Borrowed Time

by David Mark

  The phone vibrates in his hand. He drops it, curses, listening to it bounce around on the stones.

  ‘Adam? What’s going on? What’s wrong?’

  He wants to hang up. He isn’t sure he can find the words to explain himself.

  ‘You’re upset, I can tell. What’s happened? Is Tilly okay? Have you heard something?’

  Her voice hardens, her patience fraying.

  ‘Adam, I don’t know what’s wrong but that isn’t how people talk to me. Isn’t how they text me. Take a breath. Where are you?’

  He swallows, his throat hard. Throws his cigarette and sees a shower of sparks.

  ‘I want to speak to Irons,’ he growls, petulant. ‘He’s been talking to Zara.’

  ‘Zara?’ asks Alison, sounding surprised. ‘She’s your girlfriend, isn’t she? Well, if he has there’ll be a good reason. He’s one to trust, not to fear. Is that all that’s wrong? Seriously, he can keep a secret. He’s good at what he does.’

  ‘I thought we were on the same side,’ he says, quietly. His head is spinning, his gut sour.

  ‘Of course,’ she says, a laugh in her voice. ‘I’ve enjoyed our little trip down Memory Lane. It’s done me the world of good spending time with you. She’d be proud of you, I’m sure. It’s really helped me see what I’ve been missing. I hope we carry on being in one another’s lives.’

  ‘You sound like you’re sort of … I don’t know … breaking up with me, or something,’ he mutters, appalled by himself. ‘I’m sorry about losing my temper. Alison, look, this isn’t my world …’

  ‘I’ll ask Irons to call you, don’t fret. This number, is it? Okay. Love to Grace – we’ll speak soon.’

  The line goes dead. He sits holding it in his hand like something dead. His skull feels like it’s caving in. He doesn’t know what he wanted to happen, or where it’s all gone wrong. Should he not have called Leo Riley? She’d given the nod, hadn’t she? Or had her boy told her some fibs – got jealous at her spending time with some interloper and dripped poison in her ear. Perhaps it was Zara. What had she told Irons? He shakes his head, alone and angry, as his thoughts drift down familiar paths. He’s simply not lived up, that’s the problem. Exciting at first, but the novelty never lasts. He hasn’t lived up to expectations. Couldn’t sustain her attention …

  The phone buzzes in his hand. He answers without meaning to.

  ‘Mr Irons, it’s Adam, look, I know you have a job to do …’

  ‘Close the hole in your face, lad,’ mutters Irons, down the receiver. ‘Just listen and learn, yeah. First up, you don’t upset Alison. That’s not me threatening you, that’s me explaining things to you. Doesn’t matter what your mother meant to me, I have a job and I do it well and I don’t ever want her to tell me she’s pissed off with you to the point of violence. And secondly, yeah, I’ve been talking with your girl. Had a shufty at your mum too. Even ran the rule over your poor dad. Doesn’t look well, does he? But I reckon we did all right by you, lad. The Nunns seem like they gave you all you could have asked for. And I reckon you’ve done okay. Maybe gone wrong a few times, maybe not matched the potential, but you’ve got love in your life and that matters a lot, so on balance, I’m going to put you down as being more of Pamela than you are of the other fucker. So I’m going to help you …’

  ‘Mr Irons, I …’

  ‘And there you go again, talking when you should be listening. I’m going to put things right for your missus. She’s been through a lot with you away and busy with other things. She doesn’t need the stress of bailiffs and bankruptcy and all that bollocks. She needs a fresh start. All I want from you, is a yes or a no.’

  Adam swallows, his mouth all whisky and tar. ‘A yes or a no?’

  ‘Do you reckon she’d get over it? Losing the restaurant, I mean? You reckon she’d be okay after the tears had dried, if the debts weren’t there any more and she had a few quid to play with? You reckon it might do you some good in her eyes if you came in like a white knight on a charger and told her that the worst of her worries were over?’

  Adam, as instructed, keeps his answer simple. ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m going to do you both a good turn,’ he says. ‘In return, you do me one. You stay away. It’s not personal. I think I might even like you, given time. But it’s painful. It’s getting in the way. It’s making my skin sore, truth be told. All I need from you, is to make sure there are people who can vouch for you, and for Zara, all night tonight. Call a friend or two. Invite Grace over. Report a fire – do what you like. But you’ll need an alibi. And on Friday, I’ll want you to act all bashful and heroic when she finds the “insurance pay-out” in her account. And I’m putting insurance pay-out in inverted commas, all right?’

  Adam lights another cigarette. He’s so far out of his depth he feels like he’s drowning.

  ‘Yes,’ he says, quietly.

  ‘Good lad. That’ll do it then. Get yourself away home. You’ll catch cold otherwise.’

  Adam begins to speak. Irons cuts him off.

  ‘I don’t know what to believe,’ splutters Adam, desperate now, a mad grin twisting his face even as his eyes fill with tears. ‘Riley. Ace. Dozzle. Who did it? I mean, which one of them is half of me? I can’t untangle it. I’d rather it was you. I swear, I’ve thought about it, and you’re the best of them, and you’re a killer!’

  He stops talking, his words echoing back off the cave. Hears the old man breathing.

  ‘She’d have liked you, I reckon,’ says Irons, at last. ‘Your mum, I mean. She’d be pleased with what you are. That matters more than anything else. I did years for what I did to Dozzle and I’ve never thought I got it wrong. Riley’s done some terrible things but if it was him I’d have already fucking killed him. And Ace is just a silly bollocks. Truth is, Dozzle wasn’t all that bad before he did what he did. If you’re going to worry about what you’re made up of, focus on your mum. Dozzle’s dead. There’s nowt else for you to uncover. You’ve done okay, all told. And if it counts for owt, if I were your dad, I’d be pleased as fucking punch. Now, be lucky …’

  A moment later, Adam is alone in the dark, staring at a dead phone, wondering if he has just made a deal with the devil, or embraced a guardian angel.

  THIRTY-NINE

  Songbrook Manor

  Somewhere between Saffron Walden and Bishop’s Stortford, Essex

  11.16 p.m.

  Illuminated in the doorway of the big grey house, framed between the columns, floating in cold, black air …

  A short, unremarkable man.

  An ex-jockey perhaps, or a washed-up bantamweight.

  Old, certainly. An antique, inelegantly tended. A sculpture of a Chinese fisherman; varnish cracked and details chipped.

  Skeletally thin, too. Legs like lengths of rope, knotted at the knees.

  His face, cadaverous. Pinched and hollow; candlewax marbled with a violet network of capillaries.

  Large, old-man ears and clean-shaved cheeks. A thin moustache, like a liquorice bootlace, clinging to his upper lip; bottle-black.

  Glasses, thick as church windows, in unfashionable frames.

  Bags like segments of satsuma beneath wet eyes.

  He has lost the fight with his nostril hair. Stopped trimming it a decade ago when it became clear there was an infinite supply.

  One of his hands is curved completely inwards, the middle finger reaching almost to his wrist, as though taking a pulse. Arthritis.

  He is wearing jogging trousers, a fleece-shirt and a harlequin-patterned jumper under a baggy suit-jacket, because he has been told to keep out the chill.

  He was handsome, once. And strong. Still feels it, though, despite his frailty. Still got something firm and confident in his chest. He’s storing his fight as if in a camel’s hump, for when he needs to throw his fists again.

  A haunted-house mannequin, a ghost-train puppet.

  Franco Jardine.

  The old man stands still, concentrating on holding his bones together. It feels like his
skeleton is made of glass and he’s driving over a rutted track. Only sheer force of will keeps him alive.

  He’s done one or two bad things in his long life, has Franco. Hurt people, when they’ve asked for it. Sent men to slit throats and break limbs. Hasn’t helped many old ladies across the road. Wasn’t there, when the girl he called ‘princess’ was being hurt beyond enduring.

  He’s hurting, as he stands here in the cold. He spends most of his time sitting down, these days. Napping. Dozing. Waking up to read a book or watch a film or have a chat with Timmy or Alison. Spin a yarn. Tell a tale. Sometimes take a call from Irons. Or one of the snooker-club boys. Coppers and councillors with old age dribbling into their voices. Maybe talk himself into shuffling down the hall to the window that faces the city. Open it wide, lean out, and take a lungful. Search the breeze for the trace of the city. Fill himself with it, and survive another day.

  The pain in his joints comes from arthritis, they say. Bad. Near-terminal, the pain. Enough to cripple a lesser man. Enough to paralyse a horse. Enough to lay low Franco Jardine, but not to keep him down.

  His leukaemia’s still going to get him, but it’s finding him a tough opponent. He gave up on the chemotherapy after two weeks, and decided to fight it with Mackeson’s stout and Embassy cigarettes instead. A year on and it’s working. Should be dead. But he isn’t. And he isn’t planning on it any time soon.

  There’s a glow to the old man as he stands in the patch of light and listens to the car rolling over the pebbles of the driveway. A certain effervescence. An air of being more alive than he was yesterday.

  Anger? Perhaps, in the way he runs his tongue over his lips. Locks his jaw.

  The call was a surprise. Until this afternoon, Franco hadn’t heard from Leo Riley in years. Hadn’t missed the dirty bastard, neither. He’d been useful, once. They’d made a lot of money together. Wined and dined with men in expensive suits and silk ties. Sat side by side in the executive boxes at Upton Park. But it had been a long time since he’d felt a compulsion to call him up and talk about the old days.

  Franco isn’t one for whimsy. His memories are too often peppered with scenes that an old man should not have to relive, and so he maintains a distance from the faces that used to surround him. The business runs itself these days. Mostly legitimate, give or take. The snooker clubs and the fruit machines make more in a year than he could snatch from a dozen armed robberies. His doorman agency uses muscle more profitably than the protection rackets ever did. Alison does a good job running the books. The bouncers are always keen to make a little more money when muscle is required, but by and large, the name Jardine is enough to settle disputes.

  And then there’s Irons.

  He hears the car come closer and gives his teeth a more solid click as he thinks about what he’s going to have to do. He didn’t like being taken unawares. Didn’t appreciate hearing that voice, wheezing down the phone line, bringing with it a flood of buried thoughts and compacted memories. Didn’t like what he’d said, neither. Didn’t like being told that Alison had been making a nuisance of herself. Digging up things he’d told her to leave well alone.

  He waits for his daughter. He wishes he were the kind of man who could fool himself. Talk himself into another frame of mind. Convince himself he believes something when he doesn’t. But he’s single-minded. Always has been.

  Here, now, waiting for the car to pull up, Riley’s words still crackling in his ear, he knows that some of this is his own fault. He wishes Alison had listened to him, of course. That she’d been strong enough to do as she was told and forget all about Pamela. But she wasn’t. She hadn’t. Hadn’t done as she was told. She hadn’t swallowed down the pain. She’d hidden it, and let it fester.

  As the car pulls up, Franco feels the tug of old memories. Smells the wet grass and sticky champagne, the cigars and brandy, the Brut and wet wool. That night. When his eyes betrayed him and he cried in front of the lads.

  All the things you’ve done, he tells himself. So much bloodshed.

  But keeping her alive is what you’ll go to Hell for.

  There’s only one other car in the big gravelled parking area at the front of the house, and Alison has her pick of the spaces as she swings the Rover in a lazy arc, the lights sweeping across the front of the house.

  She pulls up in front of one of the conical evergreens, her mouth opening and closing as she lip-syncs to the track on the CD player. It’s a song by one of the new girlie bands, and although she’d like to punch each member of the group until their perfect, twenty-something faces resemble lasagne, she has to admit it’s a catchy tune. She glances down at her phone, hoping he’ll call back, and telling herself she doesn’t give a damn either way. He’d pushed it a bit hard. Been a little over-zealous in his choice of language. She may have to slow things down a little. She’s fond of him, but she prefers herself.

  Switching off the engine, she reaches across to the passenger seat and scoops up her folders, laptop and handbag. It’s been a hard day, doing the rounds of pubs, clubs and pool halls, signing forms, making decisions, authorizing acquisitions. There was a lot to catch up on, after the past few days. She’s been a bit slack. Let a few contracts rot and allowed some cheeky monkeys to take the piss while she’s been consumed with Adam, Grace, Pamela. Set them straight today, though. Back on an even keel. Her hands smell of money. The backs of her knees are wet with sweat. Inside her black, knee-length boots, she senses her feet are damp and swollen; black specks between her toes, like dots of old oil on deep-fried chips.

  Rolling her neck to relieve the tension in her shoulders, she steps onto the gravel and shivers into the slicing, cold air that whips across her face. She’s only wearing a white blouse and A-line skirt. She’s looking forward to a bath. A bowl of noodles and a dollop of tiramisu. Maybe phone Adam back and let him apologize. She’s been putting it off all day, not sure if he wants to speak to her.

  She approaches the house. For years she has downplayed the splendour of the property, been modest about its luxury, but under the moonlight and against the canopy of rain-lashed darkness, she knows it to be an impressive creation. Late Victorian, all high chimneys and corrugated columns, rooftop gargoyles and wrought-iron railings. Landscaped gardens, curving pebble drive. The comma-shaped lake an oily mirror, rippled by raindrops, laid flat on the neatly-trimmed grass.

  Then she sees him. Sees the small, fragile man in the too-big clothes.

  Her father.

  She fights with herself. Tells herself that she’s a grown woman. That she makes the family millions; that she’s orchestrated nearly as many broken bones and severed limbs as he has, and all in a world covered with cameras, mobile phones and computers. She’s got no reason to be afraid. She almost manages to make herself believe it.

  Giving a frown of puzzlement, she climbs the stairs to the front door, feeling an ache in her calves as she does so. She wags a finger. ‘You shouldn’t be out,’ she says. ‘It’s freezing.’

  ‘I can tek it,’ says Franco, and one half of his face twitches, like Bogart. It’s not a smile. He doesn’t suffer himself to smile unless it’s truly warranted, but she’s pleased to see that at least he isn’t scowling, snapping at himself, a dog with a tick, snarling at the pain that holds him hostage.

  ‘The doctor will have your guts for garters,’ says Alison, leaning in, brushing his cheek with her lips. She smells the gravy of his lunch, the Irish stout, the cigarettes and cod-liver oil. Loves it like Chanel.

  ‘He can bloody try,’ says Franco, and grimaces as the pain in his knees takes hold for a second, then passes, at his command.

  ‘We in?’ asks Alison, nodding at the door. ‘Or you fancy a jog?’

  ‘Don’t get funny.’

  ‘Me? Never.’

  She looks at her father and gets the sense something isn’t quite right. He’s stiffer than usual. More tightly wound. His lips are dry as brown paper.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ she asks. ‘Timmy hasn’t been playing his musi
c again, has he?’

  Franco looks at her. Hard. It’s the searching, knowing look that has flash-fried opponents and adversaries for more than half a century. He turns it on his daughter. His searchlight glare. Eyes like a serial killer, face of stone.

  ‘Dad?’

  Her voice is extinguished like a candle flame.

  And she knows. Knows, instantly, she’s been found out.

  At once, she’s a naughty schoolgirl, caught with a boy. A teenager with a can of lager in her room. She feels a quiver in her belly and a shake in her legs as she meets his gaze, tries to defy it, then fails, and looks down.

  ‘I had a call from Leo Riley this aft,’ he says, softly. ‘Hadn’t heard from him in years. Took me back a bit, it did. Had some interesting things to say.’

  She can’t find a suitable retort, so gives up. ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  Alison looks up again, trying to focus her attention on the spot between her father’s eyebrows so she doesn’t have to look him in the eye. He’s never hurt her, of course. Never done more than give her a telling-off or tell her she can do better. She knows all she’s done is upset him, but that, in itself, is enough.

  ‘Yeah,’ he says again, and his glasses amplify his grey-green eyes. ‘Very interesting.’

  The silence stretches out. The echoes of Franco’s wheezing, phlegmatic voice hang on the air like pegs on a line. For a moment, the old man stares at his daughter sternly, as though she’s only got a C in her maths test, or been told off at school for swearing. Then he gives a shake of his head that sends his glasses a little way down his nose.

  ‘You’re a bugger,’ he says, eventually, and gives the softest of laughs.

  Alison breathes out, slowly, as if filling a balloon. Rolls her eyes and gives an extravagant yawn, for no other reason than her body needs to stretch out, assert itself, prove it’s more than the hunched, scared, guilty figure it has spent the last minute portraying.