[b]Lignum Vitae Ltd.
Fulham, London
10:28 PM[/b]

Red and Charlie made the drive back from the Oyster Club in silence. The scenes of jubilation along the streets made the complete stillness in the car all the more uncomfortable. There was nothing Turner could add to the Binneys’ tale. Loathe as he was to admit it, the bulk of it was true. He’d gone through hell and back in Korea, but it was the Binneys that had beaten young “Fred” Turner into the man he was today, and for that he was almost thankful, because one of these days the Binneys were going to get theirs – and Red was going to be there to see it happen.

He’d offered little more than a murmur by way of parting when Charlie had pulled up to the florists in Fulham. Bobby had trudged home to West Norwood earlier and Turner suspected Coach was by now playing the part of the West German keeper Tilkowski in his back garden for his children. All that was left to do before turning in was to check on Cecil.

Red sat nervously as the phone rang out several times. He took a glance at the clock on the wall of the backroom and let out a troubled sigh. Old Bill had likely taken the boy in for questioning. He’d done his best to prepare him for it and,  despite his many sensitivities, Turner didn’t think that Cecil was the cracking type. But he wasn’t going to bet his life on that.

Seven attempts later, Red’d had enough and set out for Cecil’s place in Acton. The lights were out. He turned the handle to the flat a few times and then, with a derisive snort, pushed aside the little rabbit statue by the entrance. Beneath it was a spare key. He flicked on the lights and headed straight for the cupboard beneath the sink, where Turner remembered Cecil kept a cheap bottle of Scotch.

After two and a half glasses, Cecil’s thin frame slunk through the front door. The seated Turner poured out a glass for the boy and lifted it in his direction.

“What time do you call this?”

“You’ve got some cheek coming here tonight,” Cecil glowered at him with fists balled tight.

The tone of Cecil’s voice caught Red off-guard. “Pardon?”

“You don’t know, do you?”

“Don’t know what?” Turner said as he set down the glass on the table in front of him and climbed to his feet. “What’s the matter, Cecil?”

Cecil’s fists unclenched as Turner reached out towards him and placed his hands on his shoulders. The boy went to speak but the words couldn’t leave his mouth. His shoulders began to shake gently and when he looked up tears were streaming down his face. Turner shushed him, perplexed, and tried to coax Cecil to speak. When he did, the words cut through Red like a scythe.

“She’s dead.”

Turner could feel his blood running cold in his veins. “What are you talking about? Who’s dead?”

“Iris,” Cecil sobbed. “The one with the moustache, he bashed her over the head with the butt of his gun just for [i]looking[/i] at him. One bash and now she’s dead. Old Bill said she had bleeding on the brain.”

Red’s hands slipped from Cecil’s shoulders. They were dead weights at his sides. His mind was racing trying to figure out his next move and how much the Old Bill had to work with. He damned Charlie’s temper under his breath, before shaking the thought free from his mind. It could have happened to anyone – and it was Red that had sent him in there, after all. It was every bit his fault as it was anyone else’s.

The feeling returned to his hands slowly and he lifted one to his face to pinch at the bridge of his nose. It was cold to the touch.

“What did you tell the police?”

Cecil’s red, swollen eyes unscrunched themselves. “You don’t even care, do you? Iris is dead and you couldn’t care less.”

Turner shot Cecil a look of pure venom. For a half-second, all of the sympathy he had carried for the boy had been replaced by resentment. Red was a criminal – he had never sought to hide that fact – but he was [i]still[/i] a human being. The Binneys and the Kanes of the world might consider human life disposable, but Turner never had. The accusation had struck a nerve with him.

“Nothing,” Cecil mumbled guiltily. “I didn’t tell them a bloody thing, alright? But I wanted to. I wanted to drop you and the bastard that did Iris in right in it. I was just too much of a coward to go through with it.”

Red let out a sigh.

“I’m sorry, Cecil,” Turner said, reaching one of his hands out and placing it against the back of the boy’s head. He brought their temples together for a moment. “I’m so very sorry.”

They sat down on the grotty couch in the corner of the room and Turner topped up the glass of Scotch he had poured for Cecil. They sat there unspeaking for a few minutes, each sipping on their glasses every few seconds, until Turner was confident that the boy was ready to hear what came next.

“I know you might not be minded to listen to me, but it’s of the utmost importance that you do. The Old Bill are going to coming after us five, ten times harder than we planned. Like it or not, this is going to be big news – front page of The Mirror big news. We’ll need to go to ground.”

Cecil didn’t offer much in the way of a response. His glassy eyes made Red doubt he’d understood quite what he meant. “We’ll [i]all[/i] need to go to ground, Cecil.”

“What?”

“Take my share of the take as well and get as far away from London as you can. You’ll have enough to start again somewhere. You can buy a house or start yourself a business. Christ, you could even go abroad. There’ll be enough to live on for a decade if you’re smart about it.”

Cecil’s teeth rested against the brim of the glass. Turner could see in the boy’s eyes that he was trying to process it all still, maybe he was picturing life on some sunny beach in Spain. Whatever thought Cecil was entertaining, it came to an abrupt end. He shook his head, clawed his teeth back from the glass and set the glass down on the table in front of him.

“I don’t know if I can, Alf.”

Turner placed a hand on the boy’s back gently and rose to his feet. “Get some sleep. God knows this whole ordeal has been stressful enough without compounding it all with tiredness. Look, if you [i]really[/i] don’t want to go away, we can try to figure out some other way out of this mess, alright? But that conversation can wait until the morning.”

He regretted making that assurance the moment it left his mouth, but he didn’t know how else to calm the Cecil’s nerves. Things were about to get noisy for Turner and his crew, but he knew they’d be able to handle that – they had disappeared countless times before. Christ, no one knew where Bobby went half of the time even when they were planning a job. Cecil wasn’t one of them, though. He wasn’t cut out for this life and Red had known that when he brought him in. It was on him to try and make this all right.

“I’ll ring you first thing tomorrow,” Turner muttered by way of goodbye as he walked towards the exit. “We’ll sort breakfast out or something. How does that sound?”

Cecil nodded weakly and lifted his feet onto the space of the sofa that Turner had created. Turner watched as the boy reached for the glass of Scotch on the table and knocked back the dregs left at the bottom. His hand reached for the bottle and placed it on his chest pathetically as he stretched out on the sofa. It was a sorry sight. 

Red gritted his teeth slightly, bid the boy a final goodbye, and shut the front door behind him. He slid the spare key under the rabbit where he’d found it earlier and set out into the darkness, his guilt echoing through the streets with every footstep.