Paul Johnson - The Death List

Les shivered as his mother’s hand stroked the back of his neck. He forced himself to concentrate on the turret assembly. Recently, every time she touched him, he’d felt the blood run hot in his veins.

He put down the model and stood up. “Mum,” he asked plaintively, “can’t we just go? You and me? You can get a job in a shop somewhere else. We can go to another part of London. He’ll never find us. I’ll look after you and…” He let the words trail away when he saw his mother’s face crease and her eyes fill with tears. He put his arm round her thin shoulders. “It’ll be all right, Mum. Honest, I’ll protect you from-”

“From dirty Billy and his roaming hands?” His father’s voice made them jerk away from each other. He’d taken to coming back from the pub stealthily and sneaking up on them. “Seems to me you’re the one with roaming hands, son. You like the look of yer old mother, do you?” He stepped closer, his right arm raised. “You filthy little pervert!” He brought the hand down hard, but Les moved aside and was caught only a glancing blow on the shoulder.

“No, Billy!” Cath screamed.

“Shut your noise, cow!” Billy yelled, giving her a backhanded slap to the face.

“Stop it!” Les shouted as his mother went down. “That’s enough!” He felt a strength he’d never known. Although his father was six inches taller than he was, his arms thick from years on the building sites, Billy was drunk. He didn’t even see the straight right that broke his nose.

Les stepped back, amazed at what he had done. His father had crashed back against the wall, blood oozing through the gaps between the fingers that were over his face.

“You…you…fucking little bastard,” Billy gasped, glancing at his cowering wife. “Tell him, Cath. Tell him what a bastard he is.” He stumbled away, the front door slamming behind him a few seconds later.

“Are you all right, Mum?” Les asked, raising his mother to her feet. “What did he mean? I’m your son. I’m not a bastard.”

Cath looked at him, her expression a mixture of sadness and pride. “Thank you, Les,” she said, leaning forward to kiss him. “Thank you for getting him off me.” Her skin on her left cheek was red and raised. “He’s nothing but a pathetic bully.”

“Yes, but I am your son, aren’t I, Mum?” Les persisted. “What did he mean? What do you have to tell me?”

Cath led him into the dimly lit sitting room. They sat down on the worn velour sofa.

“Well, Les, strictly speaking you are our son. We did all the adoption papers when you were a baby. Billy didn’t drink so much then and the checks they did weren’t so tough as they are now. And…I wanted a baby so much.” She started to sob. “I couldn’t have any of my own,” she said, her face averted from him. “There was something wrong inside me. He…your father…Billy…he hurt me. That’s why he couldn’t say no when I wanted to adopt.”

“But…but who’s my real mother?” Les said, his eyes locked on her.

Cath smiled nervously. “I am, son. I looked after you when you were a tiny little thing, I’m raising-”

“Yes, but who did I come out of?” Les said, his voice rising. He could find another way to put the question.

“I…I don’t know.” Cath tried to meet his gaze but failed. “Some poor girl who couldn’t keep you. It was much harder then, being an unmarried mother.”

Les sat back on the sofa and looked around the room. His mother did the best she could, but with so little money from her husband and nothing left over from her own wages after food and so on, the place wasn’t much to talk about. A battered black-and-white TV with a ragged lace cloth on it, an armchair with the stuffing coming out and a wobbly table-that was about it. The badly fitted window was covered by a faded orange-and-brown curtain that moved in the constant draft.

“There must be somewhere better than this, Mum,” he said. “There must be.”

Cath shook her head slowly. “I can’t leave your dad, Les. We’re Catholics, remember? We can’t get divorced.”

Les felt his fists clench. He knew they were Catholics, all right. Father O’Connell made sure he knew what was right and what was wrong. Father O’Connell was an expert in that department. He was another one he’d pay back. But his father, who he now knew wasn’t even his real father, was number one on his list.

“All right, Mum,” he said, giving her a smile. He’d realized he was better off after hearing the news that he had been adopted. The piece-of-shit Billy wasn’t related to him and that was a big relief.

He eyed his mother. And Cath wasn’t a blood relation, either. That changed everything.

Les moved closer, his hand touching his astonished mother’s breast. By the time she’d started to protest, he’d clamped his mouth over hers.

No, the watcher at the window said to himself. Not that. The writer wasn’t going to get that. His loving mother’s memory was sacred. Nothing could be allowed to cast a shadow on it.

He looked around the penthouse. If he’d wanted to, he could have invited a hundred people and still have had room for dancing. But he didn’t know a hundred people. He didn’t want anyone in his home, not even cleaners. It was his safe place, his hideaway-the opposite end of the scale from the dump in Bethnal Green where he’d grown up. His mother would have loved it. She would even have laughed if she’d seen the tanks-dozens of models, hundreds of soldiers, British and German, in the diorama he’d built of the Battle of El Alamein. Beyond that was the sand-covered layout he’d constructed of Lawrence of Arabia’s assault on Aqaba, camels and horsemen charging across the Turks’ lines. He might spend most of his time in the underworld, but he liked to live on the surface of the earth, too-the surface he made himself, not the one outside his safe house.

No, he thought. Matt Wells wasn’t going to get anything about his mother. But his father’s-his adoptive father’s-story was another matter.

Billy Dunn had deserved everything he got.

It was a late December afternoon, three weeks after Billy had last hit him and his mother. He had been planning it ever since. He’d bunked off school several mornings to follow his father to work. He was carrying bricks at an office development in King’s Cross. When he wasn’t drunk, Billy Dunn was quiet, accepting the foreman’s orders without complaint. But Les had seen the anger burning in his father’s eyes and knew that it wouldn’t be long before he started taking it out on Cath again. That wasn’t going to happen.

He waited for the perfect day. There was heavy drizzle, mist, and people were walking the streets with their heads bowed, concentrating on avoiding the puddles and paying no attention to anyone else. He positioned himself behind a lamppost across the street from the site entrance. Late in the afternoon when the brickies were getting ready to pack up for the day, he slipped inside. He knew exactly where Billy was-on the recently started third floor. Only a few walls had been erected there so far.

He’d been watching his father and he’d learned how to sneak around. Being small, he’d already picked up a lot of skills like that at school. Avoiding bullies was better than standing up to them, unless there was no other option. He went up to the third floor, making sure no one had spotted him. Most of the men were on their way out, anyway. Billy was over in the corner, hunkered down and lighting a fag.

“You coming, Bill?” one of his mates called.

“I’ll see you in the Crown,” his father said, blowing out smoke.

The boy waited until the others had all left. Then he moved forward on all fours, keeping beneath a low wall.

“Who’s there?” Billy said, mild alarm in his voice.