by Paul Harris
“It’s been a long time.”
He sighed but gave no reply, as if he wanted to set the agenda but didn’t know how to.
“Why has it been so long, Thomas? All these years, and out of the blue, here you are?”
“You never came to see me.” His general demeanour seemed extremely defensive.
“You never wanted me. I decided to give it time. Waited. Waited for you to grow and hoped that one day you’d come back to me. I never stopped loving you. You never stopped being my boy.”
“I’m here now, aren’t I?”
“Only because you want something.”
He seemed surprised. His mouth dropped open in a theatrical display of utter disbelief. He unclasped his hands for the first time since he’d crossed my threshold, and then raised his arms. “What! How can you say that? What do I want from you?”
“I don’t know yet, but I know you want something.”
He put his hands into the pockets of his trousers and began to pace the room.
“Did you notice any feathers outside on the stairs?” I asked him.
“No. Why?”
Although he was distant; a million miles distant; it was still nice to see him, and he still hadn’t killed anybody yet. Perhaps, Angker’s premonitions were more hit and miss than she thought.
“When I came in from work yesterday, there was a magpie trapped in the stairwell out there.” I pointed at the door. “I don’t know how he got in and I don’t know how long he’d been stuck out there, but I could see that he was tired and almost bereft of hope. Like a man who can’t see the light at the end of the tunnel, who sees no end to his torment. You know? So, I knew that I was his only hope and had to rescue him.”
Tom had his back to me and was peering out of the window at the veterinary surgery. I knew that he wasn’t interested in my tale and that he was barely listening to me at all.
“Of course, it was the bird’s instinct to fly to the top of the stairs and not to the bottom where the door offered his only escape. So, leaving the door open, I started at the top of the stairs and tried to shepherd him downwards, towards freedom. We got down to the second floor, when he flapped his wings, took off, and flew right past my head. He stared at me as if in triumph with his horrible little black eyes. He landed out there, right back at the top, and perched there on the rail as if he was baiting me.”
“So, I started at the top again, got him so far down the stairs and the same thing happened again, and again, and again. Every time I got near to him, he looked at me as if I meant to do him harm. But, of course, I didn’t. Not at all. He didn’t look scared. He puffed his chest out and jabbed his beak in my direction. He surely must have realised that I was trying to save him and that he really ought to have been grateful, but he didn’t look very grateful at all.”
Tom turned to face me. He was clearly becoming a little impatient and pressed me for a conclusion. “So, what happened?”
“Well, eventually, I got him down to the bottom and he hopped down the last three steps and right out of the door.”
“Thank God for that. I thought it was going to go on forever.”
“He stood there in the car park drinking some oily water. I don’t suppose he’d had anything to eat or drink all day. There are no worms or berries out on the landing, after all.”
“No Dad, there’s not.” Tom spoke to me as if he were addressing a child or an imbecilic relative.
“But, after all that, next door’s cat pounced on him from nowhere. It was sort of, out of the frying pan, straight into the fire. He played with him and toyed with him for a while and when he was sure that the bird was maimed, he released him. But, of course, the bird couldn’t fly away now. He was crippled. And the cat pounced again, as if he was playing with a ball of wool. He tore and clawed at the bird’s feathers until a passing car distracted him and he dashed away. I stood on the step, looking at the magpie that I’d spent half an hour saving. He just lay there next to a car tyre, weakly flapping a solitary wing; the only limb that had not been torn to shreds.”
I looked into Tom’s eyes. He shrugged at me.
“Perhaps, it’s best, sometimes, to let things be. What do you think?”
He shrugged again.
“And you know, the funny thing is, I can’t remember whether that really happened or whether I dreamt it. It would have been a strange dream to have, but there was no dead magpie there in the car park the following morning.”
“There wouldn’t be. A fox would have taken it away in the night.”
“I suppose,” I agreed. “And it took me ages to clean up all the bird shit out there in the stairwell.”
He sighed and glanced nervously through the window again. “Look, Dad, it’s all very interesting about the pigeon and all that, but, to be honest, I’m in a bit of bother, see.”
“I know, son. So, what is it?”
“I need your help. You know I wouldn’t ask but I’m desperate. I don’t know what else to do.”
“What is it you think I can do to help? Is it money?”
Finally, he sat down. He stared at me and didn’t seem to know what to say.
“Coffee?”
He almost broke into a smile. “Okay, if it’ll make you happy.” I went to the kitchen to pour him a cup. “Milk, no sugar,” he shouted after me.
“I haven’t got any milk,” I shouted back. I neglected to tell him that I hadn’t got a fridge either, or a freezer or an iron or a vacuum cleaner. I watched the steam beginning to billow from the spout of the kettle and speculated as to how much money he wanted and what he wanted it for. When I returned to him with a chipped mug full of black coffee, he had his head in his hands. I put the mug down on the table beside him.
“So, how much?”
He muttered a figure without looking up. It almost sounded as if he’d said “twenty grand”. I stood over him, looking down at the back of his head. I was about to ask him again when it dawned on me that he had, indeed, said “twenty grand”.
“Jesus, Tom! What have you been doing? I don’t have that sort of money.”
Tom looked up at me. He appeared pale and drawn, desperate and ill. His fingers trembled as he gripped the handle of the coffee mug. “It’s only to tide me over. It’ll be a short term loan. Very short term. I can pay you interest.”
“Why don’t you go to a bank?”
“It’s complicated.” His head was still resting in the palms of his hands. “It’s hard to explain but I can’t go to the bank.” He dropped his head again. “You’re my last hope otherwise I wouldn’t be here pleading like this.”
“Well, if you really are that desperate…”
“Believe me I am!” he cut in, slightly raising his voice, not in anger but in an involuntary expression of how desperate he was. There was clearly something that he wasn’t telling me.
“Well, there may be a way,” I said to him, against my better judgement, “I may be able to raise it.” He stood up and took a deep breath. I noticed that his bottom lip was quivering. “But it’s risky. It’ll need to be paid back quickly otherwise we’ll all be up the creek without a paddle.”
“There’s no danger of it not being paid back, Dad. I told you, it’s a very short term loan, just to get me over a cash flow blip. I’ve got money coming in from Angker’s people in Austria.”
I was startled by what he was saying, and perhaps a little intrigued. It was the first I’d heard of such an arrangement. “Angker’s people in Austria? I suppose I ought not to ask.” But I wanted to.
He offered me no explanation and just said, “No, perhaps not.” He held out his hand to me and we shook.
“No promises,” I told him.
“Just do what you can, please. I really need this.”
I nodded, never taking my eyes off his. “Don’t let me down.”
He bowed slightly, and hurriedly left without drinking his coffee. I could hear the step of his leather-soled shoes on the staircase as he descended. He paused on one o
f the lower landings, probably scanning for feathers. Eventually, the sound of the front door shutting behind him echoed up the stairwell, and I watched through the window as he walked across the small gravel car park. The cat had shifted position and was now sitting on a fence post, eyeing Tom suspiciously. He walked with far more pride than he had shown minutes earlier when he’d been sitting in my armchair, his head in his hands, pleading for money. As he reached his car and unlocked it, I turned away and knew that, sometimes, the only thing a parent could do was to turn a blind eye and pretend that they had no idea what was going on in the lives of their children.
I took my phone out of the fruit bowl, where I always kept it so that I knew where it was, and began to scroll through my contacts. My reading glasses had been lying next to the phone, and I found that I needed them to see the names as they flickered across the screen. I stopped when I came to H for Harry Growler. He was a man who may have been able to help me, a man who owed me a favour or two, but a man with whom I loathed renewing my acquaintance. I held my breath and dialled his number but the line was dead.
Rags to Riches
Two police cars with flashing blue lights were parked, blocking access in and out of what was little more than a dingy backstreet. Further along the dimly lit street, two more police cars, unmarked, sat stationary in the middle of the road, in flagrant disregard for the double yellow lines painted along the length of the kerb-line. Shadowy figures loitered with an air of anticipation. Detective Inspector Chisholm popped a cigarette into his mouth and nonchalantly lit it. He dropped his silver lighter back into his jacket pocket, and took only two draws on the cigarette before throwing it to the ground and extinguishing it with the sole of his shoe. He had promised himself that he would give up the habit, and that today would be his last day, but his work load was increasing again and this provided him with the subconscious excuse to keep on smoking.
The shadowy figures, although outwardly exuding an appearance of relative indifference as they casually milled around, quite clearly had their attention fixed on a shop front; the only shop front in the street. It was a dry cleaner’s, but they weren’t here to have their uniforms starched, which was just as well because this particular dry cleaner’s had never so much as pressed a pair of chinos before. Behind the shop front was a wall and behind that there existed not one component of cleaning apparatus.
As Chisholm lit another cigarette, a side door was thrust open amidst a flurry of activity. More shadows emerged from the poorly lit doorway. They were huddled together as if they were performing an ancient tribal ritual. At the centre of the huddle was Harry Growler. He was always at the centre of his world, and so he remained right until the end. At either side, he was escorted by an armed detective, one of which he was bound to by means of a set of hand-cuffs. Growler walked with pride, with his head held high and a complacent grin on his face. This despite being trussed up like a Christmas turkey. An awkward limp was all that belied his pride and exposed his vulnerability. At the rear of the huddle, the lawyer, Ford Sayer, shuffled behind with his head bowed.
“Don’t worry, Harry,” he called out without raising his eyes from the ground. “We’ll get you out of this mess.” Harry wasn’t listening to him. Harry hadn’t listened to him for weeks. His words weren’t meant for Harry. They were for general consumption and Harry knew it; at least he did now. “It’s all a terrible mistake,” Sayer went on, to no one in particular. “We have here yet another case of police harrassment.” It was as if he was making a statement to the press; well-rehearsed, meaningless, and entirely superfluous on this occasion.
A tower block, two streets away, seemed to rise into the sun-reddened sky and scowl down upon the scene. The progress of this ungainly scrum was halted as they stood in the road ignoring one another. Car doors were opened and closed. Harry Growler was shown to the back of one of the unmarked police cars, and as he climbed in with a measured presence of dignity, he heard the tell-tale sound of the duplicitous Ford Sayer’s phone ringing in his pocket. Growler glared at him, just for a second, and drew his index finger across his own throat in clear indication of what he would do to Sayer if he were ever again granted his liberty.
The customary arrogant smirk returned to Sayer’s face as the convoy of cars pulled away, Growler still peering menacingly out of the back window at him. The lawyer was secure in the knowledge that he knew enough about the affairs of his former employer to ensure that he would never be given the opportunity to exact his revenge. He took his phone from his pocket and checked that the call that he had missed was the one that he had been expecting. It was, and he re-entered the building through the open doorway from which he had lately emerged.
Chisholm watched him, he watched everything, and made a mental note of every word and every gesture. He watched him disappear and carefully close the door behind him. The detective wondered how long it would be until he and his men would be visiting the dry cleaner’s shop yet again; with another warrant; and with more blood spilt. He despondently thrust his hand into his jacket pocket and turned his back on the shop. As he climbed into his car and started the engine, he decided to book a holiday, a week away somewhere pleasant, away from the drama and the bloodshed.
Inside the almost derelict-looking building, Cak Lazlo was sitting on Harry Growler’s swivel chair, in Harry Growler’s office, with his feet resting on Harry Growler’s desk. An excited Ford Sayer burst into the room. Although, taken aback by such a boisterous entrance, Lazlo was not surprised by the lawyer’s presence, and did not look up from the papers that he was carefully examining. “Knock,” he calmly demanded.
“But…”
“From now on, you knock when you enter my office.”
“If you insist,” bleated Sayer.
“I do.” Lazlo removed his feet from the desk and replaced them with a sheet of paper that had attracted his particular attention. “Has he gone?”
“He’s gone. Very much so. He’s gone for good. I’ll make sure of that.”
“You’d better.”
Ford Sayer swallowed again. Since their last private consultation, only an hour and a half previous, in the café on the corner, Lazlo’s tone and demeanour seemed to have grown far more threatening. He wondered if he had leapt from the frying pan and right into the fire. “I can arrange everything, just as I said.”
Cak watched him and knew that he was a liar. He also knew that his services, for the time being, were indispensable to him. He looked from Sayer to the bare walls of the office, to the fixtures and fittings, to the naked forty watt light bulb that hung above his head, to the sparse and worn out furniture. “It’s like a junk shop in here. A poorly run junk shop. It disgusts me.”
“We can change it,” stammered Sayer. “We can do anything now.”
“No, Sayer, I can do anything now. You just get this office a makeover, ready for the big time.”
“I can arrange that. I can arrange anything. I told you that. I’ve even got an Ikea catalogue somewhere in the boot of my car.”
Cak took his phone from a desk drawer and began to dial a number. As he listened to the dialling tone, he dismissed the fawning Ford Sayer with a wave of his hand.
Secondary Gunshot
Feeling far more relaxed than he had been for a long while, Tom climbed into his car and peered at himself in his rear view mirror. He felt relaxed, not because of the promise of funds from his father because, as had been made clear to him, there was no promise. Maybe he felt slightly liberated because he’d finally come clean and faced up to his difficulties. Perhaps, what he was feeling was a sense of absolution.
He tuned the radio into Capital Gold. As he fumbled with the knobs and dials, his car keys slipped through his fingers, landed in the foot well and rolled beneath his seat. He bent down and groped amongst the accumulated debris for them and something sticky adhered itself to his fingers. It was a decaying Liquorice Allsort. He opened the door and shook it from his hand. He had to squat down to retrieve his keys. He glanc
ed up at Rodney’s window but there was no sign of his father, not a shadow. Tom hoped that he was already busy arranging some cash.
He turned the ignition, engaged the gear stick, and reversed across the car park, before creeping forward to the exit where he stopped to allow a man to pass by on the footpath. He was walking a couple of vicious looking dogs on leads and had a huge abrasion on his face. He stared at Tom through his windscreen as he walked, slowly and deliberately, past the front of his car. Tom thought that he seemed to be scowling at him rather malevolently and wished that he hadn’t stopped to let him pass. One of the dogs growled through the glass. The man yanked on the lead and swore. Tom didn’t know whether he was swearing at him or the dog.
He pulled out and, as he drove away from the flats, his car back-fired fiercely, and embarrassingly. Someone had told him that modern cars don’t back-fire anymore, but his did, and often. Both dogs began to bark, in response to the noise. He accelerated along the New Town Road and vowed to scrap the old heap of junk and buy a brand new car, perhaps a Mercedes, maybe a Jag, as soon as his incompetent and drunken lawyer, Cawthorne, managed to remember what had become of this so-called Salzburg document.
He crossed the river and headed for the casino that had recently opened in the old fire station. Although this was his first visit, the men in the black suits were reluctant, at first, to let him in. They became far more accommodating when he showed them the wad of twenty pound notes that he was carrying in his jacket pocket. One of them opened the door for him and he went to the cage and bought some chips.
Rodney watched Tom unlock his car door but he never heard him drive away. He was making a telephone call and afterwards, he finished the coffee that Tom had left standing, steaming on the table. As he traipsed to the kitchen with the dirty cups, a loud bang resounded through the building. Outside in the road, Tom had heard his car backfiring, but Rodney heard a gunshot as if it had echoed, resonated, and followed him through time. He shook with dreaded anticipation. He clutched his chest, staggered, reached out for assistance, and then silently dropped to the ground. A secondary, more accurate, shot never came. This time, it was not necessary.