Sins of the Fathers (8 page)

Leaning against the fridge, Carlyle sucked down a mouthful of beer. ‘So what happened?’

‘I got a call at about five o’clock this afternoon.’ Helen lowered her voice, ‘From Ken Walton.’

Carlyle was surprised. ‘Ken Walton?’ The latter had been his mother’s – well, boyfriend, when she had split from his father. As he recalled, Walton had ditched her after about six months. ‘I didn’t know that they were still seeing each other.’

‘I think they met up now and again,’ Helen said evasively.

Carlyle grunted. Under the circumstances, it didn’t really matter.

‘Ken called your dad.’

Maybe it did matter. ‘Christ.’

‘He’s okay about it.’

Carlyle took another swig from his beer bottle. ‘I bet.’

Helen patted him on the arm. ‘Anyway, we need to get on.’

‘Yes.’ Carlyle gazed out of the kitchen window, across the Thames, towards the lights of the South Bank. He had a sudden, overwhelming urge to step out into the night, get pissed and explore the city’s bounty. Waiting for it to pass, he turned back to his wife. ‘How is Alice taking it?’

‘She was a bit upset, but she’ll be fine. She’ll miss her grandma, of course, but they didn’t see each other that much any more. I think she found Lorna too overbearing as she got older.’

I know the feeling.
Carlyle just managed to avoid turning the thoughts into words. ‘I’ll go and have a chat with her.’

‘Leave her.’ Helen pointed to the clock on the wall by the door. ‘It’s a school night. Let her get to sleep. You should speak to your dad.’

Carlyle made a face.

‘I thought he could stay here tonight,’ Helen continued.

‘Good idea.’

‘I’ll make a bed up for him on the sofa.’

‘Okay.’ Carlyle finished his beer and grabbed another from the fridge. Then, with a fresh bottle in each hand, he went off to talk to his dad.

‘Come on, man, this has gone beyond a joke.’ Calvin Jacobs hawked up a large gob of phlegm and spat it out onto the concrete floor. He had been kneeling on that floor for more than an hour now and his knees ached terribly. But the pain in his legs wasn’t what was causing Calvin such immediate concern.

Nor was it the fact that his hands had been tied behind his back with plastic cuffs so tightly that he could no longer feel his fingers.

What was really stressing Calvin out was the blade hovering in front of his face, so close that he could clearly make out the logo:
Fiskars Splitting Axe X25
. Looking up at the hulking figure in front of him, Calvin tried not to burst into tears again. ‘It wasn’t me, man. I wasn’t even there.’

The blade appeared three inches in front of his nose. It didn’t appear very sharp. The man smiled maliciously, as if he was reading Calvin’s mind. ‘Don’t worry,’ he whispered. ‘Fiskars have been making tools like these since 1649; it will get the job done.’

‘I wasn’t there,’ Calvin wailed.

The man took a half-step forward, wiggling the axe handle as if he was lining up a particularly tricky golf shot. ‘Don’t lie to me, Calvin. You lie to me, I get mad. I get mad, I lose my concentration.’

Calvin felt the tears come again, hot and sticky, running down his cheeks and dripping off his chin. ‘Please.’

The man stuck his tongue between his teeth, his eyes nothing more than two dark holes that had receded into the back of his skull. ‘I get this right, your head comes all the way off, first time. Minimizes any pain. You probably won’t even know what happened.’ The tongue disappeared back inside his mouth. ‘But if I don’t get a clean shot, need to hack at it a few times – well, I’m afraid that all bets are off.’

Calvin tried to scream but all that came out was a shrivelled groan. Anyway, he knew it was pointless. He’d spent the last hour shouting his head off and no one had paid any notice. That was the thing about this damn city, someone could be committing a murder twenty feet away and everyone ignores it; nobody cares. Bastards.

‘Okay. Let’s see how this goes.’

The blade disappeared from his line of vision. Closing his eyes as tightly as he could, Calvin Jacobs cried for his mother.

Careful not to steal the whole duvet, Carlyle rolled over and squinted at the clock on the table by his side of the bed.

2.12 a.m.

He couldn’t remember the last time he had felt this wide awake. The adrenaline was coursing round his body and he knew that sleep would not come before dawn. Beside him, Helen started softly snoring. He gave her a gentle dig in the ribs and the snoring stopped.

2.13.

In a situation like this, he would normally slip into the living room and watch Sky Sports News for a while until he felt his eyelids begin to droop. Tonight, however, with his father on the sofa, that was not an option. Scratching his head, he stared at the ceiling.

2.14.

He thought he could make out a scuffling noise. It sounded like the mice were back. A ubiquitous problem for Londoners, rodents were something that Carlyle had always happily ignored until one evening a fearless little creature had darted up onto the sofa to enjoy an episode of
The Killing
. Carlyle had jumped a foot into the air and immediately got on the phone to the council. A few days later a man came round with some traps and some poison and there had been no more sightings for a while. But, deep down, Carlyle knew that where there was one, there would always be more. And they would never be gone for good.

2.15.

Ignoring the scuffling, he tried to focus on the hum of traffic outside. If you concentrated, you could just about make out the steady stream of traffic that headed up and down Kingsway, despite the late hour. Should he get up? Or should he just lie here, still, hoping that sleep might eventually come?

A memory of his mother drifted into his mind. He must have been fifteen or sixteen; they were standing in the kitchen of the family’s council flat in Fulham. Carlyle was wondering how he was going to scrape together the cash for a cassette of the new Clash album before it went off special offer at the Our Price record store on the Fulham Road. His mother, meanwhile, was wondering why he couldn’t grow up.

Arms folded, scowling, Lorna Gordon adopted a familiar pose. She was wearing a truly horrible blue and white knitted sweater that his father had bought as a Christmas present. She hated the sweater but wore it anyway. Looking her son up and down, the annoyance on her face was obvious. ‘You’ll be leaving school before you know it.’ The last vestiges of the Glasgow accent mixed with the anger in her voice.

Carlyle gripped a rolled-up copy of the
New Musical Express
tightly in his left hand, the ink seeping into his fingers. He had bought the NME earlier in the day. It looked good – Paul Weller, Richard Hell, Iggy Pop and Bruce Springsteen – and he wanted to head off to his bedroom to read it in peace. ‘I know.’ He knew that his parents wanted him to settle on a career as early as possible, but life wasn’t like that any more. There were no more jobs for life, wasn’t that what everyone was saying? Joe Strummer screaming ‘Career Opportunities’ blasted into his head and he laughed.

Lorna looked at him in horror. ‘What’s so funny, boy?’

Boy.

Jesus.

The truth was, Carlyle
had
been thinking about what he might do when he left school. He was spending time in the Careers Office there – something not totally unconnected to the fact that it was run by the sultry Mrs Jennings – and he even had a list of possible vocations. He’d ruled out university on the grounds that even if his grades were good enough, his motivation to spend another three years in a classroom was lacking. He’d had an uncle in the Army but that seemed either too boring (like school, but with guns) or too dangerous. He wasn’t going to let himself get blown up by some crazy Irish terrorist complaining about what happened to his ancestors three hundred years ago.

Joe Strummer sang on, listing all the other things he didn’t want to do.

One thing young John was thinking about was the police force. Thinking about it seriously, too. But he didn’t want to get into that with his mother right now.

Lorna leaned against the sink and lifted her mug of Tetley’s tea to her lips. ‘It’s always going to be a struggle for you, son, isn’t it?’ She blew on the tea and took a sip.

Staring at the floor, Carlyle banged his copy of the
NME
against his leg.

‘You have to get on, life won’t wait for you.’

‘No, Ma. I know it won’t.’

‘You’re living in a dream world.’

2.18.

More scuttling noises came from the darkness. Realizing that he had been holding his breath, Carlyle exhaled deeply. Even after all this time, he still felt embarrassed by the conversation with his mother. Somehow, he felt ashamed.

With a small cry of complaint, Helen turned back towards him and stuck a warm arm across his bare chest. ‘Upset about your mum?’ she asked, her voice thick with sleep.

‘Nah.’ He kissed her. ‘Just restless. Go back to sleep.’

She nuzzled closer, her hand slipping between his legs as she made a half-hearted attempt to take his mind off things, not protesting when he moved it away. ‘I’m sorry, sweetheart.’

Carlyle kissed her again. ‘I’m fine. Go back to sleep.’ Not needing a second invitation, Helen grunted as she pulled the duvet over her head. Soon the gentle snoring resumed.

2.21.

He wondered if his father could sleep tonight. What must the old man be thinking?

There was no denying that Lorna Gordon had been a difficult woman. A few years ago, she discovered that Alexander had been guilty of a brief, decades-old infidelity and kicked him out of the family home. Carlyle had always thought that she used the affair as a convenient excuse, and that the truth was she had just grown fed up with her husband. His father had gone meekly into a bedsit; maybe he had just grown fed up of the marriage too.

2.22.

Whatever.

It wasn’t that he had any regrets. Now that his mother was gone, Carlyle was able to admit – if only to himself – that his life would not really be affected one way or another. Next to the radio alarm he found his spectacles. Putting them on, he slipped out of bed, retrieved his clothes from the floor and headed into the bathroom. In the darkness, illuminated by the orange glow of the streetlighting below, he took a piss, aiming at the side of the bowl so as not to make any more noise than was absolutely necessary. Finishing up, he didn’t flush.

After pulling on his clothes, Carlyle washed his face and gave his teeth a half-hearted brush. Stepping out into the hallway, he stopped outside Alice’s door. Nothing. Moving along, he picked up a pair of trainers and let himself out, quietly closing the front door behind him.

Sitting on the top step of the landing, he pulled on the trainers and tied the laces in a tight double knot. Getting to his feet, he yawned. Now, of course, he felt incredibly sleepy. Not bothering with the lift, he made his way down the stairs.

*   *   *

Slowly regaining consciousness, Paul Fassbender felt his head smack against something cold and sharp. His curses caught in the gag in his throat and he fought the urge to throw up. His head was groggy and he felt like hell. Getting his breathing under control, he took a moment to take in his circumstances. Bound hand and foot, with a hessian sack over his head, he shivered in the freezing darkness.

The sound of traffic buzzed around his ears. Up front, inside the car, some mindless pop music blared from the radio. The driver bounced through another pothole and he hit his head again, this time without swearing. Shoved in the boot like a rag doll, every bone in his body ached and he badly needed to use the toilet. Despite all that, he was smiling.

He knew where he was going.

Well, well, he thought to himself, the old bastard had finally done it. Daniel Sands had finally snapped. Even after all this time, he couldn’t leave it alone. Even worse, he didn’t have the balls to do it properly. If he had been a real man, Fassbender would be in a shallow grave by now, a bullet in his brain, his flesh already beginning to rot.

The song on the radio ended and a DJ, speaking in French, gave a traffic update, warning of delays on the A7 heading towards Lyon.
I must have been asleep for a while
, thought Fassbender. The plan, presumably, would be to drive him to the coast and then try to get him across the Channel on a ferry or maybe by train.

Closing his eyes, Fassbender brought up an image of Sands prattling on about ‘justice’. Did he never learn? Even if they managed to get him to England, he was confident that he would be back home within a week. Meanwhile, his abductor and his accomplices would be facing lengthy jail sentences for assault, kidnapping and false imprisonment.

Fassbender chuckled to himself. Now
that
’
s
what you called justice.

The pressure on his bladder increased. He stopped trying to hold it in and felt the warm amber liquid spreading down his legs. It would go cold soon enough but he didn’t care – one more problem for his captor to sort out. Snickering to himself, he tried to engineer a bowel movement. After a while, he conceded that nothing was going to come out. That was no surprise; he had been constipated for weeks and a satisfying bowel movement was no more than a distant memory. Ah well, maybe later. A car horn sounded somewhere behind them. Making himself as comfortable as he could manage, Fassbender settled in for the rest of his trip.

Joe Rowan, a refugee from the Ealing police station, was the desk sergeant on night duty. Buzzing the doors open, he looked relieved to see the inspector, saying, ‘Bloody hell, that was quick.’

You should have stayed in bed
, Carlyle admonished himself,
you berk
.

‘Huh?’

‘I only called you about two minutes ago.’

‘Huh?’ As Rowan spoke, Carlyle felt his mobile vibrating in his pocket. He pulled it out, glanced at the screen and groaned. Six missed calls. How in the name of all things technological was that possible? The inspector knew of no one on the entire planet Earth who was less in tune with the digital revolution.