Why I Went Back Read online

  That got my head throbbing all right. Ordinarily, anyone saying that – well, the stone-hard fist-blocks would be up and going in hard. But I couldn’t react that way now, couldn’t chance it with Christy’s van still down there and Haxforth inside too. So I did something I’ve hardly ever done before. I sucked it up. And part of that, part of the sucking-it-up, was thinking how even if Daniel had said it, even if he’d meant it in the nastiest way possible, it didn’t stop the facts themselves being true. Mum was stuck in that terrible place along with all those other nutjobs. Hitting Daniel Cushway, or anyone else, wasn’t going to change any of that, was it?

  ‘If the bolt cutters don’t work, you can call the police then,’ I said. ‘Anonymously though. No names. You have to promise me that.’

  I was still holding the phone like a grenade ready to be lobbed.

  ‘All right,’ he said.

  ‘Here.’ I gave the phone back. Promises seemed to mean more to Daniel than they did to other people so I thought that was an OK thing for me to say, better than fighting anyway. I stared out at the town twinkling below us, the orange patterns of the streetlamps, the roads and lanes and the distant motorway with its hum of night-time lorries.

  ‘My mum’s not a pyscho,’ I said quietly. ‘She’s got schizophrenia, that’s all.’

  ‘That’s bad,’ Daniel said after a moment or two.

  ‘You know about schizophrenia?’

  ‘Not really. Just that it’s bad. Does that mean you could get it too?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I mean, through your genes and stuff. DNA.’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t think so. I try not to think about it too much.’

  ‘Sorry,’ Daniel said.

  ‘Haxforth knows about it. He’s got a whole theory, says the mind’s like a palace where the king, the person in charge, has been kicked out. You probably think that’s a load of rubbish, don’t you?’

  ‘No.’

  Daniel came and stood next to me, not too close though, and together we stared out at the darkened world. We must’ve looked like two gargoyles on top of some old church. Down below, three shadowy shapes stepped into the overgrown alley. They walked silent and casual, not aware of being observed. They slid into Christy’s van without speaking and drove away.

  Haxforth wasn’t with them.

  ‘EX05 JYP …’ I heard Daniel murmur. ‘EX05 JYP …’

  He was tapping at his phone screen again.

  ‘What you doing?’

  ‘Writing down the registration.’

  I shrugged. That didn’t exactly seem important. How would we ever track it down anyway? It felt stupid, like some TV idea that has nothing to do with reality. If Daniel wanted to play detective though, that was his business.

  He slid the phone inside his black coat and we waited, waited, making doubly triply sure they weren’t coming back.

  Through the hanging door, down the stairs. Telling Daniel to watch out for the leaves and the pigeon droppings. Two torches guiding us because he’d brought one along too. The bolt cutters heavy-balanced in my spare hand. They’d make a good weapon all right, if a weapon was needed.

  Breathless now. The blood-drums, instinct, taking over.

  Onto the factory floor. The weird-looking machines. The corridor, the canteen where I’d hidden. Next to it the door to the storeroom. The key wasn’t even hidden this time, it’d been left in the padlock. I turned it, heard the click, saw the bar shoot up.

  Chapter 22

  It was bad all right, though not easy to tell exactly because of the way he was hunched on the pallet bed. The blankets and coverless duvet were pulled round tight like the last time I’d seen him but now dust and grit lay thick in the fabric folds as if he’d been rolled around on the floor. There was dust clumped too in the dry yellow hair, and his bleached-out eyes were spiderwebbed with scarlet veins. Overall, you had to say he wasn’t looking so great.

  ‘It’s me,’ I whispered. ‘Aidan. From before. And this is Daniel …’

  I shone my torch away, realising I was blinding him. It felt like the coldest place on earth in there, mountain-buried, filled with death. You saw the light beams shining from the torches and you wondered how long till even they froze. I pulled two bananas out of my coat pocket, pinched from the school canteen, a good energy-giving food I knew. Haxforth tore the skins off, squashed them into his mouth. Daniel looked on wide-eyed, breath steaming from his own pale face.

  ‘This is him. The man who gave me the clasp. Didn’t you, Haxforth?’

  Haxforth nodded, still shovelling banana into his mouth. His teeth were brown and stumpy like half-cooked pieces of popcorn.

  ‘No more messing around,’ I said, showing him the bolt cutters.

  He felt down around his ankles and yanked the chain out into the open. The way he was huddled, with knees up and arms linked around, it was like he was protecting his stomach. That was the exact same place I’d seen Christy punch him. Maybe there was something else there now. He seemed capable of almost anything, Christy, or at least in my imagination he did. Oh god oh Jesus, I thought, don’t let there be any blood or guts spilling out there.

  I opened the bolt cutters. Got the chain between the snubby cutting blades while Daniel held the torches. I saw the silver scratch where I’d tried to cut through with the hacksaw. That didn’t matter now.

  ‘Go on,’ Daniel whispered.

  I did. I heaved at the bolt cutter’s arms and the blade dug in and bit through. Haxforth turned the chain and I sliced the other side of the link and he was free.

  ‘Can you walk?’ I said.

  ‘Slowly. Faster without this.’

  ‘Course.’ The weight of the pallets was gone, but still there was the tight padlocked loop around his ankle, that part cutting off the blood supply to his foot. I took it slow, not wanting to nick him by accident. But still it was easy. They were magic, those bolt cutters, pure steel magic.

  All thanks to Annie Fraser-Howe and her fifty-pound note.

  Haxforth rubbed his ankle, tried to stand. It was obvious he needed support, that he couldn’t put his full weight on it yet. He was still wearing the same filthy sports gear, the tracksuit bottoms, the peeling Reeboks, everything cheap and thin and too big and just what you didn’t want to be wearing in the middle of winter. A vicious-looking yellow bruise sprouted up his neck like a diseased sunflower.

  He was definitely protecting something, or cradling something, in the front pocket of his grey Admiral hoodie.

  More gold perhaps?

  ‘Come on,’ Daniel said. ‘We need to get out of here.’

  ‘He’s right. Can you walk now?’

  Haxforth staggered and stumbled towards the door. I grabbed him, got him leaning on my shoulder, got ready to move.

  We did search for another way out, a ground-floor exit. Christy’s way in and out was locked tight as expected so Daniel scouted around and ahead with the torch. Pretty soon though we found ourselves at the bottom of the pigeon-shit staircase. It seemed simplest. Maybe we should’ve tried harder though. Because choosing the roof, that didn’t work out too well at all.

  Chapter 23

  It wasn’t any colder up there than it had been inside. Moonlight showed watery now through the swamp-cloud. I jammed the rooftop door shut behind us, wedged it tight with the bolt cutters. I wanted to put the ghostly world of the Brace Brothers behind me for good.

  ‘Keep moving,’ I said to Haxforth. ‘Think you can get down a ladder?’

  I was worried that if he stopped, his ankle might swell or seize up or something.

  ‘Give me a minute,’ he said.

  He went and sat on the wide square parapet at the roof’s edge, massaging his ankle with one hand, keeping the other protectively around the thing hidden inside the hoodie pocket, whatever it was.

  I thought about the clasp, still safe and secure in my pocket. If it once kept someone’s jewellery in place, what must the jewellery itself have looked like?

 
‘Aidan.’ I felt Daniel’s hand tapping at my elbow. ‘What are we going to do with him?’

  ‘That place on Northcote Road,’ I said quietly. ‘That homeless place, you know? I thought we’d take him there.’

  ‘They won’t be open now! It’s too late. Anyway, I don’t think you can just turn up, you need to be referred by the council or something.’

  ‘Really?’ That blew a big hole in my plans. ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘My dad used to volunteer there. I think it was there. That was one of the things him and mum always used to argue about.’

  ‘Used to?’ I turned away from Haxforth, still rubbing his ankle, peered at Daniel. The spot on the side of his nose glistened in the weak moonlight and his mouth had crinkled down a bit at the corners.

  ‘I don’t really know where he is now. He doesn’t live with us any more.’

  ‘Well, I can’t take him back to mine,’ I said, jerking my thumb at the figure sat over on the parapet. ‘I know that much.’

  ‘Why not? You found him.’

  ‘I just can’t, all right?’ Home was complicated enough already, what with Dad and the mail. No way could I go sliding Haxforth into the picture. ‘Let’s get him down the ladder and away from this place. We’ll work something out after that.’

  Daniel didn’t say anything, only adjusted his scarf and looked super-serious.

  ‘I’ll go first,’ I told him. ‘Support his legs if I have to. Then you last, how does that sound?’

  ‘What’s that he’s got in his pocket, do you think?’

  I shrugged. ‘How should I know?’

  ‘Whatever it is, it’s moving.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That thing in his pocket, that he’s protecting. It just moved.’

  ‘You’re seeing things.’

  I crossed the roof, swung my legs over, lowered myself a few rungs. Right away the frost-knives were biting. The ladder felt like an exposed track now the cloud had thinned and there was more light in the sky. Nowhere to hide once you were on it. So get down fast and safe. Haxforth stood and Daniel manoeuvred him into position and I held up a hand ready to guide his legs.

  Down we went, one icy rung at a time. It had crossed my mind, sort of, that Haxforth might not have the strength for the climbing and clinging on, but the way I figured it, if you’d been kept prisoner, been starved, you’d take any way out that was available. You’d do whatever it took. He was in a bad way all right but something about him seemed indestructible, like he’d go on forever. But then I guess I’d always thought old people were like that in general, you could never imagine them dying even though you knew they did, that one day their bodies got damaged or diseased and then they stopped working and started rotting instead. Maybe all those assumptions made me a bit casual, I don’t know. It wasn’t enough to stop what happened next from happening, anyway.

  Two-thirds of the way down he fell.

  A body crashing into mine and both of us crashing together, that’s all I knew. A sickening thud – an earthquake jarring – a body that felt for a minute like mashed potato. Not sure what caused it precisely. A slip, a misjudgement, a moment of muscle weakness, it hardly mattered.

  Time did weird skipping jumping things.

  ‘Aidan! Aidan!’ Daniel’s face hovered large and white, like the moon itself. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘I’m OK.’

  He pulled me up and I felt all around checking for broken stuff. There wasn’t any. I guess I wasn’t too far from the ground when Haxforth fell into me. I looked around, saw the bed of tall tangling weeds that’d cushioned my body, saw how my body had cushioned his in turn. Still he’d got the worst of it. We bent down and examined him, Daniel and I. The scarlet veins in his eyes were even worse now and the eyes themselves were rolling like coins that’ve been spun.

  ‘Oh my god,’ Daniel groaned. ‘He’s bleeding. There, on the side of his head.’

  He was right. A dark trickle shone at Haxforth’s right temple, drip-dripping into the weeds. Daniel took off his scarf and wrapped it round his hand and pressed it hard to the wound and I thought fair play to him for that, acting like a proper first-aider and everything.

  We pulled him forward from the position he’d fallen in and leaned him against the ladder.

  ‘Come on, Haxforth, say something. Tell me some more about those kings and their palaces.’

  He mumbled something in response, not proper words though, just odd sounds.

  ‘Look,’ Daniel whispered.

  Something was definitely wriggling in the front pocket of the grey Admiral hoodie. Even in the fall Haxforth’d protected it somehow, got a thin white hand around it. Now a tiny head poked out. A fierce black eye and a black beak covered around with warts or boils. A neck and body shaking loose from the greasy fabric, ragged feathers fluffing. For a moment it hopped onto Haxforth’s shoulder and I saw how the colour on the throat was the same as Haxforth’s moonlit blood, matched it exactly. Feebly he made a grab for it but it was away on the wing already.

  I remembered then the winter-sheltering bird from the storeroom.

  ‘That was a swallow,’ Daniel said. ‘Did you see the tail – how it forked?’

  ‘I saw it.’

  ‘But what’s it doing here, now? Swallows are summer birds. It should be in Africa or somewhere like that.’

  Haxforth was trying to speak, eyelids closed but words clearer this time. I leaned forward, leaned in close to the thin lips and the coffee-coloured tooth-stumps. Daniel did the same.

  ‘All around here … There were orchards …’

  You could tell it was an effort for him, just saying those few words.

  ‘Orchards?’ Daniel said. ‘What’s he talking about?’

  He was mysterious all right, Haxforth. Mysterious as a star or an old wild animal. I’d known it right from when I’d first seen him, known it right down in that place where there’s no need for words. I was thinking maybe Daniel knew it too, now.

  Still, what were we going to do with him?

  ‘Do you think he can walk?’

  ‘I don’t know. How’s his head?’

  Daniel dabbed and wiped around with the scarf. ‘It seems to be stopping. It’s not as deep as it looks. More of a graze.’ He wrapped the scarf tight around Haxforth’s head like a bandage, put a knot in at the side. ‘That should fix it for a while.’

  ‘Great.’

  I paced around a bit. I turned on my torch, checking it still worked OK after the fall. Turned it off again straightaway though. There was enough light reaching us from the moon to see by, just about. I curled my fists tight to my forehead, trying to force out a plan, what to do next. Nothing was coming.

  ‘If there was absolutely no other choice … I mean, if there was nowhere else at all …’ Daniel said, looking super-serious again, ‘Well, he could stay at mine. Just till morning. We’ve got a basement with its own front door, down some concrete steps. As long as he’s quiet …’

  ‘That sounds perfect,’ I said, wishing he’d mentioned it before but glad all the same he was doing it now.

  ‘I’m down there a lot, so Mum won’t notice anything unusual. I’ve got my own key and everything. She’s sort of let me have it for my own, ever since Dad left.’

  I was picturing it in my head already – knowing his road from all those dark-morning mail runs. The history magazines, the stuff my Big Bag carried for D. CUSHWAY. They were massive, those houses. They all had basements and they all went up and up and there were double driveways out the front with brand-new silver cars parked side by side.

  ‘It’s near too, Annandale Avenue,’ I said without thinking.

  ‘How do you know where I live?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You said it like you know where I live.’

  ‘Did I?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘I must’ve heard it at school or something. Come on. You take that shoulder and I’ll take this one. Haxfort
h, we’re going to carry you – take you somewhere safe. Are you all right with that? Can you walk at all?’

  He mumbled something that sounded positive. Or at least didn’t sound negative.

  We got him under each arm, Daniel and I. Wrestled him up. It felt like he was made out of wire coat hangers. One foot in front of the other and then the other in front of that and then do it again and again.

  ‘He might be concussed,’ Daniel said under his breath.

  ‘What do you do for that?’

  ‘I don’t know. Lie them down and let them sleep it off?’

  I shrugged. I didn’t know what you did for concussion either.

  Step by step we left the concrete alleyways behind. Flat dark angles, glittering frost, weeds thick and snagging underfoot. They say we’re all of us killing nature but it’s never seemed that way to me. Give nature five minutes and it comes roaring right back, even the wintertime things that look permanently dead.

  ‘What were you even doing here in the first place?’

  ‘That gang. They nicked my bike and I followed. They were having a laugh.’

  Daniel whistled through his teeth. ‘I’d’ve let them have it. They could’ve been anyone – could’ve been psychopaths.’

  ‘Just keep moving,’ I said. ‘Don’t break the rhythm.’

  Chapter 24

  A rainy afternoon sat at the back of the classroom. The cast-iron radiator behind me shovelling out heat. Eyelids heavy. Someone down the front droning on. Everybody bored, everybody watching the clock. Impossible to concentrate anyway, what with being so tired from the night before and thinking over and over how we’d somehow hauled Haxforth across the frozen night-time town and into Daniel’s basement – doing our best to keep everything muffled and low noise. Even when we’d got him inside Daniel’d only switched the light on for a minute or two, afraid of drawing attention I suppose. Still I took everything in, like you do when you enter a new room. A big blocky piano, that was the first thing you saw, with an opened book of music, what they call a score, on a little stand above the keyboard. More scores on top of the piano and above those, pinned to the wall, a poster, The Great Composers, faces of men with crazy-mad hair and names and dates underneath. So I guessed then that Daniel really was some super-whizz at music, like everyone said at school.