Nothing Sacred (9 page)

‘So he's handcuffed to this midget, I should say the midget's handcuffed to him, and the midget's rotten, pissed out of his head, can't stay awake, all he wants to do is sleep, but the geezer, he keeps slapping him on his head,
wake up,
I've paid you so fucking
– 'scuse me, my darling –
wake up
. And this midget, he's getting proper fucking angry, proper aggravated.'

Maria nodded quickly, as if to hurry my father along, get this story finished with. My father took Maria's nod for interest, enthusiasm for the details he was recounting. He took a deep breath, shook his head in malicious delight.

‘So the midget's gone to sleep again and the geezer's slapped him on the head, and that's it, the midget's had enough and next thing he's picked up a bottle,
smash
, he's broken it on the table and he's stabbing the geezer,
bang
bang bang
, course the geezer's handcuffed to this fucking midget and he can't get away, he's screaming, the midget, he's fucking crazy, the geezer's mates are trying to get the bottle off him, oh, it's fucking chaos.' My father laughed, a hacking bark, shook his head again.

‘But Francis, that's terrible,' said Maria, an expression on her face as if she had just caught the odour of something revolting. ‘Just horrible.'

‘Fucking chaos,' my father said again. ‘Oh dear, oh dear.'

That was, apparently, my father's favourite story, of a stag party he had met in a beer garden the summer before. They had been to the match, paid £300 to hire a dwarf for the day, who they had then made helplessly drunk by spiking his drinks. Perhaps it was the most palatable anecdote my father had in his repertoire; it would not surprise me.

‘Did you ever take Daniel to the football?' asked Maria, grateful for an excuse to change the subject.

My father turned to look at me, a furtive glance, looked back at Maria. His demeanour had changed instantly, from delighted to a surly guilt. ‘Can't say I did, no.'

‘But what was he like, Francis? As a boy?' Maria was probing and I wanted to warn her off, change the subject, but she was looking intently at my father and would not meet my eye, would not let go.

My father was chewing and he thought as he chewed, the silence only broken by the pop of his jaw. He swallowed, took a drink of wine, said eventually, ‘Quiet.'

‘Really.' There was a forced brightness in Maria's voice I recognised and knew was there to mask her true feelings, which I guessed were shock and revulsion. So that was it. I had been quiet. Eighteen years spent under his roof and that was the best he could come up with.

‘Took him snooker once,' my father said, as if even he had realised the meagreness of his response to Maria's question. I frowned, thought back, dimly remembered a dingy snooker hall, bright baize under the lights, my father pointing out the rudiments of the game until he lost his patience and went to the bar to sulk. I had played on my own, picking off the odd red, colour, waiting for him to be drunk enough to take me home.

My father held up his fork, examined what he had skewered, said in an offhand way, ‘He was shit.'

I brought my wallet with me to the doorstep, ready for the inevitable question, but this time my father did not even ask, just took my wallet from me, took out two, three, four notes, grunted what might have been a thanks.

‘Nice girl,' he said.

‘Yeah,' I said.

Maria had not kissed my father when he left, had instead shaken his hand, an act that told its own story. I guessed that he would not be invited back in a hurry.

‘Right, well.'

‘See you.'

‘Yeah.' My father half turned to go, stopped, as if there was something he wished to say to me. Since I had found out about my mother, and his part in her tragic story, I had felt that there was something he wanted to say to me, perhaps confess. But I did not expect him to ever find the moral courage and I was right, at least tonight. He turned without another word and walked away down the street, hands in his jacket pockets, hunched against whatever insult the world was preparing to throw his way. Some people were beyond help.

8

WHILE I HAD
been enduring my father's company, Gabe had been at home alone, drinking a beer, channel-surfing, glad to have his prosthetic leg off; stretched out on the sofa he was as content as he could be outside of a warzone. He crushed his beer can, laughing derisively at the war film he was watching, when a bullet drilled through his living room window, shattering it and passing his ear with a zip like a mosquito heard in the dark.

Regardless of the beer he'd had and the unlikeliness of a shooting in his leafy neighbourhood, he rolled off the sofa, reattached his leg and crawled to the wall next to the shattered window. Outside a car was idling, red-tinged exhaust fumes rising thickly into the night through the car's brake lights. Another shot came in, chipped wood off his window frame. Gabe ducked back, saw another bullet bore through the brick of his front wall, then tumble with a lazy subsonic buzz through his front room.

Gabe dragged himself underneath the window, took a look from the other side. A car pulled away from the kerb, slowly, as if to taunt him, show its impunity.

But almost two decades in the army had taught Gabe to keep his head under fire. Nor was he a man who could allow such insolence to go unanswered. Without a second's reflection, he got to his feet, picked up his keys, left his house, started his car and headed off in pursuit.

Gabe caught up with the car along Main Road, came up behind it doing seventy, headlights on full. His beams picked out heads, two in front, two back. One turned, saw Gabe approach. The car picked up speed and by the time they hit Gallows Corner roundabout they were pushing ninety, both cars up on two wheels. Gabe saw headlights through his side window, other drivers taking evasive action, slamming to a halt to avoid them as they barrelled through. The car in front nearly lost it exiting the roundabout, the back end spinning out, only recovered by colliding with a stationary van that bounced it back on course in a shower of sparks.

They hit the A12 and Gabe got up close behind the car, so close he could see the colour of the men's hair in his headlights, see the amazed expression on one of the men's face as he looked behind him. He got close enough to nudge the other car's bumper, saw the same man point a gun at him, no more than two metres away. Up ahead the lights were red, a busy intersection. Cars were streaming across and Gabe eased off. The men in front veered left, looking for a gap. They got halfway through before they were broadsided by a flatbed truck. The car lifted into the air, spun, steam pluming from its grille. Gabe pulled up, opened his door. All cars on the intersection had stopped. There was no movement from the destroyed car. He approached it, passed a car, saw a puzzled child's face pressed to the window. A bullet hit the front tyre of the car, a hiss of air escaping.

Civilian casualties, another thing Gabe had witnessed in the army. He backed off, back to his car, waited. Slowly the two front doors of the destroyed car opened, two men got out. Both with guns. One covered Gabe while another tried both rear doors, got one open. There must have been twenty, thirty cars watching, their beams picking out the men. None of the cars moving, as if they were at a chaotic drive-in watching the main feature. The man who had opened the rear door helped another man out. All three regrouped in front of their car, facing Gabe. By now he had retreated behind his car, protected by its length.

One man was still in the car. Didn't seem to concern the three standing in front. One stayed where he was. The two others ran to another car. They held their guns to both front windows, passenger and driver's, elbows raised high, guns pointing down. Mouths open, shouting urgent, unequivocal orders. The doors opened and a man and woman stepped out. The man had his hands up. The woman was in a short dress, flapping her hands, stepped backwards, went down on a stiletto heel. Both men got in and the man by the wrecked car ran over, got into the back. They backed up, gunned the engine, peeled away, snort of exhaust and rear lights disappearing into the night.

But a shootout at a major intersection, though traumatic for most present, was a relatively trivial event for Gabe. He got back into his car, negotiated his way through the stationary cars, and headed back in pursuit.

The car the men had stolen was fast and it took Gabe over three minutes to catch up. He saw them from a distance, hit 130 to get close. He tailgated them, looking for a way past, but they jinked across lanes, blocking him. He came alongside and they veered into him, sound of metal on metal, a shudder going through his car, tyres looking for grip. He braked, tucked back behind. The car in front took a sudden left, its back again sliding out. Gabe did not have time to follow, overshot their exit. He slammed on the handbrake, overcooked it and put his car in a spin. Got it headed back the way he'd come. Wrong way on a dual carriageway. Drove the two hundred metres back to the exit the men had taken, turned into it, lit up by the headlights of an approaching lorry, heard its horn Doppler past his rear bumper.

But by the time Gabe had found the car it was abandoned, three doors still open and lights still on. It was in an industrial estate, parked in front of a megastore selling cut-price furniture. Gabe stopped, opened his door, leaned on its frame, then hit it, again and again and again.

The police had come for him three hours later; his car had been picked up by eleven cameras during his pursuit, his plate run in seconds. He had called me two hours later, and I had arrived at the station at a little after five in the morning.

Sergeant Hicklin stopped the tape machine, sat back in his chair, smiled widely. I had to smother a smile back. My relationship with the police had never been a comfortable one; my father had instilled an abiding suspicion of them, and more recently I had been a victim of police corruption that a missing finger made hard to forget. Hicklin was old school and a man I respected, even trusted. Regardless, he was getting nothing from me.

‘Right, Mr McBride,' he said. ‘Off the record now. Stop pissing me about. You know exactly who they were.'

‘My client has already told you, on the record,' I said. ‘A full and detailed account. So how about you stop pissing about and either charge him, for what I have no idea, or let him go.'

‘For speeding, careless driving, dangerous driving, for…' Sergeant Hicklin seemed to run out of words. ‘Take your pick.'

‘If you were going to do it, you'd have done it,' I said. ‘We both know that.'

Sergeant Hicklin sighed, looked upwards as if there he might find some help. We were in an interview room, Hicklin one side of a desk, me and Gabe the other. Gabe was slouched in his chair; he seemed bored, uninterested now he'd finished his account. A uniformed policeman stood in the corner. He was young and was following it all with his eyes. Hicklin sighed again, yawned.

‘Want to hear the rest?' Hicklin said. ‘

There's a rest?' I said.

‘Oh, there's a rest.'

The man left in the car at the intersection was in hospital with a broken femur and various internal complications, Sergeant Hicklin told us. He wasn't talking, although that was mostly because so far he'd refused to regain consciousness. Now that the interview was over, Sergeant Hicklin was not so officious. There was something in his eyes, a light that I could not help but enjoy.

The other three abandoned their vehicle and made off on foot, running through the streets behind the A12. They came out under the white glare of road lights on a main road and saw a McDonald's drive-through where a couple in a car were picking up burgers. The men surrounded the car, opened the doors and when the driver put up a fight, they hit him repeatedly with the butt of a handgun while his girlfriend screamed, one hand still clenched on the bag holding her burgers, which, she said, there wasn't any way she was giving to them. Car, yes. Burgers, no chance.

Hicklin laughed softly as he recounted this detail, raised an eyebrow, invited a response. I looked at Gabe and shook my head. Hicklin knew what he was doing, was looking for Gabe to say something, give himself away now the pressure was off. But I was Gabe's lawyer, and that wasn't about to happen.

‘So,' I said, ‘we're free to go.'

‘I know where you live,' Hicklin said. ‘When I need you.'

I nodded at Gabe, who stood up, smiled at Hicklin, but did not say anything.

‘Please,' Hicklin said, putting out a hand. The uniformed policeman opened the door and led us to the front desk where Gabe signed for his possessions and we walked out together into the dark morning.

*

‘Want to tell me,' I said gently, ‘what the hell all that was about?'

We were in my car and so far Gabe had said nothing; he had his head against the window and might as well have been asleep.

‘Not really,' he said. ‘If I'm honest.'