‘Oh my God!’ Alfie Parker gasped as he saw the bloodied towel held up to Duncan’s head. He dashed over to him. ‘What happened?’ He peeled back the towel and gave a grimace. Blood matted Duncan’s hair, some of it congealing. It had dripped down onto his shirt and splashed on the sofa where he was sitting. He swayed groggily. ‘That looks bad,’ Alfie said.
‘It feels it,’ Duncan replied.
‘What the hell happened for you to get into such a state?’ he asked, pressing the towel on his head to help stem the bleeding. ‘And don’t tell me you ran into a door either.’
He winced. ‘I ran into Donnie Craddick, more like.’
‘Donnie Craddick did this?’
‘Some of it. He had help.’
‘We should ring the police.’
Duncan stiffened. ‘No. No police.’
‘He can’t go around beating people up.’
‘He can…’ he said.
‘Is there something you’re not telling me, Duncan?’
He smiled weakly. ‘It’s not your problem. I just needed someone to drive me to the hospital to get my head fixed.’ He touched his side and groaned. ‘I’m not in a fit state to drive right now.’
‘Who else was with Craddick? Who did this to you?’
‘You don’t need to know that.’
‘I’m your friend.’
‘Precisely why you don’t need to know,’ he said. ‘Just help me up, eh?’
Alfie helped hoist him to his feet. He was heavy, he thought, still a big bloke. It was more than unusual to see Duncan Winslade looking even remotely helpless.
‘It’s a good job you rang me when you did, what with all the blood you’re losing.’
‘It looks worse than what it is. A few stitches and I’ll be as good as new.’
‘The man’s an animal,’ he said angrily, still smarting from his meeting with Donnie Craddick. ‘Tell me what’s going on, Duncan.’
Duncan shook his head, the bloodied towel masking half his face. ‘I can’t, Alfie. Let’s leave it at that, huh?’
Alfie sighed, helped his friend out to the van.
* * * *
7
This is Your Life
He sat in the silence of the empty house. His wife had left him.
Not just a short-term thing, storming out to stay at her mother’s for a few days like she used to do after the many regular bust-ups they’d had over the years. This time it looked permanent.
He’d checked her wardrobes and drawers. Most of her things had gone. So too had their suitcases. Her jewellery had vanished, such as it was. And most telling of all, her prized collection of old Lionel Ritchie albums and CDs had gone, so he knew it was bad.
Barry Stocker hadn’t believed the letter, not at first. Well, not exactly a letter. A few words scribbled half-heartedly on a scrap of paper telling him in no uncertain terms that she’d had enough of this crappy way of life and was leaving him for another man who had a detached house in Rotherham, someone with a full-time job, no beer belly and a car that always passed its MOT.
He hadn’t believed it, shook his head, laughed at her silliness, screwed up the paper and tossed it at the bin and missed. It hit the bin’s side, bounced straight on back to him like it was insisting it should be taken seriously. So he went upstairs and discovered it was true.
He’d been sitting there all night, on the edge of the bed, head in hands and moping, feeling sorry for himself, feeling guilty, feeling that nobody wanted him, everyone was ditching him, and feeling like his life was shit and hardly worth the breath anymore.
And some of those Lionel Ritchie albums had been amongst his favourites, too. He’d even lost Lionel.
He’d have gotten drunk, but there was no booze in the house because they couldn’t afford it, and he couldn’t go down to the pub because of the very same reason. He had no way of nullifying the pain he was experiencing.
And what’s more, he didn’t have a beer belly, for Christ’s sake! He patted his stomach, sucked it in. There was no way he could get a beer belly without beer!
He stood up, looked in the full-length mirror of the open wardrobe door. God, you look awful, he thought. Even I would leave me if I had to look at that every day.
Just as the dawn was breaking he flopped under the duvet and pulled it over his head, screwing himself up into a tight little ball of misery, eventually falling into a fitful sleep.
It was his mobile that woke him up, playing the theme to The Italian Job. He groaned, grabbed the irritating little monster and squinted in the gloom to see who the hell was disturbing him before midday.
It was Alfie Parker. He answered with a grunt. Then heaved his bulk up onto one elbow.
‘In hospital? Duncan? Was he pissed again?’
The rising heat drew out the sweet smell of the dry earth. Birds were chirruping noisily, a couple of sparrows squabbled and kicked up dust. Dickie Sugden was digging intently but ineffectually with a trowel, watching a bee with some trepidation as it lurched drunkenly around him, looking like it was completely lost and hoping it would stumble on the right path if it flew around enough.
Alfie Parker was sitting on his old deckchair outside his allotment shed, watching Dickie and drinking a mug of tea. The warm, comforting dribbles of rain-like sound of scuffing and scraping of earth being tilled, and the chink-chinks of someone on another plot hitting rocks in the stony ground filled the silence with peaceful memories.
Alfie loved being on the allotment. The sense of cutting himself off from everything else. His radio playing low so that the music appeared to come from his head. A morning newspaper to be relished after two hours hard graft. Saying hello to the neighbour, swapping cauliflower woes, musing on the size of the green beans this year compared to last. The world kept at bay by a rickety old picket fence and a padlocked gate that you could climb with hardly any effort, or push over with one shove if you had a mind.
Dickie Sugden loved it, too. He wasn’t a bit of trouble, rain or shine. Like he had this connection with the earth, the most basic thing in life, whereas he couldn’t make a connection with much else.
‘You OK, Dickie?’ he said.
Dickie didn’t look up. ‘Yeah,’ he said, hammering away at the earth trying to dig a hole.
‘Are you feeling good this morning?’
‘Yeah.’
‘I mean, everything’s all right is it?’
‘Yeah.’
‘What I mean is do you feel happy? Are you happy?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Are you listening to me, Dickie?’
‘Yeah.’
He sighed, took a sip of the brew. ‘Do you remember being a kid, Dickie? A little boy?’
‘Yeah…’ he said, quieter this time.
‘Do you remember when you got beaten up, put into hospital?’
He nodded ponderously. ‘Yeah.’
‘Can you remember who beat you up?’
‘No.’
‘You sure you remember being beaten up, though?’
He nodded, his digging becoming more furious. ‘Yeah.’
‘So who was there? Who beat you with sticks, Dickie?’
‘Can’t remember.’
‘Are you telling me the truth, Dickie?’
‘Yeah.’
Alfie studied the man, a small plant pot sitting beside him bearing tiny green shoots trying to curl to the sky. ‘Are you happy, Dickie?’
‘Yeah,’ he said.
‘That’s good,’ said Alfie, pouring the remnants of his cold tea onto a pot of basil. ‘That’s good to hear.’
Barry Stocker came trudging up the earthen path towards Alfie’s allotment. He looked pale, his shoulders hunched like he was folding in on himself, thought Alfie.
‘Got any tea left?’ said Barry, grabbing a wooden chair from the inside of the shed, unfolding Alfie’s newspaper and scanning the headlines. He tossed it away.
‘Sorry,’ said Alfie, frowning at his creased newspaper.
‘So,
give me the low-down on Duncan. What’s the damage?’
‘The split in his head needed a few stitches, he’s got a cracked rib, and they thought he had a collapsed lung. They’re keeping him in for observation and all that kind of medical stuff.’
‘Jeez!’ said Barry. ‘So it was that bastard Donnie Craddick?’
‘Yeah. Him and one of his pet gorillas.’
‘Did you call the police?’
Alfie shook his head. ‘Duncan was set against it. As far as I can tell, Donnie’s got some kind of a hold on Duncan, too.’
Barry nodded sagely. ‘But what the hell did Mickey Craddick ever have on Duncan? He was a copper, in heaven’s name. Don’t tell me even coppers weren’t safe from his filthy reach.’
Alfie shrugged. ‘Someone ought to be able to do something about the Craddicks once and for all,’ he said. ‘Wipe them off the face of the earth.’
Barry raised a brow. It wasn’t like Alfie to sound so cold and mercenary. ‘Well if he had coppers like Duncan under his belt then what chance do we have? I guess we just leave Mickey’s little bastard of a son to get fed up of being here and piss off. He’s like a bad dose of the flu; he’ll go away eventually.’
‘Yeah, and he’s creating misery while he’s here,’ he said. ‘And trust me I reckon he’ll be here some time yet.’ Alfie popped the plastic cup back on his thermos. He was too embarrassed, even fearful, to mention he’d been threatened by Donnie Craddick and had still to go that very morning to clean the man’s carpets as instructed. Alfie’s visit to the allotment had been impromptu; he needed the fresh air and earthy smells of peace before having his nose defiled by the smell of Donnie Craddick’s obnoxious threats and gloating. So he called at Mrs Sugden’s to collect Dickie on the way. ‘Anyhow, thought you needed to know, that’s all. You might want to visit Duncan.’
Barry looked away. ‘Maybe,’ he said.
‘What is it with you two? You’ve never really got on for ages. He’s your brother-in-law. He’s never been anything but good to you.’
‘You think so?’ he said sullenly.
‘So tell me, what’s gone off between you.’
‘Nothing that concerns you. It’s between Duncan and me.’
‘So you lost a sister – I know how much that hurt you – but he lost his wife. He loved her, too, you know.’
Barry nodded. ‘It’s not just that,’ he said.
‘I’m your friend, Barry. We’ve known each other since school. If you can’t tell me then who can you tell?’
Barry Stocker rose to his feet. ‘Ever thought that friends ought just to keep their mouths shut every now and again?’ he said. ‘I’ve got more troubles than anyone knows and I’m not in the mood for sharing them. I’ve got no job, no money, no prospects, no bloody wife…’
‘What?’
Barry grimaced. He’d said too much. ‘She left me. Packed everything and buggered off.’
‘Don’t worry. She’ll be back. She always comes back. It’s the pressure of things, Barry, that’s all. She needs a little space.’
‘She took her Lionel Ritchie albums.’
Alfie groaned. ‘That’s bad.’
‘You’re telling me it’s bad. How bad can it get?’ He left Alfie, mumbling something to Dickie as he made his way down the path and out of the allotment.
It got Alfie riled up, thinking how Mickey Craddick was still at the heart of everything that was tearing all their lives up, corrupting decent people even though he was dead and buried. He hated that man more than he’d ever hated anything in his life. And now he hated his son.
‘You OK, Dickie?’ he asked.
‘Yeah.’
‘You happy?’
‘Yeah,’ he replied, chopping at the earth.
Alfie Parker had been in Mickey Craddick’s house many times before. It always filled him with a slithery kind of dread as he unloaded his heavy equipment, left the van and lugged it to the front door.
It was a huge Victorian affair, built by one of the colliery owners for his son and daughter. Detached, God knows how many bedrooms and bathrooms, conservatory out back the size of his house, sitting in a large garden all of its own. It was called Red House, for reasons no one ever knew, as it was built in creamy sandstone and never had a splash of red paint anywhere. Someone said it was the beds of red roses that used to fill the garden. They weren’t there anymore. Mickey Craddick had re-landscaped the garden and put down lawns, lots of decking and lots and lots of gravel. Luckily some of the mature trees were left standing by the high brick walls that formed Red House’s boundary, walls eight feet high to keep prying eyes and unwelcome guests out. There was a high wooden gate hung between two stone pillars topped with bronze stags, and a CCTV camera positioned so no one could nick them to sell off for scrap metal, like they’d been doing recently with the local railway lines and cables.
Alfie Parker rang the doorbell. He was kept waiting for ages, had to ring again. Finally Donnie Craddick answered the door. ‘Round the back,’ he said abruptly.
‘What do you mean?’ said Alfie.
‘Tradesmen round the back,’ said Donnie.
Alfie narrowed his eyes. ‘I never used to go round the back,’ he said indignantly.
‘Well you do now,’ he replied, slamming the door in Alfie’s face.
Tosser, he thought.
He loaded the van back up and drove it round the back of the house, had to go through the ritual of knocking and ringing all over again. This time it was one of the guys who had been in the pub with Craddick, trying to cause trouble, who answered. Silently he indicated for Alfie to go inside. He was chewing noisily on something crunchy and disgusting.
Alfie plonked his cleaning machine and various hoses and nozzles in the hall, and was called into Mickey Craddick’s large office to find Donnie Craddick standing looking out of a magnificent bay window onto a tangle of glossy rhododendron bushes outside.
Rooms filled with gracious period features, mostly High Victorian and Art Nouveau in influence, had been ripped bare by Mickey Craddick as soon as he moved in, and the house duly filled with furnishings and furniture that looked cheap and tawdry, like you’d find in those pseudo-classy hotels abroad that were all plastic and chipboard, thought Alfie.
‘It must have cost him a small fortune to make it look this bad,’ said Donnie Craddick as if reading Alfie’s mind. He turned to him. ‘He had no idea what taste was. He had the money, of course, but money and taste don’t always sit hand-in-hand in my experience. He wouldn’t employ any kind of interior decorator, always insisted he knew best.’ He laughed. ‘The evidence is before you. I rest my case!’
‘Why’d you beat up Duncan?’ said Alfie, not sure where the words or the strength to say them came from.
Donnie stared hard at him. ‘It’s no business of yours. All you do is clean the carpets under my feet.’
Alfie drew in a breath, thought he’d best button his lip. ‘Where do you want me to start?’
‘In here,’ he said. He went over to a small pile of red-backed books on a table, scooped them up and put them all in one of the desk drawers. All bar one. He opened the remaining slim volume and thumbed through the leaves. ‘You know, I’ve always been fascinated by the British Empire. It’s a dirty word right now, all that heavy-handed expansionism built on the backs of domination, slavery, violence and the like. But you’ve got to admit, it worked for a time.’
‘Sure,’ said Alfie, ‘but it working doesn’t make it right.’
‘What’s wrong, what’s right? That’s a very personal viewpoint. Me, I don’t see anything wrong in the survival of the fittest, that’s how nature operates. Hell, it’s the very basis of our free market economy, laissez faire and all that.’
‘The two aren’t the same,’ said Alfie.
Donnie Craddick raised a brow. ‘Suddenly the expert?’
‘The free market principles and practices laid down in the eighteenth century and perpetuated today are a bastardisation of the theories of t
he economist Adam Smith from his book The Wealth of Nations. He was appalled at the brutality and poverty endured by the lowest classes in society and suggested that everybody, including the poorest, might benefit from freer, properly managed markets. Instead, it was big business, the factory owners, those in power, who interpreted it to mean profit at any cost, by any means – they used their version of laissez faire as an excuse to do what they wanted to maximise profit, at the expense of people if necessary, and blamed bigger forces at work. And that bastardisation is still with us. Look around you if you want to see what that means in practice. Look at Overthorpe. Look at you.’
Craddick clapped slowly. ‘Well, Alfie, quite the bookworm, aren’t we? I’m surprised.’
‘I may clean carpets, Donnie, but I’m no idiot. I see what you’re doing.’
‘I’m carrying out a little mercantile expansionism of my own, that’s all. Filling a void left by my father. Building on his empire.’
‘And you don’t care who you crush to get it, right?’
‘Survival of the fittest.’ he said. ‘But I suppose you have something profound to say about that too, eh?’
Alfie shook his head. ‘I’ll let you read up on the subject for yourself. They did teach you to read, didn’t they?’
Donnie Craddick’s face fell deadly serious. ‘Watch your mouth. I’ll warn you now, this particular book is dedicated to you, Alfie,’ he said. ‘And just as the British Empire was forged with redcoats, this small pile of little red books in the drawer is my red-coated army in Overthorpe.’ He closed up the small red book, raised it dramatically. ‘Alfie Parker, this is your life! Remember that old programme on telly, Alfie? This is Your Life. Eamon Andrews, and was it Michael Aspel later that used to host it? The stars being surprised by the host and then having to endure all those blasts from the past as they filed in to revisit them. That must have been excruciating at times, seeing people you’d probably never want to see again. All your past life in a big red book. Makes you shudder. I was too young to have seen it, of course, but my father liked the idea that each person he had – how shall we phrase it? – special relationships with, had to have their own little red book. This one is yours. Not a great deal in it, but enough, eh, Alfie?’ He opened the drawer, tossed the book inside with the others. He locked the drawer and put the key in his pocket. ‘This key stays close to my heart always,’ he said, patting the pocket lightly. ‘It’s very important. The key to my ambitions, you might say.’
THE DOMINO BOYS (a psychological thriller) Page 6
