by Jay Stringer
He reached his car and dropped down into the driver’s seat.
I slipped the gun back into the glove box and reached for the ignition, but I waited until he was halfway down the street before waking my own car up and following him at a healthy distance.
He was driving fast, and it was a challenge to keep up without attracting attention. Usually, I wouldn’t think twice. Few people ever assume they’re being followed. But I remembered what Becker had said about Pearce’s driving, and I didn’t want to risk getting too close and have him think I was looking for a race.
He led me round in a loop, down past the Myvod, then turned right and drove in the direction of the motorway junction and the school where he worked. As he drove on past the school, in the direction of the river, I realized where he was going. I think part of me had known as soon as he’d gotten into the car.
I gambled on my conviction, and at the next junction, I turned the opposite way, speeding up to try and get there before him by a longer route. I wanted to be waiting for him. I thought of the gun in the glove box and the speed I was driving, and I thought, Please, no traffic police tonight.
I arrived before he did and pulled to the curb beside the bridge, cruising to a spot away from the streetlight before killing the engine and slipping down in my seat. It was only a few seconds before I heard Pearce’s car; the headlamps lit up the street around me as he approached. He pulled right up to the entrance to the bridge and then killed his own engine, sitting there as the darkness wrapped around his car.
I inched my hand toward the glove box, trying not to make any sudden moves that would give me away in the shadows, even in his peripheral vision. I lifted out the gun again.
Why?
I didn’t know.
It wanted me to—that was the only thought I had as my hand massaged the grip. It wanted me to lift it. I stared at Pearce’s car and almost wished he would stare back, but I knew he wouldn’t. I could see his profile, and he was looking straight ahead, toward the bridge.
I caught movement across the road and saw the woman from the other night cross in my direction, once again walking her dog. She walked past me, and if she’d seen me, she didn’t show it. As they neared Pearce’s car I thought, Please be the guy, give me something.
She paused at the end of the bridge, right in front of Pearce’s car, and stooped down to fuss with the dog. The dog sat down on its haunches, and she looped the end if its leash over the metal barrier beside them before turning back to Pearce’s car.
She walked around the passenger side and opened the door, the light coming on inside as she did so. She leaned down and stuck her head in the car, saying something I couldn’t hear. Then she leaned in, and Pearce met her halfway, kissing her.
I dropped the gun onto the passenger seat. I reached for the ignition, watching as the woman climbed into the car and pulled the door shut behind her. The light inside hadn’t been off long before the car was starting to rock on its wheels. I looked at the dog, alone in the cold, and thought of the dog shit in the bin. I wondered if she’d bought the dog only as an excuse to slip out of the house at night, or if he’d been around for longer than that.
Fuck it.
If two married adults wanted an affair, it wasn’t my concern.
I turned the key in the ignition and got a childish thrill out of the look of shock on the faces of the half-naked lovers as I drove past them. I slipped a few pills into my mouth with my free hand and swallowed them dry.
A chill dripped down my spine, from the tip to the base, and the world felt lighter. My problems drifted away on a cloud.
THIRTY‐ONE
“Hey.”
I came to as Noah shook me gently. I was in the front seat of my car, right outside the flat. Sunlight hit me in the eyes. I didn’t remember driving home.
I rubbed my eyes, shaking my head a couple of times. “I, uh, Monday?”
“We’re going to have to have a talk,” he said. “Before this goes too far.”
I followed him into the flat and showered while he made a pot of coffee. Noah had a certain way with coffee—he laced it with cayenne pepper and cinnamon—and it was the perfect tonic for any occasion.
We settled into the sofa in the living room and looked at each other for a long time.
“You look like hell,” he said.
“Thanks, it runs in the family.”
“You need to stop. Really.”
I changed the subject. “What’s the real reason you’re back?”
He smiled, clearly indulging me and my desire to steer clear of the obvious. “It’s just time, I guess,” he said. “I’m older. All the stuff Dai used to say? Family, a woman, working—it all makes more sense now than it did before, you know?”
“I never thought I’d hear you say that.”
“Neither did I.” He shrugged. “Thing is, it’s all the same.”
“What do you mean?”
“Settle, travel, whatever. It’s all the same trap. That song we were talking about the other night, ‘Born to Run,’ it’s a lie, man. I tried all that, and it hasn’t stopped me from being an alcoholic, has it? Hasn’t stopped me from gambling or being a prick.”
“Too true.”
“I just wanted to come home.”
“But you didn’t go home. You came here.”
“Yeah, well. The stuff with Mum, you know, I couldn’t stay there. Plus that madwoman across the road.”
“Mrs. Daniels?”
“Yeah. I swear, she never remembers me. She thinks I’m breaking in every time I visit.”
“She’s just old. Things stopped making sense for her a few years ago, but she’s harmless. Anyway, she likes me, so maybe she’s just a good judge of character.”
Then he asked how I was getting on with finding the proof that I needed, and I began to unload. I told him I knew who’d done it. I’d gotten there ass-backward, but a process of elimination left only one option. I laid out the options. It felt good having a big brother again, so I continued. I talked about Laura, about our failed relationship and her being crooked. I don’t know how long I talked, but when I finally finished, the coffee was stone cold. Noah took my cup and fetched a warm replacement from the kitchen, and then he settled back down.
“Feel better?”
“I don’t know. I think so. I still don’t know what to do, though.”
We fell silent while we sipped at the coffee. I felt a buried thought tugging at me, as if my subconscious was trying to coax me into remembering something important, but it was like a rope that kept slipping out of my hands. The roar of the caffeine was making my head pound, and I could feel my gut coming alive. I let it drop.
Noah picked up a book off the coffee table, the collection of stage plays our dad had forced on him. “There’s this bit I got to. A kid, this is back in Ireland in the 1920s, this kid lost his arm fighting the Brits. In the play he keeps shouting about principles, using them as reasons not to do things. And his mum, I think it’s his mum”—he flicked to the page to check—“she says to him that he lost his best principle when he lost his right arm.”
“So?”
“Look, I don’t know. I had a thought, and then I lost it. All I’m thinking is, you’ve still got both arms. So it’s probably simpler than you think.” When I shook my head and laughed, he shrugged. “So what would you rather do? Listen to some of your depressing music, like Ned’s Atomic whatsit, or Billy Bogg?”
“Bragg. Billy Bragg.”
He grinned at me, and I knew I’d walked into that one. “Noah, none of my music is—well, okay, some of it is depressing. But even then, I find that uplifting, like a reaffirmation.”
He shook his head. I waved for him to follow me, and I led him upstairs to my music room. We sat on the floor opposite each other and began looking through my vinyl and CD collections. I handpicked albums I thought he might understand and played them one by one. I started with Billy Bragg singing about beaches and love, and Noah almost seemed to ge
t it. I tried to explain how Paul Westerberg singing about loneliness was uplifting, and I played him a couple of examples, but he only connected with the ones that were about drinking. I gave up on the Wonderstuff because he only wanted to hear the one that Vic Reeves swore on. Eventually I left him up there in disgust and went downstairs to make another coffee.
It wasn’t until I was standing alone in the kitchen that I again felt as if a buried thought was trying to fight its way to the surface. Some piece of knowledge was hovering just out of reach. I pushed the feeling away and carried fresh drinks up to the room. Noah grinned up at me.
“What is this song?”
I stopped and listened to what was playing. “It’s called ‘The Road.’ It’s by Frank Turner. He’s good, sort of folk punk.”
“It’s great.” I’d never seen him this enthused about my music. “Really.”
The track ended, and the next one started to play. Noah asked me to hit repeat, and we listened to the song again.
“It’s our song, man. Listen to it. It’s about us. Now, this bit”—he turned the volume up—“it’s our song, Smudge. I’m telling you. It’s like we wrote it.”
Passion, drums, and guitars. Life packed into a song. Words about being shackled to the road, about chasing the horizon and calling it home. Listening to the song with Noah gave it a new life for me. It felt free and real. It felt close enough to touch. I reached out to fully hold the emotion, but instead I grasped the buried thought that had been submerged in my head. I stared down into the coffee in my hand, spiced with cinnamon and pepper. Something perfectly obvious fell into place. Part of me had known the answer all along.
The coffee at Mum’s house after the attack, with the strange smell.
Mrs. Daniels never remembering Noah, never liking him.
Oh, you know, he’s just a bad one, him. Has that look about him.
You owe us, you Gypsy fuck.
The two guys in hoodies who’d attacked me outside the flat with cricket bats and threats. I felt my teeth ache at the memory. I’d assumed it was a message from Channy Mann, but all at once, I realized it wasn’t.
I turned back to Noah. “When you showed up here the other day, you said you’d sat in our bedroom the night before, right?”
He looked at me and shook his head to say maybe, yeah. That put him at Mum’s house the night before the attack.
“How’s the gambling going?”
“What?”
“Those hoodies were after you, not me.”
We made eye contact, and in that moment we both caught it. He knew I’d figured it out. There was a moment where we were both frozen; it felt like the music had paused too, like the whole world had stopped.
And then there was movement. He stood and bolted for the door, trying to get past me before I moved. I swung my hand and felt the coffee mug crack as it connected with his face, the hot liquid spilling over both of us. He shouted in pain as he wiped the pepper from his eyes, and I smashed my other fist hard into his nose. He fell back into a pile of CDs, and I followed up with a kick.
There was an animal snarl, and I wasn’t sure if it was his or mine, but he rebounded off the floor and dived into me hard. We slammed into the doorframe with a force that shook the thin wall, and then we hit the floor and paused for breath, staring at each other. The music had moved on. Springsteen was singing about a failing marriage, a relationship caught in recrimination and isolation. Caught between the cracks.
I broke the silence. “You ran up some debts?”
He nodded.
“Dai wouldn’t keep propping up your mistakes, so you came to Mum for help.”
He shrugged, but it was the same as a nod.
“And she went to Kyng for a loan. What happened, did you come back and ask for more?”
“The Taylor brothers in Leeds. I’m into them for six.”
“Christ. Six? So you asked for more, and she said no. She was still paying off the last one.” He didn’t need to nod or shrug this time. “You came round to beg. You got on your knees and made big promises about quitting. But she said no, and you lost it. Did it feel big, hitting her? Did you like how her head bounced off that kitchen door?”
“I try, Smudge. I try to be someone else. I try to be clean and sober. I try not to be a prick. But there’s always this anger. There’s always—well, we can’t help who we are, can we?”
I wanted to be angry. I wanted to find the rage to rip him apart. But it just wasn’t there. He looked just as drained. He seemed to crumple inward, as though his pride had been a supporting wall that had just been demolished.
“That’s why she wanted to brush all this under the carpet. It’s why she called Laura instead of me or Rosie, or even an ambulance.”
He breathed out. It was long, and I realized he had been holding his breath since the last time he’d spoken. “That’s why I’ve been staying here. Those first few nights, I couldn’t face her.”
“But now you can?”
“Well, she’s our mum, you know. She said I’m still her son.” The dam burst and tears rolled down his face. My cheeks felt warm, and I realized I was crying too.
“It’s what mothers do,” I said.
“And brothers?”
I searched for an answer. “I don’t know.”
The flames are finally doing their job. The pub won’t be saved this time. It’s been years since my parents moved on. Years since the fire in their marriage burned out. All that’s left is an empty old pub, me, and my brother.
He knew I’d find him. He’d been doing insurance fraud for months, giving me sideways clues, practically throwing it in my face. It’s a test to see if I’m true to my uniform. His only question is whether I’m here to do my job or be his brother?
Never big on subtlety, my brother, he’s burning down the home we grew up in. He has me pressed against the wall of our old bedroom. His forearm pressed into my throat.
The fire is loud. It’s filling my ears, deafening me. Even with all the noise, though, I can still hear Noah as he threatens me.
He’s calling me a pig, a traitor. He’s saying I’ve turned my back on my family, on our history. He’s saying I need to choose. I headbutt him, reverse his hold until I have him by the throat, and then I smash his face with my fist. I’m fighting to control my temper. I’m threatening to kill him. I’m sounding like my father.
Once I get him outside, we can hear the sirens—both police and fire service. They’ll be on us in seconds. What am I here for?
I swear at him. Punch him again.
Then I tell him to run.
I watch him go.
THIRTY‐TWO
Once again, I watched my big brother go. We didn’t say anything as he picked himself up and left the flat. I sat and stared at the wreckage. Tidying the room would be easy. But my family? I didn’t even know if it was worth the effort.
The only sure thing was that I was too caffeinated to stay in one place for long. I decided to put my energy into the problem that I could fix. I pulled on a jacket and stepped outside. I pulled the gun from the glove box of my car and walked the ten minutes to Robin’s house.
He answered the door almost as soon as I rang the bell. He had a half-eaten Pot Noodle in his hand, and I could hear a sitcom’s canned laughter coming from the television inside. It took him a second to place me, and while he started to piece together a question, I pulled my jacket to one side, to show the gun.
“I’m here about Rakeela.”
“What—”
I stepped forward into the doorway, and all of his bravado slipped away. He stepped back into the room, and I followed. Robin stood nervously beside me, not knowing the socially acceptable thing to do when a man threatens you with a gun. I didn’t know either; we were both new to this.
“Ignore the gun,” I said, defeating the point of having it. “Cheap stunt to get your attention. To be honest? It’s not even mine.”
His jaw unclenched, and he seemed to relax into a more confide
nt stance, feeling like the king of his home once again. I didn’t want to give him time to get too relaxed.
“So, anyway. That stuff we told you before about security? That was bullshit. I’ve been hired to find the man who raped your girlfriend.”
There was nothing subtle about the way I said it. I wanted to gauge his reaction to the word rape. He just shook his head, looking around the room as though he’d taken a blow to the head. I tried a softer approach now that the damage was done.
“There’s more, too. Two others. Ruth and Bejna. You know both of them, right?” He nodded, but it was a hollow gesture. I couldn’t read his facial expression. “Did you know they’re both in love with you, by the way? Or whatever love is at their age.”
He shrugged, still processing everything I’d said. “Yeah. They both asked me out. But me and Rakeela—well, that’s what I wanted.”
I felt bad, felt the urge to let up, but I had to keep up with the questions, watch his reactions, see what he knew. “She’s pretty, and she looks more grown up than the other two, anyway. More together?”
He sat down on the sofa.
“Can’t be easy, though. What does her family think?”
“They don’t even know yet. They’ve met me through the charity group. But Raki’s parents hate me, think I’m a dosser. So they don’t know about—well, you know.”
“Yeah. I’ve been that guy a few times.”
He just looked at me and nodded, his eyes blank, lost. He hadn’t committed these crimes. I’d known that when I walked in, but I’d had an anger that needed to be taken out, and he’d been the first person to come along.