Freya takes a step towards me, and puts a hand on my shoulder. That warmth again. Trev is a lucky man, but it was nearly so different. Two years ago, he got home late from his IT job to find this very apartment ransacked and Freya missing. A nasty piece of work, Keith Sinfield, was running a child sex ring from a flat in a high-rise at the other end of the city, and by accident, his laptop, from which he conducted the whole operation, ended up in Trev’s possession. Keith kidnapped Freya to force the return of the laptop. He called me, and I helped get her back. It was a messy one.
‘After what you did for us, we will do anything we can to help. I’ll get some clothes together, while you hit the shower. Trev will be home soon after 5pm, so if you can wait that long, please do. Bathroom’s second door back there. We owe you our lives, Ben.’
I don’t know how to respond to that, so I don’t. I’m a bit overwhelmed. I have spent what feels like a lifetime undertaking grim tasks and never getting a words gratitude in return. So to receive it now, is just wonderful.
Freya leaves me to it, and I head to the bathroom, for a shower that I have thought about so often it has attained mythical status in my mind. Such a simple act, but signifies so much. A private shower, in freedom. It feels like a new dawn, almost symbolically, to wash away my previous life, all its mistakes and sadnesses, and start afresh.
2
The shower lived up to all expectations. I grab a towel, and dry myself quickly, since I really don’t want to outstay my welcome. Remembering the offer of clothes, I crack the door open in the hope that there might be some deposited outside so I don’t have to parade through to the living room in my grits and not much else. Perfect - just outside the door, which leaks steam into the hall as I crack it open, there is a pair of dark jeans and a black t-shirt. These will do just grand. I pull back on my old underwear (I can’t have everything) and then the jeans - which I am surprised to find are skinny. I have never worn skinny jeans before. It feels like I am wearing a denim wetsuit below the waist, something I’m not entirely comfortable with, but will navigate gamely. The t-shirt fits a gem, which is very pleasant. The smell of non-industrial strength detergent is also most welcome, and overall it is just great to be wearing civvies as opposed to prison issues.
I leave the bathroom, and pad out in my bare feet. That warm, polished, wood flooring feels like a luxurious massage to my concrete-battered toes. Savoring the steps, I edge back out into the living space.
Freya is there, at the kitchen end of the room, pouring boiling water into ceramic mugs on the counter top. The smell of fresh filter coffee fills my senses and I find myself salivating, both literally, in my now-grinning mouth, and metaphorically, in my cobweb-cleared head. I notice three mugs as opposed to two.
‘There he is...’ a voice exclaims, softly, almost as if afraid to disturb my fixation on the coffee. I turn to see Trev. Trevor Houghton, my old school friend, and eventual university compadre. ‘I made my excuses as soon as Frey text me. It’s good to see you pal.’
I am smiling as I move to meet him, again delighted to see him well. I have not seen him since that horrible day either, and now it feels like the jigsaw complete, that case closed.
‘Hi Trev,’ I offer, as I extend my hand, but he brushes it away in preference to a monster bear-hug instead, which would have crushed me like a bag of old pistachio shells if I hadn’t offered a little stout resistance.
‘Thank you,’ he says, with as much honesty I have ever heard in his voice. We were close pals at university, drinking buddies, football teammates and study friends, before I left it all to pursue what I felt was my destiny in the armed forces. And now to hear that truth in sentiment that only true friends show each other... It makes everything I did worthwhile. More sustenance for the road ahead.
He lets me go, as Freya moves into the room carrying a tray of steaming mugs. I find myself wallowing merrily in these little things, these tiny nuances of comfort that I have been deprived of barely a mile from the site of this happy reunion. I am ushered to a sofa, which I let swallow me as much as it can.
Perching on matching armchairs, Trev and Freya sit opposite me.
‘Needless to say,’ Trev begins, ‘it is so good to see you.’
‘I said you would,’ I reply. It’s true - I had. And I do like to keep a promise, even though this one was one I wasn’t sure I could keep.
‘Freya tells me you just got out of prison.’
‘In a fashion. I’ve taken a leave of absence, you could say.’
Trev looks at Freya.
‘We don’t care’, says Freya. ‘We don’t care what you did or why.’
‘Thank you’, I respond. I mean it, too. I have spent the last couple of years being judged from pillar to post when - largely - the right thing is the only thing I’ve tried to do.
‘Freya says you are not being pursued. Dare I ask how you can break out of prison and that be possible?’ Trev asks, struggling to keep a grin off his face.
‘I don’t want to tell you. The more I tell you, the more trouble you’d be in if I somehow come unstuck. I’m not expecting that at all, but I didn’t come here to drag you into anything unsavory.’
‘I can respect that’, says Trev. I raise my mug to him, and tip it towards him in a tiny, sober salut, before sipping noisily. My word, it is good. A rich, exotic, caffeine buzz damn-near smashes me bolt upright.
‘What is your plan?’ asks Freya. Neither of them are touching their drinks, merely holding onto them like props.
‘When I knocked on the door, I asked for some clothes and fifteen minutes with an internet connection, which I assume, given your IT-related employment, you have.’ I nod at Trev, who last time I was aware worked at PC Planet repairing computers.
‘By all means.’ Trev responds with commitment.
‘Thanks. Don’t worry, I won’t be doing anything traceable here. I used fake social media accounts to get things arranged when I was inside, using a kind of ham-fisted code. It was crude, but it got the job done.’
‘No problem at all. I kind of have my own sort of paranoia-protection firewall in place here anyway. In my line of work, you read... a lot... about what a simple Google search can open you up to. Can’t be too careful. It’s not fancy or anything but it’s better than your standard online protection, that’s for damn sure.’
‘Even better.’
A little silence befalls the room, as if we wonder what the next thing to say might be. I am enjoying their company greatly, and this little taste of a normal life which they are affording me. But we all know I’m a fugitive. My very presence in the room would get us all in a world of trouble. And I have work to do.
‘I’m very grateful for what you have done here. I’ll be on my way within the hour. At this point, it’s best I keep moving.’
Freya stands, as if some instinct has kicked in that she must busy herself with conforming to.
‘You can’t stay? Just for the night?’ she says.
Trev turns his gaze back to me. ‘It’s the least we can do.’
I stand myself, wishing I could just say ‘yes’, and have a lovely evening reminiscing. But my duty always has got the better of me, it’s engine a sense of purpose that is now much greater than before. I need to get the wheels in motion.
‘No. Thank you. Seeing you both has been...’ I don’t finish. I can’t. But I hope they know what I mean.
I am a bit socially awkward at the best of times. I can be very insular, quite happy with the internal dialogue I have with myself. This may well be down to trust - or, in truth, the lack of trust. I find it hard to trust anyone other than myself, and I most definitely find it hard to let anybody else in. I don’t tend to display my feelings too much. They are not really my strong suit, and it takes a hell of an event to get them to a point where I can show them to anyone.
But I trust Trev and Freya. I do care for them. And I find it genuinely painful not to stay with them a little while longer.
‘Just the internet, ple
ase.’
3
We exchange pleasantries and promise that, if my situation remains at a certain low level of drama, we will keep in easier contact. I am the secretly-proud recipient of two warm hugs and Trev’s business card. An anchor to something in England that doesn’t think I’m a piece of shit. It makes me feel I can’t be that much of a bad guy after all - but as soon as I do, I scold myself for being such a soak. No backward steps, Ben.
I step out onto the street, into the steady creeping twilight. There are cars crawling, trying to funnel out onto the ring road and out into the spiderweb roadways of Greater Manchester and beyond. The air is increasing in bite, enough so to make me zip the old leather bomber jacket Trev leant me up so far that I actually catch some chin scruff in the zipper teeth. I should have probably done something about my unkempt appearance back up at Trev and Freya’s.
I’m uncharacteristically sporting an unshaven half-beard and my dark hair is longer than usual. I’m still, through force of habit more than anything else, rather attached to my old no-nonsense military cut. I can’t get used to the fashion of being unshaven, that whole ‘hey, I’m so cool and laid back that I sport a scraggly near-beard that just oozes I can’t look after myself’. I suppose, for the time being, I’ll just go with it. I really don’t want any giveaways to my military background, however minute.
I cross the street, back between the gloomy alleys, as a light drizzle falls. A kebab shop on the corner spills steam out into the haze, and it smells like heaven. I don’t have a penny on me, so I couldn’t go and get something if I tried. But that is the next port of call, after all. Cash.
I head down past the Printworks again, and drop over to the bottom of Deansgate. At the far end, it’s apex almost lost in low, blue, cloud cover, stands Beetham Tower, bearing over everything below it like an omnipresent benefactor, it’s tapering height giving a perception of lean so much so that it could just bend over and take a gander at you up close. A flat, a few floors down from the top, was where I rescued Freya from. I have done some bad things in there, but here’s hoping Manchester is a slightly better place because of them. I don’t care about what I did, I just hope it was for the greater good. I wrap myself in the one-sided notion that it definitely was, and keep up pace. I need to get down to Deansgate Locks, a row of canal-side bars right below that tower, in the next ten minutes. It will be a push, but I’m feeling it. I’ll be there.
I was nearly ten years in the army. A decade. I came home a couple of times, but those times were spent with my family. I barely spent anything. As a regular soldier I earned in the region of £18,000 a year, which nudged up to £30,000 in the last three years as I progressed through the ranks and made captain. Give or take taxation and the odd bit of money I spent when I was at home, I should have about £180,000 in the bank. That is, until my assets were frozen when I was sent to prison. The pay - my pay - for risking everything to protect this country, was frozen by this country, fenced off until I was eligible for release, which, the judge kindly pointed out, was to be no less than 15 years into my 17 year sentence.
Well, I’m out now. Only 20 months into my sentence. And therein lies the problem. Since they don’t know I’m gone, my assets will still be frozen and therefore utterly inaccessible. Which would be an absolute pisser if I hadn’t put into action a contingency plan. Nope, my £180,000 isn’t under governmental lock and key. Thinking ahead, I disseminated it to a worthy cause before I was caged.
The night before the incident in flat 2367 in Beetham Tower, I had been drinking in a little underground oasis called Temple Bar. It’s a tiny shoebox off Oxford Road, home to artists, regular boozers, musicians and students. I had met one in there that night, and he pursued me in conversation. He struck me as a decent bloke. He was a little too alert for my liking - if you’re out having a few beers alertness is one of the things that tends to disappear the later the night gets. Sure enough, he revealed that he was hiding out in here for fear of two guys outside. He had gotten himself into a fracas at a nearby pub that had resulted in that timeless old pub conflict-catalyst, the dreaded spilled pint. So two blokes were waiting outside to smear this lad up Oxford Road over a wet shirt or something equally pointless.
Angry and half-cut, having seen this lads eyes like a frog’s in oncoming high-beams, I offered to help him out. I went outside, and sorted the two bruisers out with minimum fuss, and came back to finish my pint. The lad bought me a drink and thanked me a bunch, and he popped a card in my shirt pocket. Said if there was ever anything he could do, yadda, yadda, yadda...
As luck would have it, some 12 hours later, I would need something taken care of. Right after I had gone up into Beetham Tower and thrown that bastard straight out of the window, after dealing with a few of his friends.
I found myself on the run, away from Manchester, and had instigated a chain of events that would lead to more mayhem and my eventual arrest. I had money in my account, and needed to get it somewhere safe. I’m not money minded in the least, and had, frankly, too much. I was pissing it away on booze and self-pity. So I called the number on the card.
The lads name was Jack Brooker, and I gave him my £180,000 for safe keeping on the basis that if he did so, £20,000 of it would be his to get him through university. He said he didn’t need it, but I persuaded him that I couldn’t put it anywhere else. Any other adult bank account is subject to taxation and accounting, but a student’s does not come under that same scrutiny. It would be perfect. I added that if he didn’t need the money he should take it as a gift. I added the little caveat that if he took more than I offered, I would make him regret it.
A quick bash of some online banking while I was on the train from Manchester to Wrexham, and the £180,000 was with Jack. Within 1 hour, he sent me a picture message and some login details. He had set up another account into which he had deposited £160,000 (the picture being screenshot proof of this), which was affiliated to his own bank account, but was individual in nature. It had it’s own cash card, which he is going to give to me now when we meet for a pint in Missoula on Deansgate Locks, a neat elevated row of canal-side bars. And I get my money. Jack has revealed himself to be a man of his word, and I am grateful. When I get my hands on that cash card, the beers will be on me.
I am near the Locks now, and turn left up to the row of bars. Missoula is the first one, and it is largely empty. It won’t be for long, but I’m glad that it is quiet for the initial stages of our meeting. I had used twitter to set the meeting up, as we agreed before my trial. The only tweet the two accounts will ever exchange. Totally anonymous. Totally untraceable.
I enter the bar, and half-expect people to look at me in horror, the escaped convict, but nobody does. The flannel clad bar staff look bored and tired, as if they have either had a long day, or are dreading the oncoming evening shift, or perhaps even both. I don’t have any money (yet) and therefore can’t buy that first beer of freedom. I take a seat at a booth facing the door, and wallow happily in the dimly lit drinking hole. It is definitely nice to be in a place like this again.
I am a pretty good judge of time, mainly thanks to the punctuality-centric rigors of my extensive training, and I feel that Jack is late. Not by much, but a little late. I try to persuade myself to relax a little bit, and force myself to just let things be for the moment. I can’t control everything, so why worry about it? The folds of my thought process are tugged slightly by the thought of being recognized by the authorities, but I smooth out these wrinkles with the soothing thought that nobody will be looking for me. When that bloody riot is extinguished back at the prison, and a balance of power and order is reconfigured, the last thing that will come from that place is a report that, in the riot, somehow, Ben Bracken has gone missing.
Nope, Ben Bracken is in his cell. Patiently seeing out the next 15 years.
Two couples enter the bar, but none of them are Jack. I watch them approach the bar, not a care in this world. I envy them, in so many ways, but pity them in others. They hav
en’t seen the cruelties in life, the bluntness and trauma of a frontline lifestyle. I wish I had that, but by the same token, are they slaves to a corporate advertising protocol, telling them to dress the way they do?
I can’t be too judgmental, after all I am sat here in a rather cool-looking leather jacket with my unkempt appearance - I fit right in. Good. It’s actually kind of nice. I’d like to feel normal for once.
‘Hi mate,’ interrupts a voice, and I turn back to my booth. In my habitual scrutiny, I missed Jack’s arrival, and he now sits opposite me. He looks the same as I remember him from a couple of years back, if only a little older. In fact, a lot older. I’ll go one further - he looks aged to Hell and back. His piercing eyes are bloodshot and sagging. He looks pale, weathered and ill.
‘Hi Jack...’ I begin, but his appearance is just too off-putting to continue properly. ‘Are you alright?’
‘Yeah, I’ve... got your money here’, Jack mutters, placing a blue and red bank card on the table. ‘I haven’t touched any more than was agreed’.
I am worried about him. I’m not sure why I am all that bothered about this guy, considering that we only met once before, and our arrangement is just about concluded, save for the exchange of a PIN number. He has genuinely helped me, without fuss yet with aplomb, and I feel a pang of empathy.
‘I’m grateful Jack, but talk to me. Are you ok? Forgive me, but you look like crap’.
‘I’m fine. I’m glad you’re out. I won’t ask anything else, but I certainly wasn’t expecting you for a while yet.’ says Jack, while glancing at his phone erratically.
‘What’s happened?’ I ask.
Jack doesn’t answer, and rises. His eyes are red, his hair all over the show, and the overwhelming aura is that of near overpowering worry. He looks like he hasn’t slept a year straight. I want to ask more, but I don’t. Man-code almost comes into play. Some men say ‘I don’t want to talk about it’, when all they really want to do is spill their guts. The way Jack is speaking, the curtailed yet polite words, suggest Jack really doesn’t want to talk. I pay him that respect.
The Baby And The Brandy (Ben Bracken 1) Page 2