Resolution (The CRIME series), page 28
— Sad Man. You said it, Cardingworth wretchedly laments, then raises his glass and thoughfully strokes his chin. — You and I come from similar backgrounds, I’m betting, Ray.
Ray Lennox looks at the concrete floor. The thin, asthmatic breathing of his childhood reasserts in wispy pulls. Bound wrists throb in slicing pain. Lacerations pulse and sear.
— We were a tough little mob growing up, Cardingworth waxes, — from the Whitehawk estate. Working-class kids at the bottom of the pile in a snooty town. We were regarded as –
Lennox suddenly raises his head and looks right at Cardingworth. — Fuck off, he says, cold, emphatic, derisive.
This dagger of contempt ruins the self-affirmative party piece of a powerful, indulged man. Violated deeply, Cardingworth’s eyes pop.
— I’ve heard that bullshit come out of every cunt’s mouth, including my own, since I was fucking knee-high. Lennox is cold, offhand. — In school, the streets, football grounds, and at work as a copper. Heard it fae polis, fae cons. The nostalgic shite ay daft old guys giein it the big one about how mental, crazy, but essentially good, those lovable rogues all were in their youth. He shakes his head brutally. — Fucking tedious pish, mate. Spare me the pathetic bollocks. Did any others become fucking nonces? You were in a tunnel with psychos, terrorising and abusing little kids. Tell me about Bim!
For the first time Lennox sees real hatred in Cardingworth’s glare. Realises that he’s gained some sort of victory: has shamed him for his sponsorship of the tyrants. Called him out, in the process forcing him to confront what he really is.
Mathew Cardingworth steps back, partly concealing his tight face from Lennox by the glass he lifts in a defiant toast. — It’s a pity you can’t join me in this red wine, Ray, he wheezes, imbibing a mouthful.
Lennox senses something is badly amiss, beyond Cardingworth’s exasperation at the situation they are in. His adversary seems to spasm internally from a wave of nausea. Sucking down his vexation, Cardingworth contends, — I know you’d like it, and he takes another sip, shakily holding the glass up to the light. — It’s full-bodied, but there’s an incredible smoothness here. He enjoys a more substantial gulp.
Cardingworth’s face twitches. Lennox sees he’s fighting to regain his composure; tight breaths hauled in with effort, perspiration beads glistening on his forehead. He looks accusingly at his glass of wine.
— Struggling, are we? an arid voice suddenly rasps. It belongs to a figure stepping out from behind the stacks of wooden industrial pallets. As the presence lingers for a moment in the shadows, Lennox anticipates more torment.
Carmel, wearing a dark green hooded top, strides into the light. A serrated knife in her hand. However, it’s not him but Cardingworth she’s taunting. — You must be experiencing gut convulsions now. — And your gullet should be drying out.
— Whaa …? Cardingworth looks at the treacherous glass he shakily holds.
— Waves of nausea?
Cardingworth gapes at her, then Lennox.
— I didn’t believe a word of it at first, not Mat Cardingworth, Carmel scorns, before turning to Lennox. — I thought you were mistaken, Ray. I thought you had somehow primed Les or it was some kind of folie à deux. I’m sorry.
About to speak, Lennox sees Cardingworth at pains to do the same, but his efforts are curtailed by another sabotaging croak in his throat. Then his hand goes to his neck, like he’s trying to tear a hole in it. Face reddens in an explosive flush. Eyes bulge as if he’s trying to force air in between the eyeballs and eyelids.
— People will thank you for at least doing the honourable thing. Carmel’s cherry-red lips seem not to open as she speaks to Cardingworth, who drops the glass, grips the edge of the table with both hands. — Falling on your own sword.
Cardingworth hacks out a distorting plea for clemency.
Carmel moves behind Lennox, chopping at his bonds with the blade. Lennox twists to her. — Phil and Marco downstairs … how did ye get past them?
Carmel whispers softly, while sawing frantically, — You just have to pay them enough. Sorry for doubting you.
He turns from his kidnapper, now on his knees coughing, to his girlfriend. — I doubted you, myself, everybody. I’m still trying to piece this mess together. But … you …
— It’s over now, Carmel announces as his left arm springs free. As she works on his right, Cardingworth, ailing badly, reminds Lennox of how he himself was on encountering him in that wine bar. Then bloody vomit explodes from the businessman, splattering onto the concrete floor. He falls forward, strangely coming to rest with his chin nesting in his own puke.
As Lennox’s second hand is freed, Carmel hands him the knife. He hacks off the ties on his ankles. Rubs at the wrist indentations. Gapes unflinchingly at the exhibition of her would-be benefactor’s disintegration, as Carmel assists his shaky rise to his feet. — Thank you, he says, then nods to the table, — Those tapes … And they watch Mathew Cardingworth kick out, and Ray Lennox bears witness to one of the men from the tunnel, who haunted him for decades, take his last breath on the cold floor of the factory.
Carmel’s elbow digs into him, and she nods to the goods lift, now creaking and clanking upwards. It grinds to a halt, as Lennox feels his body stiffen. His grip on the knife tightens, anticipating the arrival of Darren Knowles.
But Mona emerges with Marco and Phil by her side. Her vacant, single-eyed stare moves in horror to Cardingworth’s lifeless body, before she shouts to the henchmen, — Get him out of here!
45
The Right Thing
Mona leans against the table, scarf-swathed face in her hands. — Why? she bubbles in a sob at Carmel, pointing at the body being reluctantly picked up by Marco and Phil. — Why did you do that? The deal was we’d give him a sedative!
— You don’t know what he did, and you didn’t hear what he said! Carmel rasps. Moves a step closer to Mona. — He was in with Knowles and the other monster. Her trembling finger points accusingly at the corpse Marco and Phil drag across the floor. — He killed Ra—
Carmel responds to Lennox frantically waving her to silence, nodding urgently towards the henchmen pulling the remains of Cardingworth into the lift.
Did they hear?
They don’t cease their activity: Phil slides open the gate while Marco, his face tightly screwed to avoid looking at Cardingworth, hauls the body from under the armpits. Both arrogant businessman and engaged philanthropist seem to have already departed Cardingworth’s form. Features spill south on the shapeless mannequin’s remains, skin waxy under the overhead light. The gate slams shut. The lift descends.
Mona straightens up. Looks at Carmel and Lennox in deep violation. Hurries out after the hired hands, taking the stairs down. As her steps recede on the creaking metal, Carmel pulls on Lennox’s arm. — She’ll come round. She and Mat had a complicated relationship. It was Mona who hooked me up with him. She’s a technician at the university. We’ve known each other a while. Brighton, as transient as it can be, isn’t a big pond.
— That’s what Cardingworth said, Lennox urgently squeezes her shoulder. — Did you need him dead? Like for this deal to go through? When did you decide this?
Carmel brushes him off, takes a step back. — I saved your fucking life!
— I know, but –
— Look … Carmel gasps, steps forward, buries her head under Lennox’s chin.
Her body vibrations pulse through him. Yet his hovering hands can’t settle into a full embrace. One pats her back insipidly while the other arm falls awkwardly by his side.
Her voice growls into his chest, — … I poisoned a man. I took his life. I said I would, if he was a beast. He wasn’t the worst, but he still planned and took part in the kidnap and abuse of kids. She looks up at him. — At the very least he was complicit in the murder of Ralph Trench.
— He’s not the executioner, that Phil –
Carmel won’t be detracted. — But there was more to Mat. He wanted to do the right thing, Ray. This way he gets to!
— And your research benefits.
— Mat was on a journey with me, Carmel coughs out. — It was something he was doing that was good. I won’t take that away from him, or from me. He wasn’t a paedophile or a murderer, but yes, he was weak, and complicit.
— How long were you listening to us?
— Long enough.
From outside: a clanking sound.
Then a muffled shout, and they pull apart.
The slamming of a car boot.
They fall silent for a few beats.
Carmel lowers her voice to whisper. — I thought it through. Better Mathew Cardingworth being seen to do the honourable thing. I doubt he’d have made that choice, so I made it for him!
Lennox pushes his fingers against eyeballs that burn behind their lids. The wine was doctored before Cardingworth’s revelations to him. What did she find out prior to this? And what did he really know about this woman? Entertains the possibility he’s dating a psychopath. — Well, I owe you big time … he concedes, — but we need to get the fuck out of here and work out our next move. Those boys downstairs … they killed Trench!
— Are you sure of that? Carmel asks emphatically, her eyes bulging as she looks to the table. — What were you saying about tapes?
Lennox lunges over to the foot of the big desk, where his stuff lies. Sticks the phone and wallet in the pocket of his coat. Hesitates with the cassette player and tapes. Then looks at her.
His finger hovers over the play button as Carmel looks pensively at him.
46
Every Dream Must Have a Man
You know, Raymond, there are three steps you can take here; one of them leads to relative safety, another one leads to my little friend Darren – as I shall always think of him – and the final one takes you straight to me …
But I know what you’re going to do …
You’re going to listen to that tape right now, aren’t you?
47
Reminiscence and Recall 5
It’s easy to hate somebody without really knowing them. In fact, maybe that’s exactly what it takes. You see only the action, the tip of the iceberg, not what’s driving their behaviour. We’ve all got shit to bear. My old man battered the fucking crap out of me for years. It stopped when I got to sixteen. I had started the boxing at Sparta in McDonald Road. As I prepared to head there every night, sports bag slung over my shoulder, he’d observe me slyly from his armchair. He didn’t know I was watching him. Every month he grew weaker, more thin-shouldered, his voice less brash, increasingly tainted with the sooky lisp of the sweetie-wife. But I kept my powder dry. Silly cunt thought I’d forgotten all about those beatings. When I left the house, two days after my eighteenth birthday, I broke his jaw. Tanned it with a right-hander and watched the old fucker crumple to the deck. My mother crying, ‘What was that for?’ I didnae say ‘He kens’, or anything in that self-justifying manner. Gave a wee shrug: ‘Just felt like it, ay.’ Went round there to see her a week later. He sat there in silence, his jaw wired, sipping watery soup through a straw. Looking at me in the same pathetic way I’d looked at him for years as a kid. He sickened me, his victim mode even more pitiful than his bullying one. If he’d had a second set ay jaws, I’d have cracked it there and then.
I vowed I’d never pass that shite on to my own kids. And I was as good as my word: I never lifted a finger to them. Everybody else was fair game though, especially all the criminal scum like him who came into my orbit. Fuck knows if it was right or wrong. Only certainty is that I never lost a night’s sleep because of it.
But Lenny: poor bastard. Fuck knows what happened in that tunnel, certainly not the old cunt in his reminiscence therapy group gone badly wrong. And that spineless ponce who let him rabbit on: that cunt should lose his job. My daughter shouldn’t have to hear that shite: care staff are human beings. They can be as vulnerable as anybody. But listen she did, and so am I.
Raymond and his friend Les had been on their bikes, unaware that Bim and his associates were waiting in the tunnel. He was ten or eleven years old. He came back early that morning, much earlier than usual. I saw him going in through the back door, as I was coming down the stairs. I had been up in the bedroom with the kid’s mother. She had already gone down to make a sandwich. I was following and he came in and caught me on the stairs. When he looked at me I knew from the laddie’s face that something terrible had happened. Christ, that fuckin look. At me, then through me, like he saw something in me and he connected it up.
I was eaten up with remorse and I still am to this day.
I didnae feel inclined to stick around after what I’d done. Told Avril that I couldn’t settle on land, which was bollocks. I could barely look her in the eye, or that damaged wee Raymond and his mate. That other wee guy became a right wee fucking tearaway, by all accounts. Poor wee bastard, but was probably always gaunny turn oot like that. Most of all, I needed to avoid Bim, who was now finished in the maritime trade after almost killing a man in a bar fight in Barcelona. He had beaten him into a vegetative state. But then he was travelling around Britain and the continent, getting into all this evil stuff with his wee gang. When it got too heavy, he would find a boat on a short-term contract and vanish out to sea. He really was like a ghost.
I should have blown the whistle on them but I was too scared.
So, I went back to sea.
It was six years later when I returned to Edinburgh. I had never heard from Bim, nor the other two, Darren, the gangster boy’s name was, and the young lad, Mat, I think they called him. I reckoned the coast was clear. John was hanging on, with poor Avril still stuck in this void. And then there was Stuart. He was only a kid. I loved them both, but I realised that I was no good for them. I couldn’t keep away though. I contacted Avril again.
Raymond had just finished at school, and became a police cadet. He was doing his IT training part-time at the uni. I was ‘Uncle Jock’ to him, Jackie and wee Stuart. It was painful. Avril and I tried to leave it, but we just couldn’t. We were soon right back into our affair. It went on for years. Stuart grew up. Raymond got promoted. Jackie became very successful in the legal sphere. John Lennox, curse him, he just held on. And on and on and on. My fascination for this family drained everything from me. Estranged me from my own daughter.
It was almost three decades later that John finally had a third heart attack and passed. I was relieved but unnerved at the same time. We’d grown so used to the deception, my Avril and me – and I suppose probably John too, with his denial – that it had become our lives.
Now there was no need. Maybe my body language gave it away, or perhaps John Lennox had told his son. Whatever the reason, Raymond was a detective, and a pretty decent one: he’d worked a few high-profile cases, usually putting away sex offenders. I wondered what part I’d played setting him on that path. Anyway, he found out about us. And at the funeral he turned on us both. Called us out in front of everybody, before tearing off.
Avril was destroyed. My son hates me, she said. Why?
Cause of what went on in that tunnel, ya radge cow.
Poor Lenny boy, I never knew. Nae cunt knew.
48
The Lights Go Out
With Carmel Devereaux squeezing his hand, Ray Lennox listened to Jock Allardyce’s full confessions in excruciating pain and torturous confusion. For forty years he’d believed his assailants to be opportunistic predators: a bunch of rootless, semi-destitute jailbirds hanging out by grim chance in that tunnel. But their presence in the dark underpass was no accident. All those years, in Serious Crimes, he’d hunted serial sex offenders, busted up nonce gangs in Britain, and even once in Florida, without any idea that he himself could be a victim of one. All caused by his father’s impotence, his mother’s straying and a horrific tragedy that Jock Allardyce had gotten involved in at sea, compounding it by his succumbing to a despicable malefactor.
Now Lennox feels he’s very slowly catching up with his own life story. It makes sense that the main players are strangers. They always were. Looks at Carmel, thinks of past lovers, feels as if he has pulled them all into his shipwreck.
Why couldn’t you be like Les? Act out, then move on, get past it? Every woman you’ve loved, Penny-Catriona-Trudi et cetera, they all asked you the same question. And you’ve never been able to answer it. So, they walked. Carmel will too. They all will until you can resolve this story and move on.
George. The encounter at Harrogate, of course you are. That staging of my whole life. Surely it’s not him that’s been doing this to me! I don’t know but I’ll find out everything one way or another. Types up a long text, requests a favour of his friend. Aware Carmel is devouring him with her eyes, urging him to share what he’s doing. Deflectively says, — You saved me, and I thank you, but you took the vengeance on Cardingworth that was mine.
— But he wasn’t your real enemy, Carmel declares, as Lennox fires off his missive. — This Darren and Bim, who scarcely figured on your radar, caused infinitely more hurt.
The blow he felt almost shatter his young jaw had been delivered when his eyes were shut, but he’d seen plenty before that. How could he let those assailants fade through time? How could he not? How could Ray Lennox resist letting memory’s sharpness erode, easing its grim image, until Cardingworth’s sighting gave him false dominion in his consciousness? It had seemed so real, but the Allardyce tapes supported Cardingworth’s contention of his (relatively) marginal role. Yet in Lennox’s tricking mind, the Brighton businessman had become the lightning rod, imbuing a pain more savagely dispensed by his cohorts.
Carmel is about to continue. Halts in the face of the clanking sound. The lift: it’s rising towards them. They look at each other, the unspoken word Knowles on their lips. Lennox grabs the broken wine glass. Indicates to Carmel, who takes the serrated knife from her back pocket.
