Survival of Thomas Ford, The (13 page)

Jack McCallum turned the ignition key back and the Subaru engine died out.

They were parked on the opposite side of the road from Thomas Ford’s house, but much further down than Jimmy and Robert had been the night before.

“We can’t see anything from here dad eh?”

“We can see enough.”

They had just spent two hours parked outside Lorna’s flat, waiting for her to come home. Every few minutes Jack had sent Jimmy into her building to rap on her door in case she was in and asleep or just not answering. Then, on the way to Thomas Ford’s house, Jack had taken a detour to pass Robert Ferguson’s house and Jimmy had clearly seen Robert and his mum sitting in their living room, ghostly shadows from Coronation Street flickering across their white visages.

Jack had grunted and said coldly,

“They’ll keep.”

Now Jimmy was staring at the pavement outside 16 Cromwell Drive. A woman passed suddenly with a dog and Jimmy recognised the dog from the night before. Jimmy was cursing his weakness now. Something about being in Thomas Ford’s garden had broken him, seeing the man there in the kitchen. He still hadn’t recovered. The fall-out from that had been landing on him ever since. That was why he had told Lorna everything.

It had only taken 24 hours for it all to come apart and now here he was stuck in the Subaru with his father. The worst thing about Jack McCallum tonight was the cold calm that had entered him. Jimmy had grown used to verbal abuse and beatings. But this calm iced demeanour was difficult to get used to.

Jack sniffed. Then he said,

“We only need to be close enough to see if someone comes or someone goes. And without us getting seen. You got too close last night. You don’t ever get that close, Jimmy, not unless you know exactly what you’re going to do. You had it all arse backwards. But maybe it’s for the best.”

Jack tapped the steering wheel rhythmically with his forefinger. He looked up and down the long, broad road of Victorian and Georgian properties. This was the cream of the city’s real estate. Jack himself owned three of the larger properties on this road, under a company set up using the alias, Graham Farnham. As Graham Farnham, Jack was a respected shadow or sleeping partner in a good percentage of the city’s business, and all without any conflict of interest charges ever arising. Often Graham Farnham’s company would acquire land one week that Jack McCallum started building on the next. These Poles who came and went, even the clever ones like Jack’s foreman, Lanski, they didn’t have a clue what they were getting involved with in this city. Same went for men like Radthammon or even that other doctor, Nissen. Jack regarded them as only half-men, a form of transient adolescent flashing across the landscape. They wouldn’t last. Only men like him lasted and made a mark on their time and place. Now the boy had done something stupid and threatened the edifice somewhat. But he would learn.

That was a father’s responsibility after all; to show by example, not just talk.

“What’s the fucking point of sitting here eh?” said Jimmy. “It’s Lorna that’s the real danger just now, worse danger than Ford eh?”

“Aye? Is that right? How do you know that? Fucking assumptions. How do you know that lassie isn’t sitting in that man’s house right now, telling him everything?”

Jimmy looked stunned.

“Why would she do that?”

“She came to me eh? What’s to stop her going to him? She’s trying to come up in the world, boy. You should take a leaf out her book eh? She’s discovered the joy of being an entrepreneur. I almost envy the lassie. There’s no buzz like it. She has to go back and forth from me to Ford, until she gets the offer she wants, see?”

“What if she’s already seen him then, and got the offer she wants?”

“No, boy, it doesn’t work that fast. She’d come back to me again, before she made the decision. She’d need to give us a chance to outbid Ford. That’s business, son. That’s what I’ve been trying to teach you.”

Jimmy sniffed. Just then, Thomas Ford and Lorna appeared together on the pavement outside 16 Cromwell Drive. Jimmy blinked and stared at them. He was trying to make himself believe he was really seeing them, that they weren’t his imagination playing a trick. Thomas Ford and Lorna turned their heads and seemed to look directly at the Subaru.

“Dad! Fuck’s sake. It’s them together. Fuck’s sake. Are they seeing us?”

“No if you stay still. We’re just shapes behind the tint from where they are.”

“What if they come down this way?”

“Then they’ll see us.”

Jack bit his lip and raised his eyebrows. He tapped the steering wheel twice. Thomas Ford and Lorna started walking along Cromwell Drive, away from the Subaru.

“He’s holding her hand!” Jimmy shouted. “How the fuck’s this going on? No, this is no right. Eh?”

“Shut up, boy. I’m trying to think.”

“That’s them off to the police,” said Jimmy. “The station’s up that way.”

“Aye, five miles up that way.”

“We’ve got to see where they’re going! Fuck’s sake!”

“No. What else is up that way?”

“The off-license. The park.”

“Maybe just out for a walk,” said Jack.

“Out for a fucking walk! She doesnae even know that cunt!”

“She knows him now, boy. She’s holding his hand. No, we sit here and wait on them. They’ll be back.”

There was a warm tingling in Thomas Ford’s fingers as he walked along beside Lorna. It felt like he’d been transported somehow, into a new place. The last few weeks seemed to be washed away from him, a layer of old skin dropping off. It amazed him how his steps were synchronised already with her steps. Lea had always done that thing of walking a half-step in front, no matter how fast or slow they would walk together. Lorna didn’t do that and Thomas felt guilty for noticing the difference and liking it.

“This whole area is so peaceful, Thomas. Is it always like this?”

“Aye. Nothing much ever happens round here.”

“Look at these beautiful old trees.”

“Aye, there’s character in them isn’t there? I draw them sometimes. You could imagine them coming to life and walking off.”

Lorna laughed.

“That one looks angry,” she said.

“Aye, but not that one.”

“No, not that one. That one’s nice.”

“You’ve never been in this park before?”

She shook her head and kept her eyes on the tree.

“I think it’s the city’s best park,” he said. “Even when I lived on the other side of town I would come here to go for walks.”

“Is it safe at night?”

He shrugged and laughed.

“Safe as anything else.”

“That’s not saying much, Thomas.”

“No. I suppose not.”

“I do feel safe with you, though,” she said. “I haven’t really felt safe for ages.”

“Why?”

“Him. Being with him. Around him. He’s not safe. I don’t think he’s right in the head.”

“Maybe I’m not right in the head either.”

“Aye, but if you’re not right in the head, Thomas, it’s because of him.”

Thomas sniffed and looked up at the dark sky.

“He’s not here, Lorna. Forget about him for just now.”

“I bet you can’t really forget about him.”

“Just now I could. Walking here just now, with you, it’s the first time in weeks I could forget about him.”

“Aye?”

“Aye.”

He felt her hand squeeze his palm.

“I’ll shut up about him then,” she said.

But Thomas Ford was lying. In his brain the indelible image of the erect black hairstyle, black eyes, birdlike nose, still loomed. Framed by the blue sky above and the red bonnet below, Jimmy’s head, incandescent, searing, a grotesque human torch illuminating Thomas Ford’s ravaged mind.

“What are you thinking about?” said Lorna.

“I don’t know. This has been a strange day. For you just as much as for me.”

Lorna nodded. Her eyes were on the path at her feet, the angled toes of her boots.

“All the days have been strange though,” said Thomas, “since I woke up after the crash.”

“You were asleep six weeks weren’t you? I remember when they brought you in. Then I was cleaning round your bed for weeks and weeks.”

“Aye, six weeks,” said Thomas.

“I watched you sleeping sometimes. Some of them aren’t nice to watch sleeping. But you looked like you were enjoying the sleep.”

Thomas laughed.

“Aye?”

“Oh aye. The nurses said that too. That you looked happy asleep there.”

“I don’t remember anything from it. Not even any dreams.”

“I’d like to go to sleep for six weeks, Thomas. Sometimes I think I’d just like to go to sleep forever. Do you ever feel like that?”

“No. Six weeks was long enough.”

At the edge of the park, where Cromwell Drive met Fortsmith Road, Jack McCallum and Jimmy stood like newly-exorcised and roaming ghosts, staring in through the metal railings at the distant walking silhouettes of Thomas Ford and Lorna.

“This is fucking unbelievable,” said Jimmy.

“Shut up,” said Jack.

Jack was trying to run through the permutations in his mind, the series of moves Lorna must have made today to have ended up here, walking in the park with Thomas Ford. But it didn’t make sense. Jack couldn’t make it add up, no matter which way he spun the dice.

“Something’s fucked up here right enough boy,” said Jack. “This is what you get when amateurs step into the playing field. Unpredictable odds. Give me a hardened professional to deal with every time, son. They might beat you, aye, but at least it will make sense afterwards when you’re licking your wounds back at the ranch eh?”

“What are we going to fucking do?” Jimmy almost squealed.

“You find your balls for a start eh son? Come on, get a grip. It’s no even the end of round one yet.”

Jimmy stared longingly at Lorna’s shape in the park. He had never wanted her like he did now, not even when she wore the boots and went on top. The pain of seeing her with Ford was starting to turn him on, bizarrely, against his will.

“I loved her,” said Jimmy. “I really loved her. I didn’t realise until now.”

Jack looked at his boy with disgust.

“Don’t talk shite, Jimmy.”

Jack sniffed and shook his head. He looked away from the couple in the park. He gazed down Cromwell Drive. It seemed very quiet. No people. No traffic. Not even a stray cat. Jack tried to remember if that was normal for this street.

“Was it this quiet here last night?”

“How do you mean?” said Jimmy.

“The street boy! Last night. Was it this quiet?”

Jimmy looked at his dad, then back down Cromwell Drive.

“I cannae mind. Aye, I think so. Just a woman walking a dog was all.”

“No son, this doesn’t feel right. This could be a set-up. The cops could be watching us right now. I think it’s a trap boy! That’s why they’re in there. She’s grassed.”

Jimmy stared at his father. He saw fear in his father’s eyes.

“You’re just shiting it!” said Jimmy. “Cops wouldn’t be here for us. They’d be straight round the house, no here!”

“I don’t know, boy.”

Jimmy watched his father’s neck crane like a terrified, hunted beast.

“I don’t know, Jimmy. It doesn’t feel right boy. Let’s back off the now. I need time to think.”

Jimmy shook his head. This was as useless as the visit to the garden the night before. Where was all his father’s big talk now?

“We haven’t got time to think any more,” said Jimmy. “There she is in there with him now eh? What are we going to do?”

“I didn’t plan for this,” Jack hissed. “She’s moving too fast. Doesn’t smell right.”

Jimmy stared at Jack, focusing hard on the fear in his father’s eyes. From a branch in a tree high above their heads, a lonely bird screeched aggressively into the night. Jimmy looked away from his father and up into the branches.

“Did you hear that?” said Lorna.

“What?” said Thomas Ford.

“That bird. It sounded angry.”

“You seem to have a thing about birds.”

“I like them. Aye. Tomorrow I want to get some bread for yours in the garden. Is that OK?”

“None of my business,” said Thomas.

“Oh, you want it hopping round your garden all day starving do you?”

“I never notice it.”

“That’s not very charitable, Thomas. You’ve got to try to take care of wee things.”

Lorna turned towards the tree she had heard the bird call from. For a moment, she thought she saw shadows there, like people standing near the tree, outside the park, on the pavement. But then the shadows were gone.

“That’s strange,” she said. “I thought I saw something.”

“What?”

“Nothing. Just a shadow.”

Thomas looked over in the direction she was indicating.

“Tell you the truth, Lorna. I’m starting to worry about this Jimmy. I sort of forgot it for the last hour. But what if they come back to the house tonight? What if they’re there now?”

“He wouldn’t be there with the lad from last night, Thomas. I saw him today. He didn’t look like he wanted any part in it any more.”

Jack and Jimmy had edged themselves round the railings a few feet, to shelter behind the tree with the screeching bird.

“They didn’t see us,” said Jack. “If they did, they’ll just think it’s people passing.”

“We’ve got to get them before they go to the police,” said Jimmy.

“They might already have been.”

“Phone mum. If the police haven’t been to the house, then no-one’s grassed yet.”

Jack felt the slick of sweat above his eyebrows. He hadn’t thought of the phone. Jimmy heard Jack’s horny fingernails clumsy against the keyboard.

“Cathy!” hissed Jack quietly. “Cathy, hi. Everything alright at the house?”

Jimmy heard his father do a false laugh into the phone.

“No, no, no reason for asking. No visitors today then? No calls? Quiet day then eh. That’s good. I’ll be home soon love. Jimmy’s with me too. We’ll be back soon. No. No. OK. Bye love.”

“See?” said Jimmy. “This is the chance.”

“OK boy.”

Jack reached in his pocket for the Subaru keys.

“Aye, Jimmy. You’re probably right. Run back down, get the car, bring it up and park beside the gates there.”