Nicholas Dane

by Melvin Burgess

  ‘Only one man flicks the match,’ said Manley. ‘If we all did it, we’d all be guilty of murder. But if just one man does it, only he will be guilty. The job of the police will be to find out which one. So long as we all keep silent, that man is safe from prosecution. The police can take us in for questioning, we can admit we were there, we can admit we took him there, we can admit we were witnesses, willing witnesses to his murder. But so long as we keep the name of that man to ourselves, no one can be touched for murder.’

  ‘They can’t touch us?’ asked one.

  ‘Conspiracy to murder, maybe. A few years,’ sneered Jones. ‘Who won’t give a few years to see an end to Tony Creal?’

  The men nodded. Well worth it, they were all agreed.

  ‘And that man has a guarantee,’ put in Jones. ‘Because if any one of us gives his name away, he will murdered in his turn, in the same way. Remember that,’ he said, glaring fiercely about him. ‘In the same way. I swear it.’

  ‘I swear it, too,’ said Manley.

  They all swore it.

  ‘How will we choose the lucky man?’ someone asked.

  ‘We cut,’ said Jones. He produced a pack of cards and shuffled it well before handing it on to the next man, who also shuffled it. The pack did the rounds of all five, shuffled in every hand, before it was placed face down on the floor.

  ‘High wins, ace high,’ said Jones. He reached down, slid the pack sideways to spread them out in an untidy fan, and took a card. One after the other, all five men did the same. When it was done, they cast their cards face up on the floor before them.

  Who took the highest card? It was never told, and it won’t be told here, either. But it was said, by one of the five to another man many years later; that it was the jack of diamonds that won the day.

  32

  What Stella Did

  While the five men were making their plans, Stella went to see Sunshine. She found him in, with just Davey for company, both of them wrapped up in blankets in the little kitchen, eating beans with the gas ring burning to try and keep the warmth up.

  It smelt of farts.

  ‘Bloody hell, you two, how long you been eating those beans?’ she demanded.

  ‘It’s him,’ said Shiner, pointing at Davey.

  ‘You were letting rip just now. And anyway, you’re old. Old farts smell worse.’

  Shiner chuckled. ‘I’m an old fart, now, am I?’ he said. ‘And beans, Stella, what else am I supposed to eat now you’re gone? Have you come round to teach us how to do one of those lovely omelettes you used to make for me?’

  Stella smiled. ‘I’ll make you an omelette if you want, Shiner.’

  He smiled thinly back. ‘No eggs,’ he said.

  ‘It’s gone to pieces round ’ere since you went,’ said Davey.

  Stella went to put the kettle on. Behind her back, Shiner caught Davey’s eye and indicated the door. It was the first time he had seen Stella on her own since she left him for Jones and he wanted to make the most of it.

  Davey quietly made himself scarce. Stella noticed, and smiled at Sunshine, flattered that he wanted her to himself. She made them both a cup of coffee and sat down at the table opposite to him.

  Shiner took a good long look at her - the bruises fading on her face, the way she held herself, how she was careful of her side where her rib was cracked. He put a hand across the table and squeezed hers.

  ‘It’s good to see you,’ he said.

  ‘It’s good to see you, Sunshine,’ said Stella. She glanced around the kitchen. ‘The old place is still the same.’

  Shiner shook his head. ‘Not the same.’

  ‘Yeah, it’s filthy round here. Can’t you get one of your other girls to do a little housework?’ she joked.

  ‘None of them come to live in me house. None a them is you.’

  ‘I'm sorry, Shine.’

  ‘You got your freedom now.’

  She threw up her hands in exasperation. ‘Don’t go on! He lets me out the house, which is more than you did.’ Shiner tried another tack.

  ‘Look at you. Look at your face. And I don’t just mean the bruises. You’re all closed up. Like the roof’s about to fall in on you.’

  ‘It probably is here.’

  Sunshine just shook his head. Stella bent hers.

  ‘I love him,’ she said stubbornly. ‘And he... he needs me.’

  ‘He needs you! What for? As a punch bag? No, don’t tell me - you’re going to change him! Is that it? Let me tell you something about these kind of men, Stella. Jones will never change. The more he loves you the more he hits you, the more he hits you the more he hates you, the more he hates you the more he loves you. For some men, love is full of hate.’

  Shiner had come very close to the truth. But Stella had other things on her mind than her own safety.

  ‘I’m worried about him, Shiner,’ she said.

  Shiner leaned back in his chair. ‘Worried about him? Eh?’

  ‘Ever since he did that chemist’s ... ’

  ‘What happened that day? What did he do to Nick? He scared the life out of that boy. I scarcely see him these days. He’s scared Jones’ll come round and find him. Did he do something wrong?’

  Stella frowned. ‘Not that I know of. Shiner, I think Jonesy is planning something dangerous. I think, I think he’s planning on killing someone.’

  Having said it, Stella burst into tears. Shiner looked at her in astonishment. ‘Oh, man. Murder? That’s not Jones’s style. He’ll kill you if you get in his way, but he’d never plan it. What makes you think that?’

  ‘Nothing...the way he is...I don’t know! He has Manley round all the time and these other blokes keep turning up, and they all look so grim. And making plans I’m not allowed to hear ... ’

  Shiner shook his head. ‘So he’s planning something he doesn’t want you to know. So what’s new?’

  ‘Something’s wrong, Shine. Something’s going on’

  ‘Something’s always going on. Who, then? Who’s he want out a the way?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Why?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘You don’t know nothing.’ Shiner leaned back in his chair.

  ‘I’m scared for him.’

  Shiner threw his hands in the air. Jones was ugly, brutal and stupid. It was an insult to him that she should prefer a man like that to him.

  They talked a while longer. Sunshine pumped her as much as he could for information about the job. Something had happened, but Stella hadn’t got a clue what it was.

  ‘Nick,’ he said at last. ‘Go and see Nick. He knows something.'

  ‘What?’

  ‘No idea. He won’t say a word to me. Maybe he’ll tell you.’

  Stella dried her tears. ‘Where’s he staying?’

  Shiner shrugged; no idea.

  Stella nodded. She was too close to Jones. If Nick wanted to avoid him, Shiner certainly wasn’t going to tell her where to find him.

  She finished her coffee and left. Behind her, Shiner put his head in his hands and moaned softly to himself.

  He loved her still. He wanted her back, and he hadn’t given up hope yet. Jones was going to go too far sooner or later - he was going back inside, no doubt about it. Then, he’d have another chance. He wasn’t above helping Jones on his way, either, if only he could find a way of ratting on him and be sure of not getting caught. So far, nothing had occurred to him.

  Stella left the building in Oldham Street and walked south into town to do some shopping, but before she went more than a few steps, Davey caught up with her. Unlike Shiner, Davey knew exactly what had happened that day. Nick had told him all about Creal sitting with his Guinness at the Old Folks at Home, and how Jones reacted when he saw him.

  Davey had thought about it and nodded. ‘You mean,’ he said, ‘that Jones used to be one of Creal’s bum boys?’

  The two of them laughed and laughed till
their sides hurt. The idea of the notorious Jones, ugly, brutal, angry Jones, bent over the back of the sofa for the old man’s pleasure was just crippling. It was also terrifying.

  If she had been to see Nick, Stella would quite likely have got nothing out of him - he was far more traumatised by his experiences at Meadow Hill than Davey was and would have just clammed up. As it was, she got the information she was looking for. Tony Creal, the pub where he had been spotted; Meadow Hill, the Home where he was the deputy.

  ‘Meadow Hill,’ she cried. ‘I’ve heard Ben talk about it. He went there, too.’

  ‘I know,’ said Davey, and sniggered.

  Stella got a great deal of information out of Davey - but not all. There were things you just didn’t talk about and sexual abuse was one of them. That was taboo. Davey would have felt he was letting his friend down if he so much as hinted at the kind of things Nick had suffered during his time in care. The shame, somehow, seemed to reflect as much on the victim as on the perpetrator. Instead, he mentioned the violence, and left it at that.

  ‘If ’e wants to top someone, it’s Creal, I reckon,’ said Davey. And he smiled at the thought of it.

  Stella was horrifed. It was real? Her fears were real?

  ‘Let him,’ said Davey. ‘Creal deserves everything he gets, and more. It’ll be the only good thing Jones ever did.’

  But to kill a man because he knocked you around when you were a kid? It happened all the time. It was hardly a hanging offence.

  Davey shrugged. ‘You weren’t there,’ he said, and he smiled grimly.

  They parted - Davey to run off to Nick’s to tell him the news. Jones was planning on murdering Creal. Now there was a cause for celebration! Behind him, Stella wandered the streets upset, confused, not knowing what to think. She couldn’t be a party to murder. If he did it, of course he would be caught and then what? Life. Twenty, maybe thirty years inside.

  She wasn’t at all sure Jones could cope with being caged up for so long.

  She couldn’t stop him, she knew that much. Nothing she could say or do would ever deflect him from a course once he’d settled on it. And she couldn’t shop him either. She could never bring herself to do that.

  Round and round the streets she went, undecided what to do. Creal she didn’t care about at all, although she hardly wished him dead. Her concern was Jones. How could she help him? How could she prevent this senseless act without attracting the police to his door?

  In the end, she made her plan. She bought paper and pen and wrote a letter addressed to Meadow Hill - she got the address from the telephone books at the post office - and Tony Creal.

  ‘If it is you,’ she wrote, ‘who drinks at the Old Folks at Home in Northenden, some men mean you harm. They are men that you harmed when they were at your school. You have been seen. This is a warning from someone who cares nothing for you, but doesn’t want to see a good man go down for no good reason.’

  She posted her letter and went on her way. She did the shopping as Jones had told her, and went back home, to find her lover in a remarkably jolly mood considering the kind of thoughts that were on his mind. She tried to join in, smoked some weed with him, drank some beer and later on they had some takeaway pizza. But she couldn’t shake off her anxiety about what was being planned, or about what she had done to foil it. Jones quickly lost patience with her and went to the pub on his own, leaving her at home alone with her thoughts.

  33

  Another Deal

  As Stella had guessed, Shiner wasn’t being completely honest with her about Nick. For the first three or four days after the job with Jones, he’d avoided Oldham Street altogether and hidden out in Jenny’s house. Boredom and the need for excitement he’d developed since his mother died drove him back soon enough, but he was wary now. Knowing what he knew about Jones’s past wasn’t a healthy thing and he no longer felt safe at Shiner’s. He moved his room to a more distant part of the house, but he spent very little time in it after that, and from then on, he always sat in Shiner’s kitchen on the seat nearest the door into the sitting room, where there was an escape hole into the attic, in case Jones turned up unexpectedly.

  Bored or not, he was spending far more time round at Jenny’s than he ever had before.

  Jenny didn't know what had happened to drive him into her house, but given Nick’s recent taste for danger, she could guess it was something pretty grim. She saw it as a chance to get him back on the straight and narrow - off the streets and into a proper home, away from theft and into education... or into something, anyway. The question was, what? Nick scoffed at the idea of school. All his mates were well into their first exam year now, he was hardly going to catch up. What was there for a fifteen-year-old during the weekdays, if not school?

  Every day she could see him itching to get away, and not daring to. Whatever trouble he was in would fade away soon enough, she guessed. Unless she found something to haul him in with, so would he.

  With the social services no longer involved, she turned to the only other source of help she knew, and got in touch with Michael Moberley.

  They had a long chat on the phone about what was best. His solution of course, was to get in touch with social services and he found it difficult to understand why she was so adamant that it was a no go. Nick had told her a few bits and pieces over the past week -nothing about the sexual abuse of course, but about the violence. She used that to try and explain.

  Michael was horrifed. ‘We need to complain! That’s monstrous!’ he exclaimed.

  ‘That won’t help Nick, though, will it?’ said Jenny.

  ‘Well, I don’t see why not. If we make a big enough fuss, they’ll make damned sure he goes somewhere pretty decent next time.’

  But Jenny wasn’t having it. She tried to explain, although she didn’t understand it herself. Nick was too shy of authority, too distrusting, and too old. At fifteen what could they do to stop him running again? Lock him up? What good would that do?

  ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I just know him. If he gets so much as a whiff of anything like that, he’ll be off. Anyhow,’ she added, ‘I gave my word.’

  ‘Nothing without his consent, of course,’ said Michael, disappointed. Because the fact was, what else was there?

  They talked a little more, but came to no conclusion. The outcome was, he agreed to come over and talk to Nick in person. And this time, Nick was there.

  Michael Moberley took a cab from the station and got out on Jenny’s road, a long row of brick terraces. He paid the driver and looked up and down. Poor area. He felt overdressed in his good coat and expensive shoes, rather too well aware that for a lot of people round here, he could be wearing several weeks wages on his back as he stood there.

  ‘Well, sorry, but there’s not enough for all of you,’ he muttered under his breath. The problem was, was there enough to help Nicholas Dane? So many things can’t be bought. The past for example. We’re all products of our pasts and no amount of money in the world can change it by one single second.

  He knocked on the door, which was opened by a curious young girl, who stared fixedly at him as she gestured him through to a kitchen diner at the back of the house, where Jenny and the phantom nephew were waiting to receive him.

  It was the first time Michael had seen Nick, and he was feeling nervous about it. Getting his eyes on him for that first look, he was left in no doubt that here was a member of his own family. The boy had Michael’s old dad written all over him - although whether or not that was a good thing, Michael was not in the least bit sure.

  He had surprised himself by how persistent he had been in tracking Nick down. It was curiosity as much as anything. There had been so many different versions. Depending on who you talked to, Nick was anything from a violent thug to a hapless victim, and he was interested to see how he came across.

  There wasn’t much sign of the thug, but what did he expect? To find him beating Jenny with the rolling pin and torturing the kids? The most vivid impression he got, over
all, on that first meeting, was that here was someone not to be trusted. Nick’s eyes were all over the place, like a pair of fried eggs slipping around a greasy plate. Victim, then, decided Michael. The boy had trouble trusting people, just like Jenny had said. But as he well knew, the road from victim to thug is a very short one indeed.

  Michael had thought to take Jenny and Nick out to dinner, but she wanted to cook a dinner in, for some reason. It was a Sunday, and she was doing a roast. The vegetables were overcooked, Michael thought, and the chicken was a battery bird and really rather tasteless, but he enjoyed it all the same - sitting in a room with a family, eating up his greens with lashings of Bistro gravy.

  During the meal, he watched Nick carefully, as well as he could without drawing attention to the fact. The lad had good manners, and was polite; he knew how to behave, which was a start at least. Nick relaxed as they ate, and began chatting to the two younger children, who evidently liked him - another point in his favour. A couple of times Michael looked up and caught Nick’s eyes travelling away from him, and he realised that he was being observed every bit as carefully and as artfully as he was observing Nick. The next time he looked round swiftly and caught his eye, and gave him a wink. Nick scowled, but a moment later played exactly the same trick, which made Michael laugh out loud; and to his intense pleasure, Nick laughed with him.

  ‘Touché,’ said Michael, and he felt that progress was being made.

  Afterwards, Jenny sent her two kids away and they got down to business. Michael opened it by talking about Nick’s mother - his niece, after all, even if he had never even known of her existence until after she was already dead.

  Nick answered his questions about Muriel curtly, which reinforced his opinion that the lad was not to be trusted. This was the first conversation either of them had had, he could at least make an effort. Then, Nick stopped answering his questions altogether and sat there scowling and staring sideways at the wall. Michael was annoyed and in half a mind to leave it there, until he saw Jenny touch the boy’s hand and give Michael a little shake of her head. Then he realised. Nick was crying. He was trying very, very hard not to let his tears show.