by Vogel, Vince
Jack heard the clatter of pans in the kitchen and moved away from the door, back into the hallway, a rather confused feeling enveloping him. Stepping across the red-and-orange-patterned carpet, he made it to the kitchen door and could hear someone on the other side banging about, opening cupboard doors and swearing to themselves.
With gradual movements, Jack twisted the handle and opened the door. On the other side, he found a woman kneeling down with her back to him. She was looking for something in one of the cupboards.
“Can I help you?” was all Jack could think of saying.
The woman turned sharply around, and Jack was greeted with the first sight of his daughter for ten years.
“Carrie,” he exclaimed.
“Hello, Dad.”
23
Dressed completely in black and wearing night vision goggles, Dorring placed crocodile clips on the eleven-foot-tall chain-link fence and rigged their wires up to a small box-shaped device that would maintain the amperage through the fence and not alert the alarm when he cut himself a hole. Having clipped a large enough section away, he entered the Fat Man’s compound.
He wasn’t going to war with them yet, so he only had a single silenced PPK with him for protection. No, tonight wasn’t about taking anyone out. For one, he didn’t know who had killed his sister yet. Chloe appeared sure that it was someone among the Doyles, and Alex was inclined to believe that too. But he wanted assurances that he was going after the right people. By keeping a close eye on them and muddying the waters of their lives, he hoped that the killer would reveal himself.
He made his way silently through the pitch-black gardens, occasionally having to duck out of the way of patrolling security guards. It appeared the Fat Man was very paranoid about his safety. This didn’t bother Alex. These guards were absolutely useless, only really patrolling the place because they had to and doing so in a disinterested fashion. There was nothing vigilant about them, and Alex spotted or heard most of them from way off.
Soon he was making his way along the long barrack-like kennel, and his ears filled with the incessant dog barking. Making it swiftly around the building of block walls and corrugated iron roof, he held himself at a corner until another guard sauntered by, this one talking loudly on his mobile phone. Waiting for the chatting guard to disappear, Alex then kept himself low as he made it across a shingle parking area to a bank of several cars. The crescent moon provided little light, and he was well covered. He reached into the breast pocket of his jacket, took out several tracking devices, and began sticking them under the rear bumpers of all the cars, making sure to log the registrations on his phone. This way he could track the movements of everyone at the house.
Once this was completed, Dorring darted back across to the side of the large mansion. He launched himself at the wall of it, taking a firm hold of a drainpipe and hauling himself up. Then he jumped from the pipe to a window ledge, and with catlike agility, he went from ledge to ledge, needing only the slightest nook or cranny to hold on to and support his weight expertly. During his SAS days, they had studied rock climbing rigorously and trained in ascending seemingly impossible structures. His fingers were almost as strong as his arms, and he gripped into the surface of the house with consummate ease.
He made it to the peak of the sloped roof and walked along the tiled ridge with the skill of a trapeze artist. When he made it to the center, he perched himself down and switched his night vision goggles to infrared. He began scanning the house that was underneath him, looking for the red and yellow heat signatures of people. It wasn’t long before he found a large room in the center of the building, which had several masses in it. A massive heat signature was let off by something big and round that Alex first took for a roasting pig. In front of it was a mass of heat signatures all joining together in one huddled mass, and Alex gathered this was probably sexual activity. Also in the room were two other men. One standing at the edge by the wall, probably guarding the door, and another man stood in front of the roasting hog.
Dorring took his rucksack off, opened it up, and took out the parabolic microphone—a long microphone attached to a handgrip with a dish at the back of it about ten inches in diameter. He moved along the roof so that he was directly above the room with all the activity. Switching on the microphone and concentrating it on them, Alex began to hear their voices.
In the Fat Man’s room, a four-girl orgy went on to the side, a prolonged activity that never ceased while Jerry Doyle was awake. Like always, he lay on his bed, his crispy, disintegrating red skin on display, like a glistening flesh-colored toad, his thin brown hair coming down his round head in sweaty strands like the tails of rats. Stood in front of him was his brother, Davey, who came with news.
“I told you all of this would be bad for us,” Davey complained to his older brother.
“You can’t blame Billy for wanting her back. He sees her as his.”
“But now she’s gone again, and one of my guys has a hole in his fuckin’ foot. These games of Billy’s have to stop, Jerry.”
“The boy has passions, Davey.”
“Is that what you call it? Passion?”
“He wants to live up to his old man’s reputation is all.”
“Then he should live up to your reputation as a businessman.”
“And he does.”
“But these side interests of his are getting out of hand. We should just find this girl and kill her.”
“Not possible, Davey. I’ve already stated it.”
Davey sighed. All these complications he was facing and all because of what? Because his nephew was a deeply abnormal man.
“Where is Billy tonight anyway?” Davey asked. “I saw his car outside.”
“He’s here in his private quarters.”
“Doing what?”
“Entertaining friends.”
Again Davey exhaled a deep sigh. He knew his brother’s euphemisms all too well.
“Anyway, enough about Billy,” the Fat Man barked, seeing that the subject of his son was annoying his brother. “Tell me about the man that took her and blew a hole in one of our boys.”
“He was some late-twenties, early-thirties bloke with blond hair and a mean left jab. Apparently he was quick as lightning. Just took them out in no time flat. They reckon he must be trained or something.”
“Whoever he is, I want him found. I don’t want him fartin’ without one of our guys smellin’ it. I mean it, Davey. We can’t have some guy walkin’ off the street, taking what’s ours, and beatin’ up two of our employees. It doesn’t look good. Imagine if those animals, the Earles, find out. They’d smell blood, the little shits, and be queueing up for their pint of it.”
“Talkin’ of the Earles Crew and wanting to get back to business, I’ve got to meet up with them tomorrow mornin’ first thing.”
“Where is it this time?”
“The fuckin’ woods again. Can you believe it? Why we can’t just meet in a nice office at one of our legit businesses, I don’t know.”
“Jacob Earle’s old-school even though he’s more than twenty years younger than us. He still likes to think of himself as a gangster. Clandestine meetings in woods, cash handovers, and everyone with guns. I mean, the guy’s got several apartment blocks he rents out, a haulage company, and three warehouses on Canvey Island. We could easily just wire him the money and he could launder it through one of his many fronts. But he prefers to meet in the woods and do it the way it’s done in the movies.”
“Yeah, but he won’t be there. I will. With his main man, Deck. If it all goes tits-up, then it’s me and the henchmen who get burned.”
“It won’t go bad. The war is long behind us now. There’s been peace for five years.”
“Fragile peace, brother. Let me remind you of that.”
“Peace is always fragile. What matters is we give him his cash and everything is kept runnin’ smoothly. Which woods are you meeting him at?”
“Glenmouth Wood at six in the mornin’.�
�
“So early?”
“Yeah. I like to get these things done as soon as possible, just after dawn. It makes moving three Hummers full of armed men around London easier.”
“Makes sense.” Jerry’s lizard eyes flicked over to the sex scene, and Davey could see he wanted to return to his leering. “Anything else, Davey?” he added, his gaze now fixed on the moaning, tangled mass of sweaty flesh.
“Nothin’ much. Just wanted to inform you that the girl escaped and went off with some guy. And that I’ll be making the meet tomorrow. I could have done it by phone, but you never know who’s listenin’.”
“Davey,” the Fat Man gently chided. “We have protection from up high. If anyone was listenin’ to us, we’d know about it. Our friend at the the Yard would say so. As it is, we’re in the clear. You can be calm in knowin’ that we are a protected people.”
“I don’t particularly trust our man in the Met.”
“He’s been with us for a long time, Davey, and he’s never let us down.”
“He’s still a copper, brother. Still a slimy bastard.”
“Hey! That’s my friend you’re talking about.”
“Friends have a habit of becoming enemies in this game.”
The Fat Man screwed up his blotchy pink face. He was getting bored of his brother’s pointless idioms and wanted to get back to the show.
“I grow tired of your cynicism, brother,” he said.
“And I of you, brother. So I bid you adieu.”
With a cheeky wink and a little bow, Davey made his older brother smile, as he always did.
When Davey was gone from the room, Jerry thought of his little brother. He’d always made Jerry laugh, even when he was a little baby held carefully in his arms. Back then baby David had suffered terribly from wind and would let rip while lying on Jerry’s lap. This always produced the most intense laughing in the older boy. He could never quite believe that a baby that easily fit in a shoe box could fart so loudly. Back then he’d sworn to protect his little brother forever. And that’s what he’d done. Protected him. When they were kids, it was the other children on the estate and at the school that Jerry protected him from. He’d always been large and strong, a man before a boy. But Davey was always wiry and weak. Perhaps this protective nature in Jerry was no more than the natural consequence of being the older brother. But much of its intensity could also possibly be derived from an incident when Jerry was four and Davey a mere infant.
The older boy had spent several nights up with his mother while Davey was suffering from whooping cough. Every bassy croak that rumbled out of the infant had scared Jerry to the bones, and he’d prayed every night that the baby would get better. Davey had ended up in hospital and nearly died. Jerry recalled visiting him when he was lying in the incubator. It had terrified him. Ever since, there had been such a love inside this grotesque creature for that brother of his. Sure Jerry was a cruel, vile man who had thought nothing of torturing men, and even occasionally women, to death. He’d cut into them like a butcher into a hanging pig, feel nothing but a release of inner hatred. But concerning his family, the Fat Man was, like many other killers and sadists, a sentimentalist. Blood was a solid rock compared to the diaphanous water of everyone else.
With a lasting smile for his brother, the limbless creature had the girl behind him position the chair so that he could see everything the writhing women were doing, his wide nostrils sniffing in the sultry air and a lecherous tingle traveling the length of what was left of his half-dead body.
24
Carrie stood up from the cupboard, and Jack could do nothing but gaze mesmerized at his long-lost daughter. She still had that pretty constellation of freckles floating across the cosmos of her face, and her jet-black hair was still cut to the shoulders. As always, it brought to Jack’s mind the happy recollection of a pair of raven’s wings, and he smiled to see them after so long.
But no sooner had the smile emerged upon his lips than he was struck by a pang of sadness that dissolved it. Taking in the features a little longer, he observed that the years had bloated her face, and the feathers of her hair were now coarser. He cringed ever so slightly when he thought of the hard life that displayed itself upon her. She smiled a half-life smile at him, and a gentle ripple of crow’s-feet fanned out either side of her eyes. When she had left this house, she was a teenage girl. Standing before him now was a woman.
“What’re you doing here, love?” Jack asked in amazement.
“You want me to leave?” she retorted with typical feistiness.
“Of course not. I only mean… well, you know… it has been over ten years, Carrie. Not a letter. Nothing.”
“I’m not here for that,” she said with a wave of her hand.
“Okay. Then—and I hope you don’t mind me asking—why are you here?”
“Just thought I’d come see you.”
“After ten years?” he exclaimed with a widening of the eyes. “Nothing for over a decade, Carrie, and then you thought you’d pop in for a cup of tea?”
She stood in front of him tapping her foot gently on the linoleum flooring, gnawing the thumbnail of her right hand.
“There’s someone I want you to meet,” she finally said.
“You mean the boy watching my telly. I was wondering when you’d get to that.”
“Come on. I’ll show you.”
She walked past him on her way out of the kitchen, and he felt the urge to reach out and touch her, to take her in his arms and hold on to her. It was as much to do with making sure she was really there than it was with wanting to hold his daughter after so long. But he resisted and merely followed her across the hallway to the lounge.
“How’d you get in anyway?” he asked as they stood by the door.
“Still got my set of keys.”
“Of course.”
She opened the door and stepped inside. Jack followed her in, and the boy didn’t move a muscle, his eyes fixed to the flashing screen. Carrie walked up to the set and switched it off. The second she did, the boy became animated.
“Ah, Mum!” he complained, following her with his eyes as she rejoined Jack by the door.
“I want you to meet someone, Ty,” she said.
“Him?”
“Yeah, him!”
“Who is he?”
“He’s your grandad.”
The boy gazed incredulously at Jack, and the latter, in turn, gazed incredulously at the boy. In all his correspondences with colleagues in the police, with Carol, and in anything else he happened to find on his daughter, Jack had never heard that she had a child. He was stunned.
“Hello, Ty,” he said timidly.
The boy continued to stare at him.
“He’s my grandad?” he asked his mother, screwing his face up at her.
Jack sensed an air of disappointment in the kid’s tone.
“Yeah.”
“But I thought Pops was.”
“He is. This is your other grandad. You have two. This is my dad.”
The boy eyed Jack with a suspicious look on his chubby face.
“Well, get off the couch and say hello,” Carrie gently chided the boy.
With a huff, he dragged himself off the couch and walked listlessly toward Jack.
“Tyler!” Carrie rebuked when he passed her. “Stand up straight.”
He did as commanded and straightened himself out, came to Jack, and offered his hand.
“Pleased to meet you, other granddad that’s not Pops,” he said in a lazy tone, his eyes pointed at the floor away from Jack.
“The pleasure’s all mine,” Jack replied, taking the limp hand and actually endeared to the boy’s impudent spirit. It reminded him of himself in many ways.
Having shaken the hand and finding it coated in crisp crumbs, Jack asked Tyler how old he was. The boy immediately turned back to his mum standing behind him and made a face.
“Of course you can tell him,” Carrie said, looking a little embarrassed afterwar
d.
“I’m eight,” the boy pronounced, turning back to Jack. “How old are you?”
Again the antics of the boy made Jack smile.
“Old enough to be your grandfather.”
“So what’s that, then—eighty?”
“About that, yeah.”
Behind Tyler, Carrie was smiling. It lit up Jack’s heart to see the smile of his daughter after so long. He saw the glowing pride of a mother in her face, and this, in turn, made him proud to see.
“You look like you’re having withdrawal symptoms from the telly,” Jack said to the boy. “What were you watching?”
“Cartoon Network. I was waiting for the football to come on.”
“Who’s playing?”
“Arsenal in the Champions League. That’s my team.”
The boy pulled down the neck of his sweatshirt and proudly displayed the badge of his Arsenal shirt underneath.
“Arsenal!” Jack exclaimed, making a face that brought a giggle to the boy’s mouth. “Where were you born?”
“Nottingham.”
“So what’re you doing supporting a team from North London?”
“I like their shirts.”
“That’s no reason to support a team. You should support the team you grew up around. I was born in Stratford, East London. Just a couple of miles from Upton Park. So I support West Ham.”
“That’s rubbish,” the boy burst out indignantly. “You don’t have to support the team you were born near. That would mean I have to support Forest or Notts County. And they’re shit!”
“Tyler!” Carrie loudly scolded. The boy sharply turned his head to her, his face already suffusing with an apologetic look. “What have I told you about bad language?”
“That it’s bad?”
“That’s right. What do you say?”
Tyler turned back to Jack and said sorry. For his part, Jack simply stood there doing his best to suppress the giggle erupting inside of him, fully entertained by the sharp-witted little boy before him. He liked the kid’s temperament. It meant that he wouldn’t be messed with. Jack had suggested he shouldn’t support a London team, and the kid had rightfully told him he could support anyone he wanted. There was already something of the survivor in him. With a pang, Jack wondered where the boy had been during Carrie’s three stretches in prison. Overall, by Jack’s calculations, she’s spent eleven months away from her son. Where had the boy been then?