She hadn’t quite heard him. Perhaps he was mumbling.
Diego then drove away even though Sissy tried to make him stay. At first he thought to go home, but he’d wake Miranda with his knocking about. With her endless good intentions she’d probably force him into some kind of medical attention. Instead, a better idea was taking shape, and it was just about the clearest thought he’d had since—since when? Maybe since his last winning bet, whenever that had been. Hadn’t Carmelo mentioned that Diego had a problem with dates?
It’s more than that, old friend, because dates and time mean nothing. Today I’m a man in his sixties. Only yesterday I was a baby kissed and cuddled by my mamita. Somewhere in between I was a fighter and a liar, a hero and a king, and you, Carmelino, you had qualities I envied.
Alone behind the wheel Diego understood where he needed to go. He parked his car at the top of the alley by the bistro. His restaurant was silent after its busy night. He opened the back door and entered the storeroom behind the kitchen. He passed the walk-in coldroom. So much wonderful produce here, not solely from local farmers but sourced from a lifetime’s contacts in Spain, some in Italy, one or two in France. Could Terence Junior really own all of this now?
Diego arranged two tin canisters, trying not to be distracted by the way his hands were so sloppy, overfilling each with fuel meant for the kitchen cookers. He shook and wiped them dry, then went through to his darkened office. He started for the safe but remembered a detail—hadn’t he been sitting at his desk with that .38 to his temple? Then wasn’t the pistol in the desk drawer? It was. He checked the bullets in the chamber; only two, seeing that Robertino had discharged one into the bistro’s floor. Who’d covered that up? Was it Diego? Maybe Don Paulo or even Miranda. He couldn’t recall, not at all.
It felt no more than a moment before he was driving once again, returning to Teneriffe with its wool sheds and stench, parking exactly where the car had been earlier. It was so late now that this world of industrial darkness and river currents was nothing but its own graveyard.
Diego climbed the hollow staircase of Building 4, struggling with exertion before he’d reached the first floor. He moved as quietly as he could, a canister in each hand, pausing now and then to catch his breath. When he reached the fourth floor, cloaked in black, the gaming tables were empty.
The climb had made his pulse race, the blood throbbing painfully in his cheek. When he grimaced he could feel the grinding of bone. A nasty injury, there was no denying. But he wasn’t here to think about the damage. Diego was here to show Terence Junior that even when a man is on the mat, strength of will can drive him to beat the count.
Ignoring the pain he did his best to pour the fuel across the room, working his way around the tables until each canister was empty. Without ceremony he lit one edge of the spreading pools with his gold pocket lighter, then stepped back as bright blue flames raced along the floorboards. The timber proved itself dry and ready as a parched forest in a rainless summer. The heat intensified, the fire crackling and jumping with a greed he found almost thrilling.
About to take his leave and let nature take its course, Diego looked past the rising smoke and saw a muted crack of light under the doorway beyond.
Junior’s office.
Raising one arm over his face to protect himself with his coat he stifled a cough and skirted past the fire. His eyes stinging, one hand found the door handle and, lungs burning now, he stumbled into the office. He slammed the door behind him and kicked a rug into the crack beneath the door, blocking the smoke. Fresh air inside brought relief, though he knew it would be short-lived.
The man himself was lying on the sofa, apparently dead to the world, an empty bottle of Dimple on the coffee table. As the smoke started to seep into the room, Diego stepped toward him.
‘Junior,’ Diego said, trying not to cough, shaking the man by a shoulder. ‘Junior, there’s trouble.’ The words seared the back of his throat. ‘Your little world is on fire.’
He shook Junior until his eyes opened. The eyelids—from smoke or whisky—fluttered painfully.
‘Old friend—’ Junior spoke.
He saw what was in front of him, and understood.
Diego shot him point blank, two times, the hammer clicking on what would have been a third, fourth, fifth and sixth. Twice Junior jerked violently. Diego dropped the .38 to the floor. He slumped beside the lounge where Junior’s body lay.
‘What are we?’ he asked the corpse. ‘Only men out of time.’
Diego smiled at that, and recognised the end.
…
The line of string running under the door twitched between his fingers. Charlie opened his eyes. There was no sound, no sprinkling of glass. He listened hard. A door had opened. Or had he only imagined the string moving in his hands?
Though anxiety travelled from his belly to his shoulder, when he felt the footsteps moving through the house it was a relief to understand the waiting was over. In the darkness he unravelled the string from his hands, then picked up the mattock handle, that solid timber helping to calm him. A moment later he heard a voice at his bedroom.
‘Wake up, old man.’
He couldn’t stay where he was. Charlie had removed the bulbs from the bedroom lights. He knew that even in the dark it wouldn’t take long for the intruder to understand he was addressing two fat pillows arranged under a blanket.
‘I told you to move.’
And there it was, the ineffective click of the light switch. Charlie eased himself down the hall. He raised the hardwood handle. From the bedroom doorway he saw the silhouetted shape of a tall, thin man standing over the bed.
Denny.
Before Charlie could bring the handle down onto that head he heard from behind—
‘You’re just too much trouble.’
—and a burst of light pitched him forward.
Upholstery … the thrum of an engine…
‘Smoke, you’re with us right?’
Charlie had an odd pinching pain in his wrists. It took him moments to understand he was crumpled in the back seat of a vehicle. The Premier again. He tried to get himself up. As he did he thought: Please, no more.
Slowly he forced himself into a sitting position, which only made his senses spin, his belly as nauseous as if he was in a small boat during a storm. He let himself rock gently to the drive, eyes half closed. Then, as the need to throw up settled, he turned to the window beside him. Gradually, things started to make sense. His hands were tied in front of him; the thin rope didn’t look like it was in any particular kind of knot, though he couldn’t do more than grind his wrists together. The circulation in his hands already felt bad.
Mike, with a pistol trained on him, watched Charlie from the front passenger seat. Charlie gazed at the muzzle, recognised it as a British Webley. During the war he’d seen Webleys issued to Commonwealth infantry divisions. So long ago, but you remembered things like that. A top-break handgun, it used .455 cartridges capable of tearing you open. Mike must have used it to smash the back of his head.
‘Drop me off.’ Charlie’s voice was a whisper. ‘You got all the money from my place?’
For one small moment Mike let a smile come to his face, predatory and satisfied at the same time. ‘You could say we had a nice look around.’
Charlie made himself breathe deeply, wanting to find some semblance of clarity even though his head felt cleaved in two.
‘You giving up already, Charlie?’
The voice of Coach Joe as Charlie slumped exhausted in the ring, the coach pulling the young fighter’s trunks and cup, helping to maximise his intake of oxygen.
‘Follow your instinct this last round, read what’s happening and find your way.’
Charlie looked out into the darkness. There was no sign of dawn, yet he could just make out where they were. This long road would take them to the industrial estate ne
ar the river. He frowned, trying to think it out.
‘Where are we going?’ he asked.
‘Quiet.’
Charlie rubbed his wrists and worked the rope.
‘Stop that,’ Mike said. ‘It’s late and I’m tired.’
‘Hey,’ Denny said. He was leaning his head down close to the steering wheel and peering up through the windscreen, trying to make something out. ‘Fuck me,’ he said, ‘look at that.’
The vehicle came to a crest in Brunswick Street and all three men had a clear view of the sky. The heavens to the north were billowing dense clouds of smoke. The spreading veil of crimson and gold reflected off nearby rooftops and windows.
Denny took a sharp left and slowed, the caustic smell of burning intensifying as they crept along in the Premier, a stench of burning timber and textiles impossible to ignore. Charlie thought he could discern a choking mixture of hot melting wires, rubber and plastic. Moving along the street they saw fire trucks, their lights flashing. The road ahead was busy with police cars. There were two waiting ambulances. One patrol car had been set up to stop any through-traffic. A pair of officers stood in the middle of the road, watching the vast conflagration, hands on hips.
Well before they reached the barricade Denny pulled the Premier to the side of the road. He snapped off the lights. A change in wind direction covered the vehicle in acridity. They heard the powerful whooshing of fire hoses creating mighty fountains. Men called out. Over the entire industrial estate there glowed a fake red dawn.
Charlie listened. Beneath the sound of water there was something else. He recognised it as masonry groaning and expanding. He saw steam pouring from the gigantic brickwork walls and heard the tremendous, reverberating crash of a wall or roof or floor giving way.
‘Look how many are going up,’ Denny said, meaning the warehouses.
They sat in the car and watched the climbing flames, the terrible colours across the sky. The intensity of the heat held everyone at a distance. Charlie saw one of the officers up ahead turn to stare at the darkened Premier, then turn back, transfixed by fire.
Charlie felt a wave of radiant heat travel all the way to the car and it dawned on him why they were here, why they had stopped. Somehow—yes, that was it—both Mike and Denny had lost their assurance. Somewhere in that mess up ahead was the place they were supposed to be taking him. Junior’s office.
Watching the great fire it was hard to believe anyone who’d been inside had escaped. And those ambulances weren’t doing anything or going anywhere. There were paramedics in white, standing as a group well back from the conflagration, nothing for them to do.
Mike spoke to Denny: ‘Go find out what’s happening.’
‘You mad?’ Denny kept watching the police officers in the street. ‘What if they come over and see him?’
Charlie Smoke recognised they’d lost confidence. Neither man knew what to do.
‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Time to let me out.’
‘Be quiet.’
‘Think about it.’
Mike turned with the Webley aimed at Charlie’s chest.
‘There’s no fucking way out for you.’
‘Mike, you tell me, where’s Junior?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘You think he’s still inside?’
‘I told you to shut up.’
‘No. Listen to me. Both of you. So far what have you done? You’ve got a stack of money you didn’t have before. I can’t go to the police to complain about money I stole myself.’
‘You won’t be complaining about anything in a minute.’
‘But what am I going to do? Report you to the cops when all you have to do is tell some detective I killed Terry Darcy?’
‘Shut the fuck up,’ Denny muttered.
Mike said, ‘You really are too much trouble, Charlie.’
‘Why? You’ve got every last bit of Old Terry’s cash. I’ll never talk about that. There just isn’t a problem any more. So why give yourselves a new one?’
Denny glanced at Charlie in the rear-vision mirror. ‘Mike?’
Mike’s face, with its bruises, lumps and uncertainty, twitched. ‘Don’t draw any attention. Get us out of here.’
Denny started up the engine. With headlights on he gently reversed then made a slow U-turn. The officers in the middle of the road cast them a glance but were uninterested. Inside the Premier there was no further talk. While Mike kept the Webley trained on Charlie, Denny took quiet streets. There seemed to be some unspoken agreement Charlie didn’t understand.
They soon came to a parkland by the river. Charlie knew it well, but he’d stopped coming here after the divorce. He remembered the playground where he pushed Sistine on the swings, and walks he’d taken with Tracy.
Denny drove through the entrance gates and along the ring road at its centre. Here there were no electric lights, no lovers, no joggers. Not even a wandering dog. Only above them the red-yellow shimmer in the sky. The Premier came to a halt under trees so thick it seemed they were in the park’s darkest spot. Had these men done this before? Mike flicked the switch on the courtesy light so it wouldn’t illuminate. He opened his door. Denny kept the engine idling and stayed where he was.
Mike opened Charlie’s door. He pressed the muzzle hard into Charlie’s forehead.
‘I know what you’re thinking,’ he said. ‘Don’t.’
He stepped back so that Charlie could climb out.
‘Down there.’ Mike pointed the gun toward a grassy slope, dark under great fig trees, leading down to the riverbank. ‘If you try to run, you’ll get it in the back.’
He stopped Charlie when they reached a park bench. ‘What do you think Old Terry would say right now?’
Charlie didn’t reply. He wouldn’t close his eyes. Despite all the fear that had dogged him so many decades, the soul erosion and physical exhaustion that had weighed on him so long, he knew he still didn’t want to leave the face of this earth. It was as simple as that.
Mike reached with his free hand into his coat and Charlie heard a knife flick open. Mike dropped it at Charlie’s feet, then turned and walked back up the slope. In the distance Charlie heard a car door slam. A glow of headlights ebbed and disappeared. Somewhere close a fruit bat screamed.
What would Old Terry say, a businessman dealing in pragmatics and racecourse odds? Maybe the same words Charlie had stumbled upon. ‘There isn’t a problem anymore. So why give yourselves a new one?’
Charlie stepped out from under the heavy cover of trees. He felt a cool night breeze on his face, the glowing specks of ash trickling down, then remembered the photograph folded into the pocket of his shirt.
Hands still tied, he managed to get it out, and in the falling embers looked at the face of Tracy, gone, and Sistine, now safe.
Already the morning buses were arriving, but the main bell wouldn’t ring for a while yet. Soon the area was teeming with schoolkids being dropped off, walking in, crowding around and being silly or playing handball games. A few were heads down, striding to the gates. No surprise to find Ricky one of the latter.
Ricky looked around when Charlie called out to him and in that quick moment of recognition his face brightened.
‘Mr Smoke, what are you doing here? And dressed like that?’
‘You think you can spare a minute?’
‘Sure.’
They walked to a shady spot along the tree-lined street, following a short path to a clean bench.
‘Mr Smoke, did someone die?’
‘The suit? Well, actually yeah.’
‘Shit, sorry.’
‘It was an old friend. Funeral’s at ten.’
‘How about I come? I can skip school.’
‘Huh, thanks, but no. And that’s sort of what I want to talk to you about.’
‘I don’t get it.’
&nbs
p; ‘How are you getting on with your father?’
‘Do we have to talk about him?’
Charlie nodded.
‘Why?’
‘Because he’s your father and I’m not.’
Ricky stopped. His forehead creased. Then he said, ‘Mum’s got a big mouth.’
‘You have to give your father a chance, Ricky.’
‘No one says he’s coming back.’
‘That might be true. But there’s still you and him no matter what happens. So what I wanted to tell you, no, I mean, just suggest … why not try to understand whatever’s been going on in his mind?’
‘Mr Smoke, I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘Adults, Ricky, they’re as stupid as anyone else, and deep down they’re always just children anyway. If you remember that then you’re closer to understanding how they can forget the good right in front of them.’
‘Mr Smoke, all I know is we have to sell our house. Mum’s getting a job. She’s going back to study as well.’
‘None of which means you can ignore your old man.’
Charlie watched Ricky closely. The boy took a heavy breath.
‘Look, I know you’re not my dad. And I know you’ve got your own daughter. I just … I just want to keep learning from you.’
‘Which is what we’re going to do, for as long as you want. That’s a promise. There’s one thing you have to add to that, though.’
‘What?’
‘I bet you can learn a whole lot more from your old man. If you make the effort.’
Ricky looked at the ground, at the grass between his feet. ‘I guess.’
‘Then that’s all I’ve got to say.’
‘Wait,’ Ricky said, half brightening. ‘What did your daughter learn from you?’
Gesù, always the turnaround with this kid. He’d need to be a lawyer or priest one day.
They heard the clattering din of the school bell.
‘I think … that sort of question, you’re asking the wrong person.’
‘I’ll meet her one day. I’ll find out.’
‘But Ricky?’
‘What?’
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