by John Barlow
Rob was about sixty. But he was still strong. And big. You go up against someone like that, you make sure he’s injured first. That’s how they’d got him to the chair, must have been. Good shots, too. No stray bullets. They shot him, taped him to the chair, and beat him to death with a bottle. But why slash his face like that, as well as caving in his skull? It doesn’t make sense, if you want to kill someone.
He pulls away, trying not to gag at the thought of it, taking long, deep breaths. Turns onto Vicar Lane and heads towards the markets. Three shots, but not fatal. Whoever it was could’ve killed him any time they wanted. They had a gun. So why the bottle to the head? And why douse him in champagne?
Down by the markets he finds a place and pulls in. Gets out his iPhone. No police. Bollocks to that. Den’s number is still on fast dial, a year after they last spoke. Should he call her? Explain all this over the phone, after twelve months of silent regret, after he ruined both their lives? Not much of a peace offering, after a year thinking about her every night as he gets slowly and methodically drunk.
He turns the phone in his fingers. Thinks: they taped Roberto up because they wanted him alive. Trying to make him speak? The gunshots, calculated, accurate. And the tape? They’d come prepared. They knew what they wanted. But what happened once they got him into the chair? Did he refuse to talk? They get angry, look around for something, grab a bottle? They start beating him with it. The bottle breaks – or they smash it – and they use it to slash his face until it’s unrecognisable. The pain would be too much. He’d be unconscious. If he hadn’t talked by then, why not just kill him? Or leave him?
They don’t leave him, though. With his face beyond recognition, they get another bottle and smash his skull with it. Two, three blows perhaps, and he’d dead. Gotta be, head bowed, body slumped forwards. Yet still they go on, pummelling his head again and again, until it’s half its original size. Anger? Frustration? Something doesn’t sound right. They come prepared, calculated, but it ends in a frenzy.
Even then it doesn’t stop. They go back to the bar, get more champagne, emptying whole bottles of the stuff over his mashed up head, the fizzy wine mixing with his blood. Pink champagne. He must have been dead by then. Dear god, he must have been. Please.
He tries to imagine what must have gone through Rob’s mind as he sat there, strapped to the chair and knowing he was about to die. What do you feel when your life flashes past you, and it’s been nothing but blokes like Lanny Bride and their violent, joyless world? What can Rob possibly have thought about himself as he realised his life was worth less than a shipment of heroine or whatever pointless, ephemeral shit he was about to get killed for?
A delivery van revs behind him, edging up onto the pavement. John realises there are tears streaming down his face, dripping off his chin. He drives on, hardly able to focus on the road, smearing the tears around his face, tasting the salt. The traffic is heavy now, lines of buses pulling into the station, disgorging their cargo of reluctant workers, who juggle phones and tablets, white headphones plugged into their ears as if the sound of the city is the last thing they want to hear.
He passes the huge ugly red brick monster of Millgarth Police Station, knows he should be in there now, reporting Rob’s death, handing over the keys and making a statement. But he’s not. He wipes his face dry with the sleeve of his jacket and pulls out onto the roundabout.
A minute later he’s driving down a series of shabby backstreets. Just half a mile from the soaring, high-rise glamour of twenty-first century Leeds; a few blocks that the city seems to have forgotten about, or can’t be bothered to demolish. There are old Victorian workshops, many of them boarded up, curls of rusted barbed wire along the walls; plus squat, pre-war warehouses, their concrete stained and rotting. And at the centre of it all is Hope Road, as shabby and nondescript as the rest, a street so visibly at odds with its own name that it might be a civic joke.
Apart from one building: a curved, futuristic structure of glass and brushed steel, so out of place it almost fits: Tony Ray’s Motors.
He parks in the forecourt. Stares at his iPhone. No, he can’t stomach the thought of speaking to Den now. Not about this. A text is better.
Hi, he writes, the trembling almost gone from his hands, I need help.
Chapter Five
The sound of his size ten Doc Martens on the floor echoes off the glass walls and the high-sheen bodywork of a dozen cars. Tony Ray’s Motors has been the family firm since the 60s, when his dad arrived in the city, a young immigrant from Franco’s Spain with no prospects and no friends.
John wanders between a silver Porsche and a six-year-old Subaru Impreza that they’ve managed to buff up pretty well. For forty-odd years the showroom had been nothing more than a couple of prefabs and a rough tarmac forecourt, home base for Tony Ray’s many business interests. Cars? They used to sell the odd one or two, and they’d always put enough cash through the books to stop the Revenue complaining. “Don’t let ’em get you on taxes!” his dad used to say.
The Subaru’s got a ridiculous mark-up on it. But it’ll sell. Impreza’s always do. The Porsche? Great window candy, although it looks a bit out of place, a top of the range 911 Turbo S. These days people come here for a solid mid-range motor, second-hand, anything up to a Beemer or an Audi. You don’t buy your Merc here, and certainly not a hundred and twenty grand Porsche.
He resists the urge to find a brick and smash its windscreen. Tony Ray’s Motors. This is where it had all started, and this is where it should have ended. Three years ago his brother Joe was shot dead, right here, in front of him. As a warning sign it couldn’t have been any clearer. But John didn’t take the warning. Instead he took control and rebuilt the premises.
He goes over to a shining Gaggia machine at the back of the showroom and switches it on. They’d met down here on a Friday night, him and Joe, to decide what to do with the place. Dad was retiring, and it wasn’t as if they could sell the business as a going concern, not back then. The shot came from nowhere. By the time John saw what had happened, Joe had sunk to his knees, half his head missing.
He jerks the arm out of the Gaggia. With Joe dead and his dad retired, he should have sold up. All his life he’d been clean, never been involved in anything dodgy. It should have been the end of the Ray family’s association with Leeds. But he didn’t sell up. Instead, he came home and took over the showroom. Bad decision, bad time to make it. Everything that’s gone wrong in his life since then has come from that decision. And now he’s right back where he started, down here in the showroom on Hope Road. And somebody else is dead.
He tamps down the coffee and thrusts the arm back into the machine, his movements fast and exaggerated. Lanny can have his pound of flesh this time. Whoever did that to Roberto deserves to feel Lanny Bride’s wrath. An eye for an eye. He stares at the coffee machine, shaking his head in disbelief. Never thought he’d hear himself say that, an eye for an eye. He knows it’s wrong, but it feels right. Whoever did that to Roberto’ll get what’s coming to him. Then it’s over. This is the last favour you’ll do, John, he tells himself, the last time you’ll have any contact with Lanny Bride, or any of ’em.
He presses the button for an espresso and looks around at the showroom, quarter of a million pounds’ worth of steel and glass. He tries to visualise exactly where it was his brother dropped to the floor. I should have left this all behind…
Three years ago Lanny Bride was already in charge of the city, the de facto successor to the Tony Ray crime empire. John knows he should have left everything right then, made a clean break. Instead he built a gleaming new showroom and filled it with cars.
He clicks a remote. Three plasma screens burst into life, each one set high up where the glass walls of the showroom meet the sloping steel roof beams. The news is on and he gets a sudden shot of déjà vu. He’s seen the footage before, years ago, something he would never forget. It’s so heart-wrenching you hate yourself for watching, but you can’t look away.
/> A young man emerges from the front entrance of a supermarket. Behind him, yellow flames dance amongst the rubble-strewn remains of the building. The man is gaunt, covered in dust from the blast. He seems lost, yet his expression is also one of astonishment. In his arms is a baby, no bigger than a doll. He looks down at it, as if the baby has just been born, still wet with blood, taking its first breaths, and he is cradling it for the first time. He shuffles slowly from the mess of bricks and broken glass, looking for someone, but knowing that no one can help. People approach him. He turns from them, pulls the baby closer to his chest. One of its limbs hangs loose. His face is now empty, as if none of this is real. The child is cold in his arms. And nothing is real.
The year was 1990. John had been in New Zealand. He saw the report of the Leeds bombing perhaps a dozen times, mainly on TVs in pubs and bars. UK: TERRORIST BOMBING. Always the same few moments of film, that young man emerging from the rubble, dead baby in his arms.
It was one of the indelible images of his youth, visual memories spliced together and played on a loop: the Yorkshire Ripper, the Belgrano, miners’ strike, Brighton bombing, his dad on the steps of the Old Bailey… Video clips that will never fade from memory. Better than memory, more real. It’s as if you haven’t lived through something unless you’ve seen it on screen. Who doesn’t remember them arresting the Ripper? Or the police horses charging at Orgreave, Tebbit in his pyjamas, a grinning Tony Ray on the steps outside the Bailey, not guilty... This is England!
But none of these images is lodged so powerfully in John’s memory as the young man stepping clear of the wreckage of that supermarket in Leeds; no scene depicts with such simplicity the horror of death, of a life gone cold.
He’s still looking up at the TV screen when the Gaggia starts to splutter. He turns the sound up. The suspected bomber is dead, had been suffering from cancer… The newsreader’s intonation is flat and neutral.
“Shit!”
He jumps backwards as hot coffee and steam hiss and splutter from the machine. He forgot to put a cup underneath. There’s espresso everywhere.
Chapter Six
He cleans up the coffee as best he can and leaves a note for Connie and Freddy. Probably won’t be in today. It won’t make much difference. They run the place pretty much on their own anyway.
By the time he’s driven back to the High School the morning is already in full swing. The curtains are open in most of the flats and the car park is almost empty. He normally manages a wry smile as he walks in through the main entrance, recalling the musty smell of the old school, now replaced by one of new carpets and contract cleaners. He moved in here a few years ago, one of the large penthouses at the back. Everyone should live where they used to go to school, he likes to tell people. It keeps you grounded, reminds you who you really are.
Today, though, the building only reminds him of Roberto, and of a past he can’t escape. He moved back to Leeds after Joe was killed. A mistake? Yes. The flat in the old school, the gleaming new showroom, all one huge mistake. Now this.
He looks at his watch as the wooden doors of the building’s main entrance slam shut behind him. The messed up body of Roberto will already be in the ground somewhere or other, unidentified and unmourned.
He’s going to find out who did it.
Then he’s done.
“Hi,” says Jeanette without looking up, “where’ve you been?”
She’s on one of the two leather sofas in the middle of the living room, bathed in the bright white light that streams in from the windows. On her lap rests a silver MacBook.
“Out and about,” he says, grabbing a mug and filling it from a large cafetière on the kitchen island. He’s jumpy, trying to keep his hands busy. Doesn’t really want anybody in the flat right now.
Jeanette seems not to notice. To her John looks the same as he has on the two previous mornings she’s woken up in his flat, a loose black suit, shirt open at the neck, and a cigarette in his mouth. He has the permanent air of someone who’s just walked out of a casino in time for breakfast.
“What’s that on your shirt?” she says, her eyes having already returned to the screen.
“I had a fight with a coffee machine.”
He hears the beginning of a news report from the speakers of her laptop. She fumbles with the touchpad, turns the sound off. But it’s too late.
“That about Bernard Sheenan?” he says, walking across and looking over her shoulder.
Paused on the screen is the image of a white cottage, a police cordon outside.
She says nothing.
“He’s dead, then?” he asks. “Sheenan?”
“Yes. Been dead over a week, apparently.”
“You don’t sound very happy about it.”
“Should I be?”
She lets the report play, the sound muted. They watch in silence as the career of Bernard Sheenan is summarised in thirty seconds of news clips. Swift rise through the ranks of the IRA, five years in the Maze, prominent role in the Peace Process…
John knows the story well enough. Sheenan was convicted of arms offences in the early 90s. He was also suspected of having planned the Leeds supermarket bombing, the one that killed a baby.
“Let him rot in hell.”
“How about not speaking ill of the dead, eh?”
“I’ll call a murderer what I like. Look.” He leans over her, jabbing a finger at the laptop as the footage of the Leeds bombing is played. “You seen this before?”
“Of course I have.”
John realises he’s trembling, heart going fast.
“Can you turn that off?” he says, unable to take his eyes off the image of the young man, behind him the ruins of a building in flames. All these years later, and still he can’t look away.
She closes the Mac.
“Want one?” he says, lighting himself a cigarette as he sits opposite her on the other sofa, a long, narrow coffee table between them, piled high with yachting magazines.
“I only smoke when I’m drinking.”
“There’s a bottle of vodka in the fridge.”
She smiles, brushes big handfuls of auburn hair from her face.
“I knew him, all right?” she says. “That’s all. I knew him.”
“You knew Sheenan?”
Investigative journalist? She probably knows half the criminals in the country. He’s not going to tell her about Roberto, though. Lanny was dead right about that.
“Work, y’know,” she says. “I interviewed him a couple of times.”
He’s only marginally interested, but he’s got to say something, anything to avoid the thought of Roberto.
“Trying to get a confession out of him?”
She shrugs.
“You were!” He stops. Thinks. “Hey, didn’t they say he had cancer. Death bed confession?”
She drinks from a mug, her hair falling down as her head dips, shrouding the mug and her hand. She’s in her late thirties and it suits her, one of those women who’ll look just as good when she’s sixty.
“Sort of. He had cancer. Don’t you read the papers?”
“Hardly ever. They’re full of bad news.”
“He announced he had cancer about a month ago,” she says, lifting her head and pushing all that hair back off her face again. “I think he was going to admit to the bombing before he died. A final act of contrition. Lay the past to rest.”
John nods. Lay the past to rest. He nods, but he doesn’t agree. The past doesn’t rest, it just finds new ways of coming back at you. What kind of rest is Roberto going to get? And that young man, walking out of the rubble with a dead baby?
“Was Sheenan going to give you the exclusive?”
“I tried. I’ve got to get my stories from somewhere. Anyway, he’s dead now.”
She leans forward and helps herself to a cigarette, lighting it and blowing several long plumes of smoke up above her head before settling back down on her sofa.
“How did he go? Softly into the night? Peac
efully in his bed?”
She stops, confused. “You really haven’t seen the news this morning? He was murdered.”
He tries to summons up an emotion. But he feels nothing. “Can’t say I’m heartbroken. What comes round, y’know.”
She smiles as she shakes her head. “No. He wasn’t like that. He was born in the wrong place and got involved in a war.”
“Great defence for baby killing.”
“Y’know, he had this line, about regretting every death in every armed conflict, every one of them. And he meant it. He carried a shitload of guilt.”
“And you believe that? I mean, when you see that young bloke coming out of the rubble, and he’s holding his own dead baby? Is there enough guilt in the world for that?”
She says nothing, purses her lips.
“An eye for an eye,” he says, almost involuntarily. “That’s fair, isn’t it, in this case?”
“You don’t strike me as the hang ’em type.”
He senses the shift in her voice. Suddenly she’s in interview mode, her tone unprejudiced, unopinionated. Journalist. Probably can’t help herself. Lanny was right. Not a word.
“It just puzzles me,” he says, holding his mug in both hands, staring down into it, a burning cigarette still between his fingers. “People get killed all the time, war, random murders, traffic accidents, food poisoning for christsake… We accept it as part of life. But when it comes to the bloke who set a bomb that killed a newborn baby we can’t bring ourselves to pull the trigger. It’s a strange trait of our civilised society, don’t you think? Is there nothing that deserves death? No act evil enough?”
He stops, sees the cigarette ash on his trousers, realises he’s been talking to himself, tears in his eyes. When he looks up, she’s standing behind the sofa.
“Well, somebody must’ve thought he deserved it,” she says, almost a whisper. “I’m gonna have a shower.”
She moves away without another word.
John watches her go. She’s only wearing a white t-shirt and skimpy black pants. Until now he hadn’t noticed.
