Runaway (2 page)

Maurie had always been inclined to plumpness, even in his teens. Then the good life that followed his elevation to the Glasgow Bar – and a solicitor’s property business that earned him a small fortune – had turned plump into corpulent.

Now only loose skin hung on his bones, a once full face cadaverous, his age-spattered skull almost bereft of hair following the chemo. He looked twenty years older than Jack’s sixty-seven. Of another generation.

Yet those dark brown eyes of his still burned with an intensity that belied appearances. There were tubes attached to his arms and face, but he seemed oblivious of them as he pulled himself into a seated position, animated suddenly by Jack’s arrival. And in his smile, Jack saw the old Maurie. Mischievous, knowing, superior. The ultimate showman, self-confident and full of himself onstage, knowing that he had a great voice, and that no matter how many of them there were in the band, all eyes were on him.

Two nurses sat on the end of the bed watching
Coronation Street
on his television.

‘Go, go,’ he urged them. ‘We have things to discuss in private here.’

And Jack was struck by how feeble that once powerful voice had become.

‘Shut the door,’ he said to Jack, when they had gone. Then, ‘I pay for that bloody TV, you know, and they watch it more than I do.’

Jewish was a part he enjoyed playing but never took too seriously. Or so Jack had thought. ‘My people,’ he had always talked about with a twinkle. But nearly four thousand years of history ran deep. Jack had grown up in a Conservative, south-side Protestant household, and so when he first started going to Maurie’s house it had seemed strange and exotic. Gefilte fish and matzo bread. Shul after school, synagogue on the sabbath, and the bar mitzvah, that coming of a Jewish boy’s age. Candles burning in the Menorah, two in the window on the eve of the sabbath and nine at Hanukkah. The mezuzah affixed to all the door jambs.

Maurie’s relationship with his parents had been conducted
à haute voix
, at first shocking to Jack, as if they were constantly at war with one another. Always shouting. Before he had come to realize that it was simply their way.

Maurie grinned at Jack. ‘You haven’t changed a bit.’

‘Liar!’

Maurie’s smile faded and he lowered his voice, grabbing Jack’s wrist with surprisingly strong fingers. ‘We’ve got to go back.’

Jack frowned. ‘Back where?’

‘To London.’

‘London?’ Jack had no idea what he was talking about.

‘Just like we did when we were boys.’

It was several long moments before understanding finally penetrated Jack’s confusion. ‘Maurie, it’s fifty bloody years since we ran away to London.’

If anything, Maurie’s bony fingers tightened around Jack’s wrist in a grip that was almost painful. His eyes were focused and fixed Jack in their gaze, and there was an imperative in his voice. ‘Flet’s dead.’

Which only plunged Jack back into confusion. Was it an effect of the drugs that Maurie was on? ‘Who’s Flet?’

‘You know!’ Maurie insisted. ‘Of course you know. Think, for Christ’s sake. You remember. Simon Flet. The actor.’

And recollection washed over Jack, cold and depressing. Memories buried for so long that their sudden disinterment was almost startling. He took a moment to recover. ‘But Flet must have been dead for years.’

Maurie shook his head. ‘Three weeks ago.’ He reached over with difficulty to pull a folded Scottish
Herald
from his bedside cabinet. And he pushed it into Jack’s chest. ‘Murdered. Strangled in some seedy bedsit in the East End of London.’

Like opening the grave of some long-buried corpse, the odour of sudden, unpleasant recollection caused Jack to clench his teeth, as if fighting hard not to breathe in for fear it might contain contaminants.

Maurie’s voice fell to barely a whisper as he leaned towards Jack. ‘It wasn’t Flet who killed that young thug.’

Now Jack was startled. ‘Yes, it was.’

‘It wasn’t! It was only me that saw what happened. So it’s only me that knows.’

‘But . . . but, Maurie, if that’s true why didn’t you ever say so before?’

‘Because there was no need. It was a secret I meant to take with me to the grave.’ He jabbed a finger at the newspaper. ‘But this changes everything. I know who committed that murder in 1965. And I’m damned sure I know who killed poor Simon Flet.’ He drew a deep breath that seemed to tremble in his throat, as if there might be a butterfly trapped there. ‘Which means I’ve got to go back again, Jack. No choice.’ And for a moment he gazed beyond his old friend, lost in some sad recollection. Then he returned his regret in Jack’s direction. ‘I don’t have much time left . . . and you’re going to have to get me there.’

_II

An acoustic guitar leaned against a wall in the corner of the room. A Gibson. But Jack could tell from the dust gathered on its shoulders that it was a long time since Dave had played it. It just sat there, like the reminder of a lost youth, and all the failed ambitions born in an age of dreams.

Dave had lost weight, and Jack assumed he wasn’t eating. Although he claimed to be off the drink, Jack could smell it on him. The whole room reeked of stale alcohol.

Dave followed his gaze towards the guitar. ‘She’s got more mellow with the years,’ he said. ‘Ageing like a good wine.’

‘When was the last time you played?’

‘Ohhh . . .’

Jack could tell that he was about to lie, but then he seemed to think better of it.

‘Been a while,’ he said instead, and he ran a rueful thumb over the uncalloused fingertips of his left hand. ‘Amazing how quickly they soften up.’ He glanced at Jack, a wry smile creasing his unshaven face. ‘And how painful they get so quickly, when you start again.’

Jack looked around the room. Curtains half drawn across the nets. A single bed pushed against one wall. A TV in the corner. A couple of well-worn armchairs gathered around the old tile fireplace. This had been Dave’s parents’ bedroom back in the day. A house inherited on the death of his widowed mother, and chosen to be the home in which he would raise his own family. A home full of dark, brutal memories that not even the bringing of new life into the world could erase. A home that seemed destined for sorrow. A wife gone in search of happiness elsewhere, a son returned like a cuckoo to the nest. Dave struggling with drink, confined now to a single room and soon, Jack had no doubt, displaced altogether. A care home perhaps, or sheltered housing like Jack.

Dave pushed himself back in his armchair and regarded Jack thoughtfully. ‘So Maurie’s no’ long for this world?’

‘I shouldn’t think so. He looked terrible, Dave. Really awful.’

‘And how does he think he can make the trip tae London?’

Jack said, ‘He wants us to take him.’

Dave’s chuckle was mirthless. ‘Aye, like we’re fit for it.’ His pale, dry lips shook off their attempt at a smile. ‘But I dinnae understand why he’s only telling us noo that it wisnae Flet that killed the guy.’

Jack pulled out the folded copy of the
Herald
. ‘It’s the story of Flet’s murder that sparked it.’

They heard the front door open and close, then heavy footsteps in the hall. The door of Dave’s room swung open and a middle-aged woman stood breathing heavily, glaring at them both. She might have been attractive once, Jack thought, if it wasn’t for the downturned mouth, an outward reflection of the inner person. But then, he mused, who else would have married Dave’s boy? She wore neatly pressed black slacks, a short grey jacket over a white blouse, and a face like milk left out in the sun.

Her focus fell on Dave. She said, dryly, ‘You’re back.’

‘Observation always was your strong suit.’

Her mean mouth tightened. ‘I found your stash.’

And Jack could see how disappointing this news was to his friend.

But Dave tried not to show it. ‘How’d you know it wisnae Donnie’s?’

‘I don’t care whose it was. It’s all gone down the sink.’ The hint of a smile lifted the corners of her mouth, and she glanced at Jack. ‘And I’d be pleased if you didn’t bring your drinking buddies round to the house.’

Jack bristled and stood up. He shoved the
Herald
back in his pocket. ‘Maybe we should continue this conversation somewhere else, Dave. There’s a nasty odour in here.’

Dave pushed himself to his feet. ‘Aye, you’re right. Somebody should tell her no’ tae wear nylon.’ He pulled a grimace in the direction of his daughter-in-law. ‘And the next time you want tae come intae my room, fuckin’ knock, alright?’

They took the bus to Queen’s Park. Jack had a dental appointment later and didn’t want to risk being late.

‘Long way tae go tae the dentist,’ Dave said.

‘It’s a family association that goes back a generation. His father was my father’s dentist. And anyway, his name always tickled me. Gummers.’

‘Ha!’ Dave guffawed. ‘That’s like Spark the electrician.’

They got off the bus at Shawlands Cross, and Dave suggested they go into the Corona Bar. But Jack steered him over the road to the park and proposed instead that they sit by the pond. No one would disturb them there.

They found an empty bench at the foot of a sweep of path that led down to the stretch of slate-grey water where Jack’s father had played as a boy. Sometimes there were ducks on the pond, but strangely today it was mostly seagulls. Harbingers, perhaps, of a coming storm.

It was early April, but the wind was still cold, and both men were wrapped up warm in winter coats and scarves. Dave wore a flat cap pulled down over once chiselled features that had lost their definition to become lugubrious. Loose flesh on a thin face. Jack’s hair, although pure silver, was luxuriant and carefully styled, and vanity prevented him from wearing a hat to spoil it. Dave was tall, a good three inches taller than his friend, and they made an odd pair sitting side by side on the park bench. Like bookends, Jack thought, and a refrain from the song played itself briefly in his memory.

‘Let me see,’ Dave said, and he slipped on a pair of tortoiseshell reading glasses as he unfolded the paper.

Jack jabbed a finger at the article on the lower half of the facing page, and Dave read aloud. Just as they had been made to do in class, sitting in rows, and reading a paragraph in turn from some dull history book, as if that somehow constituted learning.

‘
Murdered after fifty years on the run
.
’ Dave looked up from the headline. ‘Fifty years, eh? Say it fast and it disnae seem like anything at all.’

He turned back to the paper.

‘
Sixties film star Simon Flet, who vanished in 1965 after bludgeoning a man to death during a drug-crazed party in London’s West End, has been found dead in a bedsit in Stepney.

‘The body of the 74-year-old man, missing for half a century, was found strangled in his bed two weeks ago, after his landlord was forced to break into his room. Police believe he had been dead for a week.

‘His identity, however, was not confirmed until yesterday following the results of DNA testing.

‘After the killing in 1965, Flet fled from the Kensington home, then and now, of Dr Cliff Robert, whose knighthood for services to medicine was recently announced in the New Year’s Honours list.

‘Although Flet was presumed drowned while trying to escape to France in a small yacht he kept anchored at a marina near Portsmouth, neither his boat nor his body was ever found. Rumours that he was still alive have persisted over the decades, with numerous “sightings” reported from around the world. The mystery of the missing actor was even more enduring than the disappearance nearly ten years later of Lord Lucan, and has been written about many times over the years.
’

Dave inclined his head towards Jack, his face sculpted from doubt. ‘How’s that possible, then?’

‘What?’

‘DNA. They didnae have DNA back then. How would they get a sample of Flet’s, even if they knew who tae test for?’ He paused. ‘And how the hell would they know that?’