by Nicky Black
‘Christ, we can’t do this without The Chancellor,’ said Frankie as they watched Jed hop onto a wall and disappear over the other side, just as a police squad car screeched into the car park, stopping a few feet from the minibus and giving Tommy no time to think of a solution.
‘Thomas James Collins?’ Within seconds, two uniforms were in Tommy’s face. ‘Can we talk?’
‘I’d rather eat my own feet,’ Tommy replied, his eyes still on Jed’s retreating figure.
‘We’d like to ask you some questions about a robbery.’
He looked right at them, irritated. ‘What you on about?’
‘Don’t be a twat, just come with us,’ said the other officer, puny by comparison and looking like he’d barely left school.
‘I haven’t done anything,’ said Tommy, trying to push past them.
‘An armed robbery.’ The chunky officer forced him back.
‘Eh?’
‘We can do it at your house, or at the station, it’s up to you.’
‘I’m not having you in my house,’ said Tommy, looking the officer up and down. ‘Are you arresting me?’
The officers exchanged a glance. ‘No—’
‘Well, get lost then.’
‘But we will if you assault us in any way.’ The baby-faced officer had his hand on his baton and a look in his eye that goaded.
This was the last thing Tommy needed. An illegal rave to plan and him in a cell.
‘I’ll crack on,’ said Frankie, his eyes warning Tommy not to kick off.
‘It’s a mistake, Frankie.’
‘Aye, I knaa,’ Frankie reassured him.
Tommy sighed and threw up his arms in submission. Flanked by the officers, he walked to the squad car and folded himself into the back seat. The car pulled out of the car park and into the traffic, passing Paul Smart’s silver MG and Jed as he stomped toward the bus stop in his socks. Tommy watched from the back window as Jed shrunk to the size of a toy soldier before the officer floored the accelerator and his head was thrown back with the force of the speed.
Arsewipes.
PEACH
Pacing was becoming a habit, fuelled by impatience and sheer dogmatism. Peach had rolled up his shirtsleeves, the windowless viewing room thick with heat. It was all over the news, this heatwave; people splashing around in the fountains at Trafalgar Square, the beaches packed to bursting, warnings of sunstroke and skin cancer. He thought it was tosh; ’76 had been hotter in his recollection, back when he had a whirlwind toddler, a wife, and ironed shirts. The woman who was paid to housekeep now wasn’t a patch on Kathleen when it came to the crease on the arms of his shirtsleeves, so it didn’t matter if he rolled them up and spoiled them.
Collins had kicked up a fuss by all accounts. It seemed he was eager to get away, so Peach made sure the detectives conducting the interview took their sweet time. He’d stood at the air vent in the corridor of the station’s cells, listening in, enjoying Tommy’s rising frustration at being asked the same questions twenty times over. They’d got him to agree to the ID parade after four hours of interrogation. He had nothing to hide, he’d said. He’d done nothing wrong.
While officers were hunting down Collins that morning, Peach was hunting down Sally’s friend, Selina. Her mother, Fiona Blackhurst, had been potting plants on wooden decking, a ghastly veranda, constructed around the ground floor of the Old Vicarage, a beautiful piece of the city’s history ruined. Selina’s mother didn’t look quite forty and didn’t resemble any architect he’d ever seen. She had that bohemian vibe, all Indian-print cotton and Jesus sandals.
Peach had approached her with a thin smile which soon faded when he was informed that Selina was away with friends. She’d left on Monday and wasn’t due back for three weeks. Now the exams were over, they were all off “interrailing.” The woman appeared to show no concern that her sixteen-year-old was out in the big wide world, unsupervised, nor that a senior police officer was standing on her vile decking asking questions.
‘Sally Peach,’ Fiona had mused. ‘Haven’t seen her for, gosh, a year at least.’
‘To your knowledge, has your daughter ever dabbled in drugs?’ he’d asked.
‘Oh, I expect so,’ was her response. ‘Haven’t we all?’
No, thought Peach, we haven’t. His own mother had just about flipped when he lit a joss stick back in the early sixties.
‘Young people need freedom,’ Fiona said when she saw the judgement in his eyes.
The woman was a moron, and he’d left her to get on with her potting, hoping that if he ever saw her again, she’d have the decency to wear a bra.
The door to the viewing room opened and Mrs Bailey entered, accompanied by DS Murphy who wore a yellow and purple tracksuit top over a black polo neck and army combat trousers. The man must have been melting.
‘Here’s the rabble, chief,’ said Murphy, tipping his invisible cap and winking at Mrs Bailey, making her blush.
‘Come in, come in,’ said Peach, eager to get on with proceedings. Peering at the door, he saw no one else. ‘Where’s the other one?’ he asked Murphy when he reached his side.
‘Gone AWOL, boss,’ said Murphy from the side of his mouth.
Peach’s lips tightened. Denise Morris was the one who’d identified the eyes. He needed her here. ‘Well, go and find her!’ he hissed. He couldn’t keep Collins for much longer; didn’t want him disappearing or demanding a brief.
‘You need me here, boss,’ said Murphy.
Peach let out a frustrated sigh, knowing Murphy was right, that he couldn’t conduct a line-up alone. He’d just have to get on with it for now, hope for the best; hope those eyes were somewhere in Mrs Bailey’s fading memory.
Mrs Bailey was at his side, now, ringing her hands anxiously. He put a steadying hand on her shoulder, speaking gently. ‘We’re going to show you two line-ups. Take your time, look carefully, and touch the shoulder of the man you saw.’ He nodded at Murphy who walked to the door, opened it, and beckoned to someone unseen.
‘Are they coming in here?’ Mrs Bailey’s voice shook, and her hand grabbed Peach’s bare forearm. ‘I didn’t know they’d see me!’
Peach had purposefully forgotten the witness briefing, fearful they would change their minds if they knew the reality of the procedure. They might get scared, pull out at the last minute. He wasn’t having any of that.
‘I’m here with you, and so is Detective Sergeant Murphy. You’ll be just fine, I promise.’
‘Oh!’ Mrs Bailey let out a small cry and grasped her handbag in both hands as Murphy stepped back into the room, followed by eight young men rounded up from the local estates, most of them tired-looking, puffy-eyed, and scratching at themselves. Collins was among them. He avoided Peach’s eyes, his face stern and his cheeks hollow, looking like he needed a good feed.
‘Eeeh, there’s our Shaun,’ said Mrs Bailey with a gush of relief, raising an arm to wave. Peach brought it down quickly and glanced over at Murphy. If any witness knew one of the line-up it would be invalid. But Murphy was lighting a roll-up, his eyes fixed on the flame of his match.
‘You can start now,’ said Peach, holding out an arm which invited her to walk forward. Giving her the nudge she needed, he watched Mrs Bailey shuffle forward to the edge of the line to begin her promenade.
The room utterly silent, Peach wrapped his arms around his ribs, shoulders hunched as he watched closely. Mrs Bailey stopped, her eyes on the wrong man, probably “our Shaun.” He willed her to move on. To the seventh man. He repeated the number in his head: seven, seven, seven.
The heavy tension was interrupted when the door was flung open and Superintendent McNally strode in on a warm gust of air. Pulling Peach to one side by the arm, he raised his chin in challenge. ‘What the hell are you doing?’
Peach looked at his witness then back at McNally, keeping his voice low so as not to interrupt Mrs Bailey who had reached the end of the line and was wiping her forehead with a handkerchief. ‘I’m getting on with the
building society job, sir. I recognised his trainers.’
‘Trainers? Is that it?’ McNally was trying to confine his voice to within the four walls. ‘The market’s flooded with the damn things. Have you lost your wits?’
‘And two witnesses have both mentioned striking blue eyes—’
‘You can’t do a line-up of eyes!’
Peach’s own eyes questioned McNally’s. Hadn’t they done the very same thing before? 1986 – the robbery of a war hero in his own home, beaten to a purple pulp, blinded in one eye, dead a few months later. All the old man had seen were the eyes, and they’d got their conviction before the poor bugger died of fear.
‘He needs money,’ hissed Peach. ‘Where else is he going to get it?’
McNally didn’t respond, beckoning Murphy over instead and ordering him to get the witness out of there. Peach began to colour as Murphy led the woman out, closing the door quietly behind him. He could almost smell the bollocking about to be unleashed, and he was sure that if the lads in the line-up weren’t still in the room, McNally would have burst like a water pipe.
‘You are fucking this up,’ said McNally. ‘The woman’s on the verge of tears, what if she makes a complaint? Use your brain, man.’
‘There’s nowt wrong with my brain.’
‘No? Where are the background checks on these witnesses, then?’
Peach remained silent, and McNally pulled him to the back of the room with a glance at the line of youths, some of whom giggled behind their hands, sharing a joke. Not Collins, though, who stared at his feet.
‘Denise Morris,’ McNally muttered, ‘is Collins’s mother-in-law.’
The humid air turned pungent, and Peach felt Tommy evaporating from his grasp like mist. In his haste to get his man where he wanted him, he’d ignored basic procedure. He’d ignored almost all procedure.
‘If it wasn’t for him, my daughter wouldn’t be lying there, useless.’ Peach thought he heard his own voice crack as he turned to look at Tommy, searching his face for guilt, regret – insolence even – but seeing only the top of his shorn head.
McNally heard it too, and his voice lost its urgency. ‘Come on, you’ve got a tenuous link, she was out with friends.’
‘At one of his dos!’ Peach made to walk towards the line-up, but McNally restrained him.
‘Let him go. This is your last warning. Don’t make me do something I don’t want to do.’
Peach felt anger twist in his gut, a swirl of acidic hatred. He turned his back on Tommy as McNally walked away, opened the door, and the young men filed out. He walked to the wall at the back of the room, pressing his palms flat against the cool gloss and closing his eyes, staying there until he heard a voice behind him.
‘You all right, chief?’ Murphy held out a cup of tea.
Peach dropped his hands from the wall and looked into Murphy’s young face, void of lines, void of worry. ‘Apparently not,’ he said. ‘Apparently, I’m all wrong.’
‘Look, why don’t you go home for a bit? You’ve been here non-stop.’
Peach took the mug and turned away from Murphy, his eyes fixed on the space the line-up had left empty. He sipped the hot liquid and said nothing until Murphy’s discomfort eventually pulled him from the room.
He waited for the door to close.
‘Because there’s nothing to go home to,’ he said.
***
Peach had seen his fair share of drug addicts, their eyes rolling in their heads, skin peppered with lesions, vomit dripping down their chins. Junkie, was his first thought when he stood at the foot of Sally’s bed two hours later. She was propped up against the pillows, the sockets of her unfocused eyes sunken and dark, her mouth dribbling fluid onto her hospital gown. At the side of the bed was a bag of urine, full to bursting.
The humiliation of the failed ID parade was eating away at him from the inside, and he imagined bloody wounds inside his gut, his spleen. His voice bellowed down the corridor and Pamela came running, her hand holding the watch at her breast to stop it jiggling. The look on his face must have startled her because she slowed her pace as she approached him.
Why was his daughter being left like this? he bawled. Why was she allowed to lie there, slavering like some spastic?
‘Mr Peach!’ Pamela’s mouth hung open in shock. She barged past him, took a tissue from a box by the bed and wiped Sally’s mouth. ‘There you go, sweetheart.’ She touched Sally’s cheek before standing again.
‘Shouldn’t this thing be emptied?’ Peach pointed at the urine.
‘You a nurse, now, are you?’
There was a warning in Pamela’s voice, but Peach kept going. ‘I need to speak to her.’ He looked at Sally, knowing the possibility was remote. ‘Has she said anything?’
The odd word, apparently, nothing coherent yet.
Yet? It made him shoot a look at Pamela who was searching his face, something in it making her soften.
‘Look, why don’t you sit with her for a while,’ she said. ‘I think she’s been looking forward to seeing you.’ She patted Sally’s hand, the intimacy of it excluding him.
‘Leave us alone,’ he said.
With an acquiescent sigh, the nurse left the cubicle, and when she was out of sight, he closed the curtains and sat on Sally’s bed. He pulled the hospital-issue bag from under his coat. He’d locked himself in his office after the line-up, poured the contents of the bag Pamela had given him on Monday onto his desk – the cards, the dress, and the small white bag Sally wore constantly strapped across her chest. The items had lain there for some time before he’d picked up the handbag, his fingers touching the edge of the zipper. He’d opened it and put his hand inside, drawing out a five-pound note, a few coins, and her house key. Other than that, it was empty. He’d opened the zip of the inside pocket and searched with his fingers. A lipstick, nothing else. But then he’d felt it, a hole in the corner of the lining, stitched loosely with the black thread he’d seen in Sally’s make-up bag when he’d searched her room. He’d torn at the lining, turning the bag upside down, shaking it. It fell onto his desk: a tiny seal bag containing small blue pills, the Playboy bunnies laughing up at him.
But it was the Little Raver! card that had his heart in his mouth. He’d opened it, stared down at the spidery capitals.
"WHAT WILL I DO WITHOUT MY BEST GIRL?
GET WELL SOON. LOVE DAD. X"
Sally’s groan brought him back to the dreary cubical, sending his mind whirring back in time, back to Kathleen, choking and gagging as the liquid food was forced into her. He hadn’t been able to watch or listen. He hadn’t known whether to pull the nurses off her and let her die or let them get on with prizing her mouth open and forcing the tube down her throat.
Pain swelled in his chest, the sharp pain of sorrow that often took him unawares. It coursed down his arms and into his fingertips where it rested. There was nowhere else for it to go. If only he could forgive her, he might be free of it.
If only he could forgive himself.
He reached out and took the box of tissues from the cabinet, pulling one out and gently dabbing it on Sally’s lips, and for a second, as her head rolled, she looked at him. He leant forward to kiss her forehead. It was only meant to be a peck, but his lips stayed there, and the box of tissues felt to the floor as his hand slid behind her head.
‘Da,’ he heard, and although he tried with every thread of strength he had, his eyes clouded, and a sob wedged in his throat.
He pulled Sally’s head to his chest and drew his arms around her, rocking slowly.
‘I’m sorry,’ he’d whispered, ‘I’m so, so sorry.’
TOMMY
They were there, just as they always were, the rolled shutters of the youth centre a magnet to anyone with spray paint and time on their hands. A beat box thumped out hardcore techno, three lads painting the largest shutter while others tackled the silver bins that lined the back of the building. Hoods up and masks over their faces, they were lost in their art, and Tommy approach
ed them without challenge.
‘Easy, Mobz,’ said Tommy to their leader.
Mobz and Tommy had been in the same class at school – or not as the case may be. They’d skive together, ride their bikes into town to steal from the student’s art shop at the Haymarket. Mobz was a man of few words and he controlled his flock of apprentice graffiti artists with his talent alone.
Tommy stared up at their corrugated canvas. “Crash ‘n’ Burn” read the zig-zag words in yellow, red, and purple, human limbs protruding from the letters, some climbing the red brick, some clinging to the great metal boxes that held the shutters.
‘You look fucked,’ said Mobz.
He did, and he felt it, too. Despite his bath, the sickly stench of the police station still plagued his nostrils. He was tired to the bone, barely an hour of the last few days stress free, his sleep broken, his dreams disturbing. How people lived in constant fear was beyond him. It made him think of battered wives, Holocaust survivors. Prisoners.
Mobz raked his fingers through his straggly beard as he considered the mock-up flyer Tommy had handed over. On his command, the young artists stopped what they were doing and crowded around Tommy’s drawing. They muttered among themselves, following the lines of the alien images with paint-stained fingers. After a few long moments, each of the crew gave Mobz one mechanical nod of the head before walking back to their stations.
‘How much?’ Mobz asked.
‘Cash on the day. Saturday,’ said Tommy. ‘Hundred quid.’
‘Fuck off.’
‘Two,’ said Tommy. ‘And free entry for the crew.’
Mobz drew on a fat joint. ‘Two-fifty.’ It came out as a croak as he exhaled.
Two-fifty, five, a grand. It didn’t matter to Tommy; he didn’t have it. And now going back to Smartie for more money was making him feel sick to his stomach.
‘Can you DJ?’ asked Tommy, ‘on the radio, and that?’
