The Good Son (13 page)

“Yeah.” Looking at me, now. “Wouldn't you say?”

I wanted to tell him where he could go. I wanted to say a thousand things. I wanted to pick myself up off the floor and punch his fucking lights out.

But I stayed where I was. Said nothing. Did nothing. I wasn't stupid.

“So tell me,” said Ayer, “about the fucking farmer.”

“I don't know where he is.”

Ayer took two steps forward, and bent down. He wrapped one large hand around my throat, pulled me up. I went with him. Didn't have a choice. He pushed me against the wall.

Squeezed.

Tears leaked from my eyes.

Blood vessels throbbed in my temples.

“You saw what we did to that bitch.”

“I don't fucking know.” He had to understand that I didn't have the information he wanted.

He let go of my throat.

I collapsed to the floor, coughing as I struggled to get the air back into my lungs. My chest felt like it was being stabbed from the inside.

“He doesn't fucking know,” Ayer said.

“No?”

“Fuck all we can do that about that.”

Liman tucked his shotgun away beneath the long coat. “Pity, that.”

“Yeah, real shame. All you can do is ask, eh?”

I stayed on the floor, watching as they made to leave.

Ayer said, “You know, I can never tell when a man is lying. So how about we call this a gentle fucking reminder of what happens if I find out you haven't been telling the truth.”

And, casually, as he walked out the door, he shot Bill in the stomach.

I thought for a moment that the noise of the gunshot had blown out my eardrums.

Bill fell back, smashed off the desk, thumped onto the floor.

When I looked up, Ayer and Liman were gone.

I tried to move, but my body had shut down. I was going nowhere.

Fuck that.

I forced myself onto my feet. Slowly.

Moved over to Bill. He was on the floor, behind his desk. Legs tangled up in the toppled chair.

Blood leaked onto the wooden boards. Already, he'd lost too much.

He looked at me with wide eyes and said, “I thought it would hurt more.”

“Hold on,” I said. Grabbed the phone off the desk.

The woman on the other end told me to remain calm. She sounded like somebody's mother. Comforting. Authoritative. I told her a man had been shot, and I was doing pretty well considering the circumstances.

An ambulance would be with me shortly. The police had been informed.

The office was two minutes walk from FHQ. I knew who'd get here first.

She asked me to stay on the line but I told her I couldn't. After hanging up, I tried to move Bill into the recovery position.

I just had to touch him and he screamed.

“If I stay still,” he told me, “it's fine.”

Sure.

“Look at me,” I told him. “Just keep your eyes on me.”

“Do you know what you're doing?”

“Fuck, no,” I said. I knew basic first aid, but the last thing I expected to see in my office was a man shot in the gut.

“There's a surprise, man.” He giggled. Blood pumped faster.

I grabbed Bill's jacket from where it was slung in the cupboard that laughingly passed for a cloakroom. I bundled it over the wound, pressed hard.

“Fucking hell!”

“You'll bleed out,” I said. “I don't want you dead.”

“Funny way of showing it.” Speaking slower, now, his words slurring. His eyeballs rolled.

“I'd rather hurt you than watch you die.” He smiled at that, but I could see he was getting away from me. “Fucking stay awake,” I said. He wasn't dying. Not if I could do something.

Not this time.

“Look at this fucking prick! There's your criminal right there.”

I remember thinking I should never have walked in. I should have stayed out of the way. But I couldn't help myself.

Lindsay started to stand up, his eyes fixed on mine.

I ignored him.

“Martin,” I said, with no idea of how I was going to continue.

“Fuck you.” Elaine's father stood up. His chair scraped backwards across the floor.

We needed to talk. If he would just listen, maybe we could reach a kind of understanding.

But instead of saying anything, all I did was clear my throat.

Lindsay said, “This couldn't wait?” He'd already turned off the tape recorder. This confrontation was never going on the record.

Martin Barrow was a tall man, with a sinewy body and muscles like thick rope. He had been bald since his late thirties, and his prominent nose gave him an almost regal appearance.

He walked round the desk.

Lindsay stood between us. “Mr Barrow, please sit down.”

I tried to say something. “I just wanted to—”

Elaine's father made to rush me. The tendons in his neck stood out. His eyes bulged. His skin darkened with rage.

Lindsay held him back. Looking at me. “Get the fuck out of here.”

Martin Barrow kept trying to force his way past the other man. “He knows it, too. He knows what he did. The fucking coward. Can't even face up to his own responsibility.” Then, perfectly still, his eyes on
me: “This was your fucking fault.”

How could I argue with that?

“Follow my finger.”

“I'm fine.”

“Follow the finger.” The doctor wagged a digit in front of my face. I followed it as best I could. She nodded, apparently satisfied. “No concussion.”

“I could have told you that.”

She sighed, and folded her arms across her chest. “You were lucky. From the sound of it, anyway.” She was a tall woman with curly dark hair and a strong Mancunian accent. And an expression that told me she wasn't going to take any shite. Not from me. Not from anyone.

“How's Bill doing?”

“The man who came in with you? I don't know.”

She turned away. There was a sink on the wall behind the bed. She scrubbed her hands there.

“I could find out,” she said.

“I'd feel better if you could.”

“That's something, I suppose.”

I tried to stand up. She watched me and said, “You didn't mention any discomfort in your leg.”

“Old injury.”

“Really?”

“Aye.”

“We should take a look at it.”

“It's been looked at. Nothing doing.”

“How long ago?”

“Long enough.”

“It could be worth another examination. They might have overlooked something the first time round. Or
you've developed something since….”

“No, its fine.”

The Mancunian doctor told me to lie back down on the bed again and wait for someone to come and have a word with me.

“You said I was okay.”

“Wait,” she said.

I lay back down on the bed, let my head sink into the pillow. I stayed like that until she was gone. Then I swung my legs over the end of the bed.

I moved out from behind the curtains and limped through A&E. My calf muscles screamed in protest.

A nurse confronted me. A short woman who could have been any age between twenty and forty. I doubted she ever smiled. Didn't have the features for it. “Can I help you?” Nothing helpful in her tone, either.

“I'm looking for a friend.”

“Visiting hours are—”

“I know,” I said. “He was brought in here maybe half an hour ago. Gunshot wound…”

She nodded. “I heard about that. Unusual for the Dee, eh?”

I agreed with her.

She looked almost ready to let me go, and then: “You came in with him. With the police.”

“Yes.”

“You shouldn't be walking about.”

“I just need to know that my friend is…”

She pointed back the way I had come. “I don't have time for this. None of us do. It's not just you and your friend… we've got all the usual bloody headaches to deal with, too.”

“It's okay,” said a voice from behind me. “We'll have a word with him.”

Lindsay nodded in greeting when I turned to face him.

“How is he?”

“Your wee pal? He'll live.”

“Good.”

“I don't know about you, but I could do with some fresh air.”

The nurse said, “I'm not sure that it's safe for the patient to—”

“Oh, he looks fine to me,” said Lindsay. “I'm no doctor, of course.” His own joke provoked a genuine smile.

I guess someone had to find him funny.

Outside, we looked to the west of the city. From the A&E entrance we could see all the way down to the Kingsway. Car lights slipped through the dark.

“It was touch and go,” said Lindsay, “when they got him in.”

“But he's fine?”

“He'll live.” He sparked up a cigarette. “Like I said.”

“But?”

“He might be paralysed.”

“Fuck.”

Lindsay took a puff on the cigarette, then turned to look at me. “That's one reaction.” Here we were again. Someone's life thrown in the shitter and it all came back to me.

I could look for someone else to blame, but here was the truth: I was the one who had put him in the position where those bastards could shoot him.

Lindsay offered me a cigarette. Nothing friendly in
the gesture.

“I don't smoke.”

“You did when you joined the force.”

The first time we ever met: the now defunct smokers' lounge in FHQ. Even then, our relationship could only have been described as hostile.

Love at first sight?

In this case, try “loathing”.

“I got health conscious.”

“Self-righteous prick.” The insult was slung half-heartedly.

“You wanted to talk.”

“That's right. Because I think you're full of shite.” He shivered as he blew out smoke. “When you say you don't know why these pricks shot your friend, I don't believe a word of it.”

“I told you everything I know.”

“Everything?”

Not quite. “Yes.”

“When you don't like someone, you start to lie to them instinctively. I know how it is. There was an old DI… Buchan, that was the bastard's name… Jesus, can't even remember his first name… Adam, maybe? Alex? Who cares, right? He used to tell me I would never make it. Told me I had to be willing to bend a few rules here and there to uphold the principles of being a copper. Don't get me wrong, he wasn't bent, he was just… flexible. And a stubborn shite with it. When I joined CID, some smart prick thought it would be funny to put us together. We had the worst fucking history of anyone in the division because we started lying to each other. Each one trying to fuck the other over. For shits and giggles. Or just because we didn't like each other's faces. Fucking disaster.”

He blew out more smoke, watched it drift in the
air. Waited, as though expecting me to say something.

I pretended I hadn't been listening.

“Fine,” said Lindsay. “Sulk like a fucking child, see if I care. But get this, pal: I know you're kidding me on. You know something, and this keeping shit to yourself won't do anyone any good.” He dropped the cigarette, stubbed it out with his toe. “Least of all that poor prick in surgery.”