by Wes Markin
‘No, ma’am, because you already realise he is. Nostalgia draws people back. He was drawn back to a safe place. His safe place.’
‘But is it Jack Newton’s safe place?’
‘I don’t know that, ma’am. I hope to God, it is, but I really don’t know.’
‘I’ll handle it, Mike, you go and be with your family.’
‘But what about you, ma’am? I don’t want to ruin your Christmas.’
Madden laughed. ‘Come on now, Mike, you know me better than that. As if I celebrate Christmas Day. I’ll be back in touch.’
The phone went dead. Yorke thought about himself on top of that salt pile hurling snowballs at his sister, and then thought about a lonely, little boy, hiding in a treehouse, reading a comic, evolving into something very different.
Yorke tried to look like he was focused on the game of Charades. Patricia’s narrowed eyes told him she wasn’t buying it. Every now and again he went to the toilet to steal a quick look at his mobile phone screen to see if he’d missed a call from Madden.
‘Do we need to get that prostate looked at?’ Patricia said with a raised eyebrow after the third trip.
Beatrice and the new puppy, Rosie, were taking a nap together at the side of the room. Everyone had already gone camera crazy over that scene. It would surely become an iconic image in the Yorke household for years to come. There was certainly no chance of marking his gift ‘return to sender’ now.
When Ewan mimed a slow run, using his hand to mimic his hair flapping in the wind, Lexi and Patricia hollered ‘Baywatch’ simultaneously, and everyone broke down in laughter. Yorke pretended to be amused, but it was impossible to make it convincing.
He was just too preoccupied with the life and death situation playing out without him.
In fact, the anxiety was getting to Yorke so much that he started to consider the cigarettes hidden in the kitchen. If it wasn’t for his wife’s razor-sharp stare, he’d already be out smoking next to the large snowball Beatrice had rolled earlier.
After the charades, they watched the Snowman on television, so everyone could revisit their childhood for twenty minutes. At the end of that, Ewan stood up and said, ‘We have an announcement.’
Rosie ran over to Yorke and stood up against his leg. He looked down at her.
No surprises please, Ewan, Yorke thought, not sure my heart can take any more of them today.
Ewan beckoned Lexi over. She had her hands in the pockets of her dungarees. Once Ewan had his arm around her, she pulled out her left hand to show her Christmas present glowing from the third finger of her left hand.
Yorke reached down and picked up Rosie. The puppy suddenly felt like the least of his problems now.
Yorke was on his fourth visit to the toilet in less than two hours. This time, it wasn’t to check his phone, but because he was reeling in shock.
Engaged? Where the bloody hell had that come from?
He didn’t even know they were having sex for God’s sake!
He’d had the conversation with Ewan regarding that but he’d been informed, reassured rather, that that stage of their relationship was a long way off.
And now they were bloody engaged!
At least she wasn’t pregnant, and he knew that because it was the first question he asked.
‘No, Uncle Mike …’ Ewan had said. ‘That’s not the reason at all.’
At this point, Patricia’s relentless frown had turned into a glare.
‘It’s just … we know. In fact, ever since I met Lexi, I’ve known … why wait?’
I can give a thousand bloody reasons to wait. He hadn’t said it, but he didn’t have to. The awkward silence that followed suggested they’d sensed it.
‘Congratulations,’ Yorke had said, but it was too late; eyes were down.
So, Yorke had made his sharp exit.
He splashed cold water on his face, and looked at his reflection. He traced the long scar where his cheek had been split in half by a box cutter earlier this year. For someone who has built a career out of saying the right thing, you are certainly very good at saying the wrong things to people you love.
Christmas Day. Bloody hell. He’d managed to piss off everyone in that room today. Apart from his daughter, but she was asleep.
Time to re-emerge with a different attitude, Mike. A supportive one. The one you seem to give to everyone but those who are closest to you.
He opened the bathroom door and took a deep breath.
Besides, it doesn’t mean that they are getting married next week, does it?
Not that this would be the first thing he said. First, he would hug his son, and his girlfriend …
His phone rang.
‘Hello, Ma’am.’
‘He’s alive,’ Madden said. ‘Jack’s alive and we’ve got him.’
3
YORKE COULDN’T BELIEVE what he was hearing. He turned his car radio up.
There’d been a mass shooting in a care home in Leeds. Details were sketchy, but there were at least fifteen confirmed deaths; a mix of residents and carers. More were suspected. Part of the problem in identifying the true number of lives lost was the fact that Rose Hill was still on fire.
He listened to a nurse who’d managed to flee the scene. Repeatedly, she choked up, making it hard for Yorke to understand what she was saying. ‘I don’t understand it all … he was never anything but a gentleman … he just shot Roy in the head … no warning, nothing … and then we were running, those that could run, and I know it sounds bad, leaving them, but what could we do? It was terrifying … I kept hearing the gunshots, and people were falling around me.’
Yorke sighed and pulled up alongside Jack Newton’s home.
The reporter was now describing how an elderly female resident had been cornered by the shooter but had eventually walked free after the gunman turned the gun on himself.
A brutal massacre on Christmas Day in a care home.
Yorke thought back to the verse from the Gospel of John included in the Queen’s speech: “The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.”
That may be true, Yorke thought, but that darkness is making a bloody good go of it.
He looked up at the house. It was the only house on the row without any Christmas decorations. He was here to deliver the news that Jack Newton was safe and being taken to hospital. Yorke had asked Madden for that honour, simply because he’d placed a hand on Malcolm Newton’s shoulder last week and promised to find his missing son.
Something you should never do, but something Yorke always did.
He exited the car into the swirling snow. Malcolm Newton, and his wife, Sandra, opened the door. It was as if they sensed his presence. Why wouldn’t they? They’d been living their lives on tenterhooks for the last ten days, and their senses would be in overdrive.
As he walked down the path, he brushed snow from his eyes, and gave them a smile, so as to calm them, and let them know he was here offering only good news.
This is the light you talk about, your Majesty, Yorke thought, and when it shines, there is nothing quite like it.
‘When I was a nipper,’ the Conduit said, running his finger down the window, ‘my mother told me a lie.’
He stopped his finger, but left it pressed against the glass, so he was pointing outside at his snow-covered garden. ‘She told me that every single snowflake was unique. What a thing to believe, eh? That every single one of those little white crystals has its own separate identity.’
Behind him, his dog grunted.
The Conduit smiled. ‘I knew you’d appreciate that myth. But, you know, my mum didn’t lie. Not really. You see it wasn’t until 1988, that a scientist discovered two identical snowflakes. And by then, I was fully grown, and she was long dead.’
He paused to listen to his dog lapping water from a bowl.
‘But still … what a thing to believe … infinitely more snowflakes than human beings, and every single one of them unique.’
H
e heard the rattle of his dog’s chains.
‘I believed so strongly in the force that was identity.’ The Conduit turned. ‘Yes, it was fragile. Yes, it melts away like a snowflake in the sun … but it was there. Do you understand, my loyal dog?’
His dog yapped.
The Conduit sat back down at his dining table. He scooped a spoonful of cranberry sauce from a jar, and carefully positioned it beside a slice of turkey.
‘But, alas, it was false. Uniqueness, identity … simple myths. On first look, we may seem different, but we are no different.’
With a separate spoon, to avoid any cross-contamination of food, he scooped some stuffing, and placed that carefully on the other side of the turkey.
His dog whined.
‘Don’t beg, dog.’
Another whine.
‘Are you not listening?’
The Conduit rose from his chair and picked up the pruning saw he kept propped up against the wall. The pole was already extended, and locked to two metres. He’d been using it on the garden tree several days before, cutting back some unruly branches.
The dog whined for a third time.
The Conduit moved towards his animal. Along the way, he noticed that the star was lopsided at the top of his Christmas tree. He was a tall man so he was able to right this particular wrong.
‘You are what I allow you to be. Nothing more, everything less.’ The Conduit reached down and stroked his pet’s head. He liked to feel the indents that covered his shaven scalp. He ran his fingers over his thin and misshapen nose, broken on so many occasions, causing him to whistle as he breathed. He allowed the animal to lick his hand; he was asking for forgiveness. ‘Good dog. We never beg for food.’
The Conduit turned, placed the pruning saw on the dining table, and picked up the dog bowl. Earlier, he’d stuffed it full of the raw giblets from the turkey.
When he turned back, his dog sat up, panting, desperate for its food, but not begging. Trying to be as obedient as he possibly could.
The Conduit knelt beside his animal, and starting at his iron collar, which was chained to a D-ring on the wall, he ran his hand all the way down his naked back, tracing the scars and welts, most of which were done by his pruning saw.
His dog enjoyed the attention.
‘Identity … such a fickle thing,’ the conduit said, putting the bowl onto the floor.
His dog, who once carried the identity of Mark Topham, buried his head into the giblets.
The snow beside the cathedral had been trodden down by walkers over the course of the day, so Yorke opted to circle it a few times in an effort to clock up a three-mile run. He was wearing running tights and, despite the very low temperature, had already built up quite a sweat.
He looked at his running watch, and saw he was moving into the third and final mile. If he’d had a running app on his phone, this run would be called the “post-case blowout.” As it was, he didn’t have an app; running was a private affair, and he was determined to keep it that way.
Although the run felt good, and felt, as always, necessary, he was plagued with worries. Ewan’s engagement shocker was obviously high on the list of concerns, but he was also worried about his marriage. Patricia had displayed an extreme amount of patience on several occasions today. Occasions which, if the roles had been reversed, would have had Yorke reeling. Firstly, he’d left Christmas dinner to go to work. She’d understood why, and offered no objection, but he’d noticed an unfamiliar tone in her voice. And after his work duties, he’d returned home to excuse himself for a twenty-five-minute run. Again, she’d understood – it was his cleansing ritual following a difficult case – but just like before, there’d been that tone.
He bypassed the large Christmas tree in the gardens which, according to a recent press release, was “the size of two giraffes.” He saw no reason to dispute this.
When Yorke and Patricia had first met, Yorke had been consumed by his profession. She’d been accepting of this, and continued to be so as their relationship had progressed. There had been promises never to question it. Promises which, on the whole, she’d kept.
But was this now the end of the road? Was bitterness finally creeping in? Resentment?
Was Rosie the dog her last attempt to try and break him out of the world he sometimes got lost inside?
He burst from the cathedral gardens onto Exeter Street. Over the road, the White Hart was dressed to the nines in flickering Christmas lights. He turned sharp right, and only just avoided skidding over a build-up of slush.
A well-wrapped elderly couple, supporting each other over the snow, approached. Despite the bitter weather, they looked happy. There was a lamppost taking a chunk of the pavement up, so Yorke stopped beside it to allow them past. It would be easy to consider the smile Yorke received merely gratitude over his display of good manners, but it was far more than that.
Yorke saw contentment in those smiles, and he liked it.
He hoped he too could look into the eyes of the young when he was old, and not feel loss, or even envy over what they had. And this is why he feared being alone.
Every day, he woke up, he couldn’t believe the life he’d built with Patricia, Ewan and Beatrice. He never wanted to be without them.
He, too, wanted to look on the younger person at a ripe old age, and feel only contentment.
He vowed to make a change. Starting now. He had two weeks off with his family, and he intended to revel in every second of it.
Once the Conduit had finished his Christmas meal, he picked up a napkin and dabbed at his top lip. A force of habit. For many years, he’d had a white moustache. It’d been part of the identity he’d sacrificed for this new life.
He smiled. There it was again. Identity. That fickle thing.
He listened to his pet’s whistling breaths. It had finished gorging on the turkey’s raw innards. These days the beast ate without complaint. There was far less need for the trusty pruning saw. Which, in a way, was a shame. There were many elements of the ‘training phase’ that the Conduit had enjoyed, but that had been the pinnacle. There was something truly exquisite about owning your animal with sadism.
He drained a glass of Vintage Bordeaux. ‘There are times, dog, when I miss the early days of our relationship. The conversations especially.’
Earlier in this animal’s evolution, while some semblance of Mark Topham remained, they’d embarked on a few conversations. Of course, the Conduit’s IQ surpassed Topham’s by some way - and many others for that matter - so the former police officer had been more of a sounding board.
Quite an unwilling one, the Conduit thought, if memory serves me correctly.
‘There was one conversation, in particular, which often keeps me awake at night. It was about love, do you recall it?’
His dog didn’t respond.
‘Well, it was a long time ago, now, and there have been many changes since then. Many. Mainly in you, I might add, rather than myself...’
The Conduit felt sluggish as he rose to his feet. He was a burly man, and he felt heavy at the best of times, but he’d just eaten enough turkey to feed a small family. And why not? He wasn’t about to waste it, or share it with the feral creature in the corner.
‘Plato once said, “At the touch of love, everyone becomes a poet.” How true that was for you, dog! I think your opening line to me was rather eloquent. Along the lines of, “You fucking monster, you took away the only thing I ever fucking loved.”’ The Conduit smiled. ‘Yes, you were a true poet.’
He touched one of the teeth on the pruning saw lying on the dining table. ‘I think my response was equally as poetic. Didn’t I saw off a toe? Or was it two? Three glasses of wine has made everything rather foggy.’
The Conduit approached his beast again, and knelt. ‘And speaking of foggy, dog, your nightcap should be kicking in around now. I bet you barely notice anymore.’ He stroked the shaved, pitted scalp. ‘Ever since I took you in, my dear little stray, I’ve fed you lysergic acid diethylamide
.’ The Conduit laughed. ‘These days, the fog for you must be like a clear summer’s afternoon!’
The beast’s tongue hung out. It panted, but its breath was no longer steady, and it came in ragged gasps.
The Conduit pulled a handkerchief from the top pocket of his shirt, and dabbed at the drool on his pet’s mouth. ‘Good boy.’
The Conduit’s phone vibrated in his pocket. It was an alarm.
He stood up, left his dog in the dining room, and headed into the living room. There, he sat on the couch and switched on the television.
He was in time for the headlines.
Rose Hill care home massacre. 16 confirmed deaths including the gunman.
The Conduit clapped his hands together and whooped. ‘Bernard!’ He then looked up at the heavens and showed the palms of his hands. ‘Merry Christmas!’
4
MINUTES AFTER VOWING to ignore work for two weeks, Yorke faced his first challenge. A phone call from Madden.
The snow was absorbing light from the lamps, making it look heavier than it was, but it was still bad enough to force Yorke to seek out shelter. He found a large tree at the end of the road to take the call under. Fortunately, he was still warm from the run to stand still, but that wouldn’t last long. Temperatures had been dropping as low as 3° these past few nights.
‘Everything okay, ma’am?’
‘Not really, Mike … but I guess you wouldn’t be hearing from me again if it was.’
Indeed. She was not phoning to see if he’d gotten his Christmas Day festivities back on track. ‘Is it Jack? He should be back with his parents by now …’
‘Yes, he is. It’s nothing to do with that.’ She sighed. ‘Are you sitting down?’
‘No, ma’am, I’m standing under a tree in my running gear.’
‘On Christmas Day? You are starting to sound more and more like me every time we speak … well, anyway, don’t sprint in front of a lorry in shock then.’
