A Heart in the Right Place Page 9

  Nick paused. That was an unexpected question. “Er, both?” he ventured.

  Tony shook his head. “The man on the tin is not me.”

  “I know that.”

  “Are you sure? You only think in stereotypes, like we’re all walk-ons in one of your adverts. You’ve got a little box in your head which says mom, and mom goes in there. Little box in your head which says dad, and I go in there.”

  “I care about you very much,” countered Nick meaninglessly.

  “But do you know what it is you care about? Do you really know who I am, apart from this dad thing.” Tony actually drew air quotes and he didn’t usually hold with that kind of nonsense, so Nick knew he was angry. “Do you know anything about mom and me?”

  “Of course, I do!”

  “Go on then.”

  “What?”

  “Go on. What do you know about us?”

  “Um. Well, your birthday is on the tenth of September. Mom’s is the fourth of April. You were born in nineteen forty seven, mom in nineteen forty eight.”

  “That’s just dates. You’ve probably got a reminder on your phone for that.”

  “You were born in Knowle. Your parents were George and Charlotte Carver and—”

  “When did we meet?”

  “Shortly after you were born, I should think.”

  “Not my parents. Your mom and me.”

  Nick stared at the road ahead. “At a dance?” he hazarded.

  “A dance?”

  “Some sort of village disco?”

  Tony scoffed. “May twenty-second, nineteen seventy one, Birmingham Town Hall. King Crimson were playing in concert.”

  “Who?”

  “King Crimson! Court of the Crimson King? Twenty-First Century Schizoid Man?”

  Nick had no idea who or what King Crimson was or were.

  “Prog rock!” said Tony.

  Nick only had a vague concept of what prog rock was. In his mind, it was just music which had been fed into a shredder and stuck together again with drum solos; from some distant era when they had discovered LSD but had yet to discover actual tunes.

  “You’re into prog rock?”

  “Yes! All those records I used to listen to. Van der Graaf Generator. Kansas. Uriah Heep. Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention. Jethro Tull.”

  “Okay. And these are bands you’re listing? You’re not just having a stroke?”

  “You don’t remember?” Tony was incredulous. “That’s a part of me. That’s your dad. That’s who I am.”

  “And mom liked that music too?”

  Tony laughed: a release valve laugh. “She had gone there with her boyfriend.”

  “Mom had a boyfriend before you?”

  Tony’s eyebrows rose and he gave Nick a fixed look. “Your mom didn’t just settle down with the first bloke she met. She shopped around until she found the ideal man.”

  “Shopped around? Ugh! Dad!”

  “What?” Tony shrugged, amused. “She was there with some pillock called Alistair. That kind of music wasn’t her scene. She went to the bar to get a drink. It was soft drinks only, but I’d snuck in a couple of bottles of my homebrew beer.”

  “I remember your homebrew. The airing cupboard stank of fermenting yeast when I was a kid.”

  “That’s right,” said Tony. “Anyway, a bottle of homebrew and a few charming words from yours truly and I don’t think your mom saw Alistair ever again. We left before the final number, your mom came back with me to my digs in Olton and—”

  “Okay! Enough already!” Nick rested his wrists on the steering wheel and made a frantic Time Out gesture.

  Tony sighed, not unhappily. “You are aware your mom and I had sex?”

  “La la la. Not listening. Oh, mental image!”

  “Well, it’s a blasted sight more realistic than this mental image!” Tony tapped the tobacco tin loudly.

  There was silence in the car for a while (apart from some canine growling and mumbling in the back seat).

  “So, let me get this straight,” said Tony, staring out to the brown and grey slopes crowding the road on both sides. “This Scotland thing…?”

  “Yes?” said Nick.

  “It’s because of the tin.”

  Nick shrugged. “Yeah. I guess.”

  “Because the man on the tin loves Scotland, you think I love Scotland?”

  “You do like Scotland,” said Nick.

  “I don’t. I really don’t.”

  “What? No! Mom said you were keen!” Nick had the feeling his grip on the situation was slipping.

  “She said I should go to keep you happy.”

  “It’s not about keeping me happy.”

  “Sacrifices I make to keep the peace. Scotland! Midges all over the place, roads with no passing places and the whole fetishizing of whisky.”

  “No, no, no. You like whisky.”

  “Since when?”

  Nick thought. In truth, he’d never seen his dad drinking the stuff. He’d never really seen his dad drinking anything, except maybe a bitter shandy with his Sunday dinner. At most, a pint of beer at the end of a country walk. But…

  “You said Talisker was the finest whisky there was!”

  “You asked me about whisky one day. I’d heard someone go on about the stuff on Radio Four. Frankly, I couldn’t taste the difference between whisky and turps, Nick. I don’t like it. I don’t like Scotland. I’ve got zero interest in shooting.”

  Nick’s head was spinning. “What? Surely you want to do the shooting?” He cast about for the reasons why and found himself reaching for the same flimsy set of reasoning which had led him down this path the first time.

  “No. I really don’t feel comfortable with guns,” Tony was saying. “I know it’s a sport, but it’s got the feel of hunting. If I shoot a clay thing flying through the sky, am I supposed to imagine it’s a living, breathing bird and kill it? Horrible idea. I don’t want to do it.”

  Nick saw a way back into more familiar territory: a long-standing family game. “What if you had to choose between shooting a clay pigeon or setting fire to a wicker man?” he asked.

  “Is Edward Woodward inside the wicker man?”

  “He doesn’t have to be.”

  “Shooting the clay pigeon, I suppose,” conceded Tony.

  “What if you had to choose between shooting a clay pigeon and stabbing a puppy in the eye?”

  “Obviously I would shoot the clay pigeon—”

  “What if you had to shoot a tiger that was going to kill your whole family?”

  “I’d shoot the tiger! This is hardly the point, Nick. I’d like to think I would always take the less harmful option. I’d take a life to defend family, no doubt about it, but shooting for its own sake just doesn’t appeal to me.”

  Nick drove silently for a few minutes, wondering where he’d gone so wrong. Tony ate the last of his sandwich and stared out of the window. Pickles made loud chomping noises from the back seat. Maybe they should pass the dog some bacon. Nick twisted round to take a look.

  He yelped in shock: Pickles had chewed right through the back seat. There was a hole leading into the boot. The cost of repair was going to be horrendous, but that was far from Nick’s biggest problem. Pickles had dragged Oz’s foot through the gap and was chowing down on the heel like it was a tasty bone. Nick turned back to the road and tried to look like someone who hadn’t just witnessed casual snacking on a corpse.

  “Look at that view!” he exclaimed, pointing out of the window. His squeak of alarm had already given him away: Tony was staring at the back seat, trying to make sense of what he was seeing.

  “Is that ... is that a foot?” he asked.

  “Zombie leg chew toy,” Nick stated, his brain automatically throwing down its best cards. “A new range I’m working—”

  “Nick, stop treating me like an idiot,” snapped Tony. “Pull the car over. Now.”

  Nick scanned the road ahead for a stopping place. They were coming into a village so s
parsely populated it only counted as one because it has a sign. Dalwhinnie. He took the slip road. Almost immediately there was a long, low series of interconnected buildings.

  DALWHINNIE CAFÉ AND VISITORS CENTRE

  PIES, SAUSAGES, SOUVENIRS

  Nick signalled and pulled into the car park. He drove to the far end, taking as long as felt politely possible to find a parking spot in the near-deserted car park. He knew what was coming next.

  Tony got out and strode to the back of the car.

  “Dad! Dad, just listen—” began Nick, but there was no stopping Tony.

  He opened the boot and looked inside. Nick joined his father: Oz looked even more horrific than before. The enclosed atmosphere of the boot obviously wasn’t great for keeping a body fresh. A strong smell rose up, rotten and sweet at the same time. It almost overpowered the smell coming off Nick’s own body.

  “Hell,” said Tony softly.

  Oz’s ravaged face was dry and crusted over in places, like a day-old kebab. Did something just wriggle in one of the facial cavities? Nick looked away quickly, afraid of the answer. The body seeped a bloody, liquid mess which pooled on the carpet. The gorgeous green interior of Nick’s car would never, ever be the same again. Pickles continued to make appreciative chewing noises from the back seat.

  Tony shook his head, his hand still on the lid of the open boot. He opened his mouth to speak, closed it, coughed and tried again.

  “Well, looks like you could be in some trouble, son.”

  It was so gently said, and such a fucking understatement, Nick nearly laughed. “Yes, dad.”

  “I can’t say I’m happy you kept it from me.”

  “No, dad.”

  Tony reached out a hand to the body, thought better of it and withdrew his arm. He slowly closed the boot. He rotated deliberately to face Nick as though he was having some trouble getting the instructions from his brain to his legs.

  “What’s the story, Nick?”

  Nick exhaled loudly. “Right. You’re going to find this funny when I tell you.” He glanced at Tony’s face. “Or maybe you won’t. No, probably not. It began with the Talisker.”

  “Did it?”

  “It got delivered to this guy and I couldn’t get him to come to the door.” Nick glanced at the closed boot lid. “I suppose it’s understandable really, given his condition.”

  “The man was like this when you went to get the parcel?”

  “I’m not a killer, dad.”

  “But you … what? Stole his body?”

  “I couldn’t get the parcel. It was driving me mad, so I ended up breaking in to his house.”

  Tony gave him a scathing look. “Really?”

  “I told you, it was important.” Nick thought about the conversation they’d just had. “I thought it was important.” Nick heard the whine creeping into his voice. He cleared his throat. “It was a bad idea, I can see that now, but while I was in there, I found the body and sort of fell over. I got blood and, um, stuff all over me, and I left a lot of, um, footprints. I couldn’t have made it look any more incriminating if I’d tried, so I decided to try and get rid of the evidence.”

  “How did he die?” said Tony.

  Nick swallowed as he visualised the scene back at the house. “I can’t imagine what went on, but I found him on one of those folding workbench things like you’ve got. There were a whole bunch of tools clamped on it, facing upwards, and he was slumped over them. He either flung himself on, or someone else did.”

  “Tools? What sort of tools? Like chisels and screwdrivers?”

  “No, electric things, most of them. A couple of drills. A saw. What sort of thing looks like a cookie cutter on a spinning thing?”

  “A circle hole cutter,” said Tony promptly. “It’s a type of drill.”

  “I knew you’d know. That’s the thing which made his face look like that. There was one of those small whizzy tools as well, like the one you used to use for polishing the brasses.”

  “A Dremel?”

  “Yes.”

  Tony tutted. “What a terrible way to treat a fine tool.”

  “Not what I was thinking at the time, dad.”

  “So what exactly were you planning to do with this?” He gestured at the body.

  Nick shrugged. “Scotland, somewhere remote. Maybe the well at the cottage?”

  Tony thought about it. Not for very long. “No, absolutely not. This has to end before you make it any worse. You need to come clean.”

  “Woah. Hold your horses, dad.”

  “Horses be damned! It’s the only way. I don’t know what kind of madness got into you, but it needs to stop.”

  “I would like it to stop.”

  “We’ll turn the car around, go home and go to the police. I don’t want to hear any more nonsense about getting rid of the body. You are not James Bond, you are just an idiot who’s got himself into a mess.”

  “But I’ll go to prison!” said Nick, miserably.

  Tony’s face tightened uncomfortably. “Probably not for long.” Nick couldn’t tell if his dad was lying or not. Perhaps it didn’t matter. “Sometimes you just have to do what’s right, even if you don’t like it.”

  Pickles gave a small bark from the back seat.

  “I suppose the dog came from this house too?” asked Tony. “Of course it did.”

  Nick nodded.

  “Well I think Pickles probably needs a toilet break. There’s a little path down there, through the trees. You go inside the café and find somewhere to get cleaned up: you smell almost as bad as this poor guy. I’ll take the dog and think about how we best handle the situation.”

  Nick seized on the idea of getting cleaned up like a drowning man spotting a raft. If he could get rid of his appalling stink, and ease the painful chafing in his pants, he could deal with anything. He grabbed his bag off the back seat.

  “Car keys,” said Tony, hand out.

  Nick stared at him, uncomprehending, for several seconds. “I’m not going to drive off and leave you,” he said eventually. “I’m not an idiot.”

  “Car keys,” repeated Tony.

  Nick grimaced and handed them over. “Have you got poop bags?”

  “Pardon?”

  “Poop bags. For the dog.”

  Tony reached into the car for his bag. He produced a compact folding tool with a flourish. “Travel trowel. Pickles, your toilet awaits, and we can leave the blasted Scottish countryside as we found it.”

  Nick watched Tony saunter away with the dog. He went to look for a bathroom.

  27

  Adam accelerated harder, overtaking yet another car.

  “We should be able to see them by now, they only had five minutes on us,” he said. They crested a rise, the empty road visible for a good half mile ahead.

  “There’s a village or something,” said Finn. “Slow down.”

  They approached a café and rest stop place.

  DALWHINNIE CAFÉ AND VISITORS CENTRE

  PIES, SAUSAGES, SOUVENIRS

  Adam slowed to a crawl so they could take a look at the parking area.

  “Bingo,” said Finn. “They’re here

  “Our target is still wearing his thick coat,” said Adam, steering slowly into the car park. “He must be really hot,”

  “You know, if it wasn’t for the coat, I can’t see how that is Oz,” said Finn.

  “He doesn’t look anywhere near old enough,” Adam agreed. “Hair dye?”

  “The photo we have isn’t good enough for us to tell one way or the other. How important is it we get the correct heart?” she asked.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “I mean, because that guy has almost certainly got a heart.”

  “No.”

  “We could take that one. Kill him first, ask questions later.”

  Adam turned to look at her. “I can’t tell if you’re joking. No, it has to be the correct heart.”

  “Matching blood types is it?”

  “Something lik
e that. I need to see if I can confirm his identity.”

  Oz headed into the building. The older guy with the dog headed off towards the tree line at the rear of the café.

  “We need to ID him,” said Adam.

  Finn pulled the leather-sheathed blade from inside her coat.

  “No,” said Adam. “He’s probably going to the toilets.”

  “Nice and quiet.”

  “I don’t want you going into the gents and causing a scene. I’ll follow him and have a chat. Why don’t you disable the car or something? Like MacGyver.”

  “Who’s MacGyver?” asked Finn, opening her door.

  28

  The place was essentially a motorway service station, without the motorway or much in the way of service. Nick liked motorway services. Ever since childhood, service stations held a magical charm over him. They spoke of long journeys and therefore of holidays. They were a touch of the exotic: a little town centre which had broken away and decided to go off and live by themselves in the countryside, without all those bothersome houses and other stuff which made up the rest of the town. Even now, as an adult, Nick was drawn to the service station’s allure: a tiny newsagent, a tiny games arcade, and the prospect of a tiny, offensively over-priced cooked breakfast.

  The place was like a proto-service station: what service stations must have been like before they metaphorically crawled out of the sea and evolved decent lungs. All the essential pieces were there. There was a shop which was very keen on selling the passing traveller its local sausages and pies, as well as the obligatory piles of travel paraphernalia: the folding chairs, ponchos, insulated mugs and neck cushions which seemed to incubate in service stations from Lands End to John O’Groats. There was a tired and uninviting café which probably offered a side dish of salmonella and misery with every main meal. And there were the toilets.

  “Thank God,” he breathed. He felt caked in filth from knees to waist, and never had he been so desperate to get out of a dead man’s coat (although he had no other experiences with which to compare this one).

  He went inside the gents and pushed open a cubicle. The floor was awash with a slurry of piss and mud. He wasn’t prepared to put his bag down on that, and the toilet cistern was too slender to balance it on. He checked the other cubicles, but the piss and crud theme had been extended to all of them. He went outside to see if there might be a disabled toilet, or by some miracle, a shower. He hesitated at the door of the women’s toilet, deciding he’d attracted enough anger for one day. He backtracked into the gents: the floor by the washbasins was probably clean enough.