‘You’re a bloody idiot, boy! Christ knows, you’ve been a pain in the arse all through school, but you’ve a God-given talent. Don’t throw it away. Why the hell would you want to be a policeman?’
‘Because that’s what my dad was.’
His uncle had exhaled his contempt through pursed lips. ‘Your dad! For Christ’s sake, don’t go wasting your life like he did.’
‘He didn’t waste his life!’ Mackenzie had been incensed.
‘Yes he did. He was a total waster, your father. Mr High and Bloody Mighty. Thought he was better than everyone else. Just like you. Thought he knew it all, that nothing was beyond him. Well he learned the hard fucking way just how wrong he was.’
Mackenzie remembered being shocked. In all the years his uncle had beaten and berated him, he had never heard him use the F word. He screamed back, ‘You’re just jealous!’
‘Jealous?’ The old man almost laughed. ‘Jealous of what?’
‘That he sacrificed his life to save someone else. While you frittered yours away. A lifetime bullying boys in school gyms, picking on the weak to make yourself look big.’ Mackenzie had caught sight, then, of his aunt standing in the kitchen doorway, the blood drained from her face, apprehension in her eyes. ‘Well, no one’s fooled, Uncle Arthur. For all your size you’re a little man, and everyone knows it.’
An index finger like a rod of iron extended from his uncle’s fist and jabbed into his nephew’s chest. His eyes were wild and he leaned in close, so that Mackenzie could smell the whisky on his breath and see the spittle gathering on his lips. ‘Don’t you speak to me like that you little runt. Time you got your fucking facts straight.’
‘Arthur, don’t!’ Mackenzie could hear the fear in his aunt’s voice, but there was no strength in it, and her husband would ignore her as he always did.
‘No one ever disavowed you of the crap you were told about your dad. Don’t tell him the truth, they said, it could scar him for life. So we didn’t. All this fucking time, and we let you go on believing what a hero he was, just in case you might be damaged by it.’ He couldn’t hide his scorn. ‘Well, you’re a big boy now, sonny. Big enough to handle the truth, I’d say. How about you?’
For once in his life Mackenzie found himself suddenly at a loss for words. A sick sense of dread began to weigh like lead in his gut, then slowly suffused his entire being like a fast-acting poison. It robbed him of his ability to speak.
‘Please Arthur . . .’ A pleading in his aunt’s voice now, but there would be no stopping him. The dam which had held back the bile for all these years was finally bursting. The finger stabbed into Mackenzie’s chest in time to the rhythm of his uncle’s anger, which had now achieved an oddly lyrical cadence. ‘You think he was a hero, eh? A brave man risking his life to try and save that poor fucking woman?’ He sucked in air to fuel his fury. ‘Well, there’s nothing brave about suicide, sonny. That’s the coward’s way out.’
A noise like tinnitus filled the teenager’s head, trying to drown out the words. But still, above it, he heard the wail that escaped his aunt’s lips, a strangely feral sound.
‘He screwed up, your dad. Disobeyed a direct order. Because, of course, he knew better. Like he always fucking did. Went charging in to try and rescue her, only to get her killed.’ He was breathing stertorously now, as if he had just sprinted the length of a football pitch to score a goal. ‘Some hero, eh? It was in all the fucking papers. And everyone knew he was my brother. You wouldn’t believe the shit I got at school. And then he goes and makes it worse. Cos, being your dad, he couldn’t stand it that he was wrong. That he had fucked up. So he took a rope, tied one end around his neck and the other around the top rail of the stairwell, and jumped off.’
Mackenzie stood, eyes blazing, tears blurring vision. Anger, fear, disbelief, pain, all filling the chaotic space that was his mind. He lashed out, knocking his uncle’s fist away and pushed him hard in the chest with both hands. Big man though he was, his uncle staggered back. ‘You’re a liar!’ Mackenzie screamed at him. ‘You’re only trying to hurt me.’
‘Nothing hurts quite as much as the truth, sonny,’ his uncle said, and he seemed suddenly calm again, anger replaced by triumph.
The teenage Mackenzie lunged for the umbrella stand and pulled out Mr Kane, holding it by the capped end, and swinging the onyx handle at his uncle’s head. He heard his aunt scream as her husband drew back in alarm, and the handle buried itself in the wall. His uncle snatched it from him, and Mackenzie prepared himself to be on its receiving end, as he had been many times before. But his Uncle Arthur just stood, clutching it in his white-knuckled hand, and screamed, ‘Get out of my fucking house, you little bastard.’
The words reverberated through Mackenzie’s memory as he sat on the bed and saw his seventeen-year-old self climbing up through the hatch to stuff whatever clothes he could grab into his sports holdall. They were the last moments he had spent in this room until his return today, twenty years later. The hurt had never gone away, even though he had learned to sublimate it, locking it up in the darkest recesses of his mind, in those places that everyone keeps for hiding their demons.
The last sight he had of his aunt was caught in a backward glance as he slammed the front door behind him, a fleeting glimpse of the tears that wet her cheeks. He had never seen her again, until watching her coffin today
