by Fin C Gray
‘Robert!’ he shouts. ‘Robert, come through here now!’ Robert appears in the doorway. ‘What’s the panic?’
‘Look at this face. Look at this face and tell me you don’t know who that guy is. Go on.’
Robert peers at the screen. He pulls off his glasses and rubs the lenses with his hanky before putting them back on and looking closer.
‘Well,’ he begins, ‘if the body was a lot skinnier… but then the face is pretty thin, isn’t it? It’s a bit grainy too, but if you held a gun to my head, I’d say that young man is… but mind you, we ain’t seen him for a good, long while, have we? Do you think it’s really him?’
‘I do,’ says Vince, tapping at the face on the screen. ‘That’s Daniel McIntyre, or I’m a liar!’
Vince looks at his watch. It is 6.10 p.m. ‘Has anyone seen Mr McIntyre today? He typically comes down around lunchtime, doesn’t he?’
‘Come to think of it, I haven’t,’ says Robert. He sticks his head through the back-office door and shouts, ‘Benny, you seen Mr McIntyre from Flat 67 today?’
Benny scratches his head. ‘No, boss. Not today. Last I saw of him was late last night, and he was a bit worse for wear, you know?’
‘Ain’t he always?” chips in Robert.
‘I think one of us needs to knock on his door,’ says Vince.
‘Better if we ring upstairs and ask if he is OK,’ says Robert. ‘After all, he doesn’t like being called on if he’s a bit the worse for wear. You know what he can be like. That seems the best option to me. Then if we get no reply, we can let ourselves in and check what’s what, without fear of having him come down on us like a ton of bricks.’
Benny’s phone chimes on the desk. He stares at the screen, looking shocked.
‘Fuck, have you heard what’s happened in Oxford Circus? Some kind of terrorist attack. It’s like 7/7 all over again – looks like loads more people are dead, though!’
‘What?’ Vince looks at Robert, incredulous. ‘You think it was…?’ The desk phone starts to ring.
‘Good evening, Buckingham Court, Vincent speaking. How may I help?’ His voice is shaky.
‘Vince? Vince. Flat 67 here—’
Vince holds the receiver to his chest and whispers, ‘Fuck me, Robert. You couldn’t make this up. Sounds like someone’s in a bit of a state!’
Chapter Thirteen
Then
Daniel lay on his bed, trying to blot out what he’d seen. He knew he hated Tom. It had started before Mum died. The reason had never been clear; it was just a growing, nasty feeling, like the cancer that had been growing inside her. The reason was never clear. Until now. The crack he’d taken earlier wasn’t making things any better, so now he sucked on the pipe and watched the liquid bubble below the grey vapour. The smoke from the weed bong gripped his throat, and he felt the calm of its effects permeate through him accompanied by a sharp tingle from the crack cocaine in the base of his cranium. Still, what he’d seen banged against the windscreen of his mind. Bang. Bang. Bang. Was this why he was the way he was? Is this what had given him his nature? Or, was it that bastard – that fucking lorry driver – all those years ago?
That dust came into his brain again and again, and he knew he’d never been able to shake it off, not even now. He’d tried to shake it from his clothes, from his hair, from his brain. It had been a grey cloud, something that hung over him, a film that was impossible to scrub off. Not until now, anyway. Bastards. Bastards. Bastards ruled the world, and now the biggest bastard was his father. He wasn’t going to rule his world any longer.
Tom had always been a bastard, really. He’d lied about Mum and her illness. He’d kept all that from him, when he could have been preparing him, getting him ready, allowing him to spend more time with her. Worse than that, he’d kept things from Mum, more than kept things – he’d lied to her, treated her like dirt, taken her for a fool. Liar. He’d treated him – his own son – like some fucking stranger. Well, who really knew what a stranger Tom had been? Had Mum known? Was he a stranger to her? Too right he was! Tom was a strange apology for a man. Hateful bastard.
The liquid bubbled harder as he sucked in the smoke. His mind became ever clearer. The guy in the lorry – he couldn’t have made him this way. No. It ran deeper than that. What a cunt. What a cunt. Cunt. Cunt. Cunt. Who, though? That stinking-arsed fucker in the lorry? Or the liar, the cheat, the demi-man who’d made him? It had to be Tom. The guy in the lorry was an unlucky aberration. His mistake. His bad. Tom was his blood, his flesh. Tom had made him this way. Worse than anything that cunt in the lorry had done. Bastard.
Where was the fucker anyway? Drunken cunt. Drunken cunt. Hateful bastard. Liar. Liar. Poor Mum. Poor cow. Poor fucking cow. Did she know? She couldn’t. Couldn’t possibly. She’d have thrown him out if she’d known, wouldn’t she? No way would Mum have stood for that. She had been fooled by him just the same way as he had been. But what had he done to deserve this? This nature. This horrible, hateful nature he’d been given, which he lived with every fucking day. He hadn’t asked for it. All he had ever wanted was to be normal. Who wanted to be a queer, poof, faggot? All came to the same thing though, didn’t it, Tom? Well, didn’t it? What made you that way, cunt? Cunt. Cunt! I didn’t ask to be like that, did I? Did your dad do it you?
Was it you that killed Mum? Did she find out? Was that the last straw for her? The revelation that took away all the fight from her? Daniel had watched her give up, all from nowhere, no visible reason; he watched her throw in the cards and accept what was happening to her. She’d promised him time and again that she wasn’t going to die. But then the light had gone out in her, and all of her strength and resolve was gone. All of a sudden. No warning. She’d found out, hadn’t she? It was then that she couldn’t face going on. There was nothing to fight for any more.
Not me? Not even Jenny?
But the bastard in the lorry park kept coming back, even morphed into Tom sometimes. Had Tom known that bastard? Cunt. Cunt. In any case, he wasn’t like that because of the lorry driver. Tom had done it to him. Or maybe the lorry driver. Either way, it wasn’t his fault. Tonight had changed everything. Everything. The answers hadn’t been clear. Not until now. Until now. It was you all along, Tom, wasn’t it? Bastard. Cunt.
Daniel couldn’t taste the weed any longer; all that was coming through the pipe now was air. He squinted at the bowl and pulled it from his bong. It was full of ash, which he threw into a saucer that was already brimming with ashes, causing it to spill over onto the bed. There was enough water in the glass by his bed to top up the reservoir, and he’d still got plenty of the stuff he’d bought in the pub last night. His grinder had disappeared. Fuck it. Why does the damn thing always go missing just when you fucking need it? He raked his hands over the bedclothes, patted the pillows and checked around the floor. Then – head-slap moment – he patted the pockets in his shorts. Of course, he’d put it where he’d remember it. In his fucking pocket.
He ground the weed thoroughly and stuffed the contents into the bowl, throwing in a bit more acid for good measure, rechecked the reservoir that he’d filled moments before and spun the wheel on his lighter. When he got a flame to show, he lit the contents of the bowl and watched the chamber fill with smoke, feeling his anger dissipate with each swirl in the glass. Maybe this hit would help him forget the bastard for a while.
But his first deep inhalation brought the anger back. A chest full of vapour spread into his brain and agitated the synapses. Filthy images and messages permeated his thoughts again, and the blame spread through them like acid leaking from a battery. Corrosive, damaging, filling his thoughts with hatred again, making him twitch and spit out bleak words into the air. He threw his grinder at the wall and then his water glass. Fuck you, Tom! Fuck you. His phone glowed and buzzed beside him on the bed: DAD CALLING. Before the buzzing stopped, that too crashed against his bedroom wall.
A long inhalation, followed by another and another, had him standing upright. He lurched towards his
chest of drawers and pulled the top drawer open. A pile of papers lay on top of the neatly stacked underwear and socks. Daniel grimaced as he thought of the cleaning lady placing things there, where his mother would have placed things in past times, but not as neatly. He snatched up the papers and looked at them closely – MORTGAGE AGREEMENT – Tom’s name plastered all over the documentation as depositor, guarantor, co-signatory, etc. There was no escape from this fucker. He wanted to rip them all up and throw them out of his window. But he didn’t. Fucker had him over a barrel, like always. Fucking control freak.
More long sucks on the bong. What day was it? It was any day. Every day was like this now. Even the days he stacked the shelves at Tesco. How else would he get through those days? The idiots, the losers, the bastards that he worked with and served. What were days anyway? The only day that mattered was the day he would walk out of this fucking place with his bags, without ever looking back. Fuck this place, fuck Tom, fuck the world! More inhalations, more pauses, more anger, more pauses, more pauses. Then stop. Head on the pillow. A semblance of sleep. Sleep? Something that wasn’t being awake, not thinking. A thin trickle of thoughts sneaking through his head.
Then the door. Bang! Angry Tom was home. Drunk Tom. Nasty Tom. Well, let’s show him some nastiness too. Yes, let’s. Daniel looked out of his bedroom window. Tom’s car was half on the lawn, almost at right angles to his own car. The fucker had been driving drunk again. Maybe next time he’ll kill himself. As long as he doesn’t kill or injure any innocent fucker in his wake. He opened his door and listened. A familiar clink of bottle against glass, then, on cue, ‘Hallelujah’ blaring through the speakers. If he never heard that fucking song again, it’d be a lifetime too soon. He stamped hard on the landing floor, knowing it was right above where Tom would be sitting. Nothing. ‘Hallefuckinglujah’ drowning out his pain as usual.
Daniel stamped downstairs, sure that nothing would stir his father, and went into Tom’s study. He glared at the computer on the desk, which was displaying a screensaver of Tom’s favourite album covers. A swipe of the mouse got rid of them, then a few taps into the password box got him in again. He was going to stuff those images into the bastard’s mouth, one by one. He’d print them off. He’d turn them into a screensaver, one that would burn its meaning onto Tom’s retinas forever. He’d let him know that he knew and that he blamed him for it. Tom would never forget this night. The night he lost his son forever. Jenny would know too. An email from Tom’s account would do that trick. Then he’d have nobody. Nobody but the cheap shags he seemed to crave. His meaningless assignations. There would be no need to say he was working late when he wasn’t. The world would be his putrid fucking oyster. Free of Mum, free of him, free of Jenny. He could do what he liked and live with the loss. Tom’s dirty, drunken, cock-sucking mouth could chew on the filthy images and messages. He would make him choke on them. Make him eat his own shit.
The computer seemed to glare back at him. It challenged him to do his worst. He hovered the mouse cursor over the Finder icon and clicked DOCUMENTS> WORK> SPECIALISED> PROSPECTS> VERIFIED SPECS> REPEAT INGRESS> DOUBLE-CHECKED> PRIVATE> IMAGES> then there was a whole list of image files. Bingo! Thought you had it buried nice and deep, Tom, didn’t you? This is exactly where he’d found it before. Didn’t know what he’d been looking for then, but he knew he’d find something. And he did. Daniel clicked on the first image.
What appeared on the preview screen was not what he had seen last night. It was a photograph of Mum, smiling, leaning against a tree. She must have been nineteen or twenty in that picture; it was grainy, scanned from somewhere, sepia- tinted, almost. What was that doing there? It hadn’t been there yesterday. He clicked on the next image: Jenny one side, Mum in the middle, him on the other, all smiling. The next, Tom and Mum. Next, the cats. Every image he clicked on revealed another idyllic family scene – all smiles, happiness, deep family joy in every possible circumstance. Had he dreamed it? Was the sordid pornography all imagined? He drilled down into other folders, searched the whole hard disk for images, but every single one he opened was either family snaps or professional photos of properties and building sites. What the fuck?
What about his internet history? That’s where it had all started, the suspicion, the realisation, the proof he’d wanted so badly. He hadn’t imagined that. He clicked the Google icon and then PREFERENCES, followed by HISTORY. A long list appeared: FACEBOOK, TWITTER, property site after property site, ANCESTRY.COM, YOUTUBE, VEVO, SPOTIFY, IPLAYER, BOOKING.COM. Innocent web searches abounded. No dogging sites, no gay sites, no porn searches, nothing. What the fuck was going on? He couldn’t have changed all this since he looked. Tom had been at work all day, or fuck knows where, drinking, shagging, who knew? One thing Daniel knew: Tom was as computer unsavvy as a fucking retard. Another thing he knew: he hadn’t imagined what he’d seen.
Time Machine backups! They would be there, wouldn’t they? Tom wasn’t going to get one over on him, that was for sure. He clicked on ENTER TIME MACHINE from the menu. Everything on the screen withdrew to what looked like a sole, single Finder window. The scroll bar to the right showed TODAY and NOW in red. Where the fuck was yesterday, the day before, the week before, the month before, the fucking lifetime before? This couldn’t be possible. What the fucking fuck? He had imagined it. Had he dreamed it? Did he need to lay off the weed? What the fucking fuck? He stood up, looked around the room. Was this a dream, maybe? The walls felt solid. The chair was real. His toes could feel thick carpet beneath them.
Daniel left Tom’s study and stood for a few moments in the hall. ‘Hallelujah’ still blared from the living room. Did he want to go in there and have it out face to face with Tom? His guitar lay abandoned at the foot of the stairs. Had he brought it down with him? Was that his weapon of choice with his pathetic father again? He picked it up and pushed the living room door open. The music hit him like a wall.
Tom lay on the sofa, legs splayed in front of him, candles burning on the coffee table. He was hugging the wooden cat, the one he’d given Mum that final Christmas. A silver-framed photograph of Mum, Daniel and Jenny lay on his lap. His face looked wet with tears, but his eyes were shut, and he was snoring gently. Daniel turned the music off. The sudden silence had no effect on Tom. He lay peacefully, clutching the cat, soft light from the candles fondling his face in the otherwise dark room. Daniel felt his eyes welling. This wasn’t right. He sat next to Tom and poked his chest, but got no response. Fucking drunk.
The deep, woody musk of Tom’s aftershave reached him and reminded him of his childhood, of innocent days, of being whirled into the air with that smell in his nostrils, of laughing and begging for more. The scent dissipated his anger and he moved closer to his father. Before he could stop himself, he pushed the wooden cat from Tom’s grasp and lifted his father’s arm. Tom wriggled a little and called out Daniel’s name in his sleep. Daniel took Tom’s arm and draped it over his shoulders. He burrowed his face into Tom’s chest and inhaled, trying to capture more lost innocence. He stayed there for half an hour or more, trying desperately to find lost love, almost begging to find it there. Nothing came. When he couldn’t stop the sobs rising within him, he stood up, picked up his guitar and left Tom on the sofa, closing the door behind him.
Suddenly thirsty, he went to the kitchen and scowled when he saw the new computer box lying in the conservatory with Tom’s old computer beside it. At least he wasn’t going out of his mind. He’d teach that fucker a lesson, but maybe not now, not tonight. He’d wait until the deal was signed and there was no going back. You’ll get yours, Tom.
Chapter Fourteen
Then
Tom heard a loud crunch. ‘Fuck.’
He yanked the handbrake and pulled himself out of his seat, placing one hand on the open door to steady himself. A slight hiss fizzled from the front of the car, and he swayed a little as he went to investigate. The front grille of his Mercedes had a deep dent and was wedged against the large granite urn that contained the new cherr
y tree.
‘At least your tree’s OK, darling,’ he muttered.
He looked up and saw Daniel’s face staring back at him from his bedroom window. The rest of the house appeared to be in darkness. Tom waved to his son, smiling, but Daniel pulled his curtains closed.
‘Charming!’
Tom walked unsteadily towards the front door, the car engine still running. He’d left the driver’s door wide open, with the full beam of the xenon headlights washing the house in a ghostly blue light. He aimed his keys at the front door, but it gave way on him and he fell face down on the hallway carpet. Who left the fucking door ajar? The new carpet smell filled his nostrils, and the plush pile against his face made him glad the fitters had finished laying it. At least there’d be no bruises.
‘The world’s out to get me tonight,’ he said through gritted teeth, reaching for the spindles of the banister. Rufus scampered towards him and rubbed himself against Tom, purring. Falling back to his knees, he ruffled the fur on the cat’s neck and smiled.
‘Hello, buddy. Where’s Jasper?’
The cat scuttled to the kitchen, reacting to the sudden sound of strumming and banging from upstairs. A pungent stench of marijuana wafted through the house. Pulling himself up, he mumbled, ‘Open a fucking window, will you?’
Almost in response, the strumming grew louder, and he could hear Daniel chanting something unintelligible above the tuneless strings. Tom felt his way into the kitchen, where he unscrewed the top from a bottle of wine and poured himself a large glass. He ambled to the living room, splashing drops of wine on his shirt as he went, and switched on the lights.
‘Evening, Dad.’
Tom dropped his glass, spilling red wine over the new carpet. ‘Hell, Jenny! What are you doing sitting there in the dark?’
