by David Thorne
My pulse spikes but I do not move, watch him approach. He walks quickly and comes to a stop too close to me, his head back as if preparing to strike. He is not as tall as I am and his hair is short, the skin tight over his cheekbones and around his eyes, the bone structure clearly visible.
‘You, my son, are in a fucking world of trouble.’
I watch him, do not show any emotion. I look down at his hands, which are at his sides. One of them is misshapen, the knuckles swollen and nails damaged or missing.
‘Didn’t think I was going to leave it, did you?’
There is no preamble with Halliday; he is a man who gets straight to the point as if he perpetually has pressing business elsewhere.
‘I haven’t thought of you,’ I say, ‘in years. What do you want?’
Halliday’s eyes widen slightly at my provocation but he tries not to react. I can hear his breathing.
‘How’s your friend?’ he says. ‘Gabe, right?’
‘What about him?’ I say quickly, but Halliday has scored his first punch and he is in no hurry to follow it up. The man my father took by the neck is standing back a few paces, arms folded, watching with a stupid smile though his eyes are fixed on me.
‘My hand,’ says Halliday, ‘aches every day. Winter’s the worst, the cold.’
‘That why you’re here?’ I say. ‘Want me to rub it for you?’
But Halliday knows he holds the cards in this encounter and he smiles at this, stores it away for future consideration.
‘No,’ he says. ‘Here to do a deal.’
‘Oh?’
‘Rafiq Jahani.’
‘What about him?’
‘Heard what happened. Nasty.’
Halliday’s eyes give away nothing and I cannot think of any response, am entirely lost in this exchange. He smiles, is enjoying my confusion.
‘Didn’t know? He’s my boy.’
I still do not know where this conversation is going, and I say nothing, nod him to go on.
‘Works for me. Got himself into a bit of trouble, tried to rip me off. Have to respect it in a way, showed some enterprise. But he got what was coming, and he understands that.’
‘He says that Gabe did it.’
‘’Cos I fucking told him to. He’ll do what he’s told, one thing the boy’s learned.’
I look at Halliday closely, try to process what he is telling me. That he has a boy in his employ who ripped him off. Who he had punished, stabbed half to death. And then told to pin it on Gabe. The fear he must wield. I shake my head.
‘Why?’
‘Like I said. Here to do a deal.’
‘Go on.’
‘You’ve got something I want.’
Halliday is in front of me and the other man behind him to the right, and I feel like a piece on a chessboard, harried, cornered, set up for checkmate. I believe I understand what this is about and what is happening, and too late I realise that I have been hopelessly outmanoeuvred. And that Halliday is a man who I have seriously underestimated.
Vincent Halliday started out as a boxer, winning his share of fights but lacking the punching power to make it to the top. He moved into fight promotion, then security, then diversified and built up a local empire covering drugs, prostitution, protection. He has a reputation for violence but also for being a shrewd operator. Until now I had not realised quite how shrewd.
Although he has avoided any meaningful jail time, while he was coming up he came close to being put away for the murders of two business associates. The police found the murder weapon in his possession; all they have needed since are the bodies with the matching bullets in them.
‘I’m not giving you my property,’ I say.
‘Give me the deeds, this all goes away.’
‘Never going to happen.’
‘No? Might want to think about that. Because I don’t get those deeds, your soldier friend’s going down.’
Two years ago I bought a property out from under Halliday, a former convent which I have had converted into apartments. What the tenants do not know, but Halliday and I do, is that the bodies of his former associates are buried in the foundations, along with the bullets which killed them.
‘And if I sign it over to you?’
‘We’re done.’
‘Just like that?’
‘Just like that.’
But of course I do not believe this for a second. The only reason that Halliday has not already had me killed for what I did to him is that, if anything happens to me, I have left instructions for those foundations to be excavated. And if they are, he goes away for the rest of his life. Halliday cannot touch me. But even as I form this sentence in my head, I revise it. Halliday couldn’t touch me. Until now.
‘We’re done here,’ I say. I turn, walk away, past the man that Halliday has brought with him.
‘We’re not done,’ says Halliday behind me. ‘Not by a fucking stretch.’
I ignore him, but the other man moves to intercept me. I am bigger and older than him and he will not stop me leaving. As I pass, I feint with my left and drop a shoulder but he just smiles, and I do not know how but he lands a punch behind my ear from an angle I cannot process. I turn but walk into another blow which blurs and darkens my vision. I can feel the stones of the field beneath my knees and more shots are landing and now the sharp stones are pressing against my cheek, although they do not hurt.
‘Back with us? Good. Want you to see this.’
I can smell grease and fuel and Halliday’s voice is nasal and shrill and jars the back of my skull. I am on my knees and my wrist hurts. I wonder why it hurts so much and I open my eyes and see that it is in a metal-working vice which is attached to a workbench. I try to move it but I cannot, it is held too tightly. My forearm is vertical, as if I am pointing at the sky, but my hand is limp, emerging from the top of the vice.
Halliday is standing watching me from the other side of the table and he is holding a hammer in his hand, the kind used to beat out dents in car panels. I pull at my wrist but it will not move. I reach across with my other hand but somebody holds it. I turn and the man who knocked me out is there and his grip is incredibly powerful. In the other hand he is holding his phone and I realise that he is filming this, recording what is about to happen.
‘Won’t get far with Kane here,’ says Halliday. So that is his name. He can fight; must be a boxer. I have never known anybody move so fast, get the drop on me so easily. I knew nothing about it.
‘This won’t work,’ I say. ‘You’re not getting those deeds.’
‘I’ll get them,’ says Halliday. ‘But this? This isn’t about what we talked about. This is personal.’
Personal. I think back to my mother, who Vincent Halliday sold into a life of prostitution, consigned to an existence of misery, humiliation and hurt. A mother I never knew as a child, who I only ever spent days with as an adult. A shattered hand is nothing in comparison. As far as I am concerned, he got off lightly. But looking at him loosely holding the hammer I know that he has been waiting for this, that he has been nursing lurid fantasies of vengeance ever since I attacked him. I am scared of what is coming next, a heightened version of the feeling you have as a child, waiting at the dentist for the drill. I do not want it to happen. Please do not let it happen.
He holds the hammer above the vice, lines it up as if about to nail something home. I cannot move my wrist. I watch my hand writhe above the vice and it feels disconnected from me, as if it belongs to somebody else. Halliday lifts the hammer and then brings it down and I try to move my hand out of the way but I cannot and the hammer hits the knuckle of my index finger, a white explosion of hot pain. My eyes close, and when I open them my knuckle looks like a cracked nut leaking blood, exposing bone.
Halliday seems disappointed by the result, looks at the hammer in his hand as if blaming it for a poor job. I swallow back vomit, concentrate on my breathing. Halliday drops the hammer, looks behind him in a metal chest with drawers packed full of tools.
My hand pulses with pain in time with my heartbeat.
There is the sound of a large engine, a diesel, perhaps a van, and through the thin wooden walls of the shed I can hear the crunch of its tyres over stones. Halliday stops looking through drawers, does not move. Kane loosens his grip on my wrist. None of us moves. We hear the sound of a door open, close, hear footsteps on the stones. They move out of earshot and then come back, closer, this side of the sheds; whoever it is has walked around the outbuildings and is coming towards us.
‘George? You there?’ It is a man’s voice and he does not sound happy. ‘George?’
Halliday shakes his head, like a host who can’t believe who’s just showed up at his party.
‘Fucking oil in the water now,’ the man’s voice says, speaking to nobody. ‘Looks like the fucking head gasket.’
The door of the shed opens wide and framed in the light is a man in glasses and a dirty polo shirt. ‘So that’s fucked,’ he says, then stops. He takes in the scene before him: two men surrounding another who is kneeling like a supplicant at an altar, bleeding hand trapped in a vice.
But of course this changes things; Halliday does not want witnesses, wants peace and solitude and the chance to work on me at his own pace. This man has arrived and ruined his moment, like a gatecrasher upstaging a proud father’s speech. Still Halliday does not move. I reach up and loosen the vice, take my hand out, and Kane does nothing. Halliday only watches me. I get to my feet and walk towards the man in the doorway who moves out of my way quickly as if I carry disease. As I walk to my car the back of my neck and shoulders feels as if something is crawling over it and I do not dare look behind me. I open my car and get in. Try to get my keys in the ignition but my hand is shaking and it takes me two, three attempts. Halliday is walking out of the shed and I lock the doors, start the car. Like in a dream when everything moves too slowly. Get into gear and pull away. Halliday is in the doorway of the shed and he watches me go. There is nothing in his eyes and I cannot tell what he is thinking. But I do know that this is not the last I am going to see of him. This is not finished; not even close.
6
GABE IS FACING prison and it is on me. He is my best friend and I have dragged this to his door. We have grown up together, played tennis together, met girls and drunk and fought together, made sense of our lives through knowing each other. And we have always been honest. He deserves to be told.
But knowing Gabe as I do, he could never let this play out, would not have the patience to finesse it. He would take the fight to Halliday, would not hesitate for one second. I know Gabe to be kind and decent, a man with an unwavering moral compass. But the army taught him to deal with problems efficiently and expediently, and taking on Halliday would faze him no more than entering a hostile village in Afghanistan. Still, this is not Gabe’s fight. I will deal with it. I will not tell Gabe what is happening. I cannot.
My knuckle is broken but I have been told that there is nothing that can be done, that I need to let it heal. A short, efficient nurse dressed it and gave me codeine and asked me what happened; I lied to her, told her that I had been changing a tyre. It is the same lie that I later tell Maria.
Today I have no choice but to make the journey to the Goves’ family home. It is not a trip I am looking forward to. As far as I know they have no idea about the provisions of William Gove’s will; no idea that they have been cut out of his liquid assets. I think of Luke Gove’s good looks, the embodiment of effortless privilege. I cannot imagine that he will take the news with equanimity.
I drive out to the Gove estate past fields covered with ground mist which the sun is burning off, and it is so bright that the limbs of trees are edged with gold. The Goves live near the coast and the land is flat and green; I drive down lanes which wind through villages unchanged for centuries. The estate is surrounded by a continuous high brick wall which must have been built over a hundred years ago and it is so long I marvel at the time it must have taken to construct; I follow it for six miles before I reach the gates to their home. The gates are iron, tall and wide, and as I wait for them to open I cannot help but think of old newsreel footage, the entrance to a labour camp.
Saskia Gove is waiting for me when I pull up to the house. As I park, Luke Gove emerges behind her and I think back to what he said to me about my car. There are stone pots with red flowers of some kind outside the house and I reverse my car into one of them, nudging it over. It is a childish thing to do, but still I have to sit in the car for some moments after I have turned off the ignition, wait for the smile to leave my face.
‘Sorry,’ I say as I step out.
Saskia Gove is trying not to laugh and Luke Gove turns away without saying anything, walks back into the house. Saskia is wearing jeans which are so tight I wonder how long it took to get them on, and her black hair is tied back by a bright cloth. She has heels on and with them she is nearly my height; as she takes my hand in hers I am eye-to-eye with her and her expression is one of amused delight.
‘You don’t like azaleas?’ she says.
I tilt my head, frown. She nods at the overturned pot.
‘That what they are?’
She takes a step back, looks me over. ‘More of a rose man.’
‘How could you tell?’
‘Shall we?’ She turns and I follow her into the house, and as I hustle to catch up, I feel like a puppy at her heels.
There are three Gove children. I have met Luke and Saskia but not the third, whose name is Duncan and is the youngest. Saskia leads me over the black and white tiles of their entrance hall, the click of her heels echoing in the enormous space. We pass through tall wooden doors into a dining room in which is a long table which could easily seat twenty. At one end tea is set out and Luke Gove is sitting, leant back with his arms folded across his body.
‘Duncan isn’t here?’ I say.
‘We need him?’ says Luke Gove.
‘I think so,’ I say. ‘If he’s here.’
‘He’s somewhere.’ He looks at Saskia but she does not move and he sighs, stands up. ‘I’ll have a look.’
After he leaves it is silent in the room and Saskia does not speak, does not look at me. She seems preoccupied, bored, and I think back to her high-handed manner on the telephone two days ago. I cannot get a handle on her. I busy myself with taking papers out of my briefcase and she sits back in her chair, her arms folded across her chest in the same attitude as her brother. The way she watches me makes me feel as if I am engaged in something menial, some task she regards with scorn.
Luke Gove comes back and behind him is his brother, Duncan. I watch him as he pulls a chair out to sit down opposite me. He has trouble with it, cannot manoeuvre it out. Luke Gove is handsome, I cannot pretend otherwise. Saskia Gove is one of the most bewitching women I have ever met. But Duncan Gove is something else; it is hard to believe that he is related to either of them. He is tall and big in an unwieldy way, perhaps six foot five, maybe eighteen stone. His features are clumsy, his cheeks red and his mouth loose and wet.
‘Duncan,’ says Luke briefly, sitting back down. ‘Now, can we begin?’
I do not know what it is but something in Luke Gove’s tone provokes the worst part of me. I ignore him; I am going to control this meeting. I stand up, hold my hand out across the table to Duncan Gove.
‘Daniel Connell,’ I say. ‘Your father’s lawyer.’
He looks at my hand briefly and then smiles vacantly. He pulls his chair out and sits down at right angles to the table, does not look at me, at any of us.
I turn back to Luke and Saskia Gove, take a breath, turn over the first paper. Here we go.
‘Your father,’ I say, ‘has left this house and all of its attached property to the three of you, to be shared equally.’
‘Well thank fuck for that,’ says Luke Gove.
‘With some restrictions,’ I continue. ‘Any sale needs to be agreed by all of you unanimously. Failing that, by a majority of two to one, with the details of any deal to be m
itigated through a third party.’
Saskia Gove sits up straight, turns the teapot. ‘Tea, Daniel?’
‘No thank you,’ I say. I turn over my papers. ‘There’s more.’
‘Oh?’
‘Your father’s liquid assets amount to two point seven million pounds sterling. These he has elected to distribute equally between ten parties.’
‘Ten?’ says Luke Gove. ‘Who? He didn’t fucking like anyone.’
‘That’s where your father’s will becomes a little unusual,’ I say. ‘He chose them at random. From the telephone directory.’
‘Bollocks,’ says Luke Gove. ‘Please.’
He is half smiling but his smile lacks confidence and he is now sitting forward, attentive, tense.
‘I’m afraid it’s true,’ I say. ‘How much did you speak to your father? Towards the end?’
‘We didn’t,’ says Saskia. ‘He didn’t. Wouldn’t speak to us. We thought he’d lost his mind.’ She waves a dismissive hand at my papers. ‘Turns out we were right.’
‘Who are they?’ says Luke.
‘I can’t tell you that,’ I say.
‘So my father gives away fucking millions to strangers and we can’t know who they are?’
‘I’m sorry—’
‘This is bullshit,’ says Luke, interrupting me. ‘No way this is going to happen. No fucking way.’
‘Your father’s will is quite explicit.’
‘He can’t do this.’
‘I’m afraid he has. There’s nothing to stop him giving his money to anyone he wants.’
‘It’s our. Fucking. Money,’ says Luke. His voice is barely in control, the last word almost shouted, and his fists are clenched, the muscles in his forearms standing out in cords.
Duncan Gove has not said anything but he is now sitting facing me across the table. I can read nothing in his eyes, cannot be sure that he even registers me; he seems lost in a world only he can see. But being so close to him gives me the same feeling I get near a large dog I do not trust: a tightening in my groin and scalp, a wariness that he might do something unpredictable and dangerous.