by Vince Vogel
“For what do I owe the pleasure, Jack?” Col Baker said, sitting down on a chair and leaning his elbows on the table.
The guard took his position by the door and Jack took his own in the chair opposite Col.
“I hear you’ve named him,” the latter said with a hearty grin.
“Yeah. Brian Parkes. But I think there’s more.”
“Oh!” Col exclaimed gently. “And you’ve come to me about it.”
“I think you’re the only one I know that might be able to answer this for me. You remember Pauline Chalmers?”
“Can’t say the name does anything,” Col replied sharply.
A look of stone overtook his features and he relaxed back into his plastic chair, bringing his arms across his chest.
“She was Robert Kline’s girlfriend,” Jack went on. “He used her for several alibis and we spoke to her. You got in her head and made her confess that it was all bollocks. Then you said she told you other things. Things that Kline had done. You said you were going to speak to her again.”
“Robert Kline’s girlfriend?”
“Yeah.”
“Dirty fucking alcoholic who used to let her boyfriends mess with her daughter?”
“You could say that.”
“I remember her crying her heart out to me. Holding my hand like I was her savior. All that woman wanted was someone to love her and no one ever did. I showed her some compassion, some sympathy, and she melted like ice in the sun. Told me everything I wanted.”
“What like?”
“That Kline hadn’t been with her those nights. That he told her about the murders during their filthy sex games. Used to brag that he could snap her neck in a second. That woman was so desperate for love, she’d have let him too.”
“But you said there was other stuff. I remember your face. It looked like she’d said something that had really got to you.”
“She did. All that stuff about what he did to those poor, old women upset me. He was a monster.”
“But there was nothing else?”
“Like what?”
Col looked across at Jack as though he knew the secret to eternal life and Jack were a minute from death. The latter shuffled uncomfortably in his chair, a restlessness to him like ants marching over his back.
“It doesn’t matter,” Jack finally said. He breathed out and turned to face the window. The sun was almost gone, the tall, razor-wire fence drenched in twilight, the silhouettes of birds sitting on top of it.
“Don’t sound like it doesn’t matter,” Col said. “What did you find out?”
“Nothing. That’s the point.” Jack turned back to his old friend. “I found nothing but a paranoid thought—an outrageous thought that had nothing to do with reality. I’m not even gonna bother you with it.”
“You should stay away from strange thoughts. That’s how I ended up in here.”
Jack grinned a half chuckle and both men were afforded a little comfort.
“You still get your hunches?” Col asked.
“I guess,” Jack replied, blowing out the last of the smoke and stubbing the cigarette out on the table. “Maybe that’s what this was. One of the bad hunches.”
“You mean like when we raided that butcher in Newing Cross because you thought the owner was keeping a missing schoolgirl in his backroom? Turned out she was skiving with some boyfriend.”
“Huh!” Jack smiled. “I’d forgotten.”
“Poor bloke. We pulled him out during the lunchtime rush. Handcuffed and covered in blood in front of all his customers. They reckon he went out of business a year after that.”
“Really?”
“Nah!” He was chuckling to himself.
“Don’t make me feel guilty.”
“You always did get guilty, Jack. A guilty cop. Even when you weren’t doing wrong.”
“Must be a Catholic thing.”
“You feel guilty for the sins of the world.”
“And for my own.” Jack looked solemnly across the table when he said this. Col caught the look and his own face went deadly serious. “I am sorry, Col,” Jack added with every ounce of sincerity he had.
Col’s face suffused momentarily with anger, but he held it.
“Not the past, Jack,” he said in an echo.
“But it has to be spoken, Col. What I did to you.”
“In the past.” He looked sharply away, as though he would be blinded if he gazed at Jack for a second longer. There had been something broken in his voice when he’d said it. Something that told Jack it most certainly wasn’t ‘in the past’.
“Col,” Jack said, reaching across and touching his hand.
It leapt up from the table as though touched by a blazing coal. He turned his eyes back on Jack.
“You don’t know what sorry is,” he croaked. “What you and her did to me; it broke me. Busted me right open. Caused a tear in my head and let the darkness seep in and the light out. I’d never in my life had thoughts like those.” There were tears in his eyes.
Jack was responsible for it all. He knew that. For four years, he’d slept with this man’s wife behind his back. He’d destroyed his own home and that of his best friend. His partner. It seemed to Jack that during his whole life he’d hurt those closest to him. He’d hurt Jimmy—his childhood friend—by abandoning him to a life of hopeless crime. He’d cheated on Marsha and sent his daughter into drug addiction. He’d destroyed his best friend. Now he realized that he was continuing the cycle. Because while he sat here for his own selfish reasons, Tyler was at his house crying his heart out. Being told things that his nine-year-old mind would find so very hard to understand. Jack should be there with him. But instead he was here.
“I got to go,” he said in the withered remains of a voice.
He got up from the chair and almost collapsed back down in it. Col watched him go with tear-filled eyes. He said something, but Jack didn’t really hear it, everything reduced to an echo. The guard led him through the building and he wasn’t aware of anything until he got back in his car and was staring over the steering wheel at a tall fence topped with razor wire. The twilight caused everything to be stretched out by shadow, the outlines of the buildings reaching across every surface, the shadows waiting until the sun was gone all the way and they could finally merge with darkness.
Jack felt himself merging with that darkness as well; a shadow being swallowed up by it.
99
He had to park on the road because the social worker’s car was blocking the drive. The second Jack was through the front door, Tyler came bounding across the hallway from the lounge. But not with his usual excited face at the sight of his returning grandfather. No. This time his face was filled with distress, running at Jack with tears in his eyes, throwing himself at him and the latter holding Tyler tight.
“They’re lyin’,” the boy sobbed into him. “Tell them they are.”
Jack looked up helplessly from Tyler as Jean and the shrunken figure of Liz Jenkins came into the hallway. Jean was chewing her nails, which was very rare for her, a habit she'd had as a school girl and taken care to expel in later years. It had since come back to her at times of deepest turmoil. Like her divorce. Now, it was telling a nine-year-old that he would have to leave his home and go live with strangers.
Liz Jenkins also looked flustered and Jack gathered that Tyler had been as unwilling about the prospect of living with his father as Jack was about it himself.
“Is he really gonna take me?” the boy asked, looking up with teary eyes.
“I… eh… I’m sorry, mate, but he’s your dad.”
Tyler held onto the faint hope that the old man was joking. That this was no more than one of his many ruses. Sure, this one was a little over elaborate—a nice touch with the social worker—but there was a small hope that it was still a joke. Especially when the other possibility—that it was true—was so terrible.
Tyler broke down when he realized from his granddad’s sad expression that there would be
no imminent punchline.
“You’ll meet him first, Ty,” Jack said softly. “Things will be done slowly. And me and Jean will always be here.”
Always be here. The words curdled in the boy’s head. He wanted to be ‘here’. Not have it somewhere he had to go to; but somewhere he was.
“He used to hurt Mum,” the boy wept pitifully. “I don’t want nothin’ to do with him. He hasn’t wanted nothin’ to do with me. Why’d he have to come now an’ ruin everythin’?”
Jack wished he had an answer worthy of the boy’s tears. He suspected the reason Renton Williams suddenly wanted his son was nothing more than a mixture of pride and it being easy now that Carrie was out of the picture. Or maybe it was the girlfriend, Bonny, wanting him to be a real dad not only to her own child, but the one he has already. Perhaps she dreamed that fatherhood would mellow her boyfriend.
“Your dad’s better now,” Jack said to Tyler, though he wasn’t sure.
“He’s not my dad. You’ve been more of a dad than him.”
“But he wants you to live with him and be a family. Isn’t that something, Ty? That he wants you.”
“I don’t wanna live with him.”
Tyler stormed off up the stairs to his room. Liz Jenkins had a sorry look on her face. Jack turned to her with piqued anger.
“You explain what you needed to him?” he snapped.
“We managed to get the message across,” the social worker replied.
“You get all the answers to your questions?”
“Yes. It appears that you’ve made a nice home for—”
“Then get out,” he interrupted.
He didn’t care that it was the second night in a row in which he was kicking the woman out of his home. He really didn’t care. She took it well. Tucked her little red chin in, lowered her eyes, and left, her coat already under one arm.
When the door was closed, Jack went across the hallway to Jean and took her in his arms. They held each other for a while, no kisses, just a fused exhalation of the soul, the warmth of their bodies merging.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t here,” he whispered to her.
“I shouldn’t have gone off like that on the phone,” she whispered into his ear. “I’m just stressed. I don’t want to lose him. Do you think Renton will let us see him?”
“He’ll have to. I’ll make sure of it. I’ll always be keeping my eye on Renton Williams, no matter where he goes.”
“Do you really think he’ll be alright?”
“I’ll never let anything happen to that kid. You hear me?”
He lifted her head from his chest and gazed into the deep pools of her eyes. She smiled and tears fell from both. She nodded—a silent message from him to her—and he kissed her lips.
Upstairs, Jack found Tyler sitting on the end of his bed with a pair of headphones on and a controller in his hands. He was playing Minecraft and listening to the hip-hop music that Jack was never sure about when buying him it, but which Tyler assured him wasn’t as bad as everyone made out. It just sounded like anger to Jack.
He tapped the boy on the shoulder and Tyler automatically budged over, taking his headphones off.
“You know,” Jack said softly, Tyler watching the screen, “if there was anything I could do to stop this—to make it your decision and only yours—I would. But the law says that he has a right to your custody.”
“But what about you?”
“I’ve got nothing. Temporary custody while your mum’s away.”
“But she could sign me over or somethin’.”
“It’s not quite that easy. Because of the circumstances surrounding your mum being away, it makes it hard.”
Tyler turned to him with a frown.
“You’re makin’ no sense. You sound like that social worker. Comin’ out with big words. But you sound like you don’t wanna.”
“Don’t want to what?”
“Don’t wanna fight for me. You’re just lettin’ me go. Renton—an’ that’s his name, ’cos I ain’t callin’ him Dad for nobody—he comes along and tells you to give me back and you all say yeah. What about what he did to Mum?”
“It was never reported, as far as they’re concerned, it never happened. But he promised me he’s a better man now. I met his girlfriend. She said he’s good.”
Jack was trying to convince himself. Tyler shook his head in vexation. His grandfather had never seen him this angry. That anger could so easily be warped, he thought. Like the boy they found today: Brian Parkes. His anger had been warped into something terrible. So, too, had Robert Kline. A good mother had saved David Burke; as a good mother had saved Jack. Tyler had lost a mother. Now he was being handed over to an angry father.
Jack shook it off.
“I’ll always be here for you,” he said to the boy. “We’ll still go to football together. You’ll still stay around here with me and Jean. This will always be your room. Always.”
Tyler appeared slightly subdued by these words.
“Do you think he’ll buy me new stuff?”
“I would’ve thought so, and if he doesn’t, then I’ll buy you stuff.”
“But it won’t be the same.” The boy turned from the television and looked at Jack with wet eyes. “What if he’s nasty, like Mum said?”
“I’ll make sure he’s not,” Jack said to him, giving the boy a serious look. “I swear on my life.”
“You should still fight for me.”
“I wish I could, Ty. But this is one I’m gonna lose.”
“You’ll still look out for me?”
“Always.”
Tyler threw himself forward and Jack wrapped him in his arms. They’d only known each other for a year, but already they couldn’t ever imagine their lives without one another. The boy was Jack’s salvation. A chance to straighten something that he’d made crooked inside himself a long time ago. But everything had become so distorted by the emergence of Renton Williams. How could he be sure the boy was alright if he wasn’t with him all the time? If Tyler was under the guard of a man Jack wasn’t sure he could trust with looking after a dog, let alone a boy?
All he could do was wait and see. Hope and pray that the man he was handing the most precious thing in his life over to knew just how precious Tyler really was. But not just that. He wanted to make sure that Renton Williams knew that if he so much as looked at the boy the wrong way, Jack would crush him under the heel of his cheap shoes.
100
“Wake up!”
The scratched, warped voice called to him like a siren. There at the end of the bed, the one-armed figure of Jimmy Rose. Then the sharp shoulder blades poking out of his back as they moved down the stairs, floating across the hallway and to the kitchen.
There were two sitting at the table this time. Lenny joined by Renton Williams. When they walked into the room, the two men were deep in some clandestine conversation, whispering into each other’s ear. They turned their serpents’ eyes on him and contemptuous grins curled the edges of their mouths.
Outside, Jack was sure he saw the withered face of Col Baker looking in through the window. But before he could be certain, he was sat at the table dead opposite Renton and Lenny, who looked as solid as statues and easily as hard and unchangeable in their distasteful looks. A revolver levitated in the middle of the table and pointed its barrel at Jack. Arms spilt out of the two men, combined at the elbow and became one hand holding the pistol on Jack.
He closed his eyes. Willing them to pull the trigger. But it didn’t happen. No click. No bang. He opened his eyes and immediately felt the cold metal in his own hand. A panic spread through him like a rampant fire through dry grass when he saw whose forehead rested on the end of the gun. It was Tyler.
The boy was being held there by Renton and Lenny. His eyes closed as though he were peacefully asleep in bed. Jack tried to move his arm, to toss the gun away, but it was fixed and wouldn’t budge. He tried to get away. Get up from the chair and run. But he was stuck to his arm as though it
was made of cement and fixed into position with bolts.
Jimmy was at his side, his lips pressed to Jack’s ear.
“No,” Jack said in desperation.
“Fire!” Jimmy hissed.
“No!”
He pulled the trigger.
Jack was standing in the middle of the kitchen, coated in a frost of sweat, his T-shirt clinging to his heavy chest as he breathed uncomfortably underneath. The moon shone through the window, lighting up his trembling figure.
With weak movements, he made it to the chair and sat down at the table, throwing his head into his hands and sobbing wildly.
DAY FIVE
101
The dream clung to Jack like a bad smell, his head caught in the headlights of innumerable twisting and colliding thoughts as he drove Tyler to his football club. Today was the day of his trip. The boy was also silent. Not even playing with his mobile phone and instead gazing at the passing streets, yawning every so often and then sighing long and hard.
They pulled into the entrance to the club. Parents and children stood around a dirt carpark out front of the wooden clubhouse. The roof of a minibus was being loaded with bags, the team’s coach tying it all down with straps. Jack switched off the engine and turned to Tyler, who gazed out the window at his friends with trepidation swelling his heart. Outside, they joked and messed about, chasing each other and kicking a ball about. It was such a contrast to inside that car and Jack sensed that they were a black cloud.
“Just try and have fun today, alright?” Jack said. “You’ll be with your mates. Try not to let all this stuff affect you. Let everyone else worry about it.”
Tyler turned away from the view of his mates.
“I had a dream last night,” he said.
“So did I. Tell me about yours.”
The boy cast his look to the outside again. Not to his friends but to the end of a long field. To the line of tall beech trees which swayed in the strong early morning wind.
“I was bein’ chased,” he eventually said, turning to Jack. “It was him: Renton. I couldn’t see his face, but I knew it was him. He was chasin’ me through some house and I was lookin’ for you but I couldn’t find you nowhere.”
