‘So, what happens now?’ Harry asked, breaking the silence like a hammer to ice. ‘You’re here for a reason, clearly, and I’m not a massive fan of Guess What The Criminal In Your Room Wants.’
‘Are you going to stay out there in the dark, or come and join me in here?’ Harry’s dad asked.
Harry hesitated. In the kitchen, he had access to at least some defensive weapons, assuming of course that his father wasn’t alone and had brought a few helping fists with him.
‘Is it just you?’ Harry asked. ‘Or have you brought along some friendly goons to keep us company?’
‘I’m not alone, no,’ Harry’s father said. ‘But it’s just us in here, if that’s what you mean, in your not exactly grand accommodation. There’s no one hiding in a cupboard or under your bed. You have my word.’
‘And that, as we both know, counts for so much, doesn’t it?’
Harry’s father said nothing, just sat there, waiting. Harry opened a cupboard and started to remove some mugs, placing them on the worktop.
‘Tea?’ he asked, filling a kettle, then clicking it on.
‘No, thank you,’ his father replied.
Harry left the kettle to boil then walked through to the other room and sat down in a chair opposite his father. It was the closest he had been to the man in two decades. It made his skin crawl.
‘You need to relax.’
‘Do I?’ Harry replied. ‘And why’s that, then?’
‘I’m not here to fight. I’m here to put an end to this, to your constant pestering.’
Harry laughed at that. ‘Pestering? So that’s what I’ve been doing, is it?’
‘Pretty much, yes,’ Harry’s dad replied. ‘It’s not like you have anything on me as such, is it? No. This has always been more personal than that, which I understand, I truly do, but it can’t go on.’
This moment, right here, right now, was one that Harry had gone over in his mind too many times to mention. He had gone through numerous scenarios, some hugely violent, others quieter but with the same result, that being him dragging his father’s sorry, bleeding carcass to the nearest cell, and locking him up for good. Not that such a thing would ever happen in real life. It just didn’t. That wasn’t the way it worked. You didn’t find the bad guy, beat the living hell out of him, and get away with it, no matter how much you wanted to.
‘You remember what you did, don’t you?’ Harry asked, his voice the low thrum of an approaching attack helicopter. ‘To mum, to Ben?’
‘I do,’ Harry’s father replied. ‘But I’m a different person now. I regret it all. I’ve changed.’
‘Have you, now?’
Harry’s dad leaned forward, his eyes burning into Harry, so Harry stared back, his face hard and impassive.
‘I’ve been clean for over a decade,’ he said. ‘No drink, no drugs. I’m a new man, Harry.’
‘Doesn’t take away any of what you did,’ Harry replied. ‘What kind of man does what you did, hmm? Beats up his own son? Murders his own wife?’
‘That . . . was an accident,’ Harry’s dad said. ‘I never meant it to happen. She attacked me, I had to protect myself.’
Harry’s mind did a fast rewind, taking him back to the moment he’d entered the house, seen the damage, the blood. The memory was so vivid that he could still smell the metallic tang in the air of the wounds, of death.
‘Bollocks,’ Harry growled. ‘Protect yourself from what? A woman half your weight, and a teenage boy? Do you know how pathetic you sound, making excuses for your actions? You can’t even admit to what you did, can you? Just hide behind the weakness of your own lies.’
‘Nice speech,’ Harry’s dad said. ‘You been practising that, have you?’
‘You’ve still not said why you’re here,’ Harry said. ‘And you seem to be very confident that I’m not just going to arrest you right here and now.’
‘Like I said earlier, you’ve got nothing on me,’ Harry’s dad said. ‘We both know that, don’t we? I wouldn’t be sitting here now if I hadn’t spent my life being careful.’
‘You threw her so hard you fractured her skull,’ Harry said. ‘She didn’t have a chance. Died on the kitchen floor.’
‘She shouldn’t have attacked me,’ Harry’s dad replied.
‘And Ben,’ Harry continued. ‘You beat him so badly he was in hospital for days. His whole life has been damaged because of what you did. So you may think I’ve nothing on you, but I’ve got that, and that’s enough.’
‘Is it though?’ Harry’s dad said. ‘Is it really enough? Are you absolutely sure? Because if you were, then why don’t you just arrest me now? I’m here, aren’t I? Go on, Harry, do it!’
As the man spoke, his voice grew louder, and the earlier attempt at amicableness burned itself out on the mean edge which now sharpened his every word.
‘But you can’t, can you, Harry? Because that was a long time ago and evidence goes missing. I have alibis who will swear I was elsewhere that night. It’s just not enough, and that’s what’s been eating at you more than anything, isn’t it? The fact that it happened, that you can’t get me for it, that after all these years in the police, all your training, all your hard work, everything you’ve done to get back at me for what I did, I’m sitting here in front of you, and you’re helpless!’
Harry’s dad sat back and laughed, the sound cold and mean and charged with darkness.
‘Look at you, the rage eating you up from the inside all these years, and where has it got you? Where has it got Ben? All you had to do was walk away, forget about it, but no, you just couldn’t, could you?’
As his father had been speaking, Harry’s mind had drifted. He hadn’t meant it to, and at first, all he’d really wanted to do was reach over, grab the man’s head, and smash it into the floor. But seeing the man here, sitting in front of him, all the feelings he’d expected, the emotional rush of hate and revenge disguised as justice, just faded away.
The last time Harry had seen his father, the man would have been around the age he was now. And that was the image he’d carried around with him all this time, that face burning a hole in his mind so raw that it bled into his every day. But the man sitting before him was not that man. He was old, Harry could see that. His face was worn and weary and scarred, the shadows under his eyes thick, the colour of spilled ink. He’d put on weight as well. This was no man who could punch his way out of an argument because he had other people to do that now. Harry saw blotches on the skin of his father’s hands and his hair had thinned.
‘You’re old,’ Harry said.
‘Detective school wasn’t wasted on you, son, was it?’
‘Last time I saw you, you’d have been my age I suppose,’ Harry said. ‘Stronger. But now? I don’t know what you are.’
‘Let’s not lose track here,’ Harry’s dad said. ‘And though I’m sure a heart-to-heart is exactly what we both need, it just isn’t going to happen. But I’m going to tell you what is, so listen in, Harry, because I wouldn’t want you missing any of it. It’s time for you to learn a lesson.’
‘I was expecting to feel something more,’ Harry said. ‘You know what I mean? Something . . .’
Harry’s voice faded. What was he trying to say? Words just weren’t doing it because he couldn’t find any that would come close to what he was feeling.
‘I understand,’ Harry’s father said. ‘You’ve been waiting for this moment a long time, right? Everything you’ve done has been about this, and yet here we are, and you’re powerless.’
‘I’m not,’ Harry replied.
‘Oh, I think you are,’ his father replied. ‘So, here’s what’s going to happen, and you’re going to want to listen very, very carefully.’
Harry sat back and was surprised by how relaxed he felt. This man had destroyed the lives of those closest to him, and he’d spent years tracking the bastard down. It had been a driving force. In many ways, it had made him what he now was, but now, after all this time, something was missing.
/> ‘This lesson is going to hurt,’ his father said. ‘It has to, because you need to know. Do you understand that, Harry? Do you know what I’m saying here? You need to know that from this point forward, I will always know where you are. And what I’m about to do to you now, it can and will happen any time I want it to if you ever come close to me again. I will reach out and touch you whenever the fuck I want to. That’s what you need to know.’
‘It’s strange,’ Harry said using his father’s word. ‘But after all this time, all the years I’ve spent waiting for this, I’ve realised something. And you know what that is?’
‘What?’
‘I just don’t care anymore.’
‘It doesn’t matter, Harry,’ his father said. ‘This is going to be done. Right here, right now.’
‘No, you’re not listening,’ Harry said. ‘You’re hearing my words, but you’re not listening. And you need to listen.’
Harry watched as his father removed a phone from his pocket.
‘I’m going to make a call now, Harry,’ he said. ‘The instructions, the ones I’ve given to the friends I’ve brought with me, are to not kill you. You will survive this, but you will carry this lesson with you forever. I would have got to Ben, but he’s a little out of reach at the moment it seems, but then I thought, you know what? Perhaps it’s you that needs dealing with personally, perhaps only then will you just stop.’
‘Again, you’re not listening,’ Harry said, and as he spoke, he rose to his feet. ‘I don’t care. About you. About who you are, about what you do, about what you’ve done.’
‘Doesn’t matter, it’s too late.’
‘I don’t know why it’s taken me so long to realise this,’ Harry said. ‘I mean, just look at you! You’re old, you’re weak, you’re pathetic. Yes, that’s what you are, pathetic! And I’ve wasted years chasing down a man so weak, so pathetic that he couldn’t even face up to killing his own wife, beating his own son.’
Harry’s father was on the phone now, waiting for an answer.
‘I’ve let you control me,’ Harry said, a weight lifting from him as he spoke, and deep down the darkness he had carried around with him for so long was starting to bleed with light. ‘I gave you that power, and you don’t deserve it. And from this point forward, you don’t have it. I’m done!’
‘Yes,’ Harry’s father said into his phone. ‘You can come in now. We’re ready. And no, I don’t think it will take you that long.’
Harry was smiling. He could feel his face aching from it, the scars he bore wrestling against the emotion.
‘I’m done with this, with you,’ he said. ‘Whatever you do with what’s left of your life, that’s up to you. It’ll catch up with you eventually. Every bit of it will. The walls you’ve hidden behind, they’ll crash down. You’ll be dragged out on your arse and that’ll be that. But I’m not going to wait around for it. I’m not going to chase you down. Because if it’s all the same with you, I’d rather just get on with some living myself now. And you’re not going to ruin it. We’re done!’
Harry heard the door to his flat click open, then footsteps.
‘Like I said,’ his father smiled, looking up at him from where he was sitting, ‘it’s too late. Gentlemen, if you would be so kind?’
Two men entered the room and stared at Harry. They were big, muscled from years in the gym. Harry had met too many supposed-hard men like this, confident in their size, so sure of the threat given by little more than their shadow and the straining of their biceps against the sleeves of their shirts. One was carrying a baseball bat, the other a length of heavy chain.
‘Evening,’ Harry said, stuffing his hands into his pockets, his left hand fiddling with something sat in there, a sock filled with birdseed, pulling it apart, letting the seed spill.
‘Time for that lesson,’ Harry’s father said.
And Harry was moving.
Hurling a handful of birdseed into the eyes of the two new visitors, Harry charged them, crashing into the one with the baseball bat as they both roared in confusion, momentarily blind. The man managed to raise the bat, but that was his mistake, exposing himself fully to Harry’s attack, who relieved him of the weapon in a heartbeat. He sent a punch into his throat, his forehead into the man’s nose, bursting it in a shower of red. As he coughed and fought for breath, Harry reached behind him, grabbed one of the mugs he’d put on the side, and smashed it into the back of the other man’s head, who roared out and stumbled forward with the force of it.
Keeping momentum on his side, Harry swung the bat-less man around and into his companion, sending them both crashing into a wall. Harry gave no quarter, charging in with the bat, but instead of swinging it, he hammered them both in their stomachs with the handle. The reaction was immediate, the one with the chain dropping to his knees to vomit, the other only just managing to stop himself from doing the same. Harry threw the bat into the corner of the kitchen, grabbed the chain and yanked it away, tossing it over into the sink.
‘I’m assuming this isn’t quite the lesson you had planned,’ Harry said to his father as the two men moaned and rolled around on the floor, covering themselves in the vomit, the acrid stench of which was now starting to fill the air.
Harry’s father stood and walked over. He looked down at the two men. One of them glanced up at him and Harry’s father pushed him back down with his foot.
‘No, not exactly,’ he said.
Harry moved away from the mess of pumped-up muscle, blood, vomit, and moaning. From a cupboard, he pulled a box of teabags, dropped one in a mug, and filled it with water from the kettle.
‘I’m not going to chase you anymore,’ Harry said turning around, mug of tea in his hand. ‘Feel free to do whatever the hell it is that you want to do with your life. I’m done with you. And so is Ben. And the next time I see you, the next time I hear anything about you at all, will be the day it all finally catches up with you and they march you out of court to prison.’
‘You’re very confident about that, aren’t you?’ Harry’s father said, stepping over the two men on the floor. They staggered to their feet, staring daggers at Harry.
‘Get out,’ Harry said. ‘We’re done talking.’
Harry didn’t follow them to the door. He just stood there, drinking his tea, body aching from the brawl, relief washing through him like waves on a beach and suddenly, in his mind, he was back in Semerwater, all those months ago now, taking his first dip into its ice-cool embrace.
Chapter Thirty-Two
‘What the bloody hell happened to you?’
Matt’s question was fair enough, Harry thought, having caught sight of himself in the bathroom mirror that morning. He was never going to win any awards for dashing good looks, courtesy of the disagreement he’d had with an IED when in the Paras, but the addition of bruising and cuts from the scrap the evening before really wasn’t helping things. He couldn’t even remember getting hit, but then that’s what happened in fights, wasn’t it? Adrenaline took over and the pain came later.
They were both waiting for the kettle to boil at the community centre, Matt having arrived just a few minutes after Harry.
‘Nothing to worry about,’ Harry said.
‘Nowt to worry about?’ Matt exclaimed. ‘Are you having a laugh?
‘Honestly, I’m fine,’ Harry said. ‘I, er, I fell over. Slipped in the kitchen.’
‘What, you slipped and just so happened landed right on that pretty face of yours? And what exactly did you land on? An open dishwasher full of cutlery?’
‘Yes,’ Harry said. ‘That’s what exactly what happened.’
‘Those scars may give you a killer poker face,’ Matt said, ‘but you’re a bloody awful liar.’
‘It’s nothing to worry about,’ Harry said. ‘Trust me.’
‘Oh, I trust you alright,’ Matt replied. ‘I just don’t believe you. Different thing entirely.’
The sound of the door had both Harry and Matt turn to see a ball of fur rush in followed by
Jim. Fly snaked across the floor at speed, so that by the time he reached Matt and Harry his belly was scratching across the carpet. Harry noticed that the dog was baring its teeth.
‘What the hell’s that about?’ Harry asked. ‘With his teeth?’
‘Oh, that’s something new.’ Jim sighed, the door sliding shut behind him. ‘Taken to grinning it seems. Even though dogs can’t actually do that. But there you go, Fly’s having a damn good try at it, like.’
Jim walked over and stopped halfway, staring at Harry.
‘I know, right?’ Matt said. ‘Just look at the state of him!’
‘What happened down the pub?’ Jim asked. ‘I thought you just went out for a quiet pint! Doesn’t look good if the local police end up in punch ups!’
‘We did,’ Matt said. ‘This happened after. Not that he’s letting on as to what, like, are you, Boss?’
Harry lifted his mug and took a gulp, said nothing.
‘Were you attacked?’ Jim asked, drawing closer. Matt dropping down to ruffle Fly’s fur. ‘Hawes isn’t the kind of place you expect someone to get mugged!’
‘No, I wasn’t mugged,’ Harry said. ‘And I don’t need either of you making a fuss. Let’s just say I had something private to sort out and leave it at that.’
‘Something private to sort out?’ Matt said. ‘You moonlighting as an enforcer? A bailiff?’
The door opened again and in came Jadyn and Gordy.
‘Dear God, man!’ Gordy said, eyes wide, her accent reaching out for the Highlands and pulling them close. ‘What’s been going on with you, eh? You’re a mess!’
‘If that’s what you look like,’ Jadyn said, ‘I dread to think what state the other dude was in.’
Harry said nothing, just sat down, called Fly over.
Gordy thumped down beside him. ‘You do know that if Swift sees you like that he’ll send you into orbit, don’t you?’
‘I do,’ Harry said. ‘Though I doubt he’ll be rushing over here. He doesn’t really rush anywhere, does he?’
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