Promises of Blood

by David Thorne

  ‘Doctor I spoke to,’ he says, ‘told me Rafiq’d been stabbed so many times they gave up counting. Said they couldn’t get blood into him fast enough, it was coming out quicker than it was going in. Made a hole this big,’ he makes a circle with his thumb and index finger, ‘got through forty litres of it.’ Doolan sits back, nods his head at Akram. ‘How many litres of blood’s your average Kurdish scumbag got?’

  ‘Six?’

  ‘So, take the positives, that’s all new blood he’s walking around with. English blood. Might change him, stop him being a thieving wanker.’ Doolan rubs his chin. ‘I say thieving wanker. Turns out this one’s a straight-A student, a credit to his family, on his way to university. If he ever wakes up.’

  Gabe shifts in his chair and before I can stop him he says, ‘I didn’t stab anyone.’

  ‘Gabe,’ I say.

  ‘And you,’ he continues, pointing a finger at Doolan, ‘are a fucking liar.’

  Doolan smiles. ‘Go on.’

  I put my hand on Gabe’s wrist, squeeze hard, watch the veins stand out on the back of his hand. He is furious, outraged by these men’s casual disdain, their air of untouchable authority. I imagine that the army is more rigorous, that its rules are, on the whole, better defined and adhered to. But this is not the army, this is the police, and in my experience the rules they are governed by owe as much to the jungle as they do to the law. Gabe needs to stop talking, and fast.

  ‘You’ve got that on camera? The stabbing?’

  Doolan shakes his head. ‘What we have got is this young man, Rafiq, getting up off the floor and going after your client. Minutes later he’s leaking blood all over the street. Doesn’t take a genius to put it together.’

  ‘You’re going to need to do better than that,’ I say.

  ‘And we will,’ says Doolan. He says this with a confidence which makes it seem like a preordained event.

  ‘My client would like some time out,’ I say. I feel Gabe tense next to me and I squeeze harder, feel his bones shift together under my hand.

  Doolan raises an eyebrow, amused. He looks over my shoulder at Akram but I do not follow his gaze, keep my eyes steady on the fat detective.

  ‘It wasn’t a request,’ I say. ‘We’re done for now.’

  Again Doolan seems momentarily unsure, unused to being spoken to in this way. Then he stands up abruptly, says, ‘Interview terminated,’ stops the machine. He looks down at me, tries to use his bulk to intimidate.

  ‘Your client’s going down,’ he says. ‘That much I fucking guarantee you.’

  He nods at Akram and they leave us, close the door behind them; and for a moment in the silence left behind it feels as if we are both prisoners in this room.

  ‘You didn’t stab him,’ I say to Gabe. It is not a question. Gabe laughs briefly but not with any humour.

  ‘Where’d I get a knife from?’ he says. ‘Think I go down the pub carrying weapons?’

  ‘You know the guy who attacked you?’

  ‘Never seen him before. He was just a kid.’

  ‘Tell me what happened.’

  ‘I’m walking down the street, he crosses the road. Like he wants something from me, wants to ask me something. Next thing, he’s taking a shot.’

  ‘He ask you for anything? Money?’

  ‘Nothing. Just walked up and, bang.’ He sighs.

  ‘What’d you do?’

  Gabe looks at me as if the question I have asked is beneath his contempt. ‘I subdued him.’

  ‘Just that?’

  ‘He was a kid,’ says Gabe. ‘Of course just that.’

  ‘And that was that?’

  Gabe doesn’t answer, sits in silence for some moments. It is very quiet in the interview room, and warm, too warm.

  ‘This isn’t right,’ he says.

  I nod. ‘Just… Gabe? Don’t say anything. Don’t react. They’re trying to wind you up. Get a rise.’

  ‘Can they keep me?’

  ‘They’ve got nothing,’ I say. ‘You on camera defending yourself. No stabbing, no witnesses, no weapon. Nothing.’

  But we do not have time to talk any further. The door to the interview room opens and Doolan and Akram walk back in with a barely contained excitement, as if they have just heard a piece of gossip they cannot wait to share. Akram is holding a clear plastic bag and in it is a kitchen knife, the kind used for carving meat. Doolan walks straight over to the tape machine, says, ‘Interview recommenced at fourteen oh seven.’

  ‘Detective Inspector,’ I begin, but Akram throws the bag on the table, and before I can say anything more, Doolan says:

  ‘Mr Gabriel McBride, we are formally charging you with the attempted murder of Rafiq Jahani.’

  Doolan tells us that the knife was found in Gabe’s waste bin, outside his house, that it has Rafiq Jahani’s blood on it. I ask them how they can be sure it is his blood, but ultimately I know the answer to that one: they know, because they put it there.

  There is no way that they could have found Gabe’s identity so soon from the CCTV footage alone. No way they could have found that knife so quickly. No way they could have found it in Gabe’s bin, as I do not believe for a second that Gabe stabbed anybody. I do not understand what is happening, but this is not right.

  There is little I can do; there is no way that Doolan and Akram are going to release Gabe until I can get before a judge and argue his case, ask how they found the weapon so quickly, whether it was obtained legally. Akram puts his hand under Gabe’s armpit to lift him and I see Gabe stiffen. I will him not to react, lash out; Doolan and Akram are the kind of policemen for whom any excuse will do. Gabe gets to his feet, his artificial leg causing him to lean slightly as he rises, compensating. I watch him leave and he does not look around. But Akram does; at the door of the interview room he turns to look at me with his smiling eyes, and slowly, very slowly, with his upturned lips he blows me a kiss.

  The day is almost over when I leave the station, but on my way home I stop in at my office. In a previous life I worked on the fourteenth floor of a steel and glass building in the heart of the City, handling cases worth sums which were hard to fathom, impossible to imagine. I now operate a one-man, one-room law firm out of a shopfront office on a street where the main trade is in gambling and discounted alcohol and cheap rental accommodation.

  I sit behind my desk and look at the case I am working on, one concerning professional negligence; my client is a young up-and-coming snooker player who lost three fingers of his bridging hand while using an industrial lathe at his workplace. He wants to sue his employers for potential loss of earnings, which he estimates in the millions. His record on the amateur circuit, however, suggests differently; in eighty-seven matches, he only won four, one of which was given to him after his opponent was killed in a car accident on the way to the game. I push my papers aside and wonder why I bothered coming in, why I didn’t just go straight home to Maria.

  The light on my answering machine is blinking and I get up from my desk, cross my office.

  ‘Mr Connell, this is Saskia Gove. I just wanted to call and apologise for Luke’s behaviour this morning. He has issues with… well, he has issues with how to take his coffee in the morning.’

  She pauses and I picture her eyes, lights dancing in them, some lithe animal cunning hiding within.

  ‘So listen, how about I make it up to you? Give me a call.’ She leaves a number which I do not write down, and then there is the beep and she is gone.

  I sit back at my desk and wonder about the Goves, about the relationship between Saskia and Luke, and about William Gove. I remember his fear, the abject terror of where he will be going after he dies, an event which cannot be long coming. I wonder what makes a man give his fortune away to ten random people he chooses from a telephone directory. And just how Luke Gove, with all his issues, will take the news.

  But of course the Goves are not my main concern. At this moment Gabe is alone in a cell beneath Gidea Park police station, at the mercy of two
policemen who I suspect are working to their own agenda, entirely divorced from any notions of justice and due process. I sit at my desk until the sun goes down and my office is dark, and the question I keep asking myself is: why?

  3

  ‘SO ANYWAY, IT’S been off the forecourt what, hour, couple of hours tops, he’s giving it the proper big one up the M11, and he sees a fuck-off cardboard box come off the back of this lorry up ahead. Like…’ he extends his arms to demonstrate, ‘big.’

  I have known Tommy since I was a young boy and he is one of the few men I would hate to get on the wrong side of; he was always larger than me when we were growing up, but today he is the size of a small bull and I doubt I could get my fingers around his wrist. Maria is watching him with a fascination I cannot read; amused or horrified, it is difficult to tell. Tommy does not talk. Tommy shouts.

  ‘The 911 GS, I said that, dint I?’ he asks. I nod.

  ‘Right, so, he’s seen this box and he’s thinking, I’m going to have it, give it some Hollywood, drive straight through it, really flatten it. So he’s put his foot down and he reckons he was doing hundred and ten when he hit it. Only thing is…’ Tommy pauses, enjoying his moment, Maria’s rapt attention, ‘it’s got a fucking washing machine in it.’

  He puts his huge head back and barks out a delighted laugh, lager slopping from his glass over the signet rings on his thick fingers. He tells us that Bobby, the driver of the Porsche, had to be cut out and that the doctors think he will need a new knee, that he may never walk again. I look at Maria and she is not laughing; her lips are slightly parted and she seems frozen in place. I clap Tommy on the shoulder, tell him that it is good to see him. He nods, still laughing at the thought of Bobby’s crushed body being hauled out of the wreckage of his destroyed 911.

  It is my father’s sixty-fifth birthday and Maria insisted that we go. Her father had given her a childhood which contained only happiness and love, and although she knows my father, his cruelty and malice, she cannot accept that any parent is beyond redemption. His party is being held at the Seven Stars, a pub which caters to the kind of drinkers who form a queue outside in the morning, who measure their days in pints and shots. He is standing at the bar, drinking lager in an open-mouthed pour; from here I can see the gold of his fillings through his glass. His face is red and he is sweating, his grey hair oiled back. It is a face that I have only ever seen smile at others’ misfortune.

  ‘Come on,’ says Maria. ‘You can say happy birthday, can’t you?’

  ‘Happy birthday,’ I say.

  ‘Idiot,’ she says. She looks around. ‘Nice place your dad chose.’

  I can feel my shoes sticking to the carpet as we walk over to my father. One of the windows is boarded up and the place smells of spilt beer and a lifetime of neglect. Maria is wearing a dress, heels; she has had something done to her hair and it is dark and frames her face in glossy waves. Walking her over to the bar, I feel like I am bringing royalty to a dogfight. A group of men around a fruit machine watch her. One of them whistles, a long, low sound, staring at her with a look which is as clinically detached as if he is assessing a cut of steak. I catch his eye and he does not react, goes back to watching Maria. There are five of them, seem to be some kind of crew. I step closer to Maria, put an arm around her waist. My property; a return to the Stone Age.

  ‘Fuck me, it came,’ my father says, looking at me without interest.

  ‘Now then, Francis,’ says Maria. She leans forward, gives him a kiss on his cheek. ‘Happy birthday.’ As ever, attention from Maria causes a change in my father. He nods at the floor a couple of times to regain his composure and manages to say, ‘Drink?’

  ‘I’ll have a gin and tonic,’ Maria says.

  ‘Lager,’ I say.

  ‘And you don’t look a day over fifty,’ says Maria.

  ‘Stop it,’ says my father.

  ‘You’ve even lost weight,’ she says. She takes a step back, cocks her head to one side, frowns. ‘Have you got a lady friend, Francis?’

  The landlord of the Seven Stars, Paddy, a man I have known for years, laughs from behind the bar. ‘Couldn’t pull a muscle, Frankie. Got a lady.’ He shakes his head.

  ‘I don’t know,’ says Maria. ‘Looks like there’s plenty of life left in him.’

  My father’s face is dark with blood, and although he is trying to look indifferent, a smile is fighting to appear which he cannot fully master. He turns to the bar, holds out a twenty. Regardless of how many drinks he has and how many lurid stories he swaps tonight, I know that Maria has just given him the standout moment of the day.

  We stay at the bar and I stand with my back to it, keeping an eye on the group next to the fruit machine, who are looking in our direction too frequently, talking too quietly. I can hear Tommy telling his story of the Porsche to another man across the room; he is still finding it as funny, head thrown back as he gets to the punchline. The atmosphere is full of good-natured aggression, bonhomie with an edge, which is about as cosy as you get in the kind of pub my father frequents.

  ‘Gents,’ I say to Maria, putting my glass down on the bar.

  ‘You don’t need permission,’ she says. She is jabbing her drink with her straw, trying to pretend that she is enjoying herself.

  ‘We’ll go after,’ I say.

  ‘Go?’ she says. ‘And miss all this?’

  Somebody at some point has attempted to put their fist through the door of the men’s, although given the state of disrepair of the place it could have happened last week or in the previous century. There is an old man at the washbasin and as I pass him the door opens and I look around and Tommy is in the doorway. He is so big he has to duck to get into the room, which is tiny, and once he is in it feels even smaller, claustrophobic. Tommy looks at the man at the washbasin, says, ‘Go on. You’re finished.’

  The man shakes his hands and leaves without drying them.

  ‘You all right, Tommy?’

  Tommy looks me up and down and although I know and like him, I feel a dose of adrenalin shoot through my heart.

  ‘Need to speak to you,’ he says.

  ‘So speak.’

  He takes a step closer to me and I have to will myself not to take a step backwards, to hold my ground.

  ‘This didn’t come from me.’

  ‘Course.’

  ‘Don’t know any details,’ he says, ‘but Danny, there’s a lot of talk. Hearing your name.’

  ‘Who from?’

  ‘Halliday. His mob. You seen that lot out there?’

  ‘I saw them.’

  ‘You don’t want to be here.’

  I nod. Halliday is a prominent figure in the local underworld, a man who controls drugs, prostitution, doors. Two years ago I shattered the bones in one of his hands with a wrench, retribution for having destroyed my mother’s life, for having treated her like a piece of livestock to be traded for profit. But I never for a moment imagined he would see it as a fair exchange, an equitable settling of scores; I have been waiting for this.

  ‘Danny, I think it’s serious,’ says Tommy. He says it quietly and I am filled with affection for this man, for his genuine concern for my safety.

  ‘Thanks, Tommy,’ I say. ‘Excitement was getting too much anyway.’

  He doesn’t smile, nods. ‘Get her out of here.’

  But of course I cannot just leave. It is my father’s birthday, and whether or not I wish to be here, I will not be intimidated by a group of men ten years my junior, regardless of who they are connected to. They are still clustered around the fruit machine and I walk over to them.

  ‘You old enough to be playing on that?’ I say.

  There is always a leader of a group and this one is my height, with a nose that has been broken more than once. He has blond hair and innocent baby-blue eyes and his mouth is laughing stupidly as if I have just told him a joke, though the laugh does not touch his eyes. He looks no older than twenty-five. But the muscles on his forearms are pronounced and his wrists are th
ick, the fingers holding his glass large and battered. All of the men are dressed alike, white trainers and polo shirts and too much hair product, the dense smell of aftershave. The blond man raises his eyebrows, still smiling in amusement.

  ‘Say again?’

  ‘Finish your game and get out of here,’ I say.

  He sniggers and nods. ‘Like to do that. But we can’t. On for a jackpot. Anyway,’ he says, and nods again, this time across the room, ‘enjoying the view too much.’

  I follow his gaze. He is again looking at Maria, who is waving a finger at my father in admonishment, as if he has just said something inappropriate. But my father is not paying attention, is watching us.

  I walk around the group and squat down and unplug the power cord for the machine, stand up with it in my hand.

  ‘Fun’s over,’ I say. ‘Bedtime.’

  The blond man I have been speaking to hands his glass to one of his crew. His biceps are large and he has a thick gold bracelet around his wrist. I take a step forward, into his space. But before anything can happen my father is there and he takes the man by the throat and pushes him into the fruit machine with such force that it rocks back against the wall. I have been there, know my father’s strength. Maria was right. There is life in him yet.

  ‘Walk away while you still can,’ says my father. He is standing next to me so that we are shoulder to shoulder. The group look at the man my father is holding. His blue eyes have gone flat and he is completely still although I can see a pulse in a vein over his temple. Nobody moves for one, two, three seconds. Then, slowly, he takes my father’s wrist and lifts his hand away from his throat as if my father possesses no strength at all, as if he is as weak as a child. The man smiles, shakes his head and laughs, again as if he has just heard a joke. But I now suspect that his air of amusement and stupidity is an act, cultivated to hide something much darker and more dangerous.

  ‘Nice meeting you, Daniel,’ he says and nods to his crew, pushes himself away from the fruit machine. He moves carelessly, sways as if he is punch-drunk.