Duncan was surrounded by members of the Slag Gang. He tried to barge his way through and Craddick sent a plump fist into his shoulder, and Duncan staggered back. ‘Bugger off, Craddick,’ he said, trying to push through again. He met with another thump, this time harder.
‘Think you’re tough, Winslade?’ he said.
‘Didn’t your dad teach you any other words?’ He stared hard at the leering face. He could see Craddick’s mind working overtime behind the eyes.
‘My dad could kill your dad. And your mam, if he wanted to.’
‘I’m scared,’ he replied, clearly not.
The two boys gazed at each other, one of the other boys beginning to rhythmically barge his shoulder tauntingly against Duncan’s.
‘I’m going to kill you,’ said Craddick, ‘if you don’t tell me I’m tougher than you.’
‘Bugger off,’ he fired. The shoulder-barging grew in its intensity. Duncan Winslade turned in a flash and landed a meaty punch in the boy’s face and he fell backwards, yelping shrilly in shock and pain. ‘Now get out of my way, Craddick,’ he said as they both watched the stricken boy’s eyes begin to fill with tears, a little rosette of blood appearing at his nose, ‘or I’ll do the same to you.’
Mickey Craddick found himself in a dilemma. To allow Duncan to pass, to effectively win, wasn’t an option; he’d look weak in front of his gang. But the large, quiet Winslade kid had proved he had what it took to take him on. ‘Say you’re sorry first,’ he said. ‘Say you’re sorry for busting his nose.’
‘Sorry for busting his nose,’ Duncan said flatly. Craddick grinned. ‘Sorry it wasn’t yours.’ Craddick’s smile shrank.
He had no option. Mickey Craddick threw himself at Duncan and the pair was soon an untidy, flailing mound of arms and legs beating the hell out of each other on the dusty concrete. Attracted by the word ‘Fight!’ pretty soon they were surrounded by a shifting fence of cheering boys all eager to get close to the action.
A teacher barged through, yelling at the top of his voice for them to stop. When they didn’t he bent down and grabbed each boy by the collar and yanked them to their feet. They continued to lunge at each other until he adjusted his hold and instead grabbed them by their ears, lifting them to their tiptoes.
‘You ruffians!’ he thundered. ‘I might have known it would be you two! Inside, both of you!’
He marched them across the yard to the door and screamed at the rest of the boys to stop gawping. Both boys were give six-of-the-best without allowing time to discuss who was wrong and who was right. Afterwards they were made to stand against the blackboard, like the dunces they were, said the teacher, and told not to move a muscle the rest of the day. They exchanged fiery glances at each other the whole time, Mickey Craddick mouthing silently that he was going to kill Duncan, and Duncan mouthing back ‘bugger off’.
It was a turning point for Duncan Winslade, in more ways than one. Mickey Craddick never openly challenged him again, though they both made it plain they loathed each other. And after the scrap that’s when Alfie Parker and Barry Stocker came up to him and asked him if he would be their gang leader. They’d had to endure Craddick’s bullying daily and they felt they needed some security. Their dads already knew each other – they were on the same shift in the mine, and they played dominoes together down at the Coach and Horses every Friday night. Duncan thought it would be one in the eye for Craddick if he formed a gang of his own. Sure, he agreed, we can have a gang, though his heart wasn’t really in it. He’d always been a loner.
They decided their hangout would be in the line of trees that fringed the railway embankment through which the trains rumbled down the track to the colliery to fill up with coal, and the boys met up once a week to play and discuss business related to the effective operation of a gang, like had they enough money to buy four-for-a penny Black Jacks or two-for-a-penny Flying Saucers from the sweet shop at the top of their street. They deliberated for ages about a name for the gang, hunkered down in a clearing made under the spreading hawthorn trees, the Sun filtering through the gently shifting leaves and showering them in shimmering patches of dappled sunlight.
‘Our dads play dominoes,’ Alfie observed, sitting on the ground and poking at the dry earth and weeds with a stick.
‘So?’ said Barry, rolling his eyes. ‘What’s dominoes got to do with anything?’
‘So we could be called the Domino Boys,’ he returned.
‘That’s lame,’ said Barry sullenly, mainly because Barry hardly ever had good ideas; he always figured he wasn’t bright enough to think of them. And because Alfie was a full year younger than him and better at coming up with ideas than he was. Alfie got praised by teachers for being able to write good stories, one of the reasons he’d been targeted by Craddick; being good at anything was bad enough, but writing? You were just asking for it.
‘Yeah, I like that,’ said Duncan, staring down the grassy embankment alive with tall grasses and slender stems carrying swaying heads of creamy-coloured cow parsley. ‘The Domino Boys. I like that.’
And so it stuck. The threesome would always be known as the Domino Boys.
Duncan Winslade was saying goodbye to the town. Or good riddance. He couldn’t make up his mind which. He’d spent the morning walking around Overthorpe, visiting old haunts, the places where he used to live, to play, to court. And the last stop was Victoria Street. It should have been the junior school, but the old building that had been built at the turn of the last century had been demolished to make way for more houses. That made him sadder than anything. He couldn’t quite understand why, as he’d hated school. But he guessed it was chiefly because when something like that disappears it takes something of you away too. A bit of your past, who you were, the things that made you.
He didn’t mope long. He wandered back home and shrugged away the memories.
For sale. The sign that had been hammered into the ground outside the front door was again an amalgam of sadness tinged with happiness. It wouldn’t be long and he’d be leaving Overthorpe – leaving England – for good. Now that he’d recently retired from the police service he was free to do as he pleased. And he was sick and tired of living on his own. Sick and tired of living with the secret, having to be careful what he said in case he inadvertently revealed even the tiniest detail.
And with Mickey Craddick now dead, that made things even easier for him. God, it had been such a relief to hear he’d snuffed it. Even though Duncan heard on the grapevine about Mickey Craddick’s late turn of mind, who, realising death was inevitable and being a staunch though lapsed Catholic, confessed readily to all his sins and said all the holds he’d ever had over people were finally severed, he never quite believed him. Like a good many people in Overthorpe, tied to Mickey Craddick for one thing or another, Duncan Winslade couldn’t wait to hear that the bastard had finally died, taking his goddamn blackmailing ways with him.
He tested the sign, making sure it was planted into the ground firmly enough. He’d be seeing the other members of the Domino Boys tonight, he thought. There wouldn’t be many more occasions when they’d meet up, like their fathers before them, to play dominoes every Friday night.
That, too, brought a tinge of sadness, but not for long. Duncan Winslade’s capacity for friendship was as shallow as his capacity for nostalgia. Since coming back to Overthorpe after being in London he’d never adapted to living in the dead-end, filthy little town of his youth. Once you leave an old place you can never fully return.
* * * *
4
The Domino Boys
‘Here they are, punctual as clockwork,’ said the landlord. Usual, is it?’
The three men went to the bar, exchanged fleeting greetings with the landlord. ‘Need you ask, Pete? I’ll get these,’ said Duncan Winslade to his friends, fishing in his pocket for his wallet.
Alfie Parker and Barry Stocker peeled off and went to a small back room that they’d booked for the night. It was a tradition carried on from the days of the
ir fathers, who had also used this same room, sitting at the same table and playing with the same set of dominoes. For one reason or another – ill-health and getting old basically – their fathers were all dead. It had been Duncan, when he came up North seven years ago to bury his father – the old man being the last of the original Domino Boys – and set up house in Overthorpe again, as he was staring at his father’s old set of dominoes after the funeral, that he suggested on a whim they extend the tradition in memory of the three lifelong friends. After all, Alfie, Barry and he had been friends for a long time, in spite of Duncan’s long absence in the Met, and of course their gang had been called the Domino Boys. Sure, Alfie and Barry agreed, sounds like a good idea, they said. Fitting, somehow.
It was only ever intended as a one-off, but Friday night became domino night. Maybe it was because each of them needed the others, in some small way. Or perhaps habits are just too hard to kick. It had been going on for so long that no one questioned it anymore.
Alfie and Barry sat down at the table.
‘How’re things?’ said Barry absently.
Alfie shrugged. ‘So-so.’
‘Carpet cleaning doing OK?’
‘Could be better, but can’t complain. How’s the job market?’
‘Crap.’
Alfie noticed how his friend had his hand down by the pocket of his jeans, counting loose change. ‘Look, here…’ he said, pulling out his wallet and opening it.
‘What’re you doing?’ said Barry, quickly putting the change away.
He handed over a banknote. ‘For when it’s your round…’
‘I don’t need your money,’ said Barry sullenly, looking up to the door. ‘Put it away.’
‘Christ, come on, Barry, I know you haven’t got anything. There’s nothing to be ashamed of. Take it.’
‘You need it.’
‘I’ve got enough. C’mon, mate, I owe you.’
‘For what?’
‘I dunno. Plenty.’
Barry Stocker sighed heavily, reluctantly took the note and put it into his pocket. ‘I’ll pay you back.’
‘No need.’
Duncan Winslade breezed into the room bearing a tray laden with their drinks. ‘Here we are,’ he said, setting it down on the table. He sat down, scraped a chair up to the table. He raised a glass of beer. ‘Here’s to the early though much anticipated death of Mickey Craddick!’ he said brightly.
The other two grabbed a glass each and they brought them together with a sharp tinkle over the centre of the table.
‘God rot you, Mickey,’ said Alfie, grinning.
‘Goodbye to bad rubbish,’ joined Barry.
Silence descended as they drank down half their beers, another ritual, before plonking down the glasses, almost in unison, on the scarred and dented table. Duncan took the box of dominoes out of his coat pocket and started laying them out ready for their game.
The click of the dominoes against the wood was somehow comforting. It was a calm, quiet, age-old game, hardly played by the younger generation. Not like it used to be. The Coach and Horses had been noted for its hotly-contested competitions, drawing eager men from all over the county, whose position on the league table was viewed as vitally important. There were photographs of the proud winners of the trophy hung in the room where they now played, the very room that hosted the finals, year after year. The last one was played in 1989, the year the mine eventually folded and people had more pressing things on their minds. And anyhow, fashions began to change. It was considered an old man’s game. Duncan, Alfie and Barry were the last of them regularly playing dominoes in the Coach and Horses.
‘The funeral must have cost a fortune,’ said Alfie. ‘I dropped by the graveyard to check it out this morning, before I went down to the allotment. You should have seen it; he had a hearse pulled by four black horses, with these great black feathers on their heads. And the headstone… I heard it was still being made. Marble exported from Italy, nearly ten feet high.’
‘I heard that, too,’ said Barry. ‘He came across a lot of opposition to it, not least because he was a bent bastard and people objected to it, but that the thing was going to be one of the tallest structures in the graveyard, like he was taunting everyone even after his death. But he was on the council, and he got his way like he always did; they allowed it.’
Duncan was turning the dominoes face-down. ‘The amount of people he had in his pockets made sure he would always get his way,’ he said. He thumbed over his shoulder. ‘You know, even Pete was paying some kind of protection money to him.’
‘Get away!’ said Alfie. ‘Pete? Surely the brewery would have had something to say about that.’
‘They didn’t know. Mickey had blokes regularly coming in and causing trouble, starting fights, smashing the place up. You remember what it was like. Either Pete scraped a bit off the takings to stop them or he’d lose the pub.’
‘Why didn’t he go to the police?’ asked Barry.
Duncan looked up at him. ‘Why did nobody else ever think to go to the police?’ he said.
Barry averted his eyes. ‘Bastard,’ he muttered, taking up his drink again. ‘He thought he owned this town.’
‘Anyhow, that’s what I heard,’ said Duncan. ‘But nobody had any proof, and Pete refused to do anything about it, even when I asked him whether it was true or not. He was scared not only for the pub and his job, but for his wife and kids. You’d think he’d have moved away, started up somewhere better away from Craddick, but he never did. My guess is Mickey had some other hold over him. That was his modus operandi, something Mickey Craddick was a dab-hand at, blackmail and intimidation. So like a lot of folks hereabouts Pete just went along with it.’
‘Thought he looked a bit more cheerful,’ said Alfie. ‘Now I know why.’
‘Let’s not let that son-of-a-bitch spoil our game,’ said Duncan, sharing out the pieces. ‘I’ve put my house up for sale…’
‘What?’ said Alfie. ‘Where are you going?’
‘Moving abroad.’
‘To that villa of yours in Spain? The one you go to every year on holiday?’
‘That’s the one,’ he replied. ‘This place – this country – it’s got nothing to offer. I’ve nothing left to stay here for. Not since Sophie died…’ He paused with the flat of his hand on the dominoes. ‘Now I’ve finally retired, got my pension, I can sell the house and do something different with my life.’
‘That was Sophie’s house, too,’ said Barry dully. ‘She loved that house.’
‘I know,’ he said quietly. ‘I realise the house is all that’s really left of your sister, but she was my wife, too, and I know she wouldn’t have wanted me to spend the rest of my days moping about the place unhappy.’
Barry Stocker grunted. Nobody in the Stocker household had been keen on the idea of one of their girls marrying a copper. That was back in 1979. Had it been a few years later, in the aftermath of the miners’ strike, it would never have happened. There had been clashes, inevitably intense and ugly, often turning violent, between striking miners picketing the colliery gates and the police, the two primary careers suggested to decades of kids leaving Overthorpe secondary school. The two professions had been sitting together, if not easily then in begrudging toleration, for decades, but finally came together in a tragic, hate-fuelled cocktail of politics, brute force and mutual loathing during the bitter strike. It split the community and the wound had never really healed. In parts of Overthorpe, the police were hated almost as much as the blacklegs, most of them eventually forced to leave town by an unrelenting, uncomfortable heat wave of contempt.
But Duncan Winslade hadn’t been living in Overthorpe then. Just before the strike he left the town to go to work for the Met in London. So he was mostly immune to the contempt felt for the police in Overthorpe. The disease of fulmination that still permeated the dead shops, empty back alleys, the rundown streets had infected, by turn, the younger generation who in these tough times were also looking for something to r
ail against. The fact the town turned out a thousand-strong on the day of Maggie Thatcher’s funeral burning a crude effigy of her outside the Job Centre and singing, ‘Ding dong, the wicked witch is dead…’ showed that it would be a while yet before any wounds were likely to heal. And it never would, thought Barry Stocker, unless something was done about the fact that the North was being sidelined.
Even though he knew Duncan was a decent bloke, there was something that burned like acid inside Barry whenever he talked about his bloody villa in Spain. Or his damned pension. Christ, to be fifty-five and retired, that was a damn luxury these days. What the hell would my pension be worth when I get to retire in ten years? Barry’s eyes narrowed as he looked at Duncan.
And he never saved his sister Sophie from drowning. He said he tried, but who knows really? Had he played chicken, refused to swim out and drag her back as the current took her further away from the shore? And now he was planning on abandoning her altogether, abandoning them all and going to Spain. Live the good life on his police pension while he was going to be left with nothing…
Alfie glanced at Barry, understood that all was not right. He was up tight. It’s how he went – up and down like the weather. He thought he’d better lighten things up a bit. ‘Here you are…’ he said, tossing three bits of card onto the table.
‘What’s this?’ said Duncan, who was blissfully unaware of Barry’s edginess.
‘Tickets to our latest production,’ he said, beaming.
‘Thought you said you were giving up the amateur dramatics,’ said Barry, his attention duly diverted as he snatched up the ticket.
‘One each for you and the wife,’ said Alfie. ‘Treat yourself. Have a night out at the Town Hall on me. This is our production of An Inspector Calls. It’s going to be quite good, you know. We’ve attracted some good actors coming over from Sheffield for some of the parts, and not just older people either. Got some young kids looking to get involved.’
THE DOMINO BOYS (a psychological thriller) Page 3
