“You goin’ to beg?” Ezz asked, a note of polite inquiry in his voice belying the rage in his eyes.
“Beg for what?” spat the man through ragged, shattered gasps. “Who the fuckin’ ’ell are you anyway, eh?”
“I protect children from scum like you.”
The man looked over at the playground, confused; the children were abandoning their games, crossing towards the two men, curious about the commotion. Suddenly the penny dropped and the man gave a short, bitter laugh. “You think I’m a paedophile, is that it? You think that’s why I was watchin’ them play? You’re fuckin’ thick as well as sick, you know that?” The man gestured with his arm, anger giving him strength. “That’s me son over there. Me bitch of an ex got the court to stop us goin’ near ’im, ’cos I was late with me maintenance a couple of times. It’s the only way I can get to see him, hangin’ round ’ere. Got that? Understand?”
Ezz’s heart turned over. He couldn’t have been more stunned if the man had bested him, one to one. He opened his mouth to speak when, suddenly, he felt a sharp pain in his left calf. He looked down to see one of the boys from the playground. Dirt on his face; fury in his eyes.
“Me da! You hurt me da! You bastard!” Kick. “You hurt me da!”
Ezz felt a pain larger than the damage being inflicted would ever have allowed. He swallowed, turned his head from the boy to the father, searching for something to say, some words that would heal the situation. He found nothing.
The tension began to build inside Ezz again, forcing his heart to thump faster and his head to pound. Sharp tears of self-pity and helpless rage began to stab him behind his eyes. He turned and blindly ran, oblivious to anything but despair. He didn’t hear the accusatory shouts of the children and the man directed at his back, didn’t even feel the thrown stones as they hit him.
He had tried to help others to help himself. He had only made things worse. He saw the face. Sneering, taunting, mocking.
Ezz ran harder.
Eventually darkness had fallen; Ezz’s pain was still unresolved. He felt like a human pressure-cooker: body of sculpted metal constraining a hot, combustible, poisonous stew.
He had been standing since dusk, lost in the shadows of Heaton Park, waiting. The lights in the flat still weren’t on; not that he had expected them to be. But he had patience because it was Sunday night and only a matter of time.
As he watched, he saw a car pull up in front of the flat and douse the headlights. A Fiesta, almost new. Ezz’s stomach lurched as he watched Noble get out, take a bag from the back seat, lock the car and enter the flat. He watched the lights going on and the curtains being drawn.
Ezz counted off five minutes in his head and stepped out of the shadows. If the ache in his head hadn’t been clouding his thought processes, he might have been able to see a trace of irony in the situation. He was back where he had started. Where his current bout of pain had been triggered. Full circle.
Heart beating, he walked along the pavement and up the path towards a hope of salvation.
Drive
The powerfully sleek automatic eased through the light Sunday morning traffic on the A1 into Northumberland, gliding like the tyres were oiled and the road was ice. Pavarotti was trilling from the Blaupunkt, the sun was shining, and two boys, young bodies brimful of pleasures, were waiting at the other end of the journey. The man sighed, allowing himself the ration of a small smile. The car throbbed with energy and the temperature-controlled interior was like a warm cocoon. He was in his own world: safe. Secure. What more could he possibly want?
The people he was going to visit weren’t friends – he didn’t have any. They were – barring his brother – the people he’d known longest and most intimately, but they were not friends.
He had been approached by the two of them while he was still at college. Colin and Alan had both been misfits, their lack of social skills marking them out as lepers in the closed environment of the university. At first the man thought they just wanted to be friends, bask in the reflected glory of his popularity. Then, with a shudder of recognition, he realised that he and they were the same; all they lacked were masks. His first reaction was to panic: how could they have recognised him?
He forced himself to think rationally. To turn the situation around. They were outsiders. He could teach them the skills of acceptance, of protective camouflage. He was ready to push his predilections further; perhaps this association could provide him with a way forward.
So he became their teacher, passing on all his little tricks. All the while keeping his dealings with them at arm’s length, until they were truly ready to be integrated. On their own, the three of them swapped dark, obsessive fantasies fuelled by alcohol and pornography, the sessions usually culminated in mutual masturbation.
This fulfilled the man for a while, but he still wanted to go further. He knew that wouldn’t be possible while he was still a student, and without real power, so he controlled his urges. Bided his time.
After college was a different matter. He married his girlfriend – a woman either pitifully naive about his true inclinations, or, perhaps, wilfully ignorant. She saw him as a provider of wealth and social standing. She was a shallow, venal bitch. He had chosen her well.
By this time he was well-connected: that made it easier to glide into a career revolving around power and status, his assumed persona convincingly passing the psychological tests that would otherwise have been a barrier to his promotion.
As the man took his personal route to ultimate satisfaction, Colin and Alan chose careers based on close proximity to children. Opportunities for procurement. The three of them still held their clandestine meetings: swapping fantasies, watching videos, using pornography. Waiting for the real thing.
Eventually, inevitably, it happened. One of the boarders at the public school where Alan taught. He didn’t quite fit in. He was blond, beautiful – and very unhappy. So Alan befriended him, breaking him in over a series of weeks, eventually taking him away for a weekend that was supposed to be “character-building”.
They all met at Colin’s house and the boy was turned over to them.
Many of the things the man had plotted and dreamed of for so long came true that weekend. Since the boy didn’t complain, the man assumed he enjoyed it too. It was one of the most blissful weekends he had ever spent.
When it was over, and the boy had gone back to school, the man fantasised about the experience, replaying it in his head. Imagining how much more intense, more pleasurable it could have been. Wondering just how far he was prepared to go …
Over the following months and years, the blond boy became a frequent visitor to Colin’s house. Eventually he became too old to be of use, but he was too much a part of their circle to be easily discarded. The answer was simple: as Alan, and sometimes Colin, procured new boys, the blonde boy joined the men in taking pleasure from them. And then there were four.
Through the years they fell into a pattern. Alan, Colin and, latterly, James acted as procurers; the man was the driving force behind them. He drilled secrecy into them, forcing them to choose only the right kind of boys. Boys who wouldn’t rock the boat.
And there was something he became aware of as the years passed: the others were frightened of him. That could only be a good thing. There was, after all, no such thing as having too much power.
But nothing lasts forever. Eventually, Colin and Alan’s masks fell away. Once exposed, they quietly slipped out of their respective professions, seeking deliberate obscurity. No matter. James was eminently reliable, a true professional, so they could carry on just as before.
The man indicated and turned onto a minor road. He was excited. This would be the first time since Jason. He hadn’t yet planned what he would do with the two boys, but he doubted he would go to the exquisite lengths he had with Jason. Not quite yet, anyway.
16: One Fair Summer Evening
“She off?”
“Yeah,” said Jane, smiling. “Spark out. Ha
sn’t had so much exercise in weeks. Not to mention the sea air, of course.”
Larkin smiled and sipped his wine. He was sitting on the floor of Jane’s living room, back against the sofa, legs crossed, wearing an old, oversized terrycloth robe of Jane’s as his own clothes had been washed and hung to dry on the balcony. He had had a long bath to soak his battered body, during which he’d checked the progress of his bruises. They were coming along nicely, the only visible one being a purplish lump on the right of his forehead. He took another pull of wine. The room was having a calming effect on him, making him feel safe. Or maybe it was the fact that that no one knew where he was. Whatever, he’d managed to put the destruction of his home and his possessions right out of his mind.
Bamburgh was a small town on the coast of Northumberland. An old castle, a beautiful stretch of beach and some lovely, old stone architecture made the village very picturesque but, on a Sunday, rather uneventful. Nevertheless, it turned out to be just what they all needed. They’d set out, the roof of Larkin’s Golf down, Alison in the back on a borrowed booster seat. Straight up the A1 to Northumberland, an old Crash Test Dummies tape blaring out, Larkin making the two of them laugh with his attempts at singing along to it. It set the mood perfectly: the further away the city got, the more relaxed they all became.
When they arrived at Bamburgh they headed straight for the dunes – Alison immediately rolling down them and getting covered in sand.
“She’s enjoying herself,” Larkin said.
“We don’t get out of the city much,” Jane replied, her face turned away.
After walking along the beach – shoes off for Larkin and Jane, Alison collecting stones and seashells as they went – they drove to Seahouses, a nearby fishing village, for a fish-and-chip lunch.
Larkin was unsurprised to find the place had altered. Unsurprised – but disappointed. They settled in the fish-and-chip restaurant at a plastic table with attached, moulded chairs just beside the fruit machine. Jane looked at Larkin with fond exasperation. ‘Oi – what’s the matter, misery guts?”
“This has all changed.” Through the window they could see the main street; a half-hearted attempt at gaudy modernity had been superimposed over the old-style charm of the town. It hadn’t worked.
“Everything does, you old fart,” Jane remarked, teasing. “When were you last here?”
“Used to come here as a kid for summer holidays with my folks and sister. I remember it as somewhere I was happy. That’s why I suggested it today.”
Jane’s smile broadened. “What – you were happy in Seahouses, or happy in the false security of your childhood nostalgia?”
Larkin felt his face reddening. “Aw, shuddup,” he said, grinning wryly. The smile extended to his eyes and they locked with Jane’s. Something zapped between them: something that had nothing to do with Seahouses or childhood nostalgia.
After lunch they walked round the harbour, Alison fascinated by the fishing trawlers docked at the sides, bobbing and unmanned, surrounded by floating seagulls feasting on the remnants of discarded fish guts. There were piles of lobster traps by the harbour wall and the whole area reeked, unsurprisingly, of fish. It was an unexceptional scene in many respects, but Larkin doubted Alison had ever seen anything like it in real life.
They found a pub with a play area for a mid-afternoon drink. Alison was happy amusing herself on the swings and slides, yelling to Jane and Larkin to watch her as she performed some feat she was particularly proud of. Other children quickly gravitated towards her, and they soon became friends, in a way that only children of that age can.
“She seems very contented,” said Larkin, sipping his drink. “Very confident.”
“She is,” Jane replied. “Very happy, very bright. Makes friends easily.” She sighed. “I just hope she doesn’t change.”
Larkin nodded. “Start running with a bad crowd, you mean.”
“You’ve seen where I live. I can’t afford to move. I just have to try me best, do me damnedest for her.”
Larkin drank his pint. He knew what a fight Jane had on her hands.
Eventually the weather changed, and tiredness crept over Alison. They took that as a signal; it was time to leave. They had had fun: a good, life-affirming experience. Neither Jane nor Larkin could remember the last time they’d enjoyed that kind of day.
They returned to Newcastle with Alison asleep in the back of the car. As they approached the city and saw the sun slowly sinking behind the towerblocks, Larkin felt his heart ebb with the fading light. No matter how pleasant the day had been, he knew there were problems he had to face; for every escape, there was a return. By the time they’d reached Scotswood that feeling had lodged firmly inside him, but with it he’d forced a determinist attitude; the things that were to be dealt with were Monday-morning things. They could be postponed until then. Because first there was Sunday night.
Jane entered the living room, slapped a Teenage Fanclub CD in the player, poured a glass of wine, made herself comfortable in an armchair. Relaxed. As the abrasive but beautiful music started to cascade from the speakers, she looked at Larkin and smiled, almost shyly.
“So you don’t mind if I stay over, then?”
“ ’Course not,” Jane replied, then looked down to her wine, quickly adding, “That sofa’s pretty serviceable. Besides,” she looked up, cheekily, “I couldn’t let you run round the West End of Newcastle dressed like that, could I?”
Larkin laughed. Sipped his wine.
“So,” he said eventually, “what’s a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?”
“I presume you mean Scotswood, not me lovely flat.”
“I do.”
Jane sighed, sat back in the armchair. “Where do I start?”
“At the beginning. We’ve got all night.”
So, with a few glasses of wine for fuel, she started to tell him her life story.
She had been brought up in a council flat in Longbenton. Her father worked at Vickers; her mother was a cleaner. She had a younger brother, “And me dad used to let him get away with owt. He was one of the most troublesome little bastards on the estate. Honestly, it was like livin’ with The Simpsons.”
“With you as Lisa?” asked Larkin, amused.
“Too right,” she replied. “Our Gary went round raisin’ merry hell and I wasn’t even allowed out. It was ‘Study hard, do well for yourself’ – all o’ that. All me dad’s doin’. If I went to a disco he was waitin’ for us when it finished, he’d check me homework over – and boyfriends? I barely had any friends, never mind boyfriends. I think he was trainin’ us to be a nun.”
“I suppose he meant well.”
“I suppose so,” said Jane, taking a drink. “He thought he had me best interests at heart.” She gave a half-smile. “Over-protective sexist old bastard.”
“I take it you two don’t get on?”
“Not any more,” she said, her expression hardening.
“What happened?”
“I just had enough. He always said ’e wanted the best for us, that it was all for me own good an’ that, but I think he was just a control freak. An’ there’s nothin’ I hate more. I thought, ‘Once I get to university I’ll be shot of him’, but I couldn’t wait that long. So I rebelled. I would creep out at nights, go drinkin’, partyin’, whatever. I used to go to raves, get E-ed off me head, turn up home three days later, just to see the look on his face.”
“And that made him madder?”
“Aye, did it, but he could see his control was slipping. He wouldn’t raise a finger to me, but he was powerless to stop us. Then I got worse. I started knockin’ around with Todd Gibbons an’ that really annoyed him.”
“Who?” asked Larkin, blankly.
“Todd Gibbons,” Jane said with a laugh. Larkin noticed she was blushing. “Longbenton’s self-styled teenage gangster Big Boss. Well, he was – he’s inside now. Best place for him. Prick. I only started goin’ out with him because he was the person who annoyed Dad th
e most. I’d have gone out with Jeremy Beadle if it’d narked him more.”
“It probably would have done,” Larkin said, straight-faced. “But I think I can see what’s coming next.”
“Yeah,” she said. “Predictable, aren’t I? Todd got us knocked up while I was taking me A-levels. When he found out, I didn’t see the twat for dust.”
“And your dad?”
“Wanted to welcome me back with open arms. All in the past.” She leaned forward, body involuntarily tensing as she immersed herself in old emotions. “On one condition. I had to have an abortion.” She sighed. “He thought I’d done it to get back at him. Which I suppose I had. Anyway, I was goin’ to have it done, but before I did, I weighed up the alternatives. If I went through with it, got rid of the baby, he’d have us where he wanted us, wouldn’t he? I’d given in once – I’d do it again. I’d turn into me mother, an’ that would be me life over. Then I thought of the baby. I knew it would be hard work bein’ a mother, but I felt like I wanted to give it a go. Find somethin’ to put all me love into, do somethin’ positive for the future, make a child and bring it up with the right values. It was a challenge. That decided us. I told him to fuck off.”
“And what did he do?”
“Threw us out of the house.” She drained her glass and filled it to the brim again.
“So where was your mother while all this was going on?”
Jane gave a dismissive wave of her hand. “She disappeared years ago. At least, her personality did. She was just a ghost who cleaned the flat and made meals for me dad.” Long-dammed anger seemed to be welling up inside her, spilling over into her words. “I’ve never seen either of them since I decided to go it alone. And I don’t want to. As far as I’m concerned, they don’t exist. I’ve got no family. Only Alison. She’s me family now.”
She stopped talking, took a couple of mouthfuls of wine, calming herself down. She continued. “So I got meself this council flat.” She gave a bitter laugh. “Became the scourge of the tabloids – an unmarried, pregnant eighteen-year-old. Those bastards who bang on about scroungin’ single mothers wanna come here an’ see the conditions we have to bring kids up in. It’s shockin’.”
Little Triggers Page 14
