The Good Son (23 page)

“Anything you want to tell me?”

I shook my head.

“Maybe why your wee prick of a client thought it was a good idea to try and stick a knife in a couple of hard bastards who wouldn't think twice about snapping him in half?”

I sipped at the coffee, slowly. “No idea,” I said. “But grief'll do funny things to a person.”

Lindsay digested this. Considered it. Ignored it.

“Tell me something,” I said. “You showed up mighty bloody quick.”

“Like the cavalry, aye?”

“Sure. You were following me?”

“You were under surveillance.”

My heart jumped. I thought about the gun I'd
taken with me to the meeting. How I'd told Lindsay I'd taken it from Liman, thinking it was a detail Ayer wasn't really going to dispute. Not when he had other matters to consider.

“How long?”

“Long enough.”

I nodded.

“One more thing,” he said, and if I didn't know him better I could have sworn he was doing some half-baked Columbo impression. “There was a third gun.”

“Aye?”

“I mean, we've got the one you were pointing at the Cockney prick's head when we came in. And the shotgun his wee friend had been carrying. And then this third gun that comes from nowhere…”

“So… the prick had a backup weapon.”

He smiled at that. “A backup weapon? Do you spend your days watching fucking American police shows?” He snorted. “A fucking backup weapon.” The unasked question:
If that's true, how did you get hold of it?

I shrugged, trying for nonchalant.

He didn't mention it again.

We sat there in silence for a while. It was the kind of quiet you find among old friends. Neither of us showing discomfort with it.

Lindsay had wanted to make me responsible for the bloodbath at the cemetery. But I was nothing more than a bystander. The only reliable witness he had. He may have kept me in interview one for the full six hours, but that was more out of petty revenge than any real suspicion.

I was still worried about the gun.

I knew why Lindsay had mentioned it. Even if he had no proof that I had been in possession of an illegal firearm, he wanted to make me sweat.

Mission accomplished.

Susan was waiting for me when I left the station. Out of uniform. The harsh yellow light of the early evening sun seemed to soften when it fell on her.

In the car, I lolled in the passenger seat, watched the city roll past outside. In the aftermath of the storm, everything seemed quiet. The streets were almost empty, the glistening pavements reflecting the light from above. The walls of buildings were darkened with the rain, and the windows of parked cars were beaded with tiny droplets of water.

My body became heavy. The movement of the car and the peace of the city was enough to lull me towards sleep. After all, I thought, I deserved it. To close my eyes if only for a moment.

I barely remember arriving at the flat. I have only a vague memory of climbing the stairs, my arm around Susan's shoulders.

What I do remember is being in the living room, sprawled out on the sofa, Susan asking how I was doing.

And then: “Would you have killed him?”

“What?”

“Would you have killed him?”

“I wanted to.”

“Is that really an answer?”

“No.”

It was strange to hear myself talking. The painkillers were having their effect and I felt like an observer of my own life, surprised by my actions as much as anyone else was.

After Susan left, I went to bed, but stopped short of climbing in and collapsed on top of the covers. I didn't sleep. But I didn't want to move.

Except…

People thrive on closure, on the illusion of order in a chaotic world. I'm no different.

Loose ends make me uncomfortable.

Like James Robertson.

My client.

He had attacked two hard men. Killers. So full of primal rage, he'd taken everyone by surprise.

I knew that he was a changeable man. Had a temper. I'd witnessed his judgemental attitude towards other people, even his own family. But there was a great deal about him that I don't think I ever
understood.

A great deal I'd seen and simply ignored.

If I hadn't become distracted by other events, I might have been able to help him. All of this could have been avoided.

I was missing a connection. Something had made him attack two men whose business, whose very nature, was death. Was it out of character? Or merely some part of my client I had blinded myself to?

What had I said to Lindsay in the interview room? Words slipping casually from my lips in the manner of a well-worn platitude: “Grief'll do funny things to a person.”

And I wondered whether the grieving process had started for Robertson on the discovery of his brother's corpse, or if it had begun some time before even that.

I was pulled from sleep by my mobile ringing. Hadn't even thought about turning it off. Who was I expecting to call?

I answered; groggy.

Robertson said, “I killed him.”

Sleep and painkillers made me slow. “What?”

He said it again.

When I didn't answer, he told me where he was. Said he wanted to talk.

Driving over the road bridge, I kept the window wound down. The wind blew hard into my face and
kept me awake.

With my busted right hand, I found it difficult to control the car. Changing gears was the worst, letting go of the wheel and leaning my right forearm forward to try and keep it straight.

I should have stayed at home. Called Lindsay, told him what I knew.

I could claim that I wasn't thinking straight. That adrenaline, anger and painkillers were what kept me from picking up the phone.

But that was a load of shite. Because what stopped me from picking up the phone was the need to see this through to the end. The same stupid pride that had led me to kill a man.

The same stupid pride that convinced me I was the only one who could tie up the loose ends, set the world right.

Maybe I was already too late. Maybe I had the whole situation wrong.

I thought that I understood what Robertson was thinking. Finally knew why he had walked into my office that day. He had been looking for someone to blame for his brother's death. That was why he had come to me. A private investigator wouldn't step on his toes.

I should have seen all of this straight away, but for some reason I'd chosen to ignore it. Perhaps because something in his desire for revenge mirrored my own needs.

At St Michaels, I almost ramped up onto the embankment, as I turned onto the old farm roads. The car rumbled on uneven surfaces. Eventually, I came across an abandoned Mitsubishi Shogun, mud spattered across its tyre arches and the windows in need of a wipe-down. I parked behind the other
vehicle, climbed out the car and slipped through the undergrowth.

James Robertson stood beneath the skeletal tree where his brother's life had ended. At his feet, a length of rope was coiled like a sleeping snake. The man's back was to me, and he stood perfectly still.

My feet cracked dead leaves and he turned. The movement near shocking, as though a statue had unexpectedly come to life. The whites of his eyes were red-raw roadmaps. He'd been crying.

I stepped forward.

“I think I get it now,” I said. “The truth, I mean.”

He stood his ground, his body language challenging me.

“You made him kill himself,” I said. “That was why it looked so convincing. Did you plan that? I mean, was that how you thought you would avoid complicity? Was that how you avoided feeling like you had nothing to do with his death? Was that what made you think you weren't really a killer?”

“No.”

“Then why?”

“He had to understand.”

I nodded. “Make me understand,” I said.

He hesitated. Then he told me everything.

Robertson's living room the afternoon his brother came home:

“I want you to have it,” Daniel said. “All of it. The money.”

“And if I don't?”

Daniel shrugged, like it was no big deal, like people got offered cases of cash in their front rooms every day. “Then get rid of it.”

That had been where Robertson's story ended the first time he told it to me. Daniel had walked out. Either upset by his brother's refusal to accept the proffered gift or so ashamed of his life that he couldn't stand to face judgement from all that remained of his family.

I should have picked up on the lie. Robertson's version begged the question of how he knew where to find the money when we agreed to meet Ayer and Liman in the graveyard. Begged a lot more than that. Had I deliberately blinkered myself to the holes in his story because, on some level, I connected with what I saw as a man in mourning?

In the shadow of the tree where his brother's body had been found, he told me the truth.

“Why?” Robertson had asked.

Daniel snapped shut the case, took a deep breath. “I made a mistake. Fuck it, I made a lot of mistakes. Took a lot of stupid fuckin' risks. And now I'm going to have to pay for them.”

“Where did the money come from?”

Daniel shook his head. “Can't say, won't say. Bloke like you wouldn't understand. Wouldn't get it. It's not important. It's not hot money. Not for the police, anyway. No one's gonna notice you spending it.”

“But they'd notice you?”

“It's not the money that's marked.”

Robertson thought about this. He said, “Aye, all right. Then do this for me: tell me the bloody truth. All these years, for what you've told me, you might as well have been in a coma. I'm your brother. Christ, I deserve better than that.”

Daniel hesitated. For a moment Robertson thought he might turn and walk out the door. But instead he took a breath and told Robertson the whole story. Who he was, what he had become, the terrible things he had done not only to others but also to himself.

Robertson only half believed what he was hearing. His eyes were opened to another world; one he knew existed but had never properly accepted as real. Robertson had known something of what his brother told him through newspapers, TV shows and what he had read in books. The effect of realising that it was suddenly so close to his own life was devastating.

When Daniel finally finished, any connection between the two men was lost forever. People talk about how you can forgive your family anything. That evening James Robertson realised what a crock
of crap family was.

He had wanted his brother to return for so long. What had finally come home was some twisted parody of the boy he had once known; a disgrace to their father, to their family.

“I could have murdered him,” he told me. “I mean, for all that he'd done he deserved to die. Aye, Christ, I should have. But I'm no killer.”

I had to wonder who he was trying to convince.

He had asked Daniel whether he intended to do anything about his life, whether the man felt any remorse for the terrible things he had done.

“I'm fucked,” Daniel said. “There's nobody left.” His eyes dropped to the floor. “After mum died, you know, I think I began to realise something. I never really grew up. When I took off like I did, I wasn't running away from them. I was running away from myself. I could never have been a farmer. Couldn't have lived the life you have. Too fuckin' different, yeah? I always was. I was looking to make a point when I went to London. That I was different from you and from them. I wasn't just some farmer boy who had nowhere to go in life. I was gonna be somebody.” He moved to the fireplace, let his fingers reach out and touch a framed photo of their parents. In the photo they were a young couple standing in some field together. Their father's arms were wrapped around their mother's waist. Her hair was long and dark and her face was unlined. She looked radiant. There was nowhere else in the world she would rather have been. Their father was strong and proud, his eyes twinkling with a joy neither son could easily associate with the man he would become.