Father and Son: John Ray / LS9 crime thrillers, #2

By John Barlow

Someone wants you dead. You don't know who. Or why.

John Ray is called to the scene of a violent murder. The victim is an old associate of his father, local crime boss Tony Ray. There's no obvious motive for the crime, but everybody agrees on one thing: don't tell the police.

John, the charismatic, Cambridge-educated white sheep of the Ray family, has always refused to be part of his father's business. But he's also a bit of a maverick, with a foot in both worlds, and he's not quite as white as he would like: exactly the kind of person you'd want to investigate an underworld murder.

The fast-paced search for the killer takes John Ray back to events twenty years ago, and to another, even more heinous crime. It's a gripping ride, but also a painful one for John personally, and he doesn't really know what he's looking for. Until it's too late.

Plus, he's not the only one looking...

FATHER AND SON is the second crime thriller in the John Ray / LS9 series.
It can be read as a stand-alone novel.

***

NOTE ON THE TEXT: Chapter 17 of this novel includes a letter written by a child. The letter contains various grammatical errors and spelling mistakes. The are used deliberately by the author.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Storm Books
• Release date: Sep 13, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301394876

John Barlow

John Barlow was born in West Yorkshire. He worked as a cabaret musician before reading English Literature at the University of Cambridge, followed by a doctorate in Language Acquisition at the University of Hull. He remained in the academic world as a university lecturer in English Language until 2004, at which point he moved to Spain. He currently works as a writer, ghost writer, food journalist and translator, and lives in the Galician city of A Coruna with his partner and two sons.

Book preview

Chapter Two

He slams the door of the Saab behind him and pushes the key into the ignition.

Will this ever end?

Throws the car into gear and guns it out of the car park way too fast. There’s already plenty of traffic on Armley Road. Shit, what time do people start work these days?

He forces his eyes wide open as he drives, trying to wake himself up, to absorb the metallic grey of another dull Yorkshire morning. Up ahead is the spire of St Bart’s church, almost black against the skyline, and beyond it Armley Gaol, its massive square towers reaching up into the clouds like a never-ending fortress. That’s how it had seemed when he was growing up, no building bigger or more intimidating, an ever-present threat in the lives of the Ray family. But Dad had never set foot inside. They’d never managed to lock Tony Ray up.

Is this ever going to stop?

Church and jail pass out of sight, soot-darkened pinnacles of a forgotten world dwarfed by the modern city. There are so many tower blocks these days that nobody can imagine what goes on inside them all. Just when did Leeds start looking like a corner of Manhattan?

He floors the accelerator as he pulls onto the ring road. There are speed cameras up ahead. So what? If he gets a ticket someone at the Park Lane’ll know how to get rid of it. He’s Tony Ray’s son, remember? He’ll never be allowed to forget. And he’s tried. Year after year he’s tried. Look where it’s got him.

He parks on a side street down behind the Grand Theatre and pulls himself out of the car, anger already replaced by dread. He lights up, takes a long drag. This is not good. Seven in the morning and he’s been called to Lanny Bride’s place. Whatever Lanny wants, it’s not hot croissants and coffee.

Park Lane. The name is inscribed on a small brass plate above the door, which is a dull grey, like dried mud. The rest of the shop front is darker still, windows blacked out from the inside. To the right is a late-night sandwich bar and on the other side a Lebanese restaurant. Officially the Park Lane is a public bar, but it’s not the kind of place you’d wander uninvited. He’s been here a few times over the years, but never by choice.

The door opens and a young man in a leather jacket and grey joggers appears. His face is pasty and he’s about thirty pounds overweight.

John Ray? he says.

John nods. He’s leaning against the Saab, jacket flapping in the wind, open necked shirt, mop of black hair falling into his eyes. John Ray’s name precedes him. Unconventional, bit of a maverick, the white sheep of the family. He doesn’t look too white now.

The guy in the joggers disappears back inside without waiting for an answer. John flicks his cigarette into the gutter and rubs his face with both hands, so hard it feels like the flesh might split open.

A couple of deep breaths. In he goes.

The cleaners’ lights are on, but there’s still that wine-bar murkiness to the place, lending the room a muted, dream-like quality. The tables are low, surrounded by square leather seats with no backs, their exact colour hard to tell. The seats look way too big. The walls are an insipid, watery green in the fluorescent light. He hates it in here. Always has.

At the back of the room, behind the bar, a glass cabinet has been smashed, bottles lying at odd angles, some of them looking as if they’re defying gravity, ready to topple to the floor. Off to one side of the room are three men, the one in jogging pants and two older guys. They’re looking down at something.

They see John, and immediately turn their heads back to the floor in front of them. John knows who they are. Not their faces. Not their names. But he knows them. They’re the kind of men that used to work for his dad. That’s all he needs to know.

Nobody is speaking. Why is that? There’s something in the air. He doesn’t know what, only that it’s making him gag. A fatty, metallic smell. He doesn’t want to know what it is.

But it’s too late. He’s here now.

Instinctively he breathes through his mouth, trying to keep the stench out of his nose. He walks over to the three men. They let him through.

A body is slumped in a wooden chair. It’s a large man, head hanging forward, as if staring down at his own feet. His legs are bound to the chair with duct tape, and there’s more tape around his chest, lots of it, holding his torso up. The stink of blood is stronger now, but there’s something else. A sweet smell.

The dead man’s head is about half the normal size. The crown has collapsed inwards, the skull smashed out of existence. Little pools of liquid sit in the irregular contours of the scalp, glistening.

Lying beside the chair is a bottle of champagne, the thick end covered in a coat of congealed blood, making it look like a dumbbell. More bottles lie further off, some smashed, others uncorked, their contents emptied out onto the carpet, over the corpse as well, it looks like.

Show him, the oldest of the three men says.

John doesn’t move.

The young guy carefully lifts what’s left of the dead man’s head. The nose is severed right the way down one side and hangs from the face by a single piece of skin. The lacerations across the rest of the face are so severe that the features have more or less disappeared.

Jesus, he whispers, gulping back the vomit.

And then, as waves of nausea hit him, building in his throat and making him gasp for air, he sees the gold medallion.

Roberto, someone whispers before he has to ask.

For the next five minutes he kneels over a toilet, the salt-sweet stink of piss and sick in his nostrils, and his stomach in hard, uncontrollable spasms, pumping everything out. He watches the light brown bile spatter the bowl and cries in huge, silent sobs, dizzy with pain and loathing.

This is who I am: Tony Ray’s son.

Chapter Three

Take your time, the oldest one says, standing in the doorway as John gets to his feet, hawking the last traces of vomit from his throat.

Is there a back door?

Through there. It’s open.

He washes his face, letting the ice-cold water run down his neck and soak into his shirt, more and more of it until he senses that he’s alone.

By the time he’s out the back, lighting a cigarette, the shaking is under control and his mind has started to work again. The yard is small, crowded with crates of bottles and wheelie bins. The smell of old grease and spices is both sickening and welcome.

Roberto. Didn’t even know his last name. Roberto Duran, they used to call him. A boxer from London. Brilliant amateur, but he got done for armed robbery. Couldn’t turn pro after that, so he came up north and worked for Tony Ray. Now he’s dead.

John watches the tiny curls of smoke rise from the tip of his cigarette. He’ll have to go back inside. When he’s finished this, he’ll have to look at that head again. He takes a drag, not too deep, not too much. How long can he make it last?

Roberto, big strong fella, always dressed in a black shirt and trousers, that ridiculous medallion on his hairy chest. The only decent one among ’em. How many men had worked for Dad over the years? Down at the old showroom there were always a few hanging about, thugs and chancers stinking of booze and diesel. Nasty bastards, the kind that pick fights in pubs just to prove a point, kick some lippy kid’s teeth out, or threaten blokes in front of their wives for a laugh. They were all wary of Roberto, though. He could’ve taken any of them, and they knew it. That easy way he had, never more than the wag of a finger, a raised eyebrow. Somebody wasn’t wary of him, though. Last night they took his face off with a bottle. God knows what else they did to him.

He sucks on the cigarette. Thinks about lighting another, but it’d only make him throw up. Any case, he’s got no choice. He’ll have to go inside again sooner or later.

Right, he says, steadying his voice, trying not to look at the chair as he walks back into the dimly lit bar. What’s Lanny said?

The older guy holds up his hand, a cellphone pressed to his ear.

Yeah, he’s here, he says into the phone, then passes it to John.

John? says Lanny.

Yep.

What d’you think?

I just got here. Why you ask me to come, anyway?

Who else am I gonna ask?

Lanny sounds nervous. This is the last thing he needs.

I assume you’re not getting the police in? John asks.

Stupid question. An hour from now, Roberto’ll be dumped in an incinerator, or a landfill, whatever it is Lanny Bride does with unwanted bodies these days.

Not a word, to anyone.

So what have I got to go on?

Just do your best. A name, a whisper. Anything.

John thinks about it, looks across at Roberto, at the horrific squalor of how his life ended. Uncle Rob, they used to call him when they were kids. He’d carry you on his shoulders all day long, scoop you up in his arms and throw you so high in the air you’d scream with fear, choking on your own giddiness, begging him to do it again. At the showroom he’d be the first person you’d look for. You could hide behind his legs. You were safe with Uncle Rob.

I’ll do what I can, he says, reaching for his cigarettes.

One more thing, Lanny says. Who’s the redhead?

A friend.

Journalist, I heard. Don’t like the sound of that.

No one’s asking you to. He lights a cigarette. Any road, it’s only been four days.

She’s been asking questions.

You’re the man of the moment, Lanny. You think you can keep yourself out of the news forever? Anyway, it’s not about you. She wants to write Dad’s biography.

You’re joking.

Wish I was.

Make sure no one starts reminiscing about me, John.

Like I said, I’ll do my best.

He hands the phone back, sick of Lanny’s voice. Sick of his own for that matter.

He smokes in silence, lets the ash fall onto the carpet. Roberto. The name reminds him of his childhood, of growing up in Leeds and knowing he was Tony Ray’s son. Poor kid, he’d hear people say behind his back, friends’ parents, teachers, neighbours. It was as if being born with that surname was a handicap, an inescapable life sentence. But John had escaped. He’d made a clean break, the white sheep.

Look at him now, taking orders from Lanny Bride.

He swallows hard as he moves towards the dead man in the chair. I’ll do my best, he tells himself. But not for you, Lanny.

He looks down at the mashed remains of Roberto’s head, the hair sticky where the blood and champagne is beginning to congeal. Then he picks up a cork from the floor in front of Rob’s feet, a fat champagne cork, spattered with blood.

I’ll do my best, he tells himself. For Rob. And for me.

Because after this, I’m finished with being John Ray.

This is going to stop.

Chapter Four

He’s back in the Saab. They’d been keen to get rid of the body, and it wasn’t as if there was a forensics team waiting to take over. So he’d taken Rob’s keys and wallet, had a quick look round, and said goodbye to the big man for the last time.

Roberto was the manager of the Park Lane. He would have been the last one there, early hours of the morning, ready to lock up. The metallic stink of the blood was still fresh. Couldn’t have been more than a few hours since he’d died. Three bullet wounds. A shot through the left shin, and one through each of his arms, just above the elbow.

Rob was about sixty. But he was still strong. And big. You go up against someone like that, you make sure he’s injured first. That’s how they’d got him to the chair, must have been. Good shots, too. No stray bullets. They shot him, taped him to the chair, and beat him to death with a bottle. But why slash his face like that, as well as caving in his skull? It doesn’t make sense, if you want to kill someone.

He pulls away, trying not to gag at the thought of it, taking long, deep breaths. Turns onto Vicar Lane and heads towards the markets. Three shots, but not fatal. Whoever it was could’ve killed him any time they wanted. They had a gun. So why the bottle to the head? And why douse him in champagne?

Down by the markets he finds a place and pulls in. Gets out his iPhone. No police. Bollocks to that. Den’s number is still on fast dial, a year after they last spoke. Should he call her? Explain all this over the phone, after twelve months of silent regret, after he ruined both their lives? Not much of a peace offering, after a year thinking about her every night as he gets slowly and methodically drunk.

He turns the phone in his fingers. Thinks: they taped Roberto up because they wanted him alive. Trying to make him speak? The gunshots, calculated, accurate. And the tape? They’d come prepared. They knew what they wanted. But what happened once they got him into the chair? Did he refuse to talk? They get angry, look around for something, grab a bottle? They start beating him with it. The bottle breaks – or they smash it – and they use it to slash his face until it’s unrecognisable. The pain would be too much. He’d be unconscious. If he hadn’t talked by then, why not just kill him? Or leave him?

They don’t leave him, though. With his face beyond recognition, they get another bottle and smash his skull with it. Two, three blows perhaps, and he’d dead. Gotta be, head bowed, body slumped forwards. Yet still they go on, pummelling his head again and again, until it’s half its original size. Anger? Frustration? Something doesn’t sound right. They come prepared, calculated, but it ends in a frenzy.

Even then it doesn’t stop. They go back to the bar, get more champagne, emptying whole bottles of the stuff over his mashed up head, the fizzy wine mixing with his blood. Pink champagne. He must have been dead by then. Dear god, he must have been. Please.

He tries to imagine what must have gone through Rob’s mind as he sat there, strapped to the chair and knowing he was about to die. What do you feel when your life flashes past you, and it’s been nothing but blokes like Lanny Bride and their violent, joyless world? What can Rob possibly have thought about himself as he realised his life was worth less than a shipment of heroine or whatever pointless, ephemeral shit he was about to get killed for?

A delivery van revs behind him, edging up onto the pavement. John realises there are tears streaming down his face, dripping off his chin. He drives on, hardly able to focus on the road, smearing the tears around his face, tasting the salt. The traffic is heavy now, lines of buses pulling into the station, disgorging their cargo of reluctant workers, who juggle phones and tablets, white headphones plugged into their ears as if the sound of the city is the last thing they want to hear.

He passes the huge ugly red brick monster of Millgarth Police Station, knows he should be in there now, reporting Rob’s death, handing over the keys and making a statement. But he’s not. He wipes his face dry with the sleeve of his jacket and pulls out onto the roundabout.

A minute later he’s driving down a series of shabby backstreets. Just half a mile from the soaring, high-rise glamour of twenty-first century Leeds; a few blocks that the city seems to have forgotten about, or can’t be bothered to demolish. There are old Victorian workshops, many of them boarded up, curls of rusted barbed wire along the walls; plus squat, pre-war warehouses, their concrete stained and rotting. And at the centre of it all is Hope Road, as shabby and nondescript as the rest, a street so visibly at odds with its own name that it might be a civic joke.

Apart from one building: a curved, futuristic structure of glass and brushed steel, so out of place it almost fits: Tony Ray’s Motors.

He parks in the forecourt. Stares at his iPhone. No, he can’t stomach the thought of speaking to Den now. Not about this. A text is better.

Hi, he writes, the trembling almost gone from his hands, I need help.

Chapter Five

The sound of his size ten Doc Martens on the floor echoes off the glass walls and the high-sheen bodywork of a dozen cars. Tony Ray’s Motors has been the family firm since the 60s, when his dad arrived in the city, a young immigrant from Franco’s Spain with no prospects and no friends.

John wanders between a silver Porsche and a six-year-old Subaru Impreza that they’ve managed to buff up pretty well. For forty-odd years the showroom had been nothing more than a couple of prefabs and a rough tarmac forecourt, home base for Tony Ray’s many business interests. Cars? They used to sell the odd one or two, and they’d always put enough cash through the books to stop the Revenue complaining. Don’t let ’em get you on taxes! his dad used to say.

The Subaru’s got a ridiculous mark-up on it. But it’ll sell. Impreza’s always do. The Porsche? Great window candy, although it looks a bit out of place, a top of the range 911 Turbo S. These days people come here for a solid mid-range motor, second-hand, anything up to a Beemer or an Audi. You don’t buy your Merc here, and certainly not a hundred and twenty grand Porsche.

He resists the urge to find a brick and smash its windscreen. Tony Ray’s Motors. This is where it had all started, and this is where it should have ended. Three years ago his brother Joe was shot dead, right here, in front of him. As a warning sign it couldn’t have been any clearer. But John didn’t take the warning. Instead he took control and rebuilt the premises.

He goes over to a shining Gaggia machine at the back of the showroom and switches it on. They’d met down here on a Friday night, him and Joe, to decide what to do with the place. Dad was retiring, and it wasn’t as if they could sell the business as a going concern, not back then. The shot came from nowhere. By the time John saw what had happened, Joe had sunk to his knees, half his head missing.

He jerks the arm out of the Gaggia. With Joe dead and his dad retired, he should have sold up. All his life he’d been clean, never been involved in anything dodgy. It should have been the end of the Ray family’s association with Leeds. But he didn’t sell up. Instead, he came home and took over the showroom. Bad decision, bad time to make it. Everything that’s gone wrong in his life since then has come from that decision. And now he’s right back where he started, down here in the showroom on Hope Road. And somebody else is dead.

He tamps down the coffee and thrusts the arm back into the machine, his movements fast and exaggerated. Lanny can have his pound of flesh this time. Whoever did that to Roberto deserves to feel Lanny Bride’s wrath. An eye for an eye. He stares at the coffee machine, shaking his head in disbelief. Never thought he’d hear himself say that, an eye for an eye. He knows it’s wrong, but it feels right. Whoever did that to Roberto’ll get what’s coming to him. Then it’s over. This is the last favour you’ll do, John, he tells himself, the last time you’ll have any contact with Lanny Bride, or any of ’em.

He presses the button for an espresso and looks around at the showroom, quarter of a million pounds’ worth of steel and glass. He tries to visualise exactly where it was his brother dropped to the floor. I should have left this all behind...

Three years ago Lanny Bride was already in charge of the city, the de facto successor to the Tony Ray crime empire. John knows he should have left everything right then, made a clean break. Instead he built a gleaming new showroom and filled it with cars.

He clicks a remote. Three plasma screens burst into life, each one set high up where the glass walls of the showroom meet the sloping steel roof beams. The news is on and he gets a sudden shot of déjà vu. He’s seen the footage before, years ago, something he would never forget. It’s so heart-wrenching you hate yourself for watching, but you can’t look away.

A young man emerges from the front entrance of a supermarket. Behind him, yellow flames dance amongst the rubble-strewn remains of the building. The man is gaunt, covered in dust from the blast. He seems lost, yet his expression is also one of astonishment. In his arms is a baby, no bigger than a doll. He looks down at it, as if the baby has just been born, still wet with blood, taking its first breaths, and he is cradling it for the first time. He shuffles slowly from the mess of bricks and broken glass, looking for someone, but knowing that no one can help. People approach him. He turns from them, pulls the baby closer to his chest. One of its limbs hangs loose. His face is now empty, as if none of this is real. The child is cold in his arms. And nothing is real.

The year was 1990. John had been in New Zealand. He saw the report of the Leeds bombing perhaps a dozen times, mainly on TVs in pubs and bars. UK: TERRORIST BOMBING. Always the same few moments of film, that young man emerging from the rubble, dead baby in his arms.

It was one of the indelible images of his youth, visual memories spliced together and played on a loop: the Yorkshire Ripper, the Belgrano, miners’ strike, Brighton bombing, his dad on the steps of the Old Bailey... Video clips that will never fade from memory. Better than memory, more real. It’s as if you haven’t lived through something unless you’ve seen it on screen. Who doesn’t remember them arresting the Ripper? Or the police horses charging at Orgreave, Tebbit in his pyjamas, a grinning Tony Ray on the steps outside the Bailey, not guilty... This is England!

But none of these images is lodged so powerfully in John’s memory as the young man stepping clear of the wreckage of that supermarket in Leeds; no scene depicts with such simplicity the horror