Runaway (3 page)

Jack reached over and took the paper back. For a moment he fumbled in his pockets, then tutted his irritation. ‘Give me your glasses.’

Dave slipped them from his nose but then held them back. ‘Wait a minute. Your heid’s bigger than mine. You’ll bend the legs oot.’

Jack snatched the glasses from him and pushed them on to his face. He scanned the article in front of him then started reading.

‘
Police initially drew a blank in their attempts to identify the dead man. But investigating officers were intrigued by a patch of skin cut away from the left forearm, concluding that the killer had tried to remove some distinguishing mark. Questioning of the landlord and fellow tenants revealed that the victim had sported a small tattoo of a bluebird on that forearm. This led to an extensive search of both active files and so-called cold cases. But in the end it was a simple internet search which turned up mention of a similar tattoo in an article written ten years before about the mysterious disappearance of the actor Simon Flet
.
’

He glanced at Dave.

‘Do you ever remember seeing that? The tattoo, I mean?’

Dave’s face set in grim recollection and he nodded.

Jack read on.

‘
This took police to the home of Flet’s surviving younger sister, Jean. She still possessed a lock of Flet’s hair cut from his head by his mother when he was a baby and kept for posterity, which was the fashion at the time. A DNA comparison confirmed the identity of the dead man.
’

He removed his friend’s reading glasses and Dave grabbed them back, trying them on and testing them for size.

‘You have! You’ve bent the legs oot.’

But Jack wasn’t listening. He was gazing out across the water, beyond the traffic in Pollokshaws Road, towards a terrace of stone-cleaned sandstone houses.

‘I was born just over there, you know.’

Dave followed his eyeline. ‘Eh?’

‘Marywood Square. In a nursing home. That’s how they did it back then. Just a few hundred yards away from where my dad grew up in Springhill Gardens.’ He glanced back along the road towards the square of red sandstone tenements gathered around an overgrown patch of garden. ‘It’s funny. When I went to see Maurie last night, I remembered getting my tonsils out at the Victoria.’ He looked at Dave. ‘But I also remember my dad telling me the doctor came to the house and took his tonsils out on the kitchen table. Can you imagine? Seems medieval now.’

Dave breathed his exasperation. ‘Whit’s that got tae dae with this?’ And he poked a finger at the article.

Jack shrugged. ‘Nothing. Just . . . where did they all go, Dave?’

‘Where did what go?’

‘The years. The dreams.’ He turned a pale smile towards the other man. ‘I never thought I’d be old, Dave. Never felt old. Not really. Always just a boy in my head. Until now.’ Then focus returned to Jack’s washed-out blue eyes. ‘What are we going to do?’

‘About Maurie?’

Jack nodded.

‘Maybe we should both go tae see him, Jack. I mean, he cannae really expect us tae go off on a daft goose chase just because of some dying whim of his.’

Jack smiled. ‘No. That wouldn’t be at all responsible, would it?’

A nearby primary school had spewed children out into the cold afternoon, their shrieks and laughter rising above the rumble of traffic on Pollokshaws Road. Pigeons fluttered around a clutch of youngsters gathered at the water’s edge trying to catch something in a net. Mothers with prams stood around a play area beneath still naked trees, and the red of the sandstone tenements stood sharp and clear against a chill blue sky.

Jack and Dave walked together towards the park gate on the corner. Two elderly men, shadow people with spent lives and nothing much to show for them, invisible to the children and their young mothers. At the junction of Pollokshaws Road and Balvicar Street they shook hands and Dave headed off to get a bus home. Jack’s appointment with the dentist was imminent, but he stood for a moment watching Dave amble past the bus stop and cross the road towards the New Regent Bar, before he turned wearily away towards Victoria Road.

_III

Jack got off the bus just past the Derby Café at Netherlee. The ‘Tallie’, they called it when they were kids, some corruption of ‘Italian’, because all the cafés then were Italian-owned. The Derby, Boni’s at Clarkston, and another at Busby, whose name he had forgotten. They all made the best ice cream. Single nuggets and double nuggets, and wafers and cones. Fleetingly, he wondered if ‘Tallie’ would be considered politically incorrect these days.

The road at the end of the block of shops took him down past the primary school. The car park there was almost empty, but there was a group of kids playing football on the grass, their raised voices drifting through the branches of winter trees barely in bud. By contrast the car park for the sheltered housing was almost full. Not that many of the residents had cars, but there were always staff in the building, and visiting relatives.

Jack’s heart sank as he saw his daughter and son-in-law emerging from the block of brick-red flats. They were looking less than pleased, and had nearly reached their Mondeo before they saw him coming. Their son – Jack’s grandson, Ricky – had his backside propped against the boot of the car, face buried in his Nintendo 3D gaming device as it habitually was, thumbs furiously working the buttons. Even at this distance Jack could hear the inane sounds of an animated game floating across the car park.

Susan was a sweet girl but, like her mother before her, less than assertive. Malcolm was most definitely the dominant half of the partnership. He and Jack had never been fond of each other.

Jack was not at all sure who it was that Ricky took after. From somewhere in his genetic history he had inherited the fat gene. It had not come from his parents or grandparents, but it left him constantly fighting and losing the battle of the scales. He was substantially overweight, and wore the largest and baggiest jog pants and shirts that he could find, which only ever fitted where they touched. But by way of compensation, he had been blessed with an IQ that was quite simply off a very different kind of scale. He had sailed effortlessly through school, and then university, achieving an honours degree in mathematics and computer science a year earlier than he should have. Only to find himself unemployed and, because his weight had stolen his confidence, almost unemployable. Which had led him to retreat into a nocturnal world of computer games, and to sleep away most of his daylight hours.

‘Where the hell have you been?’ Malcolm had never been one to mince his words.

Jack smiled. ‘Nice to see you, too.’

‘Dad, you know we always come to see you on a Friday afternoon.’ Susan was more conciliatory, but her words still carried accusation.

‘I had a dental appointment. I forgot. I’m sorry.’

‘Hi, Grampa.’ Ricky didn’t even look up.

‘Well, you’re here now,’ Susan said, and she glanced a little nervously towards Malcolm. ‘We’ve got time at least for a cup of tea.’

‘That’ll be nice,’ Jack said. But no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t keep the sarcasm out of his voice.

He took the lift to the first floor on his own while the family took the stairs. Had he been alone he would have taken the stairs himself, but this provided some moments of respite before what he knew was the coming storm. Maybe, he reflected, that was why there had been seagulls on the Queen’s Park pond. Anyway, in the end, it was why he was here. In the months after his heart attack the stairs at home had been a problem. Malcolm and Susan had put his name on the waiting list for sheltered housing. Installing a stair lift in the house would be far too expensive, Malcolm had said, and would reduce the resale value of the property.

The family had been living with Jack ever since their house had been repossessed by the bank during Malcolm’s brief period of unemployment when he was laid off by one of the major insurance companies. It was to have been a temporary arrangement. But two years on they were still there, despite Malcolm having found another position. A flat had come up in this sheltered housing complex at Netherlee sooner than any of them expected, and Jack had moved out of the downstairs lounge, where he had been sleeping, and into his own flat. Now his family were just counting the days, he was sure, until they could claim their inheritance. It made Jack uncomfortable to feel that they were just waiting for him to die, and he was damned if he was going to oblige. At least, not in the short term.

They stood waiting for him outside the door of his flat at the far end of the corridor, and Jack could hear the bloops and bleeps of Ricky’s Nintendo drifting along it.

‘Maybe you should turn the sound down, son,’ he said. ‘Some of the old folk in here are a bit sensitive to noise.’

Ricky glanced at him with irritation and began plugging in his headset.

Inside, Jack put the kettle on, delaying for as long as possible the moment when he would have to go out and face them. When finally he did, Susan was perched anxiously on the edge of the recliner and Malcolm was standing by the window staring morosely out across the lawn below to another block of sheltered housing beyond it. Ricky was sprawled on the settee, still engrossed in his game.

Malcolm turned and glanced at Susan. Her cue to speak.

‘Dad, Mrs Rodgers’ folks have been on the phone again.’

Jack knew, because Fiona had told him.

‘They say they’re going to have to insist that you stay away from their mother. If you don’t, they’re going to make a formal complaint and ask to have you removed from the complex.’

‘That’s jolly Christian of them,’ Jack said. He knew that Fiona’s family were church folk, even although Fiona described herself as ‘lapsed’.

Susan said, ‘Fiona’s told them that you’re thinking of giving up your single flats in exchange for a double.’

‘It’s disgusting, Jack.’ Malcolm pulled an appropriate face to illustrate his point.

‘Is it?’ Jack felt his hackles rising. ‘And at what age, exactly, does sex between consenting adults stop being natural and become disgusting?’

‘Dad . . .’ Susan was embarrassed.

‘No, tell me. When? At forty, fifty, sixty? What age are you, Malcolm, forty-five? Are you still fucking my daughter?’

‘Dad!’ This time Susan was shocked, and was on her feet in an instant.

Malcolm said, ‘That’s enough, Jack.’

‘No, it’s not! How dare you come in here and tell me who I can and can’t sleep with. Fiona and I are not a couple of teenagers. And
you
are not my fucking parents.’

‘Dad, for heaven’s sake watch your language in front of the boy.’

Jack nearly exploded. ‘The boy? The boy’s not even fucking listening!’

And they all turned to look at Ricky.

It took a moment before awareness invaded his game and he swung his head towards them, perplexed. ‘What?’ he said.

CHAPTER TWO

_I

Two successive nights at the Victoria Infirmary and Jack was starting to feel like an outpatient. Being an inpatient following his heart scare, albeit briefly, had been bad enough. Beyond those critical first few hours they had moved him to a geriatric ward to complete the rest of his recovery. That was the first time it had ever occurred to him that he was ‘old’. The first time he had stood back to see himself as others saw him. An elderly, silver-haired gentleman, robust enough, but clearly past his sell-by. The all-pervading smell of urine in the ward, and a sleepless night spent listening to the wails and caterwauling of dementia patients, had persuaded him to check himself out first thing the next morning. He was damn well going to convalesce at home.

He smelled drink on Dave’s breath when they met outside the Battlefield Rest, breath that billowed around his head like smoke in the cool, still night air. Hard to believe it was April.

He said, ‘You know, I just realized on the bus tonight that it was exactly fifty years ago this month.’

Dave was puzzled. ‘What was?’

‘That we ran away to London.’

‘Really?’ He took off his cap to scratch his head. ‘Jesus. If I’d known then what I know noo . . .’ He caught Jack’s eye and a smile came briefly, sad and funny at the same time. ‘I’d probably still be a drunk.’