FIVE STILL MISSING
‘If you dig up the past . . . you're going to get dirty.’
Davy had spent most of his life running but never figured out why. Forced to return to Gallows Close where he grew up he may at last get an answer. With Police wanting to interview him for a string of murders, old ghosts resurrecting themselves and several decades of change it's going to be his hardest battle ever. Can Davy convince them that he is innocent, face his demons and find out what’s been haunting him since childhood before it’s too late?’
‘A thrilling page-turner with some shocking moments. Martyn's skill lies in bringing characters to life and making you care for them.’
- L Kibby, Casting Director.
FIVE STILL MISSING
By
Martyn Tott
SMASHWORDS EDITION
PUBLISHED BY:
Martyn Tott on Smashwords
(This author’s books are also available in paperback from online retailers)
Five Still Missing
Copyright 2012 by Martyn Tott
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental and a product of the author’s imagination.
For more on my books and short films please visit my page on Smashwords or website http://www.martyntott.com
This is a UK ENGLISH spelling edition
CHAPTER ONE
I never intended to ruin such a nice guitar by smashing it over a drunk in a tacky bar but looking back it changed everything. Epiphany moments have a habit of happening when you least expect them it’s like hitting your head on a low beam in the pub when you’ve been concentrating on not spilling the beer in your hand. Sometimes these moments of clarity are good, sometimes they’re bad, and sometimes it’s a wake up call.
For twenty-five years I’d been running from my past and now I was going to be forced to go back and face up to the mess I’d left behind. We all have our reasons for going down certain paths, the trouble is no matter how far you go or how long you’re gone for you take your emotional baggage and pack it in your suitcase.
After travelling the world I had ended up on the coast in Spain, playing ‘Miko’s Bar’ doing my one man set to backing tracks, strumming the guitar as best I could to entertain the holiday drunks. When I had started out playing music I thought that I had the gift, a skinny slick haired rock god straddling the monitors in my tight black jeans. With my dark fringe flailing around, pumping that guitar as hard as I could I thought I was the next Joe Strummer. It was my dream when I set out to conquer the music world to be headlining festivals by now with a long list of ‘greatest hits’ but reality has a habit of slapping your dreams down hard.
That evening I was enjoying a break, fifteen minutes every two hours. I may as well have been working in a mine because it sure killed me to be doing that but I couldn’t afford to have a luxury like pride, I was operating on necessity, basic survival. A little amphetamine helped me get through sometimes but the comedown was hell.
Standing at the bar eating my runny omelette I heard it again, a song called The Sleeping Gallows about a highwayman being caught and hung. It was sweeping the world with its catchy chorus, you know those songs that once you hear them they stay with you, like it or not? The thing is this particular tune was familiar to me, not just the catchy melody it was like I knew the tune deep inside. Most of all I soon recognised the artist and I knew where he’d got the title, I’d grown up with him after all and co-written it in a garage in the Close where we lived.
Carl had been my best friend up until I was sixteen. God knows why, he was a selfish manipulating bastard with a crooked sense of humour. Last time I saw him was when I’d punched him out for stealing a girl away from me. He had no right to use that song without my consent. I’d hoped that stealing Charlotte was the last lousy thing he’d do but he was back for more despite the blessing of geography putting plenty of miles between us. One thing I’d learned from my travels was that as time marched on the world was becoming a smaller place. He would have known that it would open up old wounds for me. That was the thing with Carl though, he never thought of anyone else unless they could serve a purpose.
I’d already been asked to play the song long before I’d heard it. You get that a lot in bars, people yelling out song titles when you are halfway through another, they think you should know the entire catalogue of every song ever recorded like a walking iTunes, thinking I could skip tracks like a puppet without a brain. I would usually smile at these people and if I didn’t know it say ‘I’ll learn it for you for next time.’ Of course usually there never was a next time, if there was they wouldn’t remember the request anyway because they were so trashed.
There was one lobster-faced drunk that night pushing his luck a bit. He was just another of many who came and went throughout the season to get wired, trashed, knob someone and then go home itching their private parts. However this one was different, a persistent bastard and the straw that broke the camels back or my guitar neck rather. This idiot did the worst thing you can do to a musician he started messing with my guitar as I played while carelessly balancing his pint in his other hand, splashing beer. I pushed him off in between chords and he started edging towards my amplifier and I knew already that if he damaged my VOX then I wouldn’t hesitate to boot him off the stage as I had done many times before to similar idiots. One night there had been four of them on stage jumping around and I’d shepherded them off with a deft nudge here and persuasive push there - I have to point out that stage meant several beer crates and a sheet of eight by four foot chipboard.
A musician’s equipment is out of bounds to everyone except roadies, soundmen and the band. And we never, ever appreciate people coming up asking ‘Mind if I have a go mate?’ It’s like us saying ‘Mind if poke your girlfriend?’
Keeping the mob in order in a shooters bar on a small holiday island was difficult and these rules didn’t mean much to Mr. Lobster currently overriding my precious amplifier tubes by turning the knobs up at random. A shrieking feedback cut through the bar and people clapped their hands to their ears.
‘Oi mate, no touchy the stuff okay, get yerself another drink.’ I shouted, forcing a smile.
He tried to focus on me with eyes like piss holes in the snow going in different directions. Miko, the owner, was looking at me from behind the bar not doing anything about the trouble as usual, he was too penny-pinching to hire a bouncer and told me hecklers were my problem and part of what I was paid for. At the time I was barely covering the cost of the room I rented from him above the club, it was a stinking hole even by my standards and I’d certainly roughed it for years across the globe. The toilets in the bar below my window were so wrecked, most of the seats were torn off or the sinks were kicked in but Miko didn’t care as long as they kept buying the cheap booze.
‘Come on superstar play the song.’ Said Mr. Lobster on stage, swaggering towards me again like he was on a lively cross-channel ferry.
‘Mate can you just piss right off the stage?’
'Sure.’ He grinned and I returned to my riffing. Within a few seconds I felt a tapping on my leg that grew heavier and I looked down to see that the bastard had taken my request literally and was peeing off the stage and some of it was spraying on my jeans, the only pair I had.
Mr. Lobster then grabbed the microphone from the stand and began screaming down it, the speakers started to feedback again. I nudged him with my shoulder but he pushed me back this time. I kicked out at him and he wobbled back into the amp toppling it off the back of the stage. It went quiet, I knew he’d broken the tubes and they would cost me loads to get replaced.
‘You’re paying for that you stupid arsehole.’ I shouted.
He dropped what was left of his beer on it and turned to have a go at me with his arms swinging. I therefore did what any professional self-respecting bar-musician would do. I hit him as hard as I could with my guitar.
Les Paul guitars are pretty sturdy, you could probably use them as cricket bats but I must have caught him awkwardly as it split in two and flew out of my hands hitting one of the floor length mirrors.
Mr. Lobster careered into a group of girls at a tall table, scattering them from their barstools like bowling pins as he went crashing to the floor. His friends stood there waiting to see what he would do but I thought I’d killed him. Then he let out a moan, rolled around, face bloodied trying to find his focus. I was shot through with adrenaline, holding my precious bits of broken guitar the metal truss rod inside the neck dropped out clanging across the floor. He’d just destroyed my livelihood, I was livid but there were about half a dozen of them. To my surprise they suddenly let out a huge cheer, gathered their mate up like a sack of spuds and carried him out of the bar singing the chorus to The Sleeping Gallows.
Miko had to shut the bar early because of the mess and broken glass, he didn’t look happy, storming about shouting at the bar staff to get the mops and cleaning gear out. The only time I had sensed any happiness in the bloke was when he was flirting with drunken girls half his age trying to get them back to his room.
I was drying off my amplifier with bar towels when I felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned quickly thinking it could have been Mr. Lobster but it was Miko and he had my canvas backpack.
‘You’re out.’
‘Out? That wasn’t my fault, you saw it.’
'Here.’ He handed me a load of Euros, some of the notes floated down across the stage and I peeled them off the beer soaked wood before they turned to mush. ‘We are all settled up now piss off.’ He spat.
‘Listen.’ I said, standing up and following him towards the bar, ‘I’ve put up with a lot over the last six months here, you can’t just throw me out.’
‘Go.’ He pointed to the door.
I grabbed him by his bright coloured shirt and he said something in Spanish loudly. I looked over his shoulder to the door where his arm was still pointing. Two local Police waved at me. They weren’t like the Police I’d grown up with, these had guns and I knew it was hopeless for me to argue.
I wasn’t sad to leave Miko’s crappy bar and room but it was my home, as squalid and crappy as it was I actually needed at least four walls to call my own. I took my amplifier and stuck it on a makeshift trolley that I’d cobbled together, put the bits of guitar in the case and grabbed my backpack. I ended up down on the beach, looking for a spot to sleep. I’d managed to smuggle a bottle of rum inside the guitar case while I was making my exit so I felt a tiny piece of comfort there.
The night was cool; I wrapped myself up in my jacket and began to sip at the alcohol, looking out to the waves, wondering what I would do next. I’d slept on the beach before but usually with some friends around a campfire, I used to like that as it reminded me of my childhood where we would play in the woods behind the Close. I’d kept the nicer memories and held them in my head as detailed as possible. It hadn’t been entirely bad before I’d run away but then again it was so long ago I probably rose tinted it to ease the pain of never being able to go back.
I lay on the sand and stared up at the sky, the same sky I’d seen when I began my adventure across the world over two decades ago. I’d wandered so far from my original path, the one I’d set out on, a rock star enjoying the spoils of stardom. It had briefly gone okay but then I’d slid further and further down until I’d ended up here, alone, freezing my nuts off coming down off cheap speed, drinking stolen rum with just a few Euros in my pocket for company.
In-between the shouts of drunken revellers I began to work out a plan. Sometimes it’s best to leave the past where it is but there was a small voice somewhere inside of me telling me it was time, time to take a trip back. It wasn’t ideal but I was tired. It felt like I’d been running most of my life and perhaps now was the time to go back and see if I could actually find what I’d been running from. They say if you dig up the past you’re going to get dirty. I was about to find out if it was true.
CHAPTER TWO
I woke up in a UK Bed and Breakfast for the first time in years. An empty duty free tequila bottle rolled off the duvet and clinked across the floor against a rusty radiator. I felt a sense of dread as my headache arrived along with the realisation that I was only half an hour away from the Close. When you only have a small amount of money in your pocket some people would be excited and relieved to be ‘home’ but not me. There was too much of the unknown I would have to face if I wanted to resolve some important issues. I had no idea how deep they really were, maybe if I knew what was ahead I would have got the hell out quick but hindsight is a glorious thing we can’t touch until we go through the mire to get to it.
I rolled out of the bed and washed my face in the small cracked basin. As I rubbed the rough towel across my unshaven face I thought I saw something in the mirror, a shadow behind me. When I turned around there was nothing except my jacket on the wardrobe door. I always had a vivid imagination but there were times when he still actually appeared. It hadn’t happened for a while but perhaps being back was stirring up the dead bones of my past more than I’d been prepared for.
I walked downstairs and nodded to a couple of people who were finishing their breakfast. The landlady, all housecoat and dry foundation rolled her eyes at me. I thought she looked like Mrs. Doubtfire’s evil twin.
‘Great. I suppose I need to get the pans back out of soak then?’ She said in a rough smokers voice.
I looked at my watch.
‘It’s not nine o’clock yet.’
She pointed to the one on the wall. It was ten past. I wondered how accurate my fake watch was, it only cost me ten euro on the beach from a bloke who had a basket of them.
‘Sit down. You’ve caught me on a good day.’
‘Blimey.’ I said as she vanished back into the kitchen. ‘I’d hate to see her on a bad day.’
‘That’s my mum.’ Said the man.
‘That’s a she?’ I muttered myself.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Don’t be. You can’t pick your parents.’ I patted him on the shoulder and decided to help myself to some of the orange juice sat on a plastic tablecloth. It was too risky to try the sticky looking cereals, I watched as a raisin suddenly took off from a bowl of muesli, it was actually a fly and I swatted it away.
The couple stood up and gave me a dirty look. The man was larger than me and I remembered one of my favourite lines from the film Get Carter.
“You’re a big man but you’re in bad shape, with me it’s a full time job”. Then Michael Caine clouts the bloke from Coronation Street.
I grinned to myself and stared at the guy raising my eyebrow as if to invite further comment if he had a problem but his glare melted away and they left. I’d had my fill of bust ups for the time being, maybe I was really changing at last.
‘Good morning to you too.’ I said to my reflection in a painting and lifted the orange juice; the jug was stuck to the vinyl cloth and slowly peeled itself free. Whatever happened to hospitality I thought, grabbing the newspaper from the couple’s table? I began to read the headlines as I sipped at the sharp tasting juice that must have sat there for a week. It needed some vodka in it to make it bearable but I doubt Mrs. Doubtfire’s evil twin would oblige me with that.
I felt a rumble in the ground; a familiar train noise running close to the bed and breakfast, calling to my inner being. I had a flashing image of the tunnel a dizzy sensation that made me uneasy. I had to drink more of that rotten orange juice just to snap out of it, the sour taste forcing me to wince and let out a groan.
The newspaper headline I turned to read ‘Drunken night at holiday resort ends in tragedy’.
I closed the paper without reading any more; I had enough to worry about without more depressing news reports. I studied the garish pictures on the wall, wondering how many people had sat there in that room staring at them and what their stories had been passing through this horrible point of rest before going on with their journeys.
‘Picture, picture on the wall, open up and tell us all.’
The landlady walked in with a pot of tea. She looked at me then towards the hallway.
‘I thought there was someone else you were chatting to.’
‘Just admiring your pictures.’
‘Oh. Well anyway here you are.’ The pot of tea slopped about and a splash leapt from the spout hitting my leg. ‘You looked like a tea drinker.’
‘I prefer coffee actually.’ I said, wiping the warm liquid off my dirty jeans. Not that you would have noticed if it had stained.
‘Well I’ve made tea now.’ She said, leaning over me and plopping the pot down onto the plastic table cover. A waft of stale sweat and cooking oil entered my nostrils and I gagged.
She wiped her hands down her housecoat. Now she was closer I could see dried egg and grease among the pattern on it. She hovered and I put the paper down and looked up at her, she had the air of a headmistress, someone who hadn’t had sex for a long time, up tight and on the warpath with anyone in sight.
‘So, what’s your business here?’ She said.
‘I used to live here.’
‘What in this house?’
‘No in the area.’ I said.
‘What road?’
‘Gallows Close.’
‘Never heard of it.’
‘Well its a few miles into town.’ I said.
‘We only came here when the new road was built.’
‘The glorious new road.’
‘I wish we’d stayed where we were.’
‘And where is that?’ I said.
‘Where I grew up.’
I went to ask exactly where that was but decided silence to be a better option and closed my mouth slowly. I wondered if the writers of The League of Gentlemen comedy drama had perhaps stayed there and got ideas from this woman.
‘Do you like your bacon well done?’ She said.
‘Yes.’
‘Good job, I can smell it burning.’ She turned without so much as a twitch of a smile and waltzed back through the long multi-coloured streamers into the kitchen. A puff of smoke appeared making her look like something out of the talent show Stars in Their Eyes. I had a funny image of her on TV… “Tonight Matthew I’m going to be Mrs. Doubtfire singing ‘You Shook Me All Night Long”.
I finished the grilled breakfast, the bacon tasted like fried cardboard and the tomato sauce had been distilled more than once with vinegar.
As I went to stand up The Sleeping Gallows came on the small radio in the corner. I felt myself cringe at it, I wasn’t entirely happy with what Carl had done with the song, it sounded too different compared to the original version I recalled. For the first time I tried to really listen to the lyrics. I didn’t remember writing those.
‘I love this song.’ The Landlady said, appearing like the Shopkeeper from Mr. Ben beside the table. She was a one-stop shop into TV and Film references from my past for some reason.
I turned and watched as she wiped the table free of sauce spots with her apron.
‘You didn’t finish your egg?’
‘No. But the rest was fine.’
‘Filled a hole?’ she said.
‘Yeah just like the little Dutch boy.’
She stared blankly at me then looked down at the newspaper. ‘Bad news. Don’t know why I buy it, I mean look at this, the lad goes out for a night on holiday and is found half-dead.’
‘Yeah it’s a pisser. You do take Euro’s don’t you?’ I said.
* * *
I packed up my bag and guitar case. I’d sold my beer soaked amp back in Spain along with what was left of some speed I’d been using to get through those awful nights playing at Miko’s; it would have been a pain in the butt to get shipped over, the amp that is, I wasn’t dumb enough to try to smuggle the other stuff. I paid my euro money, persuading Doubtfire’s evil twin that it was fine. She huffed as she held the foreign notes to the light and shook her head slowly then gave me a look like I’d just reversed over her cat, which I probably would have if I’d had a car.
With just a few Euros now left to my name I headed out across the main road towards the train station. It was closed and so was the hospital further along. I remembered the hospital well because I’d been rushed there after an accident when I was ten. I often wondered if my problems began that day, the protest that ended up with me in intensive care.
I could remember the room where I’d seen the psychiatrist afterwards. Sometimes I wished I’d visited one later in life, I sure wasn’t proud of the scrapes I’d got into and the way I’d dealt with them but I figured I was one of the good guys in the small wars I faced. The thing that really ate away at me was that I’d felt as if I was running all my life but I never really knew what from, for a while I thought it was to forget my childhood ghosts, or to find a better place, to escape the creeps and bullies who I’d scrapped with in bars and wherever I’d had to defend myself but the shadows on my shoulder were always there. How can you pin something like that down and face it if it doesn’t show itself?
I decided to squeeze through a break in the fence and head around towards the back of the derelict hospital site. Memories began to return about the happy times, my folks still together back then, Adam still alive. All before things went to hell on a hotdog stand. Despite their seemingly happy marriage my parents had split up the year I left school. They had stayed together for longer so it wouldn’t affect my exams but at the time I felt cheated to find out they had been living a charade, probably since I was about eleven, a year after the accident. My dad went to live with my Uncle eventually moving to Canada. It was painfully easy for them to move on and adapt to this new set-up and I never understood why because it did my head in completely.
Mum’s new boyfriend was ‘Slimy Stu’ as I nicknamed him from day one, he tried hard but you could tell he didn’t like me either it was just to keep sweet with mum. He did buy me a Raleigh Grifter bike that was the best thing I’d ever seen until I found out he’d got it on the sly from a bloke in the pub. I was accosted one day in the woods by a lad who said it was his bike and he even knew the security number etched under the base of the frame. I didn’t know what to say as his dad took it away from me. I ran home to tell Stu but he denied it and wouldn’t come with me to try and get it back in fact he didn’t even look up from the television, as mum wasn’t there he didn’t need to pretend he was interested.
I thought I was making it easy for everyone to get out of the picture and leave them to it. My childhood had been pretty good up until then and I wanted to preserve it as best I could. Carl, my supposed best friend had by then betrayed me more than once and I saw no reason to stay around and let my good memories get tarnished. If I ran fast and hard enough for long enough surely I could preserve them. There were also darker things growing in the secret garden in my head. After the accident there were strange occurrences that I couldn’t explain, call them ghosts, call them hallucinations, they began to scare the hell out of me more and more and the open road seemed the best place to deal with those.
So I left Gallows Close and for many years it worked. I still kept in touch through postcards and the odd phone call but it always felt like there would be no going back physically. It used to upset Mum, especially at Christmas, she’d always make the invite and I would always have an excuse, I would tell her ‘It’s triple money playing gigs over the holidays here...’ and then find myself on Christmas day in a crappy bar playing cover songs to a drunken party of strangers then going back to some shitty lodging for a burger, longing for Yorkshire puddings and Mum’s crispy roast potatoes. I just wasn’t brave enough to go back and face things, not if he was there waiting. That’s the trouble; Ghosts don’t count the days, they can sit tight eternally until they get what they want from you.
Now I had no choice, the two worlds of my past and present were clashing and I was back to referee the match, to see if my fears were genuine and find out what was left in the Close.
The plan was to get in, catch up with Mum and some of the old gang, find Carl and get some credit for the song he’d nicked and get out as fast as possible. Our best-laid plans however can often go to waste and deep down I knew this time he wouldn’t let me run so easily.
CHAPTER THREE
Nineteen Seventy-Six. I lay on the carpet where it reached the edge of the hardwood floor; the bit I pretended was a moat when playing with my Action Man boat. I was nine years old and the owner of a new portable mono tape recorder. I pressed the red and white buttons together and motioned to everyone in the room to be quiet. The Radio presenter announced the next song and a guitar riff came out of the speakers filling me with excitement and then the drums kicked in and I began tapping my feet on the carpet, waiting for the red needle to flicker in the tiny plastic window.
‘Turn that racket down.’ Said Dad, peering at me from over his newspaper.
‘I’m taping...’ I protested, watching as he lowered the newspaper further in a way that I understood to mean ‘DO IT!’
Dad was an original ‘Mod’ in the sixties and had kept his tightly cropped hair in the same style ever since. I’d spent lots of nights going to sleep with the sound of Northern Soul wafting up the stairs. For pocket money I’d polish his loafer shoes. He was meticulous like that everything had its place.
My Uncle James would babysit my brother and I when my parents went out to dances, he liked Elvis and the Beatles and had got me a plastic guitar and lent me his tapes, all delivered on his motorbike. He was a ‘Teddy Boy’ with drape suit, quaffed up hair and a shoestring tie and ‘beetle crusher’ shoes (not the aforementioned band you understand). I thought he was great. He had actually introduced my mum to my dad. Uncle James had been out racing his Triumph one evening and after a row at a roundabout had been followed home by a gang of Mods including my dad. When she heard shouting outside my mum had gone out to try and calm things down and ended up whacking my dad with a frying pan. This had caused everyone to crack up and when things calmed down he’d asked her out and that was the start of their romance.
Dad turned the newspaper page again and gave me a stern look. I’d slowly been teasing the volume knob back up.
‘I don’t care about taping it Davy, turn the bloody thing down.’
‘You’re ruining it.’ I squealed.
The worst thing that could happen was to be recording live like that with my tape machine and to have people’s voices in the background. When I went to play it back in my room it would be full of annoying things like that and as I couldn’t afford to buy the vinyl single back then it was the best I had for entertainment.
‘I shouldn’t worry Dad, he’s not taping it.’ Said my brother Adam.
I looked up as he walked past.
‘What?’
‘You haven’t switched the microphone on.’
‘Huh?’ I did a double take and noticed the red recording level needle wasn’t moving. I followed the thin lead from the tape machine along the floor to where the microphone was positioned in its plastic cradle. Sure enough I had forgotten to switch it on.
I kicked at my Action Man tank and it squeaked across the floor bumping into the sideboard.
‘Flipping heck.’ I said, ‘I didn’t mean to do that.’
‘Hey you mind your bloody language or you’ll be straight up them stairs.’ Said Dad.
‘You swear.’
‘I’m an adult.’
‘I’m ten years old.’
‘Nine.’ Said Mum.
‘Nine and a half.’ I snapped back.
'More like nine and a half months.’ Said Adam, now working on his Airfix kit at the table.
I pulled a face at him and rolled the microphone lead up.
'Why don’t you go upstairs and record yourself singing Demis Roussos, he’s your favourite isn’t he?’ He started to sing Forever and Ever.
I ran over and kicked him under the table but my bare foot struck the wooden leg hidden beneath the plastic sheet he’d laid out. I yelped and screamed.
‘You two, bloody pack it in!’ Dad shouted.
I finished rolling about and tried not to give Adam too much satisfaction at watching my pain. I fought any tears rising and looked at my foot, it was stinging like mad.
‘I’m going to see Carl.’ I said, hobbling to the door and swinging on the handle.
I knew that Carl wouldn’t be having the same issues with recording the Top Forty. He didn’t have an annoying older brother he had a younger sister and the family also had a new stereo system where the tape player was built in, avoiding unwanted interference.
‘You’re not going anywhere at this time of night and get off the door handles, how many bloody times have I told you?’ Said Dad.
‘Oh please. I want to see if he taped it.’
‘Not in your pyjamas. Let me see your foot.’ Said Mum.
I held it out to her and she inspected it.
‘Does it hurt when you laugh?’ She said.
She started to tickle me. I tried not to laugh I was still sulking.
‘They’re not pyjamas they’re drapes... like Uncle James had.’
‘They’re polyester from Brentford Nylons.’ Said Adam.
‘Drapes!’ I shouted.
They looked at me in my bright green pyjamas, legs rolled halfway up and top collar pulled up. The trim was in dark blue and in my head they did look vaguely like Teddy boy drapes
‘Who do you think you are anyway?’ Said Dad.
‘Bill ‘Ailey?’ I said, picking up my plastic guitar and hopping across the room and forgetting about my sore foot.
‘It’s Hailey, not Ailey’. Look, don’t be bloody long.’ Said Dad.
‘I can go over?’
‘Half an hour then you better be back here.’
'Thanks.’ I raced into the hall. There was a letter on the mat. To the Home Owner, 7 Gallows Close. I went back into the front room, handing it to Dad.
‘It was on the mat.’ I said, spinning round to leave.
‘Half an hour’ Mum called out.
* * *
I trotted across the Close towards Carl’s house number six, bright green pyjama trousers flapping in the wind. The night was still warm it had been the hottest year since I’d been born and we’d cooled off with washing up bottles and water pistols. Carl’s house was so near that we could speak to each other from our front windows, so could some of the other kids in the houses that made up our Gallows Close gang. Carl and I hung out with Loz from number nine and twins Peter and Ian from number two. The numbers were all out of sequence Dad said the planner must have been drunk when he laid it out.
All our parents had moved into the new suburban estate roughly the same time in the sixties, coming from the city as newly weds into the suburbs for space, cheaper houses and to start families. Behind the Close were woods that ran for a few miles in both directions. They stretched across to a village church to the North and farmland to the East, Running straight through them and also right under our Close was a railway tunnel, one of the longest in the country.
The original landowner’s family had owned the estate since Georgian times and they had refused to let the rail company build an unsightly rail line through it. The train company had no option but to build a tunnel underneath. At several points along the tunnel there were enormous brick chimneys that came up out of the ground and one of them was on the land in between our house and Carl’s.
When ancestors had been forced to sell some of the land they refused to let go of one plot right in the middle of where our Close was by one of the tunnel chimneys and so there was a huge gap between our house and Carl’s, the land had been fenced off from the Close right back to where the tunnel chimney came out of the ground at the end of the gardens as they met the woods.
We would sometimes climb up and look into the plot; it was overgrown with thistles and at the chimney end we sometimes built a lean to camp across the huge roots of a fallen tree. There were lots of rumours about why the plot remained empty some said there were probably ancestors of the landowners buried there. Loz and I reckoned it could be buried treasure and wanted to get a metal detector to look. The truth was actually staring us in the face, the developers couldn’t have made it easier if they had tried but sometimes the obvious is the one thing you miss.
Everything seems so much bigger when you are a kid and our world only consisted of a few streets, the woods and our school which we walked a mile to every day. Hardly any parents drove cars to drop kids off and we enjoyed the walk along a woodland trail past the farm which came out near the School playing fields and the no-go area into the train woods.
Our parents warned us not to go too close to the train tunnel entrance that was deep in the woods behind the farm. In the early days of the railway a group of boys had apparently tried to walk through the tunnel and got caught out by a train. Although there were workmen stations called cubbyholes one of the five had been too slow and been dragged into the wheels which made mincemeat of the poor little boy, we were told, mouths agape. My brother Adam told me that his ghost would walk up and down the tunnel trying to find his way home, wailing through the huge brick chimney vents. We could sometimes hear shrieking from the chimney on the empty plot and I believed him. I would open the window and look out, often able to still feel the wind whipping past the window, carrying the echoes of the scream under the slate skies.
I literally looked up to Carl who was a few years older and physically much bigger. He was always getting into trouble but it seemed fun most of the time. My brother Adam was three years older and would never hang out with us although I did tag along sometimes to the park before he spotted me and sent me home. If that happened I would go to his room and play his records on a hi-fi where the lid became the speakers. It had cost Dad fifteen pounds from an Ad in the local paper and Adam was over the moon with it, his pride and joy. I had to be really careful to put everything back as it was or he’d give me a dead arm or fart on my head. I hated it when he did that.
I reached Carl’s house and knocked at the door, pressing my face against the rippled glass pane in the middle of the wood, watching as a large figure loomed along the hall. I hoped that their mad dog was in the back room. I loved dogs but Bilbo was a lively red setter with a mad glint in his eye and he drooled everywhere. The latch clicked and I looked up to see Carl’s dad peering down. Bilbo was by his side, tilting his head to squeeze round and see whom it was.
‘Hello Uncle Derek, is Carl in?’
‘He’s in the front room.’ He said bending down to pick up a letter like the one I’d found at our house. He pulled Bilbo out the way and I ambled past. The dog went to sniff me and a string of drool went onto my sleeve.
‘Ergh.’
‘Oh Davy.’
‘Yes?’
‘You don’t have to call me ‘Uncle’ anymore, just Derek is fine.’
‘Dad told me it’s polite.’ I said.
‘Yes but you’re a big boy now.’
I shrugged and held my palms up. ‘I try to tell my parents that but they think I’m still a kid.’
‘Well, you’re nine.’
‘Nine and a half.’ I said proudly.
‘Exactly. So just call me Derek?’
I shrugged again. ‘Sure.’
‘Oh and Davy.’
‘Yeah?’
‘Why are you wandering around in your pyjamas?’
‘They’re Teddy Boy drapes!’ I said.
Carl’s dad had been opening the letter as we talked, nudging Bilbo out the way.
‘We got one of those.’ I said.
His smile froze as he read the contents inside.
He gave me a funny look.
‘Has your dad read it?’
I shook my head and played with the handle of the door into the front room where I could hear music.
‘Go through and see Carl, its okay.’ Said Derek, smiling at me again, this time it was a lopsided one the kind my teachers would give me sometimes before telling me I’d failed a test.
I opened the door, tripped on a wire Carl had put between some furniture and went sprawling into the sofa arm.
‘Argh, me gooleys!’ I winced as I folded up in a ball.
Carl was laughing and pointing at me, throwing a selection of toys. It shook the last thought from my mind, the instinctual thought that whatever was in those letters really wasn’t ‘okay’.
CHAPTER FOUR
Spring Nineteen Seventy-Seven. We’d never been as far as the barbed wire fence before. Sometimes we’d been close but we thought it was electrified and always stayed back. The farmer knew our parents and we’d get our eggs and potatoes there, but we weren’t there to shop for groceries, we were trespassing. We’d walked up the trail behind our houses and then east towards the farmland reaching the boundary fence that we would have to cross to get to the train woods behind. There was a small clearing the other side of the fence where we could easily be spotted but once we made it across there we could run down the bridle path, sheltered by overhanging trees. At the end was the final fence into the tunnel wood; Crazy Rick, an older kid from the neighbourhood had told Carl this route information. He had also told him stories about the ghost boy who had been killed by a train that matched what Adam had told me and if you went into the tunnel far enough you could see him.
We had our wooden guns with us as usual, our dad’s had made them for us and we invented our own noises to go with them. Most of the kids were kitted out in their army greens but not me I had my guardsman outfit on. It was always hard to hide in it but I was very proud especially as the funnel shaped Busby hat made me taller than everyone else, including Carl. It just wasn’t the best outfit to be playing ‘War’ in the woods in and trying to hide among the bushes in a red tunic didn’t help. ‘I spy Davy’ was the first thing you would hear within minutes of the game starting.
It had become even more important to reach further into the woods this year now that developers had reapplied for planning permission for a new road. That was what the letters had been about the year before, a link road straight through the middle of the woods. Initially the plan was rebuffed thanks to local support and protesting, but after a period of time they reapplied and got to the next stage. It was a week before the new protests started and Carl said that if we didn’t explore deeper into the woods soon then the road could put a stop to it forever.
We crossed through into the bridle path hunching down and crawling in places then we ran down to the woods, Loz, Carl, the Twins and me, in that order. There was a theory that you didn’t want to be first in the line or last as you could be either confronted from the front by the enemy or picked off from the rear. The order that we would assemble depended on who made the most noise and usually Carl would push and pull his way to second place, the safest position. If we argued then he’d say ‘I bagsied it.’ It was easier to let him get his own way, he was a bit bigger than the rest of us plus I didn’t want to fight him and get thrown in the stinging nettles.
‘You go first.’ Carl said, as we stood at the last fence separating the farmland from the train woods.
‘I don’t know. I need to get back for my tea soon.’ Said Ian.
‘No you don’t.’ Said Peter, always the bolder of the twins and older by three minutes.
‘Oh come on.’ I said, taking a deep breath and leaping over the fence and into the train woods, the place I was not supposed to be. A few feet the other side of the barbed wire felt exhilarating. Loz and the Twins jumped over behind me and we gingerly moved along, slowly walking across the embankment for thirty feet before we could see down towards the edge of the tunnel. To get there you would have to move out from the rugged path and climb down across limestone and thick twisted tree roots.
There was a shout from below. At first we thought it could be workmen but it was crazy Rick. We knelt down and slowly edged ourselves off the top of the path onto the slope and could see him perched on top of the tunnel entrance roof. The surface of the tunnel entrance was made of solid concrete and pointed in the middle like a giant’s shed roof, covered in patchy moss, scrawled chalk graffiti and dark stains from years of rain and the old smoky coal engines. The drop below the ledge was about fifty feet onto the rails but Rick was fearlessly dangling his legs over it and yelling like Tarzan.
‘I’m the king of the castle.’ Rick shouted.
‘You’re a crazy arse-hole.’ Peter said quietly.
‘I want to get up there.’ Said Carl, sliding down towards the tunnel roof. At either side were tall spiked security railings that ran around the back of the roof area. Bits of rock and chalk rolled down from beneath his feet as he slid towards it.
'There’s a bent railing over this side, you don’t have to climb out.’ Rick said, standing up and aiming his catapult around. He fired off a rock into the tree near us it clunked and bounced off.
Rick was nuts but we were glad he was our friend because he was fearless and a good shot with that thing if bigguns came. ‘Bigguns’ were older boys who would come into the woods to smoke or snog with their girlfriends. They might have been bigger than us but Rick’s aim was so good that he could get them running as long as he had enough stones.
We’d been caught a few times by these older gangs but they were usually just interested in nicking any sweets or peashooters and water pistols we had. Sometimes we would fight back if there were more of us and a few times we’d been asked to become ammo fetchers for gangs gathering stones as they fought another gang at the opposite side of the ridge.
Carl disappeared behind the railings and then appeared next to Rick on top of the concrete roof of the tunnel entrance waving his arms in the air like Rocky.
‘Champion. I was the first here.’ He stuck a V sign over at us as Rick drew rude things in chalk on the roof. The Twins, Loz and me started to edge towards the side of the railings but instead of going towards the gap onto the roof we peered down the drop to our left that descended to the tunnel entrance. I suggested to Loz, Peter and Ian that we beat Carl down to the entrance and they all agreed that this was a great idea. Carl revelled in doing things before anyone else whether it was a wheelie on his Chopper bike, or racing Scalectrix cars, or winning a play fight by making you submit.
‘Hey, what are you doing? Carl shouted, spotting us, ‘I’m going to be the first down there? I bagsied.’
‘Not this time.’ I laughed nervously, grabbing onto one of the tree roots that formed a natural ladder down the embankment.
‘You’re too chicken Davy you wouldn’t dare.’ He threw a lump of chalk and it hit me on the arm.
‘Cut it out Carl.’
‘You idiot.’ Peter shouted up at him. ‘Do that again and I’ll throw you down there.’
‘Oh I’m scared.’ Mocked Carl.
‘Why do we still hang around with him?’ Peter muttered as he held onto the first tree root and stepped slowly down, the bridge wall to our right side, tree-lined slopes of the embankment on the left. I slid down on my bum in between hand and foot holds with Loz and the twins behind me.
‘I don’t know about this.’ Ian whispered, stopping halfway and bouncing up and down like he needed to pee.
‘Get out of my way then.’ Said Peter, pushing him aside and moving down.
There was about twenty feet left to descend before I reached the huge entrance, I could smell a rusty metal odour and hear the sound of crackling electricity echoing around a tall grey tower beside the tracks. My heart began to thump more and more in my ten year old chest and I was taking big gulps of air but I was determined to beat Carl for once so I kept going, stopping just at the side of the tunnel entrance and looking back up at the others; they looked down at me but they were terrified, backing away.
‘Well come on then?’ I shouted, straightening my Busby hat.
Ian pointed over my head as I heard the sound of boots on loose gravel. I turned to see a flash of an orange coat, then another, and another as workmen came out of the tunnel entrance on the far side of the tracks, there was barely forty feet between us and to make things worse Carl and Rick were now lobbing stones down on them.
‘You, stay right where you are.’ One of them shouted.
I span round and ran back to the first tree root, scrambling up the slope, I could hear the men running across the hard rock gravel on the train line. I was much smaller and more nimble in my ascent than the workmen but my arms trembled with adrenaline and fear, my hands slipping on loose rocks as I felt for hand and foot holds. I could hear them getting closer as I reached the top roots; I slipped and winded myself hitting the dirty dusty floor, there was a tug at my foot, a hand gripping the heel of my shoe with a thick workman’s glove, I yelled out and kicked free but my shoe came off, the workman sliding back down ten feet and swearing at me.
I picked myself up and got to the next section of slope, running up it as fast as I could, my Busby straining on the elastic strap. I must have looked like Billy Whizz from the Beano comic with my legs spinning in the air, climbing the embankment section between the roof and the ridge at the top. When I got to the top I turned left along the thin pathway and tried to leap over the fence, falling over as my socked foot landed on a piece of limestone, I got up and ran through the woods hobbling and feeling the pain of having only one shoe on. From out of nowhere I felt someone on my heels again, there was a hand at my neck, it pinched at my shirt. I turned to see Carl’s stupid face. He had an annoying habit when in panic he would sacrifice anyone to escape from trouble and often pulled or pushed people off the path in order to get away himself.
This time it was a shove into a bush and he overtook as I bounced over it and landed in some nettles on the other side. He laughed as he ran away, Rick was behind him and he stopped, lifting me back up and throwing me over his shoulder, running with me down the trail towards the edge of the farmland singing The Wurzels in a shaky voice.
‘I’ve got a brand new combine harvester and I’ll give you the key!’
We reached the farmers fence near to one of the tunnel chimneys as it began to wail from below, a screaming out into the woodlands, the ghost boy. Sat there on the other side of the fence were the others, laughing and shaking with the after effects of the chase.
‘I thought you were going to get caught.’ Said Ian.
‘They couldn’t get up the hill fast enough, I think they turned back at the top.’
I walked over to Carl who was finding it very funny to see me hobbling.
‘One of them got my shoe you idiot.’
‘Shouldn’t be so slow.’ He sneered.
‘How am I going to get my shoe back? My Dad’s going to go nuts.’ It wouldn’t have been so bad if it hadn’t been my ‘Clark’s Commandos’. My favourites, the shop gave you a metal badge with every pair and they had cost my parents a fortune.
‘Thanks for holding me back as well.’ I said to Carl.’
‘Shouldn’t be so slow you wimp I keep telling you!’ He threw a fistful of soil at me and I jumped out the way, circling around and I threw myself towards him trying to get a shot with my fist. Carl rolled out the way and slapped me on the head, I grabbed him and managed to get the better of him briefly with a punch on the nose before Peter lifted me off and separated us.
‘You’re pathetic Carl.’ Peter said as I flailed around. ‘I don’t know why we hang around with you anymore.’
Carl stood up wiping at the blood that was dripping down his face and grinning. ‘Because I’m the coolest kid you know, you bunch of losers.’ He offered me his hand. ‘I was only messing about. Come on, who’s coming back then to get Davy’s shoe?’
‘What, to the tunnel?’ Said Loz.
‘Yeah.’
‘No way, that’s it for now, we’ve got a week left of the holidays to do it and we really do have to be back for tea.’ Said Ian.
‘You should have been in the girl guides Ian, are you having lashings of ginger beer too?’
I looked at my filthy foot and wondered what I was going to say to my parents. I needn’t have worried too much as they had far bigger matters to contend with.
CHAPTER FIVE
Back in the present I wandered around the derelict hospital lost in my thoughts, the awful food from the Bed and Breakfast still grumbling in my stomach. Just like my digestion I had uncomfortable feelings thinking about the accident and aftermath that had followed soon after we’d discovered the train tunnel, glad to survive, lucky, they told me, to be alive but I couldn’t help wondering if that was the turning point, when my life began to change for the worse. Up until then I had been a happy kid with nothing more to worry about than the new Action Man figure or staying out on my bike as long as I could before I got called in for tea. The accident changed all that.
When I snapped back out of my daydream an hour had passed, I couldn’t keep putting it off and I needed to head to the Close so began walking towards the small town along the new road toward the home where I had once belonged. There was a tight feeling in the air, calm before a storm that I had missed when I was in hotter climates; I never knew people could long for a miserable wet day. The British seasons were a national obsession and like roast dinners on Sundays it was something I had grown melancholic about when they weren’t there.
I had been walking for about fifteen minutes along the new road when it began raining quite heavily. I felt tired and strayed from the path into the road just as a passing car skidded to a halt and sounded its horn. I turned to flick my fingers but stopped when I saw an old Gentleman driving a classic car, something from the thirties, God knows how he’d kept it on the road it looked magnificent. The chap inside looked at me through the sloshing windscreen wipers but he didn’t shake his head or shout, he just stared at me with his pipe hanging down from his mouth and mopped his forehead with a large handkerchief. Walking towards the vehicle I watched the steam from the bonnet rising into the rain, creating a smoky haze around it. I could hear the radio now from inside, a big band tune blaring. I stood and stared at the driver.