Manchester Slingback

by Manchester Slingback (retail) (epub)

  ‘People like us,’ Jake said. ‘So what about people like Gary Halliday?’

  ‘Evil fucking bastard.’

  ‘What do you think he looks like? He’s got horns? He’s swinging a flicking tail? The man’s young, he’s smart and he’s fit…’

  Before Jake finished Johnny was ready to spit. ‘He’s fit!’

  His mouth turned into a snarl. It wasn’t what Jake meant – not fit as in fit between the sheets. Jake could feel it all going wrong, whatever he was trying to say.

  ‘I meant he doesn’t look like us. He’s not some raving faggot. He’s not a punk, rentboy, speed freak. He’s plausible. If it was him against Kevin Donnelly, you wouldn’t take Donnelly’s word. No one would. And if you were Donnelly, you’d know you don’t stand a chance against Halliday.’

  ‘I’m not Donnelly.’

  ‘You’d rip out his balls?’

  ‘I’d watch him fucking eat them.’

  ‘Yeah, well, you’re not Donnelly. You’ve not been through what he has. He isn’t normal any more. He probably doesn’t believe he was ever normal. The way he thinks, if he was, Halliday would never have singled him out in the first place.’

  ‘It doesn’t mean he has to go out of his way to help the bastard. Ask me to copy the man’s horrible fucking tapes.’

  Jake thought, He didn’t ask you. He asked me.

  What he said was, ‘You can’t blame Kevin. He thinks it’s what he deserves. Look at him, the hardest-working rentboy in Manchester. You think he’s ever stopped to wonder if that’s where he really wants to be? He doesn’t know anything else.’

  ‘So he wants to get back with the guy who kept him locked in a room for a year as his personal fucking pet sex toy? That’s his fucking destiny?’

  Jake didn’t know exactly what Kevin Donnelly thought. What Jake was doing was just pushing on in the same old direction. It’s what everyone was doing, pushing on, and the only that matters is how you do it. Whether you drag the crap of the past behind you like a cripple, or you shrug the pain away and outrun it. Go out first, in a desperate blaze.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Jake woke. He had a shrieking headache. The shrieking turned out to be his bedside telephone, but when he picked it up there was no one on the other end, just a disconnected buzz. He lay there, the piece to his ear, for a full minute before he realized it was the wake-up call he never asked for. He reached under the bed for his glasses and his watch; it was eight-fifteen.

  Another twenty seconds later, a full English breakfast arrived at his door. Jake knew for sure this was none of his doing. The state he rolled in, last night, he couldn’t have planned anything like this. While he was sipping his coffee, the phone-call came from DI Green. The man was ready to confess, he thought maybe Jake needed help waking.

  ‘You alone?’

  Jake looked over to the left-hand side of his bed, then across to the twin double. ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Only, the way you were spreading yourself round the Village last night, I thought you might have picked up company.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You’re not exactly talkative this morning. I tell you what, you take another half hour. I’ll be waiting in the lobby.’

  *

  Jake reached the lobby at nine o’clock. The policeman was drinking a cup of tea, with three bourbon biscuits, but when he spotted Jake he dropped some coins onto the coffee table and started off at a jog, tracking Jake between the pillars of the foyer until he ran him down at the concierge’s box.

  ‘Don’t forget your car.’ Green nodded at the concierge, who was standing there with a grin.

  Jake said, ‘What?’

  ‘Show the man your room number. He’ll give you the keys for your hire car.’

  The keys came in a bulky envelope. A Xerox sheet inside carried a description of the car: make, model and registration number. Jake opened it and found he had a Lexus, credited it to his hotel room. Jake nodded a brisk thank-you, with no show of surprise. He didn’t ask why he needed a car or how Green knew his driving-licence details. He just tried to maintain the same tundra-esque profile as he had the whole of the last two days… at least when he knew he was being surveilled. He was surprised Green didn’t persevere – maybe suggest that he’d looked a little less zipped the previous night. Jake’d been careering drunk round the Village; there was always a chance he couldn’t now remember what he’d got himself into. But the man obviously wasn’t in the mood for gossip – didn’t even ask what Jake learnt from Benny ‘Good-Day’ Silver.

  *

  The car was charcoal grey, understated, and parked outside G-Mex. It was a Lexus, as per the photostat instructions. Dl Green took the passenger side and settled into the seat. The impression he seemed to be going for was that some people drove, some had got used to having drivers. Jake didn’t ask Green if that really was his game-plan. He didn’t even ask for directions.

  They travelled maybe six miles before Jake turned to him and said, ‘You’re a hypocrite.’

  The way it came out, as a flat, uninflected statement, it sounded hostile. Green didn’t exactly spin in his seat but he shot Jake a look, trying to gauge the mood before he decided on a response.

  Jake rephrased: ‘I mean, what did you really think of the Village, back then?’

  ‘As a hypocrite?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  Put like that, what could the man say? He gave the slightest pause and said: ‘I thought, this shit is going to get me promoted.’

  ‘What about those gay men in Oldham – the nurse and the teacher? We ruined their lives.’

  Green shrugged. ‘I know. But I ruin lots of people’s lives. That’s what I do for a living. Mostly I try and ruin the lives of bad people, but if I started weighing every single case, I wouldn’t be able to do the job at all.’

  Jake knew the man didn’t mean that the paradoxes and contradictions would eventually get to him, undermine his sense of self. So why Jake even bothered asking…

  ‘Fuck, no.’ Green laughed out loud. ‘Just, if I started into that shit, I wouldn’t be letting the wankers in the Crown Prosecution Service do their job. I’m just a simple copper, me.’

  The man leaned back in the seat. Like he was waiting for Jake to look over, just so he could throw him an inscrutable expression. It worked: Jake couldn’t decide if the look was smug or if it was supposed to be ironic, so he turned his eyes back to the road. They were pushing up into the hills, now. Behind them, Manchester was nothing but a matt blanket, cross-hatched with designer scars. Another few miles, even the motorway would end. They’d turn off, and there’d be nothing but hills and sheep. Already the windscreen was divided along its length: one half coloured with the purple and browns of the Pennines; the rest with cold blue sky.

  It all made Green fidgety, at least enough for him to quit with the laconic act. He didn’t have the temperament for it anyway.

  He said, ‘What you were asking, what do I think of the Village now? I got to say, I think it’s great. Nice and clean, good for tourists. It brings money into the city and it’s a piece of piss to police. I couldn’t be happier. And if you want to know if I regret the way we used to tear it up, then no. It was a mad time, and it gives the place a bit of cultural heritage. Gives everyone the opportunity to say: this used to be a ghetto and now look at it; it’s an urban-planning-zone theme park.’

  Jake said, ‘What did you think about Anderton and Pascal?’

  ‘Yeah, well, they had a different view. I tell you one thing I remember. I was beered up once with the lads, back when I was still a DC, and some drunk bugger turned to Pascal and said, “It’s a load of wank, isn’t it?” Maybe those weren’t his exact words, but it’s the gist. Pascal cut him dead; said it’s down to the police to give a moral lead to society. I don’t know what the arsehole was even doing in the pub, seeing he didn’t drink.’

  Green shook his head, but only because he was laughing. ‘There were some fucking funny ideas about policing in those days. Still
, all that talk about what we were for, it got us some whacking pay increases. You know, there was a time in the eighties when a junior copper – not even twenty years old – got paid more than a teacher with ten years’ experience and previously another four at university. Not that I gave a fuck. It’s just weird seeing some kid in an expensive sportscar and thinking, fuck me, that arsehole’s a copper.’

  The motorway junction was coming up. One side of the road, they were approaching the scratchy ends of Saddleworth Moor, where Kevin Donnelly was dumped. Soon they’d be at the edge of Caldenstall Moor where Johnny’s body was found all those years ago. Green made sure he pointed out the landmarks as they passed them.

  Jake just gripped the wheel, let the words fall unheard – Green’s story of how they had to break open the peat with pickaxes before they could recover all of Johnny’s body, the ground was frozen so hard.

  Green said, ‘When we get there, look at his hands.’

  Jake jerked round. ‘What?’

  ‘At the prison. Take a look at Halliday’s hands, see if he’s guilty. It’s an old police trick.’

  ‘You think they’ll be red or something?’

  ‘Fuck, I don’t know. It’s never worked for me. I only just remembered it. I was standing with John Pascal at a conference once, thinking, How the fuck do I excuse myself when he knows I’ll only be going as far as the bar? Then this old chief inspector from Devon or somewhere came up and started asking about Anderton. You could tell the old guy couldn’t believe a man like that had been given the job of running the country’s second biggest force. But he tried to play it subtly… just muttering something about the intellectual rigors of the job. Pascal gave out this smug smile, saying the Chief’s not an intellectual, he doesn’t have to be – just look at his hands. Pascal had some idea they were plain-dealing hands, they showed a sense of destiny. You believe that?’

  Jake did. It sounded like Pascal.

  ‘So, what about it? You going to tell me if Halliday butchered your pal Kevin Donnelly?’

  ‘Benny Silver thinks so. He told me Halliday was running round the Village a few days before, asking everyone he could think of if they’d seen Kevin Donnelly. He was scared Kevin had evidence against him.’

  ‘That’s what I heard, too. Though I never thought of asking old Good-Day about it. He say anything else?’

  ‘He said he wanted to be thought of as a dirty old man.’

  ‘That’s some ambition. You’d think he’d be happy just being a millionaire.’ Showing Jake he knew the rumours – Benny Silver’s vast wealth.

  They were off the motorway now and the road was even steeper. Around the place it flattened out, they’d be able to see the prison.

  Jake said, ‘Do you have any more police tips? Anything to tell me if he’s guilty?’

  ‘Ask him what proof Donnelly had.’

  Jake said, ‘Video tapes.’ Then wished he hadn’t. The look on DI Green’s face, coming up as though it was news to him.

  ‘Is that what Silver told you?’

  ‘There were always video tapes. Johnny got a man called John Quay to copy them for Halliday.’

  ‘Really? He got old piss-eyed Junk to do it?’

  ‘Maybe you should be having this talk with him?’

  Green shook his head. ‘It’d be difficult. He got caught in another police action. In the confusion, someone blew half his head away.’

  ‘He’s dead?’

  ‘No. He’s in the hospital in Prestwich. Apparently, he’s running courses in video-making, though only the really hopeless cases understand what he’s going on about. I doubt whether Junk could say anything that would hold up in court.’

  ‘If you don’t have the videos, what case have you got against Halliday?’

  ‘Statements, confessions, the usual shit. I was wondering why you never told me anything, seeing you knew all about it. What sort of piss-weak excuse for a stoolie you turned out to be.’

  It wasn’t even funny.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Johnny nodded forwards and back in time to the music, his hands jabbering across the rim of the steering-wheel like he was a spoolful of nervous energy about to pull loose. Jake waited. It was thirty minutes now they’d been sitting in the dark of the stolen Volkswagen Golf, guessing the weight of the iron security gates. And, despite all his crackling energy, Johnny didn’t seem to be in a hurry to press the buzzer and make the delivery.

  Up ahead, Colchester Hall stood spot-lit at the top of the driveway, its two wings spread out like a backdrop behind it. Warm and inviting as a psychie-ward shower.

  It didn’t matter that Jake didn’t want to be there. When Johnny asked, he agreed to go with him. If Gary Halliday tried anything, then there would need to be two of them. From the start, they were trying to fence this whole thing with caution. They stole a car rather than pay for a taxi. They didn’t want to become a name on some radio-man’s pick-up list, or get I-D’d as the dimly recalled drop-off of an insomniac driver. And if they needed to get away in a hurry, they didn’t want the nightmare of a lonely suburban call-box while they waited for another cab.

  Johnny needed driving-music so it was lucky the car got stolen before its stereo. Since Princess Parkway, they’d listened to the 999 album Separates on continuous play. Now they were parked, the song ‘Homicide’ was on another run-through, the chorus of ‘homi homi homi homi’ how many times, over and over. Jake never understood why the band was so popular with skins or the sub-moronic Oi punks. Half the songs carried suspicious undertones; just read the titles: ‘Feeling Alright with the Crew’ or ‘The Boy Can’t Make It with Girls’. Above all, ‘Homicide’ and that chant of homi homi homi that wasn’t about homicide but other desires, barely suppressed under the too-high voice, shot through with neuroses and desperation. The singer was no killer, except in the William Burroughs sense of a boy that looked like a sheep-killing dog. A too-punk kid.

  Another two in the dark of a stolen car, nothing but their profiles showing, haloed by the loose glare of the security lights. When Johnny nodded that he was ready, the decision came like a spasm. He got out of the car and Jake watched him pass through the range of the rear-view mirror. The videos were boxed in the trunk. Jake got out of the car to give Johnny a hand.

  The intercom was set into the right-hand post, one side of the gate. After Jake pressed the button, they stood waiting until a voice threaded through the grille. Jake didn’t recognize it.

  ‘Gary Halliday?’

  ‘Who’s this?’

  ‘Kevin Donnelly’s friend, from the other night.‘

  The gate didn’t open. They stood in the freezing night air, holding a cardboard box each, and stamping their feet to keep warm. Jake only realized then, hearing the high-speed stiletto chatter, that Johnny was wearing his new slingbacks. His bare toes were curled under with cold.

  Johnny said, ‘Press again.’

  Jake was about to – scared Johnny would die of pneumonia. Then they heard a steel wheeze, and the gates began to clockwork apart. They walked through the gap and up the hill, tracked by a halogen spotlight and the shadows of the rhododendron bushes along the driveway.

  Colchester Hall was a pre-war detached house, not so very old but built to resemble something Scottish and baronial. The roof was surrounded by blunt castellations. The front door was wide enough to drive the Golf through, if no one cared about the wing-mirrors. There was another intercom on the doorframe. They buzzed and stood. There wasn’t even the sound of footsteps yet to reassure them. Johnny juggled the box of videos until he’d turned his wrist far enough to read his watch. ‘You think they’re all in bed?’ After another few seconds, he said, ‘Together…?’

  Jake took a step back from the stone-arched porch and looked up at the house. There were lights on the upper storey. He said, ‘Donnelly said there were eight boys in every house. So that’s thirty-six altogether counting the housemasters.’

  ‘There any other staff?’

  Jake shook his hea
d. ‘No. There’s a cook during the day, but the cleaning and stuff are done by the boys.’

  ‘What were those we passed: tennis courts?’ Johnny pointed back to the bushes, and the wire fence that stood behind them.

  Jake nodded. Two tennis courts.

  Johnny said, ‘Yeah, well, I fucking hate tennis.’

  ‘Yeah?’ It struck Jake as weird, to actually have an opinion on tennis. But if you ignored the high heels, tried to imagine Johnny in training shoes, he could pass as a county athlete. They both could, though Jake was built like a long-jumper, not an all-rounder like Johnny. Colchester Hall prided itself on athletics; it was one of the little nuggets they had got out of Kevin Donnelly.

  ‘You hate tennis? What do you like?’

  Johnny looked round, surprised at the question, then almost coy. ‘Everything else. Or I did, when I was at school.’

  He was talking about team sports. Jake tried to imagine him as a schoolboy striker, a prop forward, maybe a spin bowler. Jake himself was fourteen years old when he realized he could never play any team sports. Around that age, self-analysis was his main obsession, so he was amazed it had taken him so long to figure it out. He didn’t have a single character attribute to be a team-player. He got a school badge for swimming and won a medal for cross-country running. There was no school karate champion but for almost five years, right to the moment he left home, he trained three nights a week at Caldenstall civic hall. That was something he hadn’t mentioned to Johnny, so Jake guessed he had his own secrets too.

  The door opened. Gary Halliday smiled at them through a wave of soft brown hair. ‘Sorry I kept you waiting, Jake.’ Then a mild frown as he turned to Johnny. ‘Who’s he?’

  ‘Johnny.’

  Halliday turned, looking Johnny up and down slowly and pausing at his feet and the ten dirty toes, black with dirt, bluish in the cold.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Halliday. ‘It’s Johnny’s business, isn’t it? I’d forgotten. Come in.’ Johnny hadn’t lightened as the man became more polite but he hadn’t yet spoken either. Perhaps he was worried how his voice would sound against the clear un-dialected voice of Halliday. Jake could tell Johnny was thrown, despite what he’d told him, in the car and earlier, that the man was no identikit creep. He was more than plausible: wearing a V-neck jumper and check trousers, Halliday looked like a second-league model; the guy to sell aftershave on the back of a Sunday newspaper. There was even a hint of cologne as he nodded his head and turned. They followed three steps behind, to the right of an ornate staircase and down a corridor towards a warm and brightly lit kitchen. Halliday waved at hand at the chairs pushed under the heavy kitchen table.