The Man Who Sold His Son (Lanarkshire Strays)
Page 16
Rob had radioed ahead to the ship, arranging for a quarantine room to be set up for the group, and to warn the crew to keep a distance after winching Alex up on deck. Sarah didn’t care. She had no doubt whatsoever, despite Gayle’s warnings, that her husband would pull through and give the world a gift. The gift of being free of reproductive constraints imposed by a monster who placed his desire for money and status above the freedom of his very species to fulfil their most basic human right.
For all that she believed being free of Ennis’s virus would truly be a blessing for everyone affected, that blessing paled in comparison to the gift that travelled with her in the Zodiac. She was giving her son his father back.
Sarah watched the sun wobble up over the East China Sea and took her husband’s thin hand, giving it a gentle squeeze. The lack of strength in the hand as it squeezed back should have worried her, but instead it brought hot tears of absolute joy to her heart.
END
Epilogue 1
Two years later…
Alex sat at the foot of a low-based statue of bearded and mustachioed, long-haired warriors – something to do with Charlemagne – and looked up at Notre Dame’s round window. His legs appreciated the rest. After two years of recovery, they still didn’t feel quite like they should, but considering the alternative, he was grateful for the strength they had left.
“Right, shift yer arse along a bit.”
Alex looked up to see his granda smiling down at him.
“My legs are worse than yours, son. Move up.”
Alex shifted his backside along the plinth to allow his grandfather space. The old man kissed him on the crown of his head as he descended and ruffled his blond hair, exactly the way he had when Alex had been a child. He loved the gesture.
“All right, Granda?”
“Aye,” Tom puffed as he sat. He nodded out at the cathedral. “Some view, isn’t it.”
Alex nodded and felt a twinge in his upper back. He rotated his shoulder blades around to ease it.
Tom gave a little laugh. “Just had a wee flashback there of sitting in this very spot, years ago. God it must be more than sixty years ago now that I think about it.”
“That right?” Alex asked.
“Aye. It was my first time in Paris, and I was in a bad way. Your gran had dumped me.”
Alex laughed. It was odd to think of his grandfather as a young man, even more odd to imagine the rock of a man ever being upset about anything.
Tom jabbed a thumb over his shoulder at the horseman of the statue. “Would’ve fought that big bastard that day, son.” He laughed.
“What time is it?” Alex asked.
“Three,” Tom said, lighting a cigarette. “What time is she on at?”
“Four o’clock. Best get home.”
Both men groaned as their knees complained upon rising. They took each other’s arm and headed for home.
“Just there, Tommy,” Sarah instructed her son. She’d asked him to shift the sofas around for her in the living room. The press conference would start soon and Sarah wanted everyone placed just right.
Her Comm-Unit chimed from the mantel. Waving her hand over the device, Sarah made a throwing gesture, sending the call to the main Holo-Screen. Robert’s image appeared.
“Hiya, Uncle Robert,” Tommy called.
“Awright, son? Christ you’re getting big,” he boomed back. “You all ready?”
Young Tommy nodded. Sarah joined him sitting on the sofa.
“Hi, Robert. How’s things?”
Rob’s image shrugged, “Good. She’s ready, that’s the main thing. Where’s those other two eejits you live with?”
“God knows, Rob. They’ll be here though, they were well warned.”
“Right, I’m gonnae sign off. Speak to you afterwards, okay, darlin’?”
“See you then, bye, Rob.”
As Rob’s image disappeared, the front door of their apartment banged and Tom and Alex walked in. Taking a seat, Tom kissed young Tommy on his crown.
“Granda…” he complained.
“Shut yer face, you. You’re not too big to kiss your great-grandfather.”
Alex sat at the other side of Tommy and repeated the gesture.
“Sake! I just sorted my hair, Dad.”
The older men exchanged a glance, grinning at each other.
Sarah sat beside Alex and slid her hand into his.
“Here it is,” she said to nobody in particular.
The family watched as the Holo-cams focused onto the face of a middle-aged man. A high-ranking politician, with a reputation for plain-speaking and integrity, he was also known for going against his party at times in the World Government. Desmond McAnulty spoke with sincerity and commanded the respect and the attention of the world media. He approached the bank of microphones, a grim look on his normally jovial face.
“I’ve called you here to this press conference today to bring something very serious and very troubling to your attention, and to the attention of those people watching at home.”
McAnulty paused for effect, drilling his eyes into the camera.
“Many of you know the person I’m about to introduce. Most of you believe that she died in a serious fire some years ago, whilst working in a private facility. You’ll recall that it was all over the news… for a few days.”
He glared accusingly at the assembled media, before throwing his arm to the side, in a welcoming gesture.
“Please welcome Professor Gayle Robertson. You will not like what she has to say.”
McAnulty strode gruffly off the stage, leaving Gayle standing at the microphones.
She looked dignified, she looked calm and she looked happy. She’d waited two years for this moment. Two years of research, cloning Alex’s antibodies, developing functioning vaccines. She was ready. Her team had stockpiled a dose for every single human on the planet. She stepped forward half a pace and smiled.
“I’m here to tell you how the whole world has been held hostage to one man’s greed. How we were convinced by a very clever, very manipulative man that we are so much less than we are. That ends now, today. I’ll begin by telling you the story of a very brave little boy with a coward for a father.”
Epilogue 2
Sitting on his leather sofa made from bull’s hide leather, not cow’s – cow’s hide has stretch marks which ruins the leather – Gavin Ennis lets his scotch glass fall from his hand onto his thick carpet. He can’t process what he’s just witnessed. Words from the conference ping around his skull: oppression, crime, cure, con-man, bastard.
Silently he rises. Dressed in underwear only, he walks calmly, dazed, to the balcony and takes the coward’s express to the pavement below. An impressive Jackson Pollock-esque splat attests to his cowardice.
End
Also by Mark Wilson:
Bobby’s Boy (Lanarkshire Strays)
Naebody’s Hero (Lanarkshire Strays)
Head Boyd (Lanarkshire Strays)
Paddy’s Daddy
dEaDINBURGH (YA)
The Lanarkshire Strays Series (Omnibus)
Dedication
For Dad and for Patrick
“A father is a man who expects his son to be as good a man as he meant to be.” - Frank A. Clark
Acknowledgements
I’d like to thank the following people for their support in writing this novel:
Thanks to my regular test-readers, Gayle Karabelen and Jayne Doherty. Love you for the time you spend reading and for never saying no.
Thanks to Gayle also for letting me pinch her name and forcing me to bring back Tom Kinsella who I’d originally killed off.
“Even if he’s pishing himself in a nursin’ hame, it’s better than being deid.” You were right there.
Thanks also to Victoria McEwan, Jo Meneceur and Tracy Lynch-Stewart for giving their time to beta-reading.
Steph Dagg for her editing of the book. I can’t imagine publishing a novel without Steph. She’s the bestest.
A special mention for my hometown of Bellshill, always a great place to set a book.
A huge thank you, as always, to my wife Natalie Wilson for her unwavering encouragement and support. Twenty years have only made me love you more in their passing.
Author’s Note
The book you’ve just read, thanks for that by the way, was by far the most difficult novel I’ve written to date. I began with a very different story in mind, one in which Alex is duped by his wife who sells their child to Ennis to be his guinea pig.
I hated where that particular story took everyone, especially Sarah. I wanted her to be redeemed, to show that people can come back from addiction and from mental illness. I wanted my novel’s heroics to be performed by two women – they are the real heroes of the novel – and by two old guys. I wanted my book to be better, so I binned thousands of words and rewrote. Then I had problem after problem. More new pathways opened and then closed. Finally I found the character’s correct path and sailed through thirty thousand words in a week.
With the effort I put into this book, I’ve no idea if that gruelling work makes this novel my best, or my worst… Maybe neither. What I do know is that I’m glad to see the back of it.
Thank you for reading my book.
Please consider visiting Amazon UK, Amazon.US or Goodreads and leaving a review.
You may also enjoy:
Paul Carter is a Dead Man
by Ryan Bracha
"Bracha has established himself as one of the very best British authors, Indie or otherwise, with this wonderfully nasty, intelligent and exciting novel." - Mark Wilson, author of Head Boy and dEaDINBURGH
"True to form, Bracha projects scenery and characters in the back of your brain that play out like a brilliantly directed movie. Then he smacks you in the frontal lobes with his dark wit and wry humour. Paul Carter is legendary in a future Britain that makes Big Brother look like a bitch." - Craig Furchtenicht, author of Dimebag Bandits
In 2009 a bomb exploded, killing over 400 British citizens, including three generations of heir to the throne. Religious extremists took responsibility and the country went into meltdown. The British government was overthrown, and its troops withdrawn from overseas. The one-time empire closed its doors to the rest of the world. Law enforcement as it was no longer existed. The power was returned to the British people, and criminals were placed in online public courts for twenty four hours, to be judged.
The sentence for murder, death.
The sentence for anti-British behaviour, death.
The sentence for swearing, death.
In 2014 Paul Carter kills a man, and is now on the run. The thing is, Paul is smart. He's had enough of the new regime, and he's not the only one. He finds himself as an accidental revolutionary, and the voice of the disillusioned masses. He must learn to embrace the responsibility that has been thrust into his lap, and kick hard against a system which has failed everybody.
Paul Carter is a Dead Man is a horrifying glimpse into the future from the Amazon best-selling author of Strangers Are Just Friends You Haven't Killed Yet and is set to be the first book of the Dead Man trilogy.
Available now on Amazon, UK and Amazon, US
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to real persons, alive or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
First Kindle Edition, 2014
Text Copyright©2014 Mark Wilson
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express permission of Mark Wilson and Paddy’s Daddy Publishing
Published by Paddy’s Daddy Publishing.
www.facebook.com/markwilsonbooks
www.markwilsonbooks.com
http://www.deadinburghbooks.com/
Follow on Twitter: @markwilsonbooks
Cover design by Mark Wilson
Edited by Stephanie Dagg