CHAPTER 3
According to Cass, his problem started on one of those dull wet and windy days that seem to characterise everything about the area around Park Road.
Number 43, Shipley Street with its weed-strewn cobbles and council-owned trash bins had been Cass’s home for as long as he could remember. However, on that dull, wet, and windy Saturday afternoon two years ago—when he’d crept downstairs, opened the front door, and wandered away—it had changed his life forever.
When he turned the corner onto Brick Street, the only movement had been the dirty brown gutter water sweeping urban debris downstream. Plastic bags, cigarette ends, dead leaves, and other detritus from the maze of inner-city streets of Victorian brick terraces floated slowly past to gather in soggy piles at the first blocked drain. On Park Road, an empty bus splashed by. Strip lights shone inside the Cash for Clothes shop and behind the steamy front window of Osman’s Launderette. The dismal streets around Park Road were always like that.
If he’d found me, Winston, Walid, Mo, or Shaifiq sheltering like wet pigeons in the doorway of Raja’s Store or Hussein’s Money Exchange, it was unlikely things would have turned out differently. Such was his mood that if we’d said, “Where’re you going, Cass?” he’d probably have called back that he was heading down to Mootalah’s. That wouldn’t have been true because Cass hadn’t known where he was going. He’d just wanted to get away from everything and everybody. He’d had enough of the stifling square mile of familiarity locally known as Park Road with its mosque, backstreets of broken pavements, boarded up properties and shabby corner shops like Mootalah’s that smelled of wet cardboard, overripe fruit, and wilting vegetables.
Even if he’d passed Bushra and Javeria hiding beneath an umbrella in their tight jeans and make-up who always smiled, giggled, and held onto each other when they saw him, he might have said something different.
“Hi, Cass. Going somewhere nice?”
“Pushing weights down at the centre.”
That would have been a joke because Cass had only ever looked through the plate glass window at the city’s sports centre and watched those with enough money to afford the membership fee running, sweating, and going nowhere in their Lycra.
In his heart, Cass knew it would have been better to admit he didn’t know what he was doing or where he was going, but honesty demanded self-confidence and, at age seventeen, Cass’s confidence was in short supply. Unless, of course, he’d seen Kevin. Cass and Kevin had been best mates since they were kids.
If he’d passed Bashir’s Asian Store and Kevin had happened to be outside stacking boxes of oranges or cucumbers for pocket money, things might have turned out differently. “Hey! What’s happening, Cass? Why not call me?”
If he’d met Kevin, it’s likely Cass would never have stopped outside the shabby front window of Faisal World Travel on Park Road. But they hadn’t met, and so Cass had walked on and stopped, distracted by coloured stickers advertising cheap flights to Dublin, Paris, and Amsterdam. Not only that but he’d gone inside and met the owner Mr. Khan. It was Mr. Khan who’d then sold him a cheap air ticket to Turkey, which he bought in cash with his savings from his part-time jobs.
At the last minute, Mr. Khan had given him a parcel to give to his brother in Istanbul. The only other person who knew about the parcel was Kevin because he was the one who’d waved Cass off on the bus to the airport.