Survival of Thomas Ford, The (14 page)

Jimmy squeezed the keyring.

“What are you going to do?” he said.

“Just get the car. Run boy!”

Jimmy’s feet slapped the pavement on the way back down Cromwell Drive. It felt like battery acid in his veins, or the wrong oil, not blood. This was all happening too slowly. It wasn’t like the day of the crash when everything happened in a sudden blitzkrieg of action. Jimmy ran past Thomas Ford’s driveway. He kept running. He ran past the Subaru. He didn’t even look at it there, parked on the opposite side of the road. He kept on going. He ran faster. He passed the woman with that strange, old dog on a chained lead. The dog’s eyes glared with manic danger at Jimmy under the orange lamplights. It was only properly a nightmare for Jimmy, now that his father was involved. The two separate worlds had collided. The dinosaur in Jimmy was faced with its final nemesis comet moment.

Anything could happen now.

Robert’s eyelids were drooping heavily in front of the TV screen’s mesmeric flicker. His mum watched him as she knitted on the big leather chair that her husband had loved. The chair was split in so many places now, but Marie would not give it up.

If the chair went, everything could go.

“You should be off to bed, Robert,” Marie whispered when she saw her boy’s head nod on its thick neck.

“I want to see this programme.”

“You’ve slept through half of it.”

Robert sniffed. He raised his torso up higher on the sofa back. Jimmy McCallum’s face appeared suddenly at the living room window, like someone had just thrown his wet head there from the street and it had stuck to the outer glass. Marie Ferguson screamed and Robert stared. Jimmy’s mouth was working like a ventriloquist’s dummy’s wooden, churning lips. Through the double-glazing nothing could be heard. Robert stood up and his balls throbbed in complaint.

“No, Robert! Just stay where you are!” said Marie.

Robert shook his head and walked into the hall. He was careful how he moved on the way to the front door, trying to keep his thighs off his balls. He opened the door and Jimmy seemed to collapse into his arms like a relieved damsel in a fairy tale, except Jimmy was lathed in sweat. Robert held him up and got him into the house. He closed the front door with a bang, surprising the old grey cat that sat on their driveway wall every evening.

It was like a fever. Jimmy didn’t remember sleeping, but now he was waking up in Marie Ferguson’s bedroom. He recognised the smell, the wallpaper, the furniture, that mirror with the Elizabethan influence. Often Jimmy had masturbated with his head full of Marie Ferguson and this room.

But it wasn’t Marie standing over the bed. It was Robert.

“Robert man!” Jimmy whispered.

Robert watched Jimmy’s eyes make a long, slow roll of the room before focusing on himself.

“I’m sorry I did your nuts like that man! I’m sorry. It was fucking stupid. Forgive me man eh?”

Robert tried to imagine what could have happened to Jimmy tonight to leave him talking like this. It was like seeing a stranger there, lying on his mother’s bed. Now Jimmy was reaching out towards Robert with a pawing hand.

Robert stepped back.

“No, Robert man, no, I mean it. I’m sorry. You’re the only friend I’ve got man eh?”

Jimmy’s eyes came into clear focus. Robert believed it.

“Friend?” Marie Ferguson shouted from the doorway. “Friends don’t get people into the kind of trouble you’ve got my son into, Jimmy!”

Jimmy looked at her and Robert expected an outburst.

But Jimmy only said,

“I know, Mrs Ferguson, I know. I’m sorry. Look, I’ll do whatever you want. I’ll go to the police and tell them Robert had nothing to do with it. I mean, I’ll say I was alone in the car. They’ll not care about a passenger.”

“That girl knows Robert was there,” said Marie.

Jimmy nodded.

“Aye. She’s with Thomas Ford right now. In a park. My dad’s there too. He’s gone properly mental now, I think. I didn’t know what he was going to do. I ran off.”

Jimmy looked from Robert to Marie.

“I was frightened,” said Jimmy. “I’ve always been frightened of my dad.”

“What did you think he was going to do?” said Marie.

Jimmy shook his head and looked at the thick carpet.

“What’s Lorna doing with Thomas Ford? Has she grassed?” said Robert.

Jimmy stared. His eyes were desperate black pools as Robert looked into them.

“She was holding his hand,” said Jimmy.

Jack McCallum had been waiting, hunched down just inside the park gates, for a long time now. He kept looking down Cromwell Drive for the Subaru. There was no traffic. The air was still. Jack knew he hadn’t even heard the engine start and he was sure he could have heard it from here.

The boy just couldn’t be relied on. It was a terrible fact. His own boy.

Nevertheless, the insane optimist in Jack, the part of him that had sanctioned several McCallum Homes building projects on steep south-facing hills with poor drainage, that part of him kept looking down Cromwell Drive, expectant still of spying the Subaru’s metallic nose.

“Cunt!” said Jack under his breath. “Little cunt.”

He couldn’t even take comfort in alleging the boy was not his own. Cathy was boringly faithful, like a labrador, and anyway the boy looked like a younger version of himself. No, the problem was located in the boy’s brain, some kind of cross-wiring, or incompatible programming. The boy had the hardware, but the drivers needed upgrading, something like that, something impossible to fix with a human head to date. All that talk about solving this problem with murders. It should be the boy getting murdered. Jack opened his mouth in a sudden snarl. Orange lamplight glittered on his crowned incisors.

Jack took a deep breath and let it out.

The boy wasn’t coming.

Jack stood up straight. He wasn’t sure whether to walk out of the park and down Cromwell Drive, or go further into the park. He couldn’t see Thomas Ford or Lorna. If he stayed off the path, in the trees, he ought to be able to find them, maybe even get close enough to listen to them. Yes, that wouldn’t be a waste of time. Far from it.

Thomas Ford and Lorna were passing over the short stone bridge.

“Are you sure we’re safe in here, Thomas?”

“I’ve been walking here for years at all hours.”

“Aye, but the city’s changed man. There’s piles of folk here now.”

“But you’re saying we’re not safe at the house either,” said Thomas. “Where would you feel safe tonight? Your place?”

“Uh uh. Jimmy’s probably there now, battering at the door.”

“So we’re not safe anywhere now, except if we go to the police.”

“Do you want to?” said Lorna.

“It would stop them thinking I’m crazy. It’s been bad, everything just being my word.”

“Now there’s my word too,” she said.

“Will you come to the police then?”

“No Thomas. You wouldn’t have to pay me anything once I’d told the police. If you go to them I’ll deny anything. I’ll say you’re mental, that you’ve had a fixation on me ever since you watched my arse in the hospital when I was emptying your bin.”

“I didn’t watch your arse.”

“Aye you did. Two nurses told me.”

Thomas felt himself blush.

“You can stay with me,” he said. “I want you to.”

“Aye, but I need something in writing. Something formal.”

“That would take time. I’m not sure how to even go about that. It probably wouldn’t be legally binding.”

“You’ll have to find something that would be legally binding. That’s what lawyers do isn’t it Thomas? They find ways to sort out things how you want them to be.”

Thomas shook his head.

“You’re living in a fantasy world,” he said.

“Maybe,” she said calmly, “but you want to know what I know, one way or another. You need to know.”

“You’re not safe either. Not until you tell either me or the police.”

“For me it’s a calculated risk.”

There was a sudden rustling sound in the bushes nearby. Thomas and Lorna stopped walking.

“What was that?” said Lorna.

“Who’s there?” called Thomas.

They stared at the trees and bushes for moments. The noise didn’t come again.

“Probably a cat,” said Thomas.

“Let’s go back to the house.”

Thomas nodded.

From deep in the bushes, Jack McCallum stared out at the couple. He saw them turn back and head for the stone bridge again. He hadn’t been able to hear what they were talking about. Trying to hear, he had come too close. But they looked awful cosy together. This afternoon, at the office, had she already been to see Ford by then? They looked like they’d known each other for years. What was going on here? Now they were headed right back to the park gates. What if they run into Jimmy there, just arrived with the Subaru? Or maybe the car hadn’t started and Jimmy was trying to get it going down by the house. They’d hear the engine coughing and splutting all the way down Cromwell Drive, then they’d see him surely.

There were too many variables and Jack sensed the softness in his head. His head was soft where it used to be a machine, because Jack had passed the real thinking on to men like his foreman, Lanski. Jack clenched his fist and realised this was the first time in months that he had to face reality without Lanski to bail him out of a problem.

It was frightening how quickly you lost your strength when you stopped using it.

Then when you needed it again it was gone.

There hadn’t really been a plan. Jack had no idea what he would have done next if Jimmy had shown up at the park gates with the Subaru. There would have been momentum at least. Now there was no momentum. Jack could hardly even bring himself to stand up behind the bush and follow Ford and Lorna back to the bridge.

“He’s really gone mad though,” said Jimmy to Marie and Robert Ferguson. “I’ve never seen him this bad.”

“He’s always been like that, Jimmy,” said Marie. “He was like that in school, primary school I mean. He would always take things too far. Bullying people, getting ideas into his head.”

Jimmy nodded.

“He’s battered me all my life,” said Jimmy. “My mum couldn’t stop him. No-one could stop him.”

“Cathy shouldn’t have let him away with that,” said Marie.

“No-one can stop him,” said Jimmy. “No-one on the sites could ever stand up to him. Even folk buying houses are frightened of him. They take houses off-plan but then he tells them what they’re going to have in the houses, they get no choice. If people go to lawyers he frightens the lawyers. If people get the police nothing happens. All the high-up police know my dad eh?”

Marie nodded. It was true. Two of them had been in their primary school class and had joined in when Jack shoved her. They were even worse bastards than Jack. There was always the chance that now the town had supposedly grown into a “city”, there might be some top cop there who had their mind on their job, not their next Free Mason meeting, but Marie doubted it.

“Maybe we should still go to the police though,” said Marie.

“You said no police, mum.”

“Aye, Robert, but now Jack’s involved.”

“We were in the park watching them,” said Jimmy. “The park at the top of Thomas Ford’s road. We could see Lorna and Thomas Ford, in the park. We couldn’t hear what they were saying. But they were holding hands. I don’t know what’s going on. Neither did my dad. Up to then I thought he had a plan. But when we watched them in the park together I could tell he was going more and more mental. He told me to go and get the car and bring it to the park gates. I don’t know what he was going to do with it. I ran here instead.”

“I’ll call the police,” said Marie.

But she didn’t move. Jimmy and Robert were silent, waiting for her to move.

“They’re all his mates, Mrs Ferguson. Honest to God,” said Jimmy.

She looked at him. He said,

“It’s no that I’m worried about getting in trouble any more. But they’re round at our house all the time like, cops, they drink whiskey with him for hours. They all live in his houses.”

“I thought all that had changed,” said Marie.

Jimmy shook his head.

“No, Mrs Ferguson. I think it’s worse now than ever. There’s folk up from
London
and that, high up guys, worse than the ones before. There’s so much money around now eh? That’s what’s really changed.”

“What’s he going to do then,” said Robert, “to Thomas Ford and Lorna?”

Jimmy shook his head. The high plumage of his black parrot hairstyle shook beneath the energy saving bulb attached to Mrs Ferguson’s living-room ceiling.

“It’s no just Thomas Ford and Lorna he’s after now,” said Jimmy. “It’s all of us.”

“Lanski,” Jack McCallum said into the mobile. “Lanski. Wake up! It’s McCallum.”

“Mr McCallum?”

“Do you know where Cromwell Drive is, Lanski?”

“What, Mr McCallum?”

Jack heard a woman say something in Polish in the background.

“Get out of bed, Lanski. I’ve got a job for you. Meet me right now, outside 16 Cromwell Drive, you understand? Don’t drive all the way here. Park on Booth Road, then walk round the corner past the park gates, and down to Cromwell Drive, outside number 16. Walk quiet, Lanski. Don’t make a sound when you get here. I’m in the Subaru on the other side of the road from 16 Cromwell Drive and about 20 yards downhill. You’ll see me. Now move it, Lanski.”

Jack terminated the call. He sat far down in the driver seat of the Subaru. His eyes on the windows and door of 16 Cromwell Drive were the eyes of a cat near feeding time. Jack had been a long time between meals. He suddenly realised he was getting into this. He felt five years younger. Then he frowned. Maybe not. Maybe he only felt relief now that Lanski, his best man, was getting on-board.

Fifteen minutes later, Jack saw his lanky Polish foreman coming down Cromwell Drive. Lanski had on a blue thermal jacket, a wool hat, and his workboots. He saw Jack in the Subaru, just a forehead and a strip of white hair above the steering wheel. Lanski half-smiled inside. This was like smuggling meets back in
Warsaw
. He counted the house numbers as he walked down the street. When he knew he was passing number sixteen he took care not to look over at that house.

Nearing the Subaru, Lanski saw McCallum’s hand unlocking the passenger door and silently shoving it open. Lanski caught the handle in long fingers and with a tug and a swerve of his hips he was in the passenger seat, hunched down low like his boss.

Except this wasn’t his boss. Lanski sensed the difference immediately. It was like a smell in the car. Lanski knew that this was his boss’ shadow. The Wolf within McCallum had risen to the surface now and taken over. The flesh at Lanski’s neck crawled. The last thing Elena had shouted as he left the flat was to be careful. Yes, he was going to have to be very careful. Lanski looked at McCallum’s face beneath the orange streetlight nearby. Only the lower half of the nose and mouth were visible. The rest was in shadow, or had become shadow itself. Lanski’s grandmother had told him stories about the men who had holes inside themselves and how the hole could grow larger and larger until the man himself became nothing but a hole. Lanski’s mother had hated her own mother filling her boy’s head with those old-country stories which all seemed to be about the fatality of life, the uselessness of struggling against it.

Lanski’s mother had taught him, no, struggle. Never stop struggling, that is what she had taught Zbigniew Lanski who looked so much like his own father now.

“Mr McCallum?”

“They’re in there, Lanski. That house. Number 16. A man and woman who can bring everything down, Lanski. What I’ve worked for, and what you’ve worked for too. You don’t want that to happen do you, Lanski? No, of course not.”

Lanski swallowed and stared over at the unlit house.

“A business problem?” said Lanski.

“Aye. And worse. Much worse. Family trouble, Lanski. Enough trouble brewing in that house tonight to bring my whole family to the ground I think. And if that happens I go down with it. And if I go down with it you go down with it. So it’s family trouble for both of us.”

Lanski frowned.

“But what can anyone do to hurt you, Mr McCallum? You are a secure man.”

“I thought so too until today, Lanski. But we both know there’s always been a potential danger in my life eh?”

Lanski blinked. The boy. McCallum meant his boy, Jimmy. The boy has done something. A light came on suddenly in the living room of number 16. Lanski saw a man’s silhouette pass behind thin drawn blinds. A woman’s shape followed.

“What is it you want of me, Mr McCallum?”

“You’re an ambitious man, Lanski. If you help me tonight I’ll take care of you and your family, your whole family, aunts, uncles, nephews, illegitimate bastards, your old widowed mother, your wives and girlfriends, whatever you’ve got, I’ll take care of it all for the rest of your lives, Lanski. If you help me here tonight our families will be bound together, Lanski. Everything you’ve been working for and would take you thirty years, I’ll give you it for one good night’s work.”

And then Lanski knew beyond doubt that the Wolf at his side had killing in his heart. Lanski licked his lips. There was really nothing to consider. Somehow just by getting in the car he was already too far in to turn back now. Lanski swallowed loudly.

“We have to get them out of that house tonight, Lanski. I have a place no-one knows about. We get them there. It shouldn’t be too hard. Then the problem will have gone away. That’s all we need.”

“It is only a man and a woman there?” said Lanski.

“Aye. Both young enough. But the man’s been in hospital after a car accident, he’s weak. Big though. It’s the bitch I’d expect the worst trouble from.”

Lanski heard McCallum laugh. After the laugh there was a long silence.

“Are you ready?” said Jack.

Lanski didn’t answer. He opened the passenger door and levered his weight smoothly out onto the pavement. The light was still on behind that blind in 16. Lanski heard Jack’s driver door opening. He looked across the Subaru roof at his employer’s white hair, tinged with the orange from the streetlight. Jack nodded at Lanski and they both walked up Cromwell Drive.

In the living room of number 16, Thomas Ford was kissing Lorna’s neck as he stood behind her. It was as though there were some juice beneath the skin that he felt he could extract with his lips. Time in the living room seemed to have slowed. Lorna had her hands at Thomas’ hips, feeling behind herself. She twisted her neck until he kissed her mouth.

She didn’t taste like Lea, of course. Still, there was a shock, as though Thomas had expected her to taste like Lea. This taste was less rich, more sweet. Lea had been, in many ways, a savoury dish. Lorna, so far, seemed more to do with the fruit family. Her two breasts truly like warm melons in Thomas’ palms. Her earlobe plump and firm-fleshed now between Thomas’ teeth. There was a quick insane desire to bite the earlobe and make it pop and split and burst and bleed forth, to taste her juice perhaps.

But still, there it was in Thomas’ mind, the black-haired driver with his bird nose and fathomless eyes. That head, floating through Thomas Ford’s brain like some guillotined aristocrat.

“Do you want to go upstairs?” said Thomas.

“No, here. Here.”

Jack McCallum and Zbigniew Lanski were silent as they travelled the length of the side wall to Thomas Ford’s house. Their shoulders grazed the wall like floundering organic spirit levels trying to find some flat, final mathematical truth before the day ended. Jack eyed the pebble dashed wall with distaste. A house in a good area like this should never be allowed to go pebble-dashed, even at the side elevation. He made a mental note to get on to Lizzie at the Planning Office about it. Then Jack saw that Lanski was leaving the wall’s corner and entering the garden. Jack sprinted forward and slapped his palm onto the Pole’s shoulder.

Lanski spun round. Jack raised a hand, patted the air, telling Lanski, wait, in that unspoken language they had evolved through countless building projects.

Jack put his head round the corner. The garden was bathed in light from the house. Something moved in the garden just as Jack started to look for the living room window. Jack stared at the grass and saw a thin bird hopping around. The bird was glaring at Jack and Lanski.

“Look,” said Lorna. “No, stop. Look.”

“What?” Thomas said breathlessly.

She was indicating out the window, at the garden.

“The poor wee darling,” she said. “Come on, Thomas, we’ve got to put out something for it to eat ok?”

Thomas saw the small bird bouncing and stamping around in the light from the living room.

“What, now?” he said.

“We’ve got to, Thomas. I can’t just watch it out there, starving. I thought it could wait but that’s it desperate now. Just let me get some bread.”

Thomas had to raise himself off her as she started to get up from the floor. Her thick thigh almost struck his face but he saw it coming and dodged just in time. Thomas let his weight bring him onto his back. He watched the ceiling. He spread his arms wide and turned the palms of his hands down to rest on the carpet.

“Don’t give it everything,” said Thomas. “Remember to keep some for us.”

“Do you think it will be happy with bread on its own? Will it need water?” she called from the kitchen.

Thomas sniffed.

“Give it water in a bowl,” he said.

“Poor wee thing.”

Thomas could hear her moving around in the kitchen. He looked over as she walked back in. She was naked, her long hair flowing. Her breasts and thighs were huge, luscious. Nothing like Lea’s petite control. This new woman was an entirely different continent from Lea. As she walked her left breast nudged at the edge of the stack of sliced bread on the plate.

Thomas laughed.

“You’re going out into the garden like that?” he said.

“Just long enough to feed it. How? Can neighbours see in here?”

Her face looked apprehensive suddenly.

Thomas shook his head.

“No,” he said. “But I know a few who would want to.”

She grinned. As she reached a hand out towards the patio door she tossed her head and the strands of thick hair rippled and flew. Thomas rolled onto his belly, raised his face, and watched her.

“Careful he doesn’t rape you,” said Thomas.

There was a sweeping lined curve where her hip met her back. Thomas would draw it later, from memory. It would be good too, if she would pose for him. Lea had never liked posing, or even being drawn on the move.

Jack and Lanski were well round the corner and several feet along the back wall of the house when they heard the patio doors opening. Jack didn’t know it but his boots were positioned in the mudded prints left the night before by his son. Lorna walked out onto the patio paving. She looked down and was careful to keep her bare feet away from the mud left by Jimmy and Robert. The bird saw her and didn’t hesitate. It reached her in three long hops.

Lorna set the plate down and removed the little bowl of water she had been balancing at the plate’s edge.

“There you go,” she whispered.

This bird was absolutely fearless, totally accustomed to being fed by somebody around here.

Jack and Lanski watched the naked woman’s squatting form. Her buttocks looked inhuman somehow, there framed against the garden and shadowed by the light from the house. Jack and Lanski were too far along the back wall to retreat now, or to move in any direction. They stood frozen against the pebble-dashing, limbs at awkward quivering angles, afraid even to breathe or move their eyes off the woman and the bird.

The bird jabbed savagely at the bread, tearing off far more than it could hope to chew. Its beak gaped.

“Thomas!” called Lorna.

She laughed.

“Thomas, you’ve got to see this.”

Jack and Lanski heard a man’s voice from inside the house say,

“No. I’m alright here.”

“Aww, little love,” said Lorna.

Jack saw her reach out towards the bird’s thin breast with a curled index finger. The bird hopped back, letting a large crumb fall to the grass. Lorna withdrew her finger and the bird advanced back to the bread. Jack saw the girl’s buttocks swell as she flexed. Lanski saw the young woman stand up. It seemed she stood very slowly. Her hair covered all of her back as she stood straight.

The light from the living room made shadows dance around the crack of her arse, as Thomas gazed out at her. She was worthy of a proper painting, a portrait in oils like the old masters. She turned now and Thomas’ senses were filled with the impact and grandeur of her heavy breasts, the mound of V in hairs below. Her hips and thighs were a wide, replete symphony of shapes, a Pythagorean glory of natural geometry, God speaking in whispers through the flesh rather than in bellows of stone Cathedral.

As she turned, her thick hair flew up and around her face, hiding the shapes of Jack and Lanski against the wall. She raised her hand to fling the hair away, but as she did she turned to look back over her left shoulder at the feeding bird.

“Night love,” she said.

Lanski watched to see if Jack, who was closest to her, would stop her. But Jack only watched her body move past him, take three steps, and enter the living room again. The patio doors closed with a quiet thud.

Jack breathed out. Lanski breathed out. The bird was tearing a piece of bread to fine shreds, confident now that no-one would take the prize away. Jack moved back along the wall until he was next to Lanski.

“Couldn’t take the bitch outside,” he whispered against Lanski’s long hair. “One scream and the cops would be out.”

Lanski nodded.

In the living room, Lorna was sitting astride Thomas Ford. He sighed out air. Even through the condom he could feel her heat. It had made Thomas wonder, the condoms she had in her bag. Specially for him, or always there for opportunity that might arise?

It was as though Thomas was being washed inside as she moved up and down above him. He placed his palms on her thighs.

Lorna was enjoying the change from Jimmy. No requests to wear boots. No bird-like face below her. No black eyes simmering with unknown meanings. This man inside her was a professional, middle class, with a nice home of his own. A beautiful garden with its own little bird. It was all like a dream really. Only this morning Lorna had been on her way to another day at the hospital. Then something inside her had made her go to Jack McCallum instead, and that had led to this. Lorna gasped out air as she felt the first wave of excitement. Thomas gripped the flesh of her thighs. She could feel his fingernails bite into her skin. She liked it.

In the garden, Jack and Lanski and the overfed bird stood watching the girl’s rhythmic motions. The bird continued to chew. Its beak clicked lightly. Lanski heard his employer’s breathing noticeably accelerate. Lorna’s face, viewed through the clean glass of the patio doors, was in profile. Her eyes were closed and her top teeth nibbled down on her bottom lip in a charming overbite expression. She tilted her nose up and her neck back as she bore down again on Thomas Ford, filling herself. Jack heard Lanski swallow. The girl’s thighs were so thick. Jack had never seen anything like them. They should almost make her appear grotesque, but they didn’t, not at all.