Beck le Street

by Tony McHale

  He started to flick down the list of e-mails in his father’s In Box and soon realised that if Farrah sending this message to his father was a mistake, then she’d made plenty of other mistakes. There were numerous e-mails that had been sent to Aaron Gregory which had landed on Jed’s computer. Charlie quickly whipped his eyes across a few of them. A great number had obviously been sent when business in The Black Dog was slow. Charlie had seen Farrah on numerous occasions e-mailing Aaron whilst waiting for another customer. She can’t have known that they were being copied onto his father’s computer. And why hadn’t Jed told her?

  She must have some setting that blind copies her e-mails to Jed’s address. No … not all her e-mails, just the ones to Aaron.

  Charlie was trying to think why his father wouldn’t mention it. Then an awful thought struck him, what if he made her copy him in? This was part of his way of controlling her and Aaron; after all Aaron was his son. His father had always wanted to control Charlie, but never could. Charlie had a mind of his own and he knew that his father resented that.

  Perhaps Jed is in contact with Aaron. Perhaps they all copy each other in on their e-mails.

  Charlie went to Jed’s Sent Box. He’d never received a written communication from him in his life; it would be interesting for him to see what that might have been like.

  Charlie looked down the long list of sent e-mails and couldn’t find one sent to Aaron. There were however numerous that had been sent to Farrah.

  Why would he send e-mails to Farrah? He saw her everyday at work. Maybe the affair was still going on and this was the way they communicated with each other.

  Charlie clicked open one of the sent e-mails and read it:

  Hi Mum got your last message. We hope to be going to Chiang Mai next week, but I’ll have to earn some more money. I’m told once I’m there I should be able to find a job in a bar, but I need to get there first. That’s not a hint for cash, if you sent me some, I’d just send it back.

  Then another:

  Hi Mum met up with someone I knew from Sydney. He’s American and his name’s Chandler. What a weird name, but a nice guy. We going to head up north together. He tells me the Internet connection there is really dodgy, so if you don’t hear from me for a while, don’t worry.

  It was slowly dawning on Charlie what was happening. His father was pretending to be Aaron. But why? Why would he pretend to be his own son? Unless Aaron was dead and he was for some reason pretending he wasn’t.

  Charlie heard a noise behind him and standing there was Jed, he had on trousers and a vest. He was quite muscular for his age. He always put it down to humping barrels and crates around. In his right hand he had a baseball bat, which he’d had since Charlie was a kid.

  Charlie wasn’t sure what to say, he’d literally been caught red-handed.

  “Looking for something, are you?” Jed’s tone suddenly became deeply threatening.

  “Only an explanation.”

  “Lucky you haven’t got a cracked skull.”

  “I was coming to speak with you, but got distracted.”

  “What about?”

  “Your other children. I’ve been to see Farrah. She told me everything.”

  “Somehow I don’t think so,” Jed muttered the words, which were riddled with heaviness and resignation.

  “Does she know Aaron’s e-mails have been going to your account and you’ve been posing as Aaron?”

  “What do you think?” Jed turned the baseball bat in his hand as he spoke.

  “I think … it’s about time you told me what’s going on. If you don’t I’m going straight to the police.”

  Jed turned the bat in his hand again, then raised it up, only to rest it on his shoulder. Charlie wanted to breathe a sigh of relief, but he didn’t.

  “Let’s go downstairs,” said Jed as he started to lead the way.

  Confession time. If he did kill mum, then now’s the time he has to come clean.

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  Lucas often fell asleep in the chair in front of the telly. Tonight was one of those nights. He’d been watching the repeat of Holby City with someone annoyingly signing in the corner. Lucas never understood all the medical jargon, but he could generally follow the story, that’s if he could keep his mind off the signing woman. He found his eyes going to her, wondering if she was actually deaf. He hadn’t worked out that if she was deaf, then she wouldn’t be able to hear the words that she had to sign.

  Tonight he’d fallen into an alcohol-induced sleep after ten minutes of some story about a riot breaking out in some prison and one of the doctors being trapped inside. He was pretty sure this handsome young doc would get out unscathed, so sleep came to him easily.

  He was woken twenty minutes later by the ring of his mobile phone, the ring tone being the Star Wars Theme, which every time made Lucas smile. He looked to see who it was calling, thinking it might be the hospital, but it wasn’t. It was Tyler.

  “Lucas …” came Tyler’s voice before Lucas had a chance to say anything.

  “Tyler …?” Lucas knew who it was; he just said the name for something to say.

  “Yeah it’s me.”

  “And this is me.” This was Lucas’s stab at being witty.

  “I need you here.”

  “Where?”

  “Do you know Moor Cottage …?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well get your arse up here now.”

  “It’s the middle of the night.”

  “So? What you going to do … turn into a Were Wolf.”

  “It’s just …”

  “You’ll be back before morning, your mum will never know.”

  Lucas actually lived with both his parents. They’d both retired years ago and apart from trips to The Black Dog, they rarely went anywhere else. There was a running joke that if Lucas didn’t get home in time for his ‘tea’ then his ‘ma’ gave him a ‘good hiding.’ Of course this was grossly exaggerated, but she would give him an ear full, which his father often joined in with. So even in times of stress and this was definitely a time of stress for Tyler, jokes about Lucas’s mum were just natural.

  “Why you at Moor Cottage?” asked Lucas quietly, not wanting to wake up his parents.

  “I’ll tell you when you get here. Just get here!” Then as an after thought he added, “Bring your gun.”

  There were two people Lucas obeyed without question, one was Amos, the other was Tyler, so he grabbed his coat along with his van keys and his shotgun, then he left.

  Tyler had arrived at Moor Cottage about thirty minutes before he decided to ring Lucas. He’d knocked on the door and the windows, but with no success. Charlie wasn’t home. He had no idea how old the place was, it had always been there, but the latest renovation by the actor had smartened up the outside and really modernised the inside. All this modernity meant the inclusion of a burglar alarm, so Tyler couldn’t just go busting in there. However, he did have a plan about how to tackle the alarm; he just needed Lucas’s help to put it into action.

  Tyler saw the lights of Lucas’s van in the distance way before he heard the noise of the chugging diesel engine. Lucas pulled the van up next to Tyler’s pick-up and climbed out.

  “What we doing here?” asked Lucas.

  “I need to break in.”

  “Okay.” Then there was a pause as Lucas looked at the cottage. “Why?” he added.

  “Charlie Ashton’s staying here. I want to know what he’s got.”

  “Got on what?”

  “On us.”

  “He’s got nothing on me … I never touched his mum or Kyle. You don’t think I did, do you Tyler?” The question was put in the same manner as an errant schoolboy looking for support after a playground mishap.

  “No … I don’t think you did Lucas, but we
have done other things in the past.”

  “What happened with Kyle was an accident. Amos has always told me if anybody asks me about it I say it was an accident.”

  “We made him cross The Beck … we made him do that Lucas.”

  “No – it was an accident. Amos said it was.”

  “He said it to stop you blabbing your mouth off. We told Kyle if he didn’t walk on the ice, we’d strip him and send him home naked.”

  “But we didn’t.”

  “Because he tried crossing The Beck … We bullied him into it Lucas.”

  “He didn’t have to do it.”

  “He did have to do it. We made him do it. You, me and Amos … we made him do it. The ice broke and none of us tried to save him. We would have let him die …”

  “No …”

  Tyler grabbed him by the hair on the back of his head and held his face close to his as his words oozed out between his clenched teeth: “Listen to me Lucas, Kyle went simple because of what we did to him. A lot of people know the truth about that day, but have never said anything. But Charlie Ashton is like on some frigging crusade. He wants to know who killed his mother and when he’s up close and personal with people someone might just let slip about what happened. They’re going to tell him things they know about Beck le Street just to get him out of their face.”

  “It was a long time ago,” said Lucas rather pathetically.

  “But Aaron Gregory wasn’t. He wasn’t a long time ago, was he?”

  Lucas had to catch his breath. It was like he’d been punched in the stomach.

  “That was for the good of the village, that’s what Amos said.”

  “Forget what Amos said.”

  “But nobody’s going to say anything … they won’t.”

  “Like no one was going to say anything about who Georgie’s real father was. Wasn’t that one of the things everybody was supposed not to mention. But you did, didn’t you. You and Amos mentioned it.”

  “It was Amos …”

  “I don’t give a fuck! The rules were broken! We live in cuckoo land here. Everybody believing they’re safe. Believing we all look after each other. But that’s not true. When it suits … when there’s money on the table, the rules are broken. If they hadn’t have been broken, then I wouldn’t have had to beat the living crap out of Amos. Amos! I’ve known him nearly all my life!” Tyler screamed in Lucas’s face. Lucas was scared.

  “He knew … he knew that was what had to happen. It happened to his dad. Old Atkinson … He was you … He beat him up, did you know that …?” Lucas was rambling.

  “What I’m telling you Lucas is that we have to protect ourselves. If it comes out about Aaron … if comes out about him … there will be four people spending their lives in prison. Do you underfuckingstand that?”

  Lucas nodded.

  “So here’s what we’re going to do … we’re going to stop Charlie Ashton.”

  “Stop him … right,” Lucas was concentrating the best he could.

  “Stop him … eternally.” This was finite in its delivery and its intention. Tyler was going to end this.

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  There was anticipation in the bar in The Black Dog. Charlie knew something monumental was about to happen. He looked at his father who had taken his time getting them both a drink. He just wanted to get this over with, but whatever his father was about to tell him he knew it was worse than what he’d already discovered.“You know Farrah and me we …” Jed found it difficult to articulate his betrayal.

  “I know,” stepped in Charlie helping him out.

  “She was still a teenager when it started … nowt but a child.”

  “Farrah told me about the funeral … Belinda’s funeral.”

  “She was my kid … she was my kid … my girl.”

  “I was your son and my mum was your wife, but we weren’t important.”

  “Yes … yes you were … I just … I don’t know, there was my life stretching out in front of me … and it was like a massive void …”

  “So you thought you’d spice it up a bit by having a mid life crisis.”

  “I’m not making excuses … I just need you to know what happened.”

  “I know what happened …”

  “No you don’t … You know a part of what happened.”

  “Look has your sordid affair with your barmaid anything to do with my mother’s death?”

  “I think it must have.”

  “What does that mean? ‘I think it must have …”

  “I don’t know how, but I’m sure it must have.”

  “Is this making any sense to you … because it’s making no sense to me,” said Charlie his impatience growing.

  “Your mother found out … about Aaron.”

  “What … that he was dead?”

  “Yeah … she found out he was dead … and I was one of the people that killed him.”

  Charlie wasn’t sure if he’d heard correctly. He glared at his father, almost threatening him so he would retract the statement – but he didn’t.

  “You killed him, did you say?” Charlie eventually asked.

  “Yeah … me and Amos Mann, Lucas Kenyon and Tyler Samson … we killed him.”

  “This is crazy. You killed him? You killed him?” Charlie repeated hoping he could make sense out of the statement. “How … how did you kill him?”

  “Like a hunter kills a wounded stag … we shot him to put him out of his misery.”

  “Is this for real.” Charlie was still trying to make sense of it.

  “Yeah.”

  “You killed Aaron Gregory?”

  “Yes.”

  Charlie shook his head, trying to take it in. Then it suddenly made sense to him.

  “Mum knew about your affair … she’d known since the funeral, but it was Aaron’s murder you were arguing about … this was the problem between you?”

  Jed nodded.

  Charlie sat there … the lamps still giving out a dim glow. His father had just confessed to murder, but not the murder he expected him to confess to.

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  If either Charlie or Jed had stepped out of The Black Dog they may have just been able to hear the sound of a burglar alarm going off in the distance. The alarm was that of Moor Cottage.

  Parked at the end of the dirt track that led to the cottage and where the track joined what only just passed for a road, was Lucas’s van. He was behind the wheel and had in his hand his mobile. What he was looking for was any sign of an approaching vehicle. Tyler’s plan was to break into the cottage and as soon as Lucas saw anyone approaching he was to ring Tyler who would then immediately abandon his search of the cottage and tear off in his pick-up. Tyler knew a dirt track at the back of the cottage that led onto the moors, where they could easily disappear into the night. But as yet there was no sign of anyone.

  Tyler, wearing Latex gloves, had smashed the window that opened into the lounge, released the latch and climbed through. His intention was to make it look like robbery, but he also had to secure the alarm code.

  Lucas and Amos had worked at the cottage putting in some new electrics for the actor from London. Lucas had remembered seeing the alarm instructions in one of the drawers in the kitchen. So Tyler started at one end of the kitchen units and sure enough in the third drawer along was a large white envelope on which was scrawled: Moor Cottage – Instructions. Tyler opened the envelope and there the general information for the cottage and details of how to set and unset the alarm, including the alarm code. He rushed to the alarm pad by the front door and punched in the numbers. The alarm stopped. There was silence. Now he had to wait and see if the alarm was connected to a monitoring station. If so they would ring and …. The phone rang. Tyler moved into the lounge and looked at
the phone, then looked once again at the alarm instructions. Eventually he picked up the phone.

  “Hello.”

  “This is Homesafe Security, we have a notification of an active alarm,” the Woman on the other end of the phone spoke like an automaton.

  “Yes. I opened the door and couldn’t remember the code.”

  “Do you have the password sir?”

  “Password?”

  “Yes – the password.”

  “Er … sure …” Tyler looked at the paper with the instructions on. I just hope they hadn’t changed it. “Hamlet,” he spoke into the receiver confidently.

  “That’s fine, thank-you sir. And you’re sure there’s not been any forced entry.”

  “ No … all good here.”

  “Thank-you sir. Have a good night.” And the woman hung up the call.

  Tyler took a deep breath, his adrenalin still pumping through his veins. He picked up his mobile and called Lucas, giving him the all clear.

  Lucas was back within a few minutes wondering what Tyler planned to do next. Tyler opened the window for him and held out a pair of Latex gloves, which Lucas struggled to put on. Eventually he asked the question: “What happens now?”

  “ You go get your gun, climb in through this window …”

  “Why can’t I use the door?” asked Lucas quite reasonably.

  “Because we don’t have a key and if I were to break the lock that would be a bit of a give away …”

  “Right,” said Lucas not really sure what he was meaning. “I’ll go get my gun now … climb in through the window … then what?”

  “Then we wait,” replied Tyler, “we wait until he comes back here and then we kill him.”

  This isn’t what Lucas had expected.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  Jed was pouring himself another drink.

  “You know when you live in a place like Beck le Street, things can get out of perspective. Your own perception can become warped. The world you live in becomes so small you think nothing exists outside of your own little sphere.”