The Good Son (18 page)

“Why?”

“Release, isn't it? Fire fucking purifies everything. Burns what you don't need.”

And I realised that what I was doing was starting a little fire of my own. Waiting for purification and for the past to crumble away into ashes.

“Can't say I thought much of your message.”

Susan stood in the door. In full uniform. Her expression stern.

If I was a crook, I wouldn't have stood a chance.

“I didn't really intend to leave one.”

She nodded, walked in. Stopped when she saw the faded bloodstain on the floor.

“How is he? Your friend.”

“He's fine. I think.”

“You think?”

“I haven't been to see him. I called, but…”

“He can't blame you.”

“His boyfriend can.”

She considered that for a moment. “My mother would have said you'd make a fine martyr.”

I didn't ask what Susan would say.

Tearing her gaze away from the floor, she said, “The DI said you came to see him the other day.”

“That was a mistake. I thought I had something to say and… I didn't.”

“Maybe. He asked me if I could have a word with
you. Said he thought I might be able to convince you to see sense.”

“Aye?”

“Right enough, seeing as he thinks we're friends.”

“Are we?”

She walked past the desk, dropped into the recliner. “I'm not a little girl, Steed. I'm not going to pretend I wasn't hurt by what happened but… you were in mourning and I was… in my own place. We needed each other.”

“That has nothing to do with it.”

“It has everything to do with it. It's the way you are. Someone reaches out and you pull away. Always amazed me how she ever managed to make you love her in the first place.”

My stomach tightened. “Don't bloody do this.”

“I'm sorry, Steed. But you can't go around treating everyone like the enemy. Some of us are your friends. Hell, even a prick like Lindsay, he isn't out to get you. He's not the bad guy.”

“Bastard's turned you around.”

“Lindsay's a good copper. Maybe it doesn't make him a great human being, but it doesn't make him an evil bastard, either.” Her face softened. “Maybe I said some things before… in the heat of the moment. You bring that out in people.”

“Yeah?” I thought of Elaine's father. The heat of the moment lasting almost a year.

“Yeah,” she said. “I always liked you, Steed, you know that? Always thought your heart was in the right place.”

Susan wasn't the type of person to backtrack. She'd always been straightforward, meaning every word she said.

“Four people have died,” Susan said. “Because of
something you know or something your client, the farmer, knows.” And there she was: Constable Susan, again. Her humanity gone, hidden behind the armour that every copper needs to wear on the job.

“Four people?”

“Daniel Robertson. Katrina Egg. And the two men who died this afternoon. That's why you called me, right?” A crack appeared in her armour, but only for a moment. “They were no accounts, really. Local hard men. Shot to death in Burns's front hall. Burns himself… someone gave him a real good kicking. He's stable, but refusing to talk. No surprise there. He says he can't think of a reason why he was attacked. He didn't know his assailants. A mugging. His words, not ours.” I must have let something slip, because she kept going. “And you know something, right, Steed? Or at least you have your suspicions.”

I shook my head.

But I had more than just suspicions.

“This is a police matter, now. You can keep your client confidentiality and all that other nonsense as close to your chest as you want. If you keep pushing us away, more people are going to get hurt.”

I clenched my jaw, pushed my teeth together so tight it began to hurt, the pain shooting up the side of my face and pounding into my head.

“So maybe you want to think about it,” she said.

I stood, quiet for a moment, unsure how to respond. And then: “If you were anyone else, I'd have told you go fuck yourself.”

She stepped back, holding her breath. I thought maybe she was about to explode, but instead she merely let out a little sigh. “I thought I knew you a little better, Steed,” she said, before turning to walk out of the office.

I waited a moment, went out on the stairwell. Found her card lying at the top of the stairs. Maybe she expected me to call her when I calmed down. I picked up the card, screwed it up in my fist and let it drop back to the floor.

When I went back into the office, I upended Bill's desk.

And then tried to work out if I felt any better.

I was back at the hospital early that evening.

Not to see Bill. I had other concerns.

A heavy-set man stood outside the private room, large arms folded across his expansive chest. The doctors and nurses passing the door kept their distance.

I made to walk through like the big man wasn't even there.

He grabbed me by the shoulder. Tight. Even underneath the baggy shellsuit he was wearing, it was clear that his bulk was all muscle. He brought his face close to mine. Assaulted me with stale breath.

“Can I ask your business?” Polite but threatening.

“My name's McNee,” I said. “He knows who I am.”

“What do you want with Mr Burns?” Enunciating each word as if I hadn't heard him the first time.

“It's private.”

He looked at me suspiciously and then said, “Hold on,” motioning for me to wait. He opened the door and walked inside.

A doctor walked past, eyed me suspiciously. “I didn't realise you employed private security,” I said. He kept walking, his head down.

I could have listened, but I didn't think there'd be anything worth hearing. Besides, if the walking meat slab came out and found me eavesdropping, I doubted he'd wait to hear my excuses. Probably make sure I got my own private room.

When he came out, he said, “In you go.”

I moved past him. Inside the room, there was a single window on the far wall and a toilet area through a second door. But Burns wasn't getting up to go anywhere.

When I saw him that morning he had been an old man who still buzzed with the anger of his youth. Unafraid, unbowed, and unbroken.

Now, his reputation, everything he had worked so hard to maintain, had been stripped from him. I looked at him wrapped in white hospital sheets, his face lined and his skin pale where it wasn't blotted dark with bruises. A corpse that didn't realise it was supposed to be dead.

“Take a seat.” His voice was soft, lacking the edge I'd noted during our last conversation.

I sat down, made sure the chair stayed a good distance from the bed.

“Your limp's looking better, son.”

I hadn't even thought about it. Seven months ago when I'd come to the hospital for my last session, the psychiatrist had said, “You know there's nothing wrong with your leg.” I'd called him on talking crap. “I've seen your medical records. Okay, you were hurt in the accident, but you should be on the mend. I have to wonder whether it's something else.”

It wasn't supposed to be our last session, but that's
when I told him where he could stick his analysis.

“You owe me,” Burns said when I failed to acknowledge his observation.

“I don't owe you anything,” I said. “What's changed for me? What's changed for my client?”

“I put my fucking life on the line for you and your client, son,” he said and if his voice had been capable of it, he would have shouted. However, the words came out weak and hushed. “Look at what it got me.”

“They didn't kill you.”

“No bastard's going to kill me.”

I shook my head. “They meant to leave you alive.”

“A mistake.”

“No, I don't think it was. They're saying that you're nothing. They want you to know that they don't care if you live. Because you can't touch them.”

“That's a mistake, too. These pricks, they can't help making them.”

“You and your kind don't lash out at each other for no good reason. At least not the old school fellas. You've got a code of honour, even vicious bastards like Egg. So this was personal.”

He couldn't look me in the eye.

“Five years ago, you would have quietly had those two bastards disappear the minute that woman turned up dead. It was an affront to you. On your turf, no less. Gordon Egg wouldn't have batted an eyelid if you'd taught them a lesson. You and Egg are such close friends that his men should accord you a certain amount of respect on your home turf. Unless all of that's changed and you just didn't bother making it public knowledge. Because God knows how much damage that could do to your reputation elsewhere.”

I scratched the chair forward across the floor, getting in close. Adrenaline rushed through me. My face was hot and it was an effort to speak as my jaw clenched. I felt like finishing the job that Egg's thugs had started.

The words came out slow and measured. “You knew all of that when I came to see you. You knew you were fucked, that you couldn't help me even if you wanted to. But I guess it was some misplaced pride made you pretend you could still do anything you wanted. You're getting sloppy in your old age. Funny, isn't it? Egg's on top and he's making sure he kicks you all the way down to the bottom. Maybe already grooming some smart young thing to take your place? Who's the next big player up here, eh? Or do you want me to ask around? Since I guess you're no longer in the loop.”

His breathing changed. Slower, now. Harder. Forcing himself to keep calm. The veins stood out in his neck. “Do you know about the two dead lads?” he asked.

“It was on the news. A couple of thugs.”

“Aye, you fucking prick. Call them that if you like, but they were some mother's sons. Good lads.”

Did he ever think, I wondered, about the people he'd killed? Realise that they, too, were some mother's sons?

I doubted that it ever crossed his mind.

“I'm going to be around for a long time yet, son,” he said. “And that fucking turncoat cunt, he'll be fucking sorry his lads didn't kill me.”

I stood up. “I know them.”

He looked at me with dead eyes.

“I know their names,” I said. “Tell me about them.”

“Are you going to go crying to the police with their names, tell the coppers about the bad boys who threatened you?”

I shook my head. “I'm going to ask them to leave. No middle men. No police.”

“Ask them to leave?” he said, his tone carefully neutral. “Just like that?”

I nodded. “Just like that,” I said.

Burns grinned. “Did he jump or was he pushed?” he said, talking to himself, mulling over the question.

And he smiled. It was not a comforting expression. Showing something of the man who had greeted me in his kitchen the day before. Maybe he wasn't so beaten as I'd allowed myself to believe. “I think I'm beginning to know the answer, son.”

He told me what he could.

“First time I heard of these lads was maybe ten years ago. When Gordon Egg noticed their… unique talents.”

They'd been with the big man's firm maybe five years before that, although they were little more than foot soldiers and it was likely Egg hadn't even been aware of them until they started working for him in Brixton.

“Christ, they earned their stars there. Started bringing in three or four times the revenue the big man expected.” Talking about Egg's firm like it was a rival business. “He started asking around, found out who brought them in. That's where things started going wrong, because their contact was your dead man. Daniel Robertson.”

I already knew Daniel had been close to Egg. It was one hell of a reference for two small-time hard men.

They way Burns told it, Egg began handing out choice jobs to the lads and, impressed with their
ability to dish out pain, started pulling them up the ladder. “Nobody grumbled. Nobody had the fucking balls to grumble.”

By the tail end of the nineties, Daniel Robertson, Mathew Ayer and Richard Liman were working together as equals. They had become the public face of the firm as Egg drifted into the background, determined to make his new found respectability seem legit.

“He knew soon enough he'd made a mistake,” Burns told me.

The mistake was putting Ayer and Liman on a level with the man who had brought them into the organisation. Creating a situation that was unstable at best. As the years passed, the unholy trinity that Egg had created began to show cracks. Rumours of violent confrontations between all three men began to spread through the firm.

And through it all, Egg did nothing.

“After all, what the fuck could he do? Admit he made a mistake? Jesus Christ, you don't do that. Not in our life, eh? So he did what he could, and tried to make things right between the lads.”

Except it was a case of two against one. Liman and Ayer had come into the firm together, worked at their best together. They were inseparable. “A fucking married couple. Except instead of saying they love each other, they kneecap poor bastards who can't keep up their debts.”

In the last two years, the three men had rarely worked together. The only thing that kept them from killing each other, it seemed, was Egg himself. “The old bastard has this going for him: he knows how to keep a man under control. Jesus, in another world, he'd be running the fucking country.”

And then Liman and Ayer got the advantage, discovered that Daniel had been having an affair with Egg's wife.

Burns had already told me about Katrina Egg's infidelities.

What made this affair so different?

The fact that Daniel had been set up as Egg's golden child? The dual betrayal too much for the old bastard to handle?