by Will Harker
I yanked at the damp sheet, sending plastic pegs popping into the air. Then I was back under the clothesline, my fists twisted so firmly around the sheet that the soggy chill of it scorched my knuckles. My pursuer’s senses were keen, he’d be used to surprise attacks, and so I knew that brute force was my only option. He was already stepping away when I lunged forward and wrapped the icy material around his head. Something familiar in that face before it vanished under the suffocating white. A word, perhaps my name, deadened by the sheet. I didn’t allow myself time to register any recognition. Hesitation now could be lethal.
It took the man seconds to overcome his panic. Just a few moments of scrabbling at the chokehold of the sheet before his experience kicked in. Trying to save himself that way would get him nowhere, and he knew it. He had to disable the attacker, not the weapon. By the time he jolted sideways, pulling me with him and spearing his elbow into my gut, I’d dragged him as far as the forest. Despite the sudden winding, I managed to regain my footing and throw him hard against the nearest tree. I heard the dull smack of his skull on the trunk, saw the bedsheet torn away from his head. Ignoring the pain in my ribs, I sucked down as much air as I could and launched myself at him again.
Christ, but this guy was strong. I’d been a scrapper since childhood, almost all Traveller chavvies are, and through either the charm of my personality or simply because I possessed the kind of face people liked to punch, a lot of my adulthood seemed to have been spent brawling. But I’d hardly ever come up against such a tough bastard as this.
He was trying to say something while at the same time landing a left hook to my upper arm that sent me spinning into the undergrowth. I scrambled to my feet, ignored the click at my shoulder joint. He was speaking again, but this was a well-worn tactic. If a punishment beating isn’t going to plan then a ‘friendly’ word mid-confrontation, maybe an offer to defuse the situation, is often gladly accepted by the other party. Then, once his guard is down, the hurt can really begin.
The sky was moonless, the darkness thick in the forest. I couldn’t see his face properly. He held up his hands, palms out, a truce declared. I slouched towards him, panting, playing into this fiction. My heart hammered out a fast, skittish beat. I could sense the rage inside me, straining like the fairground juks at its leash. His words were lost against the blood roaring in my head. I moved quickly into his orbit and aimed a jab at the crook of his right elbow. He anticipated it, snatching at my wrist with a grip like iron, bending my arm backwards until I saw stars. I rolled with the counterattack, and dropping to one knee, used my free arm to drive an elbow into the big tibial nerve in the back of his leg.
Another man would have screamed in agony. This man let out only a short grunt. Still, the spasm did its work and his legs came unhinged, felling him to the forest floor. Meanwhile, I groaned to my feet and dug the phone from my coat pocket. Its torchlight flashed across the bedsheet, billowing on a branch and smeared with dirt, before finding my pursuer. Sprawled in a bed of autumn leaves, he was laughing against his pain and holding out a hand to me.
“That was a snide move, Scott,” he said. “But for old time’s sake, I forgive you.”
In the well of his palm, I saw the cigarette burn like a white sun, its rays radiating to the edges of his hand. At the sight of it, my anger vanished.
I suddenly remembered us in bed together, in the quiet confessional moments after making love, my finger circling that old scar as he told me the story of its origin. I had held him when the tears started in his eyes. Tears from a man whose job it was to inflict pain and to jest at scars. In the end, he’d broken down completely, reliving his youth on the Humber estuary. The mother who had abandoned him, the abusive father—a fisherman—embittered by the death of his industry and the shame of being unable to provide for his growing son.
I stepped forward now and pulled the flat cap from his head. Those denim-blue eyes, almost black in the dark of the wood, blinked up at me. Mussed by the removal of his hat, a shock of red hair stood out like flames while his pale skin complemented the white teeth behind that pained grimace. He flapped his fingers at me and the veins that ran like rivers down his huge arms pulsed in time with the movement. A giant indeed, gangland enforcer Nick Holloway was even bigger than the last time I’d seen him.
“Nicky,” I murmured. “What the hell are you doing here?”
CHAPTER FIVE
Making love? Had we ever done that? I wondered as I helped Nick Holloway to his feet. Honestly, I think we both would have laughed at such a sentimental description of what was really nothing more than good old-fashioned casual sex. And yet, I had comforted him when he’d told me about his father and the abuse he’d suffered in that cottage on the estuary. For my part, it had been a rare act of compassion in the dark days after I’d lost Haz.
“Nice way to greet an old mate,” Nick said, massaging the back of his thigh. “I thought you showpeople were supposed to be hospitable.”
I shook my head at him. “Not sure where you got that idea. Anyway, what do you expect when you creep up on someone in the dark?”
Though I could see he had lived some hard years since the last time we’d met, still the wrinkling of that snub nose made him look twenty again. His fingers curled gently around my shoulder. Just a twinge from where he’d hit me, though I expected a mighty bruise come the morning.
“Suppose I should’ve called out,” he said. “But I wasn’t sure it was you. And anyway, I didn’t expect you to come at me like that. I mean, you were always a bit on the mardy side, Scott, but Christ Almighty!” He puffed out lightly freckled cheeks. “I hope your shoulder’s OK.”
“And your thigh,” I said.
He grinned, circling his big hands around his upper leg. “Not bad, are they? Squats morning, noon, and night. It’s agony, but the boys love ’em.” He straightened up, his gaze taking me in. “Not looking too bad yourself. Do you ever age, Scott Jericho? I swear—”
“Enough with the charm,” I said. “What are you doing here, Nicky?”
“I got out,” he shrugged. “Just like you. Finally, anyway.”
I turned, and limping a little, Nick began to follow me out of the trees.
“You mean you left Noonan’s outfit?”
“I know,” he grunted. “Took me long enough, eh? Oh, I recognised the name, by the way. Jericho Fairs? Wondered if maybe you’d gone back to the travelling life, though last I heard you’d joined the filth. Noonan still wants your head for that little stunt, in case you’re wondering. You should hear the way he boasts about what he’ll do if he ever gets his hands on you.” I’d forgotten the strength of Nick’s Yorkshire accent, how it plumbed every vowel so that a word like “boast” emerged as “burst”. The London gangsters had always had trouble deciphering his dialect. “Said he’ll do for you in the end.”
I nodded. “Let him try.”
Mark Noonan. Not wanting to live much inside my own head after what had happened between me and Haz in Oxford, I’d fallen into a kind of work that didn’t require me to think. Work, in fact, in which thinking at all was aggressively discouraged. The only talents of mine that were required rested in my fists, and so I’d hired myself out to a few mobsters on a freelance basis. Noonan had been the least objectionable—not into prostitution and light on the drugs side—his operation had focused on counterfeit sports gear, smuggled cigarettes, and a bit of loansharking. From the beginning, I’d set out what I was prepared to do for him as an enforcer and what I wasn’t. It mainly involved putting the frighteners on his rivals and collecting debts owed by other gangsters. I couldn’t say I was proud of those years, but I was able to sleep at night. Just.
“So what happened?” I asked.
We had now reached the trailers and he’d shaken off the cramp in his leg. Doors were yawning wide and a bustle of Travellers was spilling into the night.
“Mark wanted to make me one of the husbands,” he said. “And you know how that always ends up.”
I gri
maced. Noonan offered “husband” status to a couple of his favourites every year, usually on his birthday, making a kind of sick pageant out of the whole thing. It was a protected, cosseted position for the prettiest boys in his gang, but Noonan was famously jealous. There were stories of husbands who had lied and cheated on him and who afterwards found themselves one eye short of the standard pair. In a twisted way, mobster Mark Noonan was something like the housekeeper Miss Rowell—they both prized honesty.
“I only knew one man who could stand up to him,” Nick said, touching my collar. “Only one he was afraid of. I remember how you’d look out for me when he got into one of his rages. I was always grateful for that, Scott.”
I pulled his hand away. It had been more than five years since I’d last seen Nick Holloway and time hangs heavy on such men, but there was something else here. His pupils sat like pinpricks in their denim-blue irises and there were claw marks on his upper arms where he’d scratched his skin raw. Quite a feat for fingernails bitten almost to the quick. I searched his face.
“What’s going on with you?”
He tried to bluff it out until a wave of exhaustion seemed to overcome him. “Codeine.” He sighed. “Tramadol. All the usual prescription pain meds. It’s what Mark’s started dealing these past few years. Thought it was how he’d keep me, I reckon. Get me hooked on the stuff so that I’d never leave. He’s lost it, Scott. Made the amateur mistake of sampling his own product. Fentanyl patches, for Christ’s sake. The kind of stuff they give terminal cancer patients who can’t bear the pain anymore.”
“And you?” I asked.
“What can I say? It’s taken a while but I’m down to just a few pills a day.”
He rubbed the pad of his thumb across that faded burn mark as he spoke, and I wondered if what he said was true.
“So what are you doing here, Nick?”
“Bodyguarding,” he said, suddenly bright again and patting the imposing barrel of his chest. “We can’t all be hard bastards and clever sods like Scott Jericho, you know. I know where my talents lie. After leaving Mark, I spent a few months working as a bouncer at a casino on the south coast.” That accent again, lyrical in its way, “coast” spoken like “cursed”. “Met some media type there who liked the look of me and put me up for a job with this celebrity he represented.” He licked his lips. “Look, Scott, I know your family’s involved with this here TV stunt. You won’t grass me up, will you? About what I did for Noonan? About the drugs? I need this job.”
“I won’t say a word,” I promised. “Who’s your client?”
He pointed over my shoulder to the carpark and the distant, blinking glare of the billboard.
“That psychic crackpot.”
“Darrel Everwood?” I rubbed my chin. “Funny, you’re the second person I’ve spoken to tonight who thinks he’s a fraud.”
Nick held up his hands. “Oh, I don’t say he isn’t the real deal. I’ve been working for him for a while now, been to quite a few of his gigs, even stood in the background when he does his private readings for celebrities. Honestly, you wouldn’t believe some of the names—rap stars, politicians, Premiership footballers, even the odd Saudi prince. Guy’s raking it in. Or was. And I gotta say, he puts on a good show. I think you’ll agree, Scott, we’ve seen some fucked-up things in our time. It would take a lot to scare us, right? Well, when Everwood starts chatting with these dead relatives, then tells the punters things he couldn’t possibly have known? Family secrets, personal details?” He blew out those freckled cheeks again. “It keeps me awake at night, that’s for sure.”
“So why do you call him a crackpot?”
He ran the tip of his tongue across his teeth. “Not because of the ghost stuff. Only, in a way, maybe it is connected. I mean, nattering with the dead? It has to scramble your brain a bit, right? Truth is, he’s paranoid as hell. Although, I guess he’s had quite a lot of crap thrown at him after the bust-up with his ex. Did you see it online?”
I shook my head. I hadn’t seen much news at all since Harry and I left Bradbury End. I suppose I’d wanted to keep our world small and focused, without the daily horror doled out by the newsfeeds. We’d both had enough horror in our lives.
Nick laughed. “Jesus, you must be the only person in the country who hasn’t heard about it. Everwood had been dating this social media influencer—probably met her at some posh do where nobody drinks anything and the bog seats are lined with coke. Anyway, although she’s considered quite a stunner by our hetero cousins, Darrel is a greedy boy. He was knocking off her assistant on the side. Miss Instagrammer actually finds them at it and tries to shove Everwood’s mystic crystal ball where the sun don’t shine.
“Next thing you know, she’s putting up videos and doing interviews claiming he’s a scam artist. Says that all the humble bragging about his background growing up on a council estate is one hundred percent horseshit. Says he was a kids’ party magician before he read some old book that inspired him to get into the medium business. Anyway, the online trolling and hate mail has been flooding in ever since. I kid you not, he’s had actual turds posted through the letterbox. I mean, who does that?”
“Are you saying that’s why he needed a bodyguard?” I asked. “Because of some unwanted mail and a few bitchy comments online?”
“Part of it. But it isn’t just spiteful nerds having a go, Scott. I’ve seen the messages. Scumbags saying he’s such a liar and a cheat that his dogs deserve to be set on fire for it.”
“That is sick,” I agreed. If anyone ever threatened to do that to Webster? Well, let’s just say some emergency dental work would be required. “So are you saying Everwood is here already?”
I glanced over to the western fringe of the fair, just now in the shadow of the old rectory. EverThorn Media had set up their production fleet there—expensive Jayco and Enterra trailers that made even the showiest Traveller homes look like sardine tins on wheels. They had arrived during the morning, but I didn’t think the production team itself had arrived with them. Nick confirmed my suspicion.
“No. Everwood asked me to come on ahead and scout out the ground.”
“He must really be worried then?” I said. “About some of the threats?”
For a moment, Nick didn’t say anything. He stared out across the expanse of the clearing, beyond the fair to the turreted chimneys of Purley.
“Strange thing is, I don’t think he actually takes the threats all that seriously. But the pressure of the whole celebrity deal, this image he has to maintain, the fact it’s suddenly crumbling, and then the sheer weirdness of the world he’s created for himself? I think it’s caused a kind of mental breakdown.”
Nick turned to me. “You see, Darrel seems absolutely convinced that he’s going to die here.”
CHAPTER SIX
“He thinks someone’s going to kill him?”
Behind us, the cacophony of the fair suddenly erupted across the clearing. Dance beats from the Waltzer, the clockwork clank and grind of the runaway train, my father’s booming voice on a loop, welcoming punters to Jericho’s Fair. In the carpark, chaps in hi-vis vests started waving the first cars into the bays.
I turned back to Nick. “If he thinks that, then why come here at all?”
“He doesn’t think someone will kill him,” Nick said. “Not exactly. But he thinks if he comes here then…” At a loss for the right words, his brow furrowed. “He told me that there’s something bad waiting for him here. That he feels it. That maybe it’s always been waiting for him, right from the very beginning, and that even if he tries to avoid it, this thing will still reach out and find him. I know it sounds barmy, but if you’d been there, if you’d heard how he said it? He even had me half-convinced.”
“Sounds like he’s talking about fate,” I suggested. “Or maybe a reckoning? I guess that would play into the trauma of what’s happened to him recently. Being questioned and exposed. But what does he expect you to do about it? You’re a strong lad, Nick, but you can’t protect him
from his own paranoia.”
“He’s looking for a way out, that’s my guess,” Nick said. “Something solid he can pin a reasonable fear on. If he can go to the producers and say, ‘Here’s a tangible threat to my safety, so I’m not doing the gig,’ maybe they’ll reorganise the whole thing.”
“You don’t think he’s scared of the reputation of the house itself?” I thought back to my conversation with Miss Rowell and her conviction that those who exploited Purley often came to a sticky end. When Nick denied that Everwood had ever mentioned Purley in those terms, I asked again, “So, why’s he coming here? From what you’ve told me, he’s successful enough to pull out of the event if he wants to.”
“He was,” Nick said. “But all that was before little Miss Instagrammer’s public meltdown. His publicity team have gone into damage limitation overdrive, but a lot of the mud has stuck. Tickets for his gigs have collapsed, theatres have pulled bookings, old celeb pals are giving him the cold shoulder. Darrel Everwood is toxic goods right now. Between us, he spends brass like there’s no tomorrow. Long story short, he needs the money.”
I nodded. “Well, it’d be devastating for the fair if he did cancel. We’re only pulling in punters over these few nights because of the excitement leading up to the TV show. So I’m not sure if I should wish you well, Nicky. All I can say is, it was good to see you.”
I’d started to move away when that iron hand caught my wrist again. Unbalanced, I was pulled around to face him. His breath steamed the night air, faint wisps drifting against my lips.
“I missed you, you know,” he said. “After you left Noonan and joined the police. I know it was never anything more than just sex between us, but I wanted to say—”
“No.” I prised his fingers from my arm and repeated, “No.”