The bus was waiting at the traffic lights, the large road junction busy at that time of night. Kelso saw the amber signal light up and he quickly weaved through the clutter of young people who, despite the thin drizzle, were reluctant to end the evening, the pavement outside the club both their debating platform and sexual showcase.
Kelso just made the bus as it was moving off. He hung on to the hand-bar, his chest heaving with the sudden exertion and more hiccups. He saw the beehive girl emerging from the club with her three friends, and her nose pointed at him like a zapgun. He climbed the stairs to the upper deck, not having the nerve to blow her a kiss, nor wanting to shrivel up under her gaze. The air was thick with smoke upstairs, a condition he contributed to by lighting up himself. The cloudy inhalation helped his hiccups. Pulling at his shirt collar so that the pointed tips rested on top of his jacket lapels, he relaxed into a seat and looked down at the bright shopfronts as the bus bullied its way through the late-night traffic. His thoughts returned to the old man.
He liked his dad – his stepfather, to be precise – and their disagreements were few. But the same old topic had arisen between them once more and, as usual, both their tempers had flared. He always regretted the upsets, knew it wasn’t good for the old man, but he couldn’t fulfil another man’s ambitions, not even when that man had taken him in as a kid and brought him up as if he were his natural son. Edward Kelso had been a policeman – a good one too, by all accounts – and although he’d never got beyond the rank of sergeant in the uniformed branch, he loved the service almost as much as he loved his wife and the little orphan he’d made his son.
Angina had forced his career to a premature halt, but he still kept in close contact with the Force, still swapped gossip on the latest blags with his old cronies. He could have stayed on, working at a more relaxed pace behind the scenes, but that wasn’t his style: he liked to be up front, right there in the action. And Nellie didn’t want him to risk even the desk job anyway. His early-retirement pension from the Force was fair, and she had taken night-time work in the local children’s hospital to make things manageable. He hated her working nights, though – said the streets weren’t safe for her to be coming home that late. He usually went to meet her and they’d walk home from the hospital, her arm linked through his, like a courting couple out for an evening stroll. Some nights he did not feel well enough to go out, but those occasions were rare, and he would sit and worry until Nellie walked through the front door. Then one night – and, it seemed, almost inevitably because of the old man’s fears – she failed to come home.
Jim Kelso had always known Nellie was not his real mother; secrecy regarding his background had never been allowed in the Kelso household. They had brought him from the orphanage when he was barely six years old, for they were childless themselves and saw him as the fruition of their own marriage. Just as his stepfather now saw him as the possible fruition of his own foreshortened career.
Nellie, that lovely little lady who had a will of iron but a soul that was soft and yielding, and who for young Jimmy Kelso was a mother, friend and mentor, had been hit by a drunken driver, the man claiming he hadn’t see her in the dark. She had smashed through the windscreen, her broken body ending up crumpled in the back seat, one leg dangling through the shattered rear window. Perhaps he hadn’t seen her, but then his car should never have mounted the kerb in the first place, something he had at first denied only to be shown photographic evidence of skid marks on the pavement. Kelso hoped the bastard was still in jail, but knew it wasn’t likely.
His stepfather had withered before his eyes after that. He had always been a big man, even through his ill-health; after the accident – ‘bloody murder’ Kelso Senior preferred to call it – he had seemed to shrink within himself. His bitterness and anger grew as his physique somehow became smaller. The Law should have more powers, he never tired of telling his stepson, more powers to stop people behaving like animals, the strength in numbers to prevent any man from hurting another, the right to lock someone up even if they only thought he was about to commit a crime. What was once to him a matter of public duty had, over the years, become an obsession and the young Kelso had grown tired of the constant harping. He had his own wounds to lick, his own grief to get over. He had lost two mothers: one had abandoned him for God-only-knew what reason, the other – the mother who really mattered – had been taken away in a manner both brutal and senseless. It was hard to bear, difficult to accept. And an awareness had been growing in him, an unease that had always been with him because of certain things that had happened during his life, things that seemed to have no logical explanation. Things that frightened him. Things that told him – although he constantly rejected the notion – that he was different.
The dispute tonight between him and his stepfather was the usual one, and it concerned his future. Jim Kelso had no desire to join the Police Force – short hair, uniforms, discipline, were not his bag. Law and Order was not that important to him. He’d stayed on at school to take GCE exams for his stepfather’s sake, scraping through six of them, but he had the right to shape his own future. He wouldn’t be the instrument of someone else’s ambition, nor their revenge. Dad had to understand that. The job in the supermarket was only temporary, something to bring money into the house until he had found a more worthwhile occupation, something that he could become involved with, that would sustain his interest. At the moment, though, it was difficult to find a commitment to anything; and that Kelso Senior found hard to understand.
If he wanted a commitment, then what was wrong with helping to prevent the erosion of standards in the society they were living in? Couldn’t he see what was happening around them? Murders, rapes, robberies – all were on the increase. Lousy, stinking hippies, refusing to work, openly flaunting their pot smoking. And when was the last time he’d had a haircut? Degenerate shows in the West End like Hair, with people running around with no clothes on. It had taken the Law years to pin something on those murderous villains, the Kray brothers. They were on trial now, guilty beyond doubt, but would they hang for their gangland killings? Not bloody likely! Scum like that couldn’t be erased any more. Not even that bastard in the States who’d gunned down Robert Kennedy could be put down like the mad dog he was! It was sickening, the whole bloody world was going into decline and he, his own son, couldn’t find any commitment!
The young Kelso had immediately regretted his angry reply, words that shook the old man visibly. He had said he didn’t care about the world’s morals, didn’t care if they blew themselves into oblivion, or murdered, raped, robbed, screwed, smoked, drank themselves to death! It wasn’t his problem. And his stepfather’s pent-up frustrations were not his problem, either!
For just one brief instant, the retired policeman had seemed to grow back into his old size again, and had towered over his stepson, grabbing the boy’s lapels, his body shaking with rage, face becoming mottled red with anger. Jim Kelso had been afraid – not for himself, but because he feared the old man’s heart would not take the strain. He flinched when the hand came up to strike him. The blow never landed. Instead, the old man’s eyes had become distant behind a watery layer and his hands had dropped away. He had become shrunken and old once more.
Kelso had wanted to apologize, had wanted to hold onto his stepfather and to show him he cared. Had wanted to make him feel a man again. Instead, he’d turned away and left the house, for affection between them had become an embarrassment over the past few years. He had tried to get reeling drunk that night, but neither his mood nor his pocket allowed it. Now he just wanted to get home and somehow make amends.
Kelso stubbed out the final half-inch of cigarette under his foot and grabbed the handrail of the seat in front. He descended the stairs and waited on the platform for the bus to glide to a halt. The rain had stopped and the streets had a shiny freshness to them, lights from shop windows reflected in shimmering patterns.
Cutting down a sidestreet, Kelso tucked his hands into his trou
ser pockets, hunching his shoulders and staring down at the pavement in front of him. He was still a little unsteady, but the night air no longer threatened to disturb the contents of his stomach. Four pints was all he had been able to afford and much of that had been passed through into the club’s john; it felt like the fumes were trapped in the top of his head, though. The next street was his and, as always, he experienced a tiny wave of comfort on seeing his own house. It had always come to him, whether he’d been out for ten minutes or ten days, and he guessed the early years in the orphanage had left an indelible mark on him, an insecurity he was sure he’d never lose. Even though he hardly remembered those parentless years, he had never really shed the fear of them. His home symbolized more than just stability; it represented a refuge from emotionless authority, care without feeling. His adopted parents had given him not just love, but a sense of being his own self, an individual who had family support, prejudiced in his favour, something the State could never provide. Home was both his retreat and stronghold, his buffer and springboard. Dad was still his rock.
He knew there was something wrong even before he’d crossed the street to the front door.
Something cold from within pushed at the lining of his stomach. His right hand was already trembling and he had to steady it with his left to insert the key into its socket.
The hall light was on, the door to the front room ajar. ‘Dad?’ he called out, and there was no reply.
The small television lamp was on in the front room, the television itself blank and lifeless. A cup, empty save for stale tealeaves, stood on the magazine table next to his stepfather’s armchair; biscuit crumbs littered its saucer. He called out again, but still there was no answer. In bed? Dad would never leave him to wash up his dirty cup.
Kelso walked to the foot of the stairs. ‘You up there, Dad?’
He went up, two at a time.
And stopped on the small landing.
An unreasonable dread made him want to stay there: he did not want to look into any of the rooms.
The bathroom door was closed.
‘Oh, no, Dad,’ he said softly to himself. Recently his stepfather had fallen in the habit of dropping off to sleep in the bath, only pounding on the door rousing him. The young Kelso always made a point of checking on him every ten minutes or so now.
He knocked on the bathroom door. ‘Dad? You in there?’
The door was unlocked, a precaution the ex-policeman always took because of his heart condition. Kelso turned the handle and pushed the door open. Blood drained from his face.
He couldn’t be sure, but he thought something moved in the periphery of his vision, a flickering shadow or perhaps a steam cloud from the bath itself. Or it might have been his own distorted reflection in the misted mirror on the wall to his right.
He couldn’t be sure because his attention was riveted on the naked figure lying over the edge of the bath, obscene because the buttocks were raised high in the air. Edward Kelso’s heavy torso spilled onto the floor like white dough, soft and shapeless. His face was turned towards the door and it was yellowy-blue, the lips dark in colour. His eyes were only half-closed and his mouth was open as though he had screamed in agony before dying.
One hand was clawed, caught up on a rung of the chair that always stood beside the bath. The chair on which the old man always placed his glyceryl trinitrate tablets, the pills that were always kept within easy reach lest an angina attack should prove to be the real thing, the real killer.
He had never reached them. The tube was against the wall several feet away, probably swept off the chair by his fumbling hand.
Yet the tube stood upright. As though it had been carefully placed beyond reach.
12
Kelso spat the matches from his mouth and dropped the small flame he was holding. Behind him, the stiff, metal door was slowly opening, throwing a subdued light onto the stairway; above him, whoever was blocking the grey daylight was descending the stairs. He spun around as a flashlight suddenly blinded him, closing his eyes tight against the white pain.
The door below was open wide and the figure that stood there seemed vaguely familiar.
‘Don’t let him get out!’ a voice shouted.
There were others coming through the doorway now and Kelso realized his only chance to get away was up. He turned, shielding his eyes against the flashlight, and grabbed at the foot which was on a level with his head. He yanked hard and the foot came away from the step; the tumbling man yelled in surprise as his body bounced down the stairs. A frantic hand grabbed at Kelso’s clothing and he almost fell with the man, but the clawed fingers had not gained a good grip; he threw himself against the wall and the body went by. Kelso bounded up the stairs, reaching for either side of the opening above with both hands to pull himself through. He thought he had made it when something tugged at his foot, causing him to sprawl flat, half out of the opening. He tried to rise, but there was a firm grip on his leg; twisting over, he saw the head and shoulders of the man who had frightened Trewick in the pub appear from the dark hole. Leather jacket. Missing finger. Whether it was a grin or a sneer on the man’s face, he couldn’t be sure, but his striking foot wiped away whatever expression it had been. The broad-shouldered man cried out as his nose exploded into a gusher of blood, yet his grip relaxed only momentarily; Kelso had to lash out with his foot twice more before he was free. By then, another figure was emerging from the stairwell.
Kelso was on his feet and running when the other man caught up with him. They went down in a heap, their scrambling bodies rolling against the side of the cruiser so that it drifted a few inches away from the dock on that side.
‘Bastard!’ the man holding Kelso shouted, as the detective squirmed and lashed out with both fists. A backhander slapped Kelso’s head hard against the concrete; ignoring the pain, he retaliated immediately by jabbing stiffened fingers into a point just below his attacker’s jawline. The man fell away from him and he used his feet once more to kick himself clear. He was on one knee when Leather Jacket, his chest and lower face covered in blood, came running at him. Kelso managed to turn his head as a booted foot came towards it; the blow glanced across his cheekbone, sending him tottering backwards against the hull of the cruiser and Leather Jacket moved in, the rings on three fingers of his left hand forming a decorative knuckleduster.
Kelso ducked the clenched fist and went in fast and low, his head thudding into his opponent’s stomach. The broad-shouldered man staggered into the shelving on the wall behind, upsetting lubricant containers and tins of paint.
Someone else had jumped from the stairwell now, closely followed by the man who had fallen to the bottom. The one who had stopped Kelso from leaving the boathouse was rising to his feet, a hand clutched to his neck. A tool-rack was nearby and Kelso saw him pluck a heavy-looking wrench from a socket; he thumped the head against the flat of his other hand and looked meaningfully at the detective. He began to move in closer.
Kelso looked around the cavernous building. Two men to his right, one limping from his tumble down the stairs, Leather Jacket gasping for breath against the shelves behind him, and the one with the wrench blocking the only way out.
‘Get the bastard!’ he heard Leather Jacket wheeze and the three men closed in.
Kelso sprinted towards the cruiser and grabbed the handrail, swinging himself up onto the prow. He slipped, his sneakers still wet from his journey along the riverbank, and felt rough hands pulling at his shoulders. He was hauled from the boat, and allowed to crash down onto the concrete flooring. Fists rained down on him and pain shot through his body as wildly aimed boots sank into his flesh. He tried to roll himself into a ball, but they lifted him to his feet and propelled him back towards the boat which, once again, shifted in the water.
‘Hold him there, just fuckin hold him there!’ Leather Jacket came lurching away from the shelves, his eyes full of malice above a red mask.
Kelso’s arms were pushed backwards against the side of the cruiser and
the wrench poked him hard in the stomach. Leather Jacket pushed the wrench-wielding man aside and stood in front of the detective.
‘Right, you little bastard. You got this comin!’
He grabbed Kelso’s hair and pulled his head up; he smashed his fist into the detective’s face, once, twice, once more for good measure. The rings cut into Kelso’s skin, grazing both cheekbones and closing one eye. He prevented his nose from being broken by shifting his head fractionally as each punch landed; by the third blow, his senses would not even allow that. He slumped, but his body was held upright.
His attacker stepped back. ‘Gimme the wrench!’ he shouted at the man behind.
‘Hold it, Bannen, you’d better . . .’
‘Gimme the fuckin wrench!’ He snatched the tool and advanced on Kelso once more. He lifted the limp man’s head, again using a grip on his hair. ‘I can’t kill you yet, cunt, but I can give you something to be gettin on with.’
He brought the wrench up hard between the detective’s legs.
Kelso screamed as the fire exploded in his groin. The two men at his side could hardly hold him as he doubled up, a stream of saliva spurting from his lips. They let him sink to his knees and his forehead almost touched the concrete floor in his agony. His low moan turned into a sharp gasp as, yet again, his head was yanked upwards. His one good eye was blurred as he looked into the sneering face only inches away. ‘When we’ve done with you, mate,’ the man called Bannen said softly, ‘I’m going to cut off your ears. Then your nose.’ He roughly tweaked Kelso’s nose between thumb and finger. Then, cocker, I’m going to split your eyeballs with a razor blade.’
He stood upright and his swiftly raised knee brought Kelso a painless blackness that he welcomed.
The darkness persisted even when he knew he was awake again; it was the pain that informed him of his returned consciousness. The left side of his face felt strangely frozen yet throbbing and, when he tried to blink, it felt as though the eyelids on that side had been sewn together. His right eye seemed to be still moist from pain-induced tears. He raised a hand to his face, and the effort was slow, forced. He touched the area around his left eye and it felt like someone had packed quick-drying putty over his skin; he winced as his finger probed deeper, deliberately causing himself the hurt because it was better than the numbness. His mouth and throat were clogged with bile and he knew that he must have been sick during his consciousless state. He was lucky he hadn’t choked to death on his own vomit.