by Ali Harper
‘Didn’t care.’
‘I don’t believe that.’
He tried to smile and for an awful moment I thought he might cry. ‘Typical bloke,’ he said. ‘Just looking to get my rocks off.’
He shivered in front of me. I made myself make eye contact. ‘Don’t believe that either.’
‘Five seconds where the voices can’t get you.’
I couldn’t think of anything to say to that. Let her who is without voices cast the first stone. I put my hand on his knee. Even through the jogging bottoms I could feel the cold of his skin. I checked the clock on the wall. Almost twenty past twelve. ‘We need to keep moving.’
He looked up at me and seemed to understand my point.
I hammered it home. ‘They’ve got my best mate. If they do anything to her—’
‘They won’t hurt her. They want the cash, not your mate.’
‘They hurt you.’
‘I kind of had it coming.’
I put a hand on the belt round my waist. They could have the money, just don’t let them hurt Jo. I couldn’t bear it. ‘You think it was them? I mean, Martha?’
He wrinkled his nose but didn’t say anything, and I didn’t have time to push it. I gave him the pair of old flip-flops I’d left at the offices when we’d been decorating. They were too small but better than nothing. We locked up the makeshift door, and I linked arms with Brownie as we walked towards the van, trying to make us look like a student couple returning from a night out, which wasn’t easy considering his tracksuit bottoms only came to mid-calf and his chest was bare. I needed to get him properly dressed, I thought, but then we passed three lads dressed as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and I stopped stressing about it.
The streets were pretty empty save for a couple of minicabs bringing the wounded home. Brownie pulled me into his body. He was trembling skin and bone. I put my arm around his waist, tried to radiate body warmth his way.
We got to the van and I opened his door first, before running round to the driver’s side. I got in, stashed the knapsack under my seat and turned the key in the ignition. I checked Jo’s phone again before setting off. Why hadn’t they rung? It was past time. I drove back the way we’d come. I wanted to get out of Leeds, but first I had to get Jo. As I pulled out onto Cardigan Road and headed for the traffic lights, we passed a dark-coloured car parked up on the left-hand side.
‘There it is,’ said Brownie, resignation in his voice.
‘What?’ My nerves were shot.
‘Knew it.’
I watched in the wing mirror and sure enough the car slunk into the road behind us.
‘Who is it?’
‘They’re after us.’ Sweat ran down the sides of his face, glistening every time we passed under a streetlight. He moaned like he was in pain. And I know, believe me, I know that it is painful when you can’t get what you need.
My eyes stung as I tracked the car behind us in the rear-view mirror. Was it the same car that had followed us to Moss Side? And if so, who the fuck was driving it? Was it following us or were we just being paranoid? No sleep the night before was messing with my mind. My bones ached, but my brain was wired. ‘Is it Duck and Bernie?’
‘It’s not their car.’
‘If they hurt her, I swear to God …’
‘It’s not Duck and Bernie you’ve got to worry about.’ Brownie raised his voice to be heard over the roar of the van’s engine.
‘What?’
‘It’s a food chain.’
My stomach flipped. ‘What?’
‘Works on the same principle.’
‘Who?’ I glanced in my wing mirror.
‘Dunno.’
‘For fucks’ sake.’ In that moment I could have punched him. I mean like really punched him.
I think he sensed it. He picked at the skin on the side of his thumb. ‘A guy called T. That’s all I know. You cross him, you go for a swim in the canal. He broke Duck’s thumbs once. Saw the bandages. Whole thing runs on fear.’
Fear. I remembered a line I’d been told, a long time ago. Courage is not the absence of fear, but the mastery of it. I tried to allow the adrenaline to run through to my fingertips, to power my body like petrol does a car. ‘You think it’s him? Is that T’s car?’
‘Dunno.’
Why hadn’t they rung? It had been way over an hour. What had happened? I checked the screen of Jo’s phone again. Nothing. I kept my foot pressed hard to the floor all the way in to the city. The van growled and barked and spat but I had the sense it loved this kind of driving. The only other traffic was minicabs, not known for their strict adherence to the Highway Code, so I kept throwing last minute turns in the hope I could shake the car behind. Once we got to the City Hall, my spirits lifted. The great thing about Leeds is the one-way system. I’ve lived here years now and still can’t get my head around it. I ducked the van one way, twisted us through various dark little side streets, driving us round in circles. The car behind me clung on.
I crossed two lanes of cars by the Grand Theatre, threw a sharp right, followed by another down a back alley. I checked the mirror. ‘Have I lost them?’
Brownie opened his window and stuck his head out. The focus seemed good for him. He clung to the headrest, didn’t speak for a moment or two. Then he said: ‘Think so.’
Silence descended. Too quiet. We drove in a suspicious silence for a few minutes, Brownie sticking his head out every few seconds or so. Nothing. I actually think I preferred it when they were behind me. The not knowing was worse – every set of headlights the potential enemy.
Jo’s phone rang, and I leaped in my seat. The clock on the dashboard showed five to one. I glanced at Brownie, swallowed my spit and swiped the screen.
‘Where the fuck have you been?’ I yelled.
‘Keep your hair on,’ said the voice on the phone.
‘You said you’d ring in an hour.’ Driving’s hard enough. Driving while speaking on the phone was a whole new kettle of fish. I held the wheel with my knees while I searched for the hands-free function.
‘Chill out. Did you get the cash?’
‘If you’ve done anything—’
Brownie grabbed the wheel as we caught a kerb. I dropped the phone into my lap.
‘Yes,’ I shouted. ‘I got the cash.’
‘All the cash?’ asked the voice on the speaker-phone.
‘Yes, yes, it’s all here.’ The traffic lights ahead turned red, so I took a last minute right turn and swung us round the corner, tyres screeching.
‘OK. We need to meet.’
‘Put Jo on first,’ I said.
‘She’s here. She’s fine.’
‘I want to speak to her.’ I fought to straighten the steering wheel with just my right hand. ‘You said I’d speak to her.’
‘Ask a question. One that only she knows the answer to.’
I thought for a moment. ‘When’s her birthday?’
The phone went quiet. Then the man’s voice came back. ‘The fourth of July.’
I exhaled. Closed my eyes for the briefest moment. ‘OK.’
‘So we need to meet.’
‘I’m ready,’ I lied. I took a left turn down Greek Street, hit a traffic cone that someone had left in the middle of the road. It made a hell of a bang, but the van kept going.
‘There’s a car park—’
‘No.’ I’d had enough of dancing to someone else’s tune. For my plan to work, it had to be on my terms.
My knuckles glistened white on the steering wheel, reflecting the glare of the streetlights. ‘Listen. I’ll meet you at Dewsbury train station. Platform Two. There’s a waiting room. You’d better be in there. You’ve got thirty minutes or I’m off and you’ll never see your cash.’
‘Don’t m—’
‘And if you’ve touched so much as one hair on her head, I’ll fucking kill you. And your mother.’
‘Let—’
‘You want your cash, and your dope, you’d better be there. Thirty minutes. That’
s it.’ I leaned across Brownie and, as hard as I could, I threw Jo’s phone out of the open window next to him.
No more dancing.
I screamed. I screamed so loud and so long that I took myself by surprise. Brownie put his hands over his ears. I grinned at him. He stared back at me like I’d gone crazy. Maybe I had. But the feeling was amazing. The high better than any drug I’d ever taken. My scalp tingled.
Up until that moment I’d harboured a dark, unspoken fear that maybe I wasn’t up to this, the business, the job. But right then, right there in the van, I knew. This is what I was born for.
‘What the fuck did you do that for?’ said Brownie.
The here and the now. There is nothing else. Learn that and the world is your lobster.
‘Fucking hell,’ I said. ‘Fucking hell.’
‘Your phone.’
‘Electronic fucking tagging device. Now we’re free. They’ve got no way of contacting us. They have to come to Dewsbury.’
But Brownie wasn’t listening. He was watching the passenger wing mirror. ‘They’re back,’ he said.
I glanced over my shoulder. Caught a glimpse of the square yellow lights. Shit. I wanted somewhere dark, somewhere we could leave the car and hit the ground running. Somewhere we could get lost. As we screeched around the north of the city, a thought came to me.
‘Brownie?’
He looked at me like he’d never seen me before. I gripped his arm.
‘I’m going to drive us to the Dark Arches. We need to ditch the van.’
I knew he wasn’t seeing me. I raised my voice. ‘When we get there, Brownie, we’re going to need to leg it. You ready?’
He didn’t look ready, but he didn’t want to get caught any more than I did. The Dark Arches are, as their name implies, dark. They’re the subterranean world under Leeds train station. Built in Victorian times to channel the River Aire, now they house a few bars and underground car parks for the tenants of the flats that are forever springing up around the city centre. The river rages alongside.
I headed south through the city, breaking every speed limit, praying the police were all busy dealing with the usual city centre fights as club kicking-out time approached. I drove the wrong way through the one-way system around Queens Square and pulled up at the traffic lights. A taxi driver in the next lane tapped his forefinger to the side of his head to indicate what he thought of me.
‘You’ve lost them,’ said Brownie.
I glanced left and right and, without waiting for the lights to go green, set off. I drove past the entrance to the Dark Arches, decided to do one more lap of the city. We had time to kill. I drove out to the south, down to the M1, then did a 360-degree turn around the roundabout, the back wheels spinning out, and headed north. Laughter bubbled in my stomach.
‘Jesus, where’d you learn to drive?’ Brownie grabbed my arm as I rounded the next corner.
‘You should see Jo,’ I said. I checked the rear-view mirror. Nothing. ‘Right, I’ll do a last loop and then with a bit of luck we’ll have time to get a coffee before the train.’
‘What train?’
‘The Manchester one.’ I was fairly familiar with the route – it was the same train we caught whenever we went to back to Liverpool to see Jo’s mum. We’d caught it a couple of times at this time of night, when Jo had got the idea of her mum’s breakfast fixed in her head after we’d been clubbing. As I skirted the north of the city, I remember thinking I had to find Jo, because her mum would flay me alive if I let anything happen to her only daughter.
I drove along Wellington Street and was just congratulating myself on a job well done when I saw it. The same car, I was almost certain, dark and square, parked up on double yellow lines, across the road from the railway station.
‘Bollocks. How did they do that?’ I didn’t have to time to think about it. We didn’t have time for another lap. I needed to get out of the city. I needed to get to Jo. ‘Hold on, Brownie.’
I pushed the van to almost sixty as we looped round the station. I jumped the red lights and hung a hard left into the entrance to the Dark Arches. There’s only one way in and out of the Dark Arches, and we were on it – a narrow road, only one car wide, that crosses the river. I knew as I drove across the bridge that it was a dead end ahead. Whoever was driving the car behind must have had the same thought, because it stopped on the bridge, blocking our exit. The only way out now would be on foot. I watched in the rear-view mirror and saw a figure climb out.
I kept driving forward. There’s a rough patch of car park on the left, outside by the canal, so I pulled in there, threw open my driver’s door and turned to grab the knapsack from the backseat.
‘Run,’ I shouted to Brownie.
He fell out of the left side of the van and I went round to catch him. He was a chain round my neck, really, and if I’d had any sense I would have just left him there, but I can never pass by an underdog. It’s in my genes – I’m duty-bound. I knew we had a few hundred yards on whoever was behind us.
I hoped it was enough.
Chapter Twenty-Four
I could tell by the way Brownie leaned on me that his legs weren’t functioning. His knees weren’t locking, his entire body trembled. I pulled his arm tight around my neck.
‘Hold me. Shut up.’
I put the knapsack on my back and half-dragged Brownie out of the car park and up against the wall. I thought about which way the driver of the car would expect us to go and turned the other, keeping us up close against the brickwork. The water rushed past, creating enough noise to mask the sounds of our feet. A positive, but one that worked both ways – I couldn’t hear whoever was following us either.
Intermittent, low-level security lighting lit up some of the arches. As we entered the maze of tunnels, I could see the headlights of the car to the right of us, still blocking the entrance.
I pulled Brownie close to me as I heard the scuttle of a tin can. Brownie’s breathing in my ear reminded me of the film Jaws. Fear prickled my neck. Not the absence of fear, the mastery of it. Channel the energy, make it work for you.
We went deeper into the tunnels. There’s loads of small rooms, like mini brick caves, all with arched ceilings, that have been turned into lock-ups – each housing ten or so cars. Plenty of places to hide. I didn’t want to hide. I didn’t have time to hide. I needed to escape.
The River Aire is huge – it crashes through four parallel tunnels, the noise echoing off the walls. Was there someone waiting in the car, as well as someone following us?
‘We’re going that way,’ I whispered to Brownie, pointing to the nearest tunnel. He stared at the river cascading through.
‘You’re taking the piss?’
The current was strong enough to wash away elephants. ‘There’s a ledge.’ I pointed over the side of the bridge. I slipped my hand into Brownie’s. His was colder than ice. An old metal gate blocked the pedestrian entrance to the bridge. The car was still parked across the road side, its headlights off. No one was in it, at least not that I could see. I pulled the gate open, cursing the squeaking noise it made. A train rumbled overhead, and I hoped it masked the noise. We climbed over the metal railings, down onto the thin stone ledge that ran alongside the inky blackness of the water. I prayed Brownie was stable enough to walk along the thin strip without falling in. If he did, I doubted I’d be able to save him. The water looked freezing, smelled cold and dark. At the end of the tunnel, a few hundred yards away, I could see the first light of dawn.
We crept along the ledge. A rat ran out of the shadows, more alarmed by us than we were of him, but I saw Brownie react, jerk. He called out, ‘Shit,’ and something else but his words got lost in the rush of the river.
We’d got halfway along when something made me turn around. I’m not sure whether it was a faint shout, a noise of some kind. I turned in time to see the outline of someone climbing over the railings of the bridge. He had a torch – a really powerful one, and the beam snaked its way towards us. I prodde
d Brownie in the back.
‘Faster. He’s seen us.’
Brownie speeded up, but this made progress more frightening. At one point his right foot slipped over the side and I had to grab his left wrist. The ledge was uneven and slippy and the rush of the water meant I couldn’t hear the guy behind me. I didn’t want to waste time by keeping on turning round but the temptation was awful. By the time the tunnel opened out, I glanced back to see a hooded figure only a hundred or so yards behind us.
‘Is that him? Is that T?’
‘Dunno. Never met him.’
The path widened, became like a towpath outside the tunnel. I spotted a half brick on the floor. A metal set of steps up to the road. I pushed Brownie towards the metal frame and up the first few steps.
‘Wait for me at the top. Stay out of sight.’
I turned back towards the man following us and yelled: ‘Stop.’
I held the brick up in one hand. He was caught, still too far away for me to make out much, except that he wore a hooded top. I was willing to bet he wasn’t a policeman, which meant that if he wasn’t a force for good, then he was probably a force for bad. Whatever, he was caught between a rock and a hard place. I mean literally, and I think he knew it. The stone wall of the tunnel to his left, the river to his right. The ledge only a couple of feet wide. He held up his hands in surrender as I threw the brick with all my strength towards him, the hatred of a dozen fascist PE teachers infused in my arm. He ducked, and the brick hit the water. There was nothing for him to grab hold of, nothing to steady himself against. He squatted low, too far away for me to get any clear idea what he looked like. I was fairly sure it was a man, from the way he held himself, the curve of his shoulders. He remained squatted, eighty, maybe ninety yards inside the tunnel. I turned round. Brownie had made it to the road.
‘Turn back,’ I shouted down the tunnel again.
He didn’t move. I found a glass bottle on the floor and lobbed that at him as well. Anything to keep him off balance. Anything to keep him crouched and trying to cling to the ground for safety.
‘Turn round,’ I yelled again.
Someone or something was on my side – I had what looked like an entire junkyard at my disposal. I threw another couple of half bricks, a tin can full of water. My hand lit on a piece of rock that had a piece of metal bar embedded in it. I balanced myself and threw it as hard as I could. It pirouetted in the air, two or three complete turns, before arching up and catching the guy on his shoulder. He yelled out and I felt a momentary rush of pride. I was always shit at rounders. And that was some distance. But my pride turned quickly to worry as he stumbled backwards, tried to stand and his left leg slipped from under him and went over the side. He grabbed at the ledge. I watched for a moment to see whether he could hold on. I didn’t fancy his chances if he went over. The river raged beside us. Cold and inky. He clung to the rocky ledge, gathering the strength to pull himself back up.