Back Trouble

by Matt Kinnaird

  ‘A little support wouldn’t go amiss.’

  ‘Ok, ok. I’m sorry. Of course you should try it, if you want to. But don’t spend a fortune. Wait and see if you can do it first, hmm?’

  ‘Ok. So, I’ll need tools, and wood,’ I count off the items on my fingers, ‘and I’ll need a workshop, so we’ll have to get electricity in the shed somehow, for light, and it’ll need to be heated … I’m going to make a list.’

  I get up from the table to hunt for a pen and paper. Julia regards me with a kind of protective bemusement, then resumes eating. It only occurs to me then that I’ll really have to make something. I’ll be useless.

  Chapter two

  ‘Are you sure about this, darling? Why don’t you take your car?’

  ‘Don’t you remember what the physio said? Hot baths; good posture; long walks.’

  Fuck the Pilates.

  ‘So you’re going to walk to work every day?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Years of driving when you were perfectly fit, and now you’ve decided to walk.’

  ‘Look, it’ll help. Walking helps maintain the flexibility. I won’t hurt myself; I promise.’

  ‘You know best. Just be careful.’ She kisses me on the cheek and watches with a furrowed brow as I set off for work.

  I’d have thought she’d be happy for me; she’s always said I should do more exercise. It would be nice to think she was protective over my back out of concern for my welfare, but it isn’t likely. I think she’s just fed up with my inability to cooperate in the bedroom, and that using her dildo while I talk dirty isn’t cutting it anymore.

  I live on the north-west side of Whitbury, in a three-bedroom semi on Wat Close. The house is more than big enough for both of us and in as pleasant an area as you’ll find in the city. We have a spacious garden (copyright our estate agent) and parking for both our cars. We can manage the mortgage (Julia earns more money than I do) with a little to spare – enough to seriously consider trying for our first child, as soon as I can pluck up the nerve – and every time I come home from work I’m confronted by an overwhelming feeling of gloom.

  ‘What on earth for?’ you may ask. Well, to you my home might look like a roomy pebble-dashed family abode with bay windows and a neat little front garden. To me, it’s a jail; a sinister bricks-and-mortar cell within which all my hope and aspirations have been forever imprisoned never again to see the light of day. Sure, it’s fine if all your aspirations amount to are a comfortable home with central heating and an inoffensive wife (after seven years of marriage I’ve decided that inoffensive is the best you can hope for), but if you tell me that’s the case I simply won’t believe you. We all dream of more and you know it. I harbour recollections of wishing to leave some indelible mark on history, whether through art or music, acting, politics, sport, whatever, but everywhere around me were examples of failure telling me I shouldn’t try too hard: the most talented sportsmen at school faded into obscurity in college and became PE teachers and gym instructors; the finest musicians ended up playing third viola in amateur orchestras and flogging houses, cars or insurance as a day job. I flirted with dreams of being an artist for a few of my teenage years, but my parents discouraged me from carrying on with it as part of my schooling, telling me I didn’t have the talent to make it. My favourite other subject was English, and fiction gave me the only academic pleasure I had, but Dad didn’t think it was a suitable subject for a career. I ended up doing Maths, Business Studies and Geography A-levels, each of which I learned to despise, and because of this my grades were below average. Finally, in a futile act of rebellion I opted to read Psychology at University, which of course qualified me for nothing.

  When it comes down to it, once you’ve abandoned ideas of fame and fortune, nothing else measures up. Nobody tells you when you’re young that you’ll fade into obscurity in some middle-class backwater, and that the closest thing to happiness you’ll have to look forward to in your later years is a working prostate and a visit from your grandchildren at Christmas, but it dawns on you one day and it never leaves you. I’ve got a nice house, but I hate it. Every evening as I turn into my close, it looms over me with a callous squint, never letting me forget that within those four walls is locked the absolute limit of my potential.

  And just to rub it in, my wife the archaeologist, the PHD, is doing what she dreamed of her whole life. She gets on television, she has her findings published in journals, she has thousands of Twitter followers creaming themselves over the photos she posts of ditches in muddy fields, and to cap it off she’d be even more high-flying if she hadn’t settled in Whitbury with me. Insufferable, isn’t it?

  Me, I manage a small wine-merchant’s shop on the west side of town. That was hardly my life’s ambition.

  It’s a crisp November morning, the first frost of winter is melting into the soil and the sun is bright and low. This is it: my first reconnaissance mission. Of course I’d much rather drive to work, and I don’t give a monkey’s sphincter what the physio said, but the walk is part of my plan and my injury is the perfect excuse. It’s twenty minutes at a brisk pace from my house to my shop, and what a walk it is – littered with potential for the casual murderer. I’ve singled out three or four possible scenes of the crime even before doing any more detailed research.

  What I need to do is establish the walk as part of my daily routine for at least a month, probably more, and in the process discover the best location for the crime along with the most opportune time and day of the week. I work shifts, but generally I get out of the shop – after locking up, cashing up and setting the alarm – at twenty past nine on Sunday to Wednesday, twenty past ten on Thursday to Saturday. As long as the nights still close in early there’s plenty of potential for mischief at those times. If I decide it needs to be later I can always visit the pub after work. I don’t know who with, but a little Dutch courage wouldn’t go amiss in the face of a helpless victim.

  In theory, then, given the right set of circumstances, I can commit my crime without going out of my way too much to do it, and be at home and settled in front of the television without arousing an ounce of suspicion.

  There are three routes from Wat Close to St Cuthbert’s Street, where my shop is situated. The quickest, and the one with the most potential, I decide to follow this morning, through St Peter’s Park, which, as we know, is tried and tested for this sort of thing. I turn left onto St Peter’s Road and stay left over the mini roundabout, taking care with my footing on the damp pavement and slippery leaves. Here the houses change from tidy Victorian semis to rows of weathered brick terraces with low doorways and shuttered windows, and the road narrows though a dog-leg left-right turn. If you carry on down St Peter’s Road, there’s a small playground in a kind of grass basin on your left, with swings, slides and a concrete circle where there used to be a roundabout. It’s surrounded by trees, bushes and undergrowth, and it’s not well lit. That one’s plan B, and I’ll be checking it out later. Plan A is down a short residential cul-de-sac to the right, and it’s a different proposition. I almost feel my mouth start to water as I approach.

  You can’t see St Peter’s Park until you’re in it. It’s so surrounded by trees that it’s difficult to imagine what’s behind them. But if you enter the park via the cul-de-sac and walk the footpath that bisects it, in a ruler-straight line from corner to corner, the first thing that strikes you is how enormous it is. It’s a massive swathe of flat, square land, and in a city where the property values are soaring it seems like a luxury that any sensible council would reclaim from its residents. My own feeling is that they’ve forgotten it’s there, and that the grass is kept nice and trim quite incidentally by armies of good-natured rabbits. During the day, students and schoolchildren and young families come to play football and throw Frisbees and lounge about in the open air, and it would be difficult to find a friendlier, more welcoming environment anywhere in the city. At night, though, it’s something other.

  When the sun
goes down the park empties; only the path, guarded by its row of towering electric lights, is used by respectable people. The thin stream of foot traffic scurries along – eyes front, head down – on this slim tarmac island, as if afraid that the darkness on either side were a tenebrous abyss they could tumble into. The comforting blanket of grass becomes invisible, and the trees become your horizon, seeming to twist and grow and glare, stretching their jagged claws into the air, black before the tangerine night sky. If you dare to peer into the gloom and strain your eyes against the shadows, you can sometimes perceive signs of activity at the edges of visibility; nefarious goings-on in the sheltered undergrowth. Above it all is Whitbury’s silent judge, the giant, stalagmite cathedral, mute witness to seven-hundred years of secrets; it towers above the park as it does the rest of its city, wrapped in its own ethereal light, angular, sharp and threatening.

  This morning the edges of the park are white with a dusting of frost in the shadows of the near-naked trees, and it’s virtually empty – too early on a Saturday for most. I decide to avoid the path and scout around the left-hand edge. The first thing I notice is the litter. Plenty of bins punctuate the path, and the park looks as tidy as you could expect at a glance, but here, among the brambles, tangled ivy and rotting leaves, is where cans and packets and wrappers seem to gather. It’s also surprising how dense the undergrowth is, and how thick the line of trees enveloping the park. It’s clear that if anyone wanted to hide here at night they’d have little trouble. I venture as far into the trees as I am able, crouching through gaps in the branches, and find a high coppiced hedge, separating the park from a series of gardens. Perhaps I could get through it if I was fitter and lighter, but I’m not, and it would be too risky to escape into somebody’s garden. So it seems as if there are only two ways out of here, each end of the path, which is brilliantly lit. This discourages me at first, but as I reach the left-hand corner I begin to think it could be an advantage of sorts. I’m sure there would be time to scout the area and ascertain whether you were alone in the park or not. After that, there are only two, highly visible, ways in or out. Find someone alone, keep an eye on the exits, all you need to do is get them into the shadows. You could see anyone else coming, and they may not see you.

  My plan is taking shape, but it’s in its early stages. I mustn’t get ahead of myself.

  Leaving the park at the far end, I turn to take another look. It might be too big. It might be too exposed. My next hot-spot could be better. After a short stretch downhill the path from the park leads under the railway. A couple of barriers you have to zigzag around discourage cyclists – they could hamper an escapee if things went amiss – and then you’re underground. The path curves at either end of the tunnel, so once you’re inside you’re invisible to the outside world, at least for a minute. It’s by no means a welcoming environment, and there’s something sinister about the grubby white bricks, the wretched graffiti and the sterile light from the ceiling. I imagine blood on the walls and a body on the floor. I might need more darkness.

  As I walk through the tunnel I practise swinging my arms. There’s room: enough to swing a cat, but maybe not a bat, not to its full potential. This feels more like a stabbing sort of spot. Short-range thrust, in passing, he wouldn’t know what hit him. I practise the motion with my right hand. Yes, that’s better here; more economical. I reach into my jacket pocket and pull out my A-to-Z and notebook, which are interlocked, each keeping the right place in the other, and an HB pencil. The map is already marked with two crosses, one on each of the parks. I make a third, then open my notebook. I scribble ‘3: Route 1; Under railway; knife no swinging’ on the page entitled ‘Black spots’, then something stops me. I perform the stabbing motion again. What exactly would I be aiming for? I write another note: ‘Study anatomy’.

  That’s about it for this route. After the railway crossing you’re into a new residential area where the houses look the same and there’s sodium lighting everywhere. Walk down this, parallel to the railway, past the West Station and the farmer’s market, and you come to the T-junction with St Cuthbert’s Street, where my shop is.

  I think I like St Cuthbert’s Street. It’s old-fashioned and one of the few places in Whitbury where you feel a sense of community. There are greengrocers, antique shops, ethnic grocers, hairdressers, sandwich shops, restaurants and pubs, all a few yards from each other. And the shopkeepers help each other, and get each other cards at Christmas. So I’m told, that is. I only started working here at the very end of last December, and I haven’t got to know them all yet.

  My branch of Viva Vino wine merchant’s is small and busy. The building is a converted Tudor town house, with three storeys and a cellar, low doorways and ceilings and a narrow, twisting staircase. I have to say I preferred my other shop, the big one across town, but orders is orders.

  The thing is, last Christmas – Christmas Eve in fact – the last manager of this branch committed suicide, leaving the place, as you can imagine, in disarray. He wasn’t the most disciplined manager at the best of times, and there weren’t any systems in place to cope with his absence, so Head Office asked me to step in, while my assistant manager ran the big shop in my place. The advantage my branch had was that there were systems, so Paul found it pretty easy to cope. Over here, at St Cuthbert’s branch, the staff needed a good kick up the arse, and I delivered it. Alex (my predecessor) was too lax. He was a druggie and set a bad example. But I managed to turn things around and get the branch through into the New Year, and they were so impressed they asked me to stay on here while they got some hotshot over from Bromley to run the big shop full-time. Of course, I was honoured they had so much faith in me, and, once we’d established that I shouldn’t take a pay cut, I was happy to accept. I’d been in the big shop nine years, six years as manager, and a change was refreshing. It’s different here. There’s a stronger emphasis on looking after your regular customers; they expect a chat, or want a single bottle delivered to their house once a week, which isn’t cost-effective or efficient use of our personnel, but it keeps them happy and they keep coming back. The big shop’s where the Corporate is. There’s far less passing trade, but the major accounts all go there. I did try to take some with me when I moved across, but my Area Manager said it wasn’t a good idea. Hotshot needed all the help he could get, I reckon. He’s doing all right now, though, I hear.

  At a glance from across the road, my shop looks in good shape. The windows are full, the POS is out, the new Christmas promotions appear to be in place. It’s amazing how well things run in your absence if only you get them organised. I think this reflects well on me, despite my two-week absence. A good manager gives his staff the tools to do their jobs to the best of their ability. Once you’ve instilled some routines, everything should come naturally to them.

  I cross the road at the zebra crossing and peer through the shop window. It looks different, but I can’t tell how. Fishing for my keys I walk down the side road running alongside the shop, where our back gate and garage are. The garage is where we keep the beer and some of the cheaper lines, and it’s hidden from the outside world by a brick wall and padlocked gate. I used to park my car next to the garage, but I don’t need to now. Maybe I’ll tell Ruth she can park hers there now.

  Having opened the padlock I drag the gate over the rutted ground in stages, taking care over my posture. Then it’s a few yards to the shop’s back door, which I unlock and duck through then nip along the passage – past boxes, the safe, cellar door, stairs and sink – through another door and onto the shop-floor, where the alarm is kept in a cupboard at the back. I never fully dealt with the minor panic of racing to turn burglar alarms on and off, and I’m always afraid that I’ll cock it up. But this time, as every time before, I get there comfortably and remember the code. Then I check my watch. It’s twenty to nine, so I’m early. Good. Let’s see what shape things are in.

  A quick check of the cellar reveals everything to be in order. It’s stuffed to the chops with wine, bu
t at this time of year that’s how it should be. Then I check the office upstairs. The CCTV is running, the safe isn’t too full, the cashing-up is in order, and we don’t appear to have haemorrhaged too much stock since I’ve been away. Good. The computer says we’ve taken quite a bit of money, too. More than I expected, more than last year.

  It’s because I trained them so well. If I were away any longer, it’d start to slide.

  I make my way down to the shop floor, and flick on the lights on my way through. It is different. They’ve moved things around.

  Ruth, my assistant manager, arrives at five to nine, and together we open up. I’m fit enough to carry the boards onto the pavement, but I’m reluctant to lift boxes or crates, so she stocks up the beer (usually down on a Saturday morning after the Friday night rush) while I redo some of the tasting notes on the wines in the window. She’s a hard worker, Ruth, but she’s never had a great palate, and a couple of her descriptions are a little wayward. We’ve got a red Burgundy promotion running, the angle being that it’s the perfect wine to have with your Christmas turkey, and she’s compared our new Côtes de Beaune with a Nuit St Georges, when it clearly lacks the body and complexity of even a lesser example of those wines. They may have been flying out of the shop, but I don’t approve of deceiving the public: it reflects badly on us. Also, I don’t think her handwriting is as decorative as mine. But my years of management experience tell me to let that go, because I need to talk about the other thing. When she’s finished on the beer I beckon her to the counter.

  ‘What’s the New World fizz doing opposite the door?’

  She looks over her shoulder towards the display. ‘That? Party season, you know? I thought we’d make a thing of it.’

  ‘But you’ve got wines in that display worth twenty pounds a bottle.’

  ‘Isn’t that ok? People are buying them.’