Forgotten Graves: Whitby's Forgotten Victims Book 4, page 7
Jake Rimes, the twenty-something layabout, had his long hair tied back in a messy bun. His eyes were red and unfocused. ‘Hello… Mr Watson?’
Peter waved the billows of smoke from his face. ‘Bloody hell… you partying with a hippie commune in there?’
Jake grinned. ‘It’s medicinal.’
‘Ah, I see. I guess it’s treatment for your ears then.’
Jake frowned, confused. He pointed at his ears. ‘Eh?’
‘Well, I’m assuming you can’t hear a bloody thing… not if you have to have the music up that loud.’
It took a moment for realisation to dawn on Jake’s face. ‘Ah…’
Peter’s eyes narrowed. ‘Ah… yes… the music.’ You fuckwit.
‘Sorry, I just keep forgetting.’
Peter made a smoking gesture. ‘I’m not surprised.’
Jake called over his shoulder, ‘Lou! Turn it down!’
A female voice, presumably Lou, called back, ‘Really? You sure?’
Peter nodded at Jake, who nodded too, and repeated, ‘Really! I’m sure.’
The music went down.
Thankfully.
‘Shit. It’s not that miserable old bastard from next door again?’ Lou called in.
Jake smiled and said, ‘The door’s still open, Lou!’
‘I’m not miserable.’ Peter rubbed his temples. ‘I’ve just got a headache from your sodding music.’
‘No,’ Jake said, nodding. ‘You’re not miserable.’
Peter scowled. ‘I’m happy enough.’
‘I agree,’ Jake said. ‘Merry Christmas.’
‘Merry Christmas.’ Peter turned away.
As he walked away, Peter thought, Get a proper job, you layabout.
He’d barely made it halfway home when a Bentley SUV was pulling into his driveway just behind his car. He stopped dead and regarded the fool behind the wheel.
Desmond Chapman from number 11.
He was already out of his car, sporting a designer coat and Kashmir scarf.
What an absolute clown!
‘Oi… Des!’
Desmond turned around. His face sagged. He looked at his car and then back at Peter. ‘Just two minutes, Peter. I promise. Two minutes. Just picking up Sophie…’
‘So, park on your ex-wife’s driveway?’
‘I can’t. Her new fella parks there.’
‘Doesn’t look like he’s there now.’
Desmond looked. ‘Yeah… but he could be back any moment.’ He looked back. ‘Best not to piss the ex off… you know how it is.’
Peter shook his head. ‘Not really, no. I suggest you piss your ex-wife off rather than me, though. I’m totally blocked in!’
‘You’re not going anywhere, are you?’
‘Aren’t I?’
‘Are you?’
‘I don’t know. It seems you’ve decided I’m not.’
Desmond nodded and opened his mouth to respond. But then he realised he didn’t know what to say. So, he closed it again.
‘Could you move your car, Desmond?’ Peter said.
‘It’s two minutes, Peter. Two minutes.’
Peter looked at his watch. ‘Actually, it’s getting on for three now.’
Desmond looked exasperated. Good. Teach him a lesson.
‘Are you scared of your ex-wife?’
‘No… well… yes. Please?’
‘No… move it, or visitation rights will be the least of your problems…’
‘Sounds like a threat.’
‘It was.’ Peter marched to his own car. A modest old Volvo but built like a tank. He hoisted out his keys and opened the doors. ‘I’m a doddering old man who’s about to reverse off my drive. Unfortunately, I didn’t see you parked there. My eyesight isn’t what it once was. And look at this bloody weather. Tsk.’ Plus, thirty minutes from now I’ll have gone bye bye, so what do I bloody care? he thought. He climbed in and started the engine.
He watched, smiling, as Desmond, palm in the air, rushed back to his gleaming Bentley. ‘Okay! Okay!’ he said loudly. ‘You’ve made your fucking point.’
For a brief moment, Peter considered doing it anyway. But then, after a few deep breaths, he killed the engine.
After Desmond had moved, Peter climbed from his Volvo.
As he marched to his home, he looked back at Desmond, glowering at him from his wife’s driveway. ‘You know what, second thoughts, the weather’s shite… best stay indoors. Merry Christmas.’
Peter caught Desmond’s response before he closed his door.
It was fairly predictable.
‘Fuck you.’
Having missed a chunk of the show, he decided to forgo Deal or No Deal and just get on with it.
His neighbours had soured his mood. Before that, he’d felt more positive than usual.
He turned off the television and plucked Donna’s photograph from the mantlepiece and sat on his chair.
He looked at his wife. His fingers traced the familiar curves of her face through the glass. ‘I’m surrounded by cretins, Don. The world has moved on and there’s no place for me in it, I can tell you.’
He could almost hear her gentle reply, the way she’d so often soothed his temper with infinite patience. ‘There’s always an easier way of managing it, Pete, remember, count to ten…’
A sad smile tugged at his lips. ‘No, that was always your way! No one had patience like you. So, without you here, what bloody chance do I have? Plus, you know, without you, and now without Bryan, too, it just gets duller and duller… So…’ He placed the photograph on the side and scooped up a fistful of paracetamol from the bowl. ‘Here or the bedroom…?’
A pounding out the back made him jump. The pills cascaded from his fingers and scattered on the floor.
‘Bollocks!’
It was the bloody back gate again. Sometimes the postman came through the back and left it unlatched.
He slammed the bowl down and stood, heart hammering against his ribs.
‘Idiots!’
In the kitchen, he flicked on the light and looked through the window. Sure enough, his wooden gate was swinging in the wind.
He slipped on some Wellington boots he kept by the back door and headed out. He could see the parcel on the ground, poking from a mound of snow. ‘Ridiculous.’
His garden was small and hemmed in by a large wooden fence. The door was banging open and closed harder now. He crunched through the snow, quickly, grumbling, fearing it was going to come off his hinges.
He'd already made his mind up to complain to the post office when his foot caught on something buried in the snow. He stumbled forward. 'Shit—'
The gate swung violently in the wind. There was a flash of movement, a crack of wood against his forehead, and then searing pain.
As he fell backwards into the snow, everything went black.
Chapter Eighteen
From his father’s bedroom window, Lewis White watched snowflakes dance in the amber glow of Victorian streetlamps.
He pressed his hands against the cold glass, desperate to feel the moment.
The mindfulness had been helping lately.
Yes, he’d scoffed over the offer at first, argued that breathing exercises wouldn’t help a man who’d fractured someone’s skull against a urinal, but he was glad he’d given it the time of day.
The anger was still there, glowing within him, but at least he could see it now, and in time, he’d get control of it.
Today, however, was posing a significant challenge to his growing calm.
After all, mindfulness required living in the present, whereas being here now was dragging him relentlessly back into the past.
And memories could sometimes be lead weights. They really could. Especially when they reminded you so painfully of the ones you’d lost. And it was hard not to revisit them at this time of the year.
He found himself in a memory of his seventh Christmas, four decades back, throwing snowballs at his mother in the back garden while she ducked and dived behind the snowman they’d made together. She caught one in the chest and collapsed to the floor, playing dead.
In the here and now, he rolled up his sleeve, and looked down at her name, Elizabeth, tattooed in elegant copperplate script, each letter a permanent reminder of the mother he’d adored and lost.
Then he was back in his memory. At the moment, Felix, his ten-year-old brother, crept up behind him and delivered a snowball to the back of his neck. A sudden icy burn, followed by Felix’s wild laughter.
He rolled up his other sleeve.
Felix.
Another name, another significant loss, inked into his skin.
Lewis turned from the window and regarded his father, John White.
He moved towards his bed, his fingers curling into fists.
‘Where were you in that memory, John?’
Of course, John wouldn’t answer back.
He merely issued another rattling breath.
He hadn’t even opened his eyes since Lewis had arrived.
‘Too busy, eh? Story of your life. Always too busy.’
He stopped at his father’s bedside.
John White – once a lion of property development, jetting around the globe for deals – was now a withering shell beneath expensive cotton sheets. Lewis touched them, saw from a label that they were Egyptian cotton. Of course they were – nothing but the best for John White.
He wondered if his father would ever hear or speak again. He’d love to know his father could hear him, would love it even more if the old bastard could try, weakly, to justify his behaviour.
‘We tried enjoying ourselves that Christmas without you there. I often wondered if you enjoyed that Christmas wherever you were. That one, and the others, many others, you missed. In fact, thinking about it now, how many Christmases did Felix have left at that point? Two… three… Were you there for any of them?’
It’d been over twenty years since he’d last seen his father.
It’d been over thirty years since he’d last called him Dad, sometime around his fifteenth birthday, when the police had caught him joy-riding a stolen Mercedes, and it took him several hours to pick him up from the station. He’d expected an almighty bollocking – would have preferred that, showed that he truly cared – instead he simply took him back to his mother, telling him that you reap what you sow in life, and fucking off back here, to this place he’d lived alone since the early nineties.
‘You look like shit, John.’
And it was true. His skin had taken on the sallow hue of old parchment, stretched tight across handsome cheekbones that had once made him quite eligible to other women – that and the bank balance, of course.
Ironically, now his impressive cheekbones only emphasised the skull beneath, a visual representation of death claiming its latest subject inch by yellowed inch.
Mark Bridges, his father’s nurse, came into the bedroom. Mark was trained to within an inch of his life to present a jovial, spritely attitude while administering palliative care.
It was impressive to Lewis. Not a single twitch or mumble, just a breeziness that made death seem like the norm – which, Lewis supposed, it was. He recalled the professionals who’d dealt with him during his three years in prison. They’d been full of mumbles and twitches – their anxieties as obvious as their cheap polyester uniforms – and even those that taught him mindfulness had been stoic, and officious. No jovial, spritely attitudes to lighten the mood there. Ever.
But only the best for John White.
He was, after all, a very wealthy man.
‘Apparently rain is on the way,’ Mark said, moving through the room as if he were hosting a dinner party. ‘Hopefully we won’t need to start shovelling after all.’ He smiled and looked between father and son. ‘How we doing?’
Lewis flashed him a look that surely revealed what he was thinking… Well, he’s dying, and I’m bitter and pissed off.
Still, if Mark, the well of happiness and contentment, clocked it, he wasn’t about to acknowledge it in his carefully curated environment.
‘Fantastic,’ Mark said, either immune to tension or trained very well in ignoring it. He went over to John, checked the drip, and tapped a button on the machine. ‘Just a touch more morphine for the afternoon, Mr White.’
Mark took a few vitals and scribbled them on a clipboard.
He looked up at Lewis. ‘He was looking forward to you coming.’
Lewis felt a familiar heat rising in his chest. He took a deep breath and tried to force it down, because it was the same heat that had ended with Gregg Ince’s blood on his knuckles, and the poor bastard’s head bouncing off the urinal.
Mark smiled and continued, ‘He really hoped he’d be awake.’
‘You’ve just dosed him again… Is he unlikely to wake again now?’
Mark held onto his smile. ‘Yes, I’m sorry… the morphine is important, though, Mr White. It makes it more peaceful.’ Mark turned his smile down to Lewis. ‘Doesn’t it, Mr White?’ Mark touched John’s skeletal hand, affectionately, and left the room.
Mark’s relentless showmanship was grating against his nerves.
It’d been Mark who’d tracked him down, phoned him and begged him to come and say goodbye to his father. His father had asked, apparently.
Maybe it wasn’t theatre, then? Maybe Mark had genuine compassion for the old man? After all, cold-calling a convicted violent offender wasn’t in a nurse’s job description.
That idea of genuine compassion made his stomach turn.
Lewis exhaled, then took another deep breath. He was, at least, getting better at calming himself. It was almost four years since he’d beaten someone half to death because of anger. He was working hard to ensure that never happened again.
Lewis wondered, and not for the first time, what the hell he was doing here.
It couldn’t be sympathy. It must be a good riddance?
Or, maybe just to prove I’m not you – running away when family needs me most?
John’s skeletal hand twitched on the covers. Lewis did have some early memories of that hand – holding his tiny fingers, teaching him to throw a ball. They were, of course, vague, though. And, had they actually happened? After all, he’d read somewhere that there was a fair amount of fiction in memory. But one thing he was crystal clear on was this. John hadn’t been holding Felix’s hand when meningitis took him at twelve. In fact, John had been nowhere near the hospital. He was in Dubai, closing a deal while his son closed his eyes for the last time.
‘You made it back for the funeral, though, didn’t you?’ Lewis said. ‘First class? God bless you, John.’
Lewis stood in silence, haunted by the memory of Felix’s cold, empty hand. At least their mother had been holding the other.
‘She was there for us, John. Always. Not like you.’
This was all Lewis could bear.
He circled the bed for the door. He turned before exiting. He clapped. ‘Well done, John. What a legacy, eh? Built on broken promises, affairs, neglect and the misery of others. All that money… yet you can’t even take it with you… was it all really worth it?’
He turned to leave—
Behind him, he heard a weak voice. ‘Don’t…’
Lewis froze.
‘Please…’
Lewis looked back over his shoulder, his blood running cold. His father’s eyes were open.
‘Stay…’
Bile rose in Lewis’s throat. He didn’t know what to say. In fact, he didn’t even know what he was feeling.
But then came that usual, default surge of anger.
How dare you ask that?
How dare you need me now!
‘No!’ he said, moving swiftly through the door. He flew down the stairs. Mark was at the bottom. He kept his eyes fixed on the floor – he was in no mood for the nurse’s compassion.
‘Mr White—’
‘No!’ he repeated, slipping on his jacket and boots and heading through the front door.
The icy blast of air was sobering.
He trudged up the snow-covered path.
Don’t…
He felt the ink spelling his mother’s name burning on his arm.
Please…
He saw his brother’s cold, empty hand.
Stay…
He looked back at the house, its windows glowing warm against the gathering darkness.
He thought now about Gregg Ince, the man he’d put in hospital during that pub fight, skull fractured against a urinal. He’d written him letters. Tried to apologise but had received nothing back.
Never really expected to. But…
Where were the answers?
To all of this?
Him?
His father?
‘Fuck,’ Lewis whispered, his breath clouding in the frigid air.
He turned back towards the house.
Chapter Nineteen
After being dropped off home by Reggie, Frank had stormed into his kitchen with cold feet and thrown his hiking boots away in disgust.
Then, he’d taken a shower, during which he could almost hear Mary’s laugh: ‘About bloody time, love!’
Mary had always called him a hoarder and used to laugh when unusable camera film and leaking batteries from decades earlier showed up at the back of old drawers.
Following his shower, he took a nap and woke up feeling rather proud of himself for ditching the hiking boots. It was a sign that he wasn’t settling for shite any more. Another step forward, like giving up the drink and eating Gerry’s rabbit food.
And why not? Who wants to be a walking Yorkshire stereotype?
However, five minutes ago, he’d come into the kitchen for a glass of water, and the sight of the bin had triggered something in him.
He was currently resisting the urge to retrieve the boots—
A sharp knock at the door made him jump. ‘God help us…’
He opened the door. The darkness surprised him at first. His nap had obviously been more than a nap!
Henrietta stood shivering on the doorstep, her smart wool coat no match for the cold, a Tupperware container clutched to her chest. She looked good. She’d styled her silver hair in soft waves that framed her face, and she’d applied makeup.
