Blacklands

Chapter 27

 

FATHER’S DAY IN LEWIS’S HOUSEHOLD WAS NOT A BIG DEAL. Lewis often forgot and when he did, his mother would produce a random card for Lewis to scribble in and present along with a fumbled, jumbled mumble of awkward feelings. Sometimes she had to scribble in it herself because Lewis forgot. Sometimes she forgot too—and then when the day came round, it had to be enough that the thought counted. Even if that thought rarely came before midmorning when Radio 2 would start to play Father’s Day dedications and Lewis’s dad had to pretend it was enough for him just to be at home with his wife and son.

Lewis went straight to the magazines while Steven looked over the paltry selection of Father’s Day cards in Mr. Jacoby’s shop. If he were going to buy one—which he wasn’t, of course—which would it be? Racing cars? Pints of foaming beer? Dirty cartoons? There was one with a flowerpot, a spade, and a carelessly discarded pair of gardening gloves, but Steven thought it looked like an old man’s card and Uncle Jude was not an old man.

He also wasn’t Steven’s father.

The thought brought with it a sad pang, poorly concealed by a hurried jab of faked carelessness that felt tinny and hollow in his heart.

“You getting a Father’s Day card?”

Lewis looked up at him vacantly from BMX Monthly, even though he didn’t have a BMX and was an overcautious rider of the smart new bike he did have.

“Shit. Suppose so. Chuck one over, will you?”

“Which one?”

“Any one.”

Steven eyed the cards again more carefully. None of them seemed to suit Lewis’s dad. There wasn’t a card with a crossword or a cardigan on it. He finally decided on the foaming beer because he had once seen Lewis’s dad going into the Red Lion and because he could remember opening Lewis’s mother’s well-stocked fridge to get them each a Kit Kat, and seeing a six-pack of Bud Light. It had stuck in his mind because it had seemed a very American thing for Lewis’s dad to drink. Very sporty.

“This okay?”

“Yeah,” said Lewis, not looking at it. “Lend us two quid, will you?”

“I haven’t got two quid.”

Lewis looked at the price on the back of the card.

“One twenty, then. My mum’ll pay you back.”

Steven only got two pounds a week pocket money. Sometimes not even that if the gas meter needed feeding.

He sighed and rummaged in his pocket. Over the years Lewis had borrowed what felt like hundreds of pounds from him and never paid a single penny back. Steven had brought it up once and Lewis had told him not to be so tight.

“I’ve only got one fifty.”

“That’ll do.”

Lewis paid Mr. Jacoby and pocketed the thirty pence change.

Avery had no idea it was Father’s Day until an excited ripple came back down the breakfast queue that they were having kippers.

The news reached the man ahead of him, who turned around, saw Avery was behind him, closed down his face, and turned back towards the steaming trays and the echoes of metal on metal. And so the chain of information broke right there and all the men beyond Avery were deprived of the anticipation of a rare treat.

“What’s up?” said Ellis with no great interest.

“Use your nose, Ellis!” Ryan Finlay laughed at his own joke. He had to because no one else did.

“Kippers,” said Avery.

“What?”

“We’re having kippers.”

“What for?”

“Father’s Day.”

Ellis had already picked up porridge at the first serving counter. Now Avery observed Ellis watching Finlay as he strolled down the line. As usual, Finlay twirled his keys on his porky fingers like a doomed gunslinger, then turned and headed back towards them.

Avery’s pale eyes flickered with interest between Ryan Finlay and Ellis, who had taken to focusing his slightly vacant gaze on Finlay whenever he caught sight of him.

Ellis had been a waste of time as far as the keys were concerned. In fact, even the soap was giving up on the plan, and had shrunk to the point where it was more scum than solid matter. Avery was seriously considering abandoning the soap molds as a failed experiment.

Anyway.

Since all that hoo-ha with his slag wife, Ellis had done nothing but brood. Avery had done his utmost to jolly him out of it but the man was stuck in a loop of wondering about Ryan Finlay. Did he take the photos? Did he keep them? Would he give them back? What did Avery think he did with them? Should he demand their return? Avery regretted ever having said anything to him about Finlay stealing the photos. All it had done was make the only con who would speak to him useless, boring, and time-consuming. As with the soap, Avery was about ready to give Ellis up as a bad job.

But now, with nothing to do but shuffle towards his promised kippers—and with Finlay almost level with them once more—he thought it might be fun to poke the bear with a stick.

“You got kids, Sean?”

Ellis looked vacantly at Avery. “What?”

“Father’s Day,” said Avery slowly, as if to a child. “Have you got kids? You and Hilly?”

“No,” said Ellis.

Something started to swell in the ocean of Ellis’s brain.

“Shame,” said Avery.

“Yeah,” said Ellis, frowning into his porridge but not seeing it.

Avery sighed heavily and then spoke carefully into the silence between them …

“Probably never will now.”

And suddenly, the fact that he’d been in prison for two years—and would be for at least another twelve—hit Sean Ellis like an anvil in the heart and sucked all the air from his chest like two-year-old shock.

For a moment he swayed slightly, his eyes blank and his mouth slack, holding up the breakfast line.

Ryan Finlay twirled his keys and said: “Hurry it up, Ellis!”—blissfully unaware that it was the last thing he’d ever say.

Sean Ellis swung his tin tray into Finlay’s face. The tray was not heavy and the porridge bowl was made of plastic, but the power of Ellis’s sheer fury behind it felled the officer like a dumpy tree, blood jetting from his nose like water from a trick flower.

There was a second—not even that long—when it could have gone either way. Men could have stood and watched Sean Ellis beat Ryan Finlay with his tray, porridge flying like mud, until the other screws pulled him off.

Or all hell could have broken loose.

And—after the briefest of moments—that was the way it went.