Sarah felt the panic for the first time. She couldn’t even string words together for Jason, and got rid of him rudely. Then she fell over it - a letter stamped with the bubbling Deep logo – an invitation to interview. It was only a reception and admin job, but Sarah did not care. It was the impossible. She felt a sense of exultant joy. Then a diving, skull-cracking sense of sickness, as the date given was
Monday March 17th, 2.00 pm
That night, against her better wishes, Sarah was tempted to ring Jason. She writhed and tormented herself with memories of their night together. She tried to sleep and rest, and think of those soothing, Deep waves. But she dreamed of drowning now, and later in the night she awoke in a breathless panic. She twitched her curtain and looked out onto the orange street corner spotlight Jason had inhabited recently, her suitor, who was always there, serenading her silently amongst glittering shards of showbiz glass.
But he was gone.
***
March 17th. The day ended, clear and simple, at dinnertime when Sarah switched her phone on for the first time in nearly two weeks. It began to bleep, and sing and vibrate and pull at her almost immediately. Voicemails. Text messages, bombardments in no particular order.
WERE R U?
Dean’s text messages always came in abrupt, shouting capitals.
ITS OK GOT REMAND + COMUNATY SERVICE
Though dressed up to the nines, Sarah felt like a giant bowel. She’d been ignoring the phone every night between six and eight. But he’d remembered her mobile, and the sheer volume of voice messages, one for every day he’d been inside, overwhelmed her. In preparation for her interview, Sarah listened to his torrent of abuse. He’d heard about Jason, yet his text about the court hearing wasn’t hostile, and it was the not knowing what to expect that made her have to get off the bus and vomit.
Twenty minutes into what should have been her interview, Sarah leaned on the railing opposite The Deep, with irrelevant interview revision still swirling in her head. It was a dark, grey day. The mobile began again, always the same pattern. It rang. It went to answer phone. Then a text.
BITCH I NO ABOUT U + VICKERS SLUT SLAG
She’d stopped reading them. It still rang and it texted and buzzed. The wind howled as if in irritation. The Deep sat calmly, with engine noises issuing from the construction going on behind it and under the wind, as if it promised to pull away at any moment, last chance boarding.
WERE THE FUCK R U? YOUR DEAD
The Deep’s knife edge profile jabbed at the sky. Sarah stood looking out over the Humber, trying desperately to see what it was pointing at.
***
She walked home. On the short terrace where the burnt-out house slumped, she waited in a final moment of doubt and panic. Her eyes fixed on a dead bird in the middle of the fireman-trampled lawn. It was long dead, and the delicate bones of the broken wings made it look like a harp. It played anaesthetic sounds in her head as she stepped out in view of the house and walked across the crunching glass, her intestines squirming like a hooked worm. She could already feel fingers in her throat.
But as she approached, she heard the worst sound. Dean was slumped in the hallway sobbing. He was thin and grey, wracked by moans and shuddering gasps coming from lungs that would like to give in. She found him there, sitting amongst crumpled tab ends that he’d part-smoked before stubbing them out on his skin. She could see fragments of broken house overflowing into the hallway. He came crawling towards her like some vile and desperate Gollum, barely intelligible at first in words, but full of pitiful begging, and even more pitiful promises, I promise to sort myself out, I promise to look after you, I’ll treat you right, I won’t smoke no more, please don’t leave me for him I can’t cope without you, I’ll kill myself I will I’m so sorry…
He stank of drink. As she went over to him, feeling more like a front line medic than a consoling lover, she saw her houseplant shattered and smashed across the floor, soil scattered across the table and the skirting boards, broken leaves, shards of plates, and a spider-web crack in the TV.
An invasive gust of wind followed her in. It whipped her hair around her face, hinted at some urgency, a time to run. But Sarah stood through it all like a ship’s captain going down.
The wind came one last time, billowed through their hallway and slammed the door shut.
If There is No Justice
Tom Palmer
‘My client would like, first of all, to apologise unreservedly to the court for missing his hearing of the 16th of April…’
Rob looks round Court One of Leeds Magistrates. At a solicitor’s mouth working. At men in pinstripe suits, flicking through piles of paper. At the three magistrates, Mon Dieu Et Mon Droit on the wall behind them. He is nervous. He hasn’t been in this court before and is studying the hard varnished wood, the blue-veined mock marble pillars, the glass cage for prisoners.
‘However…’
Rob sighs, corrupting the solicitor’s pause. The usher eyes him.
‘However, your worships, Mr Denholme was incapable of attending court on the said date.’
The middle magistrate cocks his head to one side. Rob looks at the boy in the dock. Thin. Ugly. Short. Pale skin. Spots. Rob shuffles in his seat: he has a good feeling about this case.
‘On the day of his court appearance Mr Denholme was physically debilitated by a recurring case of curvature of the spine from which he has suffered for several years, and for which I have medical evidence provided by both Mr Denholme’s GP and St James’ Hospital, Leeds.’
The magistrate nods.
‘As a result of his difficulties, my client was unable to attend court to face the charges of shoplifting, which, as you will see, your worships, he committed solely to fund his addiction to heroin, for which he is now receiving treatment. To compound his back pain, his parents were away, and, as his situation became worse, Mr Denholme was unable to make it downstairs to where the telephone is situated, and was thus unable to call the court, your worships.’
A junkie, thinks Rob. A fucking junkie.
‘For how many days were you so marooned, Mr Denholme?’ The middle magistrate.
The solicitor answers: ‘Three days your worship. Mr Denholme was only able to make it to the bathroom, to use the lavatory and to drink water from the upstairs sink. I would like to repeat that Mr Denholme respects the will of the court, but would argue that he was unable to comply with its rules. He would like – again – to apologise. And I would request that he is allowed bail before the date of his full hearing.’
The magistrate thanks the solicitor and begins talking to his two colleagues.
Rob smiles. He knows that this boy in the dock could be the one. He has sat through two previous cases – a drug dealer kept on remand and a burglar jailed for three months – neither of them any good. If they let this one off, Rob thinks, I’m in business. He is almost grateful for the weasel words of the solicitor. And he is pleased that the boy is a junkie. He hates junkies. They disgust him. They are the lowest of the low.
The solicitor’s paperwork is handed to the magistrates. They consult again.
‘The court agrees to bail. Mr Denholme will be released and should return to court on…’
Rob blanks the rest, exploding with adrenaline. But he must wait for the right moment. Would the man be released in the court or taken downstairs? He looks at the boy and sees the trace of a triumphant smile. The boy is asked to stand, which he does with a grimace. But he’s feigning. He’s not disabled. He is a wimp, yes. A boy. But not a cripple.
Rob leaves the court as the boy falls into discussion with his solicitor. He will wait for him outside.
Three hours earlier Rob is on Briggate.
The street is a corridor of cold shadow, the sun too low to reach over its buildings at seven in the morning. Rob stands in front of Harvey Nichols, looking again for tyre tracks on the road surface. But there is nothing. He finds the spot where he thinks Adele must have died. He imagines a white van coming ou
t of Harvey Nichols’ shattered glass, turning to go left down Briggate, then hitting her.
Briggate is busier than he would like it to be. He should have come earlier. One morning he came for dawn. Five a.m. He can’t locate Adele surrounded by all these people. He wishes he could have one conversation with her. Just one. So that he could explain. But she is dead.
Adele was Rob’s girlfriend. They met when she was temping and he was in the stationery room at Wetherall’s, where he still works. They lived together in Harehills. Then they finished. Then she was killed by a van escaping a ram-raid with over two hundred brightly coloured handbags and a rack of sunglasses. It is her funeral tomorrow.
Rob looks down Briggate, the shop fronts alternating brick, glass, brick, glass, brick, glass. He is still in cold shadow, but at the intersections of the Headrow and Kirkgate shafts of sunlight illuminate the people walking to work clutching paper cups.
A group of men erect fencing in front of Harvey Nichols. Huge pieces of metal clanking as the men grip them together. Hoardings inform shoppers that they must not stop shopping, that everywhere is Open For Business As Usual. Rob remembers shopping with Adele. Sometimes just with her. Sometimes with her sister, Karen too. Round and round boutiques and department stores, nodding approval, but sometimes shaking his head to show he really liked the ones he said he liked. Aware of Adele and Karen. Their figures. Their clothes. Their hair. Aware that he was a man shopping with two good-looking women, other men looking at him. But half the shops today – ENVY, ASPECTO, KOOKAI – are new. Names that mean nothing to him. He has never been in them and now he never will. Their windows are explosions of colour. Purples. Pinks. Oranges. And Rob wishes they had ram-raided one of these, then Adele might have just stood and watched them fill the back of their van with neatly folded piles of t-shirts and racks of see-through skirts. Even though he hadn’t seen Adele for months, he misses her more acutely now she is dead.
Tomorrow he will come earlier, he decides. He will arrive before it is light. No workmen. No early office workers. No to-go coffee drinkers. None of these men around him, wearing STREET CLEANSING SERVICES on their backs, picking scraps of rubbish off the pavement. Rob thinks they should concentrate on the drunks and junkies and ram-raiding scum before they worry about last night’s newspapers and burgers. So far the police had done nothing about Adele. They haven’t even traced the van. They knew nothing. But Rob is not surprised. He has seen the crime pages of the Yorkshire Evening Post. He has seen shoplifters chased by overweight security guards, seen cars driving in bus-only lanes, seen suitcases filled with stolen perfumes snapped shut as the police come round the corner. Leeds is filled with crime and the police do nothing. This is the truth. And if they do catch people, he thinks, they don’t get punished. They get helped. They get rehabilitation. They get treatment for their drug addiction. They get poets-in-residence and visits by Premiership footballers. Then they are released, maybe a tag around their ankle, back onto the streets, onto their filthy drugs, into the crimes committed to pay for drugs.
But what could you do? Write to the Yorkshire Evening Post? Become a policeman? Do something about it yourself?
When he was younger, skipping classes at Park Lane College, Rob and his mates used to go drinking all day. When the pubs shut in the afternoon they would go to the Magistrates Courts to see people tried, waiting again for opening time. When the courts were in the Town Hall. Back then, he used to be on the side of the lads dragged up one after the other. Shoplifters. Football hooligans. Breachers of the peace. He used to be pleased when they were let off. They’d beaten the system. But not any more.
And standing on Briggate at seven-fifty in the morning, Adele dead, he realises he could do something about it himself.
Rob waits outside the court for the boy with the phantom curvature of the spine. The sun is beating hard on every street now. It’s hot. Leeds smells like a foreign city. The Town Hall looks magnificent against the deep blue of the sky. In and out of the court’s rotating door go young men and women with files and documents and expensive haircuts. The smell of their hair products competes with exhaust fumes. Rob sits at the foot of a staircase and wonders who designed this place, all marble pillars, soft lighting, six-foot waxy green plants, shining stone floors. He remembers the old Magistrates Court: leather seats with the stuffing coming out, old clocks that didn’t work, faded carpets. The new place disgusts him.
The boy looks even smaller outside the court. Thin. Weak. Stupid. Rob remembers his expression when he was granted bail. His complacency. The look of impotence on the faces of the magistrates.
The boy walks towards the city centre. Alone.
Rob follows, thinking, has he seen me? Does he know what he is in for? And Rob wonders what he is in for. He has no plan. Just to follow. Find the chance to get back at one petty criminal junkie.
Up the Headrow, the road rises as he follows the boy past the Town Hall and Central Library. This part of Leeds is calm. No frenzy. No shops. He wonders if he should stop to think, maybe conjure Adele up here, away from the shoppers. But he can see the boy ahead of him affecting a slow pace, a swagger. He remembers the charges set against this boy: shoplifting, missing a court appearance. And he follows. Cars speed along the three carriageways into the city centre. Rob counts four with England flags flapping. There are flags in shop windows too. In bakeries, cafés and photocopying shops. Everywhere, huge displays using football to sell books, clothes, beer, CDs, computer games, bank accounts, stationery, electrical goods. Anything people have to sell or may be willing to buy.
Up past the great big shopping centre on the right. The bus lanes. Shoppers carrying fancy bags with fancy names – KAREN MILLEN, GAP, ZARA. Everyone in the way. A woman with a stick, stopping to stand unsteadily when people come near her. Two old men, brothers, their faces the same, wearing jumpers and jackets even in this heat. Girls with dyed blonde hair everywhere. An overweight child eating a pasty. A priest with a rucksack.
The boy takes a right down Lands Lane. Into the heart of town. Rob is twenty yards behind when his target cranes his neck and looks him right in the eyes.
He knows, Rob thinks.
The boy picks up his pace and weaves across the road. He’s going to make a sudden run for it. Rob can feel adrenalin building in his muscles: he is ready.
Walking quickly down the slope, Rob can feel his feet hitting the street. He thinks of his weak footballer’s knee. That he did it the same weekend as Gazza. Years ago. He glances left down a side street to see Briggate, where he’d been this morning. He thinks of Adele. He is doing this for Adele. One correction in a city of a million mistakes. The boy goes towards WHSmith. Can Rob do anything in there? Can he follow him into a shop? Beat him up in a shop?
Then a sudden move, the boy leaping over a row of benches down an alley. Rob is fooled, having to run round the benches. The boy is half-way down the alley, a dozen small plastic England flags fluttering in the half-light, half-shadow. And Rob is running. Running hard and fast. He sees drainpipes, bars on windows, a neat row of skip bins. Sees the boy’s feet hitting the pavement ahead of him. Hears his footfall. Sees him disturb a drinker who spills a pint, calling after the boy. Then letting Rob pass without a word. They know, Rob thinks. They know I am Good chasing Bad. He feels his heart in his chest. Pain. Pain he likes. Like a shot of espresso. He is gaining on the boy, who has stumbled and is limping. A smear on the floor where he slipped.
Then left onto Briggate, from the shadow of the alley into the hot sun. Shoppers stopping to watch. Across the front of Monsoon, its riot of colours, summer dresses and parasols. The boy takes a left again, disappearing into a wall. Another alley. Cluttered with a dozen more skip bins. Rat poison boxes. The smell of baked bread. The sound of air conditioning units. Rob is gaining. The boy looks round. Then again. Ten feet. Fire exits. Six feet. Smashed plaster walls. Three feet. Breeze blocks. Red bricks. The boy is up against a skip bin. The sun on him like a spotlight. Rob pushes him back. He falls. Rob is ki
cking him. The sounds muffled by the air conditioning hum, the indifferent mutter from the street. The boy is down, staring back at Rob.
But Rob can do no more than kick a few times. He won’t hurt him. He has done enough. Scared him. Corrected him. He kicks him a last time. But the boy has turned away, squinting into the sun. Waiting for me to go, Rob thinks. And he is aware of the sun raging above them, feels sweat running down his back, inside his jeans, on his neck. He can smell piss, hot in the sun. And his fear of rats crawling from the shadows sets him off. He walks quickly. Out into the street, among the shoppers. Briggate at midday in June. Trying to walk at a normal pace now. Trying to look normal. Trying to feel normal. His whole body writhing.
Rob waits for her outside her workplace. A tall black glass and red brick building with turrets. There was a nightclub called Madisons here before, he remembers. The shapes of men in suits stare down on the city from tinted windows. Rob doesn’t know if it’s a solicitor’s or a bank or what. But he knows she works here, has her lunch at one, comes out alone and goes for a coffee. He has watched her – only watched her – day after day since Adele died.
‘Karen?’
She looks at him. A girl slightly shorter than Adele. Thinner. Younger. Dark hair. Cut like the solicitors have it cut, he thinks. Styled, not cut. And seeing her up close again, her eyes, her mouth, the curl of hair against her face, shocks him. He feels tiny cramps through his body. A nausea. His heart pumping.
‘Rob?’
‘I thought I’d take you for lunch,’ he says, immediately intimidated. Did he ever take anyone for lunch?
Karen half-smiles, thinking the same.
‘You look terrible,’ she says. She had prepared for this moment, intending to tell him to leave her alone, that she never wants to see him again. But she is moved by his ruffled appearance. She worries that he has been sleeping rough. And she remembers that not too long ago she loved him. Enough to risk everything.
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