Jim Gardner was Benjy’s best friend. When Don Empson left him, he was bleeding and weeping. Don didn’t think Jim knew anything about anything. But he’d asked him questions all the same. Who else did Benjy know? Who might he go to for help? And Jim had done a lot of talking. Don felt bad about it, felt he’d worked out a lot of his own anger on Gardner. That was hardly professional.
Don had been busy since leaving the scrapyard. He’d borrowed one of the cars. It made noises that warned him it was dying.
‘You and me both,’ he’d told it. In his case this was certainly true. Six months, the hospital had told him. Maybe a year with treatment, but his quality of life would suffer. He’d spend half his time on a trolley in the hospital corridor.
‘No thanks,’ he’d said. ‘Just give me painkillers, lots of painkillers.’
There were some in his pocket right now, but the only things that hurt were his knuckles. Jim Gardner had told him there was this graveyard, out by the old blocks of flats. Some bloke there, Benjy said he was useful. He would hide things for him.
All sorts of things.
Gardner didn’t know the man’s name, but that didn’t matter. On his way to the graveyard, Don called his friend in the police. For the price of a few drinks, his friend would put out a call to all patrol cars. They would keep their eyes open for Don’s car, the one Benjy had taken. For another few drinks, this same friend would ask all the hospitals in the area if anyone had been brought in wounded.
‘Wounded?’ the cop had asked.
‘Don’t worry,’ Don had told him. ‘It’s not anyone who didn’t deserve it.’ He didn’t want to spook the cop.
But when Don called from the car, there was no news. He reached the graveyard in twenty minutes. It was even closer to Raymond’s garage, maybe twelve or fifteen minutes. No distance at all. The gates were closed. He got out and checked them. They were held shut by a chain. Don peered through the bars but couldn’t see any signs of life.
‘Just signs of death,’ he said to himself. He had already planned his own funeral, a cremation with music by Johnny Cash.
If he lived that long. He thought of the compactor and had to shake the image away. He looked around him. There were some kids further up the hill, gathered around a couple of bikes by a lamp post. Don drove towards them and stopped the car. He got out again. Twenty pounds, a fiver for each kid, and he had some more information. The guy who worked in the graveyard was called Gravy. He was ‘not all there’. Don listened, and then described his own car. There were nods. Then he described Benjy. More nods.
‘Did you see the car leave?’ The boys couldn’t really remember, until another twenty had changed hands.
‘Never seen anything as funny in my life,’ one of them said. The others were smiling at the memory.
‘Gravy, trying to drive!’ He burst out laughing, and his friends joined in.
‘Any idea where he was going?’
They shook their heads.
‘And no sign of the other guy?’
They shook their heads again.
Don just nodded slowly and wondered if another twenty might help. Probably not. So he saved his money and got back into the dying car. Could the money be in the graveyard? Could Benjy be in the graveyard? Don turned the car around. The boys were walking away. They gave him a wave. He waved back and pressed his foot a little harder on the pedal. The car hit the gates and snapped the chain. The gates flew open. Don kept driving, aware that, somewhere behind him, the boys were cheering and clapping. He did a circuit of the graveyard, but couldn’t see anything unusual. He stopped the car and got out. There was a hut, but it was padlocked shut. It had a window with wire mesh covering it. He looked inside, but there was no sign of life. Behind a hedge, he found a digger and a wheelbarrow, but nothing else. He stood there in the darkness, scratching his head.
And that was what he was doing when the police car arrived.
It took him an hour to talk his way out of it. They took him to the police station. The desk sergeant knew who he was, and didn’t believe his story. Some kids, joyriders, smashing their way through the gates and then running off… Don Empson, concerned citizen, completely innocent, checking the scene.
‘I wanted to make sure they hadn’t damaged anything.’
‘So the car’s not yours, sir?’
‘Never seen it in my life.’
When they let him go, he breathed the cold night air and took his phone out of his pocket. Nothing else for it. He would have to bring in Sam and Eddie. They always travelled together. They’d been best pals since primary school, nutters, the pair of them. But that wasn’t really the problem. Problem was, he couldn’t let them know what he knew. He couldn’t let them know Benjy was the shooter.
Because Benjy was family. He was Don’s family, his nephew. And if Don didn’t get to him first, the lad was as good as dead. Always supposing he wasn’t dead already. Don felt a stabbing pain in his stomach. He rubbed at it, for all the good that would do. Benjy, you bloody idiot. No happy ending.
He thought back to the garage, how it had taken him a couple of seconds to recognise Benjy’s build and voice. He’d been on the point of saying something when the first shot had rung out. And afterwards, just for a moment, Benjy’s wide, scared eyes had met his. Then he’d screwed his eyes shut. Chest wound. Should Don have stopped him driving off? Should he have called out, Let me get you to a doctor? Probably. The question now was, had Benjy known it would be his uncle in charge of the cash? If so, he’d gambled either that he wouldn’t be recognised, or that Don wouldn’t grass him up.
Big gamble.
It came down to that moment of eye contact. There had been no surprise there, so Benjy had expected Don, and, furthermore, had expected to be clocked by him…
Happy to land his uncle in the mire.
‘Cuts both ways, lad,’ Don said to the night air, rubbing his stomach again.