Crusher

by Niall Leonard

  By the time I’d run out of dirt my mother’s coffee had gone cold and her vegetarian special had congealed into a cheesy lump. I sipped my vaguely-orange juice. Jerry had been over-diluting it again.

  My mother sat there for a while, saying nothing. I guessed what was coming next—hand-wringing, apologies, pleas for forgiveness. I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to listen.

  “When you had just turned eleven,” said my mother, “they cancelled Medics. The daytime soap about a city doctors’ practice … I played the receptionist.” I looked blank, and she shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. It was a crap job, but the money kept us afloat, and I could say I was working. But after it ended I couldn’t find anything else—radio, commercials, theatre … I looked too young to play mums and too old to play girlfriends, and they were ninety per cent of the parts for women, and they still are … Anyway, Noel and I didn’t tell you, because we didn’t want you to worry about money, and there was no need to—I could have just signed on, or done something else. Except I’d never wanted to do anything else.” She looked at me. “It’s weird talking to you like this. The last conversation we had was about your favourite cartoon on TV.”

  I said nothing; that had been another life, and I didn’t remember it.

  My mother looked at her coffee. “I’d got involved with this charity—nothing to do with acting—that wrote to condemned prisoners in America. Typical bleeding-heart-liberal do-gooding nonsense, but it made me feel better about myself. I ended up writing to this chap called Enrique Romero. He’d been sentenced to death by lethal injection for a double homicide, and was in his third year on Death Row. He told me he was innocent—that didn’t mean much, they all said that—but the thing about Enrique was his paintings. He was the most amazing artist. You might have seen his one of Gabriel? ‘The Flaming Sword’? Dividing the saved and the damned?” Her eyes had been flitting about, and now they landed on me, searching for a reaction. I just shrugged, waiting for her to go on. “He sent me pictures of his paintings, and I found them … extraordinary, so moving. I think I was the first person to tell him that. Anyway, a year after we had started to correspond, he was pardoned. Someone else confessed to the crime he’d been accused of, and that was it, he was free.

  “I thought … I was in love with him. I’d persuaded myself I was in love with him, I couldn’t stop thinking about him, and your dad knew what was going on, and there was nothing either of us could do about it. And when Enrique got out of prison he wrote to me, and he told me I was the first person who’d ever believed in him, and that he loved me too, and that I should join him …”

  She blinked rapidly, though I saw no tears.

  “I think it was the single stupidest, most selfish thing I’ve ever done,” she said. “But at the time, it felt like I didn’t even have a choice.”

  “Did it work out?”

  She snorted, at her own naivety, I assumed. “For a while, yes. I was obsessed, like a teenager again, and his paintings began to sell on the back of the publicity. It was just like I dreamed it would be. For a while.”

  “What happened?”

  She shrugged, and smiled bitterly. “He’d been in prison so long, he found it hard to adjust. And it’s one thing writing letters; living together takes a lot more effort. I should have known that, I’d lived with Noel for long enough. And the guilt didn’t help.”

  “I thought you said he was innocent?”

  “Not his. Mine. I’d left my only child to follow a daydream halfway round the world.” She looked out the window, unable to meet my gaze. “Enrique and I started to argue, and soon it seemed there were more arguments than conversations. We managed to agree it wasn’t working out, and it would be better if we split. So we split.”

  “When was this?”

  “Two, three years ago? I tried for some acting jobs, but got nowhere. Then I had a go at selling cars—not those huge American monstrosities, imported Mercedes—and the hideous thing was, I was really good at it. The English accent helped, of course. Plus I didn’t have a family, so I could work all hours. For the first time in my life, I was doing really well, and making money, but what was the point? There was no one I could share it with. And then,” she sighed, “I was browsing the Net one day and I came across Noel’s name, and it all came flooding back to me. I remembered I’d had a life once, and a family, and I’d been so … cherished, and I’d thrown it all away, like a total idiot.” She sniffed, wiped her nose on a napkin and grimaced. I knew why—Max Snax napkins were made of paper so cheap and shiny they might as well have been plastic. In fact, Andy would have preferred that—he would have washed and reused them.

  My mother cleared her throat. “I got hold of your dad’s email address, and I emailed him, and he emailed me back, and we corresponded for a while, and eventually … I told him I was sorry, and I wanted to come home, if he’d have me, and he said he would. He just wanted some time, so he could find a way to tell you.”

  Funny, I thought. That’s the same thing Elsa Kendrick said. Anyone would think my dad had been scared of how I’d react. Maybe he was, said a small voice.

  “Where’s Enrique now?” I said.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “That whole experience feels like some sort of schizoid episode. At the time it seems more than real, and afterwards … you can’t even begin to understand it.”

  “Do you remember Spain?” I said. She looked mystified, and shook her head.

  “Me and you and Dad, years ago, we visited that friend of his, the one who had that old castle with the pool. It came back to me the other day, at the funeral. It was more like a dream than a memory … I just remembered being really happy, all of us together.”

  She hesitated, then slid her hand across the table and laid it on mine. The weight of it, its warmth, and the firm bones beneath her soft palm, felt completely familiar, as if she touched me every day.

  “I’m not going to apologize any more,” she said. “But I’ve come home, and I’m here for good. You might decide you never want to see me again, and that’s fine. But I’ll always be your mother. There’s nothing you can do about that, I’m sorry.”

  “Wasn’t that an apology?” I said.

  “Oh shit—yes, it was. Sorry. Damn—!”

  I laughed. “Where are you staying?”

  Her smile vanished, as if we’d bumped back to earth. “A hotel near Covent Garden, until I can find a flat.”

  You don’t want your house back, then? I thought.

  “You should call me,” she said. “I’ll take you out for a decent meal.”

  “I lost your number,” I said.

  My mother produced a sleek smartphone from an inside pocket and unlocked it. “I’ll give it to you now,” she said. “You can put it straight into your own phone.”

  “Sure,” I said. Squinting at her screen she recited her number, and I punched it into Dad’s old mobile. “I suppose you’d like mine,” I said.

  “I’ll wait till you call me,” she said.

  “Morning, Finn, and how are you today?” I hadn’t noticed Andy sidling up to our table. He must have scuttled across the floor, doing his imitation of a hermit crab at low tide.

  “Fine thanks, Andy,” I said.

  “I trust you’re enjoying your meal?” He addressed both of us, rubbing his hands together unctuously. I knew that was as close as he ever got to washing them.

  “We were,” said my mother.

  “Good, good. I just wanted you to know, Finn, that if you wanted to reapply for your position here, your submission would be favourably received.”

  “I thought you’d found someone.” I nodded at the guy behind the counter, picking his teeth with his fingernail.

  Andy grinned apologetically. “Dennis doesn’t project the right Max Snax image,” he explained.

  “Did you notice before you came over here that we were in the middle of a conversation?” My mother smiled. Uh-oh, I thought.

  “Finn was one of our finest tea
m members,” said Andy.

  “He was,” said my mother. “He’s not any more. He’s a paying customer who’s entitled to some privacy. And I’d rather he got a job skinning baby seals alive than went to work for an ill-mannered oik, serving deep-fried vomit to the desperate cretins who come in here. Now kindly leave us alone.”

  Andy swallowed and grinned and bobbed. “Enjoy your meal,” he said.

  My mother watched him slither away in the direction of his office, then turned back to me. “Oops,” she said. “You didn’t want your old job back, did you?”

  “Not really.”

  “Thank God for that. Let’s get out of here.”

  twelve

  As I rode the Tube to work I stared at my phone. At first I’d liked it that Zoe hardly ever texted me, that she wasn’t the sort of girl who needed constant attention and reassurance. Now I was beginning to suspect that maybe I was that sort of boy. For years I’d got by without any close friends, and now I had one—I was pretty sure she counted as one—I wanted to tell her everything, about last night and this morning when my mum turned up, so I could start to figure out what I thought of it.

  But by Hammersmith station she hadn’t texted me and I still hadn’t texted her. I didn’t want her to know how much I was starting to need her, in case it freaked her out or frightened her off. I didn’t even want to know it myself. And another, selfish part of me was curious to see if she needed me more—or enough, anyway, to make the first move. But Baron’s Court came and went, and the tube train rocked and lunged into the underground tunnel, and still my phone lay in my hand, blank and silent. I tucked it into my pocket.

  When I emerged from Pimlico station I felt it vibrate and whipped it out quicker than a gunfighter. No message … I’d imagined it.

  “Get a bloody grip,” I told myself, and set off for the Iron Bridge.

  Of course, my glorious career as a pot scrubber would have been cut off in its prime if Hans or whatever his name was had taken those secateurs to my thumbs. Maybe that was the idea—not just to frighten me, but to make sure those rubber gloves didn’t fit any more, and keep me away from Eccles’s restaurant. Like Prendergast said, whoever sent Hans was unlikely to give up, and since Hans wasn’t around to get paid they’d still have the money to hire someone else. How long that would take, I had no idea, but I had to act quickly if I was going to find out what the Guvnor wanted Eccles’s van for. Even if it had nothing to do with Dad, the knowledge might give me some leverage.

  Eccles wasn’t at the Iron Bridge that evening. He’d disappear every so often to do TV work and commercials, not come back for days sometimes. Then again, sometimes he’d pretend to disappear, only to pop up unannounced in the Iron Bridge to see how well it was run in his absence. It helped to keep his staff in a constant state of fear and uncertainty. Let’s hope he didn’t do that tonight, or I’d be stuffed.

  It was early in the week so business was slack and the pans were only piling up at half the normal rate. I worked my way through the stack at top speed to clear the backlog, pulled off my overalls and draped them over the counter the way I did when I was going to the loo, but I didn’t head for the loo. I headed straight for the back door, and though I was nearly one of the lads now none of the apprentice chefs took any notice. From the rear I doubled back into the building, up the moody corridor to Eccles’s office, and tried the handle. Locked, of course. Not a big deal—it just gave me that much less time. I took out my phone, punched a few buttons to withhold my own number, and dialled.

  “The Iron Bridge, good evening,” said Georgio. He had a lovely voice, like hot treacle, which was one reason Eccles made him maître d’, I supposed. I pushed open the door into the main restaurant just enough to see Georgio on the phone at his station near the front door.

  “Hello, this is Peter Finlay, from Francisco Associates? I think I may have left my wallet in the restaurant last night.”

  “I’ll have a look. What sort of wallet is it?”

  Francisco was one of the restaurant’s biggest clients, a big firm of brokers a few streets away. I’d heard the waiters boasting about the huge tips they left—the Iron Bridge was practically the firm’s staff canteen. “Dolce and Gabbana,” I said, then wondered if D&G even made wallets. But as I watched, Georgio glided across to the bar where lost property was usually stowed. When he ducked behind the counter I nipped over to his station, flipped open the cabinet below—Georgio rarely locked it, silly boy—and grabbed the key to Eccles’s office.

  “I’m afraid I can’t find it,” said Georgio on my phone. “Are you sure it was left here?”

  “Oh, wait a minute,” I said. “It’s here, on my desk. Sorry about that, hell of a day. Thanks all the same, goodbye.”

  I hung up, slipped my phone into my pocket and doubled back for the kitchens. Georgio was still behind the bar, but Lori the Chinese waitress noticed me, and frowned; I didn’t belong in the staff area. But when I gave her my biggest grin, as if I belonged there, she smiled back at me and carried on.

  I threw the keys on Eccles’s desk, sat in his chair and wondered where to start. There was a pile of invoices from suppliers, but even if I’d had half the night to read through them I doubted they’d be any use. I should start by searching the desk, I thought—but all the drawers were locked, and if Eccles left those keys hanging about I didn’t know where. OK, I was trying to find out about the van, so I needed documents relating to it—there’d be a file with insurance details, or a servicing agreement, or something to tell me where it was kept. I dragged over his in-tray and flicked through the papers stacked in it, but for all the sense I could make of them they might as well have been a heap of spaghetti. I tried looking for the logo of a petrol station or a breakdown service. Nothing. I shoved the in-tray back across the desk.

  The computer screen leaped into life, dazzling me momentarily. The desktop was an amazingly vivid image of Tower Bridge at dusk, all glowing lights and reflections off the river. I must have jogged the mouse with the in-tray and woken the PC up from standby, but there was no lock screen, no password, nothing. I knew Eccles hated technology and liked preparing everything by hand, but this seemed like overdoing it. I wondered how often he even used this computer. The keyboard was spotless, practically brand-new, and the icons on the screen seemed the standard ones you see on every new PC—rubbish bin, browser, a shortcut to the maker’s website … and RTTracker? I looked more closely at that.

  Its icon was a cartoon of a lorry in a crosshair. When I double-clicked on it a log-in dialogue appeared, both fields automatically prefilled: User: ECCLES_IRONBRIDGE, Password: a row of dots. I clicked the Log-in button.

  Almost instantly the screen filled with squiggly yellow lines on a beige background, centred on a flashing red dot with a white label. Thicker orange lines crossed diagonally from the top left to the bottom right of the screen, where they met a wobbly orange circle. There were lots of labels and words and numbers, but none of them made any sense to me. I clicked on a picture of a magnifying glass with a dash in it, and the image zoomed out. Of course—it was a map. The different coloured lines were roads. But a map of where? I zoomed out again. The yellow roads vanished, and green roads appeared, snaking around the shrinking orange circle. And in the middle of the wobbly orange circle a single word appeared bigger than all the others: Paris.

  It was France, where Eccles’s van went every week. And that flashing red dot, heading for Paris, was his van. It must have been fitted with a tracking device, so Eccles could find out exactly where it was any time he liked.

  Shit, I thought, does the Guvnor know about this?

  I checked my phone. I’d been away from my post for ten minutes. The kitchen would run low on pans soon, and I’d be missed. Putting the office keys back would not be a problem—I figured I could just leave them around for Georgio to find, and he’d be too worried about his own job to report it. I exited the tracker program and opened it again. When the log-in dialogue reappeared I clicked on Forgot you
r password? Then I switched to email and clicked on Send and receive.

  And waited.

  Twelve minutes. I clicked “Send and Receive” again.

  Ping.

  I opened up the reminder email, grabbed a pen and a bit of paper and painstakingly copied down the text. My tongue had crawled out of the corner of my mouth again, but I let it. I had just deleted the email when my dad’s phone beeped and rattled on the desk. I nearly jumped out of my skin—I’d set the volume to max because the kitchen was so noisy, and I’d forgotten to silence it. I stood to go, snatching the phone up, and checked the screen.

  Need 2 c u 2nite—xx

  It was from Zoe, and it had two x’s. I counted them a few times, just to be sure.

  “Finn?”

  Georgio was standing in the doorway. I’d been so gobsmacked to hear from Zoe I hadn’t even heard him approach—and he did not look happy. I tried to keep the idiot grin on my face.

  “What are you doing? And how did you get in here?”

  “The door was open. I was hoping to see the boss about getting a day off.”

  “Mr. Eccles is not here. You are not supposed to be in his office, and the door was not open.” He plucked the keys from the desk and stared at me.

  I shrugged. “Oh, right,” I said. I hoped he would believe he was an idiot. I sure as hell felt like one.

  “You’re needed in the kitchen,” said Georgio. He opened the door wide and stood back to usher me out. I’d seen him do that before, late at night, with a politician almost too drunk to walk. His absolute self-assurance was like a gravity field that pulled you towards the door and slung you through it. I crash-landed at the sink, where the pots had piled up into a massive, greasy, teetering pyramid, and got stuck in. Maybe I should have worried about what I was getting into, but all I could think of was Zoe, and I couldn’t help whistling.