by John Barlow
“No,” he says, “I’m looking for somebody in particular. Sixty, big bloke, Cockney accent.” He gets the card out of his wallet and holds it up. “He had your card. You probably know who I mean, right?”
Holt shrugs. “A lot of people come here.”
“Think again. Couple inches shorter than me, but still a big bugger. He was an ex-boxer, gentle, affable, but you wouldn’t mess with him. I mean, ever. If he walked through that door you’d know him straight off, however many lost souls there were hanging about.”
“I can’t talk about people who come here. It’s a private thing. That’s the point.”
“Yeah, well he’s in trouble so I’d appreciate it if you could make an exception.”
“If he’s in trouble why not call the police?”
“Why don’t you call ’em, since you seem to know what this is about?”
Holt doesn’t flinch. He wasn’t expecting this to be a social call. He takes a second, inhales. Then he pulls a quizzical face, as if he’s confused by the question.
“If the man you’re describing did come here, what’s that got to do with anything?”
“You know who he was, and you know who he worked for. Word gets out he was coming here, sooner or later the finger gets pointed at you.”
“Because he came here? After all this time?”
“Because he’s dead. Murdered last night.”
“Jesus.”
Holt looks away, oblivious to his own blasphemy.
John struggles up from the armchair. “Shall I put the kettle on?”
Holt makes no reply.
“I’ll take that as a yes.”
After all this time… It’s hardly a secret. Towards the end of his life Holt’s father had become more ambitious, shifting his attention from street crime to the more organised sort. This was when Lanny Bride was making his move, buying up legitimate businesses, amusement arcades, bars, car washes, extending his presence in the city, right under the noses of the moral majority.
Low-level drug pushers were one thing, but people like Lanny Bride becoming property owners? Minister Holt hadn’t liked it, and he’d made the fact known. Then the Ministry was torched to the ground. One of Lanny’s men did it, almost certainly. But was it Roberto? If so, why was Rob coming here ten years after the event?
“You know what puzzles me?” says John, as he drops teabags into two mugs, “your dad’s attack troops never went after my dad.”
He sloshes some milk in each mug and brings them over. Doesn’t bother to take the teabags out. It’s not as if they’re going to drink it.
Holt chuckles. “Your father was never convicted of anything.”
“Strange, isn’t it?” John says, lowering himself all the way back down into the armchair. “Tony Ray! The name still makes people smile, after all these years. The loveable rogue, crafty criminal, loved his mum, all that crap. Pathetic, isn’t it?”
Holt takes his mug, wrapping his hands around it and holding it close to his chest.
“Let’s get one thing straight, shall we? I’m not the same person as my father. I have my own beliefs, and I do things my way. When it comes to my job at the home, that’s separate. When your dad arrived he was assigned to me because I’m a trained physiotherapist. I get the patents who still have some mobility. I can help them. In my work I don’t judge. Full stop.”
“Still, seeing Dad in that state day after day. Frailty of the flesh and all that. Must make you think he got what he deserved. In the end.”
Holt shakes his head. “You’re wrong. Look, we don’t do vigils outside the Gaiety Bar any more. We try and help people, that’s all.”
“And my dad?”
“I try and help him as well. Believe me, the irony of Minister Holt’s son looking after Tony Ray ran its course long ago. Your dad gets the best care there is. And if you really want to know, I’m pretty fond of him.”
John takes a sip of tea, just out of curiosity. He recognises the taste, strong and dusty, the brand they used to advertise with chimpanzees. To think people still drink this shit. He puts it down.
“Roberto, he was called. Roberto Swales. Is there anything you can tell me?”
Holt inhales the steam from his mug, rocks backwards and forwards a fraction in his chair.
“The first thing he said to me…”
“When?”
“A few weeks ago. Three, perhaps, no more than that. The very first thing. He introduced himself, told me who he worked for. Said he had nothing to do with the Ministry getting burned down, that he was sorry it happened.”
“He came to tell you that?”
Holt sighs. “Am I going to be making a statement about all this down at Millgarth?”
“You mean are you gonna get dragged into my world?”
Holt nods, sheepish. A little too sheepish.
“First off,” John says, “it’s not actually my world. Second, the police’ll hear nothing about this from me. Rob was an old friend of the family. I loved the bloke when I was a kid, we all did. This isn’t going anywhere, not from me. I promise you that.”
“Apart from to Lanny Bride?” Holt says. Just the hint of a smile. “I bet he’s going to hear about it.”
John ignores him. “Tell me, why was Roberto really here?”
“Because he was ashamed about the life he’d had.”
“Simple as that?”
“Stuff in his past. A long time ago, something he’d been involved in.”
“Did he say what?”
“No. I think he would have done, in time. But I decided not to ask. He needed to talk to someone, let out the feelings of remorse.”
“Well, he was no angel. Could’ve been anything. How much remorse?”
“Who am I to judge? Enough for it to mean something, enough for him to come here, of all places.”
“Symbolic, was it, choosing to come to see you?”
“He might have been meaning to come for a while, years even, just took him a while to pluck up the courage.”
John imagines Roberto in his well-appointed city-centre flat, sitting alone late at night with a bottle of Scotch and wondering what happened to his life. Sixty years old, no family, no kids, and his curriculum vitae runs to a couple of scarred knuckles and a job looking after a dodgy bar.
“Are you all right?” Holt says.
John looks up, realises his breathing is unsteady, his fists balled tight.
“I’m fine. The question is, why now?”
“I don’t now. He seemed vulnerable.”
“Scared?”
“For a man like that it’s hard to say.” Holt pauses, runs his tongue over his teeth. “I got the feeling that he wanted to make peace with himself.”
“When did you last see him?”
“A few days ago. It was his third visit, and he said he’d be back. We don’t push, we don’t make appointments. People can come whenever they want.”
“And it helps people does it, coming here? They feel better?”
“I don’t know if it helps. They come, they go. Who knows if we do any good.”
“Kind of tough, isn’t it, your whole life doing something like this, and you’ve no idea whether it’s worth it? You must ask yourself, surely.”
“This is the best I can do. It’s what my dad left me, the idea that you can make a difference.”
“But you’ll never know if you do, not really.”
“And what will your dad leave you?”
John smiles.
But Holt’s not done: “He left you with a name that people associate with crime and violence and squalor.”
“So much for not judging, eh?”
Holt raises his arm, sweeping it around as he talks.
“This. Some people seem to need it. That’s why we do it. And now I’ve got you sitting here telling me that it’s worthless.”
“None of my business. I was just interested. The point is, Roberto was murdered yesterday. That’s why I’m here.”
Holt’s eyes give nothing away, but his voice is unsteady: “Like I said, crime, violence, squalor.”
John pauses to think. None of this is making much sense.
“I’m here to find out who killed my friend,” he says. “And I don’t think you’re telling me the truth.”
Before Holt can answer, the intercom buzzes.
“You should go,” he says, standing. “I’ve got work to do, not that you’d understand.”
He’s over by the door in a second, buzzing in the people downstairs without asking who they are.
“For what it’s worth,” says John, struggling out of the armchair and joining Holt by the door, “I give you my word that none of this will get back to the police.”
Holt nods.
“But you should talk to them yourself,” John adds. “And you can tell them I was here. I’ve got no problem with that.”
Holt snorts with derision. “Yes, you’ve got a foot in both camps, I heard.”
“Had.”
Footsteps on the stairs.
“Did he mention anything else?” John says, standing a little too close to Holt, close enough for it to be distinctly uncomfortable for both of them. But his eyes are pleading, not threatening. “Anything? Please?”
“Brought nothing into the world,” Holt says, almost a whisper. “That’s what he said. Over and over. That he brought nothing into the world.”
Two people on the stairs, sounds like.
“General regret?” says John. “Bloke with no kids, weighing up his life…”
Holt gives a little smile, shaking his head.
“Perhaps.”
His smile intensifies as he pulls open the door. A small, wiry man in his early twenties stands there, head lowered, ducking into the room without a word. Following him is a girl of about the same age, although it’s hard to tell. She might be older. Her hair is dirty and her skin is dry and pallid. Both of them smell of damp and tobacco.
“I’ll be seeing you,” John says, taking the first few steps then turning back to look up at Holt. “By the way, I’ve still got the letter.”
“Letter?”
“All these years I kept it.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
John puts a cigarette between his lips. “Like I said, I don’t think you’re telling the truth.”
The door closes without a sound.
He lets 3.8 litres of turbo-charged machismo idle for a while, running his hands around the black steering wheel as he thinks what to do now. The letter? That letter changed his life. But not in the way it was intended. He should be grateful to Holt for having written it. He’s not, though. He’s going to read it again, then decide what to do about The Ministry of Eternal Hope.
With the car out of gear he floors the accelerator and holds it there until blue-white smoke billows out behind and the scream of the engine is deafening. Up in the window above the butchers he sees the outline of Andrew Holt, half-hidden behind the curtain.
He checks the road’s clear, then feels his body pressed back into the driver’s seat as 530 brake horsepower take him away.
Chapter Sixteen
Detective Inspector Steven Baron, hands in his pockets, looks down at the hole in the ground. A square tent is being erected around him, four SOCOs in white overalls struggling against the wind to get the thing moored to the soft earth. Behind him there’s a steady coming and going of vehicles as another crime scene moves into its familiar routine, the constant chirping of police radios, the ordered bustle of it all.
The smell of petrol hangs in the air, and close by his feet is a pile of fresh vomit, several little mounds of the stuff in the grass, bits of half-digested chips and baked beans glowing a strange, almost florescent pink in the police lights.
The boys who found the body were nine years old, out on their own at dusk. Tough little nuts, a mile from home in the woods as darkness fell, doing whatever they wanted. Now they’re at home huddled close to their mums, kind-faced police counsellors trying to get some sense out of ’em.
And they’ll need counselling. Nightmares for months after something like this. He thinks of his own boys, same sort of age. They’d never be allowed out alone in a place like this. Not with night drawing in. Never. At least, he doesn’t think they would.
He puts the twins out of his mind, focuses on the job at hand and tries to imagine what happened. Two lads are kicking about down here by the beck. Quiet spot, lots of trees, not that far from the main road, but secluded. They see the fresh earth, reckon they’ve hit treasure. Then they’re down on their knees, wide-eyed, digging with their hands. One of ’em feels something strange, grabs it. A human nose, coming away from the head like a lump of plasticine.
DS Steele joins him, grey suit flapping in the wind.
“Shallow grave,” Steele says, rubbing his hands together. He’s an inch shorter than Baron, but a good deal wider in the shoulders; rugby shoulders, and he doesn’t mind who knows it. “What? Two feet, you reckon? Lazy bastards, whoever did it.”
“Just far enough from the road,” Baron says, still looking down. Out of the soil pokes the left side of a face, caked in mud, as if it’s wearing a mask. And the nose is missing. “So they bring the body over, don’t dig more than they have to. Quick job. Two of ’em. If there were more, they’d’ve dug deeper. Ground’s soft enough.”
“Why burn the body if they weren’t going to finish the job?” Steele says, sniffing against the cold, the smell of petrol not hard to detect, despite the swirling wind. “The nose wasn’t even charred.”
“Hands were. No fingerprints.”
“But why not let it carry on burning? Why leave it like this?”
“They got disturbed? Lost their nerve?” Baron looks at his watch. Tomorrow is his turn to have the kids. That’ll be off now.
“We’ve just dragged two shovels out the beck,” says Steele.
“They got rattled. Couldn’t wait for the body to burn. Covered it up quick and got off.”
Steele stretches his arms, quick body-yawn.
“Hacked the nose off with a shovel? Clumsy, panicking? It fits.”
Baron shakes his head. “Cuts were too clean. See what Coultard says, but I reckon the nose was before.”
“Why cut the nose off a dead bloke’s face?”
“Who says he was dead? You got a match tomorrow?”
Steele nods.
“You haven’t now. Come on, this is a bad ’un.”
The tent is finally in place, and as they step back out into the evening wind the police pathologist Michael Coultard is striding purposefully towards them.
“What we got, Steve?” he says.
A stocky man in his fifties with a ruddy, over-indulged face, he has one hand under his chin, holding the neck of a dark blue raincoat tight.
Baron smiles. “I don’t think this’ll keep you long, Michael.”
“Good. I’m supposed to be picking Deborah up. Shall I?” he says, walking past them and into the tent. “By the way,” he calls out, “I’ve seen the nose. Taken off with something sharp. But messy. Probably not a knife.”
Baron nods to himself, looks out across the waste ground, the traffic on the road no more than a quarter of a mile away.
“Did they drive right out here?” he asks, still looking ahead. “Or carry the body from the road?”
“We drove.”
Baron runs a hand across the back of his neck.
“Yeah, but if we get a wheel stuck, someone tows us out. If they get stuck with a dead body in the boot, they’ve got to leave the vehicle. In any case, there were no tyre marks close up. First thing tomorrow we’ll look for tracks. We’ve all come in on the same line, right?”
“Yep.”
“It’s their own vehicle,” Baron says, as if he’s thinking out loud. “If it was nicked, they’d’ve driven all the way in, like we did. Their own wheels? Not worth the risk.”
“Somebody who doesn’t know how to steal a car
, then?”
“Or they’d been told not to. Keep it simple, quick.”
Steele grins. “They’re not the only ones in a rush. Deb’s half his age, y’know. I don’t know how he does it! You reckon he’s gonna marry her?”
“Coultard? How the hell should I know! Any road, how about you? What’s she called?”
“Shit. Supposed to be taking her out tonight.”
“Better cancel that, an’all. The life we chose, eh, compadre?”
“Fucking hell,” Steele mutters up to the sky as he walks off, feeling the various pockets of his jacket for his phone, oblivious to the cold.
A moment later Dr Michael Coultard emerges from the tent.
“Male. Deceased, wouldn’t you know,” he says, jabbing a thumb over his shoulder. “One nose missing. That’s me done.”
“I’ll keep you informed,” says Baron.
“Not tonight you won’t,” the pathologist says, looking at his watch with undisguised satisfaction. “Off-call, as of now.”
“Have a good one,” Baron says, as Coultard scampers towards his Volvo.
“Lucky sod,” Baron says to himself, and wonders what he’s going to tell the boys this time.
Chapter Seventeen
“Flash wheels,” she says, trying just a bit too hard not to be impressed as she lowers herself into the Porsche’s low, black and white passenger seat.
“I needed to annoy someone earlier on.”
“You always carry your girlfriend’s laptop around with you?” she says, finding the MacBook on the floor by her feet.
“She’s not my girlfriend, and she left it this morning. I thought I’d get it out of the flat, y’know, just in case.”
“In case what?”
“Dunno. But Baron’s gonna be sniffing round me sooner or later, so best not complicate things.”