by Nicky Black
‘Looks quite sexy, actually,’ smiled Sam. She shooed him into the bathroom, mouthing ‘half an hour’ to him with a lustful grin.
Inside the bathroom, Tommy stood at the cracked sink and examined his face in the mirror, mottled from years of steamy baths and a window you couldn’t open for fear it would come off its hinges. He pulled a face, gave his cheeks a slap. They needed some colour, but that was about to come. His skin tingled in anticipation; there was nothing he liked better than hearing his wife panting in his ear. He turned on the tap to wash his face and bits, ready for action, but it twirled in his fingers pointlessly, nothing coming out.
Lips pursed in irritation, he gave the pipe a kick. It clattered, brown gunk sputtering into his hands and falling through his fingers. He stared at it indignantly.
What a shit-hole this place was.
***
An hour later, Tommy and Sam had the house to themselves, Ashleigh, all trussed up in a frilly frock and mop cap, carted off by Denise to be shown off to her chums. Since Ashleigh was born, daytime sex came at a premium, the long days in bed eating toast, drinking tea, and shagging a distant memory to him now. Still, they took the opportunity whenever it arose.
Sam’s head rested on Tommy’s chest. ‘You are a sex machine,’ she purred.
Tommy tightened his arms around her and kissed the top of her head. ‘Aye, you’re a lucky woman.’
They chuckled and cuddled closer, Tommy running the tips of his fingers over the bones of her shoulders, the warmth and comfort of her body making him sleepy despite only waking up an hour ago. The contentment was short lived, however, as the sound of raised voices began to seep through the open window, an argument spilling out onto the street.
The Logans were at it again.
Tommy closed his eyes, feeling a deep unease at the sound of their mutual insults, reliving memories of Trevor Logan’s onslaught on this house which started the very day Tommy’s father was arrested.
Trevor, Carl the Camper’s big brother, had just been released from youth detention, and Mrs Logan, a loud-mouthed woman who ran the estate’s resident’s association where she sold her knock-off cigarettes and anything else she could get off the back of a lorry, was coming down hard on her son now he was eighteen and responsible for his own actions. Trevor’s appetite for heroin and cider, burglary and thieving from his mother’s purse had driven her to shop him to the police herself on many occasions despite her own dodgy goings-on.
And Trevor hated her for it. Sometimes the fights turned physical, and the pair had to be prised apart by neighbours. Mrs Logan came off the better these days, Trevor’s strength eaten away by the poisons he inflicted on himself. Little Carl would watch on quietly, observant and mute, having barely spoken a word since witnessing the murder of his father five years earlier. He’d been a toddler, not even out of nappies, and the experience had shut down what few words he’d learnt by then.
It was a murder they'd all paid for: Tommy’s father in jail, his mother dead, the Logans damaged beyond all repair.
Sam had stopped talking, her tightening grasp failing to soothe Tommy’s growing restlessness as he listened to Trevor let rip a string of obscenities so vile he found his eyes closing tighter.
Trevor was outside the house now, driven from his own front door by the fire poker Mrs Logan kept at the bottom of the stairs for these very occasions. Tommy braced himself for the sound of breaking glass, a brick through the window, and he wondered if Sam was asking herself the same question he was: Ashleigh. What life would she have? What protection could they offer?
‘Just ignore him,’ he heard Sam say, gently.
It was easier said than done. Trevor Logan, though barely a teenager at the time, had taken it upon himself to make Tommy and his mother’s lives hell once Peach had dragged Reggie away. Like Mrs Logan, Tommy’s mother had been a mainstay of the estate, loved and respected, if not a little bonkers. Despite her big personality, though, she’d had times of deep, deep despair; a sorrow that seemed to come from nowhere and have her in her bed with the light off for weeks on end. The trigger generally involved babies, he knew now in hindsight – news of a new arrival, a storyline on a soap opera. She’d been immersed in this gloom already when Reggie had committed his crime, and Trevor Logan had as good as finished her off.
An eye for an eye.
When he opened his eyes, Sam was up on her elbow, looking down at him.
‘What’s wrong?’ she asked.
‘Nowt.’
‘Tommy …’ There was a hint of warning in the tone.
‘Just … that.’ He pointed his thumb towards the window.
Sam shook her head. ‘Nah – ah.’
Sometimes Tommy thought she knew him too well. But if he raised the subject again, he risked the cold shoulder. Sam was an expert at it, and they’d had the conversation before: Tommy desperate to escape, Sam happy enough with her lot; a man she loved, a baby she adored, a roof over her head. Her bloody mother nearby.
Sam’s raised eyebrows dared him to speak.
‘What?’ he asked, all innocence.
‘You can be a right annoying little shit.’
‘I’m just thinking.’
‘What about?’
A beat. Why not have the conversation again? ‘Money,’ he said.
Sam dropped her head, her dark hair falling onto his chest. ‘We’ll manage,’ she mumbled, as if for the millionth time.
‘I don’t want to just manage. You deserve more.’
‘Don’t bring me into it,’ she said, lifting her head.
‘We deserve more then.’ He sat up, reaching for the cigarettes on the bedside table but finding the packet empty. ‘Ashleigh deserves more.’ He felt Sam’s hand on his back. It gave him the confidence he was looking for. ‘I’ve got all these ideas, Sam,’ he said. ‘I’m bursting with them. For a rave, a big one, like no one’s ever done up here before.’ He glanced back at her, testing the water.
Sam sat up next to him. ‘How much?’
Tommy hesitated. It scared him to say it out loud. ‘I reckon I could do it for five grand, maybe more. Probably more.’
‘Well, that’s that then,’ said Sam, lying back down.
Tommy’s head fell next to hers and they stared up at the stained ceiling. He thought he could make out Denise’s ugly mug in one of the expanding brown lines. ‘I just thought,’ he said, cautiously, ‘maybe your mam …’
Denise seemed to buy anything she wanted, always wearing something new, furniture delivered on what seemed like a weekly basis. She had the cash, no doubt about it. The pause was long and obstinate, but he’d started now. With the takings of a full-on rave, they could get out of this dump, move somewhere nice – Wideopen or Morpeth. He put it to Sam, hoping for once she would show some enthusiasm for the idea.
‘You know what she said,’ was her response.
He did. No more bail outs until he got a proper job and faced up to his responsibilities. Fat chance – on the first count. Still, he took the tentative next step. They had no secrets from each other, and he wanted her to know he’d been summoned last night at Phutures. Word might get out, and that cold shoulder might go on for days. ‘Your Uncle Paul—’
Sam sat up sharply, cutting him short. ‘Don’t you dare. He’s bad news, you stay away from him.’
Tommy held up his hands. ‘All right, all right!’
Sam had told him of the day Paul had punched her mother with such force she’d lost a tooth. She’d described it with gruesome precision, the tale bringing tears of anger to her eyes. Sam had been twelve years old when it happened, had never been able to rid herself of the image of her uncle standing there, pure hatred in his eyes, calling her mother a whore and a bitch. It must have been going on for years, Sam had said, all the black eyes and bruises that only appeared after a visit from Uncle Paul. He was a brute, and Sam had never forgiven him.
Her body felt tense next to him now, and he regretted mentioning it. She was right, of course, ge
tting involved with Uncle Paul would be nuts.
‘Hey,’ he said, grinning at Sam, his hands disappearing under the sheet. ‘Wanna see my impression of a tent pole?’
Sam looked down at her husband’s proud erection and gave a pantomime gasp.
‘Samantha!’ The voice spewed through the letter box, making Tommy’s skin bristle like a hedgehog, and his proud erection shrivel to nothing.
‘Coming, Mam!’ Sam called, pulling back the sheet with an apologetic look at Tommy.
Tommy sighed and puffed up the pillows behind him, sitting up to admire Sam’s bare backside as she pulled on her dressing gown.
‘No harm in asking,’ he said. ‘Shy bairns get nowt.’
Fastening her dressing gown, she bent down, and kissed him on the lips. ‘You’re radge,’ she said.
Tommy pulled a crazy face in agreement.
‘And I don’t want to live in fucking Morpeth,’ she added with a hiss.
And with that, she was gone.
PEACH
The beeps and blips of the machines that kept Sally alive still resonated in Peach’s ears when he arrived home from the hospital mid-afternoon. There was no change in Sally’s condition. She remained prostrate, arms by her sides, mouth hanging open around the breathing tube, lips and eyes swollen.
He entered the empty bungalow, numb with tiredness, stepping over half a dozen envelopes lying on the doormat. He needed a shower; he needed to rest. He’d sleep for a couple of hours in the chair by the telephone in the living room, just in case.
He headed for the kitchen and filled the kettle, setting it to boil next to a sink piled high with mugs and plates. He picked up one of the mugs, lipstick staining its rim. A milky film had formed on the dregs of the coffee inside and he wondered when Sally started wearing lipstick.
He put a tea bag in a mug then walked down the hallway to Sally’s room, where he held the handle in one hand, the other raised, knuckle ready to knock. It was automatic.
It was a typical sixteen-year-old’s bedroom. A large, framed picture of a bare-chested man holding a baby dominated the chimney breast wall, the others strewn with posters of pop stars he’d neither seen nor heard of: male or female, he couldn’t tell with some of them. Her unmade bed sat against the radiator under the window, the curtains still drawn. He pulled them open and sat on the bed, opening the drawer of the bedside cabinet. He took out a small make-up bag. It was dirty inside, a few eyeshadows without their lids, a mascara, and a couple of pencils, a bobbin of black thread with a needle weaved through the cotton. On the floor by her bed was a long leather case full of neat rows of cassettes. He picked one up, “Sunrise 1989” scrawled in black ink across the label. He picked up another, “Genesis 1988,” it read. So, she had some taste after all.
He put the tape into the cassette player on the bedside cabinet and pressed play, but instead of the dulcet tones of Phil Collins he heard a racket so unmusical he wondered if the tape had got stuck like a scratched record. He wound it forward and pressed play again, the same nasty din hitting his ears. He fumbled with the buttons, unable to press stop quickly enough. It set his teeth on edge, the relentless repetition of the same notes.
Getting to his feet, he scoured the room. On one of the wardrobe doors was a collage of photographs, pink and red paper hearts interspersed between them. He strode over to it, searching out familiar faces he could put names to, friends who would have answers to questions that had begun to bombard his mind like midges, but they were all strangers to him except one. Sarah, Sandra – something beginning with an ‘S’ – a girl who used to come to tea after school. They’d been inseparable a few years ago, but what was her damned name? He wracked his weary brain but couldn’t remember the last time anyone had come for tea.
At the bottom left of the collage was a photograph of a bare-shouldered girl with mean, blackened eyes, blond hair stuck to the sides of her face, tongue sticking out at the photographer, and middle finger raised aggressively. He tore it from the wardrobe door and held it closer to his face, scarcely able to believe the lairy face belonged to his child. It was another person, and yet it was her.
His chest constricting, he shoved the photograph into his trouser pocket, rubbing at the grey stubble that clung angrily to his jaw with his other hand. He looked around the room.
If there were drugs, he would find them.
***
Twenty minutes of rifling and plundering followed. When every drawer had been turned out, every cupboard ransacked, every box emptied, he stood by Sally’s bed, swimming in adrenaline and relief. He was right. Of course, he was right. There were no drugs. There was nothing in Sally’s room but school books, clothes, trinkets, and magazines; nothing to make him distrust her.
He glimpsed his reflection in the mirror on Sally’s wall. The skin around his eyes hung in folds, his grey hair stood up where his fingers had gripped and pulled at it. He flattened it down, remembering how Sally had once told him he looked like a TV cop from the seventies with his middle parting and moustache. He hadn’t minded. Those were the days when coppers were coppers; the days when they could dish out a good thrashing and call the lesbians butch.
He gave himself a long, hard stare, recalling the numerous warnings he’d issued to Sally over the past year about drugs, alcohol, and, as much as it pained him, safe sex. Sally’s response would be a roll of the eyes and assurances that she wasn’t an imbecile. All he could hope was that the message got through. And it had got through, he was sure of it. Sally was blossoming, on the cusp of womanhood, doing well at school, about to embark on A levels. She wanted to be a television producer, and now she might not live to see tomorrow.
His chest began to sizzle. Someone had given her the drugs, someone had told her it would be fine.
He turned away from the mirror and sat on the bed, falling to his side and laying his head on Sally’s pillow. McNally was right, he’d have to pull himself together, because when he found out who was responsible, he was going to make them wish they’d never been born.
***
It was past five o’clock when he awoke with a jolt, his face buried in the pillow. Like a jack-in-the-box, he was up on his feet and stumbling down the hall into the living room, where he sat in the armchair and fumbled in his pocket for the hospital’s phone number. He picked up the telephone receiver with a trembling hand and dialled, terrified he might have missed a call, horrified he might be too late, that he hadn’t been there to hold her hand as she slipped away.
The words “no change” were starting to eat away at him. He dropped the receiver into its cradle, the armchair creaking from its belly as it always did. It had been his wife’s chair, and it had creaked from the day they bought it – Kathleen bending down to pick up her knitting; Kathleen reaching forward for the Radio Times; Kathleen standing up and stretching after the News at Ten.
It had been almost six years since he’d sat in that chair, preferring to stand if he ever needed to use the phone. Sally, however, had commandeered it. She curled up in it to watch TV, read books, or do her homework.
As if a shock ran through him, he jumped from the chair, almost hearing the clickety-clack of Kathleen’s knitting needles.
***
When he entered his office, Peach found Murphy balancing on the edge of the visitor’s chair with his cheek resting on the desk, the hood of a sweatshirt covering his head. He was dead to the world, mouth open, snoring.
Peach hung up his coat and sat in his chair. When he cleared his throat, Murphy’s head shot up, a piece of paper stuck to the side of his cheek with saliva.
‘Chief,’ Murphy said, finding his composure.
Peach picked up the telephone and dialled reception. ‘Tea,’ he said, ‘strong, two sugars.’ He stared at Murphy who was blinking the sleep from his eyes and peeling the paper from his face.
‘Got any Tizer?’ he asked.
‘Just the tea.’ Peach hung up and folded his hands on the desk, a ‘Well?’ in his eyes.
; ‘Collins,’ said Murphy, still somewhat disorientated. ‘That’s your man.’
‘Who is he?’
‘The organiser. Tommy Collins.’
Peach creased his brow and turned his head slightly, his mind flitting back to the night before, the brief glimpse of a young man on the flat roof of the warehouse’s extension. Not the same Tommy Collins, surely?
The door opened, and the desk sergeant put a mug of tea in front of Peach and a can of Tizer in front of Murphy.
‘Cheers, Shazza,’ said Murphy, looking up at her with a wink. The older woman’s grin and pat on the shoulder were almost motherly. Murphy had them eating out of his hands already.
The door closed, and Murphy hissed open his can of pop, taking a long drink. ‘Got in with the Goths at that shopping centre in town,’ he said, not before letting out a long, cavernous belch. ‘They might look ’ard, but they’re all nancies. One look at my ID and they were pissing themselves. Wouldn’t be seen dead at a rave, like, but they knew who he was.’
‘Where’s he from?’ Peach asked.
‘Valley Park, wherever that is.’
Peach’s hands cradled his mug of tea. ‘Well, I’ll be damned.’
‘You know him, then?’
‘I know the father.’ Peach took a sip of his tea and looked at Murphy over the rim of the mug. ‘He’s a murderer.’
‘Fukin’ ’ell,’ said Murphy with a short laugh.
Peach remembered it well. Reggie Collins, convicted of murdering Billy Logan outside his home on Valley Park in 1984, was currently serving a life sentence in Durham prison. Peach had spent more time than he would have liked on Valley Park Estate in 1984, back when he was a Detective Inspector on the hunt for weapons and bloodied clothes. The striking miners were vicious enough, but with any excuse for a scrap, the Valley Park skinheads didn’t waste any time getting in on the pursuit of scabs. Two junior officers had had their faces slashed at Easington, and Victor, PC Smithy’s German Shepherd, had been stabbed to death. Not by the starving miners, mind you – oh no – by yobs who had never done a day’s hard graft in their lives. He remembered the houses of the estate, stinking of damp and dirty chip pans, the beds bare of sheets, the children half naked with the round bellies of the Ethiopians everyone was chucking money at back then.
