by David Thorne
Now I am standing in my office, looking at the wreckage of my professional life and thinking that the day isn’t shaping up to be an unqualified winner either. When I arrived, my glass door was smashed and walking into my office I saw that somebody had gone through every drawer and file, lifted the carpet tiles, taken out the polystyrene squares of the false ceiling and looked into the cavity above. There are only two possible culprits, Halliday or Baldwin. And Halliday has just engaged me as his pet crooked lawyer, which narrows the shortlist down to one. Baldwin, it seems, won’t stop until he’s got his hands on the discs Terry Campion asked me to look after for him. This thought does not bother me; I took a dislike to Baldwin when he tried to intimidate me in my own office and I remind myself that I have got something he wants. As a lawyer, you never know when a bit of influence with the police is going to come in useful. Of course I have not kept the discs on my premises, or at home; Baldwin has either underestimated me woefully or he is simply desperate. One thing I do know for sure: I will cross paths again with Baldwin, and soon.
‘Redecorating? Thought this place needed a bit of love.’
I turn and see one of the men who had accompanied Halliday when he came to put the screws on me standing at my office door. He is holding a pile of paperwork and wearing an amused smile.
‘Who are you?’
‘Eddie,’ he says. ‘Brought you this, from Mr Halliday.’ Mr Halliday. Please. ‘Should be everything you need.’ He looks about, takes in the mess. ‘Where’d I put it?’
Every surface is covered with my scattered work, my filing cabinets on their sides, my desk buried under paper. ‘For the moment,’ I say, ‘you can stick it up your arse.’
‘Not very nice,’ Eddie says, unruffled. ‘He’s keen for you to get to work soon as. I’ll stick it on the desk.’ He makes some space and puts the files down. I right one of my filing cabinets, grunting with the effort, and when I look up Eddie is standing against the wall, legs apart and hands clasped over his crotch like a doorman outside a nightclub.
‘Anything else?’ I say.
‘Mr Halliday wants me to keep an eye on you.’
‘So you thought you’d take him literally.’
Eddie doesn’t answer; I suspect he is having difficulty getting to the bottom of that last sentence. He leans his shoulders against my office wall, making himself as comfortable as he can in a room with only one intact chair. This is too much.
‘You realise this kind of thing can take weeks? You going to stand there all that time?’
Eddie shrugs. ‘If I have to.’
I look around the devastation in my office and can feel my pulse hurrying. I have not slept well and have a lot of work to do and Eddie has picked the wrong time to be pressuring me, irrespective of who his boss is.
‘Look,’ I say. ‘This is my office. I have client confidentialities to respect, other cases to take care of. No offence, but it’s going to be hard to do that with some hired goon standing in the corner.’ Eddie frowns. ‘By hired goon, Eddie, I mean you.’
Eddie smiles. ‘Not going anywhere.’
‘Yes, Eddie, you are. If Halliday wants me to work for him, I’ll do it my way, in my own time. He doesn’t like it, he can find another lawyer. That what he wants?’
Eddie looks conflicted, his mouth slightly open as he works out the best thing to do. Even he knows that bent lawyers are a little thin on the ground, and that Halliday won’t be keen on finding another. He has his orders, but I am not going to budge. What to do? It cannot be easy, being Eddie.
He comes to a decision, crosses to the desk, finds a pen and writes on top of the pile of paperwork.
‘Here’s my number. Give me a call if you need anything.’ He writes slowly, forming the numbers with difficulty, his tongue held between his teeth. I wonder whether Eddie still points at aeroplanes. He finishes, stands up. I hold the door to the entrance hall open. Eddie stops as he passes me.
‘Be back tomorrow. Better be progress, sunshine.’ For a second I believe he considers patting me on the cheek, there’s a good boy, but he sees the look in my eyes and reconsiders. Perhaps he isn’t as stupid as I thought. Instead, he leaves quietly and I close the door behind him, breathe deeply, try to calm down. My life seems to be full of uninvited and malign presences right now and I have the feeling that I am losing control, that my existence is being co-opted by outside forces. I look over at the pile of papers Eddie has left for me and have to fight down an urge to kick it all across the chaos of my office.
After Eddie has gone, I spend several hours rebuilding my files, matching paperwork, putting it into piles and eventually into folders, which I place back into my filing cabinets. This process does little to improve my mood as I realise just how paltry and mundane my caseload is. Never before has my previous life as a successful City lawyer seemed so far away and for the first time the thought of what my previous colleagues are now doing and achieving bothers me enormously, makes me question myself.
To escape from these existential doubts, I get into my car and drive to the hospital where Billy Morrison is still lying with his leg in traction. At least here I can make some kind of difference, unconventional as it may be from a legal perspective. I walk into his ward where he is reading a magazine with a picture of a girl on the front wearing only a pair of bikini bottoms, the word ‘Philippa!’ splashed across the cover and the dots on the ‘i’s of her name covering her nipples. He is absorbed and does not see me approach so I bat the cover against him and he looks up. I can see a brief panic in his eyes and I regret frightening him; he is clearly haunted by the spectre of Halliday. Billy recovers and gives me a cocksure smile.
‘Danny! ’Choo doing here?’
‘How are you, Billy?’
‘Good, blinding. They give me a bed bath the other day, right, all sponges like, everywhere. You ever had one?’
‘No.’
‘Coupla sorts, nurses, should’ve seen them. So halfway through…’ Billy lowers his voice to what he probably believes is a discreet whisper. ‘I get, you know. Aroused.’
There’s no preamble, no nicety with Billy; he just dives straight in. ‘I’m sure they’ve seen it all before,’ I say.
‘You reckon? Know what they did? Only milked me, din’t they? Said it was a shame I was NHS, else they’d’ve given me the works. Their words.’
Billy beams up at me, expecting me to be impressed by his immature fibs. I shake my head at him, admonishing a child. ‘I spoke to Halliday. Looks like you’re in the clear.’
He sits up, looks at me with wide eyes. ‘Yeah? Really?’
‘Just, Billy? Keep out of his way.’
‘Yeah, no problem, brilliant. Really? He’s letting it drop?’
‘Reckons you’ll have learned your lesson.’
‘Oh fuck yeah. Yeah, I mean, definitely.’ Billy sinks back down into his pillow, his mind released from the fear he’s been feeling these past few days, racing forward to plans for the future now that he has one. I can see his lips move faintly as he tells himself stories with happy endings. He rouses himself.
‘Danny, listen, thanks, man. Dunno what to say. I knew you’d come through.’
‘Don’t worry about it. Just stay safe.’
‘Yeah. Yeah, I will.’ He smiles and I pat his good leg and turn to go. As I do so, a thought strikes Billy.
‘Danny?’
‘Yes, Billy?’
‘I still getting that money? For the Blu-ray?’
15
THE NEXT MORNING, I am taking a shower when I hear the doorbell ring. Thinking it might be a delivery, I hustle down the stairs and open the door in my towel, ready to sign. Instead, I am shown a warrant card held by one of two policemen and I recognise Sergeant Hicklin from the other night, when I had gone to the station to bail out Gabe. Next to him is his over-enthusiastic constable, Dawson. I instinctively think of Gabe and wonder what trouble he is in now; whether he has inflicted it on others, or on himself. I open the door wider, gripping the e
dge, tense with anxiety.
‘Get you out of the shower, sir?’ asks Hicklin. His voice lacks the good humour of the last time we met; it is all business today. I gaze at him levelly, not bothering to answer such a redundant question. Instead, I ask, ‘This about Mr McBride?’
‘Not this time, sir. No.’ He pauses, looks around, takes his time. It is interesting to see him in tough copper mode; he is good at it, a natural, authoritative without being heavy-handed. I wonder why he is still a sergeant. ‘Are you the son of a Francis Connell?’ He strokes his moustache with an index finger and thumb. I relax my grip on the door.
‘What’s he done?’
‘Done?’ says Hicklin. His colleague, Dawson, is eye fucking me from behind him. In the morning sun, I notice, with a practised eye, that he’s a good four stone lighter than me. ‘He’s not done anything.’ Hicklin sniffs. ‘Were you at his house at around three o’clock, two days ago?’ He looks up at me. ‘That would be the twenty-third.’
‘Yes.’ I wonder what this is about. If my father has not done anything, then something must have happened to him. ‘Is he all right?’
Hicklin ignores me. ‘I have a witness who saw you arguing with your father.’ I am about to speak when he holds up a hand, takes out a notepad, turns a page. He will not be hurried. ‘This witness claims that you had your father in a choke hold, in his garden. Would you deny this?’
‘Would I? We’re in the here and now, Sergeant. Do you mean do I?’
Hicklin looks at me blankly. ‘Did you have your father in a choke hold?’
‘Yes.’
‘Mind explaining why? I might remind you that there are laws against assault.’ He smiles blandly, robbing the statement of any force or threat.
‘I’m a lawyer,’ I say. ‘But thanks for the heads up.’
‘So you do not deny that you had an altercation with your father?’
‘No. What I’d like to know is why you are interested. And unless you tell me right now, this conversation is finished.’
Hicklin looks me up and down and I am suddenly aware of how I appear. It is hard to achieve a psychological advantage when one of your hands is holding together a purple towel and water is cooling on your shoulders, pooling at your feet.
‘At approximately ten o’clock last night, he was admitted to Queens General suffering from a suspected heart attack. He had also been beaten. Savagely.’
‘Is he going to be all right?’
Hicklin consults his pad. ‘Suspected heart attack. Beaten, savagely.’ He takes a deep breath, puffs it out, shrugs. ‘Christ knows.’
That is below the belt, I cannot help thinking. ‘Well then, Sergeant Hicklin, let’s stop dancing, shall we? Are you here to inform me of my father’s heart attack, or are you charging me with some kind of crime?’ I look over his shoulder at Dawson, give him a do-you-want-some look. ‘What?’ Dawson doesn’t know how to respond and drops his gaze. I look back at Hicklin.
‘No need for hostility, sir,’ he says. I have to give him his due, he is not easily riled. ‘We’re here to take a look at you, ask you some questions. We’re not here to inform you of your father’s heart attack. Do we look like the Red bloody Cross?’ He smiles without malice and I almost laugh; he’s got me there.
The sight of my father, fed with a drip and with a machine breathing for him, his face slack in his sleep and looking like the spent force I suddenly realise he is, gives me pause. He is no longer a monster, merely an old man who has been on the receiving end of a ferocious beating; and, while one part of me believes that it was almost certainly merited, I cannot get past the fact that he is still my father. It may sound atavistic but I am the only person who can avenge him and, despite all he has done to me, I believe I must.
The doctor told me that, although he looks unscathed, his heart attack was almost certainly caused by a sustained physical attack; underneath his hospital-issue gown he has severe bruising around his kidneys, ribs and thighs caused by a blunt instrument, possibly a baseball bat. Or a police baton.
According to the policemen who visited my home, my father had been drinking in the Good Friends, a pub I know, narrow and dirty and panelled in dark wood. It is unwelcoming to strangers, full of alcoholics who, together, make believe that their lifestyle is no worse than anybody else’s but would still prefer to get on with their serious drinking away from judging eyes. He left at around ten o’clock and made his way home, a distance of half a mile. Along the way he passed a park, little more than a stand of trees and a kids’ playground. It was there that he was found just before midnight, sullenly unconscious and sat up against a little elephant fixed on a heavy-duty spring that kids can ride, bathed in moonlight and looking like an evil visitation in a child’s dream. He was found by two teenagers out for some al fresco petting; the girl said she was so freaked out by the sight that she screamed, almost had a heart attack herself.
It is fortunate that the teenagers did find him; any longer without medical treatment, the doctor told me, and he would have died. My father’s heart has been weakened by a lifetime of alcohol abuse and poor diet and, if some alternative therapists are to be believed, too much hatred and far too little laughter. The doctor needs to perform an emergency bypass and asks me to give my consent, my father unlikely to regain consciousness before the operation. I give the form a quick scribble, then leave the hospital. There is nothing I can do there and I am happy to let my father recover, or not, on his own. I am sure he would do the same for me.
The Good Friends opens at eleven, by which time there is already a queue of men outside, some old, some who merely look it, all waiting to nurse beers until the afternoon when they can begin drinking in earnest. Even drunks have some standards, and they do not wish to be legless before lunchtime. I am also in the queue when the bolts slam open and Dean pushes the door from the inside. I know Dean a little; he is close to my age and, although we did not attend the same school, our social backgrounds are close enough that our paths sometimes crossed, often waiting together outside pubs like this one for our fathers to eventually emerge. He sees me and frowns; he may own this pub, but that does not mean that he wishes to see acquaintances, people he likes, drinking in it. He would hope they have higher standards. To drink in the Good Friends is as much a declaration as it is to stand up in an AA meeting and say, ‘Hello, my name is Francis and I am an alcoholic.’
Dean nods greetings to the men who pass him into the pub, suffering their tired witticisms with a patient smile. It occurs to me that he is running a community service every bit as vital to these men as home visits from a nurse are to the elderly and I feel sorry for him; it must be a bleak kind of life. Dean looks at me and smiles.
‘Danny. How’ve you been? Got a call from the Old Bill, sorry to hear about your dad.’
‘Yeah. Well.’ It is hard to know what to say. Am I sorry? Does it matter all that much to me? I suppose it must, otherwise why would I be at a place like this at eleven in the morning?
‘Want to come in?’
‘Okay.’
I follow Dean inside and smell that old pub odour of sour beer, wood polish and musty upholstery. The pub is dark and every surface looks tacky, as if it, like its clientele, is limned with an ancient veneer of sweat and dirt. Dean walks behind the bar, says, ‘Drink?’
‘No thanks,’ I say and I can see relief in his eyes.
‘So then, what can I do you for?’ he asks.
‘You know what the police are like,’ I say. ‘They won’t want to waste their time on the likes of my father. They been by?’
‘Joking. Quick phone call I got, some geezer with an attitude, asked me what time Frank left, if he left with anyone. Sounded like he had his dinner on the table, couldn’t get off the phone fast enough.’
‘Sounds right. So thing is, Dean, what d’you reckon? Know anyone who’d have wanted to do him?’
Dean thinks for a moment. ‘You know, Danny, he’s in hospital and I’m sorry for him, but I have to say I saw you growing
up and how he treated you, and yeah he drinks in my boozer and I’m happy to take his money but, not being funny, Danny, your dad, he’s a right nasty cunt.’ He looks at me, worried about how I’m going to take his little speech, but I just smile.
‘Can’t argue with you there, Dean,’ I say. ‘So what, did you do it?’
‘No, no fuck, Danny,’ he says. ‘’Course not.’
‘Winding you up,’ I say. ‘But he pissed anyone off especially, that you know?’
‘Oi, oi, Bern, that’s enough of that.’ I look over and see an old man hitting another man over the head with a rolled-up copy of the Racing Post. ‘You want to be barred again?’ Dean turns back to me. ‘Fucking want to be in homes, telling you,’ he says. ‘You know he asks me to help him to the loo? Like, seriously, look at me, do I look like Florence fucking Nightingale?’ He doesn’t, he looks like what he is, a pub landlord knocking forty who wants a bit more sun and wants to drink less of his profits.
‘Sorry, what… Oh, yeah, right, who’d want to bash him. Can’t think of no one in particular, Danny, he weren’t little Mr Sunshine but he kept himself to himself, didn’t make no fuss. Probably just kids, thought they’d have a go at a pissed-up old fart.’ He looks at me anxiously again. ‘No offence.’
‘None taken.’ I hand Dean my card, tell him to let me know if he hears anything. He tells me he will, tells me to take care of myself. As I walk towards the door, he flicks a switch and a jukebox comes on, playing Ultravox. He claps his hand together, says in the brightest voice he can muster, ‘Right then, gents, what will you all be having?’ My professional life may not be all it once was; but it could be a lot worse.