by Timlin, Mark
‘What a question,’ said Mark. ‘It’s been eight years.’
‘I know. I’ve been here all that time and watched the boss wishing you were too.’
‘Come on, Chas. I had to go.’
‘I know. But where?’
‘Didn’t Dev tell you?’
‘I heard you kept in touch. Little Irish git never let on.’
‘I told him not to. I’d’ve known.’
‘I know you would’ve,’ said Chas. ‘We’d’ve been out for a visit.’
‘I moved around.’
‘Where to?’
‘All over Europe.’
‘How come?’
‘I fell in with this bloke.’
‘What bloke?’
Mark knew he’d have to tell at least some of the story, so he lit up a cigarette, took an ashtray from the stack on one of the units and began. ‘When I left London I went down to the coast. Got on the ferry… You know, walk on, walk off, and went to France. I had my passport, but they hardly bothered with it. Then I caught a train to Paris. Hung out for a few days and got a job.’
‘What kind of job?’ asked Chas.
‘In a bar. Started out cleaning up, washing up. You know the sort of thing. Casual. Then one night one of the barman didn’t come in and I filled in for him.’
‘You speak French now?’
‘Un peu.’
‘Do what?’
‘A bit.’ Mark held up his forefinger and thumb a half inch apart. ‘It wasn’t hard. Most of the people spoke English, though they don’t let on until they get to know you. I made mistakes, but I learned. I was young and I think the bloke who owned the place fancied me.’ He saw the old fashioned look on Chas’s face. ‘But don’t worry, Chas, he didn’t do anything about it. He had hot and cold running geezers up in his flat. He didn’t need me.’
‘Where did you live?’
‘Got a room with one of the chefs. Mental. He was always out of his head on some designer drug or another. But when the tips started coming in I rented a room off of a customer who had a little house up in Montmartre. Fucking beautiful it was. High ceilings, roof terrace and just down the way from the bar. Life was good. Then I met someone.’
‘A bird?’
‘No. Another bloke. Old boy. Name of Cam. Mr Cam everyone called him. I never knew what his other name was, or if that was his first or last. He could’ve been sixty, could’ve been eighty. And he wasn’t gay. He wasn’t much of anything. Just a nice old bloke as far as I was concerned.’
‘So what happened?’
‘He used to come in the bar every night and sometimes lunchtime. Tiny bloke. Only about five foot tall. And… Well I never worked out what he was ‘til he told me. I knew he was from the far east, but I had no idea where. Then one night we was rabbiting. He spoke English better than you and me, and he let on. Vietnamese he was. From the south. Pissed off when the Americans left. He’d been up to something dodgy, I found out later. Buying black market stuff from the Yanks. Petrol, weapons, anything. Anyway, he’d been to a French school when they were trying to occupy the country before the Americans came, and was as good at French as he was at English, so he moved to Paris and set up in business.’
‘What kind of business?’
‘Monkey business. But at first he told me he was importing works of art. He looked the part too. White hair, smart suits, and spats would you believe. Anyway we got friendly. He loved the steak and chips in the bar and he was a good tipper. So one night I was locking up the place. Yeah, I got to be trusted enough to have the keys, and the old boy had been in, and when I came round into the alley at the back of the place to dump off some rubbish, there he was along with four other Asian blokes. But big blokes. And they’re jabbering away at each other and I can see it’s all about to go off. Now, I’ve been a good boy all the time I’ve been in Paris. Kept my nose clean. But I’m not going to have all this. I could’ve just pissed off but instead I get involved. The old boy tells me to leave it, but I don’t. You know me.’
Chas nodded.
‘And one of these other blokes gives me a shove and I shove back and away we go. Blimey, I’ve never seen anything like it. The old boy’s like bloody Jackie Chan. Bish, bosh, he’s off and we do for them.’ Mark laughed at the memory. ‘At least he does three and a half of them and I do half of one, and I’m on the floor covered in blood with my jacket all torn, and the old boy’s standing there and his suit ain’t even creased. So he picks me up and takes me round the corner to this little club I know nothing about, and he says, ‘No cops,’ and I say back that it would never occur to me to call them, and he gives me a funny little look but don’t say nothing. And this club’s full of Vietnamese too, and they start on at him because apparently they don’t want any round eyes there. That’s what they call us – round eyes. But he’s as good as gold. He starts on at them in Vietnamese and must explain what happens, because after a minute they’re all over me like a rash. Anyway the barman gives me a large brandy and then Mr Cam whizzes me upstairs to his flat.
‘It turns out he owns the whole gaff, see. And there’s this beautiful Vietnamese girl there. His granddaughter I find out later. Her name’s Lan. So she cleans me up and takes my jacket to mend where it’s torn. Anyway, to cut a long story short, when I’m patched up, he calls me a cab and sends me home. The next day I’m as stiff as a board and call in sick. It’s not a problem. But in the afternoon when I’m sitting in front of the telly trying to make head or tail of some old American film dubbed into French there’s a knock at the door and it’s him. He’s bought me a big bag of fruit and a bottle of some Vietnamese rice wine and we sit down for chat.
‘He tells me that the blokes who gave him a hard time are North Vietnamese gangsters trying to muscle in on his club which was why he wouldn’t call the cops. And he’s grateful for my intervention as he calls it. I tell him I’m sure he didn’t need it the way he could handle himself, but he’s still full of thanks and tells me if I need a doctor he’ll cough for the bill. I tell him I’m fine, I’ve had worse, and end up telling him the story of why I left England. Not all of it mind. And suddenly he asks if I’ve ever killed anyone. Well, you can imagine that sort of puts the kibosh on the conversation there and then. Except I own up. I tell him yes I have, and he tells me he guessed. Can always tell. Which, as it goes, tells me a bit about him too. And he offers me a job there and then. He likes my bravery and loyalty he says. I just tell him I didn’t like the odds, and he laughs. So he should’ve, as he could’ve sorted twice as many in my opinion without breaking a sweat. Import and export? I say and he laughs again. And that’s when it all started.’
‘Christ,’ said Chas. ‘Do you speak Vietnamese now and all?’
‘Di di mau,’ said Mark.
‘What’s that mean?’
‘Piss off.’ He laughed.
‘And did you take the job?’
Mark nodded. ‘Sure.’
‘What was it?’
‘He asked me to kill someone.’
Chas didn’t speak for a moment, and when he did he said, ‘And did you?’
Mark nodded. ‘Sure. I’d had the practice and the money and hours were better than working in the bar.’
Chas nodded, then looked up at the kitchen clock. ‘Blimey, is that the time? I’d better take the boss up his tea and see if he needs anything.’
‘Times certainly have changed here, Chas,’ said Mark as Chas boiled water and put tea in a pot.
‘How so?’
‘You used to be an enforcer. Now you’re chief cook and bottle washer.’
‘I do what needs to be done. But don’t get the wrong idea. I can still do the business when necessary. I ain’t gone soft because I’ve bought a cook book or two. No one should ever make that mistake. It could be fatal.’ And with that he left the kitchen, tea cup on a tray, leaving Mark to think about what he’d said.
John Jenner came down later in his dressing gown, grey stubble on his cheeks.
‘A goo
d night?’ asked Mark.
‘Not too bad. Only about half a dozen trips to the pisser. That’s good for me. What are you going to do today?’
‘I’m going to shoot back to my place and pick up my stuff.’
‘And then?’
‘I’m going to have a think about what you said.’
‘Good.’
‘What about you?’
‘I’m going to take the paper back to bed with me, do the crossword.’
‘Still crosswords eh, Uncle?’
‘It keeps my mind sharp. Will you call me later?’
‘Course I will.’
And they left it at that.
In fact John Jenner had had a particularly bad night. Seeing Mark Farrow again had brought back a lot of memories. Some pleasant, some not so. And talking about Hazel had brought back the worst. She’d always been the lively one out of the two of them. The heart and soul of a party that lasted a lot of years. But then she’d started to slow down all of a sudden; the heart had gone out of her soul. But she refused to see a doctor, though Jenner nagged her rotten. It was only when she collapsed one day whilst out shopping in Oxford Street that she was forced to: an ambulance took her to Queen Mary’s Hospital. When John Jenner arrived a couple of hours later, the cardiac consultant gave him the first of several bits of bad news. As far as they could tell at that early stage there was a problem with one of the valves in her heart and she needed immediate surgery. The valve was replaced with a mechanical one that ticked like a ten bob watch, but Hazel never really recovered. There was talk of a heart transplant, but even though John moved heaven and earth, the right match never turned up. And all the money in the world couldn’t buy his wife’s life back. Watching her die was the worst. Just as Mark had remembered the previous day in the restaurant. Watching the woman he loved fade to a shadow of her former self, her once lustrous red hair growing thin and dull and falling out in handfuls. And the light in her eyes slowly being extinguished.
John Jenner hated to admit it, but when the end came it was almost a relief. Hated to admit it, and hated himself for feeling that way. Feelings he’d never shared with anyone, but which came back to haunt him in the darkest hours of the night. And now, he was fading himself. ‘Serves you right,’ he said to himself as he slowly made his way back to his bed and the Telegraph crossword.
Mark Farrow drove to Canvey Island around noon. He’d rented a place there to lie low until Jimmy Hunter came out of prison. But the word that John Jenner needed to see him urgently had changed all that. Not that he was sorry. The place he’d rented was a dump, and he wouldn’t miss it. By the time he left Tulse Hill, the snow had stopped and the roads had been salted.
The chip shop underneath his flat, if that wasn’t too grand a title for the couple of rooms he inhabited, was doing a desultory lunchtime trade when he got there. He dragged open the warped old double doors in the alley at the back of the shop and parked the Range Rover next to an overflowing dumpster that stank of rotten fish even in the freezing cold. He sighed as he climbed the icy, metal flight of stairs to his door. The place might be rank, he thought, but at least I could get the car out of sight. I was probably the sharpest motor for miles, and although not strictly his property, he didn’t want it stolen or damaged. Too much hassle.
He unlocked the door and slammed it behind him. The temperature in the flat was sub zero. There was no central heating, only a couple of ancient gas fires. He went into his living room and drew back the curtains, allowing the thin daylight into the room. He looked around in disgust as he shucked off his overcoat and muffler and threw them on to a chair. He struck a match and the fire came to life with a burp, as he dropped into his lumpy armchair and surveyed the room, contrasting the dirty, scored beige wood chip wallpaper, the thin carpet and mismatched furniture with the inside of his uncle’s house. As the room warmed the window steamed and he went into the kitchen and put the kettle on. One mug, one plate, one knife, fork and spoon sat on the draining board by the sink. He found still fresh milk in the fridge, which he admitted was the one advantage of a freezing room. A teabag and sugar went into the mug and he brewed his tea, dropping the sodden bag into the Asda carrier that served as his dustbin and went back into the living room.
He looked through the few vinyl albums stacked against the wall, picked out an ancient copy of Otis Blue. It was an original American pressing on the yellow Volt label and would have been worth a fortune if not for the fact that the sleeve was torn and the grooves scratched, But Mark didn’t care. He put it on the turntable of the ancient record player he’d picked up at a boot sale, side one, track one, and let the first few bars of My Girl fill the room, thinking as he did that there was probably a mint copy back at John Jenner’s house.
He smiled to himself, sat back down and thought about what his uncle had told him. He knew it was time he got his life sorted out. He was just marking time there on Canvey. Hiding from his past, his parent’s past, his surrogate uncle’s past and everything that was happening in south London.
His time away had changed him. It would’ve changed anyone. He let his thoughts drift back.
When his father had been killed, Mark had been just a kid, his mother was in her early thirties and couldn’t cope with what had happened. Suddenly losing the only man she’d ever loved, being at the centre of a notorious murder case, and being left to look after a child alone had been more than she could deal with. She’d never been strong. Billy had been the strong one in the family. And after all the fuss had died down, Jimmy Hunter given his life sentence and the case closed, she went from bad to worse. There was money. The Met made sure of that. Compensation and a full pension meant that Susie Farrow and her son wouldn’t starve. In fact, if Susie had been forced by penury to look for a job, things might never have ended up the way they did. But a widow with a bit of money would always be the target for men. And men came and went until Bobby Thomas turned up and didn’t go away again.
Bobby was a boozer who dabbled in drugs on the side. Nothing serious really. He liked a joint and maybe some coke at the weekend with the odd pill now and then. Nothing to get excited about. But when he was pissed up and speed ran through his veins he tended to get a bit violent. And Susie was no match for him. Nor was twelve-year-old Mark Farrow. He’d tried his best, but Thomas was a big man and loved to show just how big. Especially with women and children. Susie had been an orphan and never really got on with Billy’s mum and dad, and Bobby Thomas didn’t encourage any contact, until eventually they just faded out of Susie and Mark’s life.
At Mark’s father’s funeral, John Jenner, just another big man in a dark suit and black tie who wouldn’t go to the wake after the service because of the big police presence, had spoken briefly to him, and given him a plain white card with his name, address and telephone number printed on it. He’d told the boy he was an old friend of his dad, and if he ever needed anything, anything at all, he was to ring the number. Anytime, night or day. Just do it, the big man in the dark suit had said before he’d climbed into a green Jaguar driven by an even bigger man who wasn’t introduced.
As Thomas’s drug and alcohol consumption – financed mostly by Susie’s money – increased, so the violence worsened. What had been just a few digs, the occasional slap and twisted arm, escalated. In the summer of 1985, Thomas and Susie got married. The beatings took on a new edge, and with them, Susie, encouraged by her husband, began to drink more, sometimes also joining him in his drug taking.
Mark was at his wit’s end. His school-work, which had never been much cop, went from bad to worse. After one particularly bad weekend, he took the card that he had hidden on the evening of his father’s funeral and called the number. A raspy voice, sounding like the creature from the black lagoon, answered after half a dozen rings and Mark almost hung up. Stutteringly he asked for the name on the card, and the voice demanded to know who was calling. Mark almost wet himself, and only the thought of his drunken mother, crying herself to sleep in the bedroom upstairs
stiffened his resolve. He gave his name, the phone went down with a bang and after a minute, a softer, but still frightening voice took over.
Mark told the owner of the voice what was going on, and after a second’s pause he was told to wait where he was. It didn’t occur to him until years later that whoever he was talking to knew exactly where that was. Thomas was still snoring in front of the television when there was the sound of a powerful engine outside, a soft tap on the door and the two men from the cemetery, the driver, a man mountain who simply introduced himself as Chas, and the man in the dark suit now wearing a leather jacket and jeans were on the doorstep. With them was a redheaded woman wearing a black leather suit and high heels. Jenner called her Hazel and she was the most beautiful woman Mark had ever seen. For a second he felt disloyal to his mother for thinking that.
The next few minutes mapped out Mark’s future. The woman went upstairs to the bedroom to see to Susie. John Jenner and Chas went and found Thomas. They dragged his comatose form out on to the back patio, Chas filled a vase with cold water from the sink and tossed it into Thomas’s face. He came to with a start. When he saw the two men, with Mark in the background, he demanded to know what was going on. Neither man spoke, just stared with disgust as he blustered about calling the police. Then Chas produced a sawn off baseball bat and proceeded to give Thomas a beating. His arms, legs, back and groin took the brunt of Chas’s fury until Jenner stepped in to restrain him. Chas asked Mark if he wanted to give his stepfather a few licks, but he refused. They left Bobby Thomas groaning in agony on the floor and went into the kitchen where Mark stood trembling with a mixture of elation and fear whilst Chas and Jenner helped themselves to beers from the fridge. When Hazel came down she told them that the girl needed the hospital but wouldn’t go.
She asked the boy if he wanted to get some things together and come with them, but Mark refused again, being terrified of what would happen when Thomas was alone with his mother. He was told not to worry, just to go and pack a bag. But he knew he couldn’t leave her in pain, not even at the behest of the beautiful Hazel.
