‘Beat that,’ he said, triumph lighting up his face.
Davva, sitting next to him on the wall, looked at his friend. Skegs had beaten him in everything today. He had stunt-ridden his mountain bike without falling off. Davva had fallen off. He had got a higher score on Quake in the arcade. Davva kept dying. And now the spitting contest.
Davva got down off the wall. No point in even taking part.
‘Wassamatter?’ said Skegs.
‘I’m goin’ home.’
‘What for?’
Davva shrugged. ‘Just am.’
‘But we’ve still got stuff to do. We’ve got to go to your Tanya’s.’
‘You do it. I’m goin’ home.’
Davva started to walk off.
‘See you later.’
He left Skegs sitting alone on the wall, confused by Davva, but proud of his spit.
Davva walked through the T. Dan dragging his feet, in no hurry to reach his destination. He hated going home. Only went there when he had nowhere else to go. Best thing about it: his stuff was there. Worst thing about it: his parents were there.
He reached the house. A small square box terraced to a row of identical small square boxes. An occasional burned-out or boarded-up one broke the monotony. Davva’s house was neither well nor badly maintained. It was just there.
His footsteps slowed further. Legs dragged as he walked round the back, opened the gate, let himself into the postage-stamp-sized strip of blasted barren earth described by his parents as a garden.
He opened the kitchen door and entered. His mother was there unloading carrier bags, putting pans on the gas. She stopped what she was doing, looked at him.
‘Oh. So you’re back, then.’
She didn’t smile.
Davva nodded, grunted.
‘I suppose you want feedin’, then.’
‘Aye.’
‘Where’ve you been, then?’
Davva shrugged, started to rummage in a carrier bag for something to eat. His mother grabbed the bag off him.
‘Get yer thievin’ fingers out of there.’
He got his thieving fingers out of there.
‘We’re havin’ chips, sausages and fried eggs if you want to eat with us.’
‘Smashin’.’
Davva’s mother: big to start with, getting bigger. He saw she had a packet of biscuits open on the worktop, saw her help herself to one. A new packet, straight from the shopping. Davva noticed it was nearly half-empty. She crunched the biscuit round in her mouth, absently, as if she was just giving her jaws something to do. Her face was fat: piggy big, but hard. Davva could never remember her laughing or even smiling much when he was around. less when Tanya had been at home. All he had got from her was questions. Judgements. It was all he had ever got from her.
The emotions Davva felt for his mother had full titles. They had been named and documented. But not by him. So he didn’t know what he felt for his mother. He couldn’t name it.
And he had no idea what she felt for him.
‘Where’s me fatha?’
‘Front room,’she said through a mouthful of biscuit.
Davva wandered into the front room. His father was sitting in an armchair, Mirror on his knee, Neighbours on the box, rolling a fag.
‘Hello, bonny lad.’ He smiled at Davva.
‘Hiya.’
Davva sat on the settee, stared absently at the prancing Aussie bimbos and himbos.
‘Had a good day?’
Davva shrugged.
‘All right.’
‘Where you been?’
‘Round.’
Davva didn’t take his eyes off the TV. He knew there were questions his father wanted to ask, answers he didn’t want to hear. But his father wouldn’t ask them. He was too weak. So if he stared at the screen long enough, the questions would go away.
‘Hey,’ said Davva’s dad, deliberately changing the subject, ‘did I tell you about the football match on Sunday. You shoulda been there, man. Hey, it was crackin’.’
‘Aye.’
‘I played, y’kna. Second half.’
Davva nodded.
‘Helped set up the goal.’
Davva watched TV.
‘You know, that’s what you should do. Play football. Give you an interest. Somethin’ to do. You’d like it.’
Neighbours finished. The air in the house was thick with more than frying: a kind of squandered energy that started with his parents and radiated outwards. Like they’d given up and you could feel it. Davva noticed it every time he set foot in the house. He thought of it as an airborne disease, something he could catch if he sat there long enough. He got up, went upstairs.
His room had a padlock nailed to it. He had done it himself. He took the key from the back pocket of his D&G jeans and opened it.
Inside, it was a teenage boy’s Aladdin’s cave. PS2. Games. DVDs. CDs: Garage and RnB. Portable CD player, bass-heavy.
Clothes in the wardrobe, label-heavy.
In a slit in the bed base: stashed notes. A small supply of pills. Draw. Es. Personal use only. Not for sale.
He slid the bolt into place on the door and relaxed.
This was his space. The only place he felt safe in the whole word. He could lock everyone and everything else out, forget about them. Just be himself. His parents’ disease couldn’t touch him in here.
He didn’t know what he had been feeling when he left Skegs. Some sort of sadness. He couldn’t name it. All he knew was when he felt it he wanted to be home, in his room, surrounded by his own things. Things he’d bought with his own money or lifted with his own skill. He drew comfort from them. Found solace in them.
He crossed to the CD player, stuck in a CD.
UK garage. The best.
He whacked up the volume, rolled a spliff, opened the window.
He lay on the bed, beats thumping their way into his brain, draw easing its way into his mind. Soothing him, stopping the sad thoughts. Stopping any thoughts.
He took another drag, held the smoke in his chest until it burned, exhaled. Felt the numbness rush to his head.
He smiled. Not happy, but near to it.
Angela threw the sausages into the pan, ignoring the hot fat pin-spitting at her, and sighed. She made her way into the front room, stood hands on hips, looking down at Mick.
‘Listen to that,’ she said, pointing up at the ceiling. ‘Do we have to put up with that?’
‘Boy’s got to do somethin’,’ said Mick, not meeting her eyes. ‘You were a teenager once.’
‘Not like that. Not like him. Those locks on his room …’
‘He needs privacy. Boy his age. It’s natural.’ Mick’s hands were shaking as he placed the roll-up between his lips.
‘It’s not natural. No shuttin’ us out like that. And where does all that stuff he’s got come from, eh? You never ask him about it.’
Mick cleared his throat, swallowed.
‘Neither do you.’
‘I wash me hands of the whole thing. He’s like his sister. Just as bad. He has to learn, like her, that you either toe the line in this house or you get out.’
Mick said nothing. He held the match with both hands as he lit his roll-up. He looked at the TV. Tried to be interested in the election coverage.
‘Are you listenin’ to me?’
He looked up.
‘Aye, pet. Aye.’
Angela looked at him, her eyes hard, unreadable.
‘You’re his father. You say somethin’ to him.’
‘Aye. Aye.’
Mick smoked, watched TV.
She left the room, went back to the kitchen.
The tea was soon ready and dished up. Mick was instructed to shout upstairs for their son. The music went off, the door was re-padlocked. Down he came. Davva took his seat at the kitchen table.
They ate in silence.
The occasion felt uncomfortable, unfamiliar. They weren’t a family who sat down together at mealtimes. Or hadn’t been for a
long time. Davva’s presence made them regard each other as strangers.
‘Your father has somethin’ to say to you,’ said Angela through a mouthful of sausage.
Mick looked up.
‘Now?’
‘Yes. Now.’
Mick swallowed, looked thoughtful.
‘Listen, son. Wh-where you been today?’
‘Around.’
‘It’s just that… me an’ your mother, we get, you know, we think you should be at school or somethin’. Learnin’.’
‘No point, is there? No jobs.’
Mick’s voice sounded hollow in his own ears. ‘But you have to go to school—’
‘Why? So I can spend all me life on the dole? Like you?’
Mick put his knife and fork down, stopped eating.
‘Don’t speak like that to your father,’ said Angela. ‘You with all that stuff in your room. Where did all that come from, eh? Where’s the money? Here’s us haven’t got two pennies to rub together and there’s you with all that stuff up there. Well?’
Davva stood up.
‘Is that it, is it?’
He thrust his hand into his jeans pocket, gathered up whatever notes were in there and flung them down on the table.
‘There,’ he said. ‘If that’s what you want, take it.’
He walked away, leaving his tea half-eaten, and went straight out the back door, slamming it as he went. Mick and Angela sat still, not looking at each other, Mick not eating. Angela absently forking in mouthfuls, the money lying on the table between them. They sat like that for a long time. Eventually Angela finished, placed her knife and fork on the plate, sighed.
‘Well,’ said Mick, his voice small, hesitant, ‘least he’s helpin’ out with money. If he’s got it comin’ in, he should be doin’ that.’
Angela looked at the notes lying there, then slowly reached across the table and picked them up. She counted them, pocketed them. She nodded, stood up.
They didn’t know what they were feeling. They couldn’t name it.
‘I’ll get the puddin’,’ Angela said.
Her voice was rich with the disease Davva believed she had.
Coldwell Colliery was opened in 1901. The seam was expected to last for nearly two hundred years. It was owned by the Northumbrian Colliery Company. Hartsdean House was where the NCC had its headquarters. An imposing Edwardian structure, heavy with red brick and soot. It lay to the north of Coldwell colliery, and from the top floor the three businessmen who owned it could look out over the mine, watching the winding tower wheels turn, calculate how much coal could be turned into profit.
In 1947, when the industry was nationalized, the house was sold off. For years it was a nursing home then, when the owners went bankrupt, the building was allowed to become derelict. In 2001 a brewery bought the land and razed it.
The Hartsdean pub was new, themed and chained. It smelled not of ale and smoke but of fragrance and polish. Faux Victoriana-facaded CD jukeboxes pumped out bland and palatable background noise. Computerized tills beeped. Electric gas flickering on the wall, dimmer controlled from behind the bar, bounced a warm glow off the factory-produced stained-glass windows.
The pub had a bar and a dining area. Waiting staff costumed as Victorian maids and manservants could be glimpsed going about their duties. There were outdoor and indoor children’s play areas. Trestle tables bordered an artificial lake built on the site of the deepest seam of the old mine, where twelve men lost their lives in a gas explosion in 1919. All around the lake, new trees and shrubs were planted, encased in white plastic sleeves, like grave markers for dead soldiers. A large gravelled car park was sprinkled with luxury saloons. Beyond was the roof of the leisure centre. Beyond that sprawled the T. Dan.
‘So what d’you want to know, exactly?’
Dave Wilkinson sat in a Liberty-print chair, a glass of orange juice on the dark wood table in front of him. He was again tracksuited, gym bag at his side.
Larkin sat in the chair opposite him. Stubbled, dishevelled, with a bottle of lager and a dictaphone beside him. He had performed the obligatories: thanked Wilkinson for meeting at short notice, allowed Wilkinson to pick the venue, assured him his work would be seen in nothing but a good light and that anything remotely contentious would be quoted anonymously.
Larkin switched on the dictaphone: the red light glowed.
‘We’ll start with just an overview. How d’you see the role of the police today in Coldwell?’
‘Well, Stephen, my area, and therefore the only one I can really comment on with any kind of authority, is community policing. I’m based on the T. Dan. You’ll have seen our mobile police station, the Portakabin?’
Larkin hadn’t but nodded that he had.
‘Well, that’s where my team is based. As you know, the T. Dan is an area with a lot of problems. Crimes against the person and property. Street crime. Theft, burglary. Very common. The majority of them drug-related. What we’re there to do is give residents a reassuring presence, let them drop in for a cup of tea if they want, share their concerns with us, show them they haven’t been forgotten. And act as a deterrent, of course. It’s policing based on the needs of the community. A set of initiatives implemented after consultation with local residents themselves.’
It wasn’t an answer; it was a recitation. Management-speak bullshitters r us. He’ll go far, thought Larkin.
‘Which means what, in real terms?’
‘It means a more holistic approach to policing. People who commit crimes do so for many different sociological and psychological reasons. We have to balance that alongside the victim’s view. We have to make people feel safe within their own homes and on their own streets. Bottom line.’
Wilkinson sipped his orange juice. Smacked his lips as if he enjoyed it. Smiled.
Larkin smiled back.
‘Far cry from the miners’ strike, isn’t it? Sounds more like you’re social workers in uniform.’
It looked like the orange juice had soured in Wilkinson’s mouth.
‘As I said to you the other day, I wasn’t here during the miners’ strike. I was just starting university then. I can’t speak for what happened then. Nor would I want to. The force has changed since then. Moved on. Everything has. It’s a different world now.’
Larkin took a pull from the neck of his beer bottle.
‘So how d’you get on with Tony Woodhouse?’
Wilkinson thought before answering. Whether he was deciding to get up and leave or just formulating his thoughts on Tony Woodhouse, Larkin couldn’t tell.
‘He’s a good man to work with.’
‘I wouldn’t have thought you two would agree on many things.’
‘There’s a common ground.’
Larkin nodded to encourage Wilkinson to continue. Instead he leaned across the table and switched off the dictaphone. Larkin looked startled. Wilkinson smiled.
‘I know where you’re going with this line of questioning. I’ve worked out how you operate. You want me to admit that I’m in favour of decriminalization. Perhaps even legalization. Well, I might be. But if I am, I wouldn’t admit it to you.
‘You said social workers in uniform before. Well, you’re right. That’s what we do. We pick them up, listen to their hard luck stories, try to sort them out with something or someone that’ll keep them on the straight and narrow. We do everything but wipe their noses and arses. They tell us they’re the victims. And yes, some of them have been through hell themselves. And some of them have had terrible lives, worse than we can imagine. And some of them are just plain bad. Plain nasty. And we try to work out which is which and we treat them accordingly.
‘But for all that, they’re all the same. There’s one thing they’ve got in common. A victim. Some eighty-year-old granny’s frightened to live in her own home. Some honest, hard-working bloke’s had his car nicked and torched by joyriders and he can’t afford the insurance any more. Some girl’s terrified of going out now in case the boys who raped her a
re still out there. Victims. We’ve become a society of victims. We’re all victims. It’s my job to work out who are the real ones.’
Wilkinson looked at his watch, drained his glass.
‘Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to go. I’ve got a squash partner waiting.’
He stood up. Larkin did otherwise.
‘Dave?’
Wilkinson turned.
‘Thank you for your honesty. I appreciate it. I just wished you’d let me keep the tape on.’
Wilkinson searched Larkin’s face for any trace of sarcasm. He found none. ‘Thank you.’
‘That’s OK. There is one other thing.’
‘Yes?’
‘Tommy Jobson. D’you know him?’
‘Know of him. Why?’
‘I thought I saw him at the charity football match the other day. That’s all.’
‘I wouldn’t know. Wouldn’t be surprised, though. That type think that giving to charity makes up for everything else. Now, if you’ll excuse me.’
Wilkinson walked out, bag in hand.
Larkin sat down again, pocketed the dictaphone. He got to work on his beer, looking around the pub as he did so.
Wilkinson’s words: it’s a different world now.
The minimum wage barstaff, dressed in their Victorian weeds, were serving families disgorged from the Beamers and Mercs in the car park.
Larkin drained his bottle, stood up to leave.
Not that different, he thought.
Skegs climbed the stairs. He didn’t even bother with the lift.
Cold concrete underfoot, cold plastic handrail. The block the twin of the one he lived in. He kept his hands beside him, not touching the rails. He had heard the stories: junkies leaving old syringes sticking out, needles upright, waiting to catch people unaware, share their previous owner’s bad blood.
The air was cold. Even in the summer the air in the stairwell was cold. It smelled of old piss, so ingrained that Skegs barely noticed. The walls were scrawled with graffiti. Tags and messages: lives recorded, registered, writ large. A small slice of fame, immortal until they faded or were covered over.
Skegs felt strange, nervous. He doubted anyone would attack him – everyone knew who he was, who he worked for. A lone nutter might have a go but no one else. The thing that troubled him was being alone.
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