by John Barlow
***
John orders two glasses of Laphroaig at the bar. Roberto is still there.
“You found Mike then?” he asks.
“I did.”
With a swirl of the hand Roberto indicates that the whisky is on the house.
“Thanks,” says John. “I’ve got one last question. Donna was a familiar face in here, right?”
“Sure.”
“So regulars would know her?”
“Them that aren’t blind and deaf.” He pauses. “Listen? See how quiet it is without her? Jesus Christ, Donna…”
John takes the glasses.
“Good to see you again, Roberto.”
“Keep us in the loop, John. That comes from the boss. You hear me?”
***
They sip their Laphroaig awhile.
“That stuff about having a drink here every night,” John asks, tearing himself away from the beguiling peat-smoke and seaweed notes of the single malt, “did you tell the coppers that too?”
“You joking? Would you tell ’em if you drank here?”
“Good point.” He stands. “I’ve got to go.”
“Still screwing that copper?” Pearce throws in as a final shot.
“Not so as you’d notice.”
“Walk into a place like this, you’d better not be doing the coppers’ work for ’em. If you get me.”
“I’m trying to help Freddy, that’s all.”
“Aye, well perhaps Freddy did it. Somebody did.”
***
The street lights glare down at him as he drives slowly through town. There are rowdy drinkers all over the road, young and invincible, dodging the traffic as if life’s a game you always win. Five past eleven. Connie’s date’ll be in full swing by now.
Was there something confessional about Mike Pearce, cradling his whisky, God knows how many hours without sleep? Honesty or remorse? Tired eyes. Dead eyes. But the eyes of a killer?
Two years ago: John looked straight into a killer’s eyes. Two years, there in the showroom, Joe lying dead on the floor. He remembers that night now. He and Joe had met down at Hope Road to decide what to do about their dad and the showroom. John never really liked the way his brother had turned out, a hardened, joyless version of their father. Joe had let the showroom go. They hadn’t sold a car in months. There wasn’t even the pretence of a functioning business, like there had been with dad.
So there they were in the showroom, talking it through, strolling about the place that had been the Rays’ HQ since 1963. Then the air exploded, rocking John back on his feet. Something hit him. He spun round in time to see Joe drop to the ground, limp and lifeless, the side of his head missing.
And there he was. Joe’s killer. Ten feet away, motionless, shotgun held at waist height. He was looking down at his victim. Then he looked up. Blue eyes, clear and steady, no regret. A second later he was gone.
John stood there and felt pieces of his brother’s brain dripping down the side of his face.
And he made a decision.
Blink.
PART TWO—SUNDAY
Nineteen
His father has always liked good strong coffee. Whenever mum made it too weak (which she usually did) he’d tip a bit of instant into his mug when she wasn’t looking and wink at the boys. Thirty-nine years of marriage and it was the only thing they could never agree on. As for tea, after spending most of his adult life in England, he’d never managed more than a sip without gagging.
John tries the coffee this morning. It’s like the bath water you swallow when you’re a kid, tepid and somehow sickly. And there’s no jar of Nescafé to hand.
“Shall I help you with that, Dad?” he asks.
Tony Ray is sitting in a wheelchair, although he can walk with assistance. His hair is still mid-grey, but it’s far shorter than he used to have it. They cut it short here, less trouble that way. Ditto the wheelchair. The old man lowers his head slowly and looks at the cup on the wrought iron table in front of him, concentrating. Then his attention dissipates.
Several strokes had made it clear that life on his own in the villa on Grange Drive was not practical. Like most things Tony Ray did, the decision was made quickly and without fuss. When he discussed the move with John, the old man’s only concern was whether the sale of the house would yield enough to cover the fees of such an expensive retirement home. Now, after eighteen months here, he seems to have shrunk slightly, as if his body is closing in on itself.
“Do you have to wear those bloody awful clothes?” John says.
His dad’s face pulls itself gradually into a smile. He’s dressed in an emerald green jogging suit that seems to exaggerate the boniness of his body. (Does he eat? They say he eats. They say his weight’s fine, only to be expected.) His appearance, though, is bad. He was always well dressed: suits made to measure, Oxfords or half-brogues (brown ones sometimes!), silk ties… And he was still wearing shirts with detachable collars when the Beatles broke up, that’s what mum used to say, anyway. Now he’s got an overgrown crew cut and a fucking shell suit.
At least he can see the funny side.
John has never had to ask his dad for advice. But he could do with some now. What would Tony Ray have done, with Freddy in Millgarth and a girl lying dead in the police morgue? To start with, he’d’ve called Henry Moran and told him everything. Always tell your lawyer everything, every time. That was the Tony Ray way. Not exactly the philosophy of a saint, but it has its merits.
His dad’s eyes close, his upper lip quivering gently as he breathes, chin resting on his chest. John has come prepared. He flicks through Yachting World Magazine until he finds a report on a Jeanneau sixty-footer. Eight pages of nautical porn. A million dollars of motor yacht. Pick up a secondhand one in a few years’ time? Or a new one in five? On Friday afternoon he would have said it was a cert. Now he’s not so sure…
Yes, one way or another Freddy has messed up. But murder? There’s no telling what’s going on inside the boy’s head, but if he won’t talk to his lawyer, there’s nothing anyone can do for him. He’s got the best legal advice in the city. But he’s messed up, what his role in all this. The irony? He’s messed up his own future, and he doesn’t even know it. The showroom was going to be his, lock, stock.
John tosses the magazine aside and wonders whether he should talk to someone about his dad’s appearance. How much effort would it take to dress him properly, for Christ’s sake? Couldn’t the man be allowed a collar and tie at least? Four grand a month to wheel him around in little more than his pyjamas.
He decides not to say anything. You upset the staff, what happens when you’ve gone? Thousand quid a week and they’ve got you over a barrel. He looks around. Half a dozen people in wheelchairs, all up here on the terrace looking out over the large, beautifully maintained grounds. There’s birdsong on the air, chattery and chaotic. Sparrows? He used to know the names of all the birds, and flowers, trees, clouds… The stuff you know when you’re a boy and forget as a man. Could be sparrows. Fuck, he wishes he was a kid again.
He closes his eyes. Yesterday he’d been lazing in his king-sized bed watching Den get dressed. Since then things have spun out of control. And what’s gonna be left? Den? Doesn’t look like it. And the fifty grand’s worth of notes in the boot? Jesus, Freddy, what have you done?
Something startles him. He opens his eyes and looks around. It must have been a door slamming somewhere. Then he notices a security camera up on the roof, its little red light flickering. Running along the building are more cameras, five that he can see, just on this side. When they’d come to check out the place, the manager had shown them the surveillance room, images streamed from more than two dozen cameras, all going straight onto hard drives. Then there were the electric gates, alarms everywhere, and a direct line to the police station.
The thought of it makes him laugh. He remembers his dad looking at all the security, and it didn’t take much to work out what he was thinking. How would you rob a place like thi
s? Back in the 50s you came with a glass cutter and a crow bar and you were in. But now? You’re on God knows how many cameras the minute you step into the grounds. Just how do you commit a crime these days with so many cameras about?
He sits back. The answer? You make sure it’s somewhere with a rickety old video system. Then you rewind the tape. Mike Pearce, midnight. The girl dies and he rewinds the video. When the coppers come a-calling he fesses up. I pressed rewind, officer, but I never killed her… He’s either a criminal genius or a moron. Problem is, Freddy was there too, the last person seen leaving the room on the video. And he’s certainly not acting like a genius at the moment. He’s acting like an idiot.
Think.
There’s Fuller, manager of an empty hotel up York Road, and that heavy metal kid. The Ukrainians? Think, John. They leave the room, followed by Freddy. Nearly twenty minutes disappear from the video, then they drag her out, already dead.
Not Freddy.
It can’t be.
From his wallet he pulls out a business card.
Konstyantyn Bilyk
Galey Agricultural Machinery
Kiev
Ukraine
***
A male voice answers, a light, almost imperceptible accent.
John introduces himself.
“Mr John Ray, good morning!”
“You were expecting my call?”
“I think so, yes. This trouble with the girl, harms our respective businesses, no? Why don’t we talk?”
“Okay.”
“You had breakfast?”
“No, not really.”
“I’ll bring.”
“Bring?” asks John.
“The showroom?”
“Okay. I’ll be there in half an hour.”
“Good. See you at Tony Ray’s place!”
“Do you know where it…”
But Bilyk has gone.
***
His dad stirs, raises his head.
“I thought you were asleep, Dad.”
“Pah! How’s that girl doing?”
His slow, laboured speech is accompanied by the tiniest twist of a smile.
“Connie? She’s fine. Settled in well.”
His dad nods. Looks pleased.
“Listen, I’ve got something to ask you,” John says. “Have you ever come across someone called Bilyk, a Ukrainian? I mean, in your business?”
The smile disappears.
“Who?”
“Bilyk. A Ukrainian.”
“No.”
The old man pauses, searching for the energy to continue.
John moves closer, until he can feel the old man’s breath on the side of his face. He puts an arm across his shoulders, and listens.
“East Europe. They’re clever. Good merchandise. But,” and now Tony Ray switches to Spanish, his voice is less than a whisper, just the movement of his lips and weakening breath, “you stay out of all that. Not for you, eh? Not like your brother. Don’t leave me alone, John. ¿Comprendes? Understand?”
His lips find John’s cheek.
They stay there, the two of them, the sun warming them and the sparrows chattering. If that’s what they are.
“Come on,” he says, finally straightening up, “I’ll take you back in. Or do you…”
But his dad’s fast asleep again.
Twenty
“So this is the place! Tony Ray’s Motors…”
The Ukrainian’s voice fills the showroom. He walks between the cars, letting his fingertips run along their bodywork.
“Prize winning,” says John, emerging from the office and nodding at the perspex Motor Trader award, which he’s decided looks better down here than in the flat.
“No,” says Konstyantyn Bilyk, turning to John for the first time and raising his dark eyebrows until they seem to be separate from forehead, like epaulettes or small, hairy canopies, “I mean the old showroom. That was the really famous one, yes?”
“Depends who’s talking.”
“You are, Mr Ray.” Bilyk’s hands drop to his sides as he approaches. He’s as tall as John, but with a more athletic build. “Talking to everybody, I hear. Playing the private eye. Tony Ray’s son solving crimes. It’s very good!”
“Glad you’re amused.”
“There is a Ukrainian saying. A crow will never be a falcon.”
John groans inwardly. Does he really want to trade metaphors with a Slav?
“I’m not a crow, Mr Bilyk.”
The Ukrainian looks around at the range of vehicles on offer.
“Perhaps I’m being judgemental.”
“Perhaps. Coffee?”
John moves over to the Gaggia.
“I didn’t choose my family any more than you did,” he says over his shoulder as he rams one of the detachable arms of the machine into place. “Hope you like it black. There’s no milk.”
“Strong and black is fine.”
Bilyk takes a seat at one of the sales desks.
“Look, I brought breakfast.”
From each side pocket of his jacket he pulls out a striped paper bag.
“Donuts. They have nothing else. Sunday morning.”
John delivers the coffee then sits at the other side of the desk. The Ukrainian tears open both bags revealing four small, hole-less jam donuts in each. He takes one and pushes it into his mouth.
“Me too,” he says, speaking as he chews. “My dad. I also didn’t choose that he was a communist!”
He glares, wide-eyed, as if this is hilarious.
“Party member?”
“What, my dad? Sure! Supervisor in a Kiev candy factory! Earned shit. But a big party man. I grew up in an apartment with a shared kitchen and a bathroom at the end of the corridor you had to take your own tap handle to use the bath. What, you’re not hungry?” he asks, taking another donut and holding it up close to his mouth as he speaks. “I was nineteen. The Soviet Union was collapsing, and all we heard in our house was how great the USSR had been and how things were gonna get worse for all of us.”
“And did they?”
John brings over the coffee.
“Oh yes. Dad was right. First time in his life! Ukraine got independence, corruption, and a recession. Me, I just wanted to escape. So I came to England.”
“London?”
Bilyk frowns, just for a second.
“Don’t look so surprised,” John says, sitting down opposite Bilyk and taking a donut. “It’s where anybody would go. As for escaping, I did exactly the same. Soon as I could I left this place. Like I said, I’m not a crow.”
He pops the donut into his mouth.
“Two men who went in search of their destinies,” Bilyk says with a sugary smile, fanning out his hands as if completing a conjuring trick.
John crosses his legs and chases the donut down with coffee.
“So here we are,” he says.
“Here we are.”
“But your partner is not, Mr Bilyk. And there’s a young girl lying dead in a morgue.”
“Fedir got scared. Ran away.”
“He didn’t look scared when he was punching her corpse around for the cameras on Friday night.”
“He put on a little show, yes.”
“That’s all he did, is it? Where is he now?”
“Where would you be, in his shoes?”
Off the ferry at Zebrugge and halfway round the world.
“You think he’s coming back?”
Bilyk doesn’t need to answer.
“Actually,” John says, “I’m surprised you’re still here.”
“I spent most of yesterday afternoon and evening at the police station. Glad to help. Public spirit etcetera. Actually, I have nothing to hide! Absolutely nothing.”
“Yes, I saw the surveillance video, sitting in the lounge while someone else cleaned up after you. Wouldn’t want to get yourself involved in a murder, would you?”
“I had nothing to do with it, I assure you. Fedir and me, we did not kill that girl.”<
br />
The Ukrainian puts down his coffee.
“Ask yourself,” he says, “what possible motive do I have? And remember, the last one to leave the room was Freddy.” He pauses, shaking his head. “No, no. Murder is not good for my business.”
“Your tractor business.”
“Ha! You don’t believe?” More unfurling of the hands. “The police have taken all my possessions. But when they give me back my order book, why don’t you go and check up on my clients, see how many sales I’ve made?”
“Unbelievable value, I heard.”
“You know what our slogan is? Fuck John Deere up the ass.”
“Subtle.”
John can’t help but smile.
“By the way,” he asks, “how did you get such a faultless accent?”
“Like I said, I studied here,” he says, clearly pleased by the question.
“Shit. Kiev to London. I bet that was some change. University?”
He nods.
“Nineteen years old in a new country, nothing to lose!”
“You studied languages? Or linguistics?”
Again, the compliment lays Bilyk’s pride wide open.
“Chemical engineering. Languages I just pick up easy. And you?”
“My dad’s from Spain. I studied Spanish and a bit of Portuguese. Never learned anything else, I’m afraid.”
“Shame.”
“Yes.”
Bilyk finishes his donuts.
“Why was Freddy hanging around you, up at the hotel?” John asks.
The Ukrainian nods as he licks the sugar off his fingers.
“Freddy?” he says Bilyk. “He works for you, doesn’t he?”
“Not at midnight.”
“We don’t sell tractors at midnight. At night we relax. That’s what the girl was for.”
“A gentlemen’s luxury?”
“Fedir’s. I never touched her, found her rather aggressive. I’m a little bit, how do you say, old school. But with Fedir it became a regular thing.”
“And why the hotel?”
Bilyk sits back in his chair. Breakfast is over.
“We’ve been using it as a base. It’s cheap and we’re normally the only ones there. Leeds is perfect. From here you can cover the whole north of England. But of course you know that, it’s where your father set up his own little empire.”