Father and Son (10 page)

“Flash wheels,”
she says, trying just a bit too hard not to be impressed as she lowers herself
into the Porsche’s low, black and white passenger seat.

“I needed to annoy someone earlier on.”

“You always carry your girlfriend’s laptop around with you?” she
says, finding the MacBook on the floor by her feet.

“She’s not my girlfriend, and she left it this morning. I thought
I’d get it out of the flat, y’know, just in case.”

“In case what?”

“Dunno. But Baron’s gonna be sniffing round me sooner or later, so
best not complicate things.”

“You’re going to tell him, then?”

She’s in a black t-shirt and jeans, never the one for dressing up. He
can smell the Opium on her, just enough, not overpowering.

Opium had always one of his dad’s main lines, crates of fake
eau
de parfum
everywhere, especially in December for the Christmas trade. So
when John met Den, he’d bought her the real thing, receipt taped to the box, proof
of purchase. It had been their private joke.

“Can we have food first? Where do you fancy?”

“The Flying Pizza. Haven’t been for ages.”

“You’re joking, right?”

“Don’t you like pizzas?” she says, feigning surprise. Taking a
confirmed foodie to The Flying Pizza is like taking a lover of Wagner to see
Mama
Mia
.

“I dunno. I just had a higher opinion of you, DS Danson. I really
did.”

“And to think you taught me everything I know. Sad, eh?”

Two years with John Ray had taught her a lot. How to appreciate food
and wine with unpretentious enthusiasm. And not just food. How to seize life and
wring the very last drops of enjoyment from it. Food, drink, music, travel… being
with John had been like stepping onto a new continent and discovering that the
boundaries of one’s capacity for unfettered joy and indulgence stretched way
beyond the horizon. She’d been a good student, too. She wanted to know, to
share the childlike delight he could show in a glass of Ribera del Duero or a
well-crafted pork pie, for artisan cheese and Thelonius Monk and Mahler…

In return she’d taught him how to love, how to be at peace with
someone, no need for show; how to let them into your life as if it was their
natural habitat. She’d taught him to trust in the love of a person like you
trust the days and nights to come and go, love so constant that it could remain
unspoken, unnoticed for weeks at a time, a love so simple and implicit that it
seemed impossible that it might falter or diminish.

Then he’d torn it away, showing it to be a lie.

“Any progress on Roberto?” she asks.

“Might have. But I really need to go to his flat. I’ve got the
keys.”

“Don’t. Whatever you do, don’t do that. And get rid of the keys.”

“I guess you’re right.”

“What about the body?”

“No idea. It’ll be long gone by now.”

“But you’re going to tell the police, right?”

He doesn’t say yes.

“OK,” she says, “we better talk about something else then.”

“Read that,” he says, pointing to a white envelope on the dashboard.

She takes the envelope. It’s old and worn, a red second-class stamp,
12p.

“What’s this about?” she says, opening it carefully, as if it might
fall apart.

“Me.”

“Now why doesn’t that surprise me?”

“Just read it. And forget the bad grammar.”

She does. Three short paragraphs, typed on an old machine.

22nd September, 1984

To the Head Master, Teachers and Students of West Leeds High School

They say that a school is a training ground for life. Its like a
small society of its own, with rules and regulations. There’s authority and
order in a school, and its where the individual is supposed to grow and develop.
The pupils in school are its citizens and we all want a good society with good
citizens in it don’t’ we?

She stops reading.

“What is this?”

“It was sent to the school magazine, back when I was editor. Go on,
read.”

A school should be an example for everybody in it from the
headmaster down to the cleaners. You should know they are respectable people
and that’s basic to school because, if there’s no good example then how are the
pupils going to know how to behave? That goes for the senior pupils as well.

I don’t think having a head boy whose the son of a criminal is a
good example for the school. It means its ok to be a criminal and get rich that
way whilst everyone else is trying to be honest citizens. We all know the
damage that crime does to society. I think having a head boy who is from a
crime family damages the reputation of the school and is a bad example.

Yours faithfully, a pupil

“Shit,” she says, folding the letter and slipping it back into the
envelope. “You know who wrote it?”

“Yep. Andrew Holt. You met him this morning. Dad’s carer up at the
home.”

“How do you know it was him?”

“He was three years below me at school. His dad was a campaigner,
years ago, Len Holt. When that letter arrived, I kind of suspected who it was
from, so I looked back through the files of the magazine. There were several
letters from Minister Holt that the magazine had published over the years. It
was the same typewriter.”

“Wow, good work detective. But the letter might have been from the minister
himself, no?”

“Nah, he could spell. That letter’s from a fifteen-year-old kid with
his head too far up his morally unimpeachable arse.”

“Why did you never tell me about this?”

“I’d kind of forgotten about it.”

“Must have hurt, though, at the time?”

“It did,” he says, concentrating on the road ahead. “It really did.
But it also spurred me on. For the rest of that year I worked like a bloody
idiot. Got the best A-levels in the school’s history. Did I ever…”

“Yeah, I think you might have mentioned that once or twice…”

“Dad’s trial was that summer.”

“You should be proud of yourself,” she says. “You got yourself into
Cambridge, with all that going on around you. Why bring this up now?”

He tells her about The Ministry of Eternal Hope, and Roberto’s
visits there. She listens, looking out at the orange-lit streets as Leeds gears
up for Friday night. They’re driving down Headingly Road towards the city
centre, a good trickle of students walking in the same direction, getting an early
start on the weekend. This isn’t the way to The Flying Pizza. She didn’t really
book a table there, and he knows it.

“So?” he says when he’s finished. “What do you think?”

“I told you: no coppers, no me.”

“Right you are. Fancy a big dish of gumbo and a few beers?”

“I would love a big dish of gumbo and a few beers.”

He slows down, indicates, and turns towards his favourite part of
town.

They slow down as the Halal butchers comes into view.

“The Caribbean Kitchen’s further up, isn’t it?” she says, looking at
the row of shops, some of them still open.

“Yeah, I just wanted to see whether Holt’s still here. Look, there’s
his place, above the butchers.”

They pull in a few shops down. There’s light in the upstairs windows,
and there are shadows moving behind the drawn curtains.

“Well someone’s up there,” she says.

“It’ll be another criminal, cleansing his soul.”

“Perhaps it’s the carpets they’re cleansing.”

“Eh?”

“Look, other side of the road, white van half a dozen spaces up.”

He looks.

“What about it?”

“It’s the one from the nursing home this morning.”

“How do you know? It’s plain white.”

“Exactly. That’s what struck me this morning. No company name on the
side. And the number plate? SYL. See-you-later. I remember it. Force of habit.”

“You sure?”

“You might be good with typewriters, John, but you’re shit with
vans. And yes, I’m sure.”

“What’s the dry cleaning bloke doing here?”

“Coincidence? Premises around here?”

“What if he’s up there with Holt?”

He looks at her. His expression isn’t even expectant, more a matter
of putting the question out there, feeling for a response.

She knows exactly what it means.

“No way.”

“I could go myself, but I’ve already been once today, and I left under
a bit of a cloud.”

“No way, John. You think I’m gonna go in there waving my warrant
card just to see if Mr Shake n’ Vac is saying his prayers?”

That’s precisely what he was thinking.

“Do it yourself,” she says, irritated but trying to keep it
friendly. “I nearly screwed up my career for you once.”

A year ago it hadn’t been friendly. She should have turned him in. But
she moved to the other side of the Pennines instead, wiping the slate clean and
trying to forget John. Now she’s back, and she doesn’t quite know why.

“Doesn’t matter,” he whispers, sliding down a fraction in his seat.
“There he is.”

They watch as the carpet man from this morning, the one with the thinning
mousy hair and the permanent smile, emerges from the door next to the butchers.
He crosses the road, gets into the van, and drives off. And he’s not smiling
now.

“Shall we follow him?” he says.

She snorts. “Let me out first.”

The van moves off up the road, its tail lights getting smaller and
smaller until they disappear into the distance.

They sit there a while looking at the traffic. She puts her hand on
his, squeezes.

“John, this isn’t gonna work. Not if you keep asking me to do stuff
like that. Perhaps it’d be better if I wasn’t here?”

He leans to his left, lowering his head gently until it rests on her
shoulder, the cold leather of her jacket against the side of his face.

“I’m sorry,” he says.

She pushes her fingers into his hair.

“A bloke’s dead, John. The police need to know, and they need to
know whatever you saw this morning.”

“If I tell ’em, will you help me look for whoever did it?”

“I’ll think about it.”

“In exchange for the gumbo?”

Baron’s got his
coat on now. The wind’s picked up, and it’s threatening to rain. He’s decided
to wait for the body to be brought out of the ground. No point going back to
Millgarth yet. They’ve got nothing to go on.

Door-to-doors are not proving very useful either. The closest houses
are over on the other side of the main road, quarter of a mile at least, and
most people are down the pub. He’s got a team collecting CCTV footage, but
there’s no camera pointing directly at the entrance to the waste ground. Plus,
no one’s been reported missing, nothing unusual’s been called in. All he can do
is wait for the body.

His phone buzzes. It’s Stella. He’s tried her a few times, but she hadn’t
picked up. Probably saw his number, decided he could wait. He’d left a message
with the babysitter as well. Too late to speak to the boys, who were already be
in bed.

“Hi,” he says.

Her tone is polite but clipped, efficient to the point of boredom.
In the background he can hear music. She’s at a wedding, or one of those functions
she used to enjoy so much. He hated them. When people found out he was
divorced, the invitations dried up. If he ever gets married again, he’s going
to keep it quiet. Not going to
functions
is the sole advantage of the
bachelor life.

They’ve had the same conversation countless times. Neither of them really
needs to listen. He calls tomorrow off, apologises briefly, knowing she doesn’t
want to listen to it.

“OK. We’ll cope, as usual,” she says, a slight drawl in her voice.

A thought occurs to him. “Stella?”

Half an hour? Tomorrow afternoon. He could manage that. Nip up the
A64, grab some fish and chips, eat ’em out of the paper in the park, just him
and the boys. Then roll up the paper, a quick kick-around, the three of them…

But he knows it’s not going to happen. Half an hour drive to York,
and in those thirty minutes there’d be any number of reasons for him to turn
around. First full day of a murder enquiry your phone never stops. It’s hard enough
finding time to eat. Trip to York and back? He’d only have to let the boys down
again, another phone call, daddy saying sorry, those two telling him it didn’t
matter, that they understood. But they didn’t. How could
work
be more
important than seeing your own dad once a fortnight?

“Steve?” Her voice is vacant, as if she’s keen to get back. “Are you
there?”

“Nothing. Have a nice night.”

“I will. Bye.”

He slips the phone back in his pocket, looks down at the latest lump
of dead human that’s keeping him from his sons. A lot of the soil has now been
removed from the hole, revealing the body of a large man. About six foot,
heavily built, half his head missing, and the nose. His clothes look like
they’ve been burned, his skin as well in places, although until the body is
cleaned it’s difficult to say.

He crouches. Looks more closely. Decent shoes, shop-bought trousers,
leather belt. Black shirt, seems to be, what’s left of it.

“Wallet? Rings, bracelets?” he asks a SOCO who’s labelling evidence
bags in the corner of the tent.

“Nowt. Teeth knocked out an’all.”

“Every one?”

“Yeah. Hammer, something like that. Quick job. Probably find one or
two of ’em in his throat.”

“Tats?”

“Not that I’ve seen.”

Baron looks at the dead man. He’s getting on, middle aged at least,
but he’s hefty, the forearms thick and muscular. Thick neck. Big bastard. No
tattoos?

“Right,” he says, standing up and looking around. “Whenever you’re
ready.”

He steps out of the tent. Over by the cars a couple of the forensics
men are smoking. He wishes he smoked. Times like this you need something. Den
used to smoke at crime scenes, always had cigarettes in the car, used to say
she needed something before she could face a dead body. He wonders how she’s
getting on in Manchester. He should give her a ring sometime. Why hasn’t he? He
doesn’t know.

When he looks in the tent again, five men in white suits are
standing around a stretcher, the dead body laid awkwardly on its side. They
make room for Baron. The sodden fabric of the man’s shirt is black, burned away
in patches all down one side.

“Let’s have a look under that shirt,” he says.

One of the SOCOS bends down and carefully lifts the shirt, holding
the collar between gloved thumb and index finger. It comes away easily.
Underneath is a tattoo, extending right across the man’s back, from one
shoulder blade to the other. There’s some sort of image framed in a wreath, and
beneath it some writing, nothing legible.

“Right,” Baron says, already turning to go. “Get that cleaned up and
photographed, then you can take him in. Photos to me, soon as,” he calls out as
he marches towards his car, coat blowing open in the wind.

Ten minutes later they’re back in the city centre, Steele driving,
Baron holding his phone patiently. It pings as the image arrives.

He stares at the screen for a second, and smiles.

“Right, we’ve got him. Game on.”