Beyond the Rage

by Michael J Malone

  ‘What are you talking about?’ asked Colin, and Kenny could tell he had something.

  ‘You fell for my mum. Except she was in love with my dad and you got Vi by default.’

  ‘Rubbish,’ said Colin. ‘Total rubbish.’ His expression was dark and twisted.

  ‘That’s why you’ve been a complete tosser to your wife all these years...’

  ‘Fucking nonsense.’ Colin stood up.

  ‘That’s why you couldn’t bear the sight of me,’ Kenny stood up. The two men stood face to face. His uncle trembled with the force of his anger.

  ‘And that’s why you’ve got it in for me,’ said Kenny, aware that a he was spraying saliva as he spoke.

  ‘I’ve had enough of this.’ Colin turned and walked out of the room.

  ‘Come back here,’ Kenny raised his voice. Every head in the room turned to see what was going on. Kenny followed his uncle out of the cafeteria and caught up with him outside. He raced ahead of him and barred his path.

  ‘What aren’t you telling me, Uncle?’ Kenny demanded.

  ‘There you go again, Kenny,’ said Colin, refusing to bow under Kenny’s anger. ‘Thinking you know everything.’ His smile was one of triumph. ‘You know nothing. You can only guess at the truth.’

  ‘I know this much.’ Kenny allowed free rein to his imagination and threw a wildcard into the conversation. ‘My mother didn’t commit suicide. She was murdered and maybe you had a hand in staging it to look like she had.’

  Colin slapped him. Hard. Kenny’s ears rang with it.

  ‘Whatever hole you crawled out of, away you go back into it,’ said Colin.

  ‘Hoy!’ A passing male nurse stopped and challenged them. ‘What the hell’s going on here?’

  ‘Nothing, mate,’ Kenny rubbed at his face. ‘A family misunderstanding.’

  ‘Family, my arse,’ said Colin. ‘The day my wife brought you into my home was the worst day of my life.’ He spat on the ground. ‘Now, I’m off to spend time with my sick wife. You’re no longer welcome.’ His expression was carved from rock. ‘Just like your father. Thieves and whores. That’s all you’re good for.’

  28

  He knew where his aunt and uncle kept a spare key to their front door. His Uncle Colin was a sucker for those wee shopping magazines that fell out of every Sunday newspaper. The ones that most people threw in the trash. He was always buying stuff from them and one particular item was a false rock with a secret compartment large enough for a key that would sit on the back step.

  Kenny bent down to pick the rock up and when he straightened up his head spun. He breathed deep, blinked hard. Fuck. Still with the concussion. He should really be tucked up in bed but he couldn’t allow himself any rest. He had no idea how long Colin would remain at the hospital.

  Nor had he any idea what he was looking for, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that his uncle knew more than he was letting on.

  Once inside he paused in the hallway. The house really hadn’t changed much since that day his aunt brought him back from the children’s home. He looked to the left and the door into the living room. He could remember his uncle standing there that day as if barring him from entering the room. A look on his face that could sour wine. Oh, he’d put on an act for his wife, but Kenny was a good reader of people and he knew from the first false ‘Welcome home, kiddo’ that his uncle would rather he find a bus to run under.

  The colours used in the decor hadn’t changed much either. Magnolia paint over woodchip. The cheap bastard. Here and there his aunt had dressed it up with a female touch, but was clearly hampered by her husband’s control over the family purse.

  He quickly reviewed what he knew of the house. If his uncle was going to hide something of value only to him, where would he put it? The rooms everyone used could be discounted. The only places he and Ian hadn’t been allowed to roam as boys were the master bedroom, the loft and the garden shed.

  The master bedroom could also be ruled out. The old fucker wasn’t daft enough to hide stuff where his wife might find it. Which left the loft and the shed as likely possibilities. He walked to the kitchen and looked in the drawers near the back door, found the back door key and a longer key that could only be for something like a shed.

  Walking down the neat path, past the carefully planted borders he was aware of someone’s eyes on him. He turned and looked into the windows of the neighbours. Shit. He’d been spotted. It was old Kate Ford next door, one hand pulling back the net curtain with the other offering a wave. She paused in her wave and made a sign for him to wait.

  Seconds later she was out of the door and hobbling on arthritic legs to a position just over the waist-high fence from him. She didn’t move as fast or as much as she used to, but her need for information would have propelled her into place even if she were to use her very last charge of energy.

  ‘Kenny, son,’ she breathed, one hand gripping her cardigan closed over her chest. ‘How’s your auntie?’

  ‘She’s in a bad way, Mrs Ford.’

  ‘It’s terrible, son, just terrible.’ As she spoke her expression was six parts sympathy and six parts excitement. She had something to talk about. Something she could be an authority on for the rest of the neighbourhood gossips. ‘Just terrible. One minute happy as Larry, the next you’re paralysed and in the hospital.’

  ‘She’s in the best place though, eh?’ Kenny mentally shook himself for making the conversation last one second longer than it needed to. What he really wanted to say to the old biddy was, Fuck off back into your hovel. Instead he fixed his smile in place and played the role of concerned relative.

  ‘How’s your Uncle Colin?’

  ‘He’s not taken it so well,’ Kenny replied while wondering how he was going to explain why he was going in to the garden shed.

  ‘And how are you, son?’ she asked. Her tone suggested this was more than a polite enquiry. ‘Haven’t seen you round here for ages. Then it’s twice in the one week…’ A carefully judged pause that she expected him to fill.

  ‘Oh,’ he said, putting a hand to his head. ‘A wee spot of rain.’ He looked up to the sky and the light covering of cloud, hoping he could convince the old woman against all the evidence. ‘Think we’re in for a downpour.’

  ‘You think, son?’ Mrs Ford scanned the sky, looking more worried about the possibility of rain than she had about the health of her neighbour. ‘I’d better be getting back in. It’s my lumbago.’ She turned and evidenced even more speed than when she arrived at the fence she returned to her house. And her vigil by the window.

  Inside the shed Kenny was faced with the usual array of garden implements and a few more besides: a lawnmower with a bright orange lid, electric hedge-trimmer, shovel, weeding tools, bags of compost and stacks of pots. Everything was neatly in place with barely a speck of dirt. If the garden hadn’t looked so well maintained, he’d have thought that these tools were never used.

  He looked up at the higher shelves and spotted a couple of tins. He pulled them down one by one, but they contained nothing but nails and screws and screwdrivers. There was nothing here that suggested evidence of a dodgy past.

  He left the shed and locked it. As he walked down the garden and towards the back door he saw Mrs Ford at her window. She was scanning the sky for evidence of rain. Kenny gave her a cheeky wave. Back in the kitchen he put everything exactly where it had been. There was no real need for such subterfuge because as sure as Mrs Ford got her blue rinse every fourth pension day, when she saw Uncle Colin return she’d be over to tell him that Kenny had been here, as fast as her arthritic wee legs could carry her.

  Next stop, the loft.

  Standing in the upstairs landing he stretched up with his left hand and touched the ceiling. All it needed was a wee jump and a push and he could open the hatch.

  He and Ian had been barred from entry as teenagers. Which of course meant
that as soon as Uncle Colin was out of the house they would be clambering inside for a rummage.

  Kenny jumped and with both hands pushed at the attic’s hatch. This was enough to dislodge it and give him room. His next tactic was to jump and grab hold of the rim. From there it was an easy pull for a man of his strength to get his chest up through the space and from there a lean forward, a twist and he could sit on the ledge. His vision melted, his stomach churned. He paused to allow his breathing to return to normal. This head injury was having more effect that he thought it might. Normally he would be completely unaffected by such a manoeuvre.

  He knew there was a cord just by his right hand to switch on a bare lightbulb, but he didn’t need it. There was enough daylight coming in from the two small windows positioned either side of the eaves. He turned his head left and right and viewed the narrow space. It was just as he remembered: full of old toys, clothes and books. The hoardings of a couple who believed everything could be recycled within the extended family and then never bothered to do it.

  He pulled his legs under him and stood. He sneezed and banged his head. He groaned. Just what he needed, more brain damage. He crouched and waited for his eyes to adjust to the gloom.

  The air was dry, full of dust and smelled of things left untouched for decades. Three suitcases sat just ahead of him. He snapped open the locks of the top one and recoiled at the sudden noise. Inside was a neat collection of knitted children’s clothes. In the weak light he could see that they were mainly blue or cream. They’d have been Ian’s then.

  He worked his way carefully through each of the suitcases. More clothing. Nothing of interest. Next was a parade of boxes, all of them would have been brightly coloured at one point and advertising the wares within. One read Kellogs, another Tetley. They were closed with brown tape. He picked the Kellogs box and carefully peeled back the tape to reveal a pile of comics. There were copies of Victor and Roy of the Rovers. The Beano and The Dandy. Could be worth a few pounds, Kenny thought, if his uncle could be bothered to get off his fat arse and sell them.

  He held one up to his face and smelled the paper. He smiled. Memories of rainy Sundays. He and Ian on their bunk beds, shouting out story lines, wondering if the writers of the comics knew any other German than Achtung or Mein Gott in Himmel.

  He closed the boxes up with care. This was no time to be sentimental. He needed to find evidence of his uncle’s duplicity, not hop down the tracks of memory lane.

  Working his way down the loft and back up the other side he found more of the same; clothes, toys, books. He was replacing one large box when he spotted the edge of something sticking out from under a thick layer of loft insulation. He pulled out a small wooden box. The outside surfaces displayed the black and white checked board of a chess set. He turned the box every which way and could see that it was hinged. He remembered having one of these as a kid. Inside his box each half held a piece of foam with two rows of holes, each just big enough to take a piece of the set.

  Blowing some dust from the surface, he opened it up. A piece of paper fell out. No, not a piece of paper: a photograph. He picked up the photo and with more care opened the box wide. It held a number of photographs. Checking his feet he walked closer to the skylight. The photos were bleached of most of their colour in the gloom, but he could clearly make out the people in them.

  Ian in his pram. Ian in his baby-walker. Ian kicking his first football. Kenny felt an old envy return. His aunt and uncle doted on their son and despite Vi’s best intentions and the gentle nature of her son, Kenny often felt excluded.

  There were some adults in the photos as well. His Aunt Vi looking glamourous in some Seventies gear. Kenny nodded in appreciation. She was a good-looking woman. Then he spotted one where she was with another woman. Kenny looked closer. This woman could have been Vi’s twin. Her beauty shone through the aged and dull quality of the photograph. His mother.

  He swallowed with the missing of her. Her lack, a squeeze of his heart, a tightness in his throat. If only. How might his life have been different if she had survived? If his father had stayed around. He closed his eyes against the emotion and damped it down. What was the use of crying over the loss now? He’d cried enough for two people those first few weeks in the orphanage.

  Looking at the photo again, he searched her face as if it might offer up a clue. Did you really kill yourself, or were you ‘helped’ to do so? He didn’t remember her being this attractive. She was his mother; he was a just a boy and you don’t look at your mum in that way, except through the eyes of others.

  He turned the photo over, looking for a date. Nothing. He contemplated keeping it. Would Colin even notice? The fact that the box wore a heavy layer of dust suggested it had been a while since anyone had been here.

  There were some more photographs under that one. He plucked at one and held it up to the light. This one had a chunk torn off it. To be accurate a section had been torn off each side of the photo. Kenny could see it had once been of two couples standing side by side, but one half of each couple had been removed leaving two people standing there. His mum and his Uncle Colin.

  Kenny could guess who had been torn away. The person who’d vandalised the scene hadn’t been too careful. Down the length of Colin’s thigh a dress jutted out; a dress he recognised from another photo as worn by his Aunt Vi.

  The tear left his mum slightly apart from his Uncle Colin but the illusion might have been enough to satisfy the imaginings of a spurned lover. However, in his workings of the scene there was one other thing that Colin could not have erased. An arm and a hand was draped over his mum’s shoulder. The hand that curved round the shape of her shoulder, pulling her close, wore a large ring. A ring that Kenny remembered very well. Anybody that hurts me and mine, Kenny could hear him say while he jokingly brandished a fist in his face, gets this. It was a large, gold sovereign ring. His dad called it his knuckle-duster.

  29

  Kenny replaced everything carefully as it had been. Except for the photo. He pocketed that. Then he walked over to the exit, sat on the edge of the hatch, took one look around and then swung himself out and down onto the landing below.

  Once safely on the ground, he pulled a chair from Ian’s old bedroom, positioned it below the hatch, stood on it and stretched up so that he could close the lid properly. Then he reconsidered. Uncle Colin was under a great degree of stress at the moment. People make mistakes when they are stressed. So he reached up and knocked the lid slightly out of place. When he returned from the hospital Colin was bound to notice that someone had been up here. Mrs Ford was bound to tell him that Kenny had stopped by. He’d put it all together and spell out trouble.

  All in all a good day’s work, Kenny thought, wiping the dust from his hands on the back of his jeans.

  In the car, Kenny reached for his phone. No messages. Without thinking, he dialled Alexis. No answer. Something about that whole situation was troubling him and he couldn’t think what. Why did she seek him out and then ignore him? Unless she had no way now of contacting him.

  Then there was Diana. An old woman gets shot and doesn’t get admitted to hospital. Strange.

  But then perhaps not. The shooter had tracked them down to Sanquhar; he’d easily find them in a hospital and finish the job. Perhaps Alexis could have doubled back and with all of the different contacts she has, found someone to take care of Diana without raising suspicion.

  Which raised another question. How had the shooter tracked them down to Sanquhar? Kenny shrugged. Probably with ease. None of them had training in subterfuge. A different model of car and staying well back from Kenny on his drive down the M74 and he wouldn’t have had much difficulty.

  This was doing his head in. He couldn’t think straight. He pulled the photo out from his pocket and studied it some more. A detail he had missed in his earlier viewing now presented itself. Colin was standing fairly close to his mum. His right hand was missing, pres
umably it was across Vi’s back. His mum wasn’t standing quite close enough to Colin to allow symmetry in the pose. Nonetheless, he still had reached over with his left hand to hold Kenny’s mother’s elbow.

  She was standing facing whoever was taking the photo, but with her weight against the man who’d been removed. Her chin was down, tucked into her scarf and her eyes looked as if they’d been trailing up from the hand at her elbow. As if she hadn’t wanted to be so obvious as to shrug her arm out of his grip, but still managed to get off a warning glance.

  A glance that said, Leave me alone.

  What had he here: proof? But proof of what? Colin was in this up to his skinny neck and Kenny had to find out how.

  His cousin, Ian. Would he know anything? Nah. Kenny dismissed that question instantly. Ian was clueless. In his own wee world most of the time. Feckless on weed.

  He thumbed out a text to him.

  Been to see Vi. She’s in best place. Keep your pecker up, dude.

  Kenny put the phone in his breast pocket and drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. What now?

  Alexis had disappeared. Would she be daft enough to come back to Glasgow? Had she taken on the threats and come back to Mr Bigshot with an apology and a willingness to work off her debt once again?

  He wouldn’t expect so but nothing about that situation would surprise him. Whatever was going on with her, she needed to know that he was there for her. He clicked out another text.

  Call me. Let me know if u r ok.

  He fired up the engine and drove off. Minutes later he was on the Clydeside Expressway and almost home. Perchance to sleep.

  Once inside he checked his emails. Nothing. He checked the news channels. Still no news of an old lady being shot.

  Leaning back into the cushion of his sofa he struggled to keep his eyes open. Everything was frustrating him. He couldn’t find Alexis and he was nowhere nearer finding his father.

  His uncle’s voice sounded in his mind just as he was drifting off.