There are times in a ex con's life when he realises that no matter what he does, his goose is very likely to be cooked. I was looking through my binoculars at one of those times. And the inevitability of being on the receiving end of huge helpings of pain ran through my head.
I should explain at this point that I am Anthony Monks, one time gangster, the gay eldest son of one Dave Monks, villain of this parish, all round thug and he was a pretty unpleasant individual too. I had gone to prison, and come out the other side with my dignity, and an outrageous plan, intact. I had put that plan into action, I had crossed the divide, become a private investigator, the poacher had turned gamekeeper for the love of the police officer that arrested me. Detective Sergeant Stuart Turner.
At first this scenario seemed about as likely as the second coming of Elvis, but something had definitely passed between us during our encounters on opposite sides of the law. Then the chance meeting. It was like something out of Casablanca, except there was no piano. The best part of nearly ten days spent peering at each other through binoculars, until one filthy wet night I opened my front door, to find an angry, confused, drowned rat on my doorstep. True he could have been there just to arrest me for something, but I had the vaguest inkling that that wasn't what he wanted.
So Stuart stepped over my threshold, we fell into each others arms and leaving a scattered trail of clothing, and something of a flood in the hallway we fell into bed. The rest, as they say, is history. By the time I was looking through my binoculars at hell on earth, Stu and I had been living together for nearly a year. We were happy and settled, and I wasn't about to lose that.
What was the cause of this sudden outbreak of nervousness? Well, the man I was looking at, who wasn't supposed to be there at all, that man was my father, Dave Monks. I cursed the imperfect system that had failed to warn us, because it wasn't just my neck at risk here. There was Max, the clever copper who had forced his hand, little Beth, the barmaid, only she wasn't a barmaid, she was a young copper who kept her head even after my charming parent had tried to slap it off her shoulders, my own beloved Stu, who had nicked me, and turned that one moment into the defining love affair of my life, I would have done anything for Stu, and not forgetting DCI Jack Meadows who orchestrated the entire thing. I owed him a very big one.
I knew my father. He was a sadistic bully, who thrived on pain, and dishing it out. He was going to try to get revenge, and that revenge was going to hurt, at the very least, knowing what I knew about him, there was a fair chance that that revenge would be fatal. I fished in my pocket, pulled out my mobile and hit speed dial. The only number programmed into my phone for speed.
"Hi lover, what's up?" He sounded cheery, which usually means he's having a good day, nicking the unrighteous. Which is pretty much Stu's favourite thing. He loves the interviews most of all. The opportunity to get the rodent to relax, get settled, be a bit expansive, get a tiny whiff of the cheese, reach for it and then BAM! All that always put Stu in a very good mood. I was about to rain on his parade.
"What's up luv, is that I am looking at one Dave Monks."
"You're kidding." he suddenly sounded rather serious.
"Large as life, and twice as evil."
"Shit." Stu wasn't big on swearing. So if he swore, you knew it wasn't good. "Ant, get out of there before he sees you, come by here, we need to talk to the guv."
"You had better round up the others."
He sounded very solemn and worried. "Ant, please be careful." He didn't have to tell me that, I wasn't planning on being anything else. The longer I could avoid any form of confrontation with my father, the better as far as I was concerned.
I cautiously withdrew, and cursed under my breath. One simple insurance fraud investigation had just turned into a nightmare. A nightmare which didn't just threaten me and my life, but the lives of the man I loved and several people that he worked with. My father wasn't going to care who he harmed in his seeking revenge. How did I know he would seek revenge? I'm his son, I know what he's done. I know what he's capable of. And he always took great pleasure in meting out suffering amongst any folk foolish enough to try and cross him. It was his method. I very much doubted that anything had changed that.
Trying to explain all this to Superintendent John Heaton was something of a disaster. Everyone was more than a little confused. Heaton stared at Stu, Stu stared rather defiantly back at Heaton. Max and Beth huddled together. Jack Meadows looked worried. And still Heaton didn't seem to get it. Then Stu snapped. He did have quite a short fuse, and worry over what my father might try and do to me lit it.
"With all due respect, Sir," he didn't sound remotely respectful and everyone knew it, "Ant and I live together" (and I was mildly surprised that he was openly confessing to being in a gay relationship in front of his colleagues) "Dave Monks finds Ant, he'll find me, and he may be an aggressive bastard but he isn't thick, he's going to put two and two together and the trail is going to lead right back here."
Heaton looked thoughtful, and not exactly convinced. I wondered why. Surely he knew the threat his officers were now under.
It was the end of the shift, Stu and I headed out together. He was stressed and frustrated. Heaton's lack of belief had really pushed his buttons. Max called out something about the pub, and Stu turned around.
"Max, what the hell just happened in there?"
Max shrugged. "Sounded a bit like us being hung out to dry to me." His expression was inscrutable at best, and that didn't mollify my irritated lover in the slightest. Stu was about to blow, I could tell.
"You two." An amused voice came from behind us, and I inwardly sighed with relief. Jo had a way of fixing problems which came in very handy. She went on, "Lara says that you two should come back with me." I didn't know whether to be relieved or frankly scared witless. Dr Lara Kennedy is DC Jo Masters' significant other. And trust me when I say she is very significant. I'm six foot. She tops me by two inches. Nothing makes her flinch. She has stood in the gravesites of thousands of victims of genocide, surrounded by the people who probably committed the crime, a thousand miles from so called civilisation and faced down cold eyed killers. Fearlessly.
I always considered myself quite tough. You couldn't have the upbringing I had, and led the life I used to lead without being tough, then I met Stu, and discovered there were different degrees of toughness. But Lara tops all of us. If ever there was one person I would seriously recommend my violent father didn't tangle with, it would be Lara Kennedy. Because she cares.
Does that sound strange? She cares. She cares so much that she will keep going for justice long after everyone else is exhausted and has given up. It's not about vengeance, as she explained to me one night when we were all pleasantly stuffed and reasonably drunk sat around in her battered conservatory come sitting room which also doubles as something of an office and an overspill laboratory, it's all about doing right by those who have been cruelly wronged.
Stu and I were occupying her battered leather sofa. Stu was worn out, and a bit more drunk than I was, the bottle of rum that was doing the rounds he had taken a couple of very hefty belts out of, he'd cracked his case, but it had come at a price and he was feeling a bit stressed by it all, so being well fed and quite drunk, he'd kind of keeled over sleepily into my arms. Jo had been partnered with him on that one, so she was fairly drunk and out of it too, curled up in one of the huge armchairs, her head resting in Lara's lap. One by one, Lara's housemates had drifted off to bed, leaving us, the bottle and our sleeping partners to it.
The bottle passed back and forth between us. I am not an educated man. I've done a lot of reading, prison does have that effect, but my education is considerably less than Stu's. Both he and Jo have degrees. But even they pale into not much next to Lara. She has a First in her Bachelor degree, two Masters, and a PhD. Sometimes she uses big words which are probably completely normal, even commonplace, in her world, but in mine, a complete mystery. But I had no difficulty understanding her that night. We talked for hours. I eased myself into a different position and cuddled my sleeping partner, as we talked about things. I found myself talking about things that I never expected to be able to share with another human being, including my feelings for Stu. She told me about digging up the dead in some hideous war-torn hell hole somewhere in central Africa, and her feelings for Jo. By the time the bottle came to an end, we were in tune with each other, and completely incapable of crawling away to bed.
An invite to Lara's inevitably contains a bottle of rum somewhere. The daughter of a Canadian merchant seaman, she has a capacity for the stuff which is quite startling. Well, I needed a drink badly. I looked across at Stu, caught the relief in his eyes, as he agreed with Jo.
We left Stu's car, and headed out to Lara's enormous and ramshackle house. It was at the end of a long road, of mostly gracious residences. You could generally spot the Kennedy house without the slightest difficulty, it was scruffy, it stood out like a sore thumb. Four battered Land Rovers stood in the drive. All four were usually filthy. And left in the drive in full view of the neighbourhood snobs.
Lara shared this monstrosity with Jo, and three of Lara's colleagues, into this monsterous regiment of women, Stu and I were the token blokes. We wedged the car in a gap between the filthy trucks, and climbed over the side gate. Lara wasn't into the house proud thing at all. Repairs were in order of structural priority, so the fact that the side gate had been rusted shut for nearly three years didn't matter much to her. It had taken them four months to have the front door fixed after someone broke a front door key off in the lock. Noted throughout the neighbourhood for being scruffy and full of mismatched furniture, burglars left the place severely alone, it looked in need of help.
Stu was in a funny mood all evening. He was friendly and open, as he always was with people he knew well, but there was an underlying tension, he just couldn't relax. By the time we crawled away to bed, I was more worried about my lover than what my father might get up to.
We undressed and slid into bed, he turned to me, and put his arms around me. I could feel the tension in him. I didn't feel much like talking either. So I slid up close to him and we just held each other. It seemed the only thing to do under the circumstances.
Rationally, we both knew there would come a day when my old man came back to haunt us. Neither of us thought that it would be that soon though.