Nicholas Dane

by Melvin Burgess

  ‘That’ll be to the town centre,’ said Nick. ‘Once we’re there, we’ll know how to get back.’

  ‘Oh, look at you, you big beautiful road,’ crooned Davey. ‘Oh, man, I’m lovin’ this. We’re good as home!’

  Nick pulled a face. ‘Big main road, two lads walking along in their shirt sleeves, coppers going up and down it every five minutes. How far do you think we’re goin’ to get like that?’ he asked gloomily.

  Davey was getting fed up with him. ‘Every time somethin’ good ’appens, you find the bad side to it,’ he said. ‘Anyone’d think you don’t want to get away.’

  He was even more cross when Nick vetoed his next cunning plan. As they headed off down the busy road, they found a laundrette. Davey decided the thing to do was wait in a shop doorway till someone came out with a bag full of clothes, rush out, bang into them knocking the clothes out of their arms, grab the bag and run.

  ‘Bingo! And we walk ’ome dressed like heroes,’ he explained.

  ‘Yeah, or girls. Or old men. Or nurses. Or babies. Depending on what they’ve been washing,’ said Nick sourly.

  Davey was furious, more from frustration than anything else, although he had to admit the fault to his plan.

  ‘Right well, instead of pickin’ holes in mine, what’s yours then, brainbox?’ he demanded.

  Nick turned on his heel.

  ‘Where you goin’?’ Davey asked.

  ‘Back.’

  ‘Back?’

  ‘We need to hide out. There’s loads a places round Bunker’s and it’s the last place they’ll think to look. Then when it gets busy and the rush hour comes, we can walk back and no one’ll notice us.’

  ‘I can’t wait that long!’ exclaimed Davey. It seemed against all logic to actually go back towards Meadow Hill.

  ‘We need the cover of darkness. We gotta give ourselves a chance, Davey.’

  They had an argument about it. What was the point of breaking free and then hanging around like a bunch of old men in the park?

  ‘Runnin’ is supposed to be exciting,’ insisted Davey.

  ‘Yeah, an’ gettin’ caught’s exciting too, innit?’

  Davey wriggled and moaned, but in the end...

  ‘I’m right, though, in I? You know it,’ said Nick smugly.

  ‘You’re always bloody right,’ snarled Davey. Nick was more interested in getting clean away than having fun - that could come later. And if that meant spending a day hiding in the bushes, that was what he was going to do. He even made them stop off and recover their uniforms from the bushes they’d dumped them in, so they could at least stay warm. Davey moaned his teeth out, but he did it anyway. On his own, he would have just run straight home and taken his chance. He didn’t expect anything else but to go in and out of care, and then in and out of prison, for as long as he drew breath. But Nick was different. Once he was out, he planned on staying out.

  The boys took care to hide well away from the Lane itself, in the woods around it. Sitting there with nothing to do, Nick started to think about the pictures that Oliver had stolen. They’d be scattered up and down Bunker’s Lane like confetti at a wedding.

  What was Creal going to do? He couldn’t leave them there. Maybe some of them had already been blown onto the road. If they got into the right hands and were handed in, Creal would get what was coming to him after all. And meanwhile, Oliver was still in there ...

  Nick couldn't leave it alone. He stood up.

  ‘Where you off to?' Davey wanted to know.

  Nick licked his lips. ‘You know how I knew to trust Oliver today?' he asked.

  ‘ ’Ow come?’

  ‘He nicked something else apart from them tabs.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Pictures,’ said Nick. ‘Photos.’

  Davey goggled at him. ‘What kind a pictures?’ he asked, although Nick could see by his face that he knew already.

  ‘Pictures of him with boys. You know.’

  ‘Dirty pictures.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  Davey looked away, then back.

  ‘Nick - where are they?’

  Nick waved his hand back into the woods. ‘Lost ’em. They fell out me pocket.’

  ‘Thank God for that.’

  ‘I’m going back to get ’em.’

  ‘You’re bloody not!’ Davey was on his feet and standing in front of him. ‘You’re crazy! If I’da known that, I’d never ’ave gone along with it.’

  ‘That’s why I never told you.’

  Davey shook his head. ‘You’re not goin’. We get caught with those, we’re dead, mate.’

  ‘If I can get just one,’ said Nick.

  Davey shook his head. He was sick of this. ‘Stop coming on like some kind of fucking social worker on me,’ he said. ‘We’re out. We’re out! What more do you want?’

  ‘I want Creal locked up.’

  ‘Oh, right. You want justice, is that it? There is no justice, Nick. ’Aven’t you learned that yet?’

  Nick looked away. ‘People like him get locked up ... ’ ‘People like him get away with it. Grow up.’

  Davey turned away in disgust and sat fuming on a fallen log. Nick stood looking at him for a moment.

  ‘All right,’ he said. ‘What about your brothers and sisters... ’

  ‘Don’t bring my family into this!’

  ‘Why not? You lot are in and out of these places all the time. How about your kid getting in here? How about Creal taking a fancy to him? How’d you like that?’

  ‘You don’t get it, do you, Nick? I’ll tell you. When I was about eight, right, I was in one a those places with our kid, Sid, he was only about four. They were hitting on both of us, at night in the dorms. Specially Sid, ’e was quite good-looking then. So we did a runner, me and ’im both. I got us out and I got us down town and into the local cop shop and I shopped the fat nonce that was hitting on us. And ya know what ’appened? The police listened very nicely, thank you very much, and then got us in the cop car and drove us back, thank you very much. And on the way, the copper sat in the back with our Sid had his hands up the front of his shorts. What do you think of that?’

  Nick shook his head.

  ‘The coppers are Creal's mates. Coppers, the nonces, the house tutors - they’re all on the same side. So what’s the point? You just have to live with it. I tried justice and it don't fucking work. OK?’ Davey turned away and stared furiously off into the woods.

  ‘You're joking

  ‘I’m not joking.’

  Nick sat down. He didn’t know what to say. What could he say? Davey was right. There was no point.

  They sat and waited. Ten minutes went past; then he stood up.

  ‘All right,’ he said. ‘They are all on the same side. But what about Oliver? In there with Creak’

  ‘There’s nothing we can do about that.’

  ‘And they’re not all nonces. It only takes one good one, right? And if I do find that good one and I ’aven’t got those pictures, who’s going to believe me, then? No, mate. I’m going to ’ave a look.’

  ‘You’re a twat, then,’ said Davey. ‘Be your own fault if they bloody pick you up, warn it?’

  He settled himself more firmly down on his log and looked the other way while Nick went back to Bunker’s Lane on his own.

  He wasn’t to know it, but the photos had burst out of his pocket quite early on, shortly after they had got into the cover of the woods. Oliver’s panic and desperate pleas when Andrews got him were because he had seen them tumble out and scatter among the fallen leaves. But Nick didn’t know this and he was scared to go close to the Home, so really, he was wasting his time. He hung back from the Lane and tried to spot the pictures scattered on the ground ahead, but he saw nothing. Had they all been picked up already? He looked towards the school, trying to spot flashes of white on the ground, but he wasn’t prepared to risk getting too close. He crept as close as he dared - surely he’d find at least one photo. He was still several hundred yards away from the buildi
ngs when he spotted someone else through the trees.

  There was a man, red-faced with exertion, stumbling about on the cobbles and among the thickets. Nick hid himself away and waited as quiet as he could, until at last, the figure leaned with one arm against a tree, bent his head and sobbed.

  Sure enough, it was Creal, looking for the lost pictures. He was smeared in mud and green algae from the wet forest floor, and weeping with fear and humiliation.

  He had woken up that morning without the slightest fear or suspicion of what was about to come. He still had a half packet of cigarettes left, so he had no need to look in his drawer and discover the looted packets of Bensons. When he received a telephone call from Toms telling him about the escape bid he was astonished to discover that Oliver had been among the runners. It was so amazing it almost amused him. The other boys, maybe - although even then, he could never really grasp what it was they were running to. Their old homes? Working-class dens of misery and privation? Surely not. But Oliver was one of the privileged few, and he didn’t even have that to go back to.

  He told them to leave the captured boy in the Secure Unit for an hour or so. He’d forgive him, of course - he always did. But let him sweat it out for a while first. Give him time to realise the risks he was taking.

  Less than an hour later, someone had stuffed an envelope under his office door. He got up and had a look down the corridor, but there was no one there. Odd. He tore the envelope open and inside was a photograph of himself, trousers around his ankles, buggering a boy.

  Creal’s blood ran stone cold. He staggered back against the wall. He heard himself whimpering, like a boy himself. He ran to the sitting room and ransacked the chest of drawers where he kept these things.

  Gone. All gone.

  Oliver!

  It pierced his heart. How could he? After all he’d done for him... after the times they’d had together. How could he betray him like this?

  But no time for that now. There was a note with the photograph.

  ‘Found this among the trees by the old lane.’

  The old lane - that meant it was a member of staff; a boy would have called it Bunker’s. Mr Creal ran straight out. He had to get those pictures back. Just one of them could ruin him. Public disgrace. Dragged through the courts. Everyone would know! Then, prison. And he knew very well how the other inmates treated men like him inside. Beatings. Rape. God knows what.

  And so now here he was, searching among the bushes, round and round in the mud, getting filthier and filthier, looking for the evidence. Pathetic now - but as dangerous as ever. Nick waited quietly until he passed out of sight, then crept back to where he had left Davey.

  He was half expecting him to be gone, but he was still there, sitting on his log, glaring at him as he came up.

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s Creal.’

  Davey jumped up. ‘Where?’

  ‘No, not here. Miles off, down the Lane. Don’t worry, he didn’t see me. ‘

  ‘Sick bastard.’

  ‘Let’s get ’im,’ said Nick suddenly.

  ‘You what?’ demanded Davey.

  ‘Let’s get ’im. Let’s teach ’im a lesson. Kick ’is head in. There’s two of us. Why not?’

  ‘You want assault added to the list, do yer?’ asked Davey.

  ‘We could do it together.’

  ‘You’re not listening. You want assault added to the list?’

  Nick argued but Davey wasn’t having it. There was too much to lose. Nick had to swallow down his bile. Once again, Creal was going to get away with it.

  Tony Creal did suffer some sort of punishment though - fear. He never did find all the pictures and had to live with the thought that someone was keeping them back, Nick perhaps, waiting to take them down to the police, or one of the other boys, or a member of staff who would use them when the time was right. For years to come, the missing photographs hung above his head, his own personal sordid doom. By the time he gave up, Creal was short, by his own reckoning, of eight or nine pictures. Two had been picked up by the prefects on their way back. They looked at them, laughed at them, handed them around their mates and then flushed them down the loo. They were too dangerous to hold. Another was one of a pair found by an anonymous house tutor, who had pushed one under Tony Creal’s door and kept the other hidden away. As Creal surmised, he thought - who knows? - that one day it may come in handy. The remainder had been destroyed and flushed away by Nick. But that, of course, Creal was not to know.

  Over the course of the day, Creal’s disappointment turned into anger. Oliver was still locked up in the Secure Unit, but he didn’t go down to see him, not yet. Let the little bastard stew in his own juice. He knew what he’d done. Another day or so. Then it would be time to pay him a little visit, one that he really, really wasn’t going to enjoy.

  21

  Way Home

  Once he knew Creal was about, Davey wanted to clear off at once, but Nick managed to calm him down. They crept off to the furthest part of the grounds to hide instead, which was little more than a thicket of brambles and alder trees growing in a bog. Neither of them had a watch, and the temptation to creep out into the streets to try and find out the time was almost irresistible. Several hissing rows later, they heard a hum coming at them through the trees. The traffic was picking up.

  ‘The rush hour? It can’t be,' said Nick.

  ‘Must be lunch, then. That’ll do me. Comin’?’

  Nick shrugged sheepishly. ‘Comin’,’ he said.

  So the runaways dumped their uniforms for the second time and began the long walk north.

  At last, the lads were on a roll. The weather was pretty good - a bit of wind but the sun was out and the air was warm on the skin. There were plenty of people out and about on the streets, other kids around, on their way home for lunch or off about some other business, in and out of school uniform, so they didn’t look so odd in their shirtsleeves as they had in the morning. Cars, including police cars, came and went but no one gave two boys on a busy road a second look.

  The big road they’d found was the Palatine Road, leading right out of Northenden, where Meadow Hill was, past Rusholme and the universities and on right into the heart of Manchester. From there, they knew their own way.

  All they had to do now was walk.

  And all around them were the things of this world, things they’d taken for granted for so long and which had then been taken from them. Chip shops, sweet shops, curry houses. Dogs, people walking them. Music, coming out of the houses from time to time - Duran Duran, Adam Ant, The Starship Explodes. Nick had never realised how much had been taken off him when his mother died. Music! They can even steal that from you. And cars and people and the rubbish on the streets and the dog shit and the cracked pavements. He loved it all. It was all his. He was never going to lose it again.

  For the first mile or so, they gassed and laughed and did imitations of the staff, or of each other running, fell around laughing, whooped it up. Davey had a great impression of Toms trying to hit them when they weren’t there, which for some reason they both found hilarious. Nick got anxious again when the lunch time rush died down and nagged Davey to be less conspicuous. They walked a bit longer - then, the hunger took over. You were always hungry at Meadow Hill, and they’d had nothing to eat since an inadequate breakfast in the Home hours ago. They were famished.

  ‘We need to steal some food,’ said Davey. He looked at Nick sideways - he suspected that his friend was a bit of a wimp when it came to this and was half expecting him to say, no, it’s too soon, we’re too near, we’re not away yet.

  Nick hesitated.

  ‘What are we going to do, starve?’ asked Davey. ‘Listen. I have a plan.’

  ‘Not again,’ groaned Nick. But as it happened, this one wasn’t too bad.

  The plan was called runaway chips. It worked like this. You go into a fish and chip shop, you order chips and then run off with them without paying.

  ‘They taste better that way,�
� said Davey.

  Nick bit his lip. Davey and his brothers and sisters had more or less lived off thieving for years, but he wasn’t used to it so well. He and his mates had nicked stuff, but it was all dare - sweets or a magazine, a T-shirt at the most. This was different. This was steal or starve.

  ‘You’ve not got anyone to feed you now, matey,’ Davey told him. ‘You better get used it now, or what you gonna do? Starve?’

  ‘Aren't we too close to Meadow Hill? If they catch us... ’

  ‘For a bag a chips?’ said Davey. ‘Who’s going to run us down for a bag of chips?’

  ‘Maybe we’d be better off begging ... ?’

  ‘Begging!’ said Davey in disgust. He didn’t mean that begging was beneath him, just, why beg when you can get more stealing? ‘Anyhow, we’re too old to beg,’ he said. ‘No one feels sorry for you once you’re over ten. Here’s a chippy! Let’s go.’

  Nick was about to steal his first meal.

  ‘What happens if they ask for the money first?’ he wanted to know.

  ‘Then you do a runaway nothing,’ said Davey. ‘If it was one of the chippies round my way, they never hand over ought without getting the money first, but they might not expect it here.’

  So they tried it - and it wasn’t easy. The first two, the people behind the counter wanted the money first. In the third, there was a queue built up - Davey shook his head and they left.

  ‘We’d never get out the door with that lot there,’ he said.

  In the fourth, though, it worked. The chippy handed over the chips to Nick. He should have waited for Davey to get his, but instead, he just thought, Go for it! - and turned and ran out the door as soon as the paper hit his hand.

  ‘Oi!’ yelled the man. Davey turned and jumped out of the shop on Nick’s heels.

  ‘Oi!’ yelled the man again. The two of them hoofed it down the pavement as fast as they could. As Davey had predicted, the man wasn’t going to leave his shop full of customers for the sake of one bag of chips. He stuck his head out and yelled, ‘Where’s my money? You little bastards!’ as he watched them disappear round the comer. The city opened, let them through and on their way without another thought. They made it round the corner, dodged into the ground floor of a multi-storey car park and hid behind a ledge to eat their booty.