Borrowed Time

by David Mark

  Adam turns to the next photograph, moving as if in slow motion, Mally’s words crashing into and over him. He feels swirled and battered, a piece of driftwood amid thundering surf.

  He sees his father.

  Laying on the grass outside a half-finished apartment block. Jeans and work boots.

  Tussled hair and youthful smile.

  Bare chest.

  A tattoo, livid among the scattering of chest hair.

  Aces and Eights.

  Dead Man’s Hand.

  Adam feels his chest cave in. His vision turns black then red. Mally Santinello’s words become a high-pitched vibration rattling his skull.

  ‘… aye, they were the days, right enough. Couldn’t have done it without him, your old fella. Happiest times of my life, when we were on the road. He sorted me out plenty times. Once, we were down south and I got myself into such a state over this one young lassie. Real head over heels. Made an arse of myself and he really took care of me. We were a right couple of likely lads in those days. If he hadn’t loved your mum so much he could have been a real bad one, but he was never up for my sort of caper. It was always me had the van a-rocking,’ he says, with a conspiratorial leer. All boys together. ‘Was hellish what happened. When he lit that cigarette and burned himself inside out …’

  Adam feels himself sliding onto the floor. He feels drunk. Enraged and hollow. He bites into his cheek, jaw locked, sweat beading his forehead.

  Mally stands and heads for the kitchen to replenish his wine, still talking of past conquests, victories, joys.

  ‘What he said to you – I know it must have hurt. But I’m pleased you’ve took my advice. Seen past it. Moved on. A dad and a father are different things and he’s been both to you. Wish I could tell you the strings we had to pull but it all worked out. Honestly, it’s good to get this off my chest. It’s been doing me in. Pat wasn’t sure if I should get involved but after that slipper puff came knocking, well …’

  ‘Who?’ he whispers.

  ‘Fat lad. Loud shirt. Got himself done in. Had the damn cheek to put a note through my door, to ring me up and ask me about what I remembered about that shindig donkey’s years ago – like I would tell him! Shook me up though. Had to go through nearly four decades of boxes to find the right number. Sent him away with a flea in his ear, then made a call to the old man, warning him he’d be on his way. Didn’t work out too well for him, the daft sod. What did he think was going to happen? You don’t turn up at a warehouse run by the Jardines and start asking questions – least of all when the old man’s sent his own flesh and blood to sort the problem out. Made a statement, so I heard. Did him over just like his grandad used to do. Honestly, this is doing me good. If I’d known you were so staunch – if I’d known you could understand how the game is played – I could have been putting help and info your way for years …’

  Adam slithers to his feet. He can feel his blood. Feels it moving around him.

  He stumbles for the door – Santinello’s voice drifting into silence as he hears the thumping of his pulse.

  Only one destination on his mind.

  FIFTY-ONE

  2.29 p.m.

  Mally Santinello opens the fridge door, and removes the bottle of home-made red. He’s feeling good. Loves spinning a yarn and remembering better days. The boy seems impressed, too.

  He removes the cork and breathes deep. Sweet and fragrant. Blackcurrants and vanilla. A hint of elderberries. Something else, perhaps. Autumnal. Earthy. Like mud on the knees of your best trousers.

  He frowns, puzzled by the new aroma.

  Begins to turn …

  A ligature fastens at his throat and he gasps as his airway is cut off, and he is pulled onto his tiptoes.

  He tries to say, ‘Adam?’

  The sound is a strangled gasp.

  Irons slams the old man’s face into the fridge and hears the cartilage in his nose break. The body in his arms goes limp.

  Irons doesn’t worry about the evidence he is leaving. He doesn’t care. He is learning how it feels to be angry. To act in rage. To take a life for the pleasure of it. He has her with him, now. Can feel his heart beating. Can feel her, in his blood, at his side. Pamela. She would never have asked him to be avenged, but he has no other gift to give.

  He drops the body on the kitchen floor and reaches for the golden urn that he has placed upon the work surface. He cradles it like a child, and looks down at the man on the floor.

  The Wop, Franco had called him. The man who helped build the shittiest bits of a shitty city, grew rich, then scuttled away with his dick wet and his hands red.

  He looks at the face, but even through the blood, sees little of Adam about him. None of the similarities that so tore into Franco on Christmas day.

  He frowns, trying to slow his heart, calm the burning in the blood. Looks at the urn. Its smooth surface. Its precision and tranquillity. Pictures the treasure it contains, and rubs a hand across his ruined face, then down to his scarred chest.

  He kicks Mally in the ribs, but not too hard. Tries again, but the old boy doesn’t stir. He fills a glass of water and splashes it on his face. Mally gulps and coughs into life.

  ‘You raped her,’ says Irons, softly. ‘The girl at the party. You took a shine to her when you were tarting up the hotel, and you took her, and you raped her.’

  ‘What?’ splutters Mally. All of his nightmares fuse into one shape. His mind fills with images of a Southampton scrubber, on her knees at the back of the pub, his hands in her hair, gripping too hard. Her tears hitting the pavement. She was one of many, but he never liked them too young. Not like his pal. Not like his mate, who loved to scare them first – to wear the mask his daddy brought home from the war. ‘Please! They wanted it …’

  ‘She was a child.’

  ‘She was old enough!’ he screams, and tastes his own blood.

  ‘She was an angel. You tore her apart.’

  ‘Who? Which one …’

  Irons kicks him again. ‘Pamela. Pamela Garner.’

  ‘No … no, look, I’ve done right by you all, haven’t I? Got the boy a good home? Never done you any trouble. Never said a word when that ponce detective came asking questions and hinting he knew more than he did. I’ve done right by the lass – and her boy. Kept him on the straight and …!’

  He never finishes his sentence. The urn comes down on his skull. He falls into unconsciousness by the third blow.

  There is little of his face left by the time Irons cuts it off and stamps on it.

  Irons takes his time over his work. There is no sound, save for Irons’s occasional mutterings. Anybody watching would hear him cooing to the dented urn. They would see a man content, at peace.

  Putting the world right. Putting things in order. He’s done most of what he wanted to. Even sent a few quid to Larry Paris’s widow by way of apology and reported Jon Goodwin to Professional Standards. He’s never liked bent cops.

  He’s nearly finished. Nearly ready to say goodbye.

  He’s doing right by the only person who ever really mattered.

  Truly, truly blissful in his ignorance.

  FIFTY-TWO

  The Laburnums Care Home, Holybourne, Hampshire

  January 19th, 4.33 p.m.

  Adam stands above his father’s bed and looks at him through tear-streaked eyes. Billy is staring back up at him, confused but half-smiling; eager to please but oblivious to the identity of his visitor.

  Adam considers the thing in the bed. Considers what it is to be a monster. To be inhuman. To commit acts so terrible as to render the doer somehow alien; somehow apart.

  Adam sniffs back snot. Sweat is prickling him beneath his clothes. His chest is heaving, head running with perspiration. He is grinding his teeth as if to powder.

  He has tried to find his anger on the journey here. Tried to turn the key in the lock of his rage, but it will not come. He feels just a numbing disgust. An unfathomable guilt; that a man he knows so well, could have once been responsib
le for such savagery.

  He tries to picture it, but the image distorts. His father, a young man, with a face like his own, rutting in the back of a van. A girl, naked and crying. Her face: Selena, Tilly, Zara, Alison, Grace, Pamela, Pamela, Pamela …

  Gripping the foot of the bed, he sways, vomit rising; his face a medley of jaundice-yellows and slate-greys.

  So many questions.

  How many?

  How many more?

  Why?

  Dad, why?

  He knows, as he looks upon the old man, fragile as a spider’s web, breathing as if through sand, that he will not kill him. Knows it is not in him. He will not squeeze the drip. Will not smother him with a pillow. Will not pull the knife from the plate of untouched dinner on the bedside table and cut out Billy’s heart.

  Nor will he love him. Will not tell Tilly her granddad was a great man, full of jokes and strength and silliness. Will not hold the sadist’s hand as he dies, soon, in a room stinking of his own piss. Will not ease his passage into death with words of comfort about his contributions in life.

  Adam feels simply broken. All his life, he has believed the man who raised him was his father. Then it was taken away. The knowledge has been handed back with a force he can only liken to the agony that bore into the little girl who once carried him in her belly.

  Adam wonders if there is any life to be lived after this. How he should react around those who love him. If he should turn icy eyes upon his mother. Tell Grace. Tell Alison. Tell him.

  Irons.

  He considers the giant, scarred brute. Decades spent in prison in Pamela’s memory. Living to be her work of art. Prolonging his life, so she can live on. Thinks of Alison. Jardine, in his cold, empty castle. Dozzle, beneath the ground. Riley, his name destroyed. Ace, never without fear. Pamela, dust in an urn, beneath a tribute painted in blood.

  And he pictures the people he loved before this began. People untouched by any of this. Pure and good and normal and burdensome and outlined in light against the blackness of his mind. Somehow glorious and golden amid the things he has seen and unearthed.

  And suddenly, he needs warm skin upon his. Needs Grace’s hand in his palm. Zara’s lips on his forehead. Tilly hugged tight to his chest. He wants no more of this. No more ugliness. No more death or violence or secrets daubed on crude surfaces in blood and brains.

  He looks at his father, his eyes closing again. Six stone of bewildered, withered, emaciated insect.

  Can think of no gesture to make. No sneer. No nod. No hand upon the bedclothes nor a muted goodbye.

  He hears Tilly’s laughter. Sees Grace’s smile. Traces Zara’s portrait in his mind.

  Walks from the room, into the light.

  Pushes open the doors, and sees him. Ratty and pale-faced and grinning like a corpse.

  Timmy Jardine.

  Doesn’t register the sound of the gunshot until his head hits the floor.

  Then he is patting at his chest, his guts, his head, his thoughts a dizzying carousel of gaudy colours: desperately looking for the hole in himself, his face dripping with warm, wet blood.

  He scrambles back. Looks down at his feet. Timmy: a furrow from the back of his head all the way through to the front. He’s still got his cap on.

  Adam stares towards the road.

  Irons puts the gun beneath his own chin.

  ‘No … no!’

  Irons gives a nod; polite and businesslike.

  Closes his eyes.

  Pulls the trigger.

  Adam watches the old man crumple like a pack of cards. Sees the top of his head come off as if an explosion has taken place within his skull.

  Adam reaches down and picks up the gun.

  Turns his back on the damply steaming bodies.

  Walks back through the doors.

  Thinks: Dad.

  He will never know whether what comes next is an act of mercy or revenge.