidly.