Eddie refilled his whisky glass and poured one for Jack. As they silently sipped their single malt, Jack felt something he’d never really felt before. He felt feared. Eddie feared him. Not strictly true, of course—Eddie feared the man he thought he saw for a moment standing at his front door, before he remembered that Harry Rawlins was dead.
“I want to talk to you about Harry Rawlins,” Jack said.
“I bet you do.” Eddie downed his whisky and poured himself another. “Let me guess—you want to know if old Harry knew your mum, 30-odd years ago.” He eyed Jack. “I’d say he did.”
Jack had expected to have to pry information out of Eddie, then beg for a DNA sample to test against. But here he was, inadvertently terrifying an old man by his very presence. Imagine, then, how Harry must have felt back in the day—strutting into a room and having every fearful eye on him. Imagine having that power over half of the gangsters in London, over Tony bloody Fisher, over any woman he set eyes on.
Jack realized he was staring at Eddie and, in response, Eddie was sweating and fidgeting. My God, he felt like he was Harry’s boy! However, the same gene pool had allegedly produced the wimp sitting in front him, so Jack wanted to be sure. He looked around the room, which looked like it hadn’t been redecorated since the eighties, and his eyes fixed on a photo of two boys in their mid to late teens. He went over and picked it up. One was blond and blue eyed, the other was dark haired with brown eyes and a heavy brow. The second boy didn’t look unlike Jack when he was a teen.
“The blond is Liam—he’s our oldest—the dark one is Jason. Strong genes, our Harry.” Eddie moved to Jack’s side and took the photo from him. “I loved Jason like my own.”
“Jason is Harry’s?”
“Liam’s a microbiologist in Edinburgh. Married, second kid on the way. The house he’s in now is the house he’ll die in, I expect.” Eddie glanced around his own lounge. “Jason, on the other hand, never sat still. Got his first motorbike at 16.”
“Where’s Jason now?” Jack asked.
“Knocked off his bike eleven years ago,” said Eddie. “Dragged a quarter mile under the wheels of a tri-axle truck. Couldn’t stop fast enough ’cos of the rainwater on the road. He died pretty much straight away. That’s what they told me anyway. Said I shouldn’t see him . . . so . . . that was that.”
Eddie put the photo back in exactly the same place, at exactly the same skewed angle. When he sat back down, Jack could now see that the photo was pointing directly at Eddie’s armchair.
“I don’t know your name,” Eddie said.
“Jack. Jack Nunn.” He had no idea why he’d said this.
“You’re Trudie’s boy! Of course you are! Poor Jimmy . . .” Eddie shook his head as he poured himself another whisky. “Why are you here, Jack? What do you need to know?”
“I want a DNA sample, so I can be sure.”
“I’m sure, lad. As soon as I saw you, I was sure. It’s the eyes.” Eddie glanced at the photo of his two sons again. “My Jackie left me for a biker called Harvey Rintle. He bought Jason the bike that killed him. I’ll never forgive that man till the day I die, but Harry . . . I forgive Harry. Harry gave my boy something I never could. He gave Jason ‘spark.’ People can see strength and that gets you respect. I love Liam to bits, but he’s not excited about life. He’ll always be loved, but he’ll never be . . .” Eddie brought his hands to his stomach and made a welling motion like a volcano coming from the pit of his belly. “No, I don’t need a DNA match to tell me who you belong to, Jack.”
The next two hours were spent drinking Eddie’s single malt. Jack put Eddie at ease by mentioning people like Ken Moore, Jimmy Nunn’s old racing buddy, and Tony and Arnie Fisher. He made out that he knew snippets about Harry’s criminal past and how that didn’t bother him at all. He never mentioned once that he was a police officer.
“After the underpass raid Harry hid out here with me for a time.” Eddie was now drunk and so relaxed that he forgot to edit himself. He was out to impress, bigging up his role. “I know he always looked down on me, but when the shit hits the fan, family’s family. It was awful watching Dolly go through what she did. The police showed her Harry’s watch, ’cos there was no body to identify. The driver was Jimmy, not Harry. Harry was here with me, drinking single malt like this.” Eddie took another sip. “I’ll give you a DNA sample if you think you need one,” he said. “But your eyes, Jack—dark, like stones. They’re Jason’s eyes, Harry’s eyes.”
Jack looked over again at the smiling picture of Liam and Jason. Did Jason miss out by not having Harry in his life? Or was he happier with his adopted dad, just like Jack had been with Charlie?
“Did Harry know Jason was his?” Jack asked.
A smile came over Eddie’s face. “The only thing I ever had in my life, that Harry didn’t, was a son to be proud of. So, no, I didn’t tell him. Jason came along just after Dolly’s first miscarriage. Harry got a man with a van to come round here with everything from their nursery. Gave it all to me. He just needed it out of his house. No baby, no memories, move on—that was Harry. It tore Dolly apart to see it all go, but she put his pain above hers and let him do what he needed to. By their third miscarriage, he was numb to it all, but Dolly . . . Her pain was just as deep and just as cruel. That’s why, when they both said ‘no more,’ she left that nursery like a shrine to all the little ones they could have had. So, there he was, on my doorstep, supervising a couple of grands’ worth of baby stuff being unloaded and brought in here for mine—oblivious to the fact that he was actually providing a new nursery for his own.” There was that smile again. “Can you imagine what he’d have done to me if he’d known? He’d have torn my heart out with his bare hands. See, Harry could father kids—as we know—but what he never had was a boy to teach about life. A legacy.”
Jack stared at Eddie, not really knowing how to respond to any of what he was hearing. What Eddie had done sounded so cruel, and yet, he seemed so proud of it.
“You sound as if you hated Harry.”
“No, no, no. I loved him. But he was a selfish man. Harry would have ruined Jason, like he would have ruined you. Let me put you straight. Harry Rawlins fucked my wife, Jack. Fucked her with no regard for me. When he was on the run, he went to my Jackie for help—clean clothes, money and the like—so don’t judge me for taking what was his, ’cos he took what was mine first!”
The whisky was making Eddie brave, but Jack didn’t mind. He’d come here for some back story on his birth dad and he was certainly getting it.
Eddie glazed over for a while as he gazed at his dead son’s photograph. During the silence, Jack thought about Charlie. Eddie was still suffering such a great loss—was this what grief was? Was it something you never, ever got over as long as you lived?
“Jackie never actually told me that Jason was Harry’s and I never asked,” Eddie continued, wiping his eye. “Then one day—Jason would have been around five—I said he couldn’t have something, and he looked at me like he’d cut me down if he could. That’s when I knew for certain he was Harry’s. Harry was dead by then, so . . .” He stood up, as if to clear his head. “Jason was taller than you, tall like Harry. You got Trudie’s height.” Eddie cackled as he gauged with his hand how tall he thought Trudie had been. By the looks of things, she was somewhere in between his knee and his shoulder. “Course, I might be remembering her kneeling down . . .” Another cackle of laughter. “No, no, I’m joking. She was a good sort, your mum.”
As Eddie rocked and laughed at his little joke, Jack frowned, and the deep vertical line in between his eyebrows became more prominent. When Eddie looked up and saw his expression of distaste, his laughter stopped as quickly as it had started.
“S-sorry,” he stuttered. “I didn’t mean nothing by that.”
Jack just nodded. “What about the rest of Harry’s family?”
He might as well get everything out of Eddie while he was on the back foot.
“My dad and Harry’s dad were brothers. Harry’s dad was a tough businessman, buying and selling antiques in a relatively legit business, while also running with some heavy-duty villains. Harry’s dad got sent away for armed robbery around the same time as mine died from lung cancer—so Harry’s mum, Iris, made sure me and my mum had enough money to get by. Iris wasn’t to be messed with. She became the head of the family, took over the business, trained Harry to be the man he was—and me to be the man I am, I suppose. She loved him with all of her cold, hard heart.”
Eddie sat back down in his chair and gave a soft laugh.
“When Harry was just 13, Iris would make him memorize every hallmark in her little black book. When he’d got that learned, she’d have Ezra come round—he was a jeweler . . . No, not Ezra—Eli. Eli Jacobson. Dead now. Anyway, she’d have him come round with his briefcase filled with his precious metals. Harry had to value them, find the fakes, all that caper.” Eddie was relaxed again now and happy to talk about this new subject. “I remember one time, she laid out three diamonds and told Harry to pick the one worth 500, then the one worth 1,000, then the one worth ten shillings. If he got it right, she’d give him fifty quid. That was a hell of a lot of money in them days!”
“And did he get it right?” Jack asked.
Eddie just grinned. “Harry was a teenager and was walking round with wads of money in his pocket. He was very generous with it, mind you, but, at the same time, he enjoyed taunting people with it. Me, usually. He had it, I needed it. He learned that from Iris . . . He learned to not only know his own worth, but also the worth of others. After my dad died, it took Harry all of two seconds to work out that I could be bought for the price of a monthly food bill.”
As time went on, Eddie reveled vicariously in Harry’s good fortune as a young man—the E-Type Jags, the tailored suits from Shepherds, the handmade shirts, the women. Jack could see how a young boy with all of that genuine talent and charm could grow into an arrogant man who’d be feared and loved in equal measures.
“Iris had very high hopes for her boy—so when Harry turned up one evening with Dolly, Iris had a fucking fit. There was no way her son was going to marry an East End trollop!”
Eddie got up, crossed to a bureau and opened a drawer. He took out a large photo album, hugged it to his chest and, on wobbly old legs, returned to his seat.
“When Dolly found out that Harry had betrayed her by making her think he’d died in that underpass raid, she burned every photo of him she had.”
Jack leaned forward, eyes wide, eager. Was he about to see a proper photo of Harry Rawlins? He moved to the seat next to Eddie; both of them perched on the edge of their worn cushions, legs wide, elbows on knees. Eddie stared at Jack and tears welled in his red, drunken eyes. Jack knew exactly what he was thinking. He was wishing it was Jason sitting by his side—and not a stranger called Jack who just happened to have the same eyes. Jack smiled, which didn’t help at all. As Eddie began sobbing, Jack took the album from him and rested it on his own knee.
Eddie wiped his nose on his shirtsleeve and slid the album across so they could share it. The contents were as Jack expected: Eddie and Harry as boys, then teens, then adults together with their respective families. Eddie was finding it difficult to talk. He just kept tapping photos; some of them meant nothing to Jack, some meant everything. The protective cover on each page had done its job well over the passing years and the images were still in pristine condition: Eddie’s mum and dad, their old homes, Harry’s parents. There was a photo of Harry on a bicycle with drop handlebars.
“He gave me that bike. He got a new one every year . . . so, I did too.” Page after page of Jack’s history. “This is his wedding.”
Harry was wearing a Tommy Nutter suit that he’d had made for him. Beside him, Dolly looked pale-faced, wearing a neat suit and carrying a small bouquet of flowers. There was page after page of Eddie’s wife Jackie, of Liam and Jason. As the boys grew, most of the photos became about Jason; he was usually in leathers on the back of a motorbike, giving a smoldering look to the camera. Eddie closed the album.
“When I drove Dolly to Harry’s funeral, and I knew she was burying someone else’s charred, broken bones, I remember feeling the same as when I buried Jason. I looked down at both coffins and thought, ‘It’s OK, Eddie, lad. There’s no one in there that you know.’ My whole life, I’ve been thinking Jason or Harry could walk back in through that door at any moment . . . and here you are, Jack. A bit of both of ’em. Who’d believe it, eh?”
Jack got up to return the album to the bureau. By the time he’d walked the length of the room, one photo of Harry Rawlins had made its way into his pocket.
“Harry Rawlins was a man amongst men, Jack,” Eddie said as he shuffled to the front door to see Jack out. “He had the ability to make you not only trust him but want to protect him. He rarely smiled, but when he did, those dark eyes of his would light up. That made me proud to be close to him. I wish you’d known him at his best.”
Back in the street, Jack’s heart was beating out of his chest. Why? Why was he excited his father was a man who walked all over people? Why was he excited he was a man who didn’t seem capable of loving anyone for long? Jack was not callous and cruel. Jack was not in this world to take what he wanted and fuck the consequences. But there was something that he yearned for—a space deep in his very soul that needed to be filled. For the first time in a very long time, Jack felt like he’d stumbled on a world he belonged in. It wasn’t the lawlessness, it was the excitement. Jason had lived a short, vibrant life with no regrets, whereas Liam would live a long, predictable life. Which was best?
Jack looked at his mobile. Shit! There was a voicemail from Laura. He’d been so engrossed in his conversation with Eddie, he hadn’t even felt it vibrate. Barry Cooper was about to be taken down in a synchronized raid from two Armed Response Units and Ridley’s team were all heading there to make the arrest. All except Jack.