The Baby And The Brandy (Ben Bracken 1) (3 page)

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 haven’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.

‘Jack, thank you for everything you have done for me. I won’t forget it. If there’s anything I can do in return...’

‘No, we are square,’ Jack replies, and starts walking backwards to the door. ‘4509’ he adds, before turning and heading out of the bar, the wind whistling through the door and up to the booth, chilling me as I watch Jack exit, heading back to whatever has him so fiercely in its grip. Poor lad. I hope it works out for him.

I look at the card on the table, and get up myself. It is time to go shopping. I need supplies for this new mission, and there’s still a couple of hours before the high-street stores close.

*

I think I have all the immediate essentials, so I lay them out on the bed in my hotel room. It was easy to get a cheap last minute deal on a room at the Premier Inn - I just walked up with a bunch of shopping bags and asked what they had. I checked in as Jack Brooker, the name on the bank card, which is what I’ll have to do until I can set up a fake bank account somewhere with a fake identity to back it up. But it will do for now. The room is clean, and quite spacious. The bed is a double, something else I’m really looking forward to. Plus the wifi is free.

On one side of the bed sits a 13inch Macbook Pro, a Samsung Galaxy smartphone (loaded with a pay-as-you-go sim), a Swiss Army knife, some basic clothes from Primark (combat jeans, a solitary flannel shirt, three dark t-shirts and the least ridiculous underwear I could find), a pair of hardwearing dark brown Timberland boots, a toilet bag pre-stuffed with toiletries, a waterproof backpack to stuff it all in, a pair of Steiner Nighthunter low light binoculars, a compass and the finishing touch: an Italian BMT footlong Subway with chipotle sauce.

I stretch out on the empty half of the bed, ready to wolf down the sub. I am salivating at the prospect, and I flick the TV to provide a backdrop to my feast. I think back to Jack, and what troubles may have befallen him. Maybe the fact that I had to save him from those two oafs that night suggests he has a habit of getting himself into trouble, and maybe, true to form, he has gone and done it again.

I grab the sub, and the smartphone. I bought it pretty much ready to go, so I enter the passcode I have assigned it for security and load up the pre-installed Twitter app. I type in those very specific login details, and the planet’s most poorly populated Twitter account comes to life, with only two names. My own and my one follower. As a handle, I had picked something so generic as to wash into ignominy, and enforced the same on Jack. I select direct message, and type.

@MUFC4Ever1995 to @MUFCFan2654

21.46 on Thursday 27th October

07893 629087 - if you

ever need anything.

I grab that sub. I am going to savor every morsel, and let the flavor’s reanimate my dulled tastebuds. Then, I’m going to pack, and ready for bed. I’m off first thing in the morning - back to the Big Smoke, back to settle old scores and correct the mistakes I’ve made. Back on the hunt for the one that got away - the smug, wily, powerful, old bastard, Terry ‘The Turn-Up’ Masters. The man who got me locked up, blew out my knee, stuck me in a knife fight with his son, and set his attack dogs on me. The man I can’t wait to sort out once and for all - the first mission of my new era of clean up.

4

That was the best night’s sleep of my whole life. I was initially worried after a fitful first fifteen minutes that I would struggle to drop off, but as soon as I did, I was sucked into a bottomless, floaty vacuum. Breakfast isn’t bad either - a full English with all the trimmings, thrown in with the price of the room. I had sauntered down to the hotel restaurant just like A. N. Other guest, a touch of purpose in my stride to suggest I am very much supposed to be there. Just another guy who wants to get shit done on a Saturday. And whichever way you look at it, there is a lot of truth in that statement.

The coffee feels a little lackluster, but that might be because I was utterly spoiled with Trev and Freya’s brew over on Church Street last night. I sip and swill, and glance around the restaurant. The clock over the cereal table reads 7.37am. The room is mostly empty, a couple of early risers peppered about at the window tables. Blokes, with their own backstories, just like me. They go through the motions of their breakfasts with a dull precision suggesting an oft repeated routine, the grey sky outside complementing their supposed monotony to perfection.

I have a faint memory in my head, wedged somewhere airily between when I fell asleep and breakfast this morning. Not so much a memory, but a faint whisper that I did something. This concerns me a bit, as I’ve seen myself do some fairly ill-judged things, but I feel so refreshed that I know I did nothing. It was my mind that was active. A dream. The subconscious dragging you on a journey from which you can’t resist or alter. I can’t remember what I dreamt of, the fabric of the dream too frayed at this point, so I’ll just leave it there. I don’t really want to know, in any event. I wouldn’t trust my subconscious to construct anything too cheery. It can get a bit dark in there.

As I watch the two other diners, while trying hopelessly to scoop a segment of grapefruit onto my spoon, I notice that they are utterly addicted to their smartphones. Absolutely, unashamedly slaves to them. I doubt that they have even looked up once, their whole lives organized electronically, different facets of their personalities arranged in a host of social media accounts. I remember too, that I know have a smartphone also. And I remember my Twitter appeal to Jack Brooker. I take out my own device, and activate it. If you can’t beat them, and all that...