Storms

by Menon, David

  ‘I wish my father was dead’ said Kyle, his voice full of bitterness and hurt. He hadn’t heard anything from his father since he let him down on his birthday. Today was supposed to be part of Kyle’s weekend visit to his father but he hadn’t contacted Kyle to make any arrangements. Kyle had tried to keep on loving his father but now he just felt really let down as if all his efforts had been for nothing because his father didn’t care. And he’d watched his Mum worrying herself sick about money and where she was going to get some extra from and that was all due to his father and the hole he’d left her in. He hated his father. He did wish he was dead.

  ‘You don’t really wish that, Kyle’.

  ‘I do!’ Kyle insisted. ‘When he left us he left my Mum in a right mess with money. She told me you’d paid off all her debts. She can’t believe how generous you’ve been to her’.

  ‘Your Mum is my friend, Kyle. I was able to help so I did’.

  ‘I wish you were my Dad’.

  ‘Kyle, I could never take the place of your Dad and I’m sure that one day you and he will be friends again’ said Tim. ‘But I would like to be your friend and help you in whatever way I can’.

  ‘I think that would be cool’

  ‘Good’ said Tim who was becoming overwhelmed by that familiar feeling he’d experienced so many times before. It was risky and it was dangerous because nobody else understood. But it had now begun to unfurl and even if he wanted to he couldn’t stop it now. ‘Now I think we’ll be good for a few more lengths’.

  ‘I bet I can beat you’.

  ‘Now that gives me a challenge, young man. Okay, on your marks, get set, go!’

  Tim had given his assistant Joe the night off and so he made dinner for himself and Kyle. Annabel had told him that steak and chips was Kyle’s favourite meal so that’s what he’d cooked for him.

  ‘I can really talk to you, you know’ said Kyle as they sat at the table after finishing their food. They were both in casual t-shirts and jogging pants. It was loose. It was relaxed. He felt close to Tim. Closer than he’d ever felt to anyone before. He was tall and handsome like his Dad. And yet he wasn’t his Dad. He was cultured, educated, successful. In truth he was everything his Dad wasn’t.

  ‘I’m glad about that’.

  ‘I can talk to you about really deep stuff’ said Kyle. ‘My Mum, God bless her, doesn’t have a clue about what I’m going on about half the time. Neither has my Dad. I love my Mum, don’t get me wrong, I love her to bits, but I can’t talk to her like I can to you’.

  ‘We’re just different people, Kyle, that’s all’ said Tim. ‘Look, it’s getting late. Why don’t we change into our pyjamas and lounge in front of the TV? I’ve put some pyjamas out for you on your bed’.

  When they were both changed, Tim into his shorts, t-shirt and bathrobe and Kyle into his striped pyjamas, they re-assembled on one of the sofas. Tim put the TV on. Match of the Day had just started which seemed to please Kyle.

  ‘Ace’ said Kyle. ‘By the way, these pyjamas seem really old. The colours on the stripes have all faded’.

  ‘That’s because they are old and yet they fit you perfectly’ said Tim who was being taken back in time by the sight of Kyle in those pyjamas. ‘Come and join me on the sofa. The night, as they say, is still young’.

  ‘Look, do you mind telling me what I’m doing here?’ asked John Squires. He was sitting in the interview room and had just been joined by Jeff and Rebecca. ‘You do know I recently buried my mother and can do without any hassles just now?’

  ‘Yes, we’re aware of all that, Mr. Squires’ said Jeff who’d just been informed that the body of a young black man had been found dumped on the edge of the Gorton estate. He was covered in multiple stab wounds and although no formal identification had taken place it was believed to be that of Aidan Matthews ‘But I’m afraid something’s come up that we need to talk to you about urgently’.

  ‘Go ahead’ said Squires. ‘I’ve got nothing to hide’.

  ‘Are you sure about that, Mr. Squires?’ asked Rebecca.

  ‘What do you mean by that?’

  ‘Mr. Squires, do you own a white transit van with the registration number P954 GRU?’

  ‘No, I don’t. Next question?’

  ‘I’m going to give you another chance to answer that question, Mr. Squires’ said Jeff.

  ‘You can ask me as many times as you like, detective, it won’t change the answer’ said Squires. ‘I don’t own a vehicle as you describe’.

  ‘Then why is it registered to you at your address?’ Jeff pursued. John Squires seemed as belligerent that day as when he’d first come across him in his mother Evelyn Squires’ house. He was one of those men from the empire who still believed that Britain had an empire and ruled the waves with a mixture of colonialism and exploitation. He was the sort that Daily Mail leader writers dream of. No departure from the old ways. No questioning of the assertion that whichever way the British do it is the best and the only way. No doubt of the belief that the rest of the world should bend to the British way and not the other way round. Jeff felt sorry for him and those like him. They were living in the dark ages. They were holding the rest of the country back from making real progress into the 21st century.

  ‘Mr. Squires, the van that’s registered in your name, and with your address, was seen driving onto the estate. Our witness says he saw the driver, a man of your build, get out and dump the body, the decapitated body, of PC Tyler Moore on the pavement before driving off at speed’.

  ‘This has got absolutely nothing to do with me’.

  ‘Then can you tell us what you were doing last Tuesday evening around ten o’clock?’

  ‘I was at home with my wife and we were watching television’.

  ‘And is it only your wife who can confirm that?’

  ‘Yes!’

  ‘Keep calm, Mr. Squires’.

  ‘Keep calm? You tell me to keep bloody calm when I’m in here having to answer for a most heinous crime that I had nothing to do with?’

  Jeff and Ollie stayed silent. They both watched the facial expressions of Squires as he tried to work out what to say next. Whenever a suspect was brought into the station in connection with the killing of a police officer it always put everyone on edge. Both Jeff and Ollie knew that they would be lining up to ‘sort Squires out’ for what he’d may have done to PC Tyler Moore and they would all have vivid memories of the DVD the killer sent of Moore’s ‘execution’. They had to get to a tangible result soon before patience started to run out and test the professionalism of the most dedicated officers.

  ‘Look, I know what’s going on here’ Squires sneered, his eyes beginning to show the full vent of his anger. ‘This is all your political correctness bullshit. A proud white woman who was dedicated to her race is murdered by a heartless mob and you don’t give a damn. Not really. But as soon as one of the black thugs is picked off then all hell breaks loose in trying to get to his killer. And then one of your own, an actual serving black police officer, is done in and you’re tripping over yourselves to pick on innocent victims like me’.

  ‘Victims of what, Mr. Squires?’

  ‘Victims of the political correctness that says you must find the killer of blacks before whites in case you’re accused of racially discriminating! Do I have to spell it out to you? Well I’ll tell you what political correctness is. It’s verbal fascism that’s what it is. It’s telling me I can’t say what I like in my own country’.

  ‘You were born in what was then Rhodesia, Mr. Squires’ said Jeff who’d decided to let Squires get all the ranting he liked out of his system. It only made him look worse than he did already. He was giving them more motive with each racist utterance.

  ‘Of British parents!’

  ‘Did you have a good relationship with your parents?’ Ollie asked.

  ‘What the hell has that got to do with it?’

  ‘I’m just asking’.

  ‘None of your damn business but yes I did have an excellent
relationship with my parents but look, I’m not the killer you’re looking for’.

  Jeff and Ollie decided to take a break from the interview and consulted Chief Superintendent Geraldine Chambers outside in the next room where she’d been watching the interview by way of the two-way mirror.

  ‘I would say that the man has principles but they’re not the kind I would share’ said Geraldine. ‘So gentlemen, what are your initial thoughts?’

  ‘My instinct jury is still out, ma’am’ said Jeff.

  ‘Mine too, ma’am’ said Ollie. ‘I’m the first one to condemn racism but a racist isn’t necessarily a killer however I would like to question him on other aspects of his life like why he frequents the Hare and Hound pub in Stockport’.

  ‘Isn’t that the pub that’s under investigation over the suspicion that the far-right Albion movement meets there?’

  ‘Correct, ma’am’ Jeff confirmed. ‘It was fairly active in the northwest a few years ago and everyone thought it was all but gone. But now it seems it’s coming to life again’.

  ‘Okay well keep going’ said Geraldine. ‘We’ve got to get to a result on this one, Jeff’.

  ‘We’re doing our best, ma’am’

  Jeff and Ollie went back into the interview room where Squires was sitting with his head in his hands.

  ‘Do you like to have a few pints down the pub of an evening, Mr. Squires?’ Ollie asked.

  Squires raised his head sharply and said ‘I suppose you’re going to tell me that’s a bloody crime now’.

  ‘Not at all’ said Ollie. ‘But it’s where you drink and who you drink with that matters to us’.

  ‘Police fucking state or what!’

  ‘Do you drink at the Hare and Hound in Stockport?’

  Squires paused. It was the first time they’d seen a chink in his armour of certainty, the first time he’d seemed knocked off balance by a question.

  ‘Yes, I go to the Hare and Hound’ Squires confirmed without looking at Ollie.

  ‘It’s about five miles away from your house in Cheadle’ said Ollie. ‘Aren’t there pubs nearer to where you live that you could go to?’

  ‘What can I say? I like the beer at the Hare and Hound’.

  ‘Do you attend meetings of the Albion movement there?’

  Squires’ face contorted in a mixture of cynicism and pure contempt. ‘I’m aware that there are members of the Albion movement who meet there and I may drink and discuss stuff with them, yes’.

  ‘Do you or do you not attend meetings of the Albion movement at the Hare and Hound pub in Stockport Mr. Squires, yes or no?’

  ‘Yes, I attend those meetings! I detest what all this multi-cultural bullshit is doing to this great and once proud country’.

  ‘Once proud?’

  ‘Well we can’t be proud of it anymore’ Squires asserted. ‘Not with all the mosques and the Muslims running riot all over the bloody place. And its time all the blacks got to know who was the bloody boss in this country. I’m not ashamed for being associated with a movement that believes in restoring the natural supremacy of the white, Christian race in Britain’.

  ‘So you’re an apartheid movement?’

  ‘I can’t think of a better word for it, yes’.

  ‘White people living in the good parts of town whilst blacks and other racial minorities are placed in camps that stretch on for miles and condemn all living there to poverty’.

  ‘You’re painting a mightily pretty picture to me, young man’.

  ‘Restoring the natural order’.

  ‘That’s it’.

  ‘So what would you do with a black like me who’s just as proud to be British as you are but who’s a serving police officer?’

  ‘Well you wouldn’t be able to carry on as a police officer’ said Squires, smirking. ‘But we’d find you a job cleaning the floors and the toilets. That would be more where you fit into the natural order of things’.

  Jeff was impressed with the way Ollie was keeping his cool under intense provocation. But he also knew there were limits. He could see from Ollie’s face that there was a rage going on inside. Not surprising with all the offensive shit coming out of Squires’ mouth and pelted like stones in Ollie’s direction. There was an anger in Squires too. That was very clear. The kind of anger that could drive him to murder? Whoever had killed Leroy Patterson, Tyler Moore, and Aidan Matthews had done so with meticulous planning. That needed cool, calm reflection rather than angry outbursts of potentially uncontrollable anger.

  ‘What do you do with them, Mr. Squires?’ Jeff asked.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘The murders of Leroy Patterson, Tyler Moore, and Aidan Matthews would’ve required a lot of thought and application. How did you manage it? Where did you take them? Where did you get the apparatus you used to murder them?’

  John Squires threw his head back and laughed. ‘You’re making a big mistake here, detective’.

  ‘Are we?’ Ollie asked. ‘You’ve made very clear your distaste for black people, Mr. Squires’.

  ‘Don’t you try and twist my words, boy … ‘

  ‘ … it’s Detective Sargeant Oliver Wright to you, Mr. Squires’.

  ‘Get the job so that the politically correct quotas looked good?’

  ‘Now that’s enough, Squires’ Jeff interrupted. ‘You’ve been asked some serious questions because we believe you’re in serious trouble. Now as we speak a team of officers is searching your home. Your white transit van is nowhere to be seen and isn’t even parked nearby. So why don’t you save us all a lot of time and tell us what you’ve done with the van and how you came to commit these murders?’

  ‘If you upset my wife in the course of your ridiculous and useless search of my house then I will deal with whoever is responsible’.

  ‘Like you dealt with the three members of the Gorton boys who ended up dead?’ asked Ollie. ‘Or is it only black people you have murderous thoughts about?’

  ‘You’re treading on thin ice boy’.

  ‘The van seen that night was registered to you, Mr. Squires’ Ollie went on, ignoring having been addressed so disparagingly again. So why don’t you stop playing games that are not that clever and start co-operating? It will be to your benefit in the end’.

  Annabel had found Tim’s assistant Joe to be rather engaging. True he was fit and good looking. You’d notice in a good way if he walked in the room. And he made her laugh too. But she detected a rather large chip on his shoulder where women were concerned. Like with many people who appear to be happy on the outside you only have to scratch the surface a little to find the potential demons lurking inside. A lot of people put on an act. They show the world a face that betrays the real one underneath. She’d done it herself at times. It was almost like a defence mechanism.

  But it was when the subject of previous relationships came up that the chip controlled by the demon came up. Suddenly he didn’t seem to like the fact that she was divorced with a teenage son to bring up. He also questioned her account of how her marriage had failed. He said it was unfair of her to put all the blame for the collapse of her marriage on her husband and that she must’ve done something to him to make him walk out leaving her with piles and piles of debts.

  ‘It didn’t go well then?’ said Tim who was talking to Annabel in the office that went with her new role of hotel duty manager. ‘And before I left the two of you to it you seemed to be getting on great’.

  ‘Well we were’ said Annabel. ‘Until I told him about Clive’.

  ‘Joe was left pretty bitter by his divorce’ Tim explained. ‘His ex-wife had an affair but she ended up throwing him out for some reason. Then she made it very difficult for him to see his daughter who he hasn’t seen now for years and he’s been back and forth to court I don’t know how many times. I know that it’s all hit him hard’.

  ‘Well I’m sorry about all that but we’re all different’ said Annabel who was trying to keep her married lover Dermot at bay for the moment. He’d start
ed telling her that he was developing feelings for her and she didn’t know if she really wanted that. She’d never really thought about it because she thought they were just having fun. He’d even mentioned leaving his wife and she didn’t know if she wanted that either. She wasn’t one of those daft girls who have affairs with men who are already attached and then get all moralistic and hypocritical when he mentions leaving his current partner because the girl having the affair doesn’t want to be ’seen’ to be breaking up somebody else’s relationship. What do they think they were doing when they started sleeping with him? They want to have their fun in private but be ‘seen’ to be a ‘really nice person’ to the outside world. No, she wasn’t like any of that duplicitous lot. But she didn’t know if she cared enough for Dermot to want him to leave his clearly unhappy home for her. She wouldn’t have minded stepping out with Joe for a while and seeing how things went. But it didn’t look like she was going to get the chance. He hadn’t even asked for her phone number.

  ‘But we’re all different, Tim’ Annabel asserted. ‘And we’ve all been through different situations. I don’t blame all men for the way Clive treated me and nor should he treat all women as if they’re the same as his ex-wife’.

  ‘I understand that’ said Tim who was glad she hadn’t brought up the subject he thought she might have done. ‘But Joe is not in that same place. I don’t know if he ever will be’.

  ‘Well before you go there’s something else I wanted to talk to you about’ said Annabel.

  Tim was suddenly nervous. He’d just taken control of one of the leading hotel chains in the north but he suspected that the question that was about to come would reduce him to jelly deep down inside. ‘Oh yeah?’

  ‘What did you do with Kyle at the weekend?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Well since he came back from your place he’s been wandering round moodily. He’s been up and full of the joys of spring one minute and then apparently down in the depths of despair the next. You wouldn’t know anything about what might be driving that?’

  ‘No’ said Tim. ‘Why would I?’