White Goods (43 page)

‘
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
were 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 Scotty 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.