White Goods

by Guy Johnson

  As he spoke, Rory turned slightly from side to side, checking out Jim, checking out Clint and Roy. If he still believed that Justin and Stevie-the-little-shit were listening in, he didn’t care, and he certainly wasn’t seeing them as a threat. The other action he did as he turned from side to side made that clear: he was undoing his belt.

  ‘One question for one favour Sharon,’ he uttered, moving toward her again. ‘Just hope you’ve got some more questions, or the others might be a little disappointed.’

  ‘Fuck you!’ Sharon spat back, pushing at him, but he simply pushed back, and it looked as if he was herding her towards a corner of the room, maybe even intending to push her into an adjacent one.

  ‘Now, now, a bargain’s a bargain. If you don’t mind your manners, we might not be able to mind ours. Hope you get my meaning. No need to be nasty, is there?’

  Looking on, I felt sick with alarm and anticipation. I had expected Justin and Stevie to join in by now. Expected them to come to Sharon’s rescue. The whole point, surely, had been to lure Rory and Jim here, with false promises, and – whether they confessed to Crinky’s murder or not – exact some revenge. That was the Tankard way, after all – you didn’t tell teacher, you just got your own back. They hadn’t expected Clint or Roy to come along. Probably hadn’t suspected that they had been part of the crime, either. Yet, here they were, fully implicated by Roy’s confession – unexpected and unwelcome, for some. And now, Sharon was being asked to complete her part of the so-called bargain, and the traditional Tankard response was non-existent. It was as if Justin and Stevie-the-little-shit were not there. As if Sharon was by herself for this one.

  ‘Okay.’ This single word submission came from Sharon herself. She was addressing Rory. ‘But just you. Not him, or him. Or him.’ The last him was directed at Roy. ‘Through there.’ She indicated another room towards the back of the house. Not in the direction that Rory had been pushing her, but on the other side. ‘There’s a mattress in there,’ she added, as if what was being suggested wasn’t already obvious enough.

  ‘In there?’ Rory asked, his crude, edgy laugh returning. ‘You gonna offer it up in there, on a stinky mattress? Fucking hell, your reputation doesn’t really do you justice. You’re a fucking, dirty slag, you know that?’

  Another opportunity for the Tankard brothers to plough-in came and went, and I began to feel sicker and sicker at the thought of what might happen next. I was back in the toilets at Jubilee Park, nauseous with fear, yet petrified into doing nothing. Just a cowardly observer. I knew I should be doing something – these boys were vicious, always played dirtier than you could expect. Beating Ian at the crematorium, pissing on Justin, nearly hanging me, electrocuting Crinky; the last I was still struggling to comprehend, the conscious part of my brain simply unable to believe it. What did they have in store for Sharon? One girl, and four boys; I knew what they had in mind for Sharon. Yet, still I did nothing but the expected: I watched.

  Throughout, the control swapped from side to side, like a crass game of tennis; an agonisingly slow version, with pauses and vicious teasing dragging out the final outcome. First Sharon had the ball: she set her trap and they entered. But her two invitations resulted in four attendees, and the ball was sent back. Then Roy opened his mouth, chucking the ball back in the process. But in providing the answer to her question, Roy had inadvertently seized the ball back again, handing it to Rory. To Rory, who was now relishing the position of power, tossing that ball up and down with every sentence he expelled.

  Then, the penultimate sentence he uttered, the final insult he threw at Sharon turned out to be final time he held that invisible, formidable ball.

  ‘Good job I like dirty slags, isn’t it?’ he said.

  With that, he followed Sharon into the room she had indicated.

  ‘You stay here, keep a look out,’ he said to the other three, looking back briefly at Jim, pointing upwards again, indicating he still suspected that her brothers were watching from above. He was still grinning, as if that last thought made it all the more pleasurable for him.

  But, what happened next, what happened when he stepped over the threshold from one dilapidated room to another, wiped that sick smile from his face forever. Literally.

  I don’t think what occurred was the plan. I think they intended a few cuts and bruises, a beating that would take some recovering from; the Tankards wanted a lesson well and truly learnt. But once they started their attack, they couldn’t stop. Bedlam was back and there was no controlling it. Maybe Roy’s confession was the trigger; once they were certain they had Crinky’s killers, maybe that was it. Maybe they had to take it that far. Whatever the price.

  It started with Justin. He was waiting in the room at the back of the house, where Sharon indicated there was a mattress. As Rory went over the threshold, Justin came at him with a plank of wood. Hit him right across the face. Several nails were sticking out of the plank and as the force of the whack slammed into Rory’s face, the nails hooked into his soft cheeks, instantly ripping his jaw wide open. The thud of the wood was drowned out by his agonised, animal shriek.

  ‘What the fuck?!’ Jim cried out, but he remained in the centre of the derelict shell, an instinctive terror imprisoning him physically. He didn’t dare enter the blind shadow in the corner, didn’t dare follow Rory into the dark unknown. ‘Rory, man, what the fuck’s going on?’

  Jim’s question was answered instantly, as Rory fell back into the room, his slashed face hanging off. Hardly able to stand, he stumbled into Jim, sending him to the floor. Roy and Clint simply backed off; they didn’t leave. They could have, if they’d given just a second’s thought. They could have squeezed out through the gap between the doorway and the corrugated iron flap. But they didn’t; they just put their backs against the wall. Probably about to piss and shit themselves, but I couldn’t see. They were out of view.

  Sharon and Justin were quickly back on the scene and took advantage of the fact that Rory and Jim were both down. They went in with their feet, an attack that intensified at each sharp kick. Justin only had a soft pair of espadrilles on, but as he repeatedly stamped on Jim’s privates, he still affected the desired impact.

  ‘Jesus! Fuck!’

  Sharon’s effort with Chrissie’s stilettoes was different, though. Vicious and frenzied. She focussed her hateful energy on Rory, kicking at his face, pointing the spiked heels into the rips in his flesh, pulling it further away from his head. His screams were unbearable, agonising beyond anything I could imagine, but Sharon appeared not to hear him. She just kept digging-in and digging-in, tearing into what had been his face, skinning his skull. Despite the horror, I couldn’t turn my eyes away. I still felt sick, but not with fear. The fear had gone, and what replaced it was vile fascination.

  But it was Stevie-the-little-shit who stole the show. His was a late entrance, but what he did, the way he executed his attack, put Justin’s espadrille-crutch-crushing and Sharon’s stiletto-face-shredding in the shade. He had been upstairs in the house all along. Keeping out of sight until the right moment to ambush had come.

  Afterwards, when I could look back without crying, without feeling overwhelmed by an insufferable, body-wrenching sense of loss – sorry for your loss – I tried to undo what Stevie-the-little-shit did. Tried to take him out of it altogether. In my head, he didn’t go with them at all that day. Instead, he went off with Adrian, delivering white goods and completing dodgy errands on behalf of Dontask. And in this new Stevie-the-little-shit-free version of events, I charged into the scene and made a difference. Enlisting the willing and eager help of Roy Fallick and Clint the almost-step-brother, we pulled Sharon and Justin off, ending their ceaseless attack. Rory and Jim were still badly hurt; ambulances were called and months of life hanging-in-the-balance followed. The Tankard siblings still got into trouble, still had to be sent away, punished. But when they came back, life was able to continue. Revenge was exacted and hard lessons had been learnt, but life was still able to continue. We wer
e all able to move on, or pick up where we left off.

  This reimagined version would torture me for years, coming at me like an agonising punch in the stomach when I wasn’t looking. Just take Stevie-the-little-shit out of the equation and everything would have been all right, I kept telling myself. Over and over. And there was a certain twisted comfort in the thought; a certain relief that I could dump all the blame on this one figure and rationalise that the final, bloody outcome was down to him.

  As he came charging down the stairs, cleverly managing to avoid the missing treads, splitting just an occasional rotting board in his rush, Sharon and Justin withdrew their attack, clearing the way for him to land onto the carnage they had started. Like his siblings, he came in feet first, landing the heavy-duty, rubber-rind of his big, black boots directly onto Rory’s skull. A cracking sound split through the air, as Rory’s head collapsed, leaving a flattened mess of flesh and bone in its place.

  I turned from the scene and vomited, a violent, physical need ending my stint as silent, petrified onlooker.

  As I emptied my stomach onto the weeds and grasses surrounding the derelict shell, I heard the sound of the makeshift metal door being battered, as Roy and Clint finally made their escape. If they saw me there, I had no idea. When I had finally recovered, they were gone, no trace remaining.

  Terrified of what had occurred in the seconds I had been distracted, but driven by a dark fascination, knowing I had to look back into the scene, I pulled myself up. I wiped my mouth with the sleeve of my coat and took up my earlier position. Squinting as I readjusted to the darkness inside, I instantly realised it had come to an end. The floor was a swirling mess of blood and flesh, indicating without doubt that Jim had suffered the same, final onslaught as Rory. The Tankard siblings were stood around the remains of the boys, in a semi-circle, staring. Their faces were icy-white, drained of blood, devoid of emotion other than shock, as if a mental anaesthetic was numbing their senses. What happened here? their expressionlessness appeared to be stating. What the hell happened?

  I felt my stomach contract again, turned away to vomit, stomach residue catching on my furry hood this time. When I looked up again, Justin was staring right back. Just for a second or so, we locked eyes and I swear, despite the shadowiness, he was crying. His face was still, but tears were flowing down his cold, pallid cheeks. And realised I was crying too. It was over. There was no going back. No undoing. What they had done meant everything was over. More loss to be suffered and sorry for.

  If Sharon and Stevie-the-little-shit saw me as well, I’ll never know. Aching with nausea, wretched with grief, I turned and ran. I didn’t really think about where I was going, or what I was going to do. I just ran, to get away, to distance myself from the horror I had witnessed, from the massacre of life I had done nothing to stop. As I ran, I recounted all that had happened in such a short space of time. Uncle Gary’s revelations about my brother Jackie: the money he owed, the fact he was missing, the trouble he was causing even in his absence. Finding out who Shirley White was; the questions my family wouldn’t answer; Adrian turning up with a body in his arms, a body Auntie Stella had coldly instructed him to put in the chest freezer at the end of our garden. And that would have been enough, wouldn’t it? In a lifetime, that was enough for anybody to have to deal with, to have in their head, swirling about, messing it up. But I had more than that. I had a mad mum as well, a mum who had been locked away, who would have been better off dead, according to my dad. And a dead nan that I’d loved so much, and a replacement for her that would have done nicely, only that was messed up too. Something else ruined by the Tankard line. And now I had this; now I had blood in my head. Not on my hands – as far as I was concerned, other hands were covered in the blood. But it was in my head, sloshing about, running red rivers between all the other twisted thoughts and events in there. Only there wasn’t enough room. Yet the blood wouldn’t stop. It was rushing and gushing in, putting pressure on my skull, making the bones creak, pushing at my skin, and I felt as if my head was ballooning, expanding with the pressure of the horror, of the blood, of the too-much-of-it-all.

  At the point at which I thought I would explode, something made me stop. I had reached the main road, opposite from the crematorium entrance. I had reached safety. Traffic rushed past, and I could see people. Not just in the cars and vans that went by, but walking along, heading towards and away from me. The noises and the sense of being in public helped me. Calmed me. Momentarily.

  Looking about me, checking out the coming and going of people, I saw someone I knew.

  Up ahead, walking away, towards town, I saw Ian. Ian walking away. But something was very odd with the picture. There was something in his hand; someone. Ian was holding the hand of a little boy.

  At the point where the road turned into another, into St James Road, Ian and the boy disappeared. They were heading back to our house. Dazed by the sunshine, in the aftermath of the bloodshed, I was still uncertain of my next move. Unconsciously, I made an instinctive decision, and followed them in the direction of 45 Victoria Avenue.

  23.

  I knew Scot was behind us, knew he had seen us, when I’d glimpsed back. I was watching my back, after all. Keeping a lookout. Making sure no one was taking an interest in me and the boy. You see, I hadn’t quite decided what to do with him yet. I had been planning this moment for weeks. Planning nearly every aspect, apart from the end. Apart from the bit when I finally got my hands on him.

  That bit was still to be decided.

  Turning into St James Road, we slipped down an alleyway, out of sight, and waited.

  ‘Are we hiding, Uncle Ian?’ he asked me and I nodded, holding a finger up to his innocent lips, signalling his silence.

  ‘We need to be quiet,’ I whispered, confirming the instruction beyond doubt. And then we waited and I watched, until I saw the walking navy parka that was young Scotty go straight past our hiding place. Then it was safe to continue.

  ‘So, Jackie,’ I announced, echoing a line from my own past, a line from a day when I was taken by the hand by my brother Jackie and led away from the safety of my childhood, ‘you ready for an adventure?’

  For a long, long time, I had simply done as I was told and forgotten everything that had happened. Blocked out the little adventure he had taken me on: taking Jackie’s hand outside the Wavy Line shop; the night spent in the secret cellar at Crinky Crunkle’s; and the night he’d left me with a stranger, not caring what he did to me, not asking me how I was after, either. Simply happy to leave me, and take the payment he received to waste on the drugs he craved. To waste on that woman who had dragged him down, had dragged him from his loving family and turned him against us.

  Mum and Dad had been frantic. The police had been out looking for me from the outset. But once the first 24 hours had past, they expected the worst: expected a dead son to turn up at their door.

  I didn’t tell them what had happened to me – I had forgotten it all, after all – but once a doctor had checked me over, they knew. Their relief at having me back quickly vanished, instantly replaced with a different level of anguish. Made worse, I’m certain now, by my continued silence.

  Suspecting Jackie’s potential involvement, Dad went round to Crinky’s, where Jackie was lodging in the spare room. The spare room with the trap door to the cellar. At that point, Crinky’s hoarding had only just started to be a problem.

  He’s a man grieving, I heard Mum say sadly to Dad one evening. Maybe it’s his way of coping. Can’t be easy. She’s all he had in his life.

  So, with the piles of newspaper still limited to just a few rooms, having Jackie as a boarder was still a possibility back then. But when Dad arrived, he discovered that Crinky was living on his own again.

  ‘Not seen him since he brought the young lad round,’ he had told Dad. ‘You did know, I take it?’

  I overheard this conversation later, sitting on the stairs; Mum and Dad thinking I was sound asleep.

  ‘Did he ask about Sc
otty again?’ Mum asked Dad, still referring to Crinky.

  ‘Yes. He always asks after Scot, Theresa. And I always tell him what you asked: I tell him no.’

  ‘Okay. And no sign of Jackie at all?’

  ‘No sign at all. He’s gone, Theresa, a sign of his guilt if anything. For the best, you know. What he did-.’

  ‘Will you tell Adrian?’ she asked, interrupting his sentence, not wanting to hear him complete it, I guess.

  ‘Yes. Yes, I’ll tell Adrian.’

  Jackie had been banned from our lives for as long as I could remember. Once he got involved with Shirley White and the drug taking ensued, Dad made it clear he wasn’t welcome. He was to stay away, and Mum wasn’t to encourage him, either. She didn’t listen, though. We still had secret meetings with him. You should still know him, she argued, whatever your father thinks. I remembered one time in particular: when I was four, Della two and Scotty just a baby. We had snuck out one night in the car – Dad must have been away, a rare business trip out of town. I remembered it because we had to stop: I had needed a wee, and Della had been carsick. When we got out the car, we were high up on a hillside; it was a dark, starry night. We had picked Jackie up from someone – I don’t remember where from, but I know where we took him. We took him to Crinky’s bungalow, where he lived for the next three years. And, when Dad’s back was turned, we saw him quite frequently. Never on our own, but we did see him all the same.

  One day I overheard Mum tell Auntie Stella that Shirley White was back on the scene – that she and Jackie were an item again. Then the secret visits stopped: both Mum and Dad were banning Jackie from our lives.

  After he abducted me that day, it was as if he had never existed at all. We were not to talk about him. Not to talk about him to anyone.

  ‘Scot is young enough not to remember him at all,’ Mum said to Dad one evening, another night when I was listening from the stairs. ‘Think that might be best. Are we agreed?’