He hadn’t slept. Or if he had, he couldn’t remember it.
Days and nights were the same now. He was in darkness whether his eyes were closed or open. Waking or sleeping, he still moved through the same nightmare.
The police had visited him twice in the last week. The first time had been to inform him of his son’s arrest and to ask him and Angela to join them at the station.
They had complied and found Davva in a terrible state, crying so much they couldn’t understand him. The duty solicitor explained.
Drug dealing. Underage sex. Kidnapping. Actual bodily harm. Murder.
Mick was stunned. Angela had started on Davva. Screaming at him, shouting, telling him how stupid he had been. Mick had stepped in, calmed her down. Davva had started crying again. He needed a hug from his mother. It never came.
Davva was interviewed, charged, kept on remand. He and his friend, they were told, would be sent to a secure unit.
Mick and Angela had gone home.
Two days later, another policeman had called. The badly decomposed body of a teenage girl had been discovered in Wyn Davies House. They believed it was that of their daughter, Tanya. Dead from a heroin overdose.
Mick had slid into shock which in turn gave way to tears. Angela had just remained silent.
There was a baby, Mick said, Carly.
There was no baby found in the flat but they would make enquiries.
They had to identify the body. The bloated, corrupted corpse they saw bore no relation to the daughter they had once known.
Back home, Mick had cried. Angela had said, ‘Well, that wasn’t our daughter.’
‘No,’ said Mick sadly.
‘She stopped bein’ our daughter years ago.’
Mick looked at her, too stunned to reply.
‘And as for our son, I just wash my hands of him.’
Mick could stay silent no longer.
‘You wash your hands of him? You washed your hands of Tanya and look what happened to her!’
Angela turned to him, red cheeks wobbling with anger.
‘You sayin’ it’s my fault, is it? Is that the thanks I get for everythin’ I’ve done over the years? An’ where were you in all this?’
‘I was here. Right here. Lettin’ you get away with every-thin’.’
‘That’s right. Blaine me.’
‘Look at you! Just look at you! You’ve got no love in you, have you? No love at all.’
Mick grabbed his coat. He was shaking.
‘Where you goin’?’
‘Out.’
He slammed the door behind him.
He had gone out and stayed out.
Now, he reached the town centre. He checked the time on the clock. The supermarket would be open, but not for what he wanted.
He found a wall beside the rows of trolleys, checked the ground for pound coins, found none. Sat and waited.
Opposite was a fading poster, left up from the election. For the Labour Party:
GET OUT AND VOTE. OR THEY GET IN AGAIN.
It showed Thatcher’s hairdo on Hague’s head.
Mick stared at the poster, squinted hard. The more he looked, the more he saw Blair’s face beneath the hair, not Hague’s. He laughed.
‘Too late, mate,’ he said out loud, ‘they have got in again.’
Mick waited.
Tony sat behind his desk in the CAT Centre, nervous now the time had come. He could talk to other people about their problems, their addictions. That was his job, his talent. What he couldn’t do was talk about his own.
‘Thanks for coming.’
He looked around the room. Larkin, Claire and Louise. The door firmly shut.
‘Thanks for saying you’ll help. I appreciate it. I’ve taken advice, both medical and legal, to see where I stand. There’s a doctor we do some work with here. We’re going to come up with a treatment programme together. Got to do something to keep a clean supply.’
He smiled weakly. The others responded in kind.
‘Are you still going to go public?’ asked Claire.
‘Stephen thinks it’s the best thing to do. After everything that’s happened recently there’s going to be a lot of interest in us. I have to say, I think he’s right.’
‘We make it pre-emptive,’ said Larkin. ‘If we don’t come clean, so to speak, then word about Tony’ll leak out. This way we control the interviews, the press. Make Tony come out of it in the best light possible.’
‘And keep the Centre going,’ said Claire.
‘That’s the important thing,’ said Tony. ‘We’ve got to keep this place running. Even if someone else has to take over.’
‘It might not come to that,’ said Louise.
Tony smiled at her. She smiled back, then looked out of the window.
The police had treated Tony, Suzanne and herself quite sympathetically, she thought. The only note of suspicion they had sounded was over Tommy’s presence. Tony had explained that he had to take his charitable donations when and where he found them. He had also used his influence with local police and politicians to minimize the impact.
However, they knew word would get out. That was when Louise had suggested getting her brother to manage that end of things.
Tommy’s funeral had been a media scrum. News cameras had fought for shots of celebs, crims or celeb crims, police cameras had quietly recorded the attendees, noting whose laugh was loudest, whose smile was widest, knowing they would try to make themselves in line for Tommy’s vacant position.
Tony had been invited to attend Tommy’s funeral. Louise had insisted he decline.
Karl was in hospital in a coma. Louise had attempted to be concerned over his condition but she couldn’t manage it. She felt nothing but angry relief.
It was wonderful to be free of Keith, not to have her ideas, her thoughts constantly undermined. She was sad about Ben, though. She had given him the choice and he had opted to stay with his father. She had accepted it and hoped that he would come to understand her actions in time.
Keith wasn’t fighting her demands for a divorce. She would get a very generous settlement too. He knew how much he had to lose.
She was pleased Suzanne was with her. They were trying with each other. It wasn’t easy, but they would get there. Because they both wanted to.
And Tony. They would make it. They had survived this far.
She looked out at Coldwell.
One drinker sitting on the wall outside the public toilets. Smiling to himself.
She smiled. Even he matched her mood.
She looked back at Tony.
They would make it.
Mick, feeling the satisfying clink from within his carrier bag, sat down on the low wall outside the public toilets in Coldwell’s main square. He opened his first can of Carlsberg Special, tingled at the anticipatory pop of the ring pull, put it to his lips and drank it down.
Lovely. This first one of the morning was always the best.
He was alone. His friends would be joining him soon. He was looking forward to it. He had finally found a place he felt comfortable in, people whose company he liked. They didn’t judge, they didn’t ask anything of him. He asked nothing of them in return.
It was somewhere he could go to forget, to be himself.
He glanced up at the windows of the CAT Centre. Felt a pang of guilt. Tony had tried to help. He really had. But it was too difficult. This, on the other hand, was so much easier.
And much more comforting.
There was a face at Tony’s window. A woman’s face. Mick didn’t know who she was but she was smiling. He smiled back.
Mick looked around the square. The day was slowly coming to life.
Getting going.
He took another drink.
Lovely.
Worry flitted across his mind: what would happen when the cans ran out? He told himself to calm down. He would deal with that when it happened. For now, he had what he wanted.
He took another drink.
> Waited.
Acknowledgements
As the great Norman Lovett once said, No man is an island except when he’s in the bath, so with that in mind I have to thank some people for their help with this book. Judith Atkinson of NECA, Hazel Waites, Deb Howe and Alison Taylor for the research assists. Stieve Butler and Dirk Robertson for putting up with my whingeing. David Shelley for your consideration. My agent Caroline Montgomery and my new editor Kate Lyall Grant for knowing when to crack the whip and when to tell me I’m wonderful. And, of course, my wife Linda. For all of the above.
Some publications which were useful: The Great Strike by Alex Callinicos and Mike Simons, Dancing in Mid-Air – People and Drugs in Blyth edited by Barry Stone, The Social Impact of Pit Closure by Dave Waddington, Bella Dicks and Chas Critcher, Undermined – Oral Testimonies of the Miners’ Strike by Members of South Yorkshire’s Mining Communities, Convicted at Birth by Jennifer Wynn, and Nick Davies’s excellent documentary Drugs – the Phoney War plus his accompanying articles.
The town of Coldwell isn’t a real place, but that’s not to say it doesn’t actually exist. As for places that do exist – as usual, I’ve played fast and loose with them. This is a work of fiction, remember. This is my version of the world. The Ashington Group of Painters also existed. Their work is on display at the Woodhorn Colliery Museum in Ashington, Northumberland.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
copyright © 2003 by Martyn Waites
cover design by Katherine Lynch
This edition published in 2011 by MysteriousPress.com/Open Road Integrated Media
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Born Under Punches Page 35