by John Barlow
John pauses and looks up from the lectern, ignoring the pain that shoots halfway down his back.
There are only six men in the chapel, and that includes him and the one in the coffin. The other four do not appear to be listening. What had he expected? A sharp intake of breath? A smirk of approval?
No one else was going to give the reading, so he reckoned he’d pick something he liked. Julius Caesar isn’t the obvious choice for a funeral. Then again, this isn’t what you’d call a normal funeral. Sod it.
“…The evil that men do lives after them. The good is oft interred with their bones.”
He takes his time with the reading, measuring Shakespeare’s words carefully, letting them sound out with clarity around the chapel.
Sitting behind him on a chair is a minister in a dark lounge suit. Denomination? Who cares. He was the only one who’d come. Outside a handful of reporters are waiting with cameras. Sod them too. Sod the bloody lot of ’em.
His voice rises until he’s almost shouting, his eyes fixed on the far wall of the room: “You all did love him once, not without cause. What cause withholds you then, to mourn for him? O judgment!”
Again he pauses, and finds that his hands and arms are trembling visibly. He looks down at the paper in front of him, can’t bring himself to read the last lines: Bear with me. My heart is in the coffin there with Caesar, and I must pause till it come back to me.
He slips the paper into his jacket pocket, then makes his way slowly from the alter, back to his seat next to Freddy, who is staring directly at Roberto’s coffin and looks as if he hasn’t heard a word of it.
John had to organise the service himself. Roberto Swales had no family, and if there were any old friends lurking in the shadows, they haven’t seen fit to dignify the big fella’s death with their presence. Lanny Bride sent a wreath of white carnations.
The heating inside the crematorium chapel is a little higher than it needs to be, and Freddy is achingly uncomfortable, almost gagging in a collar and tie that he’s got way too tight, as if to make sure no emotions escape. Big men don’t cry? This one’s been crying for a fortnight. First Roberto, then Tony Ray. Two old criminals, and Freddy loved them both, a cockeyed, boyish kind of love for a couple of larger-than-life characters. It turns out that both of them were involved in one of the most heinous crimes the city had ever witnessed. Now they’re gone, and something inside Freddy has gone with them.
The evil that men do lives after them. The good is oft interred with their bones.
Three rows back is Andrew Holt, alone, head bowed in contemplation. When they found him in the back of the van he was unconscious, the masking tape intended to stop him crying out for help having almost cut off his air supply. With his legs and arms bound, and his neck yoked to a side panel close to the floor of the van, he’d twisted and turned, straining wildly for air, his body convulsed in panic; then he was overcome by a drowning sensation and he blacked out.
The last thing that went through his mind, eyes full of tears and the dust from the floor of the van heavy in his nose, was that he was about to die. He’d been dragged into the very world his father had fought so fearlessly against; held at gunpoint, gagged and tied up; Graeme Thornton had used him, manipulated him, then cast him aside like a piece of low-life scum. And now he was going to die, as if to play out the pitiful failure of everything his father had stood for.
But he didn’t die. As the building exploded, bringing the walls down and throwing a mass of flames and debris high into the sky, police officers were racing up York Road, close enough to feel the deep sonic rumble of the blast in the air as Carr’s Dry Cleaners was torn apart.
They got to Holt just in time. He was taken to Leeds General Infirmary, where he spent a couple of days in an observation ward before being allowed home, rattling with Xanax and in the company of a police counsellor…
The minister leading the service now takes the lectern. He’s been asked to keep the address short. He clears his throat, looks with studied sympathy across the rows of empty chairs, and speaks with well-practiced candour about the sadness of death, of the sudden loss of a friend, and the gap that it leaves behind.
He sidesteps all mention of morality, never once using the words ‘good’ or ‘bad’. He also steers clear of repentance, of sin and God’s judgment. In fact he avoids everything but the broadest of platitudes, relying on the kind of undeniable human verities that we all need when death comes close to us. It is, all things considered, a very fitting funeral address for a violent criminal.
RIP Roberto Swales.
Human verities? Death brings its own. Two weeks ago John had faced death. Looking straight at Graeme Thornton’s gun, he’d been ready to accept the truth, knowing that he, however unwittingly, had played a part in the death of Thornton’s child. Standing there, arms raised and waiting for the bullet, he had felt for the first time in his life the true meaning of unwavering moral courage.
He had not wished for death, even then, with the terrible knowledge of what he’d been a part of. Yet he had been willing to accept it, to take Thornton’s retribution, a father still mourning his baby boy after all these years, the pain raw and unhealed, as if he’d just emerged from the devastation of the blast, the infant body in his arms.
Then Den had shot him dead.
John senses that Freddy is fighting to hold back the tears. Not just for Roberto, perhaps; for everything, for the way that humanity turns on humanity, stripping away all that is human, until only death remains. John shifts in his seat, tries to look at Freddy. But his neck and shoulder brace makes it difficult to rotate his torso, and turning his head a full ninety degrees to the side is too painful even to consider, despite a hearty breakfast of coffee and codeine.
“You all right?” he whispers.
“Yeah,” says Freddy. “You?”
“Yep.”
But he wishes he wasn’t here. Roberto wouldn’t have wanted this. John realises that now. Rob would have wanted a booze-up down at the Park Lane, reminiscing about the old days, cigars, bottles of brandy, laughs all round. He’d have wanted to play the part even in death. Because that’s how he died, trapped in a life he couldn’t escape, playing a part he didn’t want.
It hadn’t taken much to work it out: Lanny had not sold the bar to Roberto, he’d forced him to take it. Rob knew too much, he’d been Lanny Bride’s enforcer for too long, his trusted man in the city. Lanny needed to keep Roberto close. He was never going to be allowed to walk away. The bar was a life sentence.
Roberto: a sixty-year-old guy thinking about retirement, no strings, no commitments. Suddenly Lanny decides he’s not going to retire. About the same time, the Sheenan story resurfaces. If Roberto had needed a reminder of how rotten and pointless his existence had been, that was it. So he looked for help, went to see Andrew Holt. But it was too late. Lanny forced him to buy the bar. He was trapped.
The minister concludes his address, delivered to a room of empty chairs by a man who never knew the deceased, and who took quite a bit of convincing to come at all. He’s done well to keep the distaste out of his voice. There’s a short dedication, and he crosses himself. Then he turns and mumbles something towards the coffin.
With that the service is over. The minister disappears through a door behind the lectern and is gone. The pall-bearers and crematorium staff, meanwhile, are all waiting outside at the front. They’ve read the papers, they know who Roberto Swales was and what he did all those years ago. They didn’t want to hear the service, and they will not be offering their condolences.
So, as a recording of Albinoni’s Adagio plays quietly in the background, just four men are left in the chapel to watch the coffin as it sinks slowly down.
The photographers are leaning on their cars outside. There can’t be more than half a dozen of them. A couple of weeks after the explosion and most of the press interest has dissipated.
Freddy puffs out his chest, his eyes red but dry. He looks across the car park, sees the pr
ess pack waiting. The first one of them to come near him is going to get his jaw knocked out of its socket.
“Go on,” John says, “wait for me in the car. I won’t be a second.”
Freddy doesn’t need telling twice. He rolls his shoulders and storms over to the Porsche, its gleaming new front end freshly waxed. No one so much as points a lens at him.
Andrew Holt is on his own, reading the inscriptions on the two wreathes laid out for Roberto Swales.
“When did you get out?” he asks, watching as John approaches with short, laboured steps.
“Week ago. Collar bone, ribs, nothing serious. “And you?”
Holt nods. “I’m fine.”
They look at the flowers, two modest wreathes on a plinth that could take several dozen. Behind them the chapel doors close with a thud. And stay out! the sound seems to say.
“Tell me,” says John, lighting a cigarette, “when I told you Roberto had been killed, why didn’t you go to the police?”
Holt smiles. “I got a call. Just after I spoke to you. The bloke told me he’d blow my head off if I told the coppers anything.”
“Jesus…”
“It was Dennis Reid. They traced his mobile, y’know, after.” Holt exhales, shaking his head. “My father was brave. He lived with the threat of criminals all his life. Me? I’m not so brave. I was scared, I was just so incredibly scared…”
“You don’t have to be ashamed about that. He was a killer. He would have done it.”
They’re still looking at the flowers. Robert Swales, it says on the wreath from Lanny. He didn’t even make sure the florists got the name right.
“In the van,” Holt says, “we were both tied up in the back. As Thornton drove us he was shouting, like he was boasting. It was weird. He told me how he’d started coming to see me at the ministry so he could get closer to your dad.”
John nods. “Roberto too, no?”
“Yeah. He started drinking at the Park Lane to get pally with Roberto. Told him about killing a man in the army, how he was full or remorse…”
“It was true, apparently…”
“I know, it was in the paper.”
It had all been in the papers. How Graeme Thornton had set himself up as a dry cleaner with the help of Alice Carr, the mother of his dead son. How they’d planned to track down Sheenan, then every member of the crew that brought the shipment of Semtex to Leeds, killing them one by one until someone gave them the last name on the list.
Holt shakes his head in quiet disbelief.
“It was Graeme who gave my card to Roberto. And when Roberto turned up and told me who he was, I thought it was really positive, someone like him coming to see me. I did what I could, I listened. The poor bloke was hurting. He knew what he’d done, and he was sorry for it. All of it. I’m convinced.”
“You were the only place Rob could turn, the only thing that might possibly have made any sense to him.”
Holt nods. “He cried.”
“I bet.”
“The remorse, I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“For what it’s worth,” John says, “I think your ministry makes a difference, and I think you could have helped Rob. I mean, if I had nowhere to go, no one to turn to, I’d appreciate someone like you being there.”
“I didn’t think I’d ever hear that from you. But, thanks.”
Holt watches as John blows a plume of smoke up into the air above their heads.
“And you? What now?”
John runs a hand around the back of his neck, considers the question.
“Dunno. I suppose I could try doing something worthwhile for a change. It’s a thought!” he says, glancing over at the Porsche. “Anyway, better get going. Look, I’m sorry you got caught up in all this. You know, with my father, everything.”
“It doesn’t matter. Take care, John,” Holt says, extending an arm.
For a second John looks at it.
“I’m sorry about your dad,” Holt says as they shake hands. “And,” he adds, looking John in the eye, “the letter I wrote thirty years ago? I’m sorry about that as well.”
John smiles. “I was going to give you it back.”
“Glad you didn’t. I’m ashamed of it.”
“Too late now,” John says, looking up at the roof of the crematorium as thin white smoke curls out of a chimney. “Roberto did me a favour. I slipped it into his pocket in the chapel of rest.”
“Goodbye, John.”
The press are getting into their cars now, show over. They’d only really turned up to see if Lanny Bride was going to make an appearance. Rumour was, a young Lanny had also been involved in the Leeds shipment. Impossible to prove now, though. Everyone else is dead. Apart from one man.
John makes his way over to the Porsche. Two cars down he sees DI Steve Baron sitting at the wheel of a dark blue Audi. Baron had been at the back of the chapel. Now he’s watching as John prepares to leave.
John stops, nods to Baron. They haven’t seen each other since that day, when both John and Den had been dragged from the wreckage by the police, Den with no more than a few cuts and bruises, John faring a little worse. There’s someone in the van! she had shouted as they got her clear of the fire.
“How you doing?” Baron says, as he gets out of his car.
“Well, I won’t be playing the viola for a while.”
Neither of them moves, content to have their conversation across the bonnets of two parked cars.
“A few of the old-timers down at the station wanted to send a wreath to your dad’s funeral. But they didn’t know when it was. Said I’d ask.”
“I had a mass read at The Holy Rosary. There’ll be no service.”
Baron nods. It had been a massive blast. There was nothing left of Tony Ray to bury, and precious little of Graeme Thornton. The whole block had been destroyed.
“How’s Alice Carr?” John asks.
“You know about the attempted suicide?”
John nods.
After Den left, Alice Carr had watched on screen as the father of her child was shot in the chest; then, as he began to fall forwards, the screen went blank. After that she went calmly upstairs to the bathroom, took a small photograph of a newborn baby from her purse, kissed it, then swallowed every tablet she could find in the cabinet.
“Will she be…” John begins to ask.
Baron shakes his head. “Got herself a great lawyer. It was all Thornton’s fault, apparently.”
John takes one last draw on his cigarette then flicks it onto the ground in front of him, where it smoulders for a second before absorbing the rainwater from a puddle and dying.
“Y’know, Jeanette believed she’d led the killer to Sheenan and Roberto. She died just like they did, weighed down with the guilt of someone else’s death.”
“The good is oft interred with their bones,” Baron says. “There’s nothing you can do about that, John. It’s over.”
And he’s right. The case of the Leeds Bombing has been closed, and the memories will fade and be lost to time. Apart from one: a young man emerging from the wreckage, a baby in his arms, a look of vacant horror on his face. That will never fade.
“See you around, Inspector,” says John.
Baron raises a hand as the tall, indomitable figure of John Ray turns away with untypical caution. Yes, goodbye, Baron says to himself as he watches John lower himself into the passenger seat of the Porsche. I’ll be seeing you.
Chapter Fifty-nine
They pull up right outside the big glass doors of the showroom.
“How much did that cost to get fixed?” Connie says, admiring the repaired front end of the Porsche as Freddy helps John out of the car.
“Enough,” he says, straightening up and following her inside. Freddy has already disappeared into the office.
“Gypsy Kings again?” he says, the music low in the background.
“That jazz you’re always playing?” she says, as the two of them come to a halt in the middle of the
sales floor. “I don’t think it sells many cars.”
“U-hu?”
He listens to the cheerful, jangly guitars. Car-buying music? She’s probably right.
“Second hand Boxters,” she says, as if to change the subject. “I’ve got one coming in. I think we could move up a bit. We’ve got the reputation, and we’ve been selling a lot of…”
Freddy comes out of the office. The tie and shirt have been replaced by an Arctic Monkeys Suck It And See Tour t-shirt, and he’s got his jacket over his shoulder.
“Going somewhere?” John asks.
Nothing.
“Come on, Big Fella, spit it out. How bad can it be?”
Freddy stops, blows out his cheeks, doesn’t know where to start. “I’m leaving,” he says, looking past both of them, towards the doors.
John takes it in his stride. He should have seen it coming. But he hadn’t.
“Good for you, mate. Any plans?”
“Not really,” Freddy says, his body drooping slightly with relief. “Travel a bit, see the world, y’know.”
“Taking Rob’s advice? I don’t blame you.”
Freddy looks up at the high ceilings of the showroom. He’d been here with John at the start, opening the doors for the first time, popping the champagne, balloons everywhere. It had seemed like a new beginning. Now he needs to get away.
“After everything that’s happened, I just…”
“You don’t have to explain,” says John, walking across to Freddy and extending his hand. “You’re doing the right thing. Come here, you twat.”
They embrace, hold each other close, a couple of seconds, no more.
“Sorry about your dad,” Freddy says, his voice craggy, ready to split.
“I know.”
“He was…”
“Yeah, I know. I know what he was.”
Then both men are searching for a way to end it, their emotions, painful and awkward.
Freddy turns to Connie and gives her a bear hug. The two of them sway like desperate lovers who never want to let go. She already knew he was going, must have done.