Peter May - Runaway

Her focus fell on Dave. She said, dryly, ‘You’re back.’

‘Observation always was your strong suit.’

Her mean mouth tightened. ‘I found your stash.’

And Jack could see how disappointing this news was to his friend.

But Dave tried not to show it. ‘How’d you know it wisnae Donnie’s?’

‘I don’t care whose it was. It’s all gone down the sink.’ The hint of a smile lifted the corners of her mouth, and she glanced at Jack. ‘And I’d be pleased if you didn’t bring your drinking buddies round to the house.’

Jack bristled and stood up. He shoved the Herald back in his pocket. ‘Maybe we should continue this conversation somewhere else, Dave. There’s a nasty odour in here.’

Dave pushed himself to his feet. ‘Aye, you’re right. Somebody should tell her no’ tae wear nylon.’ He pulled a grimace in the direction of his daughter-in-law. ‘And the next time you want tae come intae my room, fuckin’ knock, alright?’

They took the bus to Queen’s Park. Jack had a dental appointment later and didn’t want to risk being late.

‘Long way tae go tae the dentist,’ Dave said.

‘It’s a family association that goes back a generation. His father was my father’s dentist. And anyway, his name always tickled me. Gummers.’

‘Ha!’ Dave guffawed. ‘That’s like Spark the electrician.’

They got off the bus at Shawlands Cross, and Dave suggested they go into the Corona Bar. But Jack steered him over the road to the park and proposed instead that they sit by the pond. No one would disturb them there.

They found an empty bench at the foot of a sweep of path that led down to the stretch of slate-grey water where Jack’s father had played as a boy. Sometimes there were ducks on the pond, but strangely today it was mostly seagulls. Harbingers, perhaps, of a coming storm.

It was early April, but the wind was still cold, and both men were wrapped up warm in winter coats and scarves. Dave wore a flat cap pulled down over once chiselled features that had lost their definition to become lugubrious. Loose flesh on a thin face. Jack’s hair, although pure silver, was luxuriant and carefully styled, and vanity prevented him from wearing a hat to spoil it. Dave was tall, a good three inches taller than his friend, and they made an odd pair sitting side by side on the park bench. Like bookends, Jack thought, and a refrain from the song played itself briefly in his memory.

‘Let me see,’ Dave said, and he slipped on a pair of tortoiseshell reading glasses as he unfolded the paper.

Jack jabbed a finger at the article on the lower half of the facing page, and Dave read aloud. Just as they had been made to do in class, sitting in rows, and reading a paragraph in turn from some dull history book, as if that somehow constituted learning.

‘ Murdered after fifty years on the run .’ Dave looked up from the headline. ‘Fifty years, eh? Say it fast and it disnae seem like anything at all.’

He turned back to the paper.

‘ Sixties film star Simon Flet, who vanished in 1965 after bludgeoning a man to death during a drug-crazed party in London’s West End, has been found dead in a bedsit in Stepney.

‘The body of the 74-year-old man, missing for half a century, was found strangled in his bed two weeks ago, after his landlord was forced to break into his room. Police believe he had been dead for a week.

‘His identity, however, was not confirmed until yesterday following the results of DNA testing.

‘After the killing in 1965, Flet fled from the Kensington home, then and now, of Dr Cliff Robert, whose knighthood for services to medicine was recently announced in the New Year’s Honours list.

‘Although Flet was presumed drowned while trying to escape to France in a small yacht he kept anchored at a marina near Portsmouth, neither his boat nor his body was ever found. Rumours that he was still alive have persisted over the decades, with numerous “sightings” reported from around the world. The mystery of the missing actor was even more enduring than the disappearance nearly ten years later of Lord Lucan, and has been written about many times over the years. ’

Dave inclined his head towards Jack, his face sculpted from doubt. ‘How’s that possible, then?’

‘What?’

‘DNA. They didnae have DNA back then. How would they get a sample of Flet’s, even if they knew who tae test for?’ He paused. ‘And how the hell would they know that?’

Jack reached over and took the paper back. For a moment he fumbled in his pockets, then tutted his irritation. ‘Give me your glasses.’

Dave slipped them from his nose but then held them back. ‘Wait a minute. Your heid’s bigger than mine. You’ll bend the legs oot.’

Jack snatched the glasses from him and pushed them on to his face. He scanned the article in front of him then started reading.

‘ Police initially drew a blank in their attempts to identify the dead man. But investigating officers were intrigued by a patch of skin cut away from the left forearm, concluding that the killer had tried to remove some distinguishing mark. Questioning of the landlord and fellow tenants revealed that the victim had sported a small tattoo of a bluebird on that forearm. This led to an extensive search of both active files and so-called cold cases. But in the end it was a simple internet search which turned up mention of a similar tattoo in an article written ten years before about the mysterious disappearance of the actor Simon Flet .’

He glanced at Dave.

‘Do you ever remember seeing that? The tattoo, I mean?’

Dave’s face set in grim recollection and he nodded.

Jack read on.

‘ This took police to the home of Flet’s surviving younger sister, Jean. She still possessed a lock of Flet’s hair cut from his head by his mother when he was a baby and kept for posterity, which was the fashion at the time. A DNA comparison confirmed the identity of the dead man. ’

He removed his friend’s reading glasses and Dave grabbed them back, trying them on and testing them for size.

‘You have! You’ve bent the legs oot.’

But Jack wasn’t listening. He was gazing out across the water, beyond the traffic in Pollokshaws Road, towards a terrace of stone-cleaned sandstone houses.

‘I was born just over there, you know.’

Dave followed his eyeline. ‘Eh?’

‘Marywood Square. In a nursing home. That’s how they did it back then. Just a few hundred yards away from where my dad grew up in Springhill Gardens.’ He glanced back along the road towards the square of red sandstone tenements gathered around an overgrown patch of garden. ‘It’s funny. When I went to see Maurie last night, I remembered getting my tonsils out at the Victoria.’ He looked at Dave. ‘But I also remember my dad telling me the doctor came to the house and took his tonsils out on the kitchen table. Can you imagine? Seems medieval now.’

Dave breathed his exasperation. ‘Whit’s that got tae dae with this?’ And he poked a finger at the article.

Jack shrugged. ‘Nothing. Just... where did they all go, Dave?’

‘Where did what go?’

‘The years. The dreams.’ He turned a pale smile towards the other man. ‘I never thought I’d be old, Dave. Never felt old. Not really. Always just a boy in my head. Until now.’ Then focus returned to Jack’s washed-out blue eyes. ‘What are we going to do?’

‘About Maurie?’

Jack nodded.

‘Maybe we should both go tae see him, Jack. I mean, he cannae really expect us tae go off on a daft goose chase just because of some dying whim of his.’

Jack smiled. ‘No. That wouldn’t be at all responsible, would it?’