by Vince Vogel
“Mmm,” Jonny hummed, making a face at his son. “I’ll have to remember that.”
“Did you hear that granddad’s sick?” Philip asked.
“Yeah. Your uncle Ron told me. I’m sorry. Your mum must be sad. Not that he ever liked me. I still remember the smirk on his face that day he stood with your mum as I packed my stuff up.”
“You’d just been caught cheating on his daughter,” Carl said.
“Yeah, and didn’t he love that? Proven right after fifteen years of hating me.”
“Why do you always do that?” Philips snapped at his father.
The nineteen-year-old looked upset. Once again, Jonny had allowed the poisons of his past to spill into the present. He’d been bitter about the divorce. His affair had been the first time he’d ever even looked at another woman since he’d met his wife, Jill. In the end, after sleeping with the woman only three times, he’d confessed.
That had been it. He was out. The divorce was done and dusted within six months. He’d stopped fighting it when he realized she would never take him back. Inside, he’d felt betrayed. Yes! He, the cheater, felt betrayed. Felt that she must have never loved him in the first place if she never even gave him one single chance. In his mind, she must have felt so little for him that she wasn’t willing to fight over this one thing. And after he’d confessed as well! To him, it was as though she had spent their entire marriage waiting for an excuse to offload him.
But over the years, she never remarried and any relationship she did have was as short-lived as Jonny’s own romances during that period. Over the years the two of them had existed alone side by side, and recently Jonny had reassessed his earlier thoughts on his ex-wife’s feelings for him. He realized that far from giving her an excuse to leave a partner she no longer loved, he had in fact hurt this woman so terribly that she had felt no other choice but to tear herself from him or suffer the continued betrayal that he represented.
“I’m sorry, Phil,” Jonny said. “I guess I’m a miserable old man, sore at what he lost.”
He gazed across the table at his sons and they gazed back. Their hardened looks softened for their father. Carl was about to say something, but the food came and whatever it was was lost.
32
Jack was reentering London when George Lange called.
“George?” he said upon answering the call on speaker phone.
The rainstorm had finished twenty minutes ago and he was driving along the M25 under a hazy blue sky, the wet road bending and sparkling underneath the sun’s rays.
“You do know that it’s my day off, too?” Lange complained.
“Yeah, but like I said earlier, you get on better with them lot down at archives than I do. You’re all pally with them. Whereas they look at me like I’m the ghost at the feast. They’d be more willing to do you the favor.”
“It still took me twenty minutes to convince them to give me the details without a case number attached.”
“But you got them?”
“Yeah. You ready?”
“As I’ll ever be.”
“Renton Williams. Thirty one. Previous for drugs and theft offences. None for violence. Released from prison four years ago after serving eighteen months for a series of shoplifting offenses while out on bail. His current license is set to end in two months. Perfect parole. Apparently, he completed a City and Guilds educational program in prison. Then he completed a college course in business management on the outside. Now he works as a manager at a Pizza Express.”
“Where’s he living?”
“In London. Lewisham.”
“You got his address?”
“Yeah. His parole officer had it.”
“Send it to me.”
“I will. However, I’d also like to know who this guy is to you.”
“He’s the father of my grandson.”
“So what—he’s shown up?”
“Something like that. Look, George, I’ve got to go. Text over that address soon as you can, okay?”
“Sure. See you—”
Jack put the phone down. He was approaching his turn and his finger hovered over the indicator. As he came to it, he retracted the finger and decided to stay on the M25. He would instead be making his way into the south of London.
Renton Williams’ place was an upstairs flat in a four-story tenement. It was in a block of brick terraces built after the Second World War when the Luftwaffe bombed the original block. It was almost a brick for brick replica of the Victorian one that existed there before. The street outside was busy with traffic and the front of the place was covered in soot. As Jack stood at the base of a set of stone steps, he wondered how Tyler would be in a place like this. It didn’t have a garden, or at least only shared one with its downstairs neighbor. His grandson loved the garden. Loved helping Jack and Jean tend to the flowers and the vegetables. The back wall held the huge sunflower that he’d grown for his school. He loved kicking his ball around. Practicing in the open air.
With thoughts of the boy being trapped upstairs in a flat all day, Jack ascended the steps and buzzed the top flat.
“Hello?” came a female’s voice over the intercom.
Jack introduced himself.
“I’ll have to let Renton know,” she said in a worried tone.
“You do that, love.”
He heard a muffled conversation in the background, then a man came on. His voice was deep and almost menacing.
“What’s up, Jack?” he said.
“I thought before we get the lawyers and the social workers involved, we could have a chat.”
“You mean man to man?”
“You don’t have to think of it in such heavy terms. Call it a chat about your son and my grandson.”
“Alright. I’ll put the kettle on.”
He didn’t put the kettle on. That job was achieved by his heavily pregnant girlfriend, who stood in the small, en suite kitchen preparing the tea while Jack sat opposite Renton in the adjoining lounge. The girlfriend was pretty and reminded Jack of Carrie. She was wearing a full-length gray dress, was a little skinny if Jack was honest, and had a pretty smile when she brought his tea over. She resembled his daughter in so much. Wavy hair and freckles across coffee-cream skin. Pretty.
Jack had to ask her name. Renton hadn’t bothered to introduce them. It was Bonny. “Nice name,” Jack remarked, making her smile again. Renton sat opposite with a stern look on his large face. He was a big man. Over six feet and hulking out of his black T-shirt. He worked out. His size made Jack even more hateful of him. Hateful that at this size, he couldn’t think of anyone bigger to pick on than Jack’s waif daughter. Thick dreadlocks poured out of his head, tied into a bunch at the back. His face showed a controlled anger and his eyes appeared slightly dead. He didn’t trust Jack and the latter knew it. He might be clean, the detective thought, but he still has an aversion to the law.
Bonny took a seat on the arm of Renton’s chair and snuggled into him. He didn’t warm to her touch. Rather, he sat completely rigid as though she were a pigeon and he a statue.
“So you got the letter?” Renton said.
“I did. But I want to ask you something.”
“Which is?”
“What makes you suddenly want to be a father after seven years of nothing?”
The question appeared to anger the statue and a twitch creaked through his facial muscles.
“It took me those seven years,” he began in a voice that swallowed the air, “to crawl up out of the dirt. First to get clean. Then to become a decent person. Not a criminal. Get qualifications. An education. After that, I found Bonny and got a good job. Found someone willin’ to give me a chance.”
“Yeah, I heard you were working at a Pizza Express.”
Another twitch. Pride, Jack thought. A criminal’s pride. It’s what keeps a lot of them out of menial work. That pride turning them away from nine till five hassles and toward quick bucks. No minimum wage hand to mouth with management still coming
down on you. Having to sell your soul to climb the greasy ladder. A lot of them find that they can lower themselves to sell drugs, rob houses, mug old ladies, but they can’t lower themselves to wait tables or stack shelves. Jack wondered if that pride was still there in Renton, even if he was the manager of the pizzeria he worked at. He wondered if it could jeopardize his clean life one day when someone offers him something illegitimate but quicker.
“It might not be much for some,” Renton replied, “but it gives me a decent wage as manager and it’s completely legit.”
“I wasn’t knocking it,” Jack said. “You’ve done well. It takes real heart to climb up out of the mire. But still, why come for Tyler now?”
“I told you,” Renton said in an annoyed tone. “I’ve sorted myself out. Now I wanna be a father to my son.”
“Be a family,” Jack added, nodding toward Bonny’s large belly that she cradled with her hands.
“Yeah. Be complete.”
“But I don’t get it. Four years ago, you got out of nick and in your estimation, you were clean and trying to sort yourself out. You achieved that by the looks of things. Well done. Nevertheless, while you were out and living in London, not once did you attempt to contact Tyler and not once did you offer his struggling mother support.”
“She never wanted it!” Renton burst out. He’d sat forward, his bulk moved to the edge. Bonny had a worried look on her face. She was rubbing his thick shoulder like a mother trying to soothe her baby.
“You never contacted her.”
“She’d never let me know where she was. I wrote to her both times I was in nick. Both times I got no reply. When I got out, no one would tell me where she was.”
“And why do you think that was?”
Renton pierced his eyes at Jack.
“You got to that pretty quick,” the big man pointed out.
“You know about his temper?” Jack put to Bonny, turning a sympathetic look to her suddenly.
She went scarlet and couldn’t hold the look of his eyes. She turned away a gave a dry laugh. Renton turned to her with a look that said, ‘Back me up.’
“Look,” she said, turning back to Jack, “I know that Renton used to be a bit rough.”
“A bit rough! He broke my daughter’s jaw.”
The scarlet mist in her cheeks exploded.
“He’s better now,” she insisted.
It looked to Jack like she was trying to convince herself. He sensed that this was a performance. Possibly one she’d had to give before.
“We all have the power to change,” the detective said, picking his tea up and leaning back. “I suppose you’re no different.”
“I grew up,” Renton began solemnly, Bonny still rubbing his arm, “knowing nothin’ but violence. We misbehaved, my stepdad would hit us. Sometimes with a belt and sometimes with his fists. I grew up surrounded by violence. I was taught that if you had a problem—whether it was with a woman or a man—you dealt with it with violence.”
“And I suppose you’ve given up on that credo?”
“What?”
“You don’t live by that belief anymore.”
“No.”
Bonny smiled and kissed Renton’s cheek, took his large paw in her hand, lifted it to her lips with some effort and kissed that, too. Was this more performance? Jack asked himself. Or did the woman truly want to believe that he was changed? She looked like a woman who’d been made the same promises Renton was making to Jack now.
“So after seven years you want to be a dad,” Jack announced like a statement.
Renton merely nodded.
“And since you found out,” Jack went on, “that Carrie is not well and that she’s currently unfit to be his mother and the fact that your lawyers were quick to find that I don’t have any real custody rights, you thought you’d swoop in and grab up your boy. Pretty convenient.”
“He ain’t got a mother. I’m his father. I want my boy to be part of a family.”
Bonny’s fingers gripped the wide ones of Renton even tighter.
“You’ve never once fought for that boy,” Jack put to him. “Not once have you paid a single penny to his mother. If she didn’t want to see you all those years, you could have at least sent her money. She was desperate. Trying to raise a son on her own.”
“She was a junkie.”
“She was struggling and you let that happen.”
“I heard she dumped the kid on you. Went off sellin’ her body for gear. I heard she nearly killed herself. An’ now she’s in some madhouse.”
“She’ll get out,” Jack snapped, though he wasn’t sure if it was to reassure Renton or himself.
“But what if she don’t? Tyler needs a family.”
“He’s got one.”
“What? You? You’re at least sixty, ain’t ya?”
“Fifty-eight.”
“Pah! Basically the same. You’re an old man. You can’t be raisin’ kids, an’ I’m not bein’ funny, you didn’t do the best job with Carrie. She told me all about you cheatin’ on her mum all the time. How her mum was really depressed from it. Tried to top herself and now she’s some vegetable in a home.”
Jack’s eyes were bulging from their sockets. A part of him wanted to burst up out of the chair, but he held himself. He’d come to unsettle Renton, not allow the other man to do it to him.
“I regret some of my decisions in the past,” he said. “I live with the consequences of those actions every day. However, what I never did was lay a finger on either her or my wife. I never allowed anger to pervade in my house. Apathy. Sadness. Betrayal. Yes. But I never made them fear me. When I mention your name to my daughter, I see fear in her eyes.”
He gazed across at Renton. The big man remained the statue, while Bonny still had that worried look.
“Bonny will tell you,” Renton said as calmly as he could. “I’m a changed man.”
“He is. He is,” she said enthusiastically, nodding her head and gripping his hand even tighter.
“You want your family,” Jack said next, “and I want mine. I tell you what I’m willing to do. I’m willing to let you visit Tyler. Come over for dinner. Do this slowly. After all, Ty hardly even knows you.”
“That ain’t my fault,” Renton seethed.
“So you said. But wouldn’t it be better to do this slowly?”
“I want my son.” Renton glared at Jack with a face of bitter determination.
“We could start by introducing you to him and then work towards you having him at the weekend. Then we can let Ty decide. Let him choose who he wants to live with.”
“You don’t have any rights to him. My lawyer told me. An’ with Carrie in a straitjacket, I’m his most responsible parent. I want my boy back.”
“You want him back!?” Jack scoffed. “You sound like a man who lost him in the first place. But we both know you gave him up. Never fought for him. Now it looks like it’s easy, you want him back. But why? I still feel like you haven’t answered the question.”
“I want him back.”
It was nothing more than his pride, Jack thought. He couldn’t be bothered about Tyler when it was difficult to get to him. When he had to gain Carrie’s trust. When it would cost him money in maintenance. And he didn’t want to do it the gradual way now. Gain the trust of the boy and then let him decide. He only wanted it because it was easy now. Because he could have what he saw as belonging to him. Had he even thought long about what it took to raise a son?
“You know,” the detective began in a fatigued tone, “Ty is settled with me. He’s at a school in east London. Plays for an east London footy team. He’s doing well, Renton. Settled. Can’t we do this gradually and make it as easy on him as we can?”
“I said no,” the other man boomed across the two meter gap between them. “He’s my son. You don’t have custody. You’re only taking care of him till his mum’s out of the nuthouse. Which don’t look like being any time soon.”
“But Tyler hardly knows you. He was only
two when you left. Wouldn’t it be better for him if he was gradually introduced to you?”
“No. I’m not budgin’. He’s my son. I want him back. I’ve spoken to my solicitor and the social workers. They assessed me and I’ve been classed fit. I’ve got a secure job. A place to live. I’m clean. Off parole in a couple of months. I have every right to get my son back.”
Jack stood up. He’d had enough.
“Then in that case,” he said, “I wish you all the luck in the world.”
“What you sayin’?”
Renton shot up from his chair, Bonny being swatted to the side and nearly falling off the armrest she sat on.
“I’m saying that I’ll fight you every step of the way,” Jack said as both men glared at each other, almost toe to toe, Jack only coming as far as the other man’s wide neck.
“Then you’ll lose,” the big man snorted down at him.
“Not if I can help it.”
Renton made a movement, but small hands had hold of his. He turned sharply on Bonny. Her eyes were wide. A supplicating look on her face.
Jack was already gone. He was furious, his fists curled up tight by his sides, but he didn’t want to fight the man. Not just because he was as big as a bus, but because it would be what the other man wanted.
“Renton, no!” a woman’s voice cried out behind him as Jack made it down the stairs. He turned to see Renton bawling out of the door with wide, glaring eyes.
“I ain’t gonna hit him,” he called back.
Jack stopped midway on the steps.
“You fuckin’ listen here,” Renton bellowed into Jack, grabbing the other man by his collar and hauling him up to him. “He’s my boy and I’m gonna take him. What right do you have to tell me I can’t?”
“I’m all that boy really has in the world,” Jack seethed back to him, his arm recoiling back, the fist curled.
“If that’s the truth, then I really do pity the poor little bastard. If all he’s got is some fuckin’ pig what cheated on his grandma and made her top herself. You ever take him to see his vegetable grandma? Tell him why she’s like that?”
The narrow stairway went red. Jack felt every blood cell in his body rise to the surface. His eyes must have gone bloodshot. Before he knew what was happening, he’d smashed his fist into Renton’s stomach. The latter recoiled backwards and took the punch like a man half his size. Jack still didn’t know what was happening as he lay into him. A scream echoed and he looked up to see Bonny watching him pummel Renton on the stairs.
