Crusher

by Niall Leonard

  “How do you know?” I said.

  “I just do,” she said.

  “Who have you been talking to?”

  “Sergeant Amobi.”

  I stopped and turned. “And what did Amobi tell you exactly?”

  “He said I should talk to you.”

  “Sounds like he was trying to get rid of you,” I said.

  I walked on down towards the main road that runs alongside the river, and paused at the junction outside Max Snax. It had just opened for breakfast and I noticed the spherical customer was back again, squeezed into the corner table filling his face with a triple-decker, while my replacement at the counter picked at a zit on his chin. As I waited on the kerb for a lorry to pass Zoe re-appeared at my elbow. She didn’t look like she was going to give up any time soon.

  I ignored her, crossing the road and turning right, and she followed, though I could tell she was wondering if I was actually heading somewhere or just trying to shake her off. In fact it was both. She slowed and stopped, and I thought she’d given up at last, until she called after me.

  “You were there when my dad was killed, weren’t you?”

  That halted me in my tracks. I’d just stepped off the main road into the new waterside park from where a shiny glass and steel footbridge arched over to an island in the river. The council had only just finished laying the park turf, but it was already dotted with petals from the cherry saplings, and the breeze off the water sent more drifting around me like shining snowflakes.

  Zoe caught up with me. “Dad was working for McGovern, wasn’t he?” she said. “They’d been blackmailing him with that video, and once that got out he was no use to them any more, so they killed him.”

  “I’ve no idea,” I said. “I wasn’t there.” Her face fell. “But I’ll tell you what I think happened,” I said. “I think your dad was ashamed of himself, and what he’d done. I think he went there to kill McGovern but he wasn’t fast enough.”

  “You think he knew about the video of me?” Her voice was harsh, as if she was trying to torture herself.

  “Yeah. But your dad never told you, because then you wouldn’t have been his little girl any more. I think he wanted to protect you, because he was your dad, and in his own way he loved you, in spite of everything. And that was the only way left he could show it.”

  She shut her eyes and shuddered in pain, but forced herself to go on. “Why didn’t you tell the cops all that? Are you scared of the Guvnor?”

  “Not particularly,” I said.

  “Scared of what he might do to you, or to someone you care about?” She’d opened her eyes now and was looking straight at me, but I knew a leading question when I heard one.

  “There’s nobody left I care about,” I said. I turned and walked on towards the bridge.

  “Then why not tell the truth?” she called after me.

  I paused on the bridge and turned again, irritated. “You’re right, I am scared of the Guvnor,” I said. “Now will you piss off and leave me alone?”

  “Or what? That’s an island you’re heading to, Finn. What are you going to do, swim for it?”

  “If I have to,” I said.

  She came close and looked at me under her lashes. I wasn’t going to fall for that again.

  “I think I know why,” she said. “If you had told the cops all that, it would all have come out, about my dad, and me, and the video. And the tabloids and the bloggers and the Internet would have gone mad, and that footage would have been everywhere, and the whole world would have seen me doing those things, and known it was me, and I’d never ever have been allowed to forget it.”

  “Just think,” I said. “You could have had your own reality TV series.” She actually laughed. “Look, don’t kid yourself,” I said. “It’s probably all over the Net already.”

  “Yeah, but there’s millions of dirty videos out there, mine’s just one more, and if no one knows it’s me, no one’s going to care. That’s why you kept it quiet. To protect me.”

  “If that’s what you want to believe, go ahead,” I said. “Now I was kind of hoping for some privacy, so will you get lost?”

  The island had been derelict and overgrown until last year, when the footbridge had been built. Since then its old boatyard had been tidied up and its sheds repainted, the wild butterfly bushes hacked back, and wooden benches—as yet uncarved with any declarations of love for a football team—planted facing south and east along the river. At low tide the benches overlooked a pungent greeny-black expanse of Thames mud strewn with flotsam, but at high tide, like now, they looked out over silvery grey water that lapped and swirled eastwards to the City, under London’s bridges and out to the sea.

  The early-morning mist was still rising off the river like a cloud, fading into the blue sky, as I slipped the bag from my shoulder at the water’s edge and took out the two urns. I hadn’t figured out in advance how to take the lids off, but they were only thin metal, and a coin worked under one rim lifted enough of the tin for me to get a hold on the lip and bend the lid back in half. I did the same with the other, and stood there for a while, wondering if I should say a few words, or if there were any words to say.

  For a few years, when I was little, my mother and father had been happy together. I knew that because I had lived with them, and there were a thousand moments that now only I remembered—the three of us together in Spain, here in the local playground, in their bed where they used to pin me between them and kiss me, chanting, “Finny sandwich!” That’s how I wanted to remember them, and that’s how I wanted them to be—together always, back where they’d first found each other, back when they’d loved each other. The song my dad used to sing to my mother echoed in my head, and I thought if I tried that as I poured their ashes, maybe they wouldn’t mind that I couldn’t sing a note. Maybe if I hummed it. Just the last verse.

  Creeping fog is on the river, flow sweet river flow

  Sun and moon and stars gone with her, sweet Thames flow softly

  Swift the Thames runs to the sea, flow sweet river flow

  Bearing ships and part of me, sweet Thames flow Softly …

  I tipped the urns upside down and the dust poured out, caught and mingled in the breeze, blew east and spread out across the water, mingled and swirled and sank into the dark depths, swept away downriver.

  I didn’t make it to the end of the verse. All the numbness I’d felt after I’d found Dad murdered, the numbness I’d clenched onto so hard when my mother died in my arms—in that moment, all of it crumbled and was swept away, dissolving like dust on the river, and I couldn’t breathe. I wept, not caring if I was feeling sorry for them or sorry for myself or sorry for this whole mess I’d helped to make; but now Zoe was beside me, wrapping her arms around my neck and pulling me close, and I let her hold me until I could breathe again.

  “I asked you to leave me alone,” I said.

  “You’re welcome,” she said.

  “We’re not getting back together,” I said.

  “I know that,” she said. We stood there a minute.

  “Have you had any breakfast?” she said.

  “Give me a second,” I said. I hated people dumping stuff in the river, but right at that moment it felt kind of traditional. I took each urn in turn and hurled it out into the deepest water I could reach.

  “All done,” I said to Zoe. “Let’s go.”

  Acknowledgements

  My heartfelt thanks to my agent Val Hoskins

  for her infinite patience and faith;

  To my sons, brothers, sisters and friends for indulging

  my endless grumbles about the screenwriting trade;

  To my parents for showing me how to work hard,

  love and be happy;

  And above all to my beloved wife Erika for her

  boundless love, loyalty, humour,

  encouragement and inspiration.

 
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