(22nd August 1988)
Monday morning and Huyton felt good. Comparatively speaking, that was. His bed had been re-adjusted again and his limbs had life in them. He’d also been relieved of his drip and . . . much more uncomfortably . . . his catheter.
‘Here we go,’ his favourite nurse had said, ‘don’t get all excited.’
‘I won’t,’ he’d replied, gritting his teeth as she pulled and pulled. ‘Not on this occasion. And you just remember who’s buying in The Old White Bear.’
Apart from being hooked up to the beeping machine, Huyton felt free. Well, fucked and under the weather, but free enough. And ten times tougher than most regular twats, that was for sure.
Being considerate, he waited until Mandy (that favourite nurse of his) finished her shift. Then, in a side ward and more or less immune from interruptions, he got out of bed unaided. Woozy; he was definitely woozy, but not likely to flake out.
He hoped.
Huyton’s clothes were nearby, in an unlocked locker. He quickly dressed then, not so quickly, put on and fastened his trabs. Then, blocking out all the slashes and bloodstains, he checked through his personal effects. Dwyer’s wallet was gone but his own was where it should be. That was the good news. The bad news was that he was down to forty bar. And there was no sign of either his hammer or razor.
‘Fuck it,’ he murmured. ‘God will provide.’
He looked along the internal corridor and saw two scuffers at the nurses’ station. From that angle he couldn’t see who they were talking to but, even out of uniform, he knew what they were. And he knew what they were after, come to that. They were after him.
There was a small ward across from him . . . a “bay” the nurses called it. He hurried between the beds and out of the open, aluminium-framed glass door.
Thank fuck summer’s here at last, he thought, taking in his bearings.
There wasn’t a lot to take in. He was standing on a square of lawn, mostly-glass walls on all four sides. Logic told him that, seeing as two sides belonged to his ward, the other two must belong to another, from which he could decamp. And there was another open door right there, barely twenty yards away . . .
*****
Pat’s feelings for DeeDee were sincere, but she spent most of the year far away from boring old Bingley, and they were only human. They had long ago agreed that it wasn’t possible for them both to exist in bubbles. So, while other relationships weren’t exactly encouraged, they were expected and allowed to take place.
‘Don’t fall in love,’ Dee had told him during early negotiations. ‘And make sure you don’t catch any nasty diseases. Otherwise have fun but be discreet.’
‘I’m only capable of falling in love once,’ he’d replied, ‘and that’s already happened.’
‘Yeah,’ she said, laughing, ‘you and your blinking rugby team!’
Not falling in love had been easy so Pat had taken lots of opportunities to have fun. And, as luck would have it, one of those opportunities had been with a sister from Airedale Hospital.
‘You’ll get me sacked,’ she said, her voice even sexier over the telephone than it was in bed. ‘And why do you want to know, anyway?’
‘I told you before,’ he said patiently, ‘a mate of mine has been wrongly accused. He’s pulling his hair out over it. And he hasn’t got a lot to start with.’
Sister Elizabeth sighed. ‘Are you sure this mate has been wrongly accused?’
‘Of course I am. He was with me when it happened, and we were nowhere near.’
‘Okay,’ she said, sighing again. ‘I asked around and your victim is doing well. You can tell your mate he’ll be making a statement some time later today. That’ll get him off the hook if he didn’t do it, won’t it? Although why the police won’t trust you as an alibi . . .’
Pat thanked her and, after a bit of sweet-talking, managed to hang up without making a date. He liked Elizabeth but DeeDee was in town. He only allowed himself fun when she was hundreds of miles away.
*****
Huyton found it surprisingly easy to get out of the ozzie. Okay, it wasn’t a prison or borstal, but his clothes were tattered and covered in gore. Surely someone should have stopped him, or at least asked if he’d just survived a plane crash.
There again, he wasn’t the sort of guy people wanted to question. Not unless they were doing so in the line of duty.
The hardest part of his escape was actually the last few hundred yards to the main road. At a first glance, Airedale General was situated at the bottom of a very wide valley. The sides of that valley were, however, steep and some bell-end had put the road halfway up a mountain.
Aware he was exaggerating inside his own head, Huyton started up the world’s longest flight of steps. They were encased with concrete and looked like they belonged on the underground. And his leg didn’t work the way it should. Not that he’d been stabbed in the leg. He had bandages and plasters everywhere apart from his dolly pegs.
Cursing foully under his breath, he finally made it to the bus stop. Within five minutes a single-decker with strange markings pulled up.
Pendle, he thought. Where the fuck’s that?
He vaguely remembered drinking Pendle Witch Brew in Manchester and supposed the bus came from the same place as the beer. What it was doing there, in West Yorkshire, threw him entirely.
First things first, though. The driver didn’t like the look of his tenner. In fact he flatly refused it in an accent that sounded, to say the least, mill town Lancashire. Huyton dug deep in his pocket and came up with a fistful of coins.
‘Take it all,’ he said, ‘change’ll do you good.’
*****
The bus dumped Huyton in the centre of Keighley. Looking around he saw stops for places he’d heard of but couldn’t point out on a map: Burnley; Skipton; Halifax; Bradford; Leeds . . . The town was well-served; obviously it was somewhere lots of folk wanted to get away from.
For a couple of minutes he toyed with the idea of Leeds. Leeds was a big place, wasn’t it; as big as the Pool, if he remembered rightly . . . and as big as fucking Manchester, too.
Trouble was, he was still stuck with a twenty and two tenners. That twat from Pendle had snaffled most of his shrapnel. And Leeds bus drivers probably weren’t likely to be any more tolerant.
Two minutes was all it took to come to a decision. That cunt Dwyer owed him. Fuck twenty grand; it had just gone up to fifty. And fuck Leeds. Bingley was no distance away. He’d top up the coffers and get himself tooled, then go right a few wrongs.
Fifty grand and a hole in the head, he promised himself. I’ll let him beg then bang him anyway.
Ignoring options such as Oakworth and Haworth, Huyton decided a little stroll was in order. He’d set off from the same starting point before and had learnt from his mistakes. Down to Lawkholme was out of the question. So too was whatever direction it was towards Charlie’s scrapyard. Uphill to that other big Asian area was the way to go. No question about it.
*****
Pat had just got back from the chippy when Elizabeth rang again. He put his purchases in the oven to keep warm before listening to what she had to say. That time he didn’t get away without fixing a date. In truth he was too surprised to deflect her. ‘Friday night in The Royal Shepherd,’ he said, thinking that Skipton was well enough off DeeDee’s beaten track.
‘I’ll be there at eight, straight from work,’ Elizabeth assured him. ‘And whatever you do, don’t forget to bring a toothbrush.’
‘Ah,’ Sean said as he unlocked the room and went in, ‘dinner is served. What delights do I have to look forward to today? No, don’t tell me. Let me guess. Fish, chips and curry sauce. I’m right, aren’t I?’
‘The curry sauce had run out,’ said Pat. ‘You’ll have to make do with tomato or brown.’
Sean sighed as he opened the newspaper wrapping. It was an old T&A and he didn’t notice the headline:
TWO DEAD, TWO CRITICAL
‘I got you a cake as well,’ Pat said. ‘Don’t say I’m not looking after you.’ Then, as Sean applied generous amounts of salt and vinegar: ‘I don’t know if our problem’s solved or not.’
Sean was slapping the bottom of the ketchup bottle, trying to get more onto his chips. ‘What are you on about?’
‘Your mate’s done one from Airedale. Apparently the police went to interview him but he’d already disappeared.’
‘How do you know?’
‘A confidential source told me.’ Pat tapped the side of his nose.
‘A confidential source!’ Sean snorted. ‘Does this source wear a uniform and benders, by any chance?’ Then, not waiting for a reply that wasn’t going to come, ‘If he hasn’t been interviewed I’m home free. So get these frigging chains off me.’
‘What if he’s on his way here?’
‘What?’
‘What if Huyton’s taking the law into his own hands? He looks like the sort who would.’
‘Naw,’ went Sean. ‘He wouldn’t dare.’ Then, after a pause, ‘Would he?’
*****
Huyton reckoned it was a bit early in the day for the local dealers. Or maybe they’d retired after his previous visit. Casting around he could see plenty of Asians, but none of the type he wanted to see. The streets were full of law-abiding citizens. Young mothers with kids; lads playing twenty-a-side cricket with an old tennis ball; girls playing some sort of hopscotch . . .
Then he saw a brand-new BMW and grinned. Walking up Highfield Lane he’d seen a lot of cars parked outside houses, precious few of them new. That BMW was probably worth all of them put together. He seriously doubted its owner worked in a corner shop.
The fancy motor was parked a hundred yards farther up the hill, on the same side of the road as some football and rugby pitches. Huyton approached it as casually as a man of his build could, humming innocently. The driver had his window down and was sipping from a can of Coca Cola as he read his newspaper.
‘Hello, hello, hello,’ said Huyton, ‘so you’re the man with the coke, are you?’
The driver looked at him calmly. He didn’t seem at all perturbed. ‘You shouldn’t have come back,’ he said.
Huyton frowned. He couldn’t remember this guy from the other day. And why wasn’t he scared? Surely the bandages and ragged clothes added to his threatening appearance. Surely they didn’t make him look like a wimp.
‘Get out of the car, Abdul,’ he growled.
‘I am Nasir, not Abdul.’
‘Fair enough, Nasir, get out of the car.’
The guy shook his head. For a moment it seemed he was going to decline. Then he reached for the handle and opened the door. ‘Really,’ he said, ‘you shouldn’t have come back. Everyone in the area’s looking out for you. The wrong sort of people are offering a reward.’
‘Fuck the wrong sort of people, kidda, get your arse out of the car.’
Nasir was tall but thin, and smartly turned out. Huyton felt underdressed in comparison. ‘I’m badly in need of money,’ he began, ‘and a shooter. And you are going to get me both.’
Calm as ever, Nasir smiled. ‘The shooter’s right behind you.’
Huyton tried to spin on his heel but he was too slow. He dimly realized he’d been snuck up on but, before he could do anything about it, something exploded against his right ear and he knew no more.