Human Conditioning (52 page)

Kamal took a seat in front of
the desk and in a calmer, quieter voice, he said, “Look, I’m sorry it has to
come to this, Grant. I know Aiden means a lot to you...”

Grant continued to stare out
of the window. It took him a long thoughtful moment to respond, and when he
did, his manner was uncharacteristically disconsolate. “He was the boy I never
had... and he was a good lad. He was just misguided... like us all.” Kamal
didn’t respond. Grant took a deep breath and exhaled loudly. “I know what I
have to do, but it’s gonna break my heart doing it.”

“Do you want me to deal with
this? You won’t have to know a thing...”

“No.” Grant turned back to the
desk and stubbed out his cigar in his crystal ashtray. “I at least owe him the
respect of sorting this myself. And I want it done as quickly as possible. I
don’t want him to suffer. There’s been enough suffering...”

************

All the way home the Mercedes transporting Bernard and
his sidekick didn’t leave Lily’s rear view mirror. It stopped on the road as
she pulled onto her driveway. The men remained in the car until Amy had run
into the house. She was over her distress at the graveyard, oblivious to their
presence, and more interested in watching television. Lily knew she would have
to wait to enter her home until the men had caught up with her. As they came
crunching over the drive, she went in, switched on the television and closed
Amy into the living room.

She reluctantly ushered both
men in and led them to the other door into the kitchen, closing herself and
them in. Bernard spoke first, repeating his assertion out in the graveyard, “He
won’t give up, Lily.”

“I’m well aware of that,” she
replied sharply.

She went to the fridge and
poured herself a large wine. She offered the bottle but both men shook their
heads. Lily sat down at the breakfast bar, took a gulp of wine, set it down
then looked up at Bernard. She didn’t want to speak to the other one. He was
too military for her liking. “Right, how are we going to resolve this?”

“There’s only one option,”
Bernard confirmed nervously.

Lily replied agitatedly, “And
how about I shoot you both right here, right now?” The ‘other one’ reached for
the back of his trousers, where he obviously had a concealed weapon. Lily burst
into laughter. “He sent you fucking armed, knowing his daughter would be with
me... how typically responsible of him!” She whipped up her glass and took
another large gulp. “Do you know? I really don’t know why I’m fighting this. I
mean, Aiden is
clearly
one of the most loyal and trustworthy husbands
any woman could want! How can I refuse him?” She scoffed and downed the rest of
her drink in one.

Bernard’s lips twitched into a
discreet smile, but the ‘other one’ remained straight-lipped and sergeant-like.
“Just sign the damn papers, Mrs Foster...” he said, impatient now, sick of
Bernard’s poncing about.

Lily pointed a stiff,
manicured finger at him. “If you call me Mrs Foster just
one
more
time...!” The ‘sergeant’ didn’t bat an eyelid, but Bernard blinked hard,
obviously affected by her rage. “I want to speak to Aiden... get him on the
phone... now! The phone’s over there,” she instructed Bernard, out of the
blue. 

He hesitated then hastily stepped over to the phone. He
lifted the receiver and dialled a number that Lily did not know. She hadn’t
once spoken to Aiden via phone or face to face, either at Parkhurst, Wakefield
or Maidstone, and the thought of hearing his voice again after all these years
made her sick to the stomach.

As Bernard spoke quietly into
the phone, Lily went to the fridge to pour herself another large wine. A few
minutes later, Bernard was holding the phone receiver out to her. She took a
sip of her drink and gulped hard. As she walked to the phone, her legs turned
to the consistency of jelly and the effect of the wine made her face flush
crimson. She took the receiver.

“Hello?”

When Lily heard Aiden’s deep,
gruff voice, she felt all her blood drain from her body. Her throat
constricted, and her mouth ran dry. All the feelings she had suppressed over
the past ten years came flooding back to her all at once: all the nights she
had cried herself to sleep after his arrest, all the times she had been on the
verge of visiting him, just to see his face, and the pain and hollowness of her
life without him.

When Aiden had been all over
the news, she had switched off the television. She didn’t buy a newspaper for
over four years following his arrest, and whilst the subsequent investigations
into his whole criminal life had been carried out then publicised for all and
sundry to sink their teeth into and weave their webs of lies and gossip around,
she had locked herself away in the house they had once shared. For months Aiden
had been front-page news, and she had had to endure the Press sitting outside.

She had tried so very hard to
wipe him from her mind and, as the years went by, she had done well at doing
so, her child being the only constant reminder of his existence. Hearing his
voice now affected her more than she would have ever allowed herself to
believe, but as she had learned to do a long while ago she forced all romantic
notions of her husband to the far corners of her tired mind and reminded
herself that he was a criminal – a ruthless, vile criminal. 

“Hello, Aiden.”

“Lily...? Fuck, it’s good to
hear your voice. It’s been too long...”

“Why have you sent an armed
man to the house when your daughter is in the next room?”

There was a spell of silence,
then he replied, “You wouldn’t listen... you’ve never come to see me.”

“So he’s here to kill me? Beat
me into submission? Is that how you deal with people who don’t do as you ask?”
she scoffed. “Oh, silly me, of course it is...”

“You sound different.”

“I
am
different. You
made sure of that.”

She heard Aiden sniff and
clear his throat. “Just sign the fucking papers, Lily, and I’ll leave you
alone.”

“Really... you’ll be happy
just being married to me, without any access to me or your daughter when they
finally let you out?” There was prolonged silence. “Yeah, just as I thought...
you have no interest in setting me free, Aiden.”

“Mr Foster, you’re being
requested.”

Lily heard a distant voice
over the line. “Lily, I have to go. Stop pursuing this... if I don’t have you,
I’ve got no one,” he announced with earnest and his honesty shocked Lily into
silence.

She closed her eyes to prevent
her tears, and with one final ounce of courage, she replied, “That’s not my
problem anymore.” She tailed off and waited with bated breath for some kind of
reaction, some onslaught, but only a deadly silence came over the line. She
continued, her voice quavering and choking her, “You had everything... and you
chose to throw it all away. Now, you may as well kill me, Aiden, because I’m
not signing some dodgy fucking document that will keep me married to you, which
I can only imagine was written up by some bent fucking barrister you have at
your disposal. I will keep sending you divorce papers until the day you choose
to end my life. And when that day comes, I’ll welcome it, Aiden, because then
I’ll finally be rid of you!”

For a long, tense moment, Lily
could only hear Aiden’s quickened breath on the other end of the line. She
sensed, as acutely as if he were standing before her, that he was using all his
will to rein in his temper, and she held a breath, awaiting his assault, but
there was a click and the line went dead.                                             

************

Aiden held the phone receiver down, gripping it as if it
were his life line. Hearing his wife’s voice again was music to his ears, but
he didn’t like her talking to him that way. She
had
changed. She sounded
harder
and he didn’t like it. No more was she the sweet, happy and
innocent Lily he had once known.

He understood that he had been
the driving force of his wife’s transformation. She had never forgiven him for
the things he’d done. And a part of him didn’t blame her for that. She had
never struggled for anything in her young life. She had never understood his
determination to be someone, to be respected, to be feared. All he knew was
fear, and to make anything of yourself in his world, you
had
to be
feared, had to be
dominant
. You had to be the alpha. If you weren’t, you
were used by those stronger than you or you were cast out completely and left
to rot. 

Being locked up in a room for
twelve hours a day gave you plenty of time to reflect on your life. You were
able to analyse everything with far more clarity, without the distractions of
life outside.

Aiden had come to accept that
his father had been his ultimate nemesis. He hadn’t wanted to believe that
something as common as having a shit father could affect him the way it did. It
was no psychologist’s wet dream to hear how a father’s lack of care could
destroy his son. It was so ‘typical’ that it had been a bitter pill to swallow
for him to admit that he’d been affected like any other man.

Above all, he hadn’t ever
wanted to turn out like Duggie. His father had been a moderate success for a
large proportion of his young life, but he’d fucked it all up through pride, greed
and selfishness. Aiden had wanted more than his father had ever had. He’d
wanted to live a millionaire’s lifestyle. He’d wanted to own people and be
respected, and through his determination, driven by the resentment of his
father’s failures, he had achieved his ambition, and more.

Nevertheless, he had to admit
that, as much as he’d succeeded, he’d also allowed history to repeat itself. He
had come to realise, after years of contemplation, that he had more of his
father in him than he’d ever allowed himself to admit, and it was their mutual
quality of arrogance, greediness and selfishness that had led him to an
extended life sentence. However much he understood this now, he just couldn’t
stop himself from mirroring the man who had shaped his life. The words
human
conditioning
came back to mind as he approached the cell where Dmitry
Kovalenko resided, and he couldn’t prevent the shrewd smile that crept on his
lips.

Dmitry had been sent down for
fifteen years two years ago. He had been introduced to Aiden at the request of
Kamal, and had become one of Aiden’s channels to the outside world. Dmitry
worked predominantly for the KKKs, but he also made contact with many of
Aiden’s associates. It was a business arrangement that Aiden chose to conceal
from Kamal. To Aiden, Dmitry was merely a messenger. To Kamal, however, he was
a mole.

“What’s so amusing?” Dmitry
asked as Aiden stepped into the small cell, somewhat distracted. Dmitry was sat
in his usual chair in the corner of the cell, facing the door, reading the
football scores in the newspaper. There was a plastic chair in the aisle
between the two bunk beds on either side of the cell.

“Just having a revelation,”
Aiden replied thoughtfully. Dmitry’s eyebrows rose and he set his paper down.
“I spoke to me wife just now,” Aiden added.

Dmitry grinned. “Oh yeah? How
did that go?”

Aiden frowned and he pursed
his lips. “Not good. It’s not nice realising someone you trust and love has
given up on you.”

Dmitry stared at Aiden. It was
the first time he’d ever heard the man speak so openly, and his words generated
a sudden guilty feeling in his stomach, but he forced it out of his mind.
“Aiden, we need to talk.”

Dmitry gestured to the plastic chair facing him. Aiden
sensed Dmitry’s anxiety and was suddenly all ears. Taking a seat, he crossed
his arms across his chest and rested his right ankle over his left knee.
“What’s up?” he asked sincerely. Then he heard the slam of the cell door and
footsteps behind him, and it took a delirious moment for him to realise that he
was bleeding from the neck. He tried to gasp for breath, but he was rapidly
suffocating.

The gargling sound coming from
Aiden was loud in the small cell. Dmitry stepped back, watching him intently as
he fell to his knees in front of him, gripping his throat, fighting for breath.
Dmitry tore his eyes away and stared wide-eyed at Jimmy Hicks and Richie
O’Donoghue. Richie was wiping a bloodied knife with a cloth.

When it finally registered in Aiden’s mind that he had
been set up, he flipped onto his back and took in the two large men standing by
the door – his attackers. He wanted so much to jump to his feet and beat the
living shit out of them, but he couldn’t muster the strength to rise.

“What now?” Dmitry asked
urgently.

Richie replied, “I’ll call me
uncle, tell him the job’s done.”

These were the last words
Aiden heard before he lost consciousness and his heart beat its last.

“Mummy, Daddy’s on television.”

Lily turned from the sink,
where she was washing the crystal bowls she and Amy had used for ice cream
after dinner. Lily had promised her ice cream after the scene at the graveyard
that morning. Amy stood, all prettiness, at the kitchen door with a grin on her
face. It was all very amusing seeing her father on the television.

Presenting a weak smile, Lily wiped her delicate hands on
a tea towel, and flicking her silky blonde hair over her shoulder, she followed
her daughter into their lounge. She did not question Amy’s announcement. Aiden
had been on the news more often than she could recall, and all she wondered
was: ‘what the hell had he done this time?’ And since she had laid down the law
over the phone earlier, she feared the worst. Her rebuff would have sent him
way over the edge of his already limited temper.