Peter May: Runaway

He had heard that Maurie was suffering from cancer, although he hadn’t actually seen him in years. And when his rabbi called to say that Maurie wanted to see him, it had come as news that his old friend had also suffered a major heart attack. Still, neither piece of news had prepared him for the shadow of a man who lay propped against the pillows of his hospital bed.

Maurie had always been inclined to plumpness, even in his teens. Then the good life that followed his elevation to the Glasgow Bar — and a solicitor’s property business that earned him a small fortune — had turned plump into corpulent.

Now only loose skin hung on his bones, a once full face cadaverous, his age-spattered skull almost bereft of hair following the chemo. He looked twenty years older than Jack’s sixty-seven. Of another generation.

Yet those dark brown eyes of his still burned with an intensity that belied appearances. There were tubes attached to his arms and face, but he seemed oblivious of them as he pulled himself into a seated position, animated suddenly by Jack’s arrival. And in his smile, Jack saw the old Maurie. Mischievous, knowing, superior. The ultimate showman, self-confident and full of himself onstage, knowing that he had a great voice, and that no matter how many of them there were in the band, all eyes were on him.

Two nurses sat on the end of the bed watching Coronation Street on his television.

‘Go, go,’ he urged them. ‘We have things to discuss in private here.’

And Jack was struck by how feeble that once powerful voice had become.

‘Shut the door,’ he said to Jack, when they had gone. Then, ‘I pay for that bloody TV, you know, and they watch it more than I do.’

Jewish was a part he enjoyed playing but never took too seriously. Or so Jack had thought. ‘My people,’ he had always talked about with a twinkle. But nearly four thousand years of history ran deep. Jack had grown up in a Conservative, south-side Protestant household, and so when he first started going to Maurie’s house it had seemed strange and exotic. Gefilte fish and matzo bread. Shul after school, synagogue on the sabbath, and the bar mitzvah, that coming of a Jewish boy’s age. Candles burning in the Menorah, two in the window on the eve of the sabbath and nine at Hanukkah. The mezuzah affixed to all the door jambs.

Maurie’s relationship with his parents had been conducted à haute voix , at first shocking to Jack, as if they were constantly at war with one another. Always shouting. Before he had come to realize that it was simply their way.

Maurie grinned at Jack. ‘You haven’t changed a bit.’

‘Liar!’

Maurie’s smile faded and he lowered his voice, grabbing Jack’s wrist with surprisingly strong fingers. ‘We’ve got to go back.’

Jack frowned. ‘Back where?’

‘To London.’

‘London?’ Jack had no idea what he was talking about.

‘Just like we did when we were boys.’

It was several long moments before understanding finally penetrated Jack’s confusion. ‘Maurie, it’s fifty bloody years since we ran away to London.’

If anything, Maurie’s bony fingers tightened around Jack’s wrist in a grip that was almost painful. His eyes were focused and fixed Jack in their gaze, and there was an imperative in his voice. ‘Flet’s dead.’

Which only plunged Jack back into confusion. Was it an effect of the drugs that Maurie was on? ‘Who’s Flet?’

‘You know!’ Maurie insisted. ‘Of course you know. Think, for Christ’s sake. You remember. Simon Flet. The actor.’

And recollection washed over Jack, cold and depressing. Memories buried for so long that their sudden disinterment was almost startling. He took a moment to recover. ‘But Flet must have been dead for years.’

Maurie shook his head. ‘Three weeks ago.’ He reached over with difficulty to pull a folded Scottish Herald from his bedside cabinet. And he pushed it into Jack’s chest. ‘Murdered. Strangled in some seedy bedsit in the East End of London.’

Like opening the grave of some long-buried corpse, the odour of sudden, unpleasant recollection caused Jack to clench his teeth, as if fighting hard not to breathe in for fear it might contain contaminants.

Maurie’s voice fell to barely a whisper as he leaned towards Jack. ‘It wasn’t Flet who killed that young thug.’

Now Jack was startled. ‘Yes, it was.’

‘It wasn’t! It was only me that saw what happened. So it’s only me that knows.’

‘But... but, Maurie, if that’s true why didn’t you ever say so before?’

‘Because there was no need. It was a secret I meant to take with me to the grave.’ He jabbed a finger at the newspaper. ‘But this changes everything. I know who committed that murder in 1965. And I’m damned sure I know who killed poor Simon Flet.’ He drew a deep breath that seemed to tremble in his throat, as if there might be a butterfly trapped there. ‘Which means I’ve got to go back again, Jack. No choice.’ And for a moment he gazed beyond his old friend, lost in some sad recollection. Then he returned his regret in Jack’s direction. ‘I don’t have much time left... and you’re going to have to get me there.’

An acoustic guitar leaned against a wall in the corner of the room. A Gibson. But Jack could tell from the dust gathered on its shoulders that it was a long time since Dave had played it. It just sat there, like the reminder of a lost youth, and all the failed ambitions born in an age of dreams.

Dave had lost weight, and Jack assumed he wasn’t eating. Although he claimed to be off the drink, Jack could smell it on him. The whole room reeked of stale alcohol.

Dave followed his gaze towards the guitar. ‘She’s got more mellow with the years,’ he said. ‘Ageing like a good wine.’

‘When was the last time you played?’

‘Ohhh...’

Jack could tell that he was about to lie, but then he seemed to think better of it.

‘Been a while,’ he said instead, and he ran a rueful thumb over the uncalloused fingertips of his left hand. ‘Amazing how quickly they soften up.’ He glanced at Jack, a wry smile creasing his unshaven face. ‘And how painful they get so quickly, when you start again.’

Jack looked around the room. Curtains half drawn across the nets. A single bed pushed against one wall. A TV in the corner. A couple of well-worn armchairs gathered around the old tile fireplace. This had been Dave’s parents’ bedroom back in the day. A house inherited on the death of his widowed mother, and chosen to be the home in which he would raise his own family. A home full of dark, brutal memories that not even the bringing of new life into the world could erase. A home that seemed destined for sorrow. A wife gone in search of happiness elsewhere, a son returned like a cuckoo to the nest. Dave struggling with drink, confined now to a single room and soon, Jack had no doubt, displaced altogether. A care home perhaps, or sheltered housing like Jack.

Dave pushed himself back in his armchair and regarded Jack thoughtfully. ‘So Maurie’s no’ long for this world?’

‘I shouldn’t think so. He looked terrible, Dave. Really awful.’

‘And how does he think he can make the trip tae London?’

Jack said, ‘He wants us to take him.’

Dave’s chuckle was mirthless. ‘Aye, like we’re fit for it.’ His pale, dry lips shook off their attempt at a smile. ‘But I dinnae understand why he’s only telling us noo that it wisnae Flet that killed the guy.’

Jack pulled out the folded copy of the Herald . ‘It’s the story of Flet’s murder that sparked it.’

They heard the front door open and close, then heavy footsteps in the hall. The door of Dave’s room swung open and a middle-aged woman stood breathing heavily, glaring at them both. She might have been attractive once, Jack thought, if it wasn’t for the downturned mouth, an outward reflection of the inner person. But then, he mused, who else would have married Dave’s boy? She wore neatly pressed black slacks, a short grey jacket over a white blouse, and a face like milk left out in the sun.