On the other side of the room, whisky ran down the wall in dark rivulets, pooling amidst the shattered glass. Against the pale brown carpet, it looked like blood.
Highgate Cemetery, London20th July – 3:30pm
Tom made his way through the gravestones, the cracked and threadbare path snaking its way down the hill. In a couple of places the tarmac had worn away completely and here the surface of an earlier, cobbled path shone through, the stones brightly polished where generations of heavy-hearted feet had stumbled over them.
There was a time when he could have recited from memory the names on most of the tombstones between the upper gate and his mother’s grave. They jutted out from the fleshy earth like teeth, some overlapping, others separated by wide gaps, decaying according to the seasons in the wind and the sun and the cold. Here and there, plastic flowers leered from rain-filled jam jars. In the distance, the distinctive sceptre of the BT Tower rose above the city’s concrete ooze.
The solid black marble slab nestled snugly in the grass, sheltered by the drooping branches of a willow and the tangled undergrowth that concealed the crumbling cemetery wall. The gilding that had been painted into the carved inscription still shone brightly and Tom ran his fingers over the letters, silently tracing her name. Remembering. She would have been 60 that day.
Rebecca Laura Kirk née Duval
Everyone had told him at the time that it wasn’t his fault, that it was just one of those things. An accident, a terrible tragedy. Even the coroner had played it down, blaming mechanical failure, before suggesting that his mother had been at best reckless for letting a thirteen year old boy drive, even if it was just a short distance down a normally quiet road. For a moment he had almost believed them.
But the look in his father’s eyes at her funeral, the anger that had shone through the tears when he’d hugged him, convinced Tom that he, at least, thought otherwise. That if she had let him drive, then it was because Tom had begged and bawled until she had relented. That he had as good as killed her. When he was much older, he often wondered whether when his father had hugged him so tightly that day, he had really been trying to suffocate him.
Tom closed his eyes subconsciously toying with the ivory key-ring his father had given him a few weeks before he’d died. He breathed in deeply through his nose finding the smell of freshly turned earth and cut grass comforting. It reminded him of long lazy summer afternoons in the garden, before all that. Before he had been abandoned to his loneliness. And his guilt. Because after that day, his father had never hugged him again.
‘There’s a bloody fortune in marble here.’ A familiar voice broke into Tom’s thoughts. ‘I know a bloke who’d take all these off our hands.’ An impossible voice. ‘He just splits the top layer off and re-engraves ’em. Punters never know the difference.’ A voice that had no right being there.
‘Archie?’ Tom spun round. ‘How … why … what the hell are you doing here?’
Over the years, Tom had often wondered what Archie looked like, tried to mentally sketch a face to match the voice, an expression to suit the tone. With every conversation, a little more detail had been added to this picture; an extra crease around the eyes, a slight bump in the nose, a sharper edge to the jaw. At times, Tom had almost managed to convince himself that they must have met. But with Archie, the real Archie, actually standing there in front of him for the first time, his careful reconstruction instantly crumbled and now he found that he could not salvage a single memory of it.
Instead he saw a slim man – in his mid-forties, Tom guessed – about five feet ten. He had an oval face, his hair clipped very short and receding, so that it formed a fuzzy point right at the tip of his forehead. His three-buttoned suit was clearly bespoke, possibly Savile Row, a 10-ounce dark blue pinstripe that wouldn’t have looked out of place on any City trading floor.
His blue Gingham shirt was unbuttoned at the neck and Tom guessed that he was probably wearing a set of red braces to match his socks. These were expensive clothes with the right labels in the right places, subtle tribal markings that allowed Archie to circulate unchallenged through the smart and fast-moneyed world he inhabited.
And yet despite this, there was something rough and ready about him. His face was slightly crumpled, his chin dark with stubble, his ears sticking out slightly from the side of his head. He had the easy confident manner of someone who knew how to handle himself and others. But his dark brown eyes said different. They said that he was afraid.
Tom looked around anxiously, wary that Archie might not have come alone.
‘It’s all right, mate. Cool it.’ Archie held his hands up. ‘It’s just me.’
‘Don’t tell me to cool it,’ Tom’s voice was stone. ‘What’s going on? You know the rules.’
‘Of course I know the rules – I bloody well invented them, didn’t I?’ Archie gave a short laugh.
It had been Archie’s idea that they should never meet. Ever. It was safer that way, he had said, so that all they would have on each other was a name and a phone number. By coming to find him, Archie had broken his own, most important rule. It was an act of desperation, a cry for help. Or maybe a trick?
Tom leapt forward and fired off two quick punches, a right to the stomach and a left to the side of Archie’s head. The first winded him, the second dropped him to the ground.
‘Are you wearing a wire? Is that it, you bastard? Have you cut a deal with Clarke to ship me in?’ Tom knelt over Archie and patted him down roughly, feeling around his chest and groin to see if he was concealing some sort of transmitter. He wasn’t.
‘Fuck you.’ Archie heaved Tom off him and rubbed the side of his face, coughing as the air seeped back into his lungs. ‘I’m no fucking grass.’ He hauled himself back to his feet and gave Tom an angry look, brushing his jacket down.
‘Yesterday Clarke shows up promising to put me away. Then after ten years of our avoiding each other, you break cover. What am I meant to think? That it’s all a coincidence?’
‘Clarke, that hairy-arsed wanker? Do me a favour. You think I’d risk you, risk me for him? You should know me better than that.’
‘Should I? The Archie I know doesn’t break the rules.’
‘Look – I followed you here from your gaff. I’m sorry. I should have warned you or something.’ Archie had his breath back now, but was still patting his cheekbone gingerly.
‘You know where I live?’
Tom shook his head in disbelief, his anger mounting at this latest revelation.
‘Yeah, well, after our last little conversation I got a bit worried, didn’t I? So I did a bit of homework. There aren’t that many Tom Kirks in London. Your place was the third I tried.’
‘Christ, you even know my name.’ Tom looked around him in concern and lowered his voice to an angry whisper.
‘I hate to tell you this, mate, but I’ve always known. Ever since the first job you pulled for me. You don’t like taking risks and neither do I. Till now, I’ve never had any reason to need it.’
‘Well you’re wasting your time because this isn’t going to change anything. I’ve told you, you’ll have to find someone else to do the job.’
Archie had an awkward look on his face.
‘It’s not that simple.’
‘Sure it is.’ Tom’s