Road Kill Read online

  Eli had stopped pretending to clean glasses.

  ‘You know, you’re funny. You’re a funny guy, just like your brother.’

  My smile was mirthless. ‘Eamonn’s not funny, he just loves puns way too much.’

  ‘So the big day is tomorrow?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘You must be stoked. It’s great, man. It’s really great that he’s coming home.’ He picked up the whisky gallantly and drank some. ‘I’m sorry he even had to be away this long. The law, you know… The law. I devoted my life to the thing but it can be a real bitch. If it weren’t for that blood spatter, man… I mean, you know I think it was planted evidence – in the majority of the CCTV footage he didn’t even touch the guy.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘No, really. You never stop learning about the new and fucked-up ways the opposition can screw you over.’

  ‘No, Carey.’ I caught his eyes. ‘I know.’

  That sobered him up. His first look was to Eli, who was leaning against the liquor shelves with his arms folded and a small smile on his face. His second look went to the doors, one of which had been propped open the last time he had checked. His third look was to me.

  ‘Ronnie…’ He spread his hands, palms up. ‘I don’t like what you’re trying to say. What are you trying to say?’

  ‘I’m saying that I know.’

  ‘You know what?’

  ‘I know that you swung the case.’

  ‘I swung the… I swung the… What?’ Scoffing, desperately. ‘You’re insane.’

  ‘There’s always a money trail, you know that, right, Carey? Dad followed it all the way back to Borselle and his planted evidence. You’re a lawyer, how could you not know that?’

  He made to lunge at me but I grabbed him around the neck, finding the collar of his shirt and slamming him backwards over the bar.

  Eli was ready to step in if I needed assistance, but I didn’t. Carey was soft; built for desks. I was barely breaking a sweat.

  ‘No! No! … No! No!’

  ‘Maybe that’s what you should have said before Borselle paid you off, eh? Just. Say. No.’

  Growling, snarling, ‘No! Ron! … No!’

  I took a knife out of my pocket – he hadn’t bothered searching me on the way in, the amateur – and jabbed it straight into an eye. The tiny jet of blood that erupted almost went into mine. He screamed, but Eli jammed a dishcloth into his mouth.

  When the knife was wrenched out I half expected most of Carey’s left eyeball to come with it, but it stayed stubbornly in his socket, albeit cloven in half. I went to stab him in the head but the blade broke against his skull and half of it spun away across the bar. Incensed by the failure of my tools, I took hold of Carey’s blood-spattered head – which was wailing, emitting primal hacking sounds – by his hair and smashed it into the counter. The skull relented, with a crack, and another crack, like eggshell. His body went limp and an ever-expanding circle of brain stain appeared on the bar-top where what remained of Carey’s cranium impacted against it, in a harsh rhythm, until I got a bit of out of breath and stopped and let his body slide to the floor.

  I noticed that Eli had refilled my glass, and I picked it up and took a sip.

  ‘Cheers, mate.’

  He was smiling a little. ‘Cheers.’

  I liked Eli. He was calm. Cool as fuck for a situation like this.

  I blew cold air onto my forehead and pushed my hair out of my eyes.

  The music had stopped.

  I sat back down for a moment, appraising Carey’s slumped form, and said, ‘Hey, Eli, can you put that Kansas track back on? I was really digging that.’

  CHAPTER TWO

  Eamonn hadn’t killed him, though that fact is very much a technicality when you stand there and let your mates stamp someone’s skull all over the pavement just because they suspect the lad is gay. The ones with blood on their shoes had gotten life. We’d had over half the jurors on our side and Dad insisted a guilty verdict was unthinkable. But it hadn’t been. Turns out, it had been very fucking thinkable. We’d all had fifteen years to think about it, or not think about it.

  I waited with Eli in his car, both of us sipping iced beverages through straws. I hadn’t wanted to go inside.

  ‘I’m drinking your milkshake, Eli,’ I said, laughing and slapping the dashboard.

  He looked sideways at me, expressionless, lips clamped disapprovingly around the end of the straw, which was emitting a dry fricative hiss as the bubbly remains of his strawberry milkshake chased each other around the bottom of his plastic cup.

  I stopped laughing. ‘Sorry.’

  Sitting here in the car park, I felt like I was doing a school run. But for the high walls and ominous grey, the curious halo of grass around its entrance, it could have been a college or a spa. It almost looked like a church inside, with its domes and towers and turrets, reverting to the role it was always meant for; place of judgement.

  The morning’s mission was simple; pick up Eamonn, take him home, have dinner with Mum and Dad and then… I wasn’t sure.

  ‘You ever think about London, Eli?’

  He seemed disappointed with his sudden lack of drink, frowning. ‘What, physically? Metaphorically? Philosophically?’

  ‘To live, you tart. You ever think about going back?’

  A smirk. ‘Are you proposing to me?’

  ‘Yes. Let’s move in together.’

  He shrugged. ‘Business is good here. I don’t miss it.’

  ‘Ah, yeah, I forgot, you’re a businessman.’ I winked at him, glancing in the direction of the prison gates but seeing nothing. ‘We have a lot of good stuff going on, you know. We could use someone like you. You wouldn’t be bored.’

  He wasn’t giving anything away.

  I shrugged. ‘Just saying.’

  ‘I thought you were here to look for a Japanese girl?’ he asked, just when I’d resigned myself to dropping the subject. ‘Are you saying you need my help back home too?’

  ‘Truthfully’ – was I going to answer this truthfully? – ‘yeah, a bit. We’ve had some problems.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘If I tell you, do you wanna promise you’ll think about coming over?’

  He gave me a tight-lipped smile. I took that as a maybe. To my annoyance, Eli was someone who was very aware of how valuable an asset he was. He wouldn’t be taken in with platitudes. I’d have to give him reasons. I’d have to give him a plan.

  But I wasn’t sure if I wanted him to know the full extent of how fucked-up a situation I’d left in London. Noel Braben, my business partner, was losing the plot big-time. We’d been screwed over, informed on, by one of our employees; a tiny little Japanese bitch. I could have fitted her into a shaving kit but she had somehow managed to steal tens of thousands of pounds in cash and drugs, and kill one of our most trusted employees.

  We never said her name any more – Seven – especially not in front of Noel. Out loud, she existed only in pronouns.

  What’s more, the owner of our club, the Underground, had come back from Manchester to look into this sudden loss of profit. It was embarrassingly obvious to everyone that if Edie Franco had once again deigned to grace London with her presence, things must be bad.

  Eli indicated his head at the prison gates. ‘He looks like you.’

  I followed his gaze and, for one horrible second, I thought there had been a mistake. They’d released the wrong person. The man with the small bag slung over his shoulder, walking tentatively towards the car, wasn’t anyone I recognized.

  ‘Jesus…’

  I forgot the rest of my frappuccino and left it in the footwell as I got out of the 4x4.

  The rugged thirty-five-year-old man stopped and gave us an awkward smile. ‘Hey.’

  Holy fuck, he did look like me. He had the same olive skin, black eyes, the same imposing build. The only difference was the hair. I’d kept mine long. His was shaved into a crew cut. He’d also started wearing an earring, I noticed.
r />   He came towards me and we hugged for about the fifth time in our lives. No one in our family was into hugging apart from Mum, and even then we were more acquiescing victims than participants.

  He felt wiry and adult.

  ‘Uh, this is Eli,’ I said, gesturing at the vehicle. ‘This is his car.’

  That was the first fucking thing I said, after fifteen years. What a tool.

  Eamonn waved through the windscreen.

  Eli waved back.

  ‘How’s it hanging?’ he said.

  I had no idea what to say. ‘Um, good, I guess. How are…? Mum will be glad to see you.’

  ‘Can I get a cheeseburger on the way home?’

  I snorted. ‘Well, yeah, if you like. Mum’s cooking though.’

  Every eldest child I knew had trouble getting their heads around the aging process when it came to their younger siblings. No matter how many birthdays sped by they always remained about twelve. I hadn’t seen Eamonn since he was twenty-six. I’d spoken to him on the phone a lot but voices didn’t age, not really, unless you were a smoker. In my mind he had halted at the age of fifteen, five years before he’d been sentenced.

  ‘Yo,’ Eamonn said to Eli as he bounded into the back seat, slinging his bag across the space.

  Um, this is Eli. This is his car.

  Eli glanced at me and smiled, but it was forced, awkward solidarity.

  *

  Eamonn would never have seen this house, I realized as we pulled up outside.

  ‘You look old,’ he’d said in the car, leaning forwards to slap me on both shoulders. ‘Well, not old, but you look like…’

  ‘Forty?’

  ‘No, like Dad.’

  I thought he looked like Dad too.

  ‘Sick!’ Eamonn exclaimed at the sight of the new place, where our parents had lived for the past eight years. ‘Is Dad loaded now? Shit, we have a veranda. Mum must be psyched.’

  I couldn’t tell if his hyperactivity was masking nervousness. Eamonn had never been the type to be nervous over anything. He would walk into anywhere like he owned the place; a trait I’d always predicted would earn him a punch in the face.

  Getting out of the car slowly, I slammed the door. The noise must have alerted my parents because in a matter of seconds the front door was open. I couldn’t see Dad, but Mum peered out first, as if she wasn’t sure the man we were bringing back was actually her son. But the recognition hit her, in much less time than it had taken to hit me, and she came flying out and down the steps to throw her arms around him.

  Eamonn had dropped his bag by the car and I went back to pick it up for him. Eli was still behind the wheel, putting the entire vehicle between himself and the outpouring of emotion.

  She was already sobbing, almost dragging Eamonn to the ground she was clinging to him so hard, like he was a crucifix. Our mum was a strong woman, built like a shire horse. When we were younger she’d been able to take us all in a fight.

  Eamonn stood there and took it, lapping it all up like he was the fucking Pope on tour.

  ‘It’s all right, Ma, it’s all right.’

  ‘Yeah…’ I went to say something, but no one was listening to me.

  Dad was conspicuously absent and I raised my eyes to see him standing in the front doorway. Our eyes met and we nodded at each other, both unsure of where we stood in this tableau. Dad was an elder statesman of a man, with a full head of hair even in his sixties. He hadn’t wrinkled like most guys his age; he only seemed to retain the most deep and proud lines.

  ‘Ronnie, come here.’ Mum waved her arm over Eamonn’s shoulder, demanding participation.

  I did as I was told and hugged her across my brother, my left arm jarring against his shoulder blade, still holding his goddamn bag.

  ‘Paul! Paul!’

  She directed the same gesture at Dad, forcing him to come down to us. I backed away at this point, giving them some space while he and Eamonn eyed each other. Dad held out a hand, ‘Son,’ and Eamonn took it with a thin smile, and then they hugged with the kind of back-slapping bravado that only men do.

  Mum was still crying, and I sidestepped them both to put an arm around her shoulders and give her a squeeze. ‘Oh Jesus, come here. It’s all right, he’s back, let’s all have some fucking pasta, yeah?’

  ‘Language,’ she snapped at me through her tears. ‘Eli, young man! Get yourself out of that car and come inside! You’re staying for dinner, I insist, to thank you for picking my boy up.’

  ‘Oh dear God,’ I’m sure I saw Eli mutter under his breath as he left the safety of his car, smiling.

  ‘So, what’s for eats?’ Eamonn beamed, striding on inside with Mum at his heels, leaving me standing with his bag. ‘I’m starved!’

  I want to go home, I thought, before I could even stop myself. Fuck, I already want to go home.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Eli went home after dinner, so I sat on the back porch smoking. It wasn’t the habit for me, cigarettes, but they served their purpose at times like this, gave me time alone.

  It wasn’t an etiquette observed by everyone. After ten minutes or so, Eamonn came outside and joined me.

  Our garden wasn’t lit. Surrounded by trees, it was a black hole. The last time I’d been here they’d had a trampoline, for the rare times I managed to get the kids over. I suspected it might be still there, in shadow. I wondered if Dad ever had a go on it when no one was watching.

  ‘Mum always thought you were the one who was actually gonna make something of himself,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, shut up, I’m not in the mood.’

  ‘You have, though, haven’t you? You’ve got that club, a proper business, house, kids.’

  ‘I’m doing OK.’

  ‘You sound so English, man.’

  ‘I am English. I don’t even remember much about living here any more, not school or anything.’ I stubbed the cigarette out on the decking, dividing us with a tiny mound of ash. ‘I remember leaving and coming back a lot, but it’s not really the same, is it, just remembering the flights? I remember more about what the airports looked like than our old house.’

  I had a gut instinct that he had come out here to ask me for a favour.

  He had sobered up a bit before coming to talk to me, but I wasn’t impressed. He’d been back barely twelve hours and Mum had spent about sixty per cent of that time crying. He’d spent most of that time drunk on wine, his tolerance for alcohol gone.

  ‘You know, I still wanna make something of myself,’ he said.

  ‘Good for you. The world is your oyster.’

  ‘Why are you being such an asshole? I’m just trying to talk.’

  ‘No, you’re not,’ I said. ‘You’re about to ask me if you can borrow some money or you’re about to ask me for a job.’

  He fell silent and looked at the ground.

  I offered him a cigarette out of pity, but he shook his head. It must suck to be so fucking transparent. I thought fifteen years inside might have instilled some tact into him but no, he still had all the subtlety of a nail-gun.

  ‘Look,’ he continued, speaking to his hands, positioned as if he were holding some kind of invisible orb, ‘I’m not gonna get work. You have any idea how fucked it is? Who’s gonna hire me now?’

  ‘I don’t know, maybe you can try filling out an application form and getting an interview like the rest of the fucking world? Enrol in some rehabilitation programme to show some effort?’ I shrugged. ‘Just a thought.’

  ‘This isn’t fucking England. You can’t just do that here when you’ve got a record. And like you’ve ever filled out an application for anything.’

  ‘Er, yeah, I have. How exactly are you qualified to sound disbelieving here? You haven’t got a fucking clue what’s been going on with anything other than the prison basketball league.’

  ‘I could have done, if you’d visited or called or something! More than four times or whatever it was.’

  Well, we both had each other there. I had him with failure and
he had me with guilt. I lit a new cigarette because he wasn’t going to go away and I needed something to do with my hands during the stalemate.

  My life had always been an eight-hour flight away; that was how I was able to justify it. There had always been Rachel, my wife, that reason not to come back, then Ryan had been born, and Chantal so soon after. Whenever I thought about it, the distance, Mum, Dad and Eamonn, I felt taken over by this sickness in my gut.

  ‘I’m not lending you money, Eamonn.’

  ‘I don’t want your money!’

  ‘I’m not giving you a job either.’

  ‘Oh, come on…’

  ‘What am I gonna do, fly you back to England with me and put you in charge of something?’

  He hesitated.

  I laughed so hard I almost choked on smoke. ‘Ha! Christ. No. Just no. In what fucking universe would I do that?’

  ‘Your problem is that you still think I’m a kid, bro.’

  ‘No, my problem is that I know you don’t grow up in prison. It doesn’t count. Believe me. You go in there young and you come out a fucking man-child.’

  I glanced over my shoulder to see if Mum or Dad were in the vicinity, eavesdropping through the back door, but they weren’t. I wondered if our voices could carry upstairs to an open window.

  ‘Ron, you don’t know me any more.’

  ‘I never knew you before.’

  ‘And whose fault is that?’

  I wanted to stretch out and take a walk around the garden, maybe call my kids. ‘I’m sorry if this sounds harsh, but you can’t just have everything handed to you because you made the wrong choices.’

  ‘Go on.’ He leant back on his elbows, my words rolling off him. ‘Ask me something.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Ask me something. You say you don’t know anything about me. How about asking?’

  ‘No.’ I stood up.

  ‘Come on, just one question.’

  ‘Shut up, please.’

  ‘You can’t think of one thing you wanna know about your kid brother?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Nothing?’