The Good Son (20 page)

No need to say thank you.

 

Unsigned. Not that it needed a signature.

I looked at the gun again. Turned it over. Checked the safety. Hit the release. Ejected the cartridge.

Not even thinking about getting rid of the damn thing.

I examined the stacked bullets. Wondered how something so small could be so deadly. They looked like nothing important. Innocent pieces of metal.

I placed the cartridge down on the worktop next to the gun. Hunted around until I found an old pair of leather gloves. Wiped down the gun, taking my time. No fingerprints.

My mobile rang.

On the other end of the line, Robertson said, “I've got the money. They called. We're ready to go.”

“Where?”

“Balgay Cemetery. Well, the Necropolis.”

I shivered, thought of those ancient graves on top of the hill, their ragged formation rolling and morphing into the regimentation of Balgay Cemetery.

“Midnight,” he said. “At the Hird Bridge.”

In my mind, I saw rows of graves and thought about Elaine's body beneath the ground. Seeing her not as a corpse but the way she used to look when she was sleeping next to me.

I felt like I was in there with her, my chest tightening and my breathing becoming shallow.

Heard the panicked rhythm of her heartbeat beside me.

I told Robertson I'd be there and hung up the phone.

Went through to the kitchen. Staggering a little, my balance shot.

I told myself this was nothing more than a bad dream.

And it worked. For a moment.

I grabbed a mug from the kitchen cupboard. The cold of the china shocked me, and my hand spasmed. The mug slipped from my fingers, bounced off the kitchen worktop and smashed on the floor.

One particular memory. The one I wish I could wipe forever:

I looked to my right, saw Elaine in the driver's seat.

It's the little details that stick in your mind.

Her hair.

The way it looked in the darkness of the car, illuminated by the backwash of the headlights and the dashboard lights.

Her eyes.

Focused on the road ahead and with a harshness to them that made me feel uncomfortable, reminding me of what we had said to each other only minutes earlier.

My gaze shifted, and I saw her father reflected in the rear view mirror. His face was set in a grim expression. His eyes locked onto mine.

We drove along winding country roads. On either side, trees lined up like soldiers. Their upper branches bent forwards to create a canopy that blotted out the night sky.

Martin Barrow said, “Maybe now isn't the time to
discuss this.” His voice rumbled, made me shiver.

Elaine said, “You're right, Dad, it isn't the time.” Her tone sharp. Sharper than when she talked to me? I doubted it.

Stupid little arguments.

The kind you look back on, realise how unimportant they were. Or worse, how you were the one in the wrong.

I looked out of the passenger window, watched her reflection. Her head was held high, and her gaze had become fixed on the road ahead. Like me, she didn't want to have the conversation again. What could we say that hadn't already been said?

Except her dad didn't know about the conversation we'd had on Elaine's birthday three nights earlier. The conversation that had ended badly, neither of us able to properly apologise until the sun came up the next morning.

This evening, we'd been to see a friend of the family. Her family, of course. The friend now a mother, with a tiny baby girl.

We'd talked about it before: children, family, stability.

Sometimes shouting more than actually talking.

I said, every time, that we should wait. Think things over.

Like I said, you look back, you realise you were in the wrong.

The arguments covered up the fact that the conversations scared me. That I had doubts and insecurities I couldn't admit to her. I would realise that in time.

From the back seat, Elaine's father said, “You've no right to speak to her like that.”

I said, “I just mean that we're not ready. If
something were to happen, I…”

Elaine turned her head. Taking her eyes off the road, her mind focused not on the car but on me and my selfish fucking stupidity.

“How long do you want to wait? Another five years? Ten? Longer?”

That was all it took. A momentary distraction. A few seconds of anger.

One argument over nothing and then —

Katrina Egg's dead eyes staring at me, accusingly.

Andy turning away from me in the hospital.

Bill bleeding out on the floor of the office.

— a sudden, intense glare sliced through my vision. The bastard driving full beam. I saw Elaine's pupils contract as the headlights from the other car illuminated her face with its white light.

The grey Peugeot was out of control. Over on our side of the road. Elaine twisted the wheel so we moved to the other lane.

My hand reached out to touch Elaine.

An apology?

I don't know if I could say for sure.

I heard what sounded like thunder, felt the world lurch.

I closed my eyes. Felt gravity try to tear my body through the floor of the car.

A million fists pounded me.

A high pitched noise assaulted my ears as metal crunched and creased.

And then silence.

Stillness.

At some point I had crawled from the car, but I couldn't remember how it happened. Found myself on my hands and knees in the grass that swayed back and forth in the night-time breeze. I stared back at
the road, through the remains of the broken dyke. Elaine's car had rolled down the incline and now it was behind me. Turned over on its roof, the wheels still spinning. The horn screamed, shattering the still of the country night.

I looked for any sign of the other car.

Saw nothing.

As though it had never been there.

I tried to get to my feet, found my left leg supported no weight and collapsed beneath me. There was no pain.

I pulled myself along the ground towards the overturned car, gripping handfuls of earth and grass and feeling the dead weight of my legs try to hold me back.

I couldn't see Elaine. Her father lay halfway out of the car, the back door opened as though he had made an attempt to exit the vehicle before finally giving up and passing out.

But where was Elaine?

I knew the answer. But tried not to think about it as I crawled to find her body among the screaming mass of twisted metal that lay overturned among the untamed grass.

I steadied myself against the kitchen worktop. Looked at the shattered mug on the floor. Felt sick.

Finally, I cleared up the mess, poured myself tap water. My hands trembling as I held a glass beneath the tap.

I drank the water slowly.

Remembered Rachel asking me why I never went to Elaine's grave. The lie I had told myself was that by performing my vigil at the scene of the accident that brought me somehow closer to her.

But here was the truth: I was afraid to go to her grave because that would make her death absolute. So concrete that it could never be taken back. It would remind me of my own responsibility. Something that was brought home to me when I saw the look in her father's eyes as he watched his youngest daughter's casket lowered gently into the earth.

I sat in the living room. In the dark.

I looked at my watch, illuminated by the moonlight sneaking through the window. Eleven o'clock. An hour before I had to meet Robertson at the top of the Balgay hill, across the other side of the iron bridge that would take us to the Western Necropolis.

I threw on a pair of dark jeans, a black polo neck and a long, winter coat that sat heavy on my shoulders.

In the kitchen, I pulled on my leather gloves and picked up the gun. Checked the safety. Slipped it into my coat pocket where it bumped gently against my thigh.

In the car, I drove to the steady, portentous rhythms of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds singing of a town called Tupelo.

I parked on Scott Street. Outside, the night air was sharp.

Ahead of me, at the end of the street, was the Balgay hill. Thick trees and bushes concealed another world there. One hidden from the urbanity that surrounded the hill.

I walked slowly into Balgay park, followed the roughly marked path up the side of the hill. The sound of my heartbeat echoed through the night. The city traffic faded, becoming background noise until finally it didn't exist at all. At the peak of the hill, the Hird Bridge crossed to where the Western Necropolis sat shrouded under tall trees.

I still hadn't managed to shake the pins and needles.

Maybe I should have unpacked the crutches.

The Hird Bridge passed over an old path that led from Dunkeld Place past the Necropolis and into Balgay park. A local legend claimed that a phantom
coach ran under the bridge on nights when the moon was full. See the coach and you'd die shortly afterwards.

A legend. But late at night even a legend can seem real. Shadows have a nasty way of making ghosts seem plausible.

I strained hard to hear the noises of the night. At the first hint of hooves, my eyes would be closed.

Although I tried not to look down between the gaps in the iron bridge, I found my eyes drawn there. It took a tremendous amount of willpower to force my gaze up. The full moon peeked out from behind thick, dark clouds. Normally impassive, the ancient symbol of madness seemed somehow apprehensive.

A twig snapped somewhere behind me. I turned and saw Robertson. Carrying a smart, grey briefcase. It seemed anachronistic in his grasp. Too businesslike, as though he'd mugged a still-stuck-in-the-eighties yuppie. His clothes didn't help. A thick, padded farmer's jacket and his bunnet balanced precariously on his head.

“I need this to be over,” he said, wiping his free hand across his face to remove sweat. His breathing was loud and jittery. Made me think of Burns in the hospital, hyperventilating.

The weather had been close for much of the day. Threatening thunder. Now, in the distance, a low and distant rumble signalled a storm sloping towards the city.

I looked at my watch. Two minutes to midnight. We walked across the bridge in silence. The stone beneath my feet sang out when my boots slammed down.

I heard a rhythmic patter that made me think of the phantom coach. After a moment, I realised the
noise was nothing more than the rush of blood through my veins and the rapid rhythm of my own heart.

Robertson had stopped, too, several steps behind me. He started again, his breathing, ragged and out of control and his feet landing heavily with each step. I couldn't help but think of him breaking through the aged metal and plummeting to the path below.

Across the other side we walked through the arch that led into the Necropolis. I checked my watch. One minute to midnight.

We waited in the shadow of a family tomb that stood to the left of the arch; proud and lonely, separated from the rest of the Necropolis. Whether by accident or design, I was unsure.

I looked for some sign of the family, saw no telltale inscription on the visible surface of the structure. Perhaps their names were hidden by the dark.

My heart thumped hard, enough that it resonated across my ribs. I thought about turning back, walking away. I had come here for my own selfish ends, to lay to rest ghosts which only existed in my own mind. So much for the professional detachment I claimed to hold so dear.

Looking at my companion, I realised I still didn't understand why he was here, or what he hoped to gain by all of this. As he stood there beside the tomb of some unnamed family, I found he was hidden in shadows, literally and metaphorically.

“Well, fuck me, Richard,” said a rumbling voice from beyond the tomb. Torchlight illuminated us as Ayer and Liman walked out from the shadows. “Looks like they didn't chicken out after all.”

Ayer carried a torch in one hand. The other was empty.

Liman carried a shotgun. The same one he'd had in my office? Displayed it prominently so we'd get the message: he wasn't here to be messed about.

Or maybe he was trying for another message.

Robertson said, “That's my bloody grouse gun.”

“We couldn't go to your gaff and come away empty-handed,” said Liman.

“Wouldn't be right,” agreed Ayer.

I watched Robertson for a reaction.

He gave them nothing.

They'd burned his house down, fucked up his life. They had destroyed every hope Robertson had that his brother turned out right.

And he stood there, as they threatened him with his own gun, with his head bowed, deflated.

But then, could I really understand him?

Had I simply been projecting my own motives onto him?

Expecting him to be angry because I was.

Because I blamed these bastards for everything that had happened to me and to those around me.

If I closed my eyes, I could see Bill's bed in the hospital.