Nicholas Dane

by Melvin Burgess

  Michael’s heart went out to him. ‘And why? Because he loved his mother, you silly old fool,’ he thought to himself. Even murderers love their mothers. But he was touched anyway, and made up his mind that yes, he would help, if only he could find a way.

  ‘Well, Nick, what’s to be done?’ he said, once Nick shook his head, surreptitiously wiped his eye and looked back up. ‘Jenny tells me you won’t have anything to do with the social services, though.’

  Nick shifted uncomfortably in his seat. ‘No way,’ he muttered.

  ‘Well, don’t get me wrong, I promise nothing’s going to happen without your agreeing to it - no one can make you do what you don’t want to. But can I ask why?’

  The boy avoided his eye. ‘I didn’t like it,’ he said.

  ‘Is that a good enough reason? I mean, there’s lots of things in life we don’t like,’ said Michael. Jenny closed her eyes and held her breath. Nick flashed him a hateful glance.

  ‘They’re a bunch of bastards in that place,’ was all he could say.

  ‘OK,’ said Michael carefully. He got the impression the lad was about to fly out the door. Jenny was right. ‘OK, we can put that option out of the way then. So what? Boarding school?’

  ‘Oh, go on, Nick,’ breathed Jenny. The solution to everything!

  Nick moved his head to one side. ‘Dunno what it’s like,’ he said finally.

  Michael pulled a face. Boarding school was expensive was what it was like. He’d do it even so. But ...

  ‘Not many people like it,’ he confessed. ‘I thought it was awful. And if you don’t fit in, the other boys can give you a bad time. And to be honest, Nick, I don’t think you’d fit in.’

  ‘Why not?’ demanded Jenny belligerently.

  ‘Class,’ said Michael succinctly. ‘He’s the wrong class.’ He shrugged and smiled apologetically.

  ‘Well, that just about stuffs all of us round here, then, doesn’t it?’ she demanded.

  ‘Not necessarily. People do it. They get through and come out the other end with a good education. Qualifications. It’s tough but it can be done. The thing is, would Nick stay there?’

  Nick thought about it for about a minute, then grinned.

  ‘I thought not.’ Michael looked at Jenny, who was furious. Such a chance! It was just being thrown away. ‘It’s expensive,’ he added. ‘Very, actually. I’d do it if I really thought it would work, but...’ He shrugged. He was relieved, but the fact was, Nick would last about ten minutes.

  “Well,there must be something,’ insisted Jenny.

  Michael looked at her sadly. ‘Is there? I wish I knew what it was. In a few years, you know, I can help with education, university, that sort of thing - when he gets to the point of wanting it. But I don’t think he does right now, do you, Nick? We could take a chance, of course. But to be honest, if he’s not going to make it in a school round here, why should he make it at one somewhere else, away from everything he knows. What do you reckon, Nick? What do you think we can do for you?’

  Nick smiled wryly. ‘Give me a load of money?’ he suggested.

  Michael smiled. ‘To do what? Get yourself a nice little flat? Start collecting china. Nice three-piece suite and a new kitchen. We can all go out and choose the carpets. You reckon?’

  Nick looked away. It was right. A few days sitting in watching TV and doing his homework, he’d go mad. Davey’d be knocking at the door asking him to come and do a nice little job for him. And he wouldn’t be able to say no.

  ‘Maybe in a few years, if you stay out of trouble,’ said Michael. ‘But for now, tell you what. You stay here with Jenny. I’ll help with money. Move in. Leave your old friends, try it at school. If it works I co uld help get a bigger flat. You could have your own room. Get your life back on track. But you have to do school. What do you say? It’s the best offer you’ll get.’

  Nick thought about it. He had his own life now, for what it was worth. Smoking weed and drinking beer up at Shiner’s place. Doing jobs, having fun. Well, not all fun, but still... it was a life, and it was his life. Risky as it was, he wasn’t sure he wanted to lose it. At least he was own boss. Until he got caught ...

  But then there was Jonesy, out there somewhere. That was something else.

  The thing was, he thought, nothing was forever. Why not?

  ‘OK,’ he said. ‘I’ll give it a go.’

  Michael Moberley smiled and Jen whooped and ran over to hug him and kiss his cheek. He was back on course.

  And Nick thought - for now, anyway.

  34

  What Jones Did

  Posting that letter was a momentous thing to Stella. She had named no names and done it only to save her man from himself. But Jones would see it as a betrayal whatever her motives, if he ever found out. She felt much the same herself.

  Now that it was too late, she began to doubt herself. She had no evidence. It was all instinct and superstition. To kill a man - such a thing! Jones lost his temper so violently that she believed him capable of murder if provoked enough, but to sit down and plan it and carry it out in cold blood ... ? Shiner was right; that wasn't his style. Then, to make it worse, shortly after the letter was posted, her period began. She was hopeless at remembering the day of the month. The bleeding started, her mood lifted, and she realised the coincidence with a shock.

  ‘That was the worst premenstrual tension ever,’ she thought, clutching her head. Imagining people were murdering each other. What next?

  Murder or not, something was up. After his initial burst of good humour on the day the plan was made, Jones sank back into an ugly mood. He hardly noticed her from one day to the next until she almost began to wish for a blow, if that’s what it took. Anything was better than his blindness to her.

  Of course, the plan was still afoot. Jones was spending hours round at Manley’s or one of the other conspirators, drinking beer and going over and over the plot. It seemed impossible that something so flimsy as a mere plan could work against blood and bone and the force of the law, or against the cunning of a man who had once held such power over them. But however often they went over it, no one could find a flaw. So long as they held true, so long as no man spoke, they were safe.

  So week after week the two pubs were watched, the men taking it in turns to watch in pairs. For two weeks Creal failed to show. On the third week, finally, he turned up. A call was made. The other three conspirators came and waited on the road in two separate cars so as not to attract attention - and then the victim left in a car with some friends. Nothing happened.

  Jones was enraged. Actually leaving the house to wait in the streets for Creal made it all real, somehow. Now, for the first time, he was certain it was going to happen. He was greedy for blood.

  ‘Patience,’ said Manley. Creal’s fate was sealed. It was just a matter of time.

  For the next few weeks, nothing happened. Stella began to suspect not a crime, but another woman. Jones had ceased to care for her - what else could it be? That was where he was spending his time, with someone else. He was bored with her. Mentally, she began to prepare herself for the end. Then, four weeks after she had popped her letter in the box. there was a raid at the house. It was a Thursday. The police, looking for Jones. As usual he was out.

  Stella faced them down.

  ‘What’s he done?’ she demanded.

  ‘What do you think he’s done?’ one of them asked, watching her reaction carefully. Stella felt her knees quivering as if she was standing on a nerve. Carefully she pressed her hand against the wall to hide her trembling. Too late! Had he done it already?

  The officers searched the house, but the gun and the drugs had all been hidden away, and they went away empty-handed, leaving Stella no wiser than when they arrived.

  What had happened was this. Creal had taken Stella’s letter to the police, and they, of course, had put a watch on at the Old Folks at Home. They knew Jones, and Manley, and the other three of old - all of them had served prison terms before. Over the weeks they
saw all of them in various combinations together, and it didn’t take them long to work out that all five had spent time at Meadow Hill. Warrants had been sought and obtained. Manley and two other men had been arrested at the Old Folks at Home and simultaneously, the homes of all five men were raided. Jones had been taken at one of those homes. The five were arrested for conspiracy to murder and taken in for questioning.

  Questions, questions, questions, all night. Someone had given them away, that was clear. Who? Not one of them, Jones was sure of that. Held another day. Questions, questions, questions.

  The police knew how to lean, and they leaned hard. The men were kept separate from one another, in brightly lit cells. Their sleep was broken, there was not enough food, not enough drink, no cigarettes. Blows, too - the police weren’t fussy about how they got their results. On it went. Questions, promises, accusations, threats. It was over, their friends had confessed all, jail was opening up to receive them. On it went, for three days and nights, but it was as Manley said. No man spoke. At the end of it, the police had no more than when they started out - an anonymous letter and the presence of five men at a pub.

  They were released without charge.

  Who could it have been? Back home, Jones stormed around the sitting room, kicking the chairs, smashing the furniture. Stella cringed by the door, begging him to stop. Who? Not his mates - Jones would put his life on the line for those four men and they would do the same for him. Not them! But who? Who else knew?

  ‘Maybe they watched the pub?’ suggested Stella, desperate to say anything.

  But how would they know which pub? Jones paused. Who else knew?.. .and then he realised. The boy. That shitty little sneak. Could have been him. Could easily have been him. He knew all about Creal, the dirty little bum boy, no doubt about that. It had been Nick who led him to Creal, standing outside, watching the old bastard as if he was a pot of cream.

  It had to be. No one else knew. The little shit was protecting dear Tony. How he loved dear Tony Creal!

  Where was he? Jones ran across and seized Stella by the neck. Where! She knew, she was friends. He knew he wasn’t spending much time round at Oldham Street. This was why! So where was he hiding out?

  Stella choked and shook her head. Jones flung her aside and went for the door.

  ‘I’ll find him anyway,’ he growled.

  Stella knew her man. If he found Nick, he’d kill him, or not far off. Jones had been betrayed and someone was going to suffer for it. Not Nick - her friend. Jones ignored her cry. He seized a short stick, a weighted cudgel with lead poured into the drilled end of it, and rushed out in a blind fury. He was already in the street before she found her senses and rushed after him.

  ‘Not him,’ she managed to gasp. ‘It was me.’

  Jones turned to look at her.

  ‘Not really me, Ben,’ she begged. ‘Just a letter. I knew you were up to something ... and I didn’t want murder. I just warned him off, that’s all ...’

  She began to babble but the pieces were falling together in Jones’s head.

  ‘Maybe they watched the pub,’ he said, staring at her.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You said it. What pub? How did you know about the pub?’ hissed Jones. In two strides he was on her, pushed her inside, slamming the door behind him. He seized her by the throat and shook her like a rat. Clutching her neck in one fist, he began to beat furiously at her face and head with his fist, while she clawed breathlessly at his face. The blood spattered against him and he threw her to the ground in disgust. Stella sprawled on the carpet, clutching her injured throat, unable to catch the breath to beg for mercy. Jones kicked her hard in the face, as hard as he could, one, two, three. Look at her lying there, tears and snot and blood! Ugly, ugly! In a spasm his rage increased a hundred-fold. He drew the weighted cudgel from his coat pocket, leaned over and thrashed her over the head with it four or five times. The blood sprayed up from her broken head. Jones lifted up the cudgel and looked at it, soiled with blood, skin, matted hair, a splinter of bone. Down at his feet, Stella rolled over as if she was still alive, her arm flung back, her face facing him, a mess of blood, and brains. Jones screamed in rage and terror. How could anything so ugly lie there before him? How could it dare?

  Possessed by rage, Jones struck again, and again, and again, over and over with all his force until Stella’s head was an unrecognisable pulp. Unable to look and unable to stop, he covered his face in his arm while he beat her and beat her as if he could chase her into hell, or out of this world - anywhere, so long as neither he nor anyone would ever have to look at something so spoiled, so ugly, so awful.

  The fit left him and Jones was left staring down at what he had done. He turned, ran to the door, opened it and froze on the threshold, looking out into the street. The stink of blood was awful. The room was covered in it, pooling on the floor, spattered up the walls and the furniture. He glanced down at himself and saw that he too, was covered from head to foot in spattered gore. He retched, backed up into the room, slammed the door behind him. He edged sideways around her, unable to look at the body of the one he loved. After what seemed an age he reached the door to the stairs, pushed it to behind him and ran up to the bathroom, where he stripped off his clothes and ran a bath. He was still in it when he realised that the front door was only on the Yale, and had to run downstairs, dripping and naked next to the frightful thing he had made, to lock up the mortice. Back upstairs, the bath water was red, as if somehow she had bled even there, and he had to empty it, run another and re-bathe.

  And there he lay, poor mad Jones, for hour after hour, filling and refilling the bath with scalding water from the multipoint, scrubbing at his skin until he drew his own blood to discolour the water again, until darkness fell. Then, he dressed in clean clothes, crept downstairs and out by the back way, avoiding the awful inhabitant of the front room. He ran around the block to the front, where he kept his battered old red Ford. He started up the engine, and with a fearful glance over his shoulder to the front of the house, put the car into gear and drove off.

  He headed north first, to a lock-up on the outskirts of Bolton, where, he picked up the shotgun he had used on the raid, almost two months ago now, and a plastic bag containing the remains of the drugs he had stolen. He paused, then put the drugs back. He was going to need his wits about him. It was a decision Jones was going to regret a thousand times in the next days and hours, as Stella came back to haunt him.

  He drove on. On the outskirts of Bolton he dumped the car and stole another one, a white Vauxhall. By now it was past two in the morning. He crossed the Pennines over the Snake Pass and got onto the M1, going south. It was at about this point that his spirits suddenly lifted. His plan was to reach Harwich and cross to the Netherlands on the ferry, changing the car a couple more times on the way. Or maybe not. He was feeling unaccountably fond of the car he was driving. It had brought him luck. He patted the wheel. He felt somehow that things had at last come to a head. He was leaving his troubles all behind him, leaving his whole past on the other side of the hills - all the poison, the violence, the shame, the betrayal, all left behind. Starting a new life, a better life, a clean life. He had reached bottom - what worse could happen to him?

  At this rate, he’d easily make it to the port before the news got out. Manley might come round, but he wouldn’t go in without a response from Jones. It could be days before they discovered it.

  Jones put down his foot and sped into the night.

  35

  Oldham Street

  When the wind blew hard, the roof on Sunshine’s building in Oldham Street creaked and groaned like a tired old man shifting in his chair. It was a tall building, with a complicated slate roof that presented like sails to the storm. The groans communicated themselves down the building so that on a windy day, it sounded as if the upper storeys were full of creeping strangers going about the house in their stockinged feet, setting the boards and doors creaking, while the roof above shifted and huffed and groaned
aloud, as if it would be a positive relief for it to fly off into the air and never come back.

  It was such a night - high clouds floating overhead, playing peek-a-boo with the stars, the house full of unseen presences, and unexpected draughts getting under the floor and appearing in all sorts of odd places, miles away from any apparent connection to the outside. The only consolation was, it was a dry night, and the southern wind was oddly warm.

  Sunshine was in bed with a blonde girl called Sash. Nick and Davey were sitting in the kitchen playing cards, moaning about their luck.

  Nick hadn’t been at Jenny’s for over a week. Jones had done his worst, then he had disappeared. The first Nick knew about the murder was the police at the front door looking for him - someone must have seen him out and about with either Stella or Jones. He’d slipped quietly out the back and hadn’t been there since. He’d gone straight round to Shiner’s and found Davey, who as usual knew all the news and filled him in on it.

  No more Stella. It was impossible to believe. They’d smoked weed and drunk beer to mourn her, and to celebrate Jones’s disappearance, and Nick had stayed there ever since. True the police had been round here looking for him as well, but at least it was easier to disappear here - Shiner’s building was full of hiding places. Behind him he left Mr Moberley, school and Jenny herself, more or less unmourned. Real life was here under Shiner’s roof. If it led to prison and a hundred other evils, at least it was his, that’s how it felt - and what else could he do but live his own life?

  It was a good night for thieving. Everyone would be indoors, hiding from the wind and no one would hear them creeping down the streets. They wouldn’t be bringing the goods back to Shiner’s though. After Stella’s murder Sunshine had cleared the place out as much as he could, certain that sooner or later, the police were going to come and search the place from top to bottom. When there was a killing, he said, they never let go. He didn’t dare actually chuck out all the stolen goods he’d hoarded over the years, in case the place was being watched. He’d got Nick and Davey to help him move it all deeper into the building, into spaces in the roof that weren’t his.