Why I Went Back Read online

  ‘I want you to tell me where you got this from.’

  Daniel looked at me expectantly.

  ‘First I want you to tell me what it is,’ I said. ‘What it’s worth.’

  ‘Well, it’s nothing much, I can tell you that. Anglo-Saxon, possibly.’ His eyes flicked away, avoiding mine. ‘A bit of old rubbish that kept someone’s jewellery in place, I daresay.’

  ‘It’s solid gold,’ I said.

  ‘I realise that,’ Mr McKendrick answered stiffly. The clasp was lying there on the white blotting paper, slightly nearer to him than to me.

  ‘So it must be worth something,’ I said, taking a step forward.

  ‘Worth something? Oh yes, I should think so. But what was it buried with? That’s the question.’

  ‘I didn’t find it in the ground.’

  ‘No? Where then?’

  ‘I can’t say.’

  ‘Can’t? Or won’t? How about you …?’

  ‘Daniel,’ said Daniel, and I flashed him a look that said, What did you tell him your name for, you didn’t have to do that you idiot.

  ‘I saw it for the first time just now,’ Daniel said.

  ‘Which school do you both attend?’

  From the corner of my eye I could see that the secretary had stopped staring at her screen and was now staring at us.

  Neither of us said anything.

  ‘Under the law, anyone finding something like this has to tell the authorities. And you came here, after all, to ask for help. Didn’t you? To let the professionals take over …’

  ‘I came here because I wanted to find out more about this –’ I reached out for the clasp and as I did so Mr McKendrick’s hand suddenly came down on mine, pinning it to the desk.

  ‘You’ll leave it here with us,’ he said softly, ‘of course. By law …’

  ‘No I bloody won’t,’ I said, wrenching free but seeing at the same time how he’d snatched the clasp away with his other hand. So next thing I was wrestling him across the desk, lunging for the thieving fist of this disgusting green-jumpered man, hearing him let out a cry of surprise as I dug and levered in there with my thumb and saw the clasp go skittering away across the floor.

  I saw Daniel scramble for it, pick it up – saw him look from me to Mr McKendrick and back again.

  ‘Just bring that here,’ Mr McKendrick told him, beckoning, ‘and I’ll forget about your friend’s silliness.’

  ‘You promised you wouldn’t keep it,’ Daniel said.

  ‘That was before I knew what it was.’

  Daniel shook his head. He dropped the clasp into his coat pocket. Then I shouted Run and past the open-mouthed secretary we flew, down the stairs, right in front of the black-and-green-uniformed guard who stood there like a lemon and through the reception area and out onto the wide grey steps which were bathed now in wintry sunshine. For a split second I stopped to look up at the skies, to look at the unexpected blue that had appeared in one big corner, a blue bluer even than the gold of the clasp was gold and then we were away.

  Nobody came after us. Five streets on, nice and quiet, we stopped and put our hands to our knees and gasped for breath. Daniel’s face was red and his chest heaving. He wasn’t one of those who’re too great at football, running, things like that.

  ‘I didn’t think you were going to do that!’ I said.

  ‘Neither did I. But he promised and then he tried to go back on it. People shouldn’t ever break promises.’

  ‘Suppose not.’ He sounded like he really meant it and I wondered what’d happened to him to make him think like that because everyone knows people break promises all the time, that it’s just something you have to get used to.

  He brought the clasp out from his coat pocket. There in the winter sunshine it looked like a molten slash on his opened-up hand.

  ‘Where did you get it?’

  I knew I couldn’t dodge the question this time. Handing the clasp over to Mr McKendrick would’ve been the easiest thing in the world for Daniel to do, but he hadn’t, he’d refused. And then there was Christy and Deano and what I’d seen through the hole in the breeze block wall. Maybe it would be good if someone knew where I was going tonight and why.

  His eyes were as wide as ten-pence pieces by the time I’d finished talking.

  ‘Who? Who’s doing all this to him?’ he said.

  ‘I don’t know who they are exactly, but I know I don’t ever want to meet them. They reckon he knows where there’s more stuff like this clasp, lots more gold. It’s weird, but I sort of think they might be right.’

  ‘More of this?’

  The clasp was still sitting in the palm of Daniel’s hand. The coiled hinge and the arrowhead catch. If this once kept someone’s jewellery in place, what must the jewellery itself have looked like?

  ‘He talks about kings and monsters too. I mean, almost like he’s seen them for real.’

  Daniel stared at me hard. ‘You’re making all this up.’

  ‘Come along if you don’t believe me,’ I said. ‘I’m going at midnight.’ I told him a place to meet – a concrete compound close to the roundabout, some place they used for electricity.

  Daniel gave back the clasp and I stuffed it deep in my trousers pocket, the place where it lived now safe and secure. He knew about Haxforth but that didn’t mean I’d told him anything about the mail I was delivering every night, hoping to keep Dad out of jail and me out of the care home. Every secret has its own depth, its own reasons for revealing or not revealing, and that wasn’t a surface secret. No way. It wasn’t heroic, like rescuing an old man from starvation. It was dark and shameful, one of those secrets that’ll destroy you if you let even one millimetre of it out into the light.

  ‘Maybe see you later then?’ he said, a bit hesitant.

  I shrugged. ‘Yeah, maybe.’

  He walked off in his direction, I walked off in mine.

  Chapter 19

  Evening. Dad was sitting in front of the telly. It was dark outside but all the lights in the house were off apart from the one in the kitchen. A football pitch shone greenly across his face and body. I wondered what was going on inside that head of his – whether there was an official age when you stopped thinking, or at least stopped talking about what you were thinking about. See, what he really needed to do was open up some Lines of Communication, those things they’re always going on about on daytime TV when the families scream at each other. But he couldn’t. Whatever the reason, he just couldn’t.

  ‘The Arsenal,’ he said, hearing me in the doorway. ‘Going to be a tricky one. Need all three points. Sit down.’

  I leaned in closer. The clock in the corner of the TV said twelve minutes.

  ‘Might watch the second half,’ I said.

  ‘Suit yourself.’ He had a can of lager in one hand and beside him on the brown sofa, in the place where Mum used to curl up, there sat a greasy mound of chip wrappers.

  ‘Can I turn the heating on?’ I asked. ‘It’s freezing upstairs.’

  ‘Fine. Do you know how to?’

  ‘Yeah, I’m not a kid. Mum showed me years ago.’

  ‘Go on then.’ He didn’t blink when I mentioned Mum. Didn’t say anything more about what’d happened at the hospital, or whether things really were getting better for her. It was like we’d never visited at all. He didn’t ask me anything either, where I’d been, how school was, how I was, anything like that.

  I poked the toe of my trainer into the place where the carpet was coming away. ‘I forgot to tell you. Someone came looking for you yesterday. Your mate from work – Hawkie.’

  That made him look up.

  ‘Hawkie?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  Dad turned down the volume on the TV.

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘Nothing. Just that he wanted to talk to you. Said you weren’t answering your phone.’

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘I didn’t say anything. Told him I’d tell you, that’s all. He asked what time you were gett
ing home from your duties and then he went away.’

  ‘I don’t know why he’s bothering,’ Dad said, more to himself than to me. ‘He’s going full time with the union soon. Won’t even be at our place any more. Wait a minute – what time was this? Why weren’t you at school?’

  ‘It was lunchtime,’ I lied. ‘I had to come home to get something.’

  ‘Tell the truth, Aidan.’

  ‘What about you telling the truth for once?’ I shouted.

  ‘What do you mean? What you talking about?’ Dad jumped up, scrunching the chip papers, flinging them across the room. I thought maybe he wanted to put my head in with those wrappers and scrunch that up too.

  ‘Nothing,’ I said, backtracking fast.

  ‘If there’s something you want to say, Aidan, come right out and say it. Anything else is for cowards.’

  Cowards. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I was talking about Hawkie, I wanted to say, about you, your mail, all that stuff you’re hiding in the shed. Don’t you know you’re going to get caught and when you do the judge won’t give a stuff about Mum or what’s happening inside her head and you’ll go to prison and then I’ll get shoved in a care home or something, I mean how stupid can they be at the mail centre, they must have worked it out by now, all that post gone missing, the knock could come any time, the cops could be parking their car and walking up to our house right now –

  ‘Jesus Christ!’ shouted Dad. ‘Goal! You made me miss it!’

  He turned back to the TV, the volume up, the little men running and grinning and pulling off their red-and-white shirts.

  I fled upstairs.

  Chapter 20

  There’s one thing about being out on your own a lot at night-time and that’s that you start getting some pretty crazy ideas. For example I kept thinking how I was in a sort of alliance with the moon. Every time I was out with the Big Bag I watched it change, go through what they call its phases. In a few nights’ time it’d be at its fullest and already the strong white light meant I didn’t always need my torch. Tonight though, when I needed to be soft-footed and invisible, it was locked tight behind cloud. So setting out, I knew the alliance was good.

  It was after midnight. Power hummed smooth from the concrete compound behind me, the place where they made or stored electricity. I shifted the Big Bag on my shoulders. There wasn’t any post in there though, only the bolt cutters sharp against my back. The rusting racer I’d left at home too. This wasn’t the time to be getting tangled up in brakes and gears and chain.

  Haxforth. Where’s he going? The homeless shelter, yes, for a night or two, but after that? Next week, next year – where?

  The houses of the rich. That’s what he said. Does he go there to live? Or to steal and run?

  That was assuming he could go anywhere. It was one hell of kicking they’d dished out, Christy and his mate.

  Time to move. I’d waited long enough, Daniel wasn’t coming. In fact, thinking about it, I didn’t know why I’d told him about Haxforth at all. His helping me in the museum like that must’ve made me go soft in the head. But it isn’t any good, being soft, in this life. The only person you can rely on is yourself. No, Daniel would’ve been a liability. I was better off on my own.

  I pulsed steam from my mouth and started walking, hugging the outside edge of the roundabout, trying to turn my body into a shadow. If you practise it long enough maybe you can do it for real. I knew anyway that as soon as I reached the factory the blood-drums would start up. They’re good sometimes, when they’re sounding it means you’re running clear on instinct and don’t have to think too much any more. Almost like you’re a hunter, back in the time when there were no cities but only forests.

  All these crazy night-time thoughts.

  ‘Aidan,’ hissed a voice.

  ‘Jesus!’ I spun round.

  ‘Sorry. Didn’t mean to surprise you.’

  ‘You didn’t,’ I said quickly.

  Daniel was dressed all in black. Black boots on his feet and a black scarf tucked into a high-zipped coat and up top a black woolly hat yanked close over his ears. He looked like he’d joined a special forces unit or something. Not that I laughed. I didn’t really feel like it, what with one thing and another.

  ‘Is it far?’ he said. ‘Where we have to go?’

  ‘No, not far at all.’

  ‘This better be real, because if it isn’t …’

  I unslung the Big Bag, showed him the bolt cutters. Seeing those, he knew I was serious. Knew I had Purpose and Intent. ‘These’ll free Haxforth in no time.’

  ‘Haxforth?’

  ‘That’s his name – the old guy who gave me the clasp, who’s chained up. Didn’t I tell you?’

  ‘You didn’t tell me his name,’ Daniel said.

  We walked fast beyond the roundabout and on towards the industrial estate with its jumble of factories and warehouses. A few halogens hung suspended like slabs of supercharged ice around the newer units but the whiteness didn’t penetrate anywhere near the derelict areas where we were headed. Daniel Cushway out at midnight, I was thinking that whole time. Well, well, well.

  Down the weed-choked alley. At the end, the building that said Brace Brothers. The swishy-lettered sign, giving no clue about what they ever did inside.

  No cars. No voices. Silence. Not even the wind blowing.

  ‘In there,’ I whispered.

  ‘How do we get inside?’

  ‘Follow me.’ I glanced at Daniel. If he was scared, he wasn’t letting it show. Why was he here? The clasp was interesting all right but it had to be more than that. I didn’t feel I could ask him directly though. Maybe I’d never find out. You hardly ever find out anything properly about other people, not when you come right down to it.

  We went around the building and in a flash of torchlight I showed him the weed-choked lower rungs of the fire-escape ladder.

  ‘Up there,’ I said.

  ‘Right to the top?’

  ‘Right to the top. You’re not scared of heights, are you?’

  ‘No.’ He reached out and touched a rung, pulled back his hand. He wasn’t wearing gloves and they were like knives, those metal rungs, frost-knives cutting flesh.

  ‘Isn’t there any other way in?’

  ‘Not that I know of,’ I said.

  Daniel opened his mouth, to reply or make a suggestion perhaps. But what it was I’ll never know because just then out of the endless midnight world we saw high-beam headlights angling in our direction. They weren’t in any kind of a hurry but suddenly we were. Soon a familiar engine would be pushing its way through the overgrown avenues and alleyways of the industrial estate.

  Second time of nearly being caught. Luck like that can’t last forever.

  ‘Get climbing!’ I said. ‘Quick!’

  Up the ladder Daniel went, grasping the danger instantly because one thing about him at least he wasn’t slow like that. I saw his feet slip-sliding on the white frosted metal, thought how if he fell I’d be right underneath but still taking hold of the ladder and following fast because after all what choice did I have. That climb must’ve only lasted half a minute but it felt longer, a lot longer. What with the bolt cutters banging against my back and Daniel’s black boots clanging above my head and the frost-knives slicing my hands, and knowing what was inside and what down below, it was like everything was suddenly screaming DEATHTRAP.

  Then I saw Daniel sprawled on the flat factory roof and I was next to him and for a minute we didn’t do or say anything.

  Chapter 21

  Christy and Deano and another of their scumbag helpers were bundling a figure out from the back of the Transit. The glow from the tail-lights showed the scene, the blanket covering the head, the figure surrounded and held on all sides – like a prisoner being led away to begin a life sentence.

  ‘That’s him,’ I whispered. ‘That’s Haxforth.’

  Daniel grabbed my arm to pull me back. I was leaning out over the wide square parapet that ran around the ro
of’s edge, wanting to get a better view. He didn’t need to worry though. People never think to look up.

  I heard a lock and a door being opened. Whispered words, some scuffling. Then the angle cut off my view. It was too acute. They’d gone inside anyway.

  ‘We need to call the police,’ Daniel said in an undertone. ‘This is really serious.’

  ‘I know it’s serious. That’s why I’ve got these.’ I nudged the Big Bag lying next to my spying position, indicated the bolt cutters inside.

  ‘It’s kidnapping and assault and –’

  We crab-crawled away from the parapet, moved to the centre of the roof where it was safer to stand and talk. Daniel was taking something out of his pocket but I couldn’t believe he was actually going to use it.

  ‘Hold on a minute,’ I said. ‘We’re going to go down there and cut him loose, just as soon as they’ve gone. That was the plan all along.’

  ‘But what if they don’t leave? What do we do then?’

  I could see the numbers on the white electronic screen of his phone. He’d tapped them out already, the three nines. All he had to do was hit the green call button.

  ‘Daniel,’ I said, ‘don’t do that.’

  With those numbers staring at me, all I could think was Police, Dad, Shed, Prison.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘They won’t do anything about it, they’re useless.’ My answer sounded flat and unconvincing and I knew it.

  ‘They will. They’ll be here really fast. They have targets for that sort of thing, responding to emergency calls.’

  His thumb hovered over the dial button.

  ‘Don’t, I’m asking you, please.’

  ‘I really think we should.’

  He tapped the button and I snatched the phone out of his hand, slamming down on the screen before it could connect, knowing the cops always call back if a 999 call gets cut off. Then I took a step towards the parapet, held my arm back like I was about to hurl it over the edge.

  Silence. In the darkness I could just make out Daniel’s eyes fixed on me, blinking fast.

  ‘It’s right what they say at school.’ His voice when he spoke trembled slightly. ‘You’re a psycho. Just like your mum.’