Borrowed Time

by David Mark

  ‘All you had to do was what I told you,’ hisses Alison. ‘It’s a goldmine. You just need to put your doubts to one side. If you stay onside then the others will too.’

  ‘How can I? Your man, your monster, we don’t know if he still exists, Alison. And these past days when it’s all been going to shit, you’ve been out of the picture. Been up to “personal business”, whatever the hell that is. It gets the old geezers talking. They fall back into old prejudices. You’re a woman, you’re all hormones and feeelings …’ he says, making the word sound revolting. ‘I can’t tell you how to run your side of the firm but this was the wrong time to take your eye off the ball …’

  Adam senses a change in the quality of the air. Everything slows down. The lights seem to crackle and fizz within the bulbs.

  And then he is raising his hands, shielding his eyes, as Jimbo takes five brisk steps across the floor and brings a metal-tipped wooden hammer down on the top of the Maltese man’s shiny dome. It cracks like glass. Jimbo brings it down again. The fat man falls forward, blood and skull forming an archipelago on the table top.

  Alison sits back in the booth. Adam becomes aware of a screaming behind him; the barmaid, pressing herself up small behind the till. He swivels back to Alison. He realizes he isn’t scared. Isn’t even excited. He just wishes he hadn’t seen this. Hadn’t heard the sound of hammer on bone.

  He locks eyes with her. Watches her drain her espresso, emotionless. She flicks her eyes towards the door. He doesn’t need telling twice. Walks away, hearing the thunk as Jimbo drops the hammer on the floor, and pulls out a mobile phone. As Adam bangs out into the street, he hears him asking for the police. Telling them to come quick. Telling them that a man in a black hood and a black mask has just smashed in the skull of Alfredo Bussutil. That his boss is a witness. She can tell them everything.

  Rain on his face, a chemical tang in his nostrils, Adam starts to run.

  As he’d stared into her eyes, he’d seen nothing but darkness.

  It had felt like looking into a mirror.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  The Bat and Ball, Waterlooville

  1.14 p.m.

  Irons pinches out his cigarette between forefinger and thumb and turns to look at the blazing oak fire that sits halfway along the back wall of the main bar. The flames fold in on themselves, turn inside out, like material caught in crosswinds. The light bounces off the brasses that hang from the dark oak timbers, cast shadows on the old black-and-white photographs. For an instant he remembers the kiss of the flame, the sensation of his skin turning to glue, dribbling onto his chest, into his ears, like candlewax among the hairs. Transformed by fire, reborn in agony, anointed with a cross of sulphur.

  Close up, and in this light, Zara has started seeing a strange, unexpected beauty in Irons’s face. She can only liken it to the way that the grain in a wooden table, when studied, can suddenly grow perfect and sensuous, more dramatic than any deft brushstroke or sculpted alabaster. Or the way that the patterns which swirl in a cup of coffee as the milk goes in can sometimes be mesmerizingly elegant, like a galaxy viewed from God’s platform.

  In places his face is a raw, scrubbed pink; a baby with nappy rash. Here and there the flesh puckers, in deep, scarred tunnels. At the jawline the skin is almost leather. It looks as though it has melted and dripped away, and what remains has been glued back down then varnished. The skull, so utterly bald, seems to have been sanded down, rubbed too close to the bone. But his eyes, one black and shark-like, one the head on a flat pint, seem to hold her gaze in a way that no pristine set of blue irises has ever managed. Despite his age, his scent of wet leaves, his alabaster hands, the baby smile, Zara finds herself thinking of her new friend as an attractive man. She reproaches herself for flinching the first time he took her hand.

  ‘We’re not going to have to argue about the bill again, are we?’ she asks, as she drains the last of her double espresso then settles back in her hard wooden seat and places a cigarillo between her lips.

  ‘No argument, pet,’ says Irons, leaning across the table and lighting it. ‘I’m paying, you’re saying thank you.’

  Zara pulls a face of mock indignation, then smiles. ‘But you don’t eat,’ she says. ‘A bowl of gravy and a few slices of bread isn’t going to make you a big strong boy.’

  ‘It’s served me fine up until now,’ says Irons, as he lights another cigarette and takes a sip of water, swirling it around his toothless mouth.

  They sit and smile at each other across the table, and both feel strangely comfortable. Zara wonders what the other diners think of them. She, with her shaved head, short skirt, knee-length boots and sloppy jumper. He, melted, remoulded into something monstrous, powerful in his black jumper, black jeans, leather coat. Father and daughter? Lovers? The thought makes her giggle.

  ‘You reckon they think we’re at it?’ asks Irons, reading her mind and nodding in the direction of the four elderly ladies, clothed head to toe in Laura Ashley, drinking their sweet sherries in the snug by the fire.

  ‘Do you think they know what “it” is?’ replies Zara, and they smile afresh.

  This is the third time Zara and Irons have been out for lunch together inside a week. Two days after he found her crying in the restaurant, they bumped into one another in the cash and carry. Irons had offered to pay for Zara’s trolley-load of booze, but she refused, despite the screaming inside. Instead, she accepted a cup of coffee in the crappy canteen, and found herself again filling him up with her misery. Him, listening, questioning, caring. Telling her his own stories. Explanations. He’s looking into his family tree. Spending his days in libraries and archives, visiting graves and gazing at addresses that have played a part in his life. On Wednesday night he came to the restaurant, dabbed up his Roquefort cheese and red wine sauce with a complimentary roll, and left the steak untouched. Pushed his plate away and insisted Zara join him. It wasn’t busy, so she agreed. Spoke a little more, then a lot. Unburdened herself of just a little baggage. Then all of it. Found herself growing more and more comfortable in the company of this curious bruise of a man.

  His treat again, today. Sunday lunch in this well-to-do country pub. She, digging into turkey from the carvery, summer-fruit pudding and a bottle of house red. He, a bowl of gravy and half a bag of bread. Glass of water and a packet of cigarettes. Eating slowly, methodically, like it’s a chore.

  ‘Another?’ asks Irons, as Zara drains the last of her red wine.

  ‘No, I’d best behave,’ she replies. ‘Adam’s coming home tonight, all being well, and I want to get the kids bathed and into bed before he does. Wouldn’t mind an early night of my own.’

  ‘Business must be going well then,’ says Irons. ‘Working on Remembrance Day.’ His poppy is so pristine in his leather buttonhole that the old ladies at the nearby table are wondering if his disfiguration occurred during the war.

  ‘Seems to be,’ says Zara, nodding enthusiastically. ‘I miss him like crazy but he’s doing what he always wanted to do. He phones me as often as he can and I think after this trip he’ll be home a lot more often. The kids are lost without him, especially Selena.’

  ‘How are the money woes?’

  Zara stares at the dribble of red, already turning to treacle, in the bottom of her glass. She doesn’t like thinking about it, but she knows that she came here today to talk about this very thing. ‘I’ve got a week, tops. I spoke to the people at the law centre and they said I’ve got a case but the only way I can prove it is to go through arbitration, and that’s going to cost more than I’ve got. There are moments when I just want to chuck it all in.’

  ‘Do you really think Adam will let you fail?’ asks Irons. ‘Is he that kind of man?’

  Zara wipes her eyes with the heels of her hands, smearing her make-up. She looks fragile and far-away. ‘He’s been through so much with me already. I’ll be dragging him down with me and that isn’t fair. He’s making a go of his own business but not enough to subsidize mine. He’s got a temper. I d
on’t know if he gets it from his dad, but when he’s angry he doesn’t think …’

  ‘You still haven’t met them, then? His parents?’

  ‘No chance. His dad’s getting worse and worse, by all accounts. He sounds a decent sort from Adam’s stories, but who knows? And his mum just sounds like a neurotic. God knows how she’ll cope when his dad dies, which can’t be long. I know it’s hitting him hard. I think that might be what’s wrong with him. I hope it is. I don’t want it to be me.’

  ‘He probably doesn’t want your impressions of his dad to be a dying man losing his mind. He’s probably protecting you both.’

  ‘Maybe,’ says Zara, and then thinks about it, and finds herself nodding. ‘You could be right. I know his dad’s been a big influence to him. He was a man’s man, by all accounts. I told you, didn’t I? He was a builder, out on the road, until he was, erm …’ Zara shifts uncomfortably, pulls a face, searches for a word that isn’t rude.

  ‘Burned?’ prompts Irons, and gives a smile that splits his scarred face. ‘You don’t have to sugar-coat it, pet. I’ve got mirrors. I’m a car crash, I know that. And fair play to you, love, you’ve managed to spend a good bit of time with me without mentioning it.’

  Zara starts to say that it’s none of her business, that she doesn’t need to know, but she’s longing to hear his story, to listen and nod and pay attention as he has for her, and distract herself from her own problems, if only for a few more moments.

  ‘You don’t have to tell me,’ she says, and drops her eyes to the table.

  Irons looks across at Zara, the gentle, pale lines of her face, the stoop to her shoulders, the tiny buds of her breasts, the passion and anger in her belly, and realizes that he is truly fond of this woman. She is becoming more than a source of answers. She is more than a doorway into Adam’s life. He is enjoying her company.

  ‘Your scars,’ she asks, her voice a whisper. ‘Did somebody hurt you?’

  Irons feels a tightness across his chest. His vision, split into light and darkness, suddenly blurs, as though twisted sheets of cellophane are being held in front of his eyes. The effort of telling the story has hit him harder than he expected. Memories are fighting in his mind. The black eye seems to become even darker.

  At length, he looks down at his hands. ‘I made a mistake. I deserved what I got.’

  ‘Nobody deserves that,’ says Zara, softly.

  And he hears it. Hears her. The voice, in his head, silent these past forty years – muted by the crescendo of crackling flame as the fire devoured the petrol and began to work its way through his face.

  You let me down. You let him in. You need to make it right.

  THIRTY-SIX

  The Cenotaph, Westminster

  November 11th, 12.22 p.m.

  The snow falls in great fat flakes, like cherry blossom drifting from April trees. It throws a lace veil over the borough.

  Freeman Leo Riley leans on his walking stick and feels the chill seeping into his bones. Cold to the marrow, he thinks. It used to be just a phrase, when he was young. Now he knows its true meaning. Knows how it feels to see your own skeleton as nothing more than a collection of icicles, held together with sagging skin.

  He feels old, today. He stands by the kerbside, watching the traffic, weight on his stick, fighting the urge to tremble. Gridlock in front of him, shops behind. Cold and wet and dark and miserable. He glances to his left. Some young press officer with blonde hair and a flat chest is holding a large golf umbrella over his head while he waits for the car, but it’s doing nothing to stop the billowing flakes of snow, and his coat is growing heavier as the water soaks in.

  ‘Shouldn’t be long now,’ she says, cheerily, pulling a face against the cold. ‘Always the same on Remembrance Day.’

  Riley gives her a nod and a grunt.

  ‘Did you enjoy the service?’ she asks, shivering.

  ‘Very uplifting,’ he says. His voice is rich and deep, and doesn’t tremble. It never betrays him. ‘Far fewer veterans this year. Fewer every year, to be honest. I hope your generation doesn’t ever let this tradition die out. It’s a duty.’

  ‘Oh no,’ she says, shaking her head. A snowflake is melting on her long eyelashes. ‘No, this is important to everybody.’

  No it isn’t, he thinks. Doesn’t bloody matter at all. We do it because we’ve always done it. I’m only here so people don’t think I’m dead. I haven’t listened to the Remembrance Service in fucking years. I’m freezing and I need a piss and a sandwich …

  ‘You must have better things to do on a Sunday, though,’ Riley says, turning his face into the wind to get a better look at her. Victoria, she said she was called. ‘You got a nice young man waiting for you at home?’

  ‘Oh he’s having a look around the shops while I’m here,’ she says, grinning. ‘I’ll meet him when I’m done here.’

  ‘You get a day off in the week for this?’

  ‘Hopefully,’ she says, with a cheeky little smile.

  In front of them, the traffic starts to move a little quicker. The noise of windscreen wipers beating away the plump flakes of snow and of wet tyres swishing over dark tarmac is a soft accompaniment to the sounds of families and young couples filling the pavements and spilling out of the great glass shopping centre behind where Riley stands. He can hear grumbles about the weather, the traffic, the midweek result at White Hart Lane. Miserable bloody day, he thinks. And him, stood with a little girl, waiting for a car that should have been here twenty minutes ago. He’s getting cross.

  ‘Here it is,’ says the girl, suddenly, pointing down the street to where one of the big black civic cars is pulling out of the traffic and easing across to the kerb.

  Riley feels relief flood through him. A minute or two and you’ll be in the warm, he tells himself. Quick drive, then into the civic hall for some grub and back-slapping. Few glasses of wine, sausage roll or two. Maybe even get a mention in somebody’s speech. Then home, bit of telly, back rub from Urszula, quick toss, wash his hair in a cup of her piss, if she can squeeze one out, bed.

  The rear door opens and a young man with glasses and dark hair steps out, rubbing his arms and pulling a face at the girl. Another bloody press officer. ‘Can you manage?’ he asks, taking Riley’s arm.

  ‘I’m fine,’ he grunts, and takes the cold metal of the open car door with his hand, using it to push himself off the kerb and onto the comfortable leather seats. The heater’s been on, and the warmth of the car is delicious.

  He sits back as the Mercedes pulls away from the kerb and back into the traffic. All the cars have headlights on full beam. It’s just gone lunch, but dark as bedtime, and Riley can see his reflection in the tinted windscreens. He looks every one of his eighty-one years. A lot shorter than he used to be, too. He sees himself as some hunched little wizard, wrapped in an overcoat and ceremonial robes. A horseshoe of white hair around a liver-spotted skull. Wrinkles that could have been put there with a pizza wheel. Wet eyes, still fine for long-distance but useless close to. Neck like a turkey. Urszula has to stretch the skin almost to his ear before she can shave him.

  ‘Should be a good spread,’ says the young man, cheerfully. ‘My first one of these dos, actually. Starving, I am. Banquet room, they said. You be OK with the stairs? Course you will, we’ve got that whatsit. Chairlift. If you’re taking the chair, that is. You looked pretty light on your pins during the procession. Horrible day for it though, eh. Honestly, I can’t believe it. On the council for donkey’s years, weren’t you? Alderman, freeman, now this. This borough owes you a lot, I’d say. I was made up when they said I’d be looking after you for the day. Sorry about the delay with the car but we had to drop the mayor off, and then the traffic was terrible. That’s one for the council, eh? Get the bloody city centre moving. Oh, sorry, my phone’s ringing …’

  Riley sits and lets the words wash over him. He concentrates on warming his body through. What’s the boy saying? Deserves it? Course he fucking deserves it. He built this city. Never
taken a bloody penny on the side for it, neither. Sometimes he wishes he had. Wishes he’d pocketed the envelopes that were offered alongside the perks. The hospitality. The warm bodies and instructions to never say no. Could use the cash now though. Urszula isn’t cheap. Council pension, war pension, nest egg from the sale of the big house where he used to live before the stairs became a burden. Just about enough to pay for his dalliances with Magda, but not much reward for a life of unstinting service to the community, sweet as she is. She hasn’t got the paperwork, of course, but she’s a good little carer. Polish. Blonde. Nineteen. Mouth like a plunger. Expert hands. Does as she’s told, and doesn’t object to a man with a temper, and curious ways. Fucking terrible English, though. Not much of a receptionist, neither. What had she said last night? Alison Jardine ringing for him? Bollocks. He hasn’t spoken to the Jardines in years. Spent force. No point. Did each other some good turns, once upon a time, but things change. Change spectacularly, sometimes.

  No, he’d told Urszula, you’ve got it wrong. Never mind, pet. Come here and let me sniff you …

  An annoying ditty is chirruping inside the car, and Riley turns to look at his companion, who is struggling with his pocket. He pulls out a mobile phone, flips it open, and the music stops.

  ‘Hi, Wayne Dunning. Oh hi. Hmm. Yes. No, he wouldn’t be. Right, of course. Well he’s with me now, actually. OK.’ The lad turns to Riley with his hand over the telephone. ‘Journalist looking for you. Wants to do an article about your legacy – about the Games and how it’s men like you who paved the way. All go, isn’t it? You want to talk to him?’

  Riley gives an exaggerated sigh, but reaches for the phone. He’s always liked talking to the Press. He was making a name for himself as a safe pair of hands before the phrase ‘public relations’ had even been invented. Knew how to play the game. Kept reporters happy, and his own image whiter than white. It’s come in handy, once or twice, having a journalist onside. One or two pictures that wouldn’t have looked good in print have disappeared over the years thanks to a tip-off and some friends on the picture desk.