Angels Of The North

by Ray Banks

  Gav walked past Fiona and out into the corridor. It smelled of antiseptic. His feet squeaked on the floor. He slipped once as he rounded the corner, his heart jumping in his chest and forcing him to speed up as left the hospital. As soon as the frigid air punched his lungs, he pulled his tabs and lit one, warming them up again with smoke. He stood and then he walked around, and then he stood again.

  Thinking it through.

  Always thinking. Didn't want to do the wrong thing here.

  It wasn't Gav's fault. He'd been nothing but a good father, attentive and disciplined. It wasn't Jason Orton's fault either – all that nonce stuff, all that extrapolation, it hadn't been right and it hadn't been good. It was unhealthy, just a short, sick run of thoughts that had momentarily shoved the good sense out of his brain.

  They were mates, that was all. Andy liked the Capri. Jason took him out for a spin, and then ...

  Gav stopped walking, smoked halfway down the cigarette, then dumped it as he went for his cab. He slipped in behind the wheel and turned on the radio. Fuzz and murmurs filled the car. He got on the receiver. "Rosie."

  "Gavin?"

  "Rosie, you heard from the police yet?"

  "How's Andy?"

  Gav's hand shook a little. He pulled the car door shut and leaned against the steering wheel. Closed his eyes as he spoke. "He's not good. They're going to ..." He swallowed back the lie. "Have the police called?"

  "No."

  "Can you look up a registration for me, then?"

  "One of ours?"

  "I need to see who took out a cab tonight."

  "Is this the one—"

  Gav didn't let her finish. He read out the registration of the smashed-up cab. "Check into it for me, will you?"

  "But what happens—"

  "Now, Rosie? I'll be here. Just buzz me back when you know who checked it out tonight. And if there's no name, then ask around. I want a name."

  I want to be sure.

  He hung up the receiver, started the engine. Glanced across at the hospital. They would be there for a while. Lots to deal with. He wished he could be there with them, helping Fiona, but he had other things to do. As he pulled out of the car park, he heard the squelch of the radio. "Gavin, it's Rosie."

  He grabbed the receiver. "Ten-four. Got a name for me?"

  "Yes, I do." A click.

  "You going to give it to me or not?"

  "I don't know if I should."

  "Then let me put your mind at ease, Rosie. You should."

  "What're you going to do?"

  "I'm going to sack you. Give me the name."

  Another click. She was sighing at the other end and didn't want Gav to hear it. When she came back, he could hear the clamour of a busy cab office in the background.

  "There wasn't a name."

  "I thought you said you had a name for me, Rosie?"

  "They didn't write it down, so I'm not sure. But I've asked around."

  "And?"

  "People seem to think that it was Phil Cruddas's car."

  "Right."

  "But Phil got beaten up tonight, didn't he? I mean, I saw him—"

  "That's right. He got beaten up."

  "So he wasn't driving. Must've been kids or something."

  He nodded. "Or something."

  "What're you going to do?"

  "Nothing. You're right, it was probably just kids. Police'll pick 'em up."

  He hung up the mike and sat with his chin on his hands for a while. Then he started the engine and headed home.

  55

  Brian walked. Staggered. Swayed. Grabbed onto whatever he could to right the whirl in his skull.

  His head throbbed, his balance off. Felt drunk. Worse than that. Lost. Black in the head. A mind too addled to think. Blood filled his mouth. He tried to swallow it, but it was too much. He felt sick.

  He put a hand to brick and tried to catch his breath. Blood splattered the pavement when he opened his mouth. He stared at it for a moment. Such a lot of blood. Too much. But he couldn't stand here all night. If he stood, he would fall; and if he fell, he wasn't sure he'd be able to get up again.

  Brian spat and moved on. One foot after the other. The scrape of sole against concrete.

  He remembered – what did he remember?

  He remembered just before. He remembered the car that came out of nowhere. He remembered trying to pull off his seatbelt before the impact, because what kind of silly sod wears his seatbelt in a suicide attempt? It was embarrassing.

  He remembered the impact. White flash. Crunch of metal, the squeal and scream. Followed by black and brown and the low, sticky rasp of his breath.

  And then he started to emerge from the muddy darkness, the world around him slowly turning grey and orange, and then Brian was back, the smell of petrol and piss in his nostrils. Smoke too. Booze. Whisky on his breath, regurgitated. Pain in his head, blood sticking one eye closed. That was first. Then, when he opened his mouth, the cold air spiked the nerves and the air made the taste of blood in his mouth overwhelming. He felt sick, disgusted with himself, recoiled and discovered the bruise across his chest where the seatbelt had grabbed and held him tight. He looked down at the seatbelt, clicked it loose and coughed, brought up blood that splattered the wheel and dash. Jesus fucking Christ. He tried to speak out loud, but his tongue felt weirdly numb. More blood filled his mouth. He tried to poke around his teeth to see if any had been dislodged on impact, but his tongue couldn't find them. It was as if his molars were somehow just out of reach.

  Brian twisted the rear view mirror towards him and opened his mouth. Nothing but black and wet. He fumbled for the overhead light and saw the mess inside his mouth, and there, just sitting next to the speedometer, was the tip of his tongue, a tiny raspberry blown at its former owner. He let out a groan, grabbed the handle for the window and rolled it down, leaned out to get some air and let the blood fall from his open mouth.

  And that was when he saw the Capri, lit like the Chamber of Horrors. The Capri was bent around the side of the cab. There was blood on the white bodywork, broken glass shining like stars on the tarmac. Brian kicked open his driver's side door and hauled himself out. He hung on to the side of the car and stepped towards the Capri. It had come out of nowhere – that was the cliché and it felt true enough. He leaned against the side of the Capri. Saw the driver – a young lad, maybe in his twenties, rough looking and already scarred before he ever met Brian – in a heap in the driver's seat, his face a Pollock of blood. Teeth missing, one arm trapped under the steering wheel and with that loose look under the arm of the jacket that meant it was broken. Brian blinked, swayed, watched. He saw the shallow rise and fall of the lad's chest, which meant he wasn't a murderer, just an arsehole. It wasn't much, but it could've been worse. He pushed away from the Capri when something else caught his eye. A white T-shirt, jeans, right near him in the passenger seat. It took him a moment to piece it all together – jeans meant legs; T-shirt meant arms; beyond that he picked out pale points of interest from the shadows – a face, head, looked crushed. Dear God. Another smashed arm. Smashed leg. Looking for the chest, trying to turn the image around so it made sense. And then he saw the kid. Twelve years old, maybe thirteen? Mangled in the passenger seat. No seatbelt. Lucky he didn't go through the windscreen, but then it wasn't that sort of collision, was it? People didn't fly in these types of collisions, they were crushed beyond hope.

  He let out a groan that started low and ended up something like a squeal, deep in the back of his throat as his hands trembled too much to hold on to the car. He didn't know the kid. He didn't think he knew the kid. All the kids looked the same round here. But the kid was dead or dying; he knew that much. There was little movement in the older lad, but there was something too loose and long gone about the way the kid was lying there. The image put a tremble into Brian's legs and he had to push away from the car.

  What the fuck had he done?

  He didn't know. He didn't want to know. He wanted to get out of there
, so he did. Weaving away from the cars, heading for the nearest dark spot, somewhere out of the light, somewhere cold he could lie and think, get his brain working. He spat at the ground again. His head rang with the sound. He put a hand up to his temple, found more blood there and enough sudden agony to fold his legs out from under him. He hit the tarmac. He cried, breathing hard against the road, more blood spilling out over his lips. He wanted to lie there, just stay there and die, but there was something else keeping him conscious and in pain.

  You need to go.

  A simple command, barked from somewhere deep inside his psyche. He had to go. He had to flee. There was nothing for him here. There was booze at home. He needed to sort out his mouth. Maybe the booze would stop the bleeding. It would definitely help the pain. He leaned against a lamp post, blinked a quick look at the street. There was nobody around. He didn't know what time it was – guessed it was late – and there were no sirens or flashing lights, so he guessed that he'd only been unconscious for a short while. That was a small mercy. There was a chance to walk away now. If there had been ambulances, there would be police cars, and if there were police cars, he would go to jail. There was no doubting that. This was, what, the ideal final act for him, wasn't it? The kind of thing that Crosby would just crow about – the final nail in Brian Turner's coffin. Taken his wife, his daughter, his job, and now he was about to take his liberty.

  Well, fuck him. Brian fucking Turner made his own decisions. There was still time. He didn't have much of a long-term plan, but his short-term plan was good enough to keep him staggering towards home.

  Except he didn't go home, did he? Because now he couldn't remember the streets, couldn't navigate with an inner ear that seemed intent on whirling around like a gyroscope on ice. He stumbled against walls, looked up expecting to see something familiar, and found it skewed and weird and like he was in another country. He remembered the time once when he was so drunk and poor, he got into a cab in Newcastle, and when he ran out of money, thought he recognised the roads, became convinced that he was in Durham – some drunk-associated memory – and so he walked and walked along the side of a motorway, the grass verge and ditch, until he realised slowly but surely that he was nowhere near home, that this wasn't Durham, that he was no longer at university – that he'd pissed that away somehow – and he'd woken up in a ditch, face up, staring at the stars and the silhouette of a copper telling him to come on, he couldn't sleep there. And then, as he was walking on, the police car long gone, he stopped and wondered why the copper hadn't offered him a lift.

  But that's what they were like, weren't they? Fucking filth.

  And that was when he found himself staring down Kielder Walk. He could see the burnt-out houses at the end. A landmark. He smiled painfully. He was home. But the more he walked, the more he came closer to his house. And the more he was afraid.

  He stopped outside his house. The place was dark. It was cold. It looked like a tomb. He sat on the wall to get his bearings. He looked back at the house. If he went in there, he'd die. He didn't know how he knew. He just knew. There was nothing in that house. It was cursed, full of dead and dying memories of things he couldn't control. Cursed things. Bad beats and worse decisions. That place had never been happy. When they moved in, Lynne hated it immediately. She always saw that house as a failure, as snake instead of a ladder, and a sign of how far they'd fallen in life. And if Lynne hated something, Danielle was normally quick to hate it too. She was her mother's daughter, never his. He'd known that her whole life, even when she was a little kid. There was no getting through to her, no understanding could ever arise between them. They were just different, conflicting rhythms in life. And that was why she wanted to live with her mother. She didn't like him. She didn't understand him. She never would.

  He hung his head. If he'd known that before it could have saved them all a great deal of pain. He opened his mouth as he cried, and more blood spilled out. He put his hand to his mouth, felt it warm and wet immediately.

  There was no hope for him here. No hope at all. Nothing to do.

  If he stepped through that front door, he would die, he knew it. And he wasn't sure he wanted that anymore. He hadn't lived a good life. He had to make up for that. He had to tell Danielle and Lynne that he was sorry.

  He wasn't ready to grow cold just yet.

  Across the road, the light in Joe Warren's front room was on. Brian watched it change as someone moved in front of it.

  It looked warm in there.

  56

  A light knock at the door, the feeble rattle of a letterbox. The old man opened the door on the chain and, peering through the gap, saw the bleeding, desperate and half-drunk figure of Brian Turner collapsed against the front door.

  "Joe."

  Joe appeared in the hall. Saw Brian through the gap. He gestured for the old man to get out of the way and closed the door. "Do us a favour and put some towels down on the settee, will you?"

  "You letting him in?"

  "Just do it, Dad, all right?"

  Joe pulled the chain and opened the door again. Brian slid forward, but Joe grabbed him before he could fall. He looked over Brian's shoulder at the street. Dead out there. He'd heard ambulance sirens before, but it was far away and none of his business. He dragged Brian into the hall and kicked the door shut. Brian was battered, smelled drunk, blood all over him. He was a dead weight in Joe's arms as he dragged him towards the front room.

  The old man appeared at the door. "There was some in the wash."

  "Help us with him."

  Joe threw Brian's loose arm around his shoulders, the old man took the other side, and the pair of them hoisted Brian to his feet, walking him slowly towards the settee.

  "Okay, let him down. Gently. Easy does it."

  They deposited Brian on top of the towels, rolling him onto his back. Brian looked worse in the light. Blood all over his face, like he'd been chewing on raw meat, some of it from a congealed gash in his temple. His eyes moved around in their sockets as if he couldn't focus or pay attention to anything for more than a few seconds. Joe wondered if it was concussion or the drink he could smell on him.

  He crouched by Brian's head. "What happened?"

  Brian's eyes rolled round towards Joe. He blinked and his eyes narrowed, peering at Joe as if he wasn't sure what he was seeing. He grunted.

  "That's right. You look at me." Joe pointed to his eyes. "Look me right in the eyes. What happened?"

  Brian let out another grunt. His forehead wrinkled, his bottom lip became loose and wet. He moved his head from side to side, and he started to cry, the tears tracking through the dried blood on his face.

  "It's okay. Look at me. It's all right. Just tell me."

  Brian put a hand to his face. His body appeared to double up on itself as he began to curl on the settee. Joe thought he could hear the man apologising over and over again, but there were no consonants.

  "Can you talk?"

  Brian whimpered.

  Joe laid a hand on his shoulder. "It's okay. I'll call for a cab, we'll—"

  Brian's eyes snapped open. He became rigid and grabbed Joe's shirt. Shook his head. "Ngoh."

  "It's all right."

  "Ngoh."

  Joe saw the stump in Brian's mouth. "We need to get you to a hospital. You're bleeding."

  Brian shook his head again. Begging him. The blood started again from the cut on his temple.

  Joe removed Brian's hand from his shirt. "It's okay. I won't call a cab. We can talk about it later. But right now your head's bleeding, all right?" Joe tapped his temple to show where. Brian blinked. He was bleeding hard now – Joe could see it pick up the pace whenever Brian got upset. Joe wadded a hand towel and pushed it against the wound. "So we need to get a doctor to look at you."

  Brian breathed out through his nose. Tried to shake his head, but Joe held firm.

  "It's important, Brian. You don't want to die, do you?"

  Brian's eyes were full of water. He blinked, and more tears
tracked across his cheeks.

  "It's okay. I know it feels bad. But you don't want to die."

  Brian tried to nod.

  "Well, if you do, then that makes you an arsehole, because you want to die in my house. You don't bring this to me."

  Brian tried to say he was sorry. It came out in a series of low yelps.

  "Well, I'm sorry too." Joe pressed the towel harder against Brian's head. "But I'm not going to let you die in my house. It's not on."

  Brian pointed to the door.

  "And I'm not taking you outside either. You're staying here. At least until the ambulance comes."

  "Ngoh."

  "I don't give a shit. You need medical attention."

  Brian tried to get up. He put a hand on Joe's chest. Joe felt pressure, but not much.

  Joe eased him back onto the settee. "Listen to me. You need to rest. Here, hold this against your head, all right?" He pressed Brian's hand against the towel and held both against Brian's temple for a second before he let go. "Keep the pressure on, do you understand?"

  Brian nodded. He started to speak, but the words were throttled by a sudden rush of emotion and he looked weak again. The towel slipped from his hand. Joe righted his grip.

  "It's all right, Brian. Just rest, okay? See how you get on. Just do us a favour and keep that towel pressed against your head. It's very important. Don't go to sleep, just concentrate on that towel. You feel you can't do it anymore, you just give me a shout and I'll come and help."

  Another nod. Brian swallowed. He looked sick.