Borrowed Time

by David Mark

  ‘I’ve been there, lad. Called in favours from every tattooist out there. Nothing. Done everything you and Alison have tried. Damn sight more besides. All you can do is live with it. Tell yourself it was Dozzle, and try and live. I don’t see much of her in you, but that doesn’t mean you have to be him.’

  ‘The urn,’ says Adam. He closes his eyes, and gulps, noisily, painfully. ‘Is that Pamela?’

  Irons turns to look at Adam. He stares through him. Through the sepia of his eyes he sees a boy who has suffered, but can take more.

  ‘Pamela’s here,’ says Irons, stroking his chest. ‘In me.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah,’ begins Adam misunderstanding. ‘Her ashes, I mean.’

  ‘So do I.’

  Silence falls as Adam, through the confusion and the tears and the pain and the hurt, stares at the scarification on Irons’s chest.

  Without saying anything, Irons pulls a small blade from his trouser pocket and finds the tail of the freshest scar. Eyes locked on Adam’s as he digs the blade into it, and tears it an inch further into his skin. There is the sound of paper tearing. Irons reaches for the urn, picks it up with one hand, and shakes a tiny amount of grey ash into his palm.

  ‘No, don’t …’ begins Adam, but Irons is already pulling back the flap of bleeding skin. He smears the grey powder into the wound.

  ‘She’s with me. Always,’ says Irons. ‘I keep her alive. Keep her with me. I kept myself alive through dreaming of her. I can still dream. But one day she’ll seep inside me properly, and I’ll feel my heart thump like it did when she kissed my cheek. When she smiled. You’re part of her too. You understand, don’t you?’

  For the first time, Adam can see a human emotion in the old man’s face. It is a desperation. A hunger. A need to be understood.

  Irons needs Pamela’s flesh and blood to forgive him for not being there.

  For not protecting her.

  For not even killing the right man.

  Adam’s knees are buckling. He feels weak. Sick. Lethargic. Angry. He tries to turn it on Irons, and can’t. He feels pity. Compassion. He can feel his own heart beating and sense his own tears on his cheeks and wonders how it must feel to know that only one person can make you human, and that person has suffered and died.

  He gazes again at the wounds, the bleeding tail of the innermost circle on the giant’s chest, and wonders if he could love anybody that much. If he could take their remains and grind them into his skin. To wear them like a shadow, stitched within, never without.

  Adam has no claim on Pamela.

  He has no right to be here. To hijack somebody else’s pain. To stumble into an agony that has been alive as long as he has.

  Suddenly Adam does not want to be here. He wants to go home. Any home. Grace and Tilly, Zara and Selena and Jordan. Mum and Dad. He wants to leave this place with its blood-soaked chimney breasts and scarred killers and its lies and secrets and its old men who’ve made a living from pain.

  He turns, tears pricking at his eyes.

  He won’t let himself take a last look. At this place. At him. Where she died, and he built her shrine.

  He is out the door and into the cool night before he even realizes he is moving.

  Licking his lips as they start to sting. Feet pounding on the wet leaves.

  Running for home.

  FORTY-SIX

  2.04 a.m.

  Adam’s vision is shattered glass. Sea spray. A storm viewed through a migraine. He can barely see the branches that claw at his face, nor feel the dribbles of rain that slip-slap down the boughs to drench him, as he stumbles over damp leaves; his feet kicking up an aroma so reminiscent of the man he has left in the cottage, it makes him gasp.

  The desire not to be here is overwhelming.

  The need to be home, any home, consumes him so utterly that for a moment, he wonders if he can force himself away from this place through sheer force of will.

  His chest, he’s thinking, as his boots find the path. Your mother was burned to dust and insinuated into the skin of a killer. Her resting place is in the flesh of a man who makes his living claiming lives. Get the fuck out of here, Adam. Find somewhere to cry. Get yourself home.

  Adam pictures Zara, curled up, hugging her knees, sitting in front of the telly with a hot drink, coloured by Christmas lights, waiting for him. She’ll be chewing the skin of her wrist, practising the smile she’ll use when he walks in.

  He tries to imagine telling Grace what happened. It makes him gag. His skin prickles, rises, protests, as if he’s trying to get through a mouthful of something disgusting. He closes his eyes and begs for her not to speak of it. Not to mention it. Not even to think of it. He knows it is an action that won’t be repeated. He has fallen as far as he is willing to go. He has looked inside himself, seen what he could become were he to let himself fall, and now wants to abandon the pursuit. He wants to go home. Back to the banality he had before all this began. He wants normal problems. Normal stresses. Wants to get irritated by the simple things. Wants to hold Billy Nunn’s hand and say, ‘I love you’. Call him ‘Dad’.

  The lights of the house suddenly wink through the trees and Adam emerges from the woods and onto the gravel of the forecourt. The wind is picking up and the lights that shine great circles on the mansion catch the movement of endless leaves as they dance on the breeze.

  Adam reaches into his pocket with cold fingers and pulls out the keys to the car. The sudden gusts of wind, now unimpeded by the canopy of trees, cuts at the damp patches on his cheeks, and he wipes himself clean, gulping back the little choking sounds and staggered breaths that wheeze up from his throat. Staring down, he watches his boots kick up little puffs of gravel and dust.

  He looks up, heading for the car, abandoned in the centre of the driveway.

  Timmy is sitting on the bonnet. The door is open and the faint light by the mirror illuminates the shape of a teenage girl in the driver’s seat.

  Adam is maybe ten paces away when he stops walking. He stares at Timmy, who is dressed in his new white tracksuit. Against the darkness, feet up on the hood, he looks like a floating ghost.

  Timmy’s face creases into an ugly mask of surprise.

  ‘What the fuck you doing here?’

  Adam blinks, slowly. He shivers and looks around himself taking it all in. It looks for a moment as though he has just woken up in this place. He is exhausted. Utterly drained. But there is a snarl in his voice when he speaks.

  ‘Get off the car,’ he says, just as the wind drops and the rain begins to fall. It’s gentle at first, but grows quickly into a downpour, which makes a pleasing sound as the water bounces off the array of cars in the driveway, and, more distantly, drums against the surface of the pond at the side of the house.

  Timmy smiles and gives a jiggle of his shoulders. He looks inside the car and smirks at the girl, then turns his attention back to Adam.

  ‘What are you doing here? It’s Christmas.’

  Adam takes three steps forward. ‘I know. I’m going home. Get off the car.’

  ‘This yours is it? I was just admiring it. 1.7?’

  ‘1.5. More economical. Nippy as fuck. Get off the bonnet. Get your girl out of the car.’

  ‘Was just having a look. Mate of mine’s thinking of getting one like this. I prefer the Golf, like. This is a bit of a girl-car, innit?’

  ‘Just get off.’

  ‘Don’t be a twat about it. I’m saying, it’s a nice motor. Just not my type.’

  Adam moves forward again. The rain is starting to run down his face. His suit is wringing wet. His face, sickly white. He looks like a drowned man, resurrected for vengeance. He is growing impatient. All he can think of is leaving this place. Going home. Getting free.

  ‘Please move,’ says Adam, and closes the distance between himself and the car. He puts a hand on the open door and peers in at the young girl in the driver’s seat. He remembers her face from before. From the bathroom. When all this seemed exciting and he didn’t know he’d been
shot from a rapist’s cock. ‘Do me a favour, love. Get out.’

  Timmy slides down the bonnet. Although he is grimacing at the rain, he doesn’t seem in any rush to get inside. He looks confused. A little confrontational. ‘Does my granddad know you’re here?’ he asks. ‘Or my mum?’

  ‘I’ve been seeing Irons,’ replies Adam, and finds himself starting to tense. His cheek twitches, almost imperceptibly. Who does he think he is? On top of all of it? All this? Some little turd who tried to have you done over, asking questions you don’t want to answer?

  ‘What about?’

  ‘None of your business,’ snaps Adam, and suppresses a shiver as the cold rain seeps through to his skin.

  ‘My house.’

  ‘No it’s not.’

  ‘Fucking good as.’

  ‘No it’s not.’

  Adam is bone-tired. His words are weary. He feels like he’s swaying slightly. He’s full of drink and food and vile knowledge; secrets, delusions, fantasies. He wants to go home.

  ‘Don’t get smart.’

  ‘Or what?’

  ‘You can’t touch me. Not here. Not at Franco Jardine’s.’

  ‘You’re a prat, son. Now get her out of my car or we’re going to fall out. Didn’t work out so well for you last time, did it?’ Adam doesn’t sound like himself. He’s shaking. Trembling. He sounds pestilent. Weak. He doesn’t like it. He feels as though he has been robbed of what he was. That all the things about himself that he liked have been replaced by fear and insecurity. He doubts his own strength.

  ‘You look like you’re going to fall down,’ sneers Timmy.

  ‘Then we’ll both be on the ground,’ says Adam, and he locks his gaze on the younger lad. Even now, up close, he sees nothing of Alison in him. Sees nothing decent, neither.

  ‘Let me take the car for a bit of a spin, eh? I’ll see what it can do.’

  ‘I know what it can do.’

  ‘Bet I’m a better driver.’

  ‘He is,’ says the girl, grinning, as she pulls her feet up and holds her legs, there in the driver’s seat, nodding encouragement.

  ‘Yeah, you probably are.’

  ‘No, honest, I am.’

  ‘I’m not arguing. I don’t argue. I’m asking you very nicely to fuck off.’

  Timmy’s face scrunches into anger and he steps forward, his finger up in Adam’s face.

  ‘I dunno why you’re here, mate, but you don’t talk like that. You don’t mug me off in front of my lass.’ He’s raging, hands flailing. ‘You don’t know what I’m capable of. What I’ve done. Last bloke who thought he could play me found out what happens when you fuck with the Jardines. Put a mallet through his skull – watched it come apart like a boiled egg. You don’t come here and …’

  Adam’s left hand closes around Timmy’s throat before he can finish the sentence, and he lifts him from the ground, slamming him down, back-first, on the wet bonnet of the car. The girl swears and edges back in her seat, hands to her face. Adam lifts Timmy again and thumps him down once more. The boy’s hand is clawing at Adam’s but the grip is firm.

  Were he to squeeze a little tighter, Adam knows he could kill the lad. He suddenly seems solid again. He can feel his blood thicken. He can feel glorious rage, thundering like a cavalry charge into his skin and bones. He suddenly wants to hurt somebody. Something. Anybody. Everything. To be a normal man, who takes things out on those who happen to be around …

  ‘Stop it!’

  Alison’s voice cuts through the blood which thunders in Adam’s ears. It is a shriek. Shrill, sharp, like a crystal glass being smashed on rocks. He turns, his hands still at Timmy’s throat, the skin soft, peach-like, beneath his fingers. He looks up, from beneath heavy lids, his mouth slightly open, his teeth bared, the muscles in his arms standing out through the drenched suit which clings to his torso. A noise like a hiss escapes his lips.

  ‘Adam!’

  Alison stops, midway across the forecourt. A dark hole appears in the centre of her pale face as she recognizes the man who is throttling her son on the bonnet of a car, here, at her home, late on Christmas day.

  He has shaved his head. Thinned out on the face. His skin is a garden statue. Grey-green. The only light left in his eyes is rage. If there was ever any Pamela in him, it’s gone.

  She rushes forward again, suddenly angry. She starts pulling at his arm and is surprised at how much strength she can feel in those arms. She remembers the last time they touched. She is suddenly Jardine’s daughter. Angry. Capable. Appalled her home has been violated, her kin touched. She wonders where Irons is. How he has allowed this. The angry man, throttling her only son, becomes any intruder. Any stranger. Any business rival who needs to be removed.

  Alison’s thoughts are not of her son. They are not the concerns of a mother. They are the venomous curses of a gangster’s daughter, abused by a nobody who has dared to take them on.

  He sees the change in her. Her face is a black cloud, changing shape and form under the onslaught of a harsh breeze. In an instant, the shock on her face is replaced by a snarl of anger. Outrage.

  He can feel her clawing at him, and he squeezes harder, just for bad. He had been ready to let go, but he’s not in the mood for yielding.

  There is another pressure at his back. The young girl is squealing, pulling at him, begging him to stop. He likes it. He feels powerful. Strong. He has the power to take life. The capacity to inflict pain. Or the mercy to spare. Staring into Timmy’s purple, open face, he wonders if this is how it feels to be Franco. Irons. Billy Nunn. Big, capable, enduring men. Unencumbered by fear. Conscience. Doubt. Misery.

  Men who can. And do.

  He leans forward, puts his weight on his left hand …

  The gunshot is a thunderclap. Even the rain seems to fall silent in the few seconds after the colossal bang, that sends a great squawking flapping procession of birds into the dark sky.

  The quartet on the bonnet of the car throw themselves sideways as the spray of shot thuds into the side of the car like a handful of stones. The window of the driver’s door shatters; cobwebs, splinters, fractures running outwards from a central point. A dozen tiny holes appear in the door.

  On the steps, outlined by the yellow light of the hallway, stands Franco Jardine.

  FORTY-SEVEN

  2.18 a.m.

  Smoke coils upwards from the long barrel of the shotgun in the pale, wrinkled hands.

  Jardine can feel himself growing taller. Stronger. He feels as though he has injected himself with something. Snorted a line of rage.

  He knows only that a tall, handsome man has entered his property. Hurt his family. He knows that Irons must be dead, for otherwise, this man would already be a deflating corpse.

  Franco Jardine doesn’t believe in forgiving his trespassers.

  He shoots them in the stomach and watches them bleed to death.

  Adam sees a little old man holding a gun three sizes too big for him, swaying on the breeze, damp from the rain, ridiculous in huge jam-jar glasses and a bottle-black moustache. He’s wearing a Christmas sweater, jogging trousers and a crepe paper hat. With the steam rising from the gun and his clothes, he looks as if he’s just been dug up and left to slowly decompose beneath a warm bulb.

  The anger hasn’t gone. The adrenaline still fills him.

  He stands up and looks around. Alison is climbing to her feet. The girl, feeble, hugging herself, on the wet gravel.

  Timmy is on his knees, retching, coughing out insults and swear words.

  ‘Leave him alone,’ cries Alison. ‘Who the fuck do you think you are?’

  Adam’s face creases into a smile and his laughter is a hollow, joyless thing.

  ‘I’m Adam Nunn,’ he says, kicking Timmy again. ‘My mum was a little girl. My daddy was a rapist. A gangster had me adopted because he couldn’t stand to look at me. And it was the best thing that could have happened. You’re all fucking mad. No wonder Pamela did what she did. You failed her that night. All of you. And you kept
on failing her. She did what she did because it was better than living her life on the path you all put her on.’

  Adam reaches down and picks up Timmy by the back of his tracksuit. He hauls him to his feet, then embeds his fist in his stomach. He doubles over, like a folded sandwich. Adam knees him in the face.

  ‘How can you do this?’ shrieks Alison, darting forward. ‘After everything. You’re nothing like her. You’re all him. You’re Dozzle.’

  ‘Dozzle?’ bellows Adam. ‘You’re believing that now, are you? Daddy’s told you not to ask any more questions so you stop? You’ve got what you wanted. You got to dip back into Pamela again, say you were sorry, and move on. What about me?’

  On the steps, Franco is struggling to aim the gun.

  The words are hitting him like tiny fists.

  Pamela’s boy.

  Here.

  In his home.

  Hurting his blood.

  Screaming at his daughter.

  Here, as a man.

  A man who looks nothing like Dozzle.

  And everything like somebody else.

  The gun becomes too heavy for his hands.

  His heart is being squeezed beneath giant hands.

  ‘He’s had enough,’ says Alison, though there is no affection in her words. She is not trying to save her son. She is trying to make sense of what is happening. Pamela’s boy, turning on Franco’s little girl.

  She turns to her father, standing, motionless, on the steps. ‘Dad!’

  She doesn’t recognize him. He is weak. Old. Hopeless. Ineffectual. A pensioner, wrapped up against the cold. The gun in his hands seems to be pulling him forwards.

  In a moment of anger and desperation she runs to him and grabs the rifle. The barrel is warm from the first shot. Her eyes meet her father’s as she drags the gun from his grip.

  He coughs out two words.

  A duo of gargled syllables, dredged up from the blackest shadow of his bile duct and spat out in a spray of red-flecked spittle.

  Alison hears what he says. She doesn’t understand. Her fingers are shaking, but it is through anger, not fear.

  She grips the gun and runs back down the steps.