It's Grim Up North (Book 3): The Journey

by Wilkinson, Sean

  It’s Grim Up North 3

  The Journey

  Copyright © 2018 Sean Wilkinson

  All rights reserved

  No parts of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the copyright owner.

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. Under no circumstances may any part of this book be photocopied for resale.

  This book is a work of fiction. Any similarity between characters and situations within its pages and places and persons, living or dead, is unintentional and coincidental.

  Foreword

  Again, thank you, thank you, thank you for purchasing the latest chapter in the IGUN series. I’m still overwhelmed by the interest and positive feedback I’ve received for book one and two.

  This, the third instalment in a twelve book series, has taken a little longer to publish than the others, mainly because of work and college commitments. It’s been a very busy year but finally, it’s here! (sorry for the wait Allan)

  Once again, my thanks to the talented Jo Kemp for proof reading and correcting my abysmal spelling and punctuation and thanks to my guinea pigs for reading the rough draft. Becky Hodgson, Chris Scott and my Aunty Paula. X

  Also, thanks to my technical advisor, Bryan W Haddock. Still on 24 hour call. Cheers bruv. X

  Enjoy Guys!!!

  It’s Grim Up North 3

  The Journey

  Chapter One

  I remember the first time I laid eyes on her. I remember the tightness in my chest. I remember the ache of longing when our eyes met. The goose bumps, the sweaty palms, the palpitations.

  In hindsight, it may have been the onset of a cardiac arrest due to the copious amounts of alcohol and cocaine in my system, but at the time I thought she was the most likely cause of my symptoms.

  The Big Market, Newcastle, on a freezing December Friday evening in 2006. I found her alone and shivering in a doorway. As is the law in the northeast of England, coats are not allowed, no matter how cold it is.

  She’d also been crying at some point, judging by the mascara panda eyes she wore.

  I was in the process of making my way to the Haymarket to catch the last bus home when I’d happened upon her. Even in her dishevelled state she was still the most stunningly beautiful thing I’d ever seen.

  I’d been out that night, attending a stag do. The groom-to-be had been an old friend from school and had contacted me out of the blue one day. I hadn’t actually seen the guy since the day of my expulsion.

  Harvey ‘Robbo’ Robson was the wild child of the school. Always in trouble and forever standing outside of the classroom because of his bad behaviour. Before the world ended Robbo would most likely have been diagnosed as having ADHD or something of that nature. Back in those days it was what it was. He was just a naughty fucker. A born entertainer, forever performing to his loving audience of fellow students. By the end of his school years, he only had to look at the teachers in the wrong way and he’d be out in the corridor, warming the doorframe.

  So, imagine my surprise when I received a Facebook request and message from him, over a decade later, asking me to attend his premarital celebrations.

  I’d always wondered what had happened to Robbo and how he’d fared in the adult world. I really couldn’t imagine him being an upstanding citizen with a nine-to-five. His Facebook page didn’t tell me much. He’d obviously just signed up to the social media tool, as there were no profile pictures or friends on his account. Usually, this would set alarm bells ringing, but curiosity got the better of me and I replied to him anyway, accepted his invitation and took the night off work.

  We were to meet outside a cinema at 4:30pm at The Gate, a kind of leisure shopping mall with numerous bars and eateries. I wasn’t at all surprised by the early start and could only imagine the night of drink and debauchery Robbo would have planned for us.

  On the way I made a quick detour to dodgy Dave’s (my local merchant of illegal substances) and procured some of his finest Colombian nose candy. After a cheeky sniffter with him, I jumped on the bus and headed for the Toon.

  I arrived early and waited outside the third-storey cinema.

  As I was standing there in my finest threads and smelling like a whooa’s handbag, a sudden sinking feeling grabbed my stomach. This didn’t feel right. What it did feel like was an elaborate set-up by my mates. At the time we were always playing practical jokes on one another, each prank wilder and more intricate than the last. Were they all standing around the corner, to see how long I would wait for the phantom groom-to-be?

  Or, worse still, could it have been a disgruntled boyfriend of one of the numerous girls I’d ‘befriended’ at any one of my gigs? Had they enticed me into town and were waiting for me outside to give me a good yarking?

  No, of course not, that couldn’t be it. How on earth would they know about Robbo?

  The minutes passed slowly, as I nervously scanned and checked the faces of everyone in the immediate area. In those days the paranoia monster that lived in my head was well and truly in charge. Not only that, he’d just been fuelled by the charley I’d recently partaken of.

  ‘Fuck this for a lark,’ I thought and decided to call an end to it all.

  I was just about to leave when I felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned around expecting to be surrounded by my friends laughing and pointing at my naivety for falling for their gag. I did not, however, expect to see the huge, voluptuous man who stood in front of me. Swathes of black greasy hair hung down around his ample face. If this was indeed a disgruntled boyfriend I was fucked. He was huge. I visibly flinched at the wedging I expected to receive, but instead of a grimace of anger from the Sasquatch of a man, I received a grin.

  It was the crooked smile that did it. Now I could see him. Robbo had turned into Blobbo. He was fucking enormous!

  He grasped me in a bear hug, lifting me off my feet. The smell of unwashed body odour enveloping me.

  ‘Alreet mate?’ He said as he lowered me to the floor.

  ‘Ermm yeah,’ I replied, shocked and in awe of his vastness. ‘You look... well mate.’ I lied.

  I couldn’t believe it. Robbo was more like a wild boar than the wild child I’d known and loved.

  ‘No one else has turned up,’ he said forlornly. ‘Looks like it’s just me and you buddy,’ he added as he turned around and headed into the cinema. WTF? The pictures? On a fucking stag do?

  My decision to decline the pills I’d been offered by Dodgy Dave had been the right one. This would have been the mother of all bad trips.

  As we stood in the queue for the tickets, I asked Robbo what he’d been up to since we’d left school.

  Initially, he had struggled to find work, what with having absolutely no qualifications at all. He’d been signing on the Nat King Cole for a couple of years before his dad found him a labouring job for a local builder.

  He lasted a day. True to form he had started pissing around on the scaffolding and had fallen off, breaking his back. From that day on, he’d never really left the confines of his parents’ home and had been claiming disability allowance ever since.

  ‘I’ve had a really hard time mate, I could hardly move for two years,’ he said.

  ‘It didn’t stop you getting to the fucking fridge though,’ I t
hought.

  ‘Aw, that sounds awful,’ I replied.

  As we slowly advanced in the queue, I mentally shook my head at the predicament I was in. Our fellow queuers behind us tried their best to keep a safe distance from the smell of arse emanating from the huge pudding of a man I stood next to. The people in front had nowhere to go. An elderly couple actually gave up their space and went to the back of the line to escape the clutches of the tangible mist of stench he gave off.

  The embarrassment I felt soon turned to pity for the man. After all, he had been quite a close friend at school and had once taken the blame for me, when I accidentally set fire to a girl’s hair with a Bunsen burner. I felt I owed him and so vowed to myself to see out the next couple of eye-watering hours.

  Now 2006 hadn’t been a bad year for movies: The Departed, Casino Royale, The DaVinci Code, Borat, Talledega Nights, to name but a few. Robbo decided we would be partaking in the viewing of chick flick rom-com The Holiday. Again, what the actual fuck?

  I learned the rest of his story as we stood in the confectionary line.

  He’d met a girl online six months previously and they’d fallen deeply in love, even though they’d never actually met. ‘That’s not going to end well,’ I thought, but who was I to judge? I’d never had a relationship that lasted more than a couple of months, always looking for the perfect woman and always coming up short. Maybe Robbo had found his. If he had, then good for him. I just hoped she had shares in Fabreze.

  After Robbo had purchased most of the food on display, I helped him carry it into the screening room. I declined his kind offer of food. I was doing all I could to keep my breakfast from making an appearance.

  We sat in the centre row and soon became an island because of the buffer zone of stink that radiated from my old friend.

  I sat and watched him from the corner of my eye, as he devoured the veritable feast that lay on his never-ending lap. What had happened to him? There was obviously some deep-seated reason that he’d ended up this way. Maybe he did have acute mental problems at school after all. Maybe all he needed was a friend. Maybe I could bring the old Robbo back from the abyss. Get him cleaned up, start him at the gym and help him turn his life around. Like it or not he was a friend. He’d asked me on his stag night, bless him. It was the least I could do.

  As he gorged on his second hotdog, mustard dripping down his chin, I made a decision, right there and then. I side-doored the fucker before the movie started.

  ‘I’m just gonna go to the toilet,’ were the last words I said to him. I think he knew where I was going, judging from the look in his sad doe-like eyes as he snaffled down the rest of his hotdog. To be fair though I did pop to the toilet to powder my nose before I nashed. So I wasn’t lying, really.

  I never heard from him again after that and never did find out how the wedding went. He unfriended me from Facebook that very night.

  A part of me did feel terribly guilty as I made my escape and legged it away from the cinema and headed into town, but there was no way was I going to waste a perfectly good night off work watching a fucking chick flick with fatty balatty.

  And so I made my way down to the quayside, which in those days was the in place to be. I chanced on finding someone I knew to latch onto and save this debacle of a night.

  Eleven o’clock came and went and I still hadn’t found anyone. Also, I had hoovered all of Dave the merchant’s finest up my sneck, so I decided to call it a night and headed to the station to catch the last bus.

  The long walk from the quayside to the Haymarket bus station gave me time to reflect on what I’d done to poor Robbo. With the guilt and the copious amounts of alcohol I’d consumed I soon started an argument with myself.

  ‘What did you do that for sober Carter?’

  ‘What was I supposed to do drunk Carter?’

  ‘At least watch the fucking movie with him.’

  ‘Fuck that, he stank of sweaty arse.’

  ‘You owed him.’

  ‘I owed him nothing drunk Carter. Fuck you.’

  ‘Who the fuck are you talking to?’ Came a voice from a darkened doorway.

  ‘Who, me?’ I asked the ethereal voice.

  Out of the darkness came an angel. Albeit snotty, shivering and panda faced.

  ‘Yes, you. Were you actually arguing with your sober self?’ She asked.

  ‘Erm, yeah, I must have been. He’s a dick and it’s been a strange night.’ Quickly changing the subject. ‘You look a little upset. Are you ok?’

  ‘Not really, I lost my friends, my handbag with my money and phone in it, oh, and one of my shoes,’ she replied. ‘I don’t know how I’m going to get home.’

  ‘Where do you live?’ I asked.

  It turned out she lived in the next town over from me.

  ‘Do you want me to get a taxi with you?’ I asked. ‘I’ll get you home safely. No funny business.’

  She replied, ‘But I haven’t had a dance yet.’

  And that was it. The night I met Jenna Moore.

  We found her shoe a few metres from the doorway and then hit the clubs. After dancing till lowse, we hit the casino and talked and laughed until the early hours, and the rest is history. All thanks to Blobbo. I’d never have met her if he hadn’t invited me to his stag party.

  Chapter Two

  ‘Are you Gippa’s wife?’ I asked.

  Her head slowly rose. Her featureless face hidden in the shadows.

  ‘Are you Gippa’s wife?’ I repeated, this time with a tad more aggression in my voice.

  In the darkened room I saw her head lean to one side like a curious puppy.

  ‘Ray?’

  She had just said my name. Nobody knew my Christian name. I hadn’t even told Darren it. Everyone knew me as Carter.

  ‘Ray!’

  The woman stood up, came from out of the shadows and into the dim light, brushing the greasy and matted hair from her dirty face.

  I stood there dumbfounded and in utter shock. Darren stood aiming his pistol at Jenna and asked, ‘Who the fuck is Ray?’

  Jenna and I just stood there staring at each other, both of us absolutely speechless.

  ‘Carter, who the fuck is Ray?’ He asked again.

  ‘I’m Ray, Darren. That’s my name.’

  ‘Then who the fuck is she?’ He demanded.

  ‘She’s the girl I’m always thinking about. Jenna.’

  ‘Fuck me,’ was all Darren could say.

  All of this must have been too much for Jenna to bear and she fainted on the spot. Darren holstered his Glock in a flash and caught Jenna before she hit the floor. I just stood there blinking, trying to comprehend the magnitude of the situation and the unfathomable fact of her being in front of me. Alive!

  ‘Carter.... Carter!’ Darren snapped.

  I slowly turned my head and locked eyes with him.

  ‘We’ve got to get the fuck out of here mate.’

  I nodded slowly.

  Suddenly gunshots rang from outside in the compound. Darren dropped Jenna onto one of the large leather sofas and ran out of the building.

  I stayed, rooted to the spot. Staring at her prone form, lying peacefully on the couch, a thousand questions ricocheting inside my head. ‘How?’ was the first question. But that wasn’t hard to deduce, really.

  When I found out Jenna had met someone I’d asked one of our mutual friends to get the lowdown on him. The text he sent me said, ‘His name is Paul Gibson, he’s just moved from Amble to work at the gym in Bedlington and he’s fucking huge mate. Some of the guys at the gym call him Gibba or Grippa or something. Defo on the roids. He’s supposed to be a right fuckin nutter. I’d stay well clear of him buddy. X’

  That answered how she was there but didn’t explain why she was in such a bad way. She was filthy, malnourished and an absolute shadow of her former self.

  ‘Carter.... Carter.... Ray!!’

  I suddenly snapped out of my reverie and noticed that Darren had re-entered the room. ‘That fucking rat, Damien
and the two guards have done a runner. Andy and Josh took some pot shots at them but missed. Carter? Are you listening?’

  ‘Errr.... What mate?’

  Darren walked over and grabbed me firmly by my shoulders.

  ‘Listen mate, I fucking need you to snap out of it. Whatever this is we’ll have to sort it out later. There are a group of frightened girls outside that we need to protect. We’ve got to find a vehicle and get out of here. I can’t do this by myself. I need you back. Now.’

  He was right. This was no time to have a mental breakdown. We had a matter of minutes before every deeda in the vicinity homed in on the service station explosion.

  I scooped Jenna up from the couch and took her outside, noticing that she was as light as a feather. What the fuck had happened to her?

  It was dark now as we exited Gippa’s house, but light enough for me to make out a group of people standing in the yard by a large minibus.

  Andy was there, standing guard over the new additions to our family. There were nine in all. Seven women and two young men.

  I made my way towards them and laid Jenna on the ground. When the women saw Jenna they ran collectively to her aid. ‘What the fuck have you done to her?’ One of them shouted.

  ‘Nothing,’ I answered. ‘She fainted.’

  ‘Keep away from her,’ the girl spat.

  I must have been too much in shock to tell the girl to fuck off and that I’d actually lived with Jenna for nearly ten years.

  ‘What’s the craic? Where’s Josh?’ Darren asked Andy.

  ‘He’s gone to look for the keys in that garage over there,’ Andy replied as he pointed to a large building in the corner of the yard.

  As if on cue Josh came out of a door that entered the garage and shouted Darren over.

  ‘Darren, you need to see this.’

  Darren looked at me and beckoned me to follow. I looked up, alternating my gaze between him and Jenna.

  ‘She’ll be OK mate, the girls have got her.’

  I reluctantly nodded my head and followed him over to the building.