It was Saturday evening, and the Bull was pretty crowded. It wasn’t anything special in terms of Saturdays, but it had been one of those stupidly warm early September days when you were tricked into believing that Bradford was still going to get a proper summer. Everyone kitted out in the warm weather gear they’d almost given up on, which, in the case of the blokes, involved some pretty dodgy shorts. Though in the case of the girls, it meant an explosion of cheesecloth shirts knotted round their midriffs and hot pants, which was reason enough to celebrate, Vinnie reckoned.
It was still hot even now, at half eight in the evening, and Don, the landlord, had a grin on his face that could have stretched all the way to Bridlington, even if he was sweating buckets trying to serve a bar queue ten deep and the ice machine had long since given up.
Most of the pub’s young crowd had spilled out on to the street, and the atmosphere was buzzing outside. Half the estate seemed to be there, which was all to the good, because somewhere there would be someone who knew something about Mucky Melvin; it wasn’t like he was overrun with friends on the estate, was it? Someone would give the address up, Vinnie was sure of it.
‘He might have buggered off altogether,’ Brendan said. ‘I fucking would if I was him, mate. Wouldn’t you?’
Vinnie shook his head. ‘And go where? To sleep under a viaduct? Nah, he’ll be around. He’ll have found some crony or other to take him in. They like to stick together, nonces – that’s what they’re good at. Someone’s taken him in. Someone local. Some other low-life who’s into child-snatching, probably. It’s just a question of finding out who.’
But it seemed like it was going to be Vinnie’s lucky night because another mate, Steve, had come to join them. He was a part-time taxi driver at his uncle’s firm, and he also worked at the local scrap yard now and again. So he got about a bit, and because he had his nose into everything he knew a lot about a lot – including something that might potentially speed up the hunt.
‘You know Debra Nicholson?’ he asked Vinnie. ‘Used to live over on Canterbury Front?’
Vinnie nodded. The name was instantly familiar, even though she was a girl he didn’t know particularly well. She’d been in the year below him in school and he remembered her as being the sort of bird who swanned around with her nose in the air, like the girls from Canterbury Front generally did.
‘What about her?’ he asked.
‘Well, I was just thinking about what you were saying. She’s having a bit of a party at hers later, or so I’m told, and I’m betting there’ll be a fairly good chance Mikey Harris might be there.’
‘Mikey Harris?’ That was a name Vinnie didn’t know.
‘Good friend of hers,’ Steve explained. ‘Going out with her best mate.’
‘Course!’ Brendan said. ‘I know him. Of course,’ he said again, nodding. ‘That’s a really good point, mate. He’s Mucky Melvin’s nephew, Vin, that’s who Mikey Harris is.’
‘Not that I think he has anything to do with him,’ Steve added. ‘For obvious reasons. I mean, would you? But you never know. If anyone’s got an idea where he might be hiding out, I’d say he’s a prime candidate, wouldn’t you?’
Vinnie tipped his head back and drained his pint in a couple of swallows. Then he placed the glass down on the already crowded pub window-sill. ‘Right lads,’ he said. ‘Who’s for getting tanked up? I feel a bit of a party coming on, don’t you?’
It turned out that Debra Nicholson didn’t live on the estate any more. She’d moved to one of the roads down at the town end of Little Horton Lane, which was some distance away. It was a good half an hour walk and Brendan was whining about getting a taxi, but with four pints already inside him, Vinnie barely noticed. That was one thing about borstal life, he supposed – and, weirdly, he missed it; the relentless obsession with PE. And much as he moaned about it (everyone moaned about it because moaning was what you did) it sharpened you up being so fit; kept you strong and on your toes. As did having a good reason for going where you were going, and that was one thing he definitely had in spade loads.
His rage about Titch had not abated. It sat there inside him like a low rumbling presence. Like the beginnings of an earthquake or volcano, stirring just under the surface, ready to blow.
She didn’t deserve it. She didn’t deserve any of it. She’d done fuck-all but be nice to everyone – fucking everyone. Wouldn’t say boo to a goose and got shat on by all and sundry. He wasn’t stupid enough not to realise how things worked. He was the prodigal fucking son just by virtue of the fact that his mam thought the sun shone out of his arse. Perhaps she wouldn’t think that any more – not if she’d seen some of the rucks he’d got into. But he could see just by the way she simpered round him – specially in public – that his ‘holiday’ at her majesty’s pleasure had only served to make it shine even more.
Which left no room for his little sister. Which was just like it had always been, only worse. She was just there and expected to get on with it. And with that no-hoper, washed-up selfish druggie of a sister, she must have felt pretty lonely, all told.
He knew he’d frightened Titch the other night, and he felt bad about it. But fuck, whenever he so much as thought about what had been done to her, he saw red. He couldn’t help it. He wanted blood. He craved it. So having to deal with that fucker Robbo had actually been a gift. Vinnie held him personally responsible for turning his sister into a smackhead, so he’d had it coming to him since the day he clapped eyes on Lyndsey. So what that she might have been doing dope before she met him? He was a bloke and a decent bloke would have helped sort her out – not get her on heroin, knock her up, spend her fucking family allowance money. Not get so feet-under-the-fucking-table secure that while his girlfriend was in hospital having a fucking abortion, he thought helping himself to a bit of younger skirt was an acceptable fucking way to carry on.
No, Robbo had got off lightly. Literally, in fact. He’d been Vinnie’s light entertainment; the warm-up act before the main show.
‘Hold up,’ Pete puffed, ‘I gotta stop and have a slash. How much further is this fucking house, anyway?’
Vinnie laughed at his mate. He was beetroot and sweating. ‘You’re such a fat lazy fucker, Pete,’ he said, boxing him playfully on the upper arm. ‘You want to get in shape, mate. Leave off the pies. Take a leaf out of my book.’
‘What, banged up doing porridge?’ Pete said, as he peed into a dusty buddleia. ‘No fucking thanks. I’d like to keep my arse in one piece, thanks.’
‘I know,’ Vinnie shot back, ‘because you need it to fucking talk out of!’
Vinnie grinned as he dodged Pete’s retaliatory stream of piss. He was enjoying tonight. He could almost sniff Melvin on the breeze now. Catch the scent of revenge in the shifting summer air.
Things were going to shape up well. He could feel it.
‘Look, I can’t let you in okay? There’s already a million people in here. And the place is getting wrecked as it is.’
Debra had grown. That was for sure. She was in a vest and a pair of shorts that left almost nothing to the imagination, and though she’d daubed on enough lipstick to look uncannily (and slightly unsettlingly) like his mother, Vinnie decided that, actually, she was really pretty.
Pretty but arsey, and currently blocking their way. Brendan clearly lacked any sort of skill at charming birds of any kind – out of trees or into letting blokes into their parties. Edging him and the others aside, Vinnie mounted the doorstep and thrust his bottle of Double Diamond in her direction.
‘Alright, Deb?’ he said, nodding appreciatively. ‘Long time no see.’
She stared at him for a moment, obviously taking in the shiny hair, the luxurious tache, the confident grin, the cool threads – and he had the same sense of self-confidence that he’d felt a lot since he’d been home. People treated him differently now, and he knew it wasn’t just because he was older. He’d been inside. He had a status that his mates could only dream of. Particularly when it came to certain types of girls. He knew in that instant – that one when she realised who she was looking at – that she was going to allow them to go in.
‘Vinnie?’ she squeaked, blushing almost as pink as her lipstick. ‘Shit – Vinnie McKellan! Bloody hell!’
Vinnie turned and smirked at his mates, as she stood to one side to let them in. ‘Watch and learn, lads,’ he whispered. ‘Watch and learn.’
They naturally made straight for the kitchen. There was a kind of through lounge, separated by an arch, but Vinnie ignored it. It was a solid sea of bodies, most of which were jigging around to Roxy Music, heads bobbing like corks, looking like dicks. No, the kitchen would be where it was at because it always was at parties, so they threaded their way through, acknowledging the odd familiar face – though, in doing so, Vinnie felt the width of the gap that had opened up now; the lads seemed to know people he’d never even clapped eyes on. The world could change a great deal in three years.
‘There he is,’ Pete said, nudging him, as they went through the kitchen doorway. ‘That is him, isn’t it, Steve?’
Steve nodded.
Vinnie cast an eye over the lad standing in the far corner, by the fridge, chatting to a bloke he didn’t recognise half-in and half-out of the back door. He looked like a regular bloke – longish hair, bit of a hippy, twenty-ish, generally unremarkable, and Vinnie wondered what it must be like to have a filthy pervert sharing the same blood as you did. Was that sort of thing in your genes?
There was the usual mess on all the horizontal surfaces. He didn’t know what the deal was – most likely that her parents had buggered off to Blackpool for the weekend – but he had the impression the party had been in full flow since the middle of the afternoon. There were Tupperware bowls scattered around, empty except for crisp shards and crumbs now, and an assortment of beer and cider cans – big and small – plus rows of plastic bottles, most of them empty, of cream soda and lemonade and cola.
It was fuggy, too, a haze of grey-blue sitting just above eye-level, regularly topped up by smoke from cigarettes and joints. There seemed to be two main groups of lads, but few girls in the kitchen currently, as some sort of competition seemed to be taking place in the garden involving a bunch of empty beer bottles and a lot of giggling. Vinnie glanced around him as he began looking for a bottle opener among the detritus. You could almost smell the testosterone.
The lads in the kitchen were beginning to notice them now too, and, taking in the various unfamiliar faces that were scrutinising him, Vinnie again felt this sense of wired disconnectedness – this sense of needing to keep alert and at the ready. He was, in every sense, very far from home turf. He was only just settling back into the pecking order of his own area, after all, and he could tell his mates were feeling it too.
No, the natives might not be entirely friendly. But then they weren’t here to make friends. Neither were they here for the Slade that was now blaring from the living room. They were here for a purpose and there was no time like the present. Finding a bottle opener, he opened his beer, and took a long thirst-quenching swig. Everything felt more manageable with a beer in your hand. And even more so when in your stomach.
As it turned out, the natives weren’t unfriendly. Pretty soon it was established that the guy standing with Mikey Harris was the cousin of a bloke Steve had done a bit of work with, and that they’d actually met a couple of times before. So it wasn’t long before they all started drinking together, and the initial tension began to melt away.
Though, information-wise, it soon became clear, at least to Vinnie, that Mikey Harris might be a bit of a non-starter. For one thing, it seemed he had a pretty large group of mates with him, any or all of which, being that bit older than Vinnie and his mates, would also need taking on or taking out. And for another, Vinnie reckoned himself to be a pretty good judge of character, and this Mikey Harris guy seemed alright. Odds on he felt the same as everyone else did about his uncle, which meant that, odds on, he wouldn’t know where he was.
Course, he could just ask him, but ‘Where’s your bastard uncle hiding out?’ wasn’t the sort of thing you could just slip into party conversation – not without drawing attention to the reason you wanted to know. And if the guy genuinely didn’t know – well, that was the tricky one. Because the one thing he didn’t want to happen, at least in the short term, was for anyone outside his immediate circle to know how much he wanted to track the bastard down.
No, much better, he decided, to simply watch – to watch and learn. No point in anything kicking off until it needed to.
But it looked like that wasn’t his choice to make. Time had passed now – quite a lot of time. It was fully dark. The beer they’d brought had all but gone now, and the energetic partying in the garden had become more of a sit-in, the participants only spottable via the glowing tips of their cigarettes. The crowd in the kitchen had swelled a bit too, and some more characters – older guys neither Vinnie or his mates knew – had arrived out of nowhere and seemed to be holding court.
And one of them seemed to have his eye on Vinnie. He wasn’t a big guy, but the way he carried himself suggested no one had pointed that fact out to him, and when he spoke it was clear he was on something too.
‘Vinnie fucking McKellan!’ he said, loudly and jocularly, causing several heads to swivel round to see.
Dispensing with his stock answer – who the fuck wants to know? – Vinnie merely nodded an acknowledgement as the guy approached. And was then surprised when the guy grinned and thrust an arm towards him.
‘I’ve been hearing about you,’ he said, pumping Vinnie’s hand enthusiastically. ‘’bout time someone showed that smackhead Robbo what was what.’
Vinnie was aware of Pete and Brendan exchanging nervous glances next to him. They obviously knew who this character was even if he didn’t. But this probably wasn’t the moment to ask them. Or, come to that, ask how this bloke even knew who he was, much less what he knew – assuming he did, and it certainly seemed that way – about what Vinnie had done to Robbo in the week. He was also short of a response, so he searched for one.
‘Glad to be of service,’ he replied, thinking furiously. How the fuck did this guy know? And who was he?
‘I’d offer you a drink,’ the bloke went on, ‘only there seems to be shit-all left here.’ He grinned again then, revealing a row of alarmingly brown teeth. ‘Though I’ve got other stuff, if you’re interested, like.’
‘You’re alright,’ Vinnie said evenly. ‘I try not to.’
‘Leave that to your half-wit of a brother-in-law? Very sensible.’
Vinnie couldn’t detect an edge in the guy’s voice, but felt he had to clarify even so. ‘He’s not my brother-in-law.’
‘Sorry – my mistake,’ the bloke conceded. ‘Your sister’s “boyfriend”. Anyway, since you seem to have his ear now …’ – he stopped to laugh, and his cronies all joined in, as if on cue – ‘… perhaps you can remind him when you next see him that I’m only going to be feeling indulgent for so long. You know what I mean?’
He was a dealer, then. That figured. The bloke Lynds and Robbo got their smack off? ‘No,’ Vinnie said, ‘but as an educated guess, I’m assuming he owes you some money.’
‘Got it in one,’ the bloke answered. ‘Anyway, extremely nice to meet you. Nice to know there are like-minded folk out there. And if you ever need a job, lad, come and find me, okay?’
He winked at Vinnie and squeezed past, then went into the garden, the long tail of his retinue dutifully following. There was an almost audible mass outbreath when they’d gone.
‘Well, that was, um, interesting, to say the least,’ Brendan ventured. And it was at that point that things went horribly wrong.
Looking back the following day, Vinnie recalled what happened next in a kind of inevitable, not to mention sickening, slow-motion. And a blurry one, too: perhaps it would come back to him in time, but right then he couldn’t quite recall the exact point when ‘bad’ turned to ‘very, very bad’.
What he did recall was that immediately following the drug dealer’s exit, everyone seemed to start talking at once. It seemed the guy was well known to almost everyone but him, and that it wasn’t at all surprising that he knew about Vinnie, since he would have been round to Robbo’s regularly – or so the theory went – and seeing him in a state would have naturally wanted to know why. And he would have had no trouble finding out either. This was Robbo. It wouldn’t take much, after all.
And it seemed everyone else wanted filling in now. This had been bemusing for Vinnie, and not a little pleasing. He was being talked about, as well as talked to, and with a new level of reverence, so he was only too happy to hear his punishment of Robbo being described in such awed and respectful tones. Reputation was everything, after all.
But then he heard a single word that changed everything. ‘Josie’. And suddenly his ears were the sharpest they’d ever been. And also focussed, which meant an exchange by two guys across the kitchen – neither of which he’d ever seen before – did not escape his notice. Not a word.
‘Josie McKellan?’ one was saying.
‘Yeah, I know,’ said the other.
‘Christ!’ said the first, laughing. ‘That’s fucking smack for you!’
Vinnie was not meant to hear it. That much was obvious. But the words floated across the crowded kitchen towards him even so, as if propelled there by an unseen angry force.
He looked towards the source of them, but not before Brendan had as well, and who, being closer, was quick to answer.
‘Hey,’ he said, ‘watch it, mate. I’d keep your trap shut if I were you.’
To which the lad, presumably because he hadn’t realised who was who – not to mention where Vinnie was – answered, ‘Oh, come on, mate – would you? He must have been pretty fucking desperate.’
Vinnie was aware of only one face at that moment, and moved towards it as fast as the crush of people allowed.
Which was fast. He was nose to nose with the lad in seconds. ‘You want to say that again, mate?’ he asked him quietly. ‘To me? Only I’d feel bad smashing your face in just on hearsay, you know?’
And perhaps at that point, it still could have been dealt with. At that point there was still scope for apology, for reparations. Perhaps at that point the best thing either of them could have done was to take a step back, breathe deeply and walk away.
But it wasn’t going to happen, and for so many reasons. Reasons of drink, reasons of face, reasons of sheer unbridled anger. And mostly because the lad’s friend was an arsehole.
‘Come on, mate,’ he said to Vinnie. ‘No need to overreact, is there?’ At which Vinnie slammed his forehead into the guy’s nose.
What happened after that was blurry, as, his head throbbing, Vinnie lunged for the other guy. Fists flew, there were shouts, glasses shattered, girls screamed and at some point, this being a kitchen, the inevitable happened. Someone opened a drawer and pulled out a knife.
It wasn’t Vinnie. That much he did recall. It wasn’t him that had had that particular bright idea. All he knew was that somehow, at some point, he had taken possession of it, and that somehow he had stabbed the guy, twice.
‘Shit, Vinnie! Shit! What the fuck!’ It was Pete’s voice. It seemed to soar above him – even above the cacophony of female screams. He could hear someone else shouting, too – no, several people, yelling. ‘Call the police! Someone call a bloody ambulance, for God’s sake!’
‘Shit!’ Brendan screeched at him. ‘What the fuck did you do that for? Christ! Pete, come and help me. Jesus, Vin – you idiot! Christ, we have to get out of here now!’
And somehow, without him consciously knowing how they’d got there, the four of them were running down the road, their feet pounding, the sound of wailing sirens at their flank.