Family

by Owen Mullen

  A picture of Mandy and Amy came to me. Mandy had been terrified of Danny.

  With good reason.

  Vincent Finnegan’s extraordinary tale, added to what I’d discovered, rocked me to my core. A part of me wanted to dismiss the Irishman as a bitter guy, eaten with resentment, and doubt his story. But that was the old Luke. Me – I believed every word and was ready to kill.

  I hadn’t been near this part of South London in more than two decades – not since I was fifteen. Coming here should’ve been nostalgic, poignant even. Today, I was blind to everything except the fury boiling in me. The front door was ajar, a portal to another time, one where I was a kid, my brother could make me laugh, and the future would take care of itself.

  The golden past: a place beyond reach. A place that didn’t exist and never had.

  62

  He was standing with his hands crossed behind his back, younger-looking than the day he’d tracked me to the pub on the Broadway when I went AWOL from my homecoming party. Like a fool, I’d swallowed his big brother act whole without questioning his sudden interest in me after so long. I’d told myself my brother was going through a tough time, and he had been, just not for the reasons I’d imagined. Now I understood. The corny ‘Team Glass’ pitch was for a reason – he wanted me where he could keep an eye on me until he was ready to turn the screw.

  I wanted to rip his heart out.

  The room was exactly as I remembered, right down to the yellowed net curtains on the windows and the faded carpet on the floor. The furniture, even the wallpaper and the pictures, were the same.

  A finger scolded me. ‘Kinda spoiled the surprise, bro. Shame. Had a notion we’d come here someday – you and me – and kick-over old times together.’ He paused as the irony hit home. ‘Got that right, didn’t I?’

  Whatever response he expected he didn’t get. Hearing him go on about a house neither of us had lived in for two decades while the horror story Vincent Finnegan had told me played in my head was more than I could handle.

  A voice, husky with anger, stripped the nonsense he was talking away: it was mine.

  ‘You killed them. You killed Cheryl and Rebecca.’

  Danny blinked and didn’t answer, like he didn’t understand what I was saying.

  The words came out cracked and broken.

  ‘For Christ’s sake… they were… beautiful people. Why?’

  The question physically changed him: the flesh at his neck coloured, his eyes became hooded and puffy as blood and rage met on his face. ‘Why? You’re asking why?’ He screamed at me, spraying flecks of spit in the air. ‘You were fucking her! You were fucking my wife!’

  My reaction shamed me. ‘You knew?’

  Danny’s laugh at my naiveté was brittle and bitter.

  ‘From the beginning, little brother, from the very beginning.’

  ‘You didn’t love Cheryl.’

  ‘You’re right. I couldn’t have given a monkey’s. I was done with her. But she was mine. She belonged to me.’

  ‘She tried for you, you bastard, you pushed her away. Pushed her away for your whores.’

  ‘And you were there to catch her. Sounds noble when you put it like that. Knight in shining armour saving a damsel in distress. Leave it out.’

  ‘It’s the truth.’

  ‘Truth. I’ll give you some truth: my wife betrayed me with my brother.’

  He laughed that laugh again and I guessed what he was going to say next.

  ‘Nobody mugs off Danny Glass. Thought you knew that.’

  I felt as if I were drowning in quicksand. Every move I made sucked me in deeper. Vincent Finnegan’s clipped Northern Ireland accent had offered no apology for who he was and for who he’d been. Listening to him quietly describe Danny’s unspeakable crime had chilled me.

  On the morning they died, I was waiting for Cheryl in my flat. She was late. I’d spent my whole life believing in Danny, and I’d believed him again when he’d given me the awful news.

  they’re dead, Luke

  that bastard Anderson

  Albert hadn’t been innocent – far from it – but he hadn’t murdered Cheryl and Rebecca.

  I turned the syllables over in my mouth and spat them out like bad meat.

  ‘You killed both of them.’

  His rejection of the accusation was pathetically sad. ‘Rebecca wasn’t supposed to be there.’

  ‘Except she was, and she died before her life had even begun. You murdered your little girl. How can you live with yourself? You’re a monster. A fucking savage.’

  Danny absolved himself; his daughter’s blood wasn’t on his hands.

  ‘Rebecca died because of you. Because of you, brother. All because of you.’

  ‘What about Mandy? What’ve you done to them?’

  Before he could speak a noise from over my shoulder made me look round. Marcus was Danny’s shadow – wherever my brother went, the big man wasn’t far away.

  He leant both hands against the frame of the door like Samson about to bring the temple down, casually observing the scene, his eyes as empty as a cadaver. Behind me, a shoe scuffed where the carpet didn’t cover. Scotch Norrie emerged from the kitchen. Danny was taking no chances. I’d been outnumbered from the start. The Scottish guy was a stranger – I’d met him a grand total of once, in the office above the King Pot; there was no history, good or bad, between us. He ran a fingertip along the blade of the knife in his hand. Unlike Marcus, his eyes were alive.

  Danny came back to my question. ‘You’ll find out what I’ve done to them. Forgot who you were messing with, bro. I always square the account. Assumed you’d know that. Did it often enough for you when you were a kid.’

  The past, always the fucking past.

  ‘This is between me and you. Nobody else is involved.’

  Danny laughed; I’d said something funny. ‘Tell that to Sean Poland.’

  I’d asked Vincent Finnegan about his taciturn friend. He’d told me: after the bomb went wrong, Poland was found one Sunday morning hanging from a tree in Norwood Park, his death made to look like suicide. Of course, it wasn’t. The unnamed people who’d strung him up from a branch late on Saturday night broke into Finnegan’s flat and crippled him with baseball bats. Vincent had had no part in the explosion – in fact, he hadn’t even known about it. Danny judged him guilty by association. Vincent reckoned he’d got off lightly considering who he was dealing with. But every good thing he’d ever known was behind him, and ever since he’d expected Danny’s heavies to finish the job – explains why he carried a gun.

  ‘Where are they?’

  My brother chose his words, searching to do justice to what he had to tell me.

  ‘Let’s just say they’re waiting for you. Will that do?’

  I had my fingers round his throat before his thugs could reach me. Blows rained down on my head and shoulders – I hardly felt them. Eventually, they dragged me off and laid into me, kicking and punching. The last thing I remembered was Danny standing over me shaking his head and wagging his finger, as if I was a little boy who’d done something wrong and needed to be punished.

  I opened my eyes and closed them again. I was naked, my hands behind my back, tied with rope to a wooden stanchion running all the way to the roof. When I struggled, the rope bit into my wrists. After futile attempts to free myself I gave up. My body ached and my head hurt but, for the moment at least, I was alive.

  I guessed this was Fulton Street.

  A shaft of sunlight, dust dancing like plankton in its beam, pierced the darkness, allowing me to see my prison. The room was large, smelling of damp and mould and stale air. Decades of rain seeping through the mottled plaster had cracked it like eggshell, exposing the black crumbling brick underneath. Stumps of wood – the supports for what had once been a loft – dotted the gable end in a high horizontal line. Above them, boards, rotted and broken, were nailed across a window large enough to be a door.

  It was cool but I was sweating.

  Th
e flagstones in front of the pillar I was shackled to were stained a deep brown. Blood – dried and ingrained. If I didn’t find a way out of here, mine would be added to it. Rollie Anderson waited seven years to avenge what I’d done to his father. Danny’s had been longer in the making.

  from the beginning, little brother, from the very beginning

  He’d accused me of betraying him and he was right – I had. We hadn’t set out to hurt anyone. ‘It just happened’ is a cliché – in our case, it was true.

  Danny had become distant and remote, even with me, cutting me out of decisions, disappearing for days with no explanation. I was Rebecca’s godfather and had always been close to Cheryl. The marriage was failing. Like a friend she confided in me. And like a friend, I listened. Until, inevitably, friendship changed into something more.

  Cheryl had showed up unexpectedly at the flat. Danny wanted to talk and had sent her to tell me. Her eyes had been wild with unhappiness. When I’d asked what was wrong, she’d broken down and told me my brother hadn’t come home again. I’d held her in my arms until the sobbing stopped. Then we were kissing, tearing each other’s clothes off and I was having my brother’s wife.

  The first time is never the best time. Strangers meeting in the dark. Too many unknowns for the earth to move. It didn’t move for us. But it was good. I knew it would be. When it was over, she lay with her head on the pillow, tracing my face with her eyes, her voice husky with something she was reluctant to admit.

  Eventually she said, ‘I lied to you. I promised myself whatever happened I wouldn’t and I have.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘About Danny.’

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘Danny didn’t send me.’

  After that we couldn’t have stopped even if we’d wanted to. Occasionally, we’d go to a hotel. Mostly we met at my place. It went on for months. At first, Danny loomed large in our conversation. Gradually, we stopped talking about him. Sometimes, we didn’t talk at all.

  My need was great. Hers was greater. Being loved how she wanted to be loved wasn’t something she was used to, and it showed. Time after time, I resisted being drawn into the depths of her. Her response was to quicken her rhythm. Finally, she broke over my body, and we kept going, until she was moaning again in my ear and I felt the sting of her nails cutting bloody lines in my back. Eventually, she had all of me in a spasm of mutual joy, which went on and on.

  We lay with each other’s sweat drying on us, not talking because there was nothing to say. But in the shared silence, with her heart beating against mine, the knowledge it couldn’t last crowded in, souring my mood.

  I sat on the edge of the bed while she ran her fingers along the welts on either side of my spine.

  ‘I’m sorry. I couldn’t help myself.’

  I shook my head. She noticed the change and I sensed her daring herself to speak.

  ‘Did I disappoint you?’

  ‘You could never do that. It isn’t possible.’

  She disagreed. ‘Everything’s possible, Luke.’

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘not everything.’

  And I was right. Danny had eyes and ears everywhere; pretending he wouldn’t find out about us was a lie we both bought into. Once, when he was away ‘on business’ we went to Margate for the day. The night before, the madness of what we were doing made me almost call it off. I didn’t and was glad because it was the best day of my life.

  In the car she closed her eyes and let the wind blow her hair away from her face, a beautiful face. I tried to concentrate on the road. With her beside me, not a chance. A few days and already I was in deep. Deeper than was wise.

  She turned her head and smiled. ‘I feel like I’m in a dream and don’t want to wake up.’

  ‘Dream on.’

  Her fingers ran up and down my arm. ‘This was a good idea. I thought you might’ve changed your mind.’

  Her fear was talking though we both understood what she meant. Silly girl. She wasn’t the only one who was dreaming. I knew who she was and what she was and it couldn’t have mattered less.

  The signs had been there for anyone with eyes. Albert Anderson was causing trouble, which meant Danny wasn’t around much. When he was, he avoided me. That was a warning. Because I was lost and hopelessly in love, wanting – no, needing – to be part of them; I didn’t see it and selfishly risked their lives.

  Family wasn’t something I was used to; I hadn’t known the woman who’d given birth to me and, growing up, my father was too often in a whisky stupor to realise I was even there.

  Little girls are cute – this one was no exception. She liked me and wasn’t afraid to show it. The feeling was mutual and when they went home, a sense of loss beyond anything I could explain settled over me.

  But it was her mother I was drawn to most. The more time I spent in her company, the more I appreciated qualities her husband had missed. She was smart, kind, funny and well able to call bullshit on me. It was easy to forget the relationship was doomed and had been from the beginning.

  And that was the problem. I had forgotten.

  The years in Wandsworth were deserved; I didn’t grudge a day of them – not for what I’d done to Albert Anderson. Danny had ordered the bomb that went wrong. Sean Poland was the man who set it. They weren’t responsible for Cheryl and Rebecca dying.

  I was the one who’d killed them.

  63

  Distant voices broke into the memories. They were coming for me. I braced for the worst. Marcus ducked under the lintel and came into the room with Scotch Norrie behind him. They’d been arguing about football – Arsenal and Rangers were mentioned – casually going on with their lives, and stopped when they saw me. Norrie took his knife from his pocket and played with it, opening and closing the blade to intimidate me. Marcus plugged in an extension cable, dragged a rickety chair from the shadows and sat it a yard from where I was. My clothes were lying in the corner; the gun was on top.

  I made a stab at defiance – ridiculous in the circumstances.

  ‘Where’s Danny?’

  Marcus ignored me and carried on. He lifted a duffle bag, carried it into the centre of the room and slowly emptied the contents, one at a time in a performance for my benefit: a hammer, a handful of reclaimed and rusted six-inch nails; a pair of long-handled bolt cutters powerful enough to snap chain; an iron bar a foot long; and last, a blood-spattered hand-held electric drill. I thrashed against the rope, my wrists on fire, until I was exhausted. Danny’s men watched me. They understood the psychology of terror: silence was their weapon. When they finished, they left, and I was alone with the tools of torture at my feet.

  Thinking was the enemy. Awash in fear, my brain refused to function. The beating I’d taken had sapped my energy; every bone in my body ached. Nothing compared to what was coming. I was more tired than I’d ever been in my life. My eyes wouldn’t stay open, my head fell forward and, unbelievably, I slept.

  Danny’s rough laugh brought me awake. Sunglasses, jeans and a white shirt open at the neck gave him the look of a guy who’d watched England have a promising first day against Australia at the Oval and was pleased with what he’d seen. One hand held a ghetto blaster, the other a bunch of CDs. Bottles of Camden Pils nestled in the crook of his arm, beads of moisture gathering like tears on the outside of the dark-brown glass. He set the lager on the flagstones, popped the top off one of the bottles and raised it to his lips. Experience had taught him this was thirsty work; he’d come prepared.

  ‘The old man hated lager. Said it looked like piss and tasted worse.’ Danny sniggered and kicked at something on the floor. ‘Rich coming from a man who’d drink anything so long as it was alcohol. ’Course, he hadn’t tasted this.’ He turned the label so I could read it. ‘The best of British. Streets ahead of the junk they brew across the channel. Next time you’re in the office, we’ll crack a few.’ He hesitated. ‘Or, maybe not. But it’s good stuff. Take my word for it.’

  Danny straddled the chair the way mo
vie stars did in films and rolled up his sleeves.

  ‘Looked after yourself in prison, give you that. While other poor bastards like me are grafting, you’re down the gym in Wandsworth. No wonder Joe Public thinks it’s a fucking holiday camp.’ He burped, loudly. ‘Now, where were we?’

  He was enjoying himself.

  ‘Oh, yeah, that’s right. You were about to tell me why I shouldn’t cut your balls off and feed them to you. Am I right or am I right, bro?’

  The bottle swung menacingly between his first and second fingers and there was a glint in his eye: he was on the edge. One word – any word – and he’d smash it and stick the jagged edge in my face. He fired the bottle over my shoulder, close enough to feel the air move. It crashed against the back wall and Danny leaned towards me.

  ‘I said, am I right or am I right?’

  ‘Tell me where Mandy is.’

  He took his mobile from his back pocket, his lips a tight line.

  ‘I can do better than that, little brother, I’ll show you.’

  The light from the camera cut through the darkness like a tiny moon, arcing over a narrow dirt path covered in leaves, while the audio recorded the soft pad of footsteps on the earth and the rustle of a branch, bending then falling back. A male voice quietly whistled the old Fleetwood Mac tune ‘Man of the World’, against the ghostly outline of the trees and the first shafts of dawn lancing the tops. Suddenly, the forest disappeared and a man leant on a spade beside a mound of brown soil, smoke drifting from the cigarette in the corner of his mouth. I recognised him.

  Scotch Norrie.

  The hole in the ground was deep. Mandy and Amy were lying side by side at the bottom like discarded mannequins. Mandy’s face and naked body wore the marks of torture, her red hair, matted with blood, crudely cut – the final indignity. Amy had been treated with more respect; her neck was broken and her young head rested at an angle on her mother’s breast.