Crusher

by Niall Leonard

  “Hey, we got company,” he said. “Finn, right?” There was an American or Canadian twang to his voice and he didn’t offer to shake hands, maybe because his own were full. One held a square bottle of spirits wrapped in a brown paper bag—more Jack Daniel’s, I guessed—the other a half-full plastic carrier bag, the sort that usually splits ten minutes after you leave the corner shop.

  “Finn, this is Enrique,” said my mother, in a small voice. Enrique grinned at me, shut the door behind him with his heel and moved over to the picnic table to dump his shopping.

  “Enrique Romero, right?” I said. “The painter?” My mind was racing. The guy my mother left us for?

  “That’s me,” said Enrique. “Want a drink? We only got two glasses—you’ll have to share with your mom.”

  “Pass,” I said.

  “Something to eat maybe? I just got some more cheese and crackers.”

  “How was this going to work out?” I said to my mother. “You and him and Dad. Was it going to be like a threesome, or were you planning a rota?”

  “Finn, please don’t,” she said.

  “Why did you tell Dad you wanted to get back together, if you were still shacked up with your pen pal?”

  “Yo, what the fuck,” said Romero. “Lighten up, kid, OK?”

  I glared at Romero, rage and indignation boiling up inside me, and I knew I had to get out of there before I blew out the windows. My mother had shut her eyes, in shame or pain or embarrassment at getting caught, I didn’t know which, and I didn’t care. “I should go,” I said.

  “Hey, hey—what’s your hurry?” said Romero. He looked pained. “Look, I know this is kind of awkward, but we got things to discuss.”

  “We really don’t,” I said.

  He pushed his hand against the door so I couldn’t open it. I took a deep breath, trying to stay calm, trying to think straight, but my mind was clouded with choking black fumes of anger and confusion and disappointment. Romero’s bomber jacket hung open; from the flex of the muscles under his shirt I could see the guy was seriously ripped. You don’t get a torso like that from hefting a paintbrush. He twisted his neck and flexed his fingers, as if limbering up, and I could smell his aggression smouldering.

  “Goddammit,” he muttered to my mother. The way she shrank from him when he spoke that way made me tense too. “I told you,” he went on, “didn’t I tell you? The motherfucker’s been having us tailed.” He jerked his chin at me. “Bitch with red hair, she with you?”

  “You want to step away from the door?” I said.

  He just leaned on it with his elbow, tilted his head as if to weigh me up, and finally wiped his face with his free hand. “OK, kid, here’s the deal,” he said. “Fifty–fifty and we walk away, you never hear from us again. Unless you want to. She’ll send you a postcard every Thanksgiving if it makes you happy.”

  “Fifty per cent of what?” I said.

  He rubbed his nose and tried to grin as he fought to keep his temper. “Hey, we’re all here in one room, no more bullshit, OK? You’re smart, I’m smart, let’s not break each other’s balls. Fifty per cent of what the old guy left your dad. It should have been half hers anyway.”

  I turned to my mother. “You knew about the money?” I said.

  “I visited Charles Egerton to ask him for a loan,” she said. “He sent me away. Said he could never forgive me for abandoning you and your father, that he was leaving everything to Noel.”

  “Holy crap,” I said. “Dad wasn’t going to take you back, was he? That’s why you hired Hans to kill him.” My mother’s face was drawn, and she couldn’t look at me. “He took Dad’s laptop and his notes just to mislead the cops.”

  “You only just getting this?” said Romero. He turned to my mother and snorted, “Kid’s not that smart after all.”

  I ignored him and looked at her. “And you sent him back to kill me. So you could inherit, as my next of kin.”

  “Of course I didn’t,” my mother insisted. “It was just—when we couldn’t pay Hans the rest of his money, he said he was going to start charging interest.”

  Jesus. Those secateurs … “Interest being one of my fingers,” I said.

  “I never wanted to hire that asshole in the first place,” said Romero. “But no, she wants to get a professional, do it properly. That worked out great. Tell you what, the twenty grand we would have paid him, we’ll take that out of our cut, how’s that?”

  “You don’t get a cut,” I said. My voice was calmer than I felt. “Open the door.”

  “Finn—” my mother said.

  “We’re not walking away from this empty-handed, kid,” said Romero. “I spent a goddamn fortune getting over here, hiring that guy, renting this shithole. We get fifty per cent, or you get to be in pieces in my suitcase, and she gets all of it.”

  “Finn, please, just a third,” said my mother.

  “Who the fuck is talking to you, bitch?” said Romero.

  “A few people have tried to kill me this week,” I told him. “It didn’t really work out that way.”

  “Please, Finn, don’t do this,” said my mother.

  “I’m not going to shop you,” I told her. “Even if I tried, I couldn’t prove anything. I’m just going to let you walk away, because that’s what Dad was going to do.”

  “No deal,” said Romero.

  “Step away from the door,” I said.

  He chuckled. “You think you’re tough, all those muscles and shit?” said Romero. “You know what we call guys like you in prison? Dessert.”

  And he launched himself at me.

  He was fast, hard and wiry, and we both went flying. I landed on the TV and felt it slide off its wooden stand onto the floor, the hard edge of the unit cutting into my back. Romero’s right hand was round my throat clutching my windpipe while he punched me hard in the face with his left and I felt the skin of my cheekbone split under his knuckles. As I tumbled off the TV unit and onto the floor he lost his grip, scrambled to his feet and aimed a kick to my belly, but I grabbed the leg he stood on as I rose, throwing him off balance, forcing him to hop backward, arms flailing, till he collided with the door jamb of the bedroom, bursting the concertina door out of its rickety frame and making the whole flimsy wall creak and groan.

  All the while my mother was shrieking, but whether she was actually saying anything I couldn’t tell, because the guy next door had turned up the music to drown out the screaming and the racket of two men trying to kill each other. I pinned Romero to the door jamb with my left forearm while I pounded his belly with my right, trying to drive right through to his backbone, feeling the muscle there tense and give under my fist as he clawed at my wrist, his eyes bulging. Then his right hand snaked out and I saw too late the glint of the empty Jack Daniel’s bottle as he swung it.

  The first blow bounced off my head and I pushed harder with my forearm against his windpipe, but on the second swing the bottle smashed, and through the pain I felt shards of bourbon-scented glass scattering down my hair and shoulders. I had to loose my hold and grab instead at his right arm that clutched the broken stub. While he twisted and turned his right to break my hold he pounded my gut again and again on the same spot with his left fist. I’ve never been kicked by a mule but I’m pretty sure the sensation came close, and I twisted my torso to avoid his blows before he ruptured something, held his right wrist with my left hand and hit him as hard as I could in the face with my right elbow. I felt one of those lovely white teeth go loose, and I swear he grinned, like he was getting off on the pain, and I hit him again, and we staggered back, and suddenly my mother was crying out, trapped between him and the folding table. The whole rickety heap of fibreboard and cheap chrome struts was bending and buckling, and I realized I was pushing the broken bottle in his fist towards her eyes.

  My instant of hesitation was all Romero needed. I felt my legs tangle in his and a hard shove brought me slamming down hard on the floor, driving most of the wind from my body. He was on me faster than a rat a
nd his right hand pulled back to drive the broken shard into my throat, when suddenly his head jolted forward and downward, and my mother raised her arms again, and I pushed my right hand into Romero’s face and held his head up steady while she brought the full bottle of bourbon down for a second time, with all her force, onto the back of his skull.

  This time the bottle shattered, soaking us both in booze, and Romero’s stab flailed and went wild, nicking my left ear. I grabbed his arm, wrenched it round and squirmed from under him till I was on his back. The raw bourbon was burning my eyes and a fragment of broken glass bit into my knee, but I pressed his face harder into the sodden purple carpet glinting with shards, reached out to where the TV lay screen-down on the floor, grabbed the flex where it entered the set, and wrenched it out. Yanking Romero’s other arm back I lashed both his wrists together while he grunted and cursed and spat through his clenched and bloody teeth, and my mother sank onto the sofa with her hands over her mouth, saying over and over, “Please don’t hurt him, please don’t hurt him.”

  I didn’t know which of us she was talking to, and I didn’t ask.

  seventeen

  “Nicola Hale.”

  “Ms. Hale, it’s Finn Maguire.”

  “Finn, good morning. I’ve been trying to reach you. We have a financial adviser we think you should meet.”

  “That’s great, but right now I need a criminal lawyer, and I was wondering if you could recommend one.”

  “I trained in criminal law. What’s happened?”

  “I’m being questioned at Shepherd’s Bush police station.”

  “Fine. Say nothing until I get there. Forty-five minutes, OK?”

  I wasn’t actually the one who was in trouble. Since it was me who had phoned the cops, they’d heard my side of the story first, and that’s usually the one cops go with. Romero didn’t help his case by calling everyone in sight a dumb British motherfucker. For a guy who’d done prison time this showed poor judgement, because thanks to me he already had plenty of cuts and bruises before the cops took him in, which meant that in the half-hour before the duty doctor turned up at the nick they could give him plenty more without getting into trouble. When the doctor eventually did appear they sent me to the surgery to be patched up first, allowing themselves extra playtime with Romero.

  The fresh stitches in my cheek and scalp were just starting to throb when Nicola Hale was shown into my interrogation room. I started with that morning’s events and worked backwards, leaving out everything about McGovern and James Gravett. They’d had nothing to do with my dad’s death, and I didn’t want Hale thinking she might have to spend the rest of her career bailing me out of police stations. She had got the gist of the story when there was a gentle knock on the door.

  The man who entered was a big scruffy Glaswegian with unruly fair hair who introduced himself as DI Jones. He seemed cheerful and relaxed as he took a seat in the regulation-issue office chair on the other side of the desk, while a uniformed policewoman took a seat in the corner.

  “We’ve checked out your story, Mr. Maguire,” said Jones. “And I spoke to my colleague DS Amobi, from your local nick. He didn’t exactly vouch for your sterling character, but he thinks you’re one of the good guys.”

  “He doesn’t know me that well,” I said.

  “I’m inclined to give you the benefit of the doubt myself,” said Jones. “I just got off the phone to the FBI. Your friend—I mean, your mother’s friend—Romero is wanted on a fresh charge of murder in the States. After he got out of prison he made a load of money from those paintings of his, but blew most of it on gambling and crack. Seems he fell out with his agent over his commission, stabbed him through the eye with a paintbrush and did a runner.”

  “How did Romero get into the UK?” asked Hale.

  “We’re looking into that,” said Jones. “But it seems he should never have been freed in the first place. The FBI can’t prove anything, but they think he used the money from the sale of his first painting to buy himself an alibi. He paid another criminal to confess to the crime he was jailed for. That’s how he got off Death Row.”

  “He hired a man to kill my father too,” I said.

  “So I understand,” said Jones. “Your mother has indicated she’s willing to make a full statement.”

  “No,” I said. “It wasn’t her fault. She was being coerced by Romero. That’s why Ms. Hale’s here—I want her to represent my mother.”

  Jones frowned. “Your mother already has legal representation,” he said.

  “Not one of those useless duty hacks,” I said. “Someone who knows what they’re doing. I’ll pay.”

  “Sorry, Mr. Maguire—” Jones looked genuinely confused. “The solicitor you hired is already here. They’re in conference now.”

  “I haven’t hired anyone,” I said.

  As we sat looking at each other, a bell rang outside in the corridor, and went on ringing. Moments later we heard running feet and shouting. Jones registered the racket at the same time as I did, and in a moment he was out of his chair, through the door and running down the corridor, with me right on his heels. At the far end of the passageway was another interview room, and a uniform cop with scarlet hands burst out of the doorway, shouting for the medic.

  Beyond Jones, in the interview room, stood Elsa Kendrick, cornered by two officers in stab vests. In her fist she held a long, gleaming butcher’s knife running with blood. Her face and her arms were splashed with it, and she was smiling like she was in a blissful dream. When one of the officers reached out she offered him the knife as if he was going to cut her a slice of cake.

  Kendrick’s big leather satchel lay open on the interview table, and the chair beyond it was lying on its side on the floor, and beside it lay my mother, twitching in a massive pool of blood that was slowly spreading, fed by the deep gashes in her face and her hands and her throat.

  I heard the suck of my shoes in her blood as I knelt beside her, and felt its warm sticky wetness on my hands as I took her in my arms and hugged her and lifted her head. The fear and confusion on her face seemed to vanish when she looked at me. She raised her delicate hand to touch my face, and two of its fingers were missing, but she caressed my cheek, and there was no pain in her eyes, just an infinite sadness.

  “Finn,” she mouthed, and blood spilled down her chin. Her lips went on moving, but she had no breath left.

  “Please, Mum, don’t talk, don’t say anything,” I said. “Just hang on. Please don’t leave me. Please, Mum. Please.”

  She smiled at me, and coughed, and her hand fell from my cheek, and her eyes were empty.

  eighteen

  There were two grey funeral urns on my mantelpiece now, and they bugged me. I had tried standing them at opposite ends, but it looked like my mum and dad were ignoring each other, and when I stood them together they looked like targets in a coconut shy. I didn’t know why I was displaying them anyway—they weren’t pretty, and they weren’t exactly conversation pieces. On the other hand I couldn’t just stick them in the attic. I was going to have the house redecorated, and it did occur to me to have them painted white, like the walls, so they would be there, but invisible. And then I could grow old and die here and be placed in a white pot between them, and we’d be a family again, until someone bought the house and threw us all into a skip.

  It was an early Sunday morning in late May. The sun was shining and innocent fluffy clouds were tumbling slowly across the bright blue London sky when I slipped both urns into a backpack, stepped out of the house and pulled the door shut behind me. I was getting ready to run when I noticed her coming down the street towards me, in a short skirt that would have flaunted her thighs if they weren’t clad in black leggings. Her hands were fisted in the pockets of her denim jacket and her head was bowed.

  When Zoe heard my door close she looked up, and paused, and I could see she’d been trying to think of what she might say to me, and hadn’t come up with anything, and now it was too late.

  �
�Hey,” she said instead.

  “Hey,” I said. I hoiked my bag up my shoulder and strode past her.

  “Can I walk with you?” she called after me.

  “It’s a free country,” I said. “Mostly.” I couldn’t start running now. I didn’t want her thinking I was afraid of her or trying to avoid her. I didn’t particularly want to talk to her, but then I couldn’t stop her talking to me.

  “How have you been?” she said.

  I shrugged.

  “I heard about your mum,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

  “What did you hear?” I said.

  “That she was the woman killed in a police station by some loony with a machete,” said Zoe.

  “It was a butcher’s knife,” I said.

  “If I’d known about the funeral I would have come, but I didn’t know about it, so I …” She sighed, aware she’d started blethering. I was glad. Maybe if she got bored or embarrassed enough she’d go away and I wouldn’t have to tell her to piss off. “That’s if you’d wanted me to come,” she added.

  “It’s a free country. Mostly,” I said, and cursed inwardly. Now she had me repeating myself. I walked a bit faster but she didn’t even seem to notice, tailing after me like a bad smell.

  “I know how you feel, Finn,” she said. I snorted at that, but she ignored me. “There were hundreds of people at my dad’s funeral, most of them cops, and they all wanted to shake my hand and tell me what a wonderful man my dad was and how proud I must be.”

  “No one came to my mother’s funeral, except me,” I said. “Stop pretending you know how I feel.”

  “I’m sorry,” Zoe said.

  “Yeah. You said.”

  “I wished no one had come to my dad’s funeral, if they were all going to spout bullshit,” said Zoe. “He didn’t die a hero in a shoot-out with some child-trafficker after an anonymous tip-off.”