Runaway

I

‘And I never saw him again until we stepped off the bus today at Victoria Coach Station.’ Jack’s voice died in the dark, to be replaced by a very long silence. And he began to think that Ricky had fallen asleep. ‘Rick?’

‘I’m here, Grampa. Just...’ His voice was hushed. ‘Poor Jeff.’

‘Yes. Poor Jeff.’

‘You never hugged Luke back then, but you did today.’

Jack couldn’t resist a smile that no one would see. ‘I did. Times have changed, Rick. Not sure how, or why. Seems we have permission to show our emotions, these days.’

‘You could have stayed. I mean, fifty years ago. When Luke did.’

‘I could. And maybe if I had, things would have been different. But, you see, I didn’t have Luke’s courage, Rick. I was afraid. I wanted to go back. I wanted the safety of the womb. The security of the family.’

Ricky could hear the bitterness in his grandfather’s voice.

‘So I went back to a life shaped by fear.’ He turned his head on the pillow, trying to see his grandson in the dark. ‘And that’s the biggest crime you can commit in life, Rick. To be afraid of living it. It’s the only one we’ve got, and you’ve got most of yours still ahead of you. So don’t waste it, son. Trust me. You don’t want to be looking back on it fifty years from now and wishing you’d done things differently. There’s nothing more corrosive than regret.’

A further silence settled between them, but neither of them was ready for sleep.

Ricky said, ‘What happened when you got home?’

‘It was a long five-hour train ride, Rick. Maybe the longest five hours of my life. I’m not sure there was a single word passed between any of us all the way up through England and back into Scotland. It was as if anything we said might be an acknowledgement that Jeff was gone, and that Luke was no longer among us. I think we felt, all of us, diminished. Like we’d lost limbs. It’s hard to explain.’

For the first time in many years Jack felt like a cigarette. A fleeting longing for the comfort that sucking smoke into your lungs can bring, the nicotine hit that both stimulates and calms. He had not felt any desire to smoke since giving up more than thirty years before, and was startled by the sudden and unexpected craving.

He said, ‘When Luke went off to buy the tickets and we divvied up our remaining cash to give him when he got back, I left the others to make a phone call. A reverse-charge call to my folks.’ He remembered the hushed sense of disbelief in his mother’s voice when he had said, It’s Jack, Mum. I’m coming home. ‘So my dad was waiting on the platform when the train got into Central Station. Platform One. It’s strange, because we never discussed this. But he must have called the other families. They were all there. Maurie’s dad, and Luke’s. And Jeff’s. Not Dave’s, though. My dad had to give Dave a lift home.’

Jack hesitated, remembering the moment as clearly as if it had been yesterday. His dad stepping forward to shake his hand. Well done, son. I’m glad you had the courage to come back. And Maurie’s dad shaking his son’s hand and saying almost the same thing. As if it had been discussed and rehearsed. And Luke’s dad and Jeff’s, standing there, puzzled, fearful. Lost.

‘We never did tell Jeff’s folks what happened to him. Just that he had stayed in London with Luke. Which was true in a way. And I suppose it was kinder to let them go on believing that their son was alive somewhere, making his way in the world. How could we have told them the truth? It was hard enough to carry it in our own hearts.’

Jack clenched his teeth hard and pressed his lips together to stop the emotion that welled up inside him from spilling over. That would have been embarrassing in front of his grandson.

‘The rest of my life you pretty much know all about.’

Another lengthy silence drifted in the dark before Ricky said, ‘So, if this actor, Simon Flet, didn’t kill Rachel’s boyfriend, who did?’

Jack closed his eyes and felt his stomach lurch at the thought that he had refused to even entertain since Maurie had told him that Flet was not the killer.

Rachel never had come home. And Maurie had always refused to say where she’d gone or what had happened to her.

He said, ‘I don’t know, Rick. Guess we’ll find out tomorrow.’

II

Early the next morning, Jack and Luke walked on Hampstead Heath with Luke’s black schnauzer, Odin, leaving the others at breakfast with Jan. Wild flowers grew among the long grasses in this gently undulating pasture, and Jack found it hard to believe that they were still in the heart of the city. Beyond the tops of the trees he could see chimneys and skyscrapers in the hazy distance of the cool, grey morning, but it felt like they were miles from anywhere. And a little of the sense of oppression that had descended on him since their arrival in London lifted like a weight off his chest. Suddenly it seemed easier to breathe.

A jogger, in clinging mauve Lycra, passed them on the half-gravel path that cut through the grass, an iPod Nano strapped to her arm, earphones firmly plugged in her ears to shut out the world. She almost certainly did not hear Odin’s playful bark or Luke’s call of rebuke, which brought the dog smartly to heel.

‘Did you ever contact your folks?’ Jack asked him.

Luke gazed thoughtfully into the distance. ‘Never did.’ He turned to Jack. ‘Was that cruel of me?’

Jack shrugged. ‘No more cruel than what they put you through, I guess.’

‘I often wonder how my life would have been if I’d gone back.’

Jack smiled, ‘Probably as often as I wonder how mine would have been if I had stayed.’

Luke was lost in a moment of reflective silence. ‘I sometimes think I should have got in touch. But I didn’t, and I don’t regret it. Regret is such a waste of energy. You can’t undo what’s been done. But every new day offers the chance to shape it in the way you want. And that’s how I’ve lived my life, Jack. Looking forward, not back.’ He paused. ‘Only thing I regret. Only thing I wish I could go back and change is what happened to Jeff. I’ve wondered so many times how different it might all have been if only we’d got up to the roof sixty seconds earlier.’ He looked at Jack again. ‘Do you ever think about those days?’

Jack nodded. ‘Often.’

‘Whatever any of us have or haven’t done since, Jack, those were the days of our lives. I don’t think I ever felt quite so alive.’ He smiled fondly. ‘Poor old Jobby Jeff...’ he chuckled, ‘as Dave would have called him. He missed out on so much.’

‘It’s different with me and Veronica,’ Jack said.

And they both laughed.

Odin cocked his head and looked at them, no doubt wondering what was signified by the strange quacking sounds that issued from their mouths.

When their laughter died and their smiles faded, Luke said, ‘Your grandson tells me he graduated with honours in maths and computer studies.’

‘The boy’s a bloody genius, Luke. Don’t know where he gets it from. Certainly not me. He’d give you a run for your money any day.’ He stooped to pick up a stick and throw it ahead of them for Odin to chase. ‘But he’s in danger of chucking it all away. I guess he’s self-conscious about his weight. Got no real confidence. Locks himself away playing computer games half the night and sleeping most of the day. And his parents are a dead bloody loss.’

Odin returned with the stick, and Jack threw it for him again.

‘Nightmare though it’s been, I think this trip might actually have been good for him. Although we’re both going to get it in the neck when we get home.’

They walked, then, in silence for a time.

Luke seemed lost in thought before he said, ‘My boys are just about to commission an IT developer to write software for a custom-made database and accounting system for the agency.’ He looked at Jack. ‘Is that something Ricky might be able to do?’

Jack smiled. ‘That’s good of you, Luke. And I appreciate it. But you run a professional business. You need a professional software developer.’

‘If he could do it, I’d rather the contract went to friends or family. And we have plenty of space in the house here. He’s a nice lad. I think Jan’s taken a fancy to him.’

Jack said, ‘I twisted the boy’s arm to get him to bring us down here. He really didn’t want to do it. But, you know, we’d never have made it without him.’ He tilted his head towards Luke. ‘Why don’t you ask him? See what he says. He’ll not bullshit you. If he can’t do it, he’ll tell you.’

Luke grinned. ‘Then I’ll ask.’

They were almost back at the house when Jack said, ‘Luke... about tonight.’ He avoided looking at him. ‘You don’t have to come with us, if you don’t want to. We’ve already burned our boats, but none of this has to touch you. And God knows what it is that Maurie’s got planned.’

But Luke shook his head. ‘You think I’m going to let you old farts go out to the Victoria Hall on your own?’ He lifted his head to stare in thoughtful wonder at the sky. ‘The Victoria Hall. The very name of the place brings it all back. I’ve thought about that bunch of people a lot over the years. J. P. Walker. And that crazy woman, what was her name? Alice. Both dead now.’

‘Are they?’

‘She died sometime in the seventies. You probably wouldn’t have heard much about her up there, but she was a minor celebrity in London for a while. Cured by JP. Her art became quite fashionable. There were exhibitions, she wrote a book, started making a lot of money.’ He paused for a moment of reflection. ‘She dropped dead suddenly at a vernissage, a glass of champagne in her hand. An aneurism, apparently.’

‘And JP?’

A sadness crossed Luke’s face, like the shadow of a cloud as the sun slipped momentarily behind it. ‘His philosophy and his writings were à la mode for a few years. But he seemed simply to drop off the radar in the seventies. Overtaken by age and fashion, I suppose. Then I saw his obituary in The Times. Must have been mid-eighties. He’d got into a tussle with the American immigration authorities over a conviction for possession of cannabis in the seventies. Sometime before that he’d established a home, and some kind of relationship, in New York City. Came back here for the funeral of his ex-wife, the mother of his children, and they wouldn’t let him back into the States. He’d developed a drink problem by that time, too. Full-blown alcoholic, it seems. Anyway, they found him dead in a hotel room in the West End. Massive overdose of barbiturates.’

Jack was shocked. ‘He killed himself?’

Luke nodded.

And Jack remembered that day he’d found JP weeping in his office. And the last time he’d seen him. Dancing wildly on the roof of Dr Robert’s house in the moments before Jeff jumped to his death. And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.

Luke stopped and turned earnest eyes on his old friend. ‘I’m going with you tonight, Jack. Whatever really happened back then, I was as much a part of it as any of you. And I still am. I want to know what happened, too.’

I

The last light of the evening had gone by the time they cruised slowly through the backstreets of Bethnal Green in Luke’s Mercedes, turning finally into the square that was bounded on its south side by the Victoria Hall, dark and dominating against a sky of low cloud that reflected back the city lights.

Rising up around the other three sides of it were the same blocks of council flats that had been there fifty years before. Face-lifted now, many of them privately owned and lived in by Arabs and Asians, Eastern Europeans, and a handful perhaps of native East Enders.

The gardens were even more overgrown than they had been back in the day, and the Victoria Hall itself was boarded up, graffitied and neglected, abandoned to future demolition and redevelopment.

Luke drew his Merc into the kerb at the front door and looked up at the grim, decaying edifice that had once played host to a brave experiment in the treatment of mental illness. ‘Locked up tight. We’ll not get in there.’

‘Aye, we will,’ Maurie’s voice came from the back seat, surprisingly strong and filled with resolution. ‘There’s always a way in. Help me out.’

Ricky and Dave slipped out from each of the back doors, then helped Maurie on to the pavement in front of the hall. Broken glass crunched underfoot, just as it had that final day when Jack came looking for the others to tell them he was going home. Jack came around to join them, and Luke stood hesitantly by the open door of his car.

Maurie managed a smile. ‘I don’t blame you, Luke. I wouldn’t want to leave my Merc here either — if I had one.’ He turned towards Ricky. ‘That’s why the boy here’s going to stay with it, park it a street or two away so we don’t frighten off our visitor. If you trust him with it, that is.’

‘Of course I do,’ Luke said.

But Ricky was disappointed. ‘I want to come in with you.’

Maurie shook his head. ‘It’s none of your business, laddie. And nor should it be. You stay with the car and keep it safe.’

Luke chucked him the keys, and Ricky caught them reluctantly.

Maurie looked at his watch. ‘Come back about twelve. We should be done by then.’

Jack nodded to his grandson, and Ricky slipped huffily behind the wheel, slamming the driver’s door shut and starting the engine. He revved several times, filling the cool night air with the toxic fumes of carbon monoxide, before slipping into gear and driving slowly away, turning at the end of the street to disappear from view.

As the sound of the motor faded, an uncanny silence fell on the square. Lights in windows dotted the darkness around them, but there was no one in the street. Four of the original five members of The Shuffle stood in the shadow of the Victoria Hall. They had neither played together nor stood together on this spot for half a century, and although fifty years had passed and much had changed, the ghost of Jeff still hovered among them, as if he had always been there.

‘So how do we get in?’ Jack said.

‘Service entry,’ Maurie said. ‘Always was the weak spot.’

He pulled his heavy winter coat around himself, as if he were cold, and Jack thought how he looked drowned by it. Diminished by his disease, a shadow of the man he had once been.

They followed the wall along the front of the building, ignoring the main door, until they reached a rusted wrought-iron gate that blocked the way into a narrow alley leading down the side of the building to a service door accessed through a brick archway. On the other side of a broken-down railing, the gardens lay brooding darkly in their leafy neglect.

Dave tried the handle of the gate, and it swung inwards with a creak of rusting hinges. The alleyway was littered with debris. Bricks and broken glass, bits of a dismembered doll, the ragged remains of a coat, the skeleton of an umbrella, a single, soggy trainer.

Luke drew a torch from his jacket pocket and shone it into darkness, picking out the detritus of decades of abandonment. They stepped carefully through it to a black-painted door beyond the arch. It was padlocked.

‘No way in here,’ Luke said.

‘Aye, there is.’ Dave’s voice boomed out of the dark. ‘Gimme that torch a wee minute.’

And he took the torch from Luke’s hand and made his way back along the alley, before turning the light and his attention towards the broken fence. It took him less than two minutes to break one of the palings free of its rusted anchor and return, brandishing it triumphantly.

‘Okay, light the lock for me. A wee leaf oot of Jeff’s book here.’

He thrust the torch back at Luke, and in the circle of its light slipped the paling through the loop of the padlock and braced himself against the door with his foot. Years of bending pipework, and hefting baths and sinks and toilet bowls, had built muscle in his arms and shoulders that was still there and still strong.

But in the end it wasn’t the padlock itself that gave. It was the bracket that fixed the clasp to the door. Wood splintered and cracked in the still of the night and it came away in its entirety, padlock and all.

A flimsy Yale lock then offered no resistance to Dave’s boot as he slammed it into the door once, twice, three times. He stood panting triumphantly as it finally gave, and the door swung into the blackness beyond.

He grinned. ‘Missed ma vocation, eh?’

Maurie snatched Dave’s flat cap from his head and chucked it at him. ‘Here, go and hang that up on the gate, so our friend knows where to get in.’

‘Ma guid bunnet?’ Dave protested.

But Maurie was dismissive. ‘No one’s going to steal your greasy old cap, Dave.’

The darkness beyond the door was full of must and memories, and an all-pervasive reek of damp and decay. Luke led the way through a rubble-strewn hallway, shining the beam of his torch on the floor ahead, then up the narrow service stairs to the landing, which led to the common room and the hall. Here, faded paint on scarred walls bore the faintest traces of the designs once painted on them in shit by the demented Alice.

No one spoke as they all trooped into what had been the common room. A table stood at its centre, white with plaster dust, lumps of broken ceiling strewn across its surface. It might have been the very table they had all sat around in those long-ago days of madness. Luke righted a couple of toppled chairs before swinging the beam of his torch briefly into the old kitchen. An ancient rusted cooker still stood there, its door open and hanging off a broken hinge. Incongruously, a blackened aluminium cooking pot sat on one of the rings, as if waiting for someone to make their morning porridge.

With the others close behind him, he stepped through into the hall itself. A couple of table-tennis tables were half covered by dust sheets. The wooden floor had been marked out in different colours at some time for badminton and basketball. There were hoops mounted on the walls at either end, and old moth-eaten badminton nets lay in a discarded pile at one side.

‘They must have used it as a youth or community centre at some point,’ Jack said. He turned to Maurie. ‘What now?’

‘We wait.’

‘When’s our visitor due?’

Maurie checked his watch. ‘Not for another hour. I wanted to be sure we were here well ahead of time. Who knew how long it might take us to get in?’

II

Back in the common room they dusted down chairs and sat themselves around the table. But Luke was dubious about how long the batteries in his torch might last, and he went in search of the fuse box to see if there was still power in the hall. The others were left in the dark, sitting at the table and listening to his footsteps as he moved around on the landing and up the stairs.

When he returned, he shook his head. ‘No juice.’

He went into the kitchen and rummaged around in cupboards and drawers before they heard his ‘Aha!’ and he returned with a cardboard box of old candles, some of them half burned, others with pristine waxed wicks.

‘Anyone got a light?’

No one had, and Luke’s smile quickly faded. He laid the candles on the table and went back into the kitchen, returning a few moments later with a renewed smile on his face and a box of matches clutched in his free hand. But they were damp, and old, and one after the other they sparked and sputtered and shed their phosphor, but failed to ignite. Until the second from last, which fizzed and popped before bringing flame to the splinter of wood. Quickly he lit the first candle, and they all grabbed one, lighting each in turn, and setting them on the floor along the walls, fixed in their own molten wax.

Then they sat at the table again, as they had done all those years before, their shadows dancing around the walls to remembered music. Jack recalled all those faces, pale and drawn, many of them bearded, eyes lit by madness, a fug of cigarette smoke and marijuana hanging over them in a cloud. And JP tipped back in his chair at the head of the table, bare feet crossed in front of him, regaling them with tales of insanity and miracle cures, his charm and charisma the single factor that bound and kept the residents of the hall together.

Dust settled around them, along with their silence, and they waited in the flickering darkness with the ghosts of the past, and Jack could almost imagine that Alice was still dancing out there in the hall, slashing the air with her brush, painting their ordinary lives with extraordinary colours. And for just a moment he believed he could actually hear the distant echo of the Kinks playing on that scratchy old Dansette. They had been so tired of waiting back then.

Jack, too, was tired of waiting. He had spent a lifetime wondering what had become of Rachel, and still Maurie was giving nothing away.

‘What the hell was it with you and Rachel?’ he said suddenly.

And Maurie’s eyes flickered towards him.

Although his focus was on Maurie, Jack could feel the tension among the others around the table, like a fist clenching.

‘And don’t tell me it’s none of my business, or that you don’t owe me anything. Not after all these years. Not after everything I’ve been through to get you here.’

Maurie’s expression was bleak. His eyes held Jack’s for only an instant before they slipped away to stare off into some long-buried past. Or perhaps towards a dwindling future that promised nothing but pain and death. Whichever, it brought him little comfort, and Jack saw how his hands bunched into fists on the table in front of him, turning his knuckles white. A physical manifestation of what they all felt.

‘You always wanted us to go to Leeds, didn’t you?’ Jack said. ‘That’s why you had her letter with you. One way or another you’d have talked us into going there and getting her out of that place.’ Jack’s thoughts raked through old coals and found that there was still a glow among the embers. ‘Maybe that’s the only reason you came with us in the first place.’

It was a thought he had never entertained before, and hadn’t seen coming until now. But he saw how it affected the wreck of a man sitting opposite him. Like a physical blow, bringing a hint of pale colour to a dead-white face. Maurie unbunched his fingers and laid them on the table in front of him.

‘I was eleven years old when I found the letter from the Beth Din.’ His voice was thin and reedy, and not much more than a whisper, but somehow it filled the room. ‘I don’t know what my parents had it out for. Maybe the rabbi had asked to see it, I don’t know. But my father had left it on his bedside cabinet. I used to sneak into their bedroom sometimes when they were out, to look at the soft porn magazines he kept hidden under the bed. Which is when I saw it.’

He dragged his eyes away from their focus on his hands, and he looked around the faces silently watching him. And in spite of himself he smiled at their consternation.

‘The Beth Din’s a Jewish court that rules on matters of Judaic law. The letter was marked “Confidential” and addressed to both my parents. The Clerk of the Court was writing to advise them that the Beth Din had established that Maurice Stephen, their adopted son, was of Jewish birth, and that an entry had been made accordingly in the Proceedings Book.’

‘You were adopted?’ Dave said.

Maurie nodded.

‘And you never knew till then?’

‘Nope.’ A sad smile attempted to animate his face but somehow failed. ‘It’s quite a feeling when everything you thought you were and knew falls away from beneath your feet. There were only two things in my head. The first was that they had lied to me. My parents. By omission, perhaps, but it was something they should have told me. I had a right to know.’ He paused, and they all heard his breath rattling in his windpipe. ‘The second was a question. Who the hell was I?’

Jack closed his eyes. There was a sudden clarity in his mind about where this was going, and his thoughts went reeling back through time, like the tumblers in a slot machine, making sense of so much that had made none at the time.

‘What did you do?’

‘I went through all the deed boxes in my father’s study till I found a folder marked “Adoption”. And there it all was. A receipt from Renfrew County Council children’s department for payment of fees due in the legal adoption of Maurice Stephen Cohen. Five pounds and five shillings. Or five guineas. That’s what it cost them to buy me. Cheap at the price, wouldn’t you say?’

His bitter little laugh turned into a cough, and it took almost a full minute for him to bring it under control.

Finally he said, ‘But there was other stuff. Personal correspondence between my father and a woman who ran a hotel and restaurant in the Gorbals. Smith’s Hotel. Though I guess the Smith was probably a corruption of Schmitt. It was famous in the years after the war, a gathering point for the Jewish community. Any Jew arriving in Glasgow would end up there. And Isa Smith was a sort of godmother to the whole community. My mother, my adoptive mother, worked there as a bookkeeper. It was Isa who arranged the adoption.’

His eyes wandered off again to some distant past.

‘I knew the place. My mother took me often, and I would eat in the kitchen. There was an older woman who worked there. Always made such a fuss of me. Serving me little treats, kissing me on the forehead. Always with a gift for me on my birthday. Turned out she was my grandmother. My blood grandmother. Her daughter had got herself pregnant. Unmarried. Just a teenager. And in those days it was common for unmarried mothers to give up their babies for adoption. Only she didn’t want to. She wanted to keep that baby. Me.’

And for a moment it seemed as if Maurie would be overwhelmed by emotion.

He swallowed hard. ‘But she’d never have managed to keep it without the help of her mother. And then the stupid girl gets herself pregnant again, almost immediately. Not even by the same man. And her mother tells her she can’t look after two babies, and that the second one will have to be adopted.’ He shook his head. ‘But before she even got the choice she went and died in childbirth, and there was no way her mother could cope. It was Isa’s idea to put us both up for adoption.’ He refocused to meet the gaze of his old friends. ‘Me and Rachel.’

Luke’s voice was hushed. ‘She was your half-sister.’

Maurie nodded. ‘My adoptive mother and her sister were both older women. Neither of them had been able to conceive. Something genetic, probably. So I went to one, and Rachel to the other. The perfect solution. Kept us both in the same family. Except that my aunt had wanted me, a boy, but drew the short straw and got Rachel.’

‘Did Rachel know?’ Jack’s voice was so quiet as to be almost inaudible. ‘I mean, about being adopted.’

‘Not until I told her. And then it was our secret. One we swore to keep always. Just the two of us. Our parents never knew that we knew. I had confronted the woman who worked in the kitchen at Smith’s. My real grandmother. She couldn’t deny me anything. Least of all the truth. And I think, in the end, she wanted me to know. She broke down and told me the whole sordid tale, but made me swear never to tell a soul. Which, apart from Rachel, I haven’t until now.’

Maurie’s eyes dipped to the table, then rose slowly to seek Jack’s. ‘She had too much of her mother in her. I was scared—’

‘That she was going to sleep with some guy and get herself pregnant.’ Jack held his gaze, unblinking.

Maurie swallowed back his emotion again, then spat it out as anger. ‘It was only too clear to me. History repeating itself. First that thug Andy...’ he hesitated, ‘... and then you, Jack. She gave herself too easily. Just like her mother. And you took advantage.’ His lip trembled as he sucked in a breath. ‘And I was right. Because it happened, didn’t it? Just as if it were programmed into her DNA. Got herself pregnant, just like her mother had! And I saw the whole damned cycle repeating itself a generation on. It was only ever going to end badly.’

No one knew what to say, and silence hung among them like a pall of cigarette smoke in a sixties pub.

It was some minutes before they heard it. The first scrape of leather on concrete. Footsteps disturbing rubble on the stairs. Slow, cautious steps. Jack glanced at his watch. Whoever it was had arrived early. And the tension in the common room became palpable. A beam of torchlight played out on the landing then snapped into darkness, before a tall, lean figure stepped into the undulating wash of candlelight in the doorway. An elderly man, well into his seventies, Jack thought. He wore an expensive camel coat and shiny black shoes. His strong, handsome face beneath a head of thick white hair swept back from his forehead was still extraordinarily familiar. Even after all this time.

Jack had been half expecting Dr Robert, and so it came as no surprise. What did surprise him was the rude health and powerful build of a man who was anything up to ten years their senior. Evidently life had treated him well.

But if he was still familiar to them, his incomprehension as he looked at the faces gathered around the table was patent.

He frowned. ‘Who the hell are you?’

‘Don’t you remember?’ Maurie said.

Dr Robert swung his eyes in Maurie’s direction, and his shock at the appearance of the dying man briefly widened them.

‘Five lads from Glasgow who lived for well over a month in the basement flat at Onslow Gardens. Who were there the night that a young thug called Andy McNeil was bludgeoned to death by the actor Simon Flet. Must be hard to see those young boys in these old men.’

The doctor’s transition from confusion, to fear, to recognition and resignation passed across his face like so many shades of the same colour. But darker each time.

‘The Shuffle,’ he said.

And Jack wondered how on earth he remembered the name after all these years.

‘Jack,’ Jack said.

‘Luke.’

‘Dave.’

Dr Robert’s eyes swung back to Maurie, whose smile seemed more like a grimace.

‘No. You wouldn’t have recognized me in a million years, would you?’

‘Maurie,’ Dr Robert said, his voice so soft it scarcely penetrated the still of the room.

‘Well remembered.’

‘What’s wrong with you?’

‘Just about everything that could be. Sit down, doctor. It was me that emailed you.’

Dr Robert took a step into the room, but didn’t sit.

Maurie watched him, unblinking, totally focused. ‘Must have scared the shit out of you, my message, eh? Scared to come, scared not to. It was the sting in the tail that caught you, though, wasn’t it?’ He bared his teeth. ‘Just irresistible. I knew it would be.’ He paused for effect. ‘That I knew who really killed Andy McNeil.’

Dr Robert was impassive, and his voice was stronger now. ‘It was Flet.’

Maurie shook his head. ‘It wasn’t.’

Jack turned towards Dr Robert. ‘Then it must have been you.’

And the doctor’s eyes flickered in his direction, hostility flashing briefly behind his apprehension.

But Maurie shook his head again. ‘No. Not the good doctor, either.’ He kept his eyes fixed on the older man. ‘But you did kill Simon Flet. Didn’t you?’

The blood drained from Dr Robert’s tanned face and left him looking jaundiced. But he said nothing.

Maurie leaned forward on the table. ‘That scumbag Andy McNeil attacked you that night, didn’t he? Ripped your phone out of the wall and came at you round the desk. And you lifted that Oscar paperweight and hit him with it. And who could blame you? A clear case of self-defence. He went down on to his knees clutching his head, blood oozing through his fingers.’ He drew a tremulous breath. ‘I know, because me and Rachel were out in the hall. We saw it all. And you ran out to go and call the police from another phone somewhere else in the house. Ran right past and didn’t even see us.’

He was having trouble breathing now, and took a moment to collect himself before he turned his head to look at the rest of the group.

‘It’s the only reason I wasn’t up on the roof with you when you went looking for Jeff. Rachel thought she could talk sense into Andy. I didn’t, and I wasn’t about to let her try.’

There was almost a full minute when the only sound in the room was Maurie’s stertorous breathing.

Then Luke said, ‘So what happened, Maurie?’

‘When the doc had gone, we went into the study as Andy got to his feet. He was pretty unsteady, seriously concussed, I’d say. The blood was streaming down his face and he was in a filthy mood. Rachel wanted to help him, but I wouldn’t let her. He started shouting at her. Cursing her, calling her every foul-mouthed name he could think of. Told her how he was going to make her pay for running out on him. Lock her up and make her his fuck puppy.’ His mouth curled in distaste. ‘His words.’

Maurie reached into his coat pocket now to bring out a handkerchief, with an almost uncontrollably shaking hand, and wipe his mouth.

‘He was a piece of shit. And that was my sister he was threatening. So I picked up the Oscar and smashed his fucking head in.’

There was not a sound in the room. And as far as Jack could tell, not a soul breathing in the entire universe.

Then Maurie said, ‘I can still hear the sound of his skull breaking.’

‘You killed him?’ Doctor Robert was almost breathless with incredulity.

‘I killed him. And I’d do it again. A hundred times over.’

‘But you weren’t there when I got back. Only Simon. Crouching over the body.’

Maurie was having trouble speaking now. ‘Do we have any water? I need some water.’

Luke went through to the kitchen and found a cracked mug that he rinsed under the tap, filled and brought back for Maurie to drink from. Maurie tipped his head back as he drank, water cascading from both sides of his mouth to run from his chin on to his chest. His face was the colour and texture of wax. He breathed deeply for a good thirty seconds. Then summoned all his strength to speak again.

‘Rachel was hysterical. She knew I’d killed him. I dragged her back out into the corridor.’ He let his gaze wander around the table. ‘You guys were probably never aware of it, but there are service stairs at the back of the house that go up from the ground floor all the way to the attic. Rachel knew, though. There’s a door at the end of the corridor beyond the doctor’s study that leads out to them. She took me out there and said we could escape without being seen. But I told her this was my problem now, not hers, and I wasn’t leaving without Jeff. But that she should go. When she refused, I screamed at her and slapped her. Hard. And told her if she didn’t leave I wouldn’t keep her secret any more.’ His eyes blazed at us.

Dave said, ‘What secret, Maurie? That she was your sister?’

And a tiny, bitter smile twisted his lips. ‘No. Not that. And, after all, she went, didn’t she? So it was a secret I kept.’ He returned his focus to Dr Robert. ‘I came back into the hall just as you returned to the study and found Simon there. Obviously he’d gone in looking for you while we were out on the stairs. He found Andy McNeil lying dead on your study floor and he thought you’d done it. And when you came back to find Andy dead, you thought you’d done it, too.’

For the first time since his arrival, Dr Robert looked his age. Paler and frailer, the certainties of a lifetime suddenly stripped away, to confront him with a truth which had evaded him all these years.

Maurie said, ‘You really did think you’d killed him, didn’t you? So when Simon looked into your eyes, that’s what he saw there. Guilt, fear. The realization that your life as you knew it was about to change irrevocably because of one stupid, thoughtless act. And that foolish young man sacrificed himself for you. For the man he loved, the man he believed loved him, too.’

Maurie was transported back through fifty years, the little life left in him burning fiercely in his eyes.

‘He didn’t know that his lover was a serial molester of young boys. Or maybe he suspected it, who knows? Who can even begin to guess what was in his mind? But I saw you flinch when he lifted that paperweight, as if you thought he might hit you with it. And I was just as confused as you when he put it down again, standing it upright on the floor next to the body, covered in his fingerprints and began smearing his face and hands with blood. And it dawned on me that he was taking the blame. Taking the fall for you. The stupid man almost knocked me over when he ran out of your study.’

Dr Robert pulled up a chair and sat down heavily, staring at his hands laid flat on the table in front of him. ‘I always thought it was me. My whole life. That I’d killed that man. And it took me all that time to figure out why Simon did what he did.’

‘Because he loved you,’ Luke said.

‘And you killed him for it.’ Maurie fixed the doctor with a look so filled with hate that Jack recoiled from it, as if it were something physical. ‘Half a century later, you killed the man who sacrificed his life for yours.’

Dr Robert looked up, eyes on fire. ‘No! Sy was...’ he searched for the word, ‘... he was an egomaniac. Arrogant. Disruptive on set. He’d been fired from the film he’d been working on that morning. They’d just had enough of him. And his agent had dumped him. So he was in a pretty volatile state of mind. You see, Sy wasn’t an actor, he was a celebrity. All he was interested in was fame. And what he did that night, taking the blame, it didn’t just make him famous. It made him... a legend. The man who simply disappeared off the face of the earth.’

He looked round their faces, as if looking for their sympathy.

‘You think it was love? Really? So how is it he comes back fifty years later threatening to expose me if I don’t stump up? If I don’t get him a little apartment somewhere in London with a monthly stipend, so he can live out the rest of his days in anonymous safety, financially secure.’

‘Why didn’t you just do that?’

‘How could I trust him? How? I mean, who knows how he survived all these years, or where? Or what bitter jealousy it was that brought him back. Seeing me reach the pinnacle of my life and career. Honoured by my country. Arise, Sir Cliff. Who the hell knows? But I wasn’t about to risk it. To let him spoil it all now. Even if no one believed him, the publicity would have tarnished me. I couldn’t allow that.’

He stood up again, suddenly agitated.

‘And anyway, the man was already dead. That’s what everyone thought. No one to miss him, or regret his passing.’

He paused, gazing beyond them all into some personal hell all of his own.

‘I was sure I had removed all possibility of identification when I cut away his tattoo.’ He shook his head in frustration. ‘But I was wrong. Wrong!’

And he thumped his fist on the table. The noise of it reverberated around the room and out into the hall. The blood had flowed back into his face now, coloured red by a cocktail of mixed emotions.

‘I suppose you’re going to go to the police.’

Maurie shook his head. ‘No.’

Dr Robert’s relief was tangible, but it vanished in a moment as Maurie drew a pistol from an inside pocket. Bizarrely, to Jack, it looked like a toy gun he’d had as a kid. But he was under no illusions about it being a toy. It shook so much in Maurie’s hand that he had to steady it with his other, both arms extended in front of him, the gun pointing across the table at Dr Robert.

His three friends were on their feet in a moment, chairs toppling backwards to raise dust in the candlelight.

‘For Christ’s sake, Maurie!’ Dave’s voice was elevated by alarm.

Maurie’s smile was grotesque. ‘Amazing the acquaintances you make during eighteen months behind bars. And the things they can get you when you really need them.’

Luke’s voice was more controlled, but Jack could hear the tension in it.

‘Don’t be stupid, Maurie. Nothing to be gained by this. You barely knew Flet. He meant nothing to you.’

Maurie’s gaze was fixed on Dr Robert. ‘This isn’t for Flet,’ he said, and suddenly the light of all the candles seemed to flicker more brightly in his eyes. ‘This is for Jeff. Poor Jeff who thought he could fly. Poor Jeff, who was my best and only friend all through childhood, who stood up for me against the bullies. Who was always there for me, whatever the problem. Poor Jeff, who never had the life he should have.’ His eyes held Dr Robert helpless in their thrall. ‘Seduced into taking drugs, and God knows what else, by you, you bastard.’

And he pulled the trigger three times, pumping his bullets straight into Dr Robert’s chest, the recoil almost toppling Maurie backwards in his chair.

The noise was deafening in the confined space, and the doctor flew back against the wall, then slowly slid down to the floor leaving a trail of blood glistening on the painted plaster behind him.

The sound of the gunshots seemed to take an eternity to fade, and left them feeling as if their ears had been plugged by cotton wool.

Dr Robert sat on the floor, back against the wall, his eyes wide, mouth hanging open, blood staining his camel coat a dark brown.

Dave gawped at him in horror. ‘Jesus Christ, Maurie, you’ve killed him.’

Maurie lowered his hands to rest them on the table, but still he held the gun. ‘It’s what I came to do. No knighthood for Dr Robert.’

Luke bent down to check the doctor’s pulse. He caught Jack’s eye and shook his head, then stood up again.

Maurie said, ‘You’d better go. These walls probably contained the sound of the shots, but who knows who else might have heard them?’

Jack frowned, panting hard and still in shock. ‘We’re not going without you, Maurie.’

‘Yes, you are.’ Maurie was quite calm now. Even his hands seemed to have stopped shaking. ‘I only have a week or two left in me. Maybe not even that. You boys... well, you might all have a whole wheen of years left among you. So go and live your lives, and make the most of what you have left of them.’

‘Maurie...’ Luke took a step towards him.

‘Go!’ Maurie raised the gun to point it at him.

Luke was startled. ‘You wouldn’t!’

Maurie forced a grin. ‘No, I wouldn’t.’ He turned the gun to press the barrel to his temple. ‘But unless you really want to watch me blow my brains out, I suggest you go now.’

Jack said, ‘You’re really going to do this, aren’t you?’

‘I am, Jack. Quick and easy. And gone. But...’ He reached into his pocket with his free hand and drew out a white envelope, which he placed on the table in front of him and pushed towards Jack. ‘I figure maybe I owe you this, though part of me says you still don’t deserve it. But, well... I never promised Rachel I’d take her secret with me to the grave.’

Jack felt a chill of apprehension as he reached for the envelope.

‘She never had the abortion, Jack.’

Jack’s face stung as if he had been slapped, and he felt Luke and Dave’s eyes on him.

‘Oh, I know you took her to that woman’s place. But in the end she couldn’t go through with it. And didn’t tell you because she didn’t want you to think you had to stand by her. Though, in my book, that would have been the decent thing to do. Even though you weren’t Jewish. Anyway, the only person she told was me, and she made me promise not to tell.’

Jack’s world had stopped turning on its axis. He stood paralysed. ‘You mean she had my baby?’

‘She did, Jack. Kid doesn’t know.’ He chuckled. ‘Hardly a kid now, though.’

Jack was almost afraid to ask. ‘And Rachel?’

Maurie nodded towards the envelope. ‘You’ll find an address in the envelope. Go there at three tomorrow. Someone will meet you and tell you all about Rachel.’

The envelope trembled in Jack’s fingers. It felt as if it held his destiny in it. A coda to a life that had never lived up to his hopes for it. An average life, stultifying in its ordinariness, except for those few extraordinary weeks in 1965. The days of their lives, Luke had called them, and that’s what they were.

‘Now go!’ Maurie’s voice echoed out into the hall.

But Jack rounded the table, ignoring the gun.

Maurie panicked. ‘What are you doing?’

Jack leaned over and kissed his forehead. ‘Thank you, Maurie.’ And he saw tears spring into his old friend’s eyes.

‘For fuck’s sake get out of here. I hate farewells.’

The three old men stopped by the door, and looked back at the shrunken figure who had once been their lead singer. But they didn’t see the shrivelled old man about to put a bullet in his head. They saw the plump young singer who had once auditioned for Scottish Opera and had the voice of an angel. Maurie. Their friend. And not one of them could bring himself to say goodbye.

They had reached the alley where Dave forced open the service door before they heard the shot.

A single shot, clear and pure, like Maurie’s voice had been once.

Epilogue

They drove up the hill past suburban semis on their left, and on their right what looked like a city park abandoned to the vagaries of nature behind a wall and fence. Gloomy and neglected. Long grass and tangling briar, dead trees in among the living, stark in their leaflessness.

At first, Ricky had driven Luke’s car through the London traffic with meticulous care born of fear. That Luke had trusted him with it was flattering, but he was terrified of bumps or scrapes, and his confidence on strange roads in a strange car was not high. But after half an hour he had begun to relax a little.

The GPS burbled out its instructions. A woman’s voice that sounded uncannily like Margaret Thatcher. Ricky preferred to rely on the video screen to map out their progress, and the orange arrow that kept them right. His grandfather sat beside him. Silent. A black hole. Lost in thoughts he was not about to share. Ricky dragged his eyes from the road for a moment to look at him.

‘Are you ever going to tell me?’

‘No.’

‘At least tell me what happened to Maurie. I deserve to know that.’

‘You don’t want to know.’

‘I do.’

‘Trust me, Rick, you really don’t.’

Ricky fell back into a semi-sulk. Then, as they reached the top of Brunswick Park Road, he said, ‘Luke offered me a job.’

‘I know.’

‘He told you?’

‘Yes.’ Jack looked at his grandson for the first time. ‘Can you do it?’

Ricky snorted derisively. ‘Of course I can. He said I could stay with him and Jan. He also said I’d have to get my National Insurance sorted out as a freelance, then we could talk about a contract and terms.’

‘It’s a great opportunity, Rick. To get away from home. Break the cycle. See a bit of the world.’

Ricky was indignant. ‘I’ve seen more of the world than I ever wanted to in the last few days!’

Jack smiled. ‘You’re just scratching the surface, son.’

They cruised down the far side of the hill, and the GPS warned them that they were three hundred yards from their destination.

‘Thanks, Grampa,’ Ricky said suddenly.

Jack cocked an eyebrow, distracted from where they were going by his surprise. ‘What for?’

‘For making me go on this trip with you.’

Jack laughed, in spite of himself. ‘That’s not what you were saying three days ago.’

But Ricky’s face was a study of reflection. ‘I never knew it, but it was like I was in hibernation or something. Just waiting to wake up. It’s...’ he glanced across the car again, ‘... it’s been one hell of an experience, Grampa. I just wish you’d tell me what happened last night. I’m a big boy now, honest.’

But Jack was spared from responding by Mrs Thatcher. She said, ‘You have reached your destination.’

And Jack looked around, surprised. They had arrived at a small roundabout at the foot of the hill. He was looking for a house. Number 147. But on their left was open parkland behind a mesh fence, and on their left wrought-iron gates on stone pillars leading to an area of mature trees and manicured lawns. He’d missed the sign, but Ricky hadn’t.

The boy’s voice was hushed. He knew immediately what it meant. ‘New Southgate Cemetery and Crematorium,’ he read.

And Jack’s heart went dead.

He’d had no idea what to expect, or how it might have been to face a Rachel in her mid-sixties all these years later. And maybe somewhere in the darkest recesses of his mind he had known she was already gone. Really gone.

Ricky pulled in to park the Mercedes outside the gate, and they stepped out into the sunshine of this breezy spring afternoon to see a man selling flowers from a cart just inside the cemetery.

Ricky glanced awkwardly at his grandfather. ‘She’s dead?’

Jack nodded. ‘I should have known it was the only way Maurie would have given away her secret.’

Ricky slipped an arm through his. ‘Come on, then. You’d better go and say goodbye to her.’

Once inside, the size and extent of this old cemetery became only too painfully clear to them. It was enormous, with paths turning in concentric circles, linked by spokes, and a chapel half hidden by trees at their centre. Undulating land was divided and subdivided into countless plots. A population of the dead so huge that they had built special white-stone walls to accommodate coffins four deep. From the distance they looked like miniature blocks of flats.

Ricky was bewildered. ‘How will we ever find her?’

But Jack had spotted the tiny sign planted in the grass. White letters on a black background and an arrow pointing the way: Hendon Reform Synagogue Cemetery.

With Ricky on one arm, and his stick in his free hand, he followed the signs round to their left. They passed a grave festooned with colourful plastic butterflies and big-petalled flowers, another hung with a heart. The words at the centre of it read, I love you, Daddy. The names here had their origins in many far-flung places. Italy, Greece, Russia, China. A cosmopolitan community of the dead. No prejudice against immigrants here.

The cemetery of the Hendon Reform Synagogue stood opposite the chapel, a small plot of Jews screened off from the sea of Christian crosses that surrounded them by dilapidated wooden fencing that had collapsed in places.

Jack told Ricky to wait, and went in on his own. A small brick building bore a legend in Hebrew above the door, and one exterior wall was given over to niches where ashes could be stored. Those that were occupied were closed off by grey plaques engraved with gold lettering. In Loving Memory of John Hans Schuck, dearly loved husband and father, 1919–2002.

The plot itself was small, on a downhill slope, gravel with cement paths, and it was filled almost to capacity. Plain marble headstones set above concrete plinths.

A middle-aged woman stood on her own halfway down. Lean once, but carrying now a little of the weight that comes with age. She had dark hair drawn back from a strong face, and looked up from the grave she was standing over as Jack approached.

He glanced down at the headstone. Rachel Stahl. 1949–2013. So she had never married, or at least had kept her maiden name. And died just two years ago. Jack felt a wave of melancholy weaken his legs and he supported himself heavily on his stick.

When he looked up, he found the woman gazing at him with puzzled curiosity.

‘Are you the man Uncle Maurie said would meet me here?’

Jack nodded, not trusting himself to speak.

‘You’re a friend of his?’

‘Since we were boys.’

She took some moments to digest this. ‘I never met him until he came out of prison,’ she said. And, then, as if fearing this was an indiscretion, added quickly, ‘I suppose you must have known about that?’

Jack nodded, and she seemed relieved.

‘He did it for me and my mother, you know. She said it was the only reason he took that money from the client account. When we were really on our uppers.’ She paused. ‘He said you could tell me about my mother.’ She had her mother’s eyes. So dark, and yet so full of light.

Jack found his courage. ‘I think you can probably tell me much more about her than I ever could.’ He paused. ‘Do you have brothers or sisters?’

She shook her head, and there was a sadness in her voice. ‘I was an only child.’ Then she brightened. ‘But I have three of my own.’ And her curiosity returned. She frowned. ‘Who are you?’

Jack’s mouth was so dry he could barely speak. ‘I believe I’m your father.’