by Mark Ayre
Finally, her legs seemed to grow tired. Stumbling, she found the nearest sofa and dropped into it. Not wanting to be presumptuous, James remained standing until she waved for him to sit. Upstairs they could hear Jacob moving. His minutes were up, but James decided not to mention that.
“You asked why Harris and Michael became close. I wasn’t there when they met, so I can’t be sure, but I would say it has something to do with the parents. You’ve already mentioned how Harris drew in on himself when Jane went to prison. Well, when Michael and I were growing up, our father was in and out of prison all the time. You got used to it—one of those things. It was never nice, but we coped. Then, when we were in our teens something shocking happened. Our father was out of prison. We were all waiting for him to step that foot out of line and get sent back. I’m sure he would have if he’d had time. As it was, before he could get back into the criminal swing of things, our mother took a knife and cut his throat, earning herself a life sentence.”
Her eyes glistened. She tried a smile.
“You can’t imagine what that’s like.”
“Actually,’ James said. “I can.” And off her raised eyebrow—“my father is in prison for the murder of my uncle.”
He felt his heart lurch. Had he ever said it out loud? He didn’t think so. And he had kept it ambiguous. It was an honest declaration but the horrible truth, masked by his words, was that his father had been wrongly convicted for the killing. James sat unpunished while he tried to track down another murderer.
“Well,” Kaye said, not dwelling on this admission. “Maybe you would have been allowed to join the gang too. Point is I guess it was their parents that connected them, and while I liked Harris, I knew their friendship was the worst thing that could happen to my brother.”
“How come?”
“Michael had already been working for the Chappells a few years. As a bouncer, at first, but the money was crap, and he wanted to provide.”
Another glance upstairs, then to the big clock on the wall. Kaye tutted, but didn’t call for Jacob.
“You raised him together?” James asked.
“Father ditched when Jacob was two. No emotional loss but I missed the money. Michael and me, we’d always been close, and he loved my son as if he were his own. He moved in. Did what he could but it was a struggle. He hated it. Wanted better for us. I told him it didn’t matter, but that didn’t stop him. He started doing extras for Jane and Davis. I’m sure you know what that means. The money was good, but I lived in fear. I loved my brother and Jacob saw him as a dad. I knew it would go wrong.”
Her voice was strong, her back straight, her features set. It was the eyes that gave it away, shimmering like the surface of a pool. A fine film ready to break at the slightest prevarication, releasing tears down her cheeks.
“Funny thing was I always feared prison. I knew he was working with dangerous people, but these dangerous people were protective of their own. I never expected him to bite the hand that feeds.”
The first tear rolled, but there was bitter anger, too. Her jaw was set, her fists clenched. She was no longer making eye contact with James.
“He informed on Jane,” he said.
“On all of them, I would guess. Taking money from the cops while on the Chappell payroll. We had enough. I think he must have realised that eventually. Stopped talking to the cops, and I never found out what he was doing when Jane got put away. It was only later when history began to repeat itself.”
She looked to the mantlepiece, and James could no longer avoid the call of the photo that had her eye. There stood a large, beaming man holding a grinning boy. Michael and his nephew. A friendly giant and his delighted captive.
“My brother was a good guy,” Kaye said, still looking at the picture. “I want you to understand that, but he suffered from something good guys often do. He was easily led.”
The door opened, a kid poked his head in, staring from mum to stranger.
“I’m ready.”
“Great. Wait in the kitchen please.”
“But you said—“
“Just wait for me in the kitchen.”
She twisted her head from her boy, and James watched her wipe her eyes. Jacob looked at his mum with heartbreaking concern, then glared at James, who tried to appear reassuring.
The boy slunk away, and Kaye looked up, trying to reclaim her train of thought.
“He was easily led?” James prompted.
Wiping more tears away she nodded.
“Yeah. When we were kids, he used to follow me around. Do what I said. In school, he had this nasty group of friends, and he’d do whatever they wanted, to impress them. As he grew up, it was girls. A simple cycle. Fall in love, get used, get dumped, repeat.”
A glance to the door and James knew she was afraid Jacob would be listening. She checked, but he was in the kitchen, playing some handheld console. Closing the door as softly as she could, she turned back to James.
“He had been talking about leaving—the three of us together—when he met Harris. Suddenly he had his new friend and, like back in school, peer pressure came into play. Harris was lonely. Michael was the only friend he had, and Master Chappell talked him into sticking around.”
Another look at the clock. Time was sliding by, and she could have gone, but she had committed to opening up and, James was pleased to see, she wasn’t going to stop.
“People always think,” she went on, “that once you start working for the mob, they have you. Try to get out, and it’s a gruesome death. That’s probably true but, what people don’t realise is, the cops won’t let go either.
“Last few months, Michael starts going out more. He wasn’t a party animal or anything and was usually home to play with Jacob in the evenings, but things were changing. I’d hear him come home at three am, or not at all. At first, I tried to leave it, but it kept getting worse. His nerves were frayed, he would jump at the slightest sound. Eventually, I’d had enough.”
“You confronted him?”
She nodded. Her eyes were on the picture, the mix of anger and misery heartbreaking.
“I explained he was frightening me. That was bad enough, but Jacob was starting to notice, and that’s my hard line. I told him if he wanted to do something stupid, get himself locked up or killed, that was fine, but I wasn’t sticking around to see it. He could either tell me what was going on and let me help, or he could lose the two people that supposedly mattered to him most.
“He looked me in the eye—“ she demonstrated on James— “and lied to my face. Said it was nothing. He was stressed at work. I should have walked away, but he called my bluff, and when it came down to it, I couldn’t go.”
Her foot was tapping. It was clear she was angry at herself for the decisions she had made and miserable she had not been able to reclaim her brother from whoever swayed him. James remembered she had been talking about the cops.
“You think the police came back for him?”
She nodded.
“Everyone knew they were desperate to put Davis and Jane away for a long stretch. When Jane went down for three years, they tried to paint it as a victory, but it wasn’t enough. They never stopped looking for ways of getting the Chappell’s done for longer and, when they couldn’t do it on their own, they came back to the person who helped them last time.”
Yes, that made sense. If it had been unclear how Davis might have known Michael was the grass, this offered one solution. The police hounded him. Someone saw them talking. People grew suspicious. It was no wonder Michael was stressed and afraid.
“He tried to hide it from me,” Kaye said, “but eventually the law came here. A stony-faced blonde man with nasty eyes. I didn’t hear much of their conversation, other than this cop saying he wanted to help Michael. They didn’t argue or anything—just sat in the kitchen for ten minutes and talked. Then the cop was leaving, and I confronted Michael again.
“He was shaking. Petrified. I told him we needed to leave. That informing
for the police was too dangerous. He said he knew and wasn’t going to tell them anything, but he thought it was too late. He’d been working against the Chappells, and they were going to find out.”
James gripped the edge of the sofa, feeling Kaye’s pain as she spoke, imagining the pain of living it. Wondering how it hurt to be dragged through it again by James. He wanted to say something. To apologise. But she spoke before he could.
“I changed my mind. Told him if he thought the Chappells were going to find out, he should tell the cops everything he knew, and we should leave. I wasn’t sure about witness protection, but I said we had to go. Leave it to them to deal with the Chappells.
“I begged him, but he said it was too late.”
“What do you mean?” James leaned in, not wanting to miss a word.
“I mean he was scared he would be killed for betraying the Chappells, so he went and talked to the only person he could trust. To his best friend in the entire world.”
James closed his eyes, feeling his heart pound with misery.
“Harris?”
“Yeah,” Kaye said, tears flowing now. “My brother turned from me to tell Harris Chappell he had betrayed Jane and Davis.
“He spilt his guts to that man and, within a week, my brother was dead.”
11
Tahir gave him a long, bored look tinged with frustration.
“You’re not listening to me.”
This was true. It was hard to pay attention to the bar manager with the memory of Kaye talking over him. Repeating again and again her assertion that Harris had told Davis Michael was the grass, getting the brother she loved so dearly killed.
James wasn’t so sure.
“Sorry,” he said, straightening his back, putting Tahir’s words at the forefront of his mind, pushing Kaye to the back.
“I was saying,” Tahir went on, talking as though to a slow student who needs extra attention. “Jane has told me why you’re here, and it ain’t to pull pints and chat up the local chicks.”
“No,” James said, aiming for casual. “I have a girlfriend.”
“That’s interesting. Know what else is interesting? Shut up.”
“That’s not that—“ Tahir’s eyes flashed, shutting James down. Tahir drummed his fingers on the table.
“I’m pissed off. Wanna know why?”
James nodded.
“None of your business.” More drumming, then: “I’ve been friends with Jane a long time. I run her bar and since she’s been in prison, I been keeping her business afloat. Now she needs to know who killed her son and she thinks ‘why turn to my trusted lieutenant when I could ask this nobody?’”
Flowers of frustration bloomed within James. Davis had been similarly defamatory, and although it was technically correct—in the context of the Chappell family—it riled him.
“It’s weird,” James agreed. “Maybe you’ve given her reason not to trust you.”
The drumming stopped, which was a relief. James used the silence that followed to imagine Harris giving up his best friend. It didn’t fit what he knew. Why give up Michael, the only person he was close to?
Then again, Harris was suffering after losing his mother to prison. Perhaps the draw to Michael was he had found someone he could rely on, someone who would not let him down. Learning the truth might have changed that, pushing him into a mood spiteful enough to spill the beans to his grandfather.
Possible, but James needed more information. It could still be that someone saw Michael with the police, or overheard him telling Harris all. James needed to keep looking.
“Don’t think,” Tahir said through gritted teeth, “that because Jane has designated you chosen investigator, you can come in here, saying whatever you want. Piss me off, and I will rip you apart.”
James allowed the bar manager to stew in his threats. Keeping calm, distant, knowing this would further piss off Tahir. Uncaring, he let his mind drift to his prime suspect—Davis. If Harris had told his grandfather Michael was the grass, that might change things. Then again, what if Harris told Davis, but made the old man swear he would not kill Michael? A broken promise could lead back down the path James had already imagined for Davis. One ending in Harris’ body lying dead beneath a trusted lieutenant.
The drumming was back. It was giving him a headache. James searched for a question to make it stop.
“Are you a violent man?”
The implied accusation was too much. Tahir rocketed to his feet, his office chair scurrying across the room as though in fear of him. James was afraid also but tried not to show it.
“You want to be careful what you say.” He didn’t crack his knuckles but looked as though he might like to.
“I understand,” James said, forcing calm. “You feel slighted, and you blame me, but I’m not the one you should be angry at. I’m doing what I’m told. Trying to find Harris’ killer, isn’t that what you want? He was a good guy; he didn’t deserve what happened.”
At this, Tahir scoffed. Regret crawled immediately onto his face, and he crossed the room to grab his chair, bringing it back and reseating himself.
“I shouldn’t complain,” he said. “What you got here is a poisoned chalice. Jane thinks her boy was perfect.”
“Partly based on your reports, I hear.”
Tahir smirked. “I believed it,” he said. “Not that he was perfect, but everything I told her. That he was a good kid, a hard worker. Quiet but kind. That’s how I would have described him.”
“What changed?”
“He wasn’t what he seemed.”
James couldn’t help but smile. “Is anyone?”
Tahir chuckled. “A good point, but most of us hide little things. Harmless shit.”
“But Harris wasn’t?”
Tahir leaned back in his chair, stretching his arms in front of him. His fingers moved on the edge of his desk as though he was playing the piano. Drumming. Drumming. It was a drill to James’ skull.
“Great interview technique,” he mocked. James said nothing. “Jane says she wants me to be open with you. To tell you anything you want to know. I wonder if she might regret that decision.”
“Why?”
“I told you. Her son was not what he seemed. Put on a good act, sure. I only found out myself recently.”
“Found out what?”
“Maybe you don’t want to know.”
James restrained the sigh.
“I think I can handle the truth.”
“Maybe,” Tahir shrugged. “But that’s not what I mean.”
“What then?”
The drumming stopped. Tahir leaned in.
“The more you learn, the deeper you dig. You have Jane’s trust—God knows how—but how long will it last? You start digging, and don’t find what she needs… you may find she dumps the dirt on your head and leaves you buried.”
The thought had occurred to James on numerous occasions, but it didn’t matter. He wasn’t doing this for glory. He was doing it to protect Megan. Not that he could tell Tahir this.
“I’ll take my chances.”
“I suppose I should admire your bravery,” Tahir said, his lips turning into a nasty, almost smile. “Let me tell you first I care about the people who work for me. We pay them well, and where I can, I protect them from being pulled into the nastier aspects of Jane’s business.”
Doesn’t always work, though, does it? James thought. Michael came to mind, the doorman who had been pulled into darker deeds and ended up dead.
“I talk to them. Get to know them. I try to let them know that, if they ever need to talk, I will be here, and I will listen. It can be a tough life working at the bar. We need to look out for each other.”
This time it was Megan he thought of. How protective had Tahir been when her co-workers were bullying her? Had he missed it, or known and ignored it? Either way, it did not look good for his little teamwork makes the dreamwork ethos, and James would have raised the point, had he not wanted to keep his relationsh
ip with Megan under wraps.
“How does this relate to Harris?” he asked, pushing thoughts of Megan away.
Tahir leaned forward, took a pen from a holder by his monitor. Withdrawing it, he clicked the tip of the pen out and made as though to write upon his desk, pulling back at the last moment.
“I’m aware how this will make me look,” he said, lifting James’ heart rate as he did. “But I’m going to tell you anyway.”
James said nothing, afraid to speak would be to invite Tahir not to talk. The bar manager clicked his pen as he had drummed the desk, and spoke.
“A few days ago a young lady came to me in floods of tears. Devastated. She told me Harris, Prince of the Chappell empire, had some dark habits. Habits everyone was either unaware of, or were too afraid to spill.”
He stopped, clicking and all. He brought pen to mouth as though to bite it, then tapped his lip. His face had tightened, and he looked far angrier than he had since James had stepped into the office.
“She told me Harris was becoming fixated on certain girls. Pursuing them until they felt they had no choice but to come on a date with him. They would meet at this very bar. The girl would believe she was only trying to appease him. That it would be one date, then all over. Harris had other ideas.”
James saw Megan and Harris, arm in arm, him kissing her, her pushing him away and—
“Are you saying he—“ he couldn’t bring himself to say it. Tahir took over.
“He didn’t force them. Not physically anyway, but he would pressure them. Make it feel as though they had no choice but to say yes. He would take them into his office, and he would have—“ he caught on the word, brought the pen up again and took a deep breath, as though smoking it. “He would have sex with them.”
The pen came down, clasped tight in Tahir’s hands. Squeezed, bent. If this was a story, Tahir was a phenomenal actor. The rage here was real.
“The girls would think that was it,” Tahir said. “They would hate themselves, or would be miserable, but at least it was over. That was until a video message arrived on their phones, and they would realise their abuse was now a matter of record. That it could never be forgotten. The deed of which they felt so ashamed could end up online if they did not keep Harris happ—argh.”
