Chapter Forty-Two Zig
Christ. Zig had forgotten how much bigger than him Dad was. How much meaner, and the way he made Zig feel like a fag-end only fit to be stamped out on the street. It’d seemed so easy to dismiss him when he was sitting in the Chalice Well gardens. So easy to imagine telling him to piss off.
Zig’s guts twisted. “I’m working,” he said, his voice coming out a lot less firm and confident than he’d wanted it to.
“You can take a break to catch up with your old man. That’s all right, ain’t it, love?” Dad smiled at Ange, who with some kind of sixth sense for trouble had appeared at Zig’s shoulder. “You won’t mind giving my boy five minutes with his dad who ain’t seen him for years.”
Ange looked sharply at Zig. “Is that what you want?”
Zig was tempted to say No, Christ, bar the bastard, but it wasn’t like Dad would simply disappear. Best to get it over with now. “Five minutes?” he asked hoarsely.
She nodded. Then she sent Dad an insincere smile. “We’re a bit busy tonight, so I can’t spare him any longer, my lover.”
He looked smug. “I’ll find us a table.”
No doubt by evicting its present occupants with menaces. Zig couldn’t stand the thought of that, and he didn’t want anyone overhearing whatever Dad had to say to him, either. “No. Outside.”
With a depressing irony, Zig found himself in the same alleyway he’d stood in a week earlier, telling Si he loved him. It was dark, with a bitter wind blowing, and Zig shivered in his polo shirt. Dad, in his thick wool coat, loomed larger than ever in the silhouette cast by the streetlight.
Christ, had it been a mistake coming out here, where there was no one around to see what Dad might do?
“What do you want?” he asked brusquely, trying to keep the fear out of his voice.
“Is that any way to greet your old man, when he’s travelled all this way to see you?”
“I didn’t ask you to come.”
“Maybe I wanted to see my only flesh and blood. Wasn’t easy tracking you down, you know.
Almost like you wanted to hide, imagine that?
It was Trent what first got on your trail.
Remember him? He remembers you, all right.
He had a word with that young lady you used to work with—management said you and her was in tight.
” Dad laughed nastily. “And we both know it wasn’t like you’d be trying to shag her.
Not unless she had a dick hiding under them short skirts.
She told him you said you were going down Peckham for a family emergency. ”
His tone was full of derision. “And Trent thought, ‘Peckham, why’s that familiar?’ And then he remembered.
All them evenings down the Dog and Duck with the brickies, back before that job that went tits up and landed us all in jail.
So, he heads over there, and what do you know?
They had plenty to say about you turning up like a fucking bad penny.
Asking about the boss’s nipper’s mate—one of your little boyfriends, back in the day, wasn’t he?
They told Trent he’d moved back to hippie central here.
” Dad folded his arms, looking smug. “After that, it didn’t take long to find you.
You’ve done a piss-poor job of hiding, but then, why should I expect any different? ”
Zig felt colder than he had on the tor. “Why, though? Why come all this way after me? Last time we spoke, you told me I was a bloody waste of sperm.”
Dad’s face turned hard. “Because you owe me, boy.”
“I don’t owe you nothing.” Ice, there was fucking ice clogging up his veins, making it hard to think. Stay strong. Tell him to eff off and do his worst.
“That’s what you think, is it? I gave you life, you ungrateful little bastard. I gave you life, and I fed you and housed you after your cunt of a mother fucked off and left us, so don’t you fucking tell me you don’t owe me.”
Even as Zig reeled mentally with the blows, the ice melted, a little. He doesn’t know. Thank fuck, he doesn’t know what I did on that last job. “I never asked you to do any of that.”
“No?” Dad’s tone was steel. “And I never asked you to set off the alarm, grass us up to the pigs, and land us all in jail. But here we are.”
The ice stabbed him right in the heart, and bile rose in Zig’s throat. He wanted to swallow, but his mouth was too dry. “Who told you that?” His voice shook.
Triumph flashed in Dad’s eyes. “I knew it. I fucking knew it. Trent swore blind he laid that guard out before he had a chance to reach for his alarm. And unlike some ungrateful pricks, he don’t lie to me.
” Dad’s colour rose, but his voice was as quiet as ever.
It was somehow worse than if he’d shouted.
“Think I’m stupid? Did you think I’d never work it out?
You ought to thank your lucky stars Trent ain’t put it all together.
You’d finally have two matching eyes if I let him loose on you, and that’d be the least of your troubles. ”
“What do you want?” Zig rasped. What’ll stop you telling Trent?
“You’re going to do a little job for me. And this time, me and Trent won’t be coming along, so the only person you can shit on is yourself, you got that?”
“What, and then you’ll leave me alone?” Like hell he would.
“All I want is you to pay me back for those years inside. So you do this job, and you make it good, and then we’re quits, right?” Dad smiled, showing his gold tooth.
There was a lead weight in Zig’s stomach.
They’d never be quits, not in Dad’s eyes.
Not unless this little job was doing over the Tower of London and making away with the Crown Jewels.
No, not even then, cos this wasn’t about the money, was it?
This was about showing Zig who was boss. Making him do what he was told.
Stay. Fucking. Strong.
“No,” he said, but it came out almost inaudible, so he said it again. “No. I’m not doing it. I’m through with all that.” A cautious flicker of warmth spread through him. He’d done it. He’d stood up to Dad.
“You’re through with it when I say you are.
” Dad’s voice went softer, snuffing out that warmth like a bucket of ice water.
“Or do you want me to give Trent your new address? Tip him off about you sounding that alarm? Admitting it to my face? Reckon he’d be very happy to see you again.
” He paused. “’Spect he’d like to meet that bloke of yours too.
Rides a Harley, don’t he? I saw one parked out back of that shop you live over, and I don’t think it’s that witch bint who rides it.
Terrible dangerous things, those are. So many accidents.
I knew a boy came off a motorbike. Skidded on some oil.
He spent a year in hospital getting his face pinned back together. Never the same again, poor lad.”
The ice was back big-time, and the nausea too. He’ll hurt Si . . .
Zig couldn’t let anything happen to Si. Not Si, with his warm smile and the utter fucking goodness of him. “You wouldn’t.”
“Wouldn’t I?” Dad snarled in Zig’s face. “You just try me. Now, are you going to be a good little boy, or is the boyfriend going to be trading his Harley for a wheelchair?”
Oh God . . . “One job,” Zig found himself saying, though it didn’t sound like him at all. “One job, and we’re through, yeah?”
“That’s it.” Dad nodded, like he was satisfied. “Give me your phone.”
Numbly, Zig pulled his phone out of his pocket, realising as he did so that he hadn’t switched it back on since the afternoon. Dad muttered a few curses while they waited for it to boot up again, then Zig unlocked it and handed it over.
After sending a quick text—to himself, Zig assumed, so he’d have Zig’s number—he handed it back, so roughly it almost fell to the ground before Zig could grab it and shove it back into his pocket.
Dad rolled his eyes. “I’ll be in touch with the details.” Then he turned on his heel and walked away.