He shrugged. ‘They can’t kill me.’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t know.’
We drove for a little while without speaking, both of us thinking about the night Alex had escaped. My mind was racing, trying to put things together. Something didn’t add up.
‘Did they say anything else to you?’
‘No. I just ran. I didn’t look back. I hitched a lift to the first station I could find, and then got on the train down to London. I hid in the toilets all the way. I sat there, too scared to go out in case they’d tricked me. I couldn’t tell people what they’d done, in case they followed through on their promise to kill me. That’s why I had to get you to go to that place. I had to get someone to stop it. Every day since I left, I’ve been cowering in the shadows with my back to the wall, terrified they would find me. I was sick of feeling frightened.’
I looked at him. ‘It’s strange…’
‘What?’
‘You never seemed frightened today.’
He nodded. ‘I suppose a part of me expected to die. They told me never to come back, but that’s what I did. When you think you might not live to see another day, it gives you some focus. And I just needed to make sure you got out.’
‘What about Al?’
He looked at me. ‘You know about him?’
I nodded.
‘I’ve had a lot of time to think about what I did,’ he said. ‘I spent a lot of months being scared about dying. And then I spent the last few weeks wondering what they would do to me if I came back here. After what I did to Al, maybe I would have deserved to die today. But I couldn’t die before I did something about the farm. I know what happened today doesn’t make up for what I’ve done… but it’s the only thing I could do.’
‘So, why did you kill him?’
‘I did it for Dad,’ he said. ‘Dad and Al, they went way back. Dad used to work for a bank in the City, then Al offered him a job doing the books at his stores. We got a new TV, a new kitchen, went on a nice holiday to the south of France. But then it started to go wrong. Everything Mum and I thought we owned, Dad knew differently. Because Al really owned it all. He’d loaned Dad money for just about everything, told us we never had to pay it back because we were like family to him. Then one night he flipped. Dad came home and told me Al wanted to take back what was his. Everything we’d ever got from him, he wanted repaid. There was no way we could do it. If we gave him back all that was his, we would have had nothing.’
‘Why did he suddenly turn like that?’
‘I don’t know, but it just got worse and worse. Dad invited Al round to the house when Mum was out, to try and talk him round. They went down into the basement, and Al absolutely lost his head. He punched Dad. When Mum asked, we told her he’d had a fall while we were out at the lake, fishing. Dad couldn’t bring himself to tell Mum, couldn’t bring himself to tell her everything he had bought for her, the life he had created for her, was about to fall apart. That our home and everything in it would be gone.’
Alex looked out of the window.
‘This went on for a few months — and then Dad came up with an idea. We’d pay Al back with his own money. Dad could fiddle Al’s books quite easily. Al had three stores, each making a lot of cash. That was when we first got talking about the five hundred grand.’
‘Five hundred grand?’
‘The money we would take from him. After that, we realized the only person who could stop us was Al himself. Because eventually he would find out. If we stopped Al, we got to keep the money.’
‘Your dad helped come up with the plan to kill him?’
‘We just got swept along by it, corrupted by the idea…’ He seemed to fade a little then. ‘In the end, I did it. But, that night, I never set out to. The closer we got to the idea, the less certain I became, until eventually I said to Dad it might be better for me to go and talk to Al. Dad didn’t want that. By then, he was very sure of the path we needed to take, but the thought of… the thought of what we were going to do to Al, it scared me shitless.’
We passed under a set of signs. Eighty miles to London.
‘So, I went to meet him at that strip club in Harrow. He was drunk by the time I got there, sitting next to the stage, letting these strippers rub their tits in his face. He wasn’t in a fit state to talk. He wasn’t in a fit state to do anything. Every time I tried to reason with him, he turned his back on me and told me I didn’t know what I was talking about. I tried to give him a chance, tried to let him give me a chance, but in the end I lost it with him. I told him to stay the hell away from my family. I told him if he ever came near us again, I would kill him.’
He stopped. We both knew what came next.
‘I told him I would kill him,’ Alex said gently, ‘and that’s what I ended up doing. Mum had the car that night. She was out with friends. I guess I could have got the train, but I just wanted to get in and get out again. I didn’t want to spend time with Al, I just wanted to do what was necessary. So I hired a car at a place close to Mum and Dad’s. It was a Hertz but the manager there was this old guy. I showed him my ID, but lied on the form, so nothing could be traced back to me. The guy looked at the form after I was done, but didn’t even twig the name and address were different. I guess, deep down, I knew there would be trouble that night.’
He paused for a moment.
‘Anyway, I came out of the bar and headed back to the car and he came after me. He was so drunk he couldn’t stand up, let alone walk in a straight line. But he charged over to me and started pointing at me. Telling me what a piece of shit my dad was. There were a couple of people standing outside the bar. As soon as they went in, I hit him. He was so drunk he didn’t see it coming. When he was on the floor… I broke his nose with the heel of my shoe.’
The lights from the motorway flashed in his eyes. He was caught somewhere, silent for a moment. Then he turned back to me.
‘When he finally got up, he was a mess, could hardly speak properly. But he looked straight at me and said, “You just made a big fucking mistake, Alex. I was trying to help you. I was trying to help your mum. You came down here for your dad, right? Your fantastic dad. Well, why don’t you go and ask him about his dirty little secret in Wembley?”’
‘What did he mean by that?’
Something glistened in his eyes.
‘I got in the car and tried to calm myself. Then he started again. He was spitting blood all over the bonnet, telling me to go fuck myself, telling me he’d make a special journey to watch Dad being kicked out on to the streets. And then, before he went to walk away, he looked at me and said, “Go and ask your dad about your brother.”’
‘Your brother?’
He nodded. There were tears on his face now.
‘I put my foot to the floor, and went straight through him. He hit the middle of the car, just flew off to the side. And I left him there. When I looked in the mirror, he was lying in a puddle. And he was still. Absolutely still.’
47
‘Where did you go?’ I asked. It was dark, almost nine o’clock, and we were ten miles from my house, stuck in traffic on the edge of London.
‘France,’ he replied. ‘After I left home, I took my bank card, withdrew the maximum amount of money they would let me take in one day, and headed down to Dover. I dumped the car in long-term parking, then found a trawler willing to take me across the Channel. I didn’t have my passport, so I paid them whatever it took. Just to keep them quiet.’
‘What did you do in France?’
‘Worked some crappy jobs, cleaning toilets, waiting tables at cafés. I just tried to keep my head down. I didn’t spend more than three months in each job, just in case the police were on to me.’