Still that didn’t give him carte blanche to be careless. And it had been infuriating that things hadn’t gone according to plan with Amie. She’d been a lot harder to please than Kathryn. On the Saturday morning, she’d insisted on going for a walk even though it was drizzling and the visibility was negligible. He’d tried everything to put her off, but she’d been determined. At least the rain meant they’d both had to put their hoods up. He didn’t think any of the handful of walkers they’d passed could ever have recognised them again.
But once they’d returned, she’d gone on and on about the craft shops and tearooms they could visit the next day. All his careful planning was going up in smoke before his eyes. However, he wasn’t about to be defeated by an idiotic woman obsessed with finding some souvenir of their time together. He could think on his feet.
So he’d strangled her after dinner on Saturday instead. It had been easier the second time because he knew what to expect. The drugged passivity, the grunting gasps as the body struggled for air even in its unconscious state, the ugly colour of the skin as it suffused with blood. And beneath it all, the pure delight of imagining it was Tricia under him.
Afterwards he felt no guilt. Not least because Amie had begun to irritate him with her constant chatter about people he’d never met and places he’d never been. No wonder her relationships had never worked out. Everything was about her. There was a certain relief to her death, even though he didn’t like having her body about the place all day on the Sunday. Ironically, he’d gone out for a long walk by himself to get away from her.
But it had all worked out in the end. And he felt fabulous. So fabulous he’d laid his plans for the next one. Manchester this time. Plenty of choice there. And hopefully it would be another Kathyrn, not another Amie.
39
B
ecause it was a midweek match, it had been possible to buy a couple of tickets for Bradfield Victoria’s game against Stoke City at the last minute. It was the best idea Tony could come up with after Paula had tracked him down in the shipping container he used as a library to tell him how worried she was about Torin.
He’d been catching up on his reading when she’d banged on the door, the muffled clang of something hard on metal making him jump. Nobody had ever visited him there before but Paula had once dropped him off outside, so he wasn’t entirely surprised to find her on his doorstep. ‘I was reading,’ he said plaintively.
‘Good for you. Can I come in?’
‘There’s only one chair.’
‘Well, get your coat and I’ll treat you to a coffee,’ she said in the tone she normally reserved for children who’d witnessed something traumatic.
Obediently he grabbed the purple jacket and padlocked the container behind him, hurrying to catch up with Paula, who was already halfway down the street, coffee in her sights. When he caught up, she gave him a sceptical glance. ‘Are you wearing that for a bet?’
‘It was in the sale,’ he said. ‘Carol said it suited me.’
Paula snorted. ‘Carol just wanted you in anything but the disreputable brown thing.’ She turned into the coffee shop and made for the counter.
‘I think this is the last coffee shop in town where the barista isn’t a hipster,’ Tony muttered as they found a quiet table to huddle over their drinks. ‘So what can I do for you, Paula?’
‘It’s Torin,’ she said. And outlined their recent concerns and the discovery that he had apparently sold some of his mother’s jewellery. ‘And then he completely lost it with me. Ranted about me invading his privacy, told me I had no business sticking my nose into his life and that what he did with his own stuff was nothing to do with me.’
Tony sighed. ‘Tell me you didn’t go down the “my house, my rules” line.’
‘I’m not entirely stupid,’ she growled. ‘I backed off. But the last couple of days, it’s been like living in a “no comment” interview. He’s silent and surly, he won’t meet my eyes and I don’t know what to do.’
‘What does Elinor think?’
Paula fidgeted in her chair. ‘I haven’t told Elinor. I’ve hardly seen her since it all blew up between Torin and me and, to be honest, I’d rather bring her a solution than a problem right now. They’re incredibly short-staffed in A&E and she’s having enough of a struggle trying to make sure everything at work is covered.’
‘And you don’t want Elinor to think you can’t deal with Torin,’ Tony said. ‘Because then she’ll take everything on herself.’
‘That too,’ she acknowledged reluctantly.
‘You want me to talk to him?’
‘Would you? He trusts you. When you come round for dinner, it’s like he relaxes.’
‘It’s a guy thing,’ Tony said, clearly mocking himself. ‘Seriously, though. It’s mostly because I’m not in a parental role. It’s always easier to talk to someone who’s got less investment in you. There’s not the same potential for disappointing them.
‘He’s going to be suspicious of me suddenly turning up out of the blue so soon after you’ve had this row.’ Tony sipped his coffee and frowned in thought. ‘It’s got to be the kind of thing we do anyway.’ And then he’d remembered the football. He’d taken Torin to a Bradfield Victoria match once before. They’d gone to the game then for a kebab afterwards. Tony thought it had gone well. The only reason he hadn’t repeated it was that it was almost impossible to get tickets for the Saturday games now that the team were nudging that valuable fourth-place slot that would see them playing in the Champions’ League the following season. He’d had to settle for watching his team on their dedicated TV channel.
So Wednesday evening found Tony and Torin riding the bus across town to Ratcliffe, the city’s melting-pot suburb. Every colour and creed seemed to have migrated to the narrow streets of red-brick terraces over the years. Walking the pavement here, a man could hear the unfamiliar phonemes of twenty different languages within half a mile. But on match days, English reclaimed the air as the Bradfield Victoria fans were funnelled from tram halts, from bus stops and from car parks into the handful of cramped thoroughfares that led to the great cantilevered stands of Victoria Park. The bright yellow of the home strips seemed to bring sunshine into the dank streets and random chants broke out as the fans milled together towards the temple of their faith.
‘We’re going to be in the Vestey Stand tonight,’ Tony said. ‘It runs along the side of the pitch. Not like the Grayson Street stand where we were the last time. You remember?’
‘Yeah,’ Torin said. ‘We were smack-bang behind the goal. We had a great view when Pavlovicz scored.’
‘So we did. Do you know who the stand is named after?’
‘No. Is it interesting?’ Torin grinned.
‘I think so, but then I’m an anorak.’
Torin snorted with laughter. ‘No kidding. You can see that a mile off. You’re well ready for a Prince revival.’ He hummed ‘Purple Rain’ under his breath.
‘You’re too young to remember that,’ Tony complained.
‘My mum loved Prince.’ His face clouded momentarily, but he recovered himself. ‘So why is it interesting?’
‘It’s named after Albert Vestey. He was the Vics’ centre forward – that’s a striker to you – from 1929 to 1938. He scored one hundred and ninety-seven goals for the club and he won twenty-two caps for England. But he never scored a goal in open play for the national side. All three of his goals were penalties. Now, you’ve got to admit that’s interesting.’
Torin gave him a gentle punch on the shoulder. ‘OK. It’s a bit interesting.’ They approached the turnstiles leading to their section of the stand. ‘Thanks for asking me to come. I really enjoyed it before.’
‘I’ve not actually managed to get a ticket since the last time we were here. Otherwise I’d have asked you. But I watch the games on my laptop. I’ve got a sub to TVics. You can always come over to the boat and watch it with me if I’m in town.’
The boy nodded. ‘But Paula said you’d moved in wit
h Carol. So you’re not going to be on the boat, are you?’
Tony pulled a face. ‘I’ve not moved in with her, as such. It’s more like keeping her company. And I’m still down in Minster Basin two or three nights a week. So next time there’s a home game and I’m around, I’ll message you.’
‘OK.’ They began the steep climb to their seats. ‘Are you and Carol, like, a couple?’
‘Start with the easy questions, why don’t you?’ Tony grumbled. ‘We care about each other. But we’re not a couple. Not in the conventional sense. We’re more than best friends and less than lovers.’ It wasn’t something he’d ever had to codify for someone else. Why he was telling Torin, he wasn’t quite sure. Except that he understood that the best way to provoke honesty was to offer it up.
They squeezed past fellow fans to their seats and settled in, studying the team sheet they’d picked up on the way in. ‘Karabinits is on the bench again,’ Tony said.
‘So how come you never got it together as a couple?’
‘It’s complicated. Bad timing? Fear? Not wanting to spoil what works? All of the above. And I’m rubbish at romance.’
He was spared further interrogation by the referee’s whistle. The first half zipped by. End-to-end play, a goal apiece, some dazzling passages of play. The crowd roared and seethed and sang and nobody cared that it started raining, a fine drizzle that the wind blew into the faces of those lower down in the seating tiers.
At half-time, half the crowd disappeared to stand in line for bad food and overpriced drinks. Tony reached inside one of his many pockets and produced a bottle of sugar-loaded energy drink and a bag of popcorn. He handed them to Torin. ‘There you go. Saves us having to queue.’
‘What about you?’ Torin looked greedily at the snacks, too polite to dive in without checking.
Another pocket, a bottle of water. ‘I’m fine.’
They discussed the first half, dissecting the problems with the Vic’s midfield. As the stand filled up again and anticipation buzzed around the stadium, Tony said, ‘So what’s the problem, Torin?’
The second half kicked off and the noise from the fans grew in a deafening crescendo. Paradoxically, it made the crowded stand a very private place to have a conversation. ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’ Torin frowned and leaned forward, staring at the match below.
‘We never want to talk about the difficult things. But if we don’t they poison the good things in our lives. You’ve already fallen out with Paula. Where’s it going to end? Are you going to fall out with Elinor too? With me? And for what?’
‘You don’t understand.’
‘I understand shame. And I understand fear of loss, Torin. You’ve already endured the worst kind of loss and that makes you twice as scared of losing more.’
Torin licked his lips but said nothing.
‘You’re not going to lose us. We’re not going to walk away from you. We’re on your side. Trust me, there’s nothing you could have done that would make us reject you. We want to help you. I want to help you. I remember what it felt like to be your age. Everything looms so large in your head. And it’s never quite as bad as you think.’ He gave a dry bark of laughter. ‘And believe me, I had a completely shitty adolescence.’
Torin flashed a quick look at him. ‘I can’t tell you, Tony. I’ve let everybody down, I accept that. But there’s worse to come.’
‘So let’s head it off at the pass. There’s nothing out there that can’t be mitigated. We can’t fix everything, I know that, but we can find ways to deal with whatever the problem is. I’ve been dealing with people’s problems all my professional life, and really, it’s never as catastrophic as you think.’
‘There’s nothing that anybody can do.’ His voice was dull, his shoulders slumped. ‘I did one really stupid thing and it’s going to ruin my life.’
If it hadn’t been for Paula’s insistence to the contrary, Tony would have assumed Torin had impregnated his girlfriend. ‘What? You’re throwing in the towel without a fight? That’s not like you. The way you handled yourself after your mum died, that wasn’t the reaction of somebody who caves in. Come on, Torin, whatever it is, it’s not the end of the world.’
Torin’s response was to get to his feet and push his way to the end of the row. Tony was seconds behind him, earning grumbles and complaints and curses. He ran down the vertiginous steps behind the boy and they emerged almost together in the broad concourse that swept round the back of the stand. Torin fell back against the wall and dropped down into a crouch, burying his face in his folded arms. ‘I’m sorry,’ he mumbled, so quietly that Tony barely heard him.
Tony hunkered down beside him. ‘I know. But you’re only going to start to feel better when you talk about it.’
‘I can’t talk about it.’ His voice shook.
‘I’m not going to judge you, Torin.’
‘You don’t need to, I can do that for myself.’ He sounded disgusted. ‘I don’t know how I’m going to face anybody.’
Tony put an arm round the boy’s shoulders and drew him close. ‘Come on, mate. You know what I do for a living. After all I’ve heard over the years, I’m bombproof. You need to trust somebody and it might as well be me.’
Torin shivered then gulped. ‘You got to promise you won’t tell Paula and Elinor.’
‘They need to know, Torin.’
‘I won’t say another word unless you promise.’
There would be a way round this, but it would have to come from Torin himself. In the meantime, what mattered was finding out. ‘I promise. Cross my heart. Like you were a patient.’
‘I was lonely. Paula and Elinor, they’re great but…’
‘They’re not fourteen.’
‘I post a lot on Instagram. I’m quite good at taking interesting pics. All sorts of people like my stuff, and sometimes they comment, you know?’
Tony knew. He didn’t really use social media but he lurked because he needed to know the kind of behaviours people engaged in online. Most predators found the anonymity invaluable, and it was the perfect environment in which to do bad things without taking too many risks. ‘Somebody started commenting a lot? Really praising your stuff?’ Torin’s head moved in what Tony took to be a nod. ‘A girl?’
‘She was funny,’ he said. ‘She made really sharp jokes about stuff. And she liked the same bands and the same games I do.’
How hard would that be to find out? Even Tony could manage it with a few clicks and some search engine work. ‘And you fancied her?’ he said gently.
‘Anybody would. She was gorgeous.’ He let out a shuddering breath. ‘I could hardly believe she liked me too.’
‘And you took it out of the public arena? Into a private space?’
Torin raised his head and his eyes were damp. ‘I was lonely. And she sent me photos. Then little videos. Sexy, you know?’ His face was beseeching Tony to understand, to forgive.
A swell of sympathy rose in Tony’s chest, tempered with the anger he felt at the heartless bastards who had exploited Torin. He could see what was coming and it made his heart ache. ‘And she asked you to do the same.’
Torin dropped his eyes again. ‘Yeah,’ he croaked. ‘So I did.’
Tony reached out and put a hand on his shoulder just as the noise from the stadium erupted and engulfed them. Bradfield had clearly scored. When it died down, he said, ‘They blackmailed you. “Give us money or everybody in your contact list gets a copy.”’
‘Yeah. They wanted £500.’
‘So you sold your mum’s pendant?’
He nodded. ‘I got £550 for it. And then Paula said it was up for £800, so whoever bought it, well, they were cheating me too. I’m a complete mug. But it’s not going to stop. I got a message last week saying they want a grand by the end of the month or they’ll distribute it to everybody I know and post it online.’ His voice cracked with desperation.
‘How did you pay them?’
‘They gave me card details and told me to go into a b
ank and pay the cash on to the credit card. It was one of those cards you buy to load up with cash and spend with the card. Like when you go abroad. If anybody asked, I was to say it was for my cousin who was on his gap year and needed a top-up. But nobody asked.’
Probably untraceable, Tony thought. They needed to get Stacey on board with this. ‘I’m sorry you’ve had to carry this by yourself.’ He put an arm round the boy’s hunched shoulders. ‘I think we can sort this,’ he said. ‘But first you’re going to have to tell Paula and Elinor.’
Torin pulled away, his face an accusation. ‘You promised!’
‘I know. That’s why I said you’re going to have to do the telling.’
40
E
ileen Walsh sat on the stool in front of her dressing table removing her make-up with soft cotton pads. When she’d furnished her bedroom, the light bulbs surrounding the mirror were how she’d imagined a Hollywood star’s dressing room would appear. She didn’t mind the cliché; she wanted there to be one part of her day where she could feel like a star. Even if it was only the star of her own life.
That had been five years ago and nothing that had happened to Eileen had felt remotely starry. There was nothing glamorous about work. Being a nurse on the women’s surgical ward in Manchester Royal Infirmary was to exist in a perpetual state of overwork with occasional moments of gratification when a patient you liked had a better outcome than expected, or when a family showered you with thanks and chocolates. But the constant exhaustion overwhelmed any sense of virtuous satisfaction at being part of a caring profession.
At one point, she’d dared to hope that marriage was going to rescue her from drudgery. Lovely, gentle Tim who had a good job with a major insurance company. They’d met when his mother had been in having her gall bladder removed and he’d inexplicably fallen for her. He wasn’t the most exciting man in the world, but Eileen enjoyed his company and she could imagine a comfortable life with him. An end to loneliness, an end to financial worries. An end to dragging her weary body through endless shifts leading nowhere. She could do this, she told herself.