Survival of Thomas Ford, The (9 page)

Robert had asked Jimmy, on the drive home, what had been the point of it? Jimmy had only said one word. Reconnaisance.

Robert thought the word over. It was a military word. Jimmy must have got it from a war film. Or those old Commando books. So it had been a mission, the trip to Mr Ford’s garden. Intelligence had been gathered, Robert presumed, by Jimmy. Robert himself did not feel any better informed by the expedition.

He had seen Mr Ford again, this time from behind, and he had seen the man’s house. Robert could imagine that Mr Ford was finding it a very different house now, with the absence of Mrs Ford.

In a way, Robert was relieved. Jimmy had not entered the house, he had not made Mr Ford aware of his presence. He had not done anything crazy or irrevocable. They already had the accident to live with. That had been crazy and irrevocable enough. Robert fell asleep, taking with him into his dreams the image of Thomas Ford standing in the kitchen, a broad back and thick neck, but in Robert’s dream Robert is frozen on the spot in the garden, unable to move his legs, as Thomas Ford turns slowly and sees him standing there in his garden. But Thomas Ford’s face is not the face Robert has seen in the newspapers, or can remember from the moment of the crash. No, in this dream, as sweat spurts from Robert’s neck and armpits, Thomas Ford’s face is the long, hairy snout of a wolf, teeth gleaming and jaws slavering. Thomas Ford’s eyes are enormous yellow orbs and Robert cries out in his sleep twice, waking his mother with the second cry.

At her flat, Lorna is on the verge of sleep when she hears Jimmy’s ratatat knock on the door. She swears, then throws off her duvet. She opens the door to a sober-faced Jimmy. His only expression is a raised eyebrow. Then he smiles.

In the bed, afterwards, they lie again in that familiar zone of total blackness, which Lorna thinks now is something that she never experiences when alone in the bedroom. The nebulous vacuum only seems to come with Jimmy’s presence, as though some density within him has absorbed the light. She finds herself wishing he was not there, that she had not let him in.

“There’s something I want to tell you about,” he says, and Lorna wishes he would stop talking. “It’s about that man at the hospital, Thomas Ford.”

Lorna starts to feel sleepy again.

“He’s not at the hospital any more,” she says. “He went home.”

“Aye. I know. Me and Robert were round at his house just now. We were in his garden eh?”

Lorna frowned.

“How do you mean?”

“Just what I said. We were in his garden.”

“What were you doing in his garden? How would you know where his garden is anyway? You’re talking shite Jimmy. Let me sleep.”

“His garden’s at 16 Cromwell Drive,” said Jimmy. “That’s his house. Nice area. Me and Robert just came from it.”

Lorna’s eyes were open in the black room.

“It was me and Robert, in my car, that caused the crash two months ago, that Ford’s wife died in eh?”

“Don’t talk shite Jimmy.”

Jimmy sniffed. Then he laughed in the darkness.

“Aye well,” he said, “if you really don’t want to know.”

“You’re saying you caused the crash?”

“Aye.”

“How?”

“We were coming round a blind corner, nose to nose with a lorry.”

“A lorry driver died there too,” said Lorna.

“Aye. But that was a heart attack,” said Jimmy. “Can’t blame me for that.”

Lorna felt like something had twisted in her chest. There was an excitement too though, like being privy to the solution of a great mystery.

“You killed that man’s wife then,” she said.

“No. It was an accident.”

“But you caused it.”

“The trouble is,” said Jimmy, “this man, Ford, he saw our heads like, for a second. I could pass him on the street one day. I think he’d remember me.”

“Why were you in his garden?”

She felt Jimmy’s shoulders shrug against the mattress. He didn’t answer.

“You’re just winding me up, Jimmy. You weren’t in anybody’s fucking garden. Except maybe your mum’s, or Robert’s mum’s.”

“I know he remembers me,” said Jimmy, “because if I was him I’d remember me. No way am I spending years in a cell, living around a bunch of mangey cunts, no way. No for an accident on a road.”

“Just shut up Jimmy. I’m no listening. I’ve had enough of you doing this, stuffing my head full of shite when I’m trying to get to sleep. You wouldn’t think it was funny if you had to work the next day.”

Lorna turned over onto her stomach, raised the pillow, laid her cheek on it.

“Just shut up and go to sleep,” she said.

Jimmy frowned in the darkness. He felt very alone. Where was the relief in confession when one was not believed? It was supposed to be good for the soul, but then people didn’t believe you. What good was that? Still, it was interesting that it went that way. Perhaps it showed the flimsy nature of the evidence against Robert and himself. That was Jimmy’s last thought. One moment he was staring into the darkness, the next he was asleep.

Detective Sergeant McPherson was sitting at his narrow corner desk, looking out a dirty window. He smelt Liz’s perfume before he heard her shoes on the carpet. She placed a styrofoam cup full of coffee on his desk.

“From the machine?” he said.

“Don’t be so bloody choosy. The kettle’s broken.”

“What? The new one? Another one?”

“Aye.”

“What the hell are they doing to the kettles?”

Liz shrugged.

“Have you written up the rest of the Ford file yet?” she asked.

McPherson shook his head.

“Come on, Bill, we need to sign off on it. There’s that hit and run yesterday morning.”

“I thought McGregor had that.”

“No. He was just doing a prelim. It’s ours. McGregor’s off on holiday tomorrow. Canary Islands. Some new girlfriend he got off the internet.”

“You make it sound like he bought her.”

Liz raised her eyebrows, pouted her lips.

“You never ever know,” she said.

McPherson grinned.

“Aye,” he said, “alright. But it’s the thing about the red car and the bird-faced guy, and the square-jawed guy. Ford painted a pretty vivid picture there.”

“Uniform’s been on the lookout for a couple like that, seen nothing.”

McPherson looked over his shoulder to make sure no-one was near.

“You don’t trust plod to fucking find folk, Liz. That’s our job.”

She laughed. Then she stopped laughing and sniffed.

“No, come on, Bill. The Inspector’s made it clear. We’ve been on the Ford case long enough.”

McPherson started tapping his desk with a pen. He tapped faster and harder, staring out the window. Liz shook her head, got up, walked away and left him to it. Out the window, McPherson could see the dual carriageway in the distance. What you’d need to do, he thought, was dedicate a car to just sitting at the roadside, looking out for a bird-faced guy. But there were too many forms to fill in now. Not enough time for anything. McPherson grabbed the Ford file, tugged it closer, read off the phone number, dialled.

“Hello, it’s DS McPherson here. That’s you isn’t it, Mr Gillan? Alan?”

“Aye. Hello Mr McPherson.”

“I’m just calling as a matter of courtesy, Alan. I’m sorry not to have anything new. We’ve had men on the lookout for the driver and passenger of the red car which I told you your son-in-law described…”

“Aye, well, Mr McPherson, we were actually round at Thomas’ house, Thomas and Lea’s house, last night.”

“Oh yes, Alan? Well, that’s good then, that you’ve all talked at last.”

“Aye. There’s no sign of the lads in that red car then, though, Mr McPherson?”

“No Alan. Not yet anyway. Sorry not to have anything solid to tell you, as I said.”

“Aye.”

There was a silence.

“Mr McPherson, do you believe like, yourself, that there was a red car there, with lads in it, like Thomas said?”

“Well Alan, I can only make note of what I’m told, and then pursue lines of enquiry.”

“Aye.”

McPherson felt a sudden wave of desolation, depression, come through the phone to him, from Alan. McPherson gritted his teeth and sniffed.

“Oh Alan, sorry, I have to go just now, something’s come up here. But I’ll be in touch again soon. Goodbye Alan.”

“Aye, ’bye Mr McPherson.”

McPherson started tapping his pen again. It was important to keep a distance. Otherwise you could burn out. You had to watch it, all the time. He stared at the Ford folder, then used his pen to flick the cover up hard so that the file closed with a slap.

Thomas woke up on the bedroom floor. He had dreamed that a great hawk was flying low over the city, shitting on everything, knocking people over with its great, sharp clawed feet. It was very hard to think of a reason to move, so he lay there for a long time. The sun shifted position in the sky as he lay still, feeling the carpet against his heels.

Eventually, he felt thirsty, so he walked down the stairs to the kitchen. He walked around the broken glass on the floor, took another pint glass from the cupboard, filled it with water. He turned to face the garden, saw Lea’s little rockery. There they were in the morning light, the colours, brown stones, mauves, pinks, orange stones, grey bricklike slabs.

Thomas unlocked the big, sliding patio doors and lugged a wooden chair out with him into the garden. He sat by the rocks, sometimes staring at them, sometimes letting his neck swing far back until his closed eyelids faced the sky. It was going to be a good day, weather-wise. It occurred to Thomas that he could try to work. He hadn’t been in the little studio in the loft since returning from the hospital. He had no ideas though, nothing to begin on, his mind was empty. Maybe he should do some push-ups, or yoga, but he couldn’t be bothered. It was as though some thick, scaled toad was sitting just beneath his breast-bone, blocking all life.

Thomas picked up the chair and was halfway down the garden when he saw the footsteps on the grass, two sets it looked like, big feet, coming round the corner of the house and leading up to the patio doors. Some of the boot marks were left on mud, beside the grass, from yesterday’s rain. Some of the marks were on the stone flagging of the patio, boldly embossed there, in dried dirt.

The mud had only been there from yesterday evening onwards. Who could have come round here like that, since then? Had they come when Alan and Jean were here? Or when he was asleep upstairs? The first thought that came into Thomas’ head was that cops had been here, while he was in the living room talking to Alan and Jean. Cops out here, with Alan and Jean’s knowledge, listening to the living room conversation, trying to get Thomas on tape maybe, or witnessed, as he said something new, some confession about the crash. It was possible. But then Thomas remembered Jean’s eyes at the front door, as she left. Her eyes had not contained any such deceit.

Kids then, round the back, playing. Kids had big feet these days. Or burglars, burglars who knew about the empty house and had come to see. Well, burglars would have gone through those patio doors like butter.

Then the image came to Thomas’ mind, the bird-faced driver and the square-jawed passenger. Thomas tried to reason himself out of it, but he saw them clearly, walking round the corner of the house, hovering out here in the garden, staring in at him.

Thomas walked into the house, sat down and picked up the phone. Then he put it down. He didn’t know the police number. He would have to ask the operator. She would give him some stupid new directory enquiries number. Then eventually McPherson would be on the phone. Thomas tried to phrase it right, in his mind, what he would say to McPherson.

McPherson! It’s me, Ford. I think they were here in my garden. The driver with the bird-face and the other one. There’s footprints in the garden. I don’t know why I’m thinking it could have been them. It’s just a funny feeling I got when I saw the boot marks out there just now.

No. There was no way to phrase it that wouldn’t sound mad.

Thomas sat back in the lonely brown chair and stared at the empty sofa. Footprints in the garden, that was all. The rest was only in the imagination.

Lorna woke up to the view of Jimmy’s high, profiled hawk-nose. His eyes were closed and she sensed that he was truly asleep, not just feigning it to trick her. She had gone to sleep sure that Jimmy was winding her up with all the talk about causing the Ford crash. Now she woke up believing him. As though sleep had re-ordered her cells and neurones mysteriously, prepared her for this new, dark knowledge. She didn’t want to know anything about it. She closed her eyes again to see if that would stop her knowing. Sleep had forced her to understand that this wasn’t some new craziness come out of nowhere. She had remembered the odd questions Jimmy had asked about Thomas Ford. Even when Jimmy’s stomach had been hurting that day, in Starbucks, Jimmy had still been asking her about Thomas Ford. He had asked her if Thomas Ford had said anything to her at the hospital, about the crash. It had felt wrong when he asked.

Lorna turned away from Jimmy as she got out of the bed. She felt his hand on her shoulder.

“What time are you going to work?” he said.

“I have to be there at two.”

“You still cleaning that theatre?”

“Aye.”

“Funny how they call it a theatre eh? Like it’s just a stage production, all an act, drama and that. Bangs and flashes.”

Lorna sniffed. His hand was still on her shoulder, like some fat pirate’s parrot. The weight seemed to enter her shoulder bone, then travel down the arm to her wrist. She could almost make herself feel it, a pain in the wrist from the weight of Jimmy. Not the weight of Jimmy’s hand, but of Jimmy himself, and what he had told her.

“Hey,” he said, “you know I was just joking last night eh?”

“I know you weren’t.”

She didn’t turn to look at him. His hand left her shoulder like the parrot was taking off now, toward the bedroom ceiling, escaping from everything. She could see its wings and red-feathered belly. She felt hot, like the beginning of a fever.

“Don’t go to work today eh?” he said.

“I have to.”

“Why? So a few people don’t get poisoned later by some superbug? Let them get poisoned. If that poison doesn’t get them they’ll just get it from another poison somewhere else. The water. The air. It’s idiots in charge of everything. Let them fuck it all up eh? Just lie down here with me.”

And suddenly she did feel like it, just lying back again and watching the ceiling. Maybe the ceiling, or the sky, or a flock of red parrots, would roll down towards them until she and Jimmy were crushed together here in the room. Then it would all be over.

“I need the toilet,” she said.

“Go on then.”

Jimmy listened to the sounds of her moving through the flat. He knew it was possible that she could get dressed quickly, without him knowing. She could open the front door quietly, nothing on it squeaked. She could run out onto the streets and tell everyone that he killed Lea Ford that day. Jimmy laid back on the bed, his neck tensed. He heard the toilet flush. He heard feet pad on the carpet, then felt her body against his side. He turned to look at her eyes. Her irises were wide and round as she looked back at him, like shooting targets at some wild fairground. Jimmy brought his bird-features close to Lorna’s face. He kissed her mouth. When he was inside her and moving he found his mind back at the road by the lochside in the moment before Thomas Ford swerved his
Toyota
into the water. As Jimmy came with Lorna, it was Lea Ford’s face he saw behind closed lids. Afterwards, as he lay and held Lorna, there was a sour taste in his mouth and an annoying slick of sweat between his shoulders and the sheets. Lea Ford’s face was still there. He wanted it to go now. Her eyes were locked on him.

“Why did you tell me, Jimmy?” said Lorna.

“Eh?”

“Why did you tell me?”

Her face was in his armpit. It was uncomfortable, her face there. Jimmy felt tension all through him, his nerves.

“You must trust me, Jimmy,” she said.

Jimmy felt his eyes sting. A tight lightning-flash of pain flicked through the very centre of his right eye. He twitched.

“Are you OK?” she said.

“Aye.”

“You’re not worried about telling me are you? Now, I mean?”

Jimmy laughed. Something pulsed in his soul like a black insect waking up.

“Well,” he said, “it was a pretty fucking stupid thing to do I suppose.”

“You can’t hold everything in, Jimmy.”

“Aye, evidently eh?”

When Jimmy left the flat an hour later, he stared long and hard at Lorna, as she lay on the bed gazing back. There was something in her eyes that Jimmy didn’t like, something lazy and satisfied, the look of a lioness that had just fed.

Lorna slept for an hour, then lay awake watching the ceiling and feeling the idea’s energy grow in her. She didn’t know if she had the courage. Did she dare? She lay on the bed and physically trembled, vibrated, trying to truly sense whether she had the nerve to carry out the idea, live with its consequences. She was not sure.

She looked at the clock.

There would be time to go and see Robert on the way to work.

That might help her decide.

Robert’s mother was at his bedroom door. She had a strange look on her face. Robert pulled the earphones out and Johnny Cash’s voice became a distant, tinny screech, as though Johnny Cash was reincarnated now, back in town as some performing insect vocalist trapped in the world’s ether.

“There’s a lassie at the door for you, Robert.”

“Who?”

“Lorna, I think she said.”

“Lorna?”

“Aye.”

At the foot of the stairs, Robert saw Lorna standing, waiting. She looked up at him as he walked towards her.

“Hi Robert.”

She smiled.

“Hi,” he said. “Eh, do you want a tea?”

They stood in the kitchen, quite close together. Robert could smell soap from her. Lorna looked toward the doorway slyly, twice, until some instinct moved Robert to say,

“My mum will no hear us. She’s out in the garden.”

Lorna looked at him sharply, almost coldly.

“Jimmy told me what happened,” she said.

Robert stared.

“Mrs Ford,” said Lorna. “The crash.”

Robert’s heart took a leap, like it was in no way part of him suddenly, but some alien object in his chest. He swallowed.

“Jimmy was driving,” he said. “I was just the passenger.”

“Aye, the silent fucking passenger who’s never said a word to anyone about it since.”

“Have you told anyone, Lorna?”

She shook her head.

“He only told me last night,” she said. “Were you two really in that man’s garden?”

Robert nodded.

“We saw his back, in the kitchen of his house. He didn’t see us.”

“What were you doing at his house, Robert?”

Robert shrugged.

“Jimmy said we had to do something about him.”

“What did you do?”

“Nothing. Jimmy said after that it was reconnaissance, like in war.”

“Reconnaissance?”

“Aye.”

Robert’s hands were hot with fear.

“Jimmy told me not to tell my mum,” said Robert. “But now he’s told you.”

Lorna’s eyes narrowed into a tight horizontal strip of eye, like twin cinema screens were regarding Robert now, each showing a wide, blue desert sky, or unfathomed ocean deeps. And at the centre of each eye a black circle that Robert could sense was full of contempt. He looked down.

“I should go,” said Lorna. “I should be at work. I think I just wanted to see if you’d tell me Jimmy was talking shite and it’s all a wind up. But I already knew it wasn’t.”

“You’re no going to tell anybody are you?” said Robert.

Lorna sniffed and shook her head.

“It’s Jimmy that seems to be doing all the telling just now, Robert. I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

Lorna walked slowly along the street from Robert’s house. She tried to make the walk like a moving meditation, watching each shoe plop down on the next paving-stone. She crossed the bridge over the river, not sure if she would head for the bus-stop and go to work, or was she on the way to somewhere else.

Half an hour later, as though some strange warm southern wind had blown her there, Lorna found herself standing on the opposite pavement to a large ground floor office that had the sign above it:

McCallum Homes, Builders and Architectural Consultants

Lorna stood and stared. She had been there a minute, and was on the verge of letting the warm wind blow her on and away from there, when she saw through a window the thick head of white hair, the bird-like profile, of Jimmy’s dad. She crossed the street and walked in to the building.

Five minutes later, she was alone in a room with Jack McCallum. He was staring alternately at her breasts, then her eyes. Back and forth.

“You’re doing well, Lorna, to keep putting up with that wee bugger. Most young girls would have told him where to go by now.”

“I had to take him up to the hospital the other day, Mr McCallum, because you’d stamped on his stomach.”

“Call me Jack, Lorna. No, I didn’t stamp on him. He exaggerated. But you know what he’s like. He was out of control, goading my Polish employees. Without those Poles, Lorna, I’m halfway out of business. Are you still working up at the hospital then?”

“Aye.”

“Well, why not have a wee think about coming to work for me here? Surely you’d rather be doing office work than that cleaning?”

“I’ve never worked in an office.”

“Happy to give you a job here with me, Lorna. It would be my pleasure.”

It was uncanny, how much he looked like Jimmy. Lorna had never been alone with Jack McCallum before. She had met him once on the street with Jimmy, and again when she’d been out to visit Jack’s big house at Culloden.

“I’m no here to talk about a job, Jack. It’s about Jimmy.”

Jack raised white eyebrows. Lines like corrugated iron rippled across his wide forehead.

“Aye? What about him?”

“He told me about something he’s done, Jack. Something terrible. Something that would mean a lot of trouble, for him, his mum, and you too, if people get to know. He told me in bed last night.”

Jack started to grin.

“What did he tell you?”

“I’m not ready yet to tell you what it is, Jack. I’m just letting you know, that’s all.”

“Letting me know?”

“Aye.”

“Letting me know. What are you after, Lorna? Money?”

“Aye Jack, maybe. But like I say, I haven’t thought it all through yet. I’m just letting you know there’s this thing out there, that Jimmy’s done.”

Jack let the grin spread across his face.

“You’re an entrepreneur then eh Lorna? Just like myself. No cleaning work or office work for you eh? That’s great. You need to be careful though, Lorna, not to get out of your depth. That can be a terrible thing too.”

“Aye, Jack. I know I’m going to have to be careful.”

Four hours later, after deciding not to turn up late at the hospital and phoning in sick instead, Lorna stood on the doorstep of 16 Cromwell Drive. She had been home, eaten a tasteless frozen pizza, watched a repeat of the Jeremy Kyle show, then looked up Thomas Ford in the phone book.

Now she stood on the stone doorstep, staring at the frost-glass on the door. She sniffed and rapped hard on the wooden panel, four times. There was no answer. She waited, then almost walked away. Instead, she gave the door six hard raps. A silhouette of a head and shoulders appeared at the frosted glass. Thomas Ford opened the door and stood looking at Lorna. She could see he had not been out today.

Lorna smiled at him.

“Thomas?” she said. “You remember me? Lorna from the hospital.”

Thomas Ford blinked.

“Lorna? Aye. Hi.”

“Well, maybe it’s crazy Thomas. I just had the idea, to come and see you.”

Thomas Ford stood completely still for several seconds, looking at her.

“Well, come in then,” he said, with a shrug.

He stepped out of the way and Lorna walked past him into the wide hallway.

“Go on through to the living room, Lorna. On the right.”

Thomas walked behind her in the hall. He watched her hair move from side to side as she walked. He could smell her. Her smell filled the hall suddenly, like Lea’s used to. He remembered watching Lorna like this at the hospital, his neck loose like a snared rabbit’s, as she emptied bins and her starched uniform expanded to accommodate her.

In the living room she stopped and turned towards him, smiling.

“Are you sure this is Ok Thomas? It must seem mad, me turning up at your door. But I thought, well, you never know, sometimes it’s nice to have company. How have you been getting on?”

Thomas pointed through the patio glass, out into the garden.

“Well, I had some uninvited company last night Lorna, only found out today. Footprints in the garden, coming right round the side of the house, through the garden, and up to those doors there.”

Thomas laughed.

“So you’re no the first visitor,” he said.

Lorna shook her head. Her concerned eyes narrowed.

“That’s terrible, Thomas. What did the police say?”

Thomas sat in the lonely brown chair. He motioned for Lorna to sit on the sofa. He blew out air like an animal dying.

“Police. Well, I never bothered telling them. Nothing to tell really. Just kids probably. I had enough of police questions at the hospital Lorna.”

Lorna nodded sympathetically.

“Aye, Thomas, I saw them there. I felt sorry for you, the way they’d not even let you alone, even in ITU. But you seem a lot better now, Thomas.”

Thomas looked at her, raising his eyebrows. It was strange to see her sitting there on the sofa, in Lea’s place.

“Do I?” he said. “All I’ve been doing for weeks is sitting or lying around. It must be hard to notice improvement in that.”

“You looked pale in hospital. Now you look like you’ve been outside.”

“I was out in the garden, sitting for a while. Before I noticed the footprints out there.”

“That’s terrible. Who do you think it was? Just kids maybe eh?”

“Maybe,” said Thomas. “Kids with big feet.”

Lorna smiled and nodded.