Beyond the Rage (5 page)

9

The water was dark and deep and frothing, rushing below and under him from his position on the bridge. He fancied the water was angry, surging towards the next obstacle content in the knowledge that nothing could withstand its power.

The riverbanks were a steep tangle of brambles, broom and nettles. Here and there it looked like the local youth had gone in for a spate of ornamental gardening and their ornament of choice was the ubiquitous supermarket shopping trolley.

He leaned forward, the wall of the bridge reaching his midriff and planted his elbows on it. He looked into the brown depths and at the memories trapped under its shifting surface.

The first letter was a disappointment. The writer was tentative, frightened even, subsumed by the need to make friends. The information was scant, the apology brief as if they were afraid to mention the reason for the writer’s absence and that any mention of it would have the reader reaching for a match and an ashtray.

Kenny learned nothing about the writer of the letter and was so confused by its blandness he almost refused to believe that it was written by his father.

The next two letters, which would have arrived when he was nineteen and twenty, were equally as nondescript. If they had been food, they could have been compared to watered down consommé.

Kenny threw the letters back in the box after he had finished reading them. They offered him nothing. It was as if the writer was going through the motions. As if the act of writing the letters was some form of punishment. Like he was only writing them to please someone other than himself and the intended recipient.

He dropped his aunt back at her house. She was tripping over herself to apologise. He was tired, numb and counting the minutes before he could be on his own again. Emotions too many to number were crowding his mind, demanding attention and an emotional articulacy he didn’t possess.

His answer was to drive to the spot where his he had spent many evenings as a teenager contemplating death and whether the cold would kill him before the water swamped his lungs.

The fourth letter was different, reflective and if you knew where to look, layered with meaning. It was also quite clear that when he wrote it his father was drunk.

The first three letters had been addressed to Kenny. This one was headed
Dear Kenneth
, as if now that he was twenty-one he had outgrown the boyish air evinced by the derivative, Kenny. As far as he was concerned it was patronising. A poorly penned attempt by a stranger to reconnect with his son.

He recognised his impatience and decided that as this was the last letter he should read it as if coming to the whole experience fresh. He exhaled sharply, sought his centre as he did when he was about to fight someone. A relaxed mind was a more receptive mind, he told himself.

He read.

Dear Kenneth,

Happy Birthday, son. 21, eh? Time for you to get the keys of the house and all that.

Then there were some lines that had been scored through so harshly it made them illegible.

…Sorry about that
,
this is only my ninth attempt at this letter and I’m running out of paper. And booze. And booze is needed for this, I’m thinking. You know, typical Scot. Emotion can only be examined in a state of inebriation and the problem is that once pissed you overdo it, don’t you?

So, you’re 21 and I haven’t seen you for ages. It was just weeks – or was it days? – before your thirteenth. I always remember your mum kidding you that you were turning into a man. Just like your dad. Some dad I turned out to be. So that’s the last time I saw you. Apart from that one time I stood by the school gates when you would have been in fourth year at the academy. You looked so well and strong and confident striding among a group of your mates that I didn’t dare come over and speak to you.

Kenny broke off from reading at this point. His eyes were misting and he could no longer see the print. He coughed. Fuck, my dad was close enough to speak to me. Why didn’t he? He would have given anything for that moment to be returned to him. What would he have said? He saw his father before him and his stomach shifted and surged.

...I just stood there like a big lump. Desperate to say hello. I even practised for the moment when we faced each other. ‘Hi, Kenny. I’m your dad.’ I said it over and over again. Like it was a prayer. But when I saw you it all vanished and I could no more walk or talk than I could fly. I got a wee bit emotional that day. So much so, some woman came over and asked if I was okay. She even handed me a hankie. I told her to piss off. That’ll be the last time she speaks to a stranger, so I’ve done her a favour, eh? You looked like you had my height and your mother’s good looks.

Does it hurt you to mention your mother? She was an amazing woman. Softened my rough edge and made me more of a man. Cliché but true, it was a privilege to be married to her and I’ve missed her every day since.

And you. I’ve missed you...

Oh fuck off, thought Kenny.

...You probably don’t want to hear it and who can blame you? A boy needs his father and I abandoned you when you needed me most. The change from boy to man is a difficult time and if you were anything like me – a cocky, aggressive bastard – it can’t have been easy.

If you’re as bright as I think you are, well, you are your mother’s son...

Turn it down, Dad, for crying out loud.

...you’ll have noticed a change in this letter from the previous ones. Well, it’s because I’ve been given another chance. I met a lovely woman just after I sent your last letter. We’ve had one baby, a girl, and there’s another one on the way. Having these other kids has me thinking about you more and more. I’m older and wiser and full of what might have been.

Kenny felt a hot spike of jealousy score his gut. He realised that this was the wee boy of twelve who still lived at his core. The grown man felt a vague sense of happiness. He had a sister and perhaps a wee brother?

…The thing is I have to stay away. Two reasons. One is my new wife has no idea of my past and it needs to stay that way or she’s gone and I can’t lose another family. The other is that your life may depend on it.

Oh, come on tae fuck, thought Kenny. Somebody’s been watching too many TV soaps.

…That probably sounds a bit too dramatic, but it’s true. It’s no secret that I was involved with some unsavoury types and one of them and me had a serious fight. Unfortunately, and I will take the guilt of this to my grave, people died. A mother and a son. It was a horrible accident but no one believed me. The family of the deceased told me that if I didn’t vanish then you would too. The threat was unmistakeable. My choice was to stay and you
’d
be the one to suffer the consequences. Or run and you would live. This man was determined I would lose as much as he did.

I’ve said enough. My difficulty here was to explain without telling you too much. I don’t want you to go looking for revenge. These are people that no one messes with. Let me repeat that – no one.

I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me, or at the very least think that I’m not all bad.

Yeah, right, Kenny thought. He read over the last few paragraphs time and time again. He struggled to take the information in. His dad was responsible for people dying. He was a killer.

The letter was signed simply.

Dad.

10

The way he saw it, Kenny had two choices. When faced with news that involved a possible surfeit of emotion either he exercised until he dropped or he got pissed. He
’d
already had his daily dose of the first and he couldn’t do the second on his own.

He picked up his phone and dialled one of his contacts. A deep voice answered in a familiar manner.

‘What the fuck are you wanting?’

‘Detective Inspector Ray McBain, you are cordially invited to an afternoon of debauchery.’

‘If I knew what it was, I might be tempted.’

‘Booze and lots of it.’

‘I don’t know, Kenny.’ McBain’s tone grew serious and Kenny could hear him walking. ‘There’s stuff going on here.’

‘Delegate, m’man, and tell them you’ve an important suspect that needs to be waterboarded with whisky.’

‘That serious?’

‘Mmmm.’

‘Okay, consider me a willing debauchee.’

‘If that’s not a word,’ said Kenny, ‘it should be.’

• • •

People who have a wont to launder their falsely earned money quickly realise that few methods are more effective than washing their money through businesses that deal mostly in cash. When people buy a round of drinks they rarely do so with a credit card or a cheque. In the drinking business, cash is the ermine-cloaked asset and therefore the bar becomes a handy place to integrate your pennies.

Kenny owned a number of pubs and cafés throughout the city and it was in one of these that he arranged to meet Ray McBain. He chose one that was in a quieter part of the city and one that was ‘owned’ by a faceless corporation. None of the employees knew he was the boss and he could visit without causing a stir.

It was called The Blue Owl and was originally offered to the Glasgow punters as a bar where jazz and blues musicians could jam and congregate. The ‘owl’ part was presumably to denote the late-night nature of the venture. Which was a bit of a misnomer because it failed to get a licence to sell alcohol beyond midnight. The business never quite got off the ground; the musicians decided they were too hip to be seen this far from the city centre and the owner was forced to sell. The building remained a bar, but despite the best efforts of an array of eager landlords it wobbled from one cash-flow crisis to another. Until Kenny and his ‘company’ took over.

Strangely, these new owners managed to make a success of the business without increasing the footfall.

• • •

Kenny was on his third Glenmorangie – ice and water – when McBain turned up. Reading what Kenny was nursing before him, he ordered the same. The barmaid took enough time from her dedicated reading of
Real Lives, Real Loves
magazine to pour him a measure.

While she was temporarily busy, Ray looked around himself. He took in the low ceilings, the soft lighting, the giant saxophone over the bar and the two other customers, who were tucked away in far corner. By the way they were sucking the face of each other he guessed they were in love.

‘Right, buddy,’ the barmaid said, sliding the glass towards him. She was tall and stringy, with cropped packet-blonde hair and wearing a black blouse and skirt. Her expression was as devoid of personal expression as her clothing. Bored to distraction, she named the price.

‘Charmed,’ said Ray, holding his glass towards her and toasting her complete lack of it. She threw him a twisted smile and went back to her tale of the man with two heads who married the woman with three hands.

He placed his glass on the table, sat on the chair across from Kenny and exhaled long and deep. ‘Sorry, mate,’ Ray said. ‘Crime never rests.’

‘
Au contraire
, my friend, yes it does.’ Kenny held his glass up, mimicking Ray’s interaction with the barmaid. ‘So,’ – he assessed his friend – ‘which part of the Luther Vandross weight yo-yo are you currently on?’ He was of course referring to the now-deceased soul singer who was just as famous for his agonised deliberations about weight on the sofa with Oprah as he was for the numerous albums he produced.

‘Rushing back up to being a fat bastard.’ Ray lost and gained the same twenty pounds on a regular basis.

‘You should get yourself to the gym, man.’

‘What, and deprive the ladies of all this loving?’ Ray grinned. ‘It’s not the size of the nail that counts, it’s the fifteen stone knocking it in.’

‘Right. Fifteen stone.’ Kenny had the good manners not to snort. ‘Talking about which, you getting any?’ He delicately enquired about the state of his friend’s love life.

‘Yup,’ said Ray. ‘I had sex with an actual person the other night.’

‘Was she blind or drunk?’

‘Blind drunk,’ Ray answered with a laugh. ‘She expressed her gratitude by leaving her phone number on the bathroom mirror and a pair of panties in my fridge.’ He took a sip.

‘You’ll have to have a shower and steam up the mirror before you can call her. Perhaps there’s a message there.’

‘At least I don’t have to pay for it.’

‘I don’t have to do anything, buddy. I chose to. An important distinction. I am taking part in an act of commerce. Helping to keep the economy afloat in these troubled times.’

‘The Chancellor of the Exchequer should send you a wee note of thanks.’

‘Or at the very least a tax rebate.’

‘You pay tax?’

Kenny held his hand up. The pad of his thumb and his index finger barely touching.

Ray drained his glass and returned to the bar. The barmaid actually sighed.

‘Customers get in the way of a hard day’s work, don’t you think?’ Ray asked her.

She smiled an apology as if feeling a pang of conscience. She raised an eyebrow and pursed her lips. ‘Same again?’

‘You can read me like a book, sweetheart.’

She leaned over the bar, giving him a look down her cleavage. Her breasts were so far apart and her top so low and loose he could almost see down to her navel.

‘Can I get you anything else...?’ she asked. The space she left at the end of her sentence a request for his name.

‘A pair of dark glasses?’ he said.

She completely misread him and gave a little toss of her hair as if to say,
You’ll have to try harder than that, mister
.

She served the drinks. He paid and carried them over to the table.

‘I think I preferred it when she was playing hard to get,’ he said to Kenny.

‘You just can’t get the staff,’ Kenny replied, reaching for his fresh glass. Ray was only aware of part of his various enterprises, had no idea he was the owner of The Blue Owl.

‘What kind of name is that, anyway? The Blue Fucking Owl?’ asked Ray.

‘I like it,’ argued Kenny. ‘Makes me want to stay up all night and play jazz.’

‘Is that a euphemism?’

Kenny pushed back into the cushion of the chair, enjoyed the whisky that glowed in his system and they settled into silence. Sometimes you just wanted the presence of a friend without having to fill their ears with the minutiae of your day. And sometimes you want to tell them everything.

He leaned forward in his chair and told Ray the lot: his memory of that night, his life with Aunt Vi and Uncle Colin, the letters. He spoke without emotion, relaying the facts, allowing them the freedom of the atmosphere.

After speaking, drained like an anorexic after a feast, Kenny sat back in his chair and cleared his throat. To get the words out was enough. He didn’t need to know what solution Ray might suggest.

‘So,’ said Ray with a grin, ‘a man saves your life and you’ve got to listen to his whole freakin’ life story, jeez.’ He grinned. Grew serious. ‘What now?’

‘I find the fucker who killed my mother.’ His phone beeped. A pause. ‘Right after I answer this text.’