Boy A Page 22

  Suddenly it seems to Jack that the light is telling him something totally different. It is saying that this isn’t the day to die. Not in here, not like this, not with the pack all around him. Not without a struggle. He pulls his duvet off, almost robotically, the action is so pronounced, so deliberate. What he has to do is clear.

  The Nike Air Escape trainers that Terry bought him, that he has kept meticulously white, are still sat side by side at his wardrobe. He puts them on, not tucking the laces in, like he usually wears them, but pulled taut and tied tight. Their name reinforces the message of the beam of light, confirms his decision.

  But first he has to visit the toilet. He kneels down on the rug before it, as if in prayer. Here, too, the window faces east, and it bathes him in the first forgiving rays of the sun. With his fingers he pushes at the back of his throat, until he feels a retch, which brings forth his breakfast of tablets and alcohol. The white pills bob in the Beaujolais waves of the bowl. Thankfully they still look pristine, not even dissolved at the edges. Taking no chances, he makes himself vomit again and again. Until it is the very lining of his stomach he is heaving. He already feels strangely cleansed by being so totally empty. But he washes his hands and face at the sink and cleans his teeth to be more so. Jack returns to the bedroom, to put on his cap – though some of the press have seen it, it may disguise him against the public. Then, with one last look around, he steps out into the bright white beam, as if into a teleporter.

  The skylight is stiff to open; the gap it leaves barely large enough for him to fit through. It would be easier with a chair. But somehow there is a solemnity to this moment of exit, which would be spoiled if he went to get one now. With a heave, and legs kicking into nothingness, he gets his head and shoulders out on to the roof. The air is fresh. It smells of victory, not the fear he’s leaving in the house. He pulls his whole body out on to the sloping roof. Slowly. Careful not to roll. He is surprised to find that the tiles are not slate, like he imagined, but a kind of coarse plasticky stuff, warm to lie on. Prone like this he can see he is quite invisible to anyone watching the house from below, even if there are any in the back alley. He closes the skylight and begins to move cautiously across the rooftop. Sliding his knees, in the commando crawl that he has seen so many times on TV. Though without a gun to hold, his hands can grip the tiles too. He’s still scared, but it’s channelled now. He uses it to fuel his progress. There is even a momentary flash of joy as he reaches the barely discernible boundary with the neighbouring house. Thank God for terraces.

  It takes the best part of an hour for Jack to make his way up the street like this. The further he gets from number ten, the higher he allows himself to rise. By the end of the road he is moving in a crouched walk, right hand raised to clasp the peak of the roof as he goes. He knows where he is getting down. He’s seen it from afar. The second to last house has a small extension, or a brick shed, jutting out from it. Something he could drop on to, and from there to the ground.

  It is easier in the imagination; reality shows further to fall. But the house has sturdy iron guttering, which allows Jack to hang by his fingertips before the drop. He lands with a thud, and rolls on to his back to lose the impact, like a parachutist. He’s uninjured, scrambles quickly to the end of the flat roof, in case the noise draws the owners out. The gate at the end of the short yard is already ajar. He has his eye on it as he takes the shorter second drop, and maybe this is what makes him twist on the impact. What creates the snap and the surge of hurt in his left knee. Takes it from under him.

  He doesn’t even allow himself to test the leg as he gets up. The pain tells him it isn’t all right, but that’s not the point. It has to be all right enough to walk on, and adrenalin ensures it is. Jack limps out of the gate and then out of the alley. On to the road the paper shop is on, where he was headed first of all.

  It’s not safe here though. It’s too open. He feels very vulnerable, less than a street away from where the hordes are surrounding his home. They might even be aware that he’s gone by now, if the police have turned up for him. At the end of this road is one of the main arterial routes. A direction he’s taken countless times in the comfort of a white van. If he can make it down there, he might be able to hitch right out of the city. He heads towards it, hat pulled down, left knee excruciating. It’s almost the peak of rush hour now. Occasionally people push past as they walk much faster up the pavement, hurrying to another inconsequential day at work. There are too many faces around, too many watching eyes, staring at the guy who plods so obviously in pain. The end of the street is an impossibly long way off under such scrutiny, and hitchhiking suddenly seems far too risky a route. Who’s going to pick him up? Probably the police. He wouldn’t give himself a lift like this: injured, dishevelled, terrified.

  When he sees a train rumbling across a grey bridge over the road, Jack’s plan changes immediately. He’s momentarily alone under the passover’s shadow, as he reaches it. And he climbs as fast as he can up the concrete bank towards the track. His leg screams with the strain of the steep ascent, forcing him to rest at the top, concealed by the concrete parapet. He’s shaking with the pain and the fear and the cold. He wishes he’d worn a coat, as well as his thin work fleece. Who knows where he’s going to sleep tonight?

  The ground Jack’s sitting on is a narrow dirt trail, pressed flat by kid feet. Probably a short-cut to the back of the houses which run alongside the train-tracks. His knee has ballooned. He can feel its swollen shape through his trousers. But worried that he’ll be discovered here, he decides to move on.

  He follows the rails away from the city centre. He hadn’t counted on how much harder it would be to walk on this uneven surface. The stones give way under his trainers, and with agonizing frequency his knee gives way too. When he tries to walk further from the tracks, in the long grass of the banks, he finds it difficult to judge where to put his feet. Slowing his progress and shaking his confidence. He ends up winding his way, like a wounded snake, between the verge and the grey stones. Where do they get them from, so many identical stones?

  When the trains rage past he has to stand well away, for fear that he’ll fall under them. But the rush to move quickly when he sees them makes a fall all the more likely. A couple of times he only just steadies himself on shifting shale as the front of an Intercity reaches him. But this threat of death is better than simply giving in and dying. The harder it gets, the more important it is to survive.

  His leg has begun to numb a bit by the time he reaches a station. Though he can’t see how the walk can have helped it. A limping stagger that has taken close enough to two hours, including the rests when his knee became unbearable. Maybe his brain has just stopped letting as much pain through.

  A gap in the fence allows him into the station car park unobserved. So he approaches the building at the normal entrance, by some steps. In spite of everything he feels some satisfaction, as he pulls himself up the blood-red, metal handrail. He’s pretty sure he’s made it this far unspotted. If he can get away he’ll come up with something. Maybe out of the country, abroad, where no one will ever recognize him. They’re always going on about the numbers of illegal immigrants getting in to Britain. It must be a piece of piss to get out.

  First things first. Just get out of Manchester. He stares around the small station building for a map or a timetable, something to tell him where he can flee to from here. There is a news-stand to one side, racks of tabloids facing out in rows. With heart-stopping horror he sees that one, the Sun, carries the headline: ‘Milton killer in violent attack’, and then: ‘Bruiser’, above an almost full-page photo of him. Not just any photo. The one taken by the Evening News. They’ve cut it off, so that instead of standing shoulder to shoulder with Chris, he’s on his own. Alone, and wearing exactly the same clothes as he is now. It could have been taken outside the station.

  Jack looks around him, expecting to see a police snatch squad or a baying mob. But no one seems to have noticed, no one is even looking at
him. The danger gives him an explosion of energy. He rips off the DV cap and hobbles, faster than his knee could have stood a second before, towards the matchstick man that marks the toilet.

  Inside a scrawled stall, Jack sets about changing his appearance. The cap he stuffs into the cistern, once he’s prised its lid off. But deciding this might be found, he takes it out again. With the cut-throat from his pocket, he cuts it into strips thin enough to be confident they’ll flush. He pulls off the fleece and T-shirt, and hangs them from the lock. And with toilet paper he tries to buff a shine onto the steel roll-holder. He gets it good enough to see his reflection, though it appears stretched and ghoulish, the sickening spirit of a muppet. With the razor, he starts to strip away his hair. He washes the blade after every long stroke, in the still-open cistern. Which burbles away to itself like a baby, unaware of the anguish around it. Halfway through the shaving process, Jack realizes he’s probably marking himself more by doing it. The skin of his scalp is as white and crinkled as an arse in the bath, but with angry red blotches where he’s cut too close. Only he’s gone too far to stop. He has to go forward. So many clumps of blond swim about in the cistern by the end that he can’t get the razor clean. He has to scoop out some of the wet chunks of hair, and put them in the bowl with the sliced-up hat.

  His top is lined in blue, so he cuts off the washing instructions and size label and puts it on inside out, to change the colour and hide the company logo. With more toilet roll, he cleans up the most obvious bits of scattered hair, and watches to make sure everything flushes away. For a moment it looks like the bowl is going to flood. But the blockage bursts, and hat, hair, labels and paper are sucked into the sewers. He pockets the cut-throat in his trousers, closer to hand in case he needs it.

  Examining himself in the mirror by the wash-basins, which are crusted with ancient soap smears, Jack decides that the fleece looks all right, not obviously on wrong way round. His head isn’t too bad either. Maybe it was a good idea to shave it. He’s managed without any major cuts, even at the back, and it’s certainly altered his appearance. He looks like a Romanian Aids orphan: sickly, sad and doomed.

  He gets on the first train that’s heading out of the city. Not knowing where it’s going, not really caring, so long as it is far away. He finds a seat at the end of a carriage, so nobody can sit opposite him. No one on board so far can even see his face. With the weight off his knee, and his leg extended, the pain almost subsides. Exhaustion hits him like a PP-9. He hopes it’s not the tablets acting as well. He needs to have his wits about him.

  It’s a struggle to hold down the panic when the ticket collector comes round. The guy is a kindly-looking, middle-aged West Indian, but Jack has a deeply drilled fear of uniforms. This one is Nazi grey, and a ticket machine hangs Uzi-like from a polished leather shoulder strap. Jack tries to control his breathing, fights the urge to bolt, as the inspector moves down the carriage towards him. But there’s nowhere to run to on the train, even if he could run. He has to brazen it out and buy a ticket. Shit, he doesn’t even know where the train’s going. He strains to hear a destination from another passenger. They’ve all paid at the station, just hand over slips of card. Which are clipped with a click that goes right through Jack.

  ‘Ticket?’ the collector says.

  ‘Haven’t got one,’ Jack says, keeping his voice monotone. ‘Had to run for the train.’ His knee twinges at the very idea.

  ‘Where you going, son?’

  ‘All the way.’ He forces a smile. It must look false; his face feels contorted.

  The inspector seems not to notice. ‘Right you are,’ he chuckles. ‘All the way. Are you coming all the way back as well?’

  ‘Sorry?’ Has he been rumbled after all?

  ‘Single or return?’ The man’s pink-nailed hand hovers over the buttons on his machine.

  Jack wants to say return. Single is suspicious, surely, but suddenly the question of payment hits him. He has no idea how much this costs. He’s only been on a train once before. On a trip from the home with Terry. The thought of Terry nearly breaks him. He feels a gulp, a gasp for air shuddering through his chest. ‘Single,’ he says, quickly. While he still can.

  The machine makes an electronic clatter, the rapid crunch of tiny printing wheels, ejects a cream and orange credit-card-shaped sheet. ‘Ten pound thirty,’ the guard says.

  For a moment Jack believes he’s lost his wallet somewhere on the trail. But tracks it down by panicky patting of the numerous pockets of his trousers. He struggles to get it from his second zippered hip, fumbles it out on to his lap. Then knocks it to the floor like a spider, when he sees the branded letters of his name, burned script like a Western ‘Wanted’ poster.

  ‘Are you all right, son?’ asks the inspector, his eyebrows wrinkled in concern.

  ‘Fine, sorry, I’m fine.’ Jack opens the wallet, with his hand over the name on it. To his relief, he has a twenty inside. He knows the police could track his switch card.

  The man gives him the change and ticket, watches while he slots them into the wallet, and says: ‘You look after yourself now.’ And he nods to emphasize the importance of his advice.

  Jack watches him through the window into the next carriage. He doesn’t talk into a radio or phone, just carries on collecting tickets. It looks like he’s got away with it; he’s unrecognized.

  A fat man in a tweed jacket gets on at the next stop, still in the city outskirts. He sits down across the aisle from Jack; who slumps his head as if asleep, so the man can only see the top of his shaven scalp. Traces of the tablets must be still swimming through Jack’s bloodstream, because, before he’s even aware he’s drifting, the sleep is no longer an act.

  He wakes with a shake, dispelling dreams of a vanished lady. It’s not him that’s shaking though, or rather it is, but someone else is doing it. He comes round to pain, and a brown mouth blocking his vision. For a moment he’s back inside, in Feltham, the tooth-spitting beating of his first day. He often wondered whether it might have been better if it ended then. But this mouth is smiling, laughing to itself.

  ‘Come on, son,’ it says. ‘You’re here now. “All the way”, end of the line.’

  Jack pulls himself upright on the seat.

  ‘I thought you were dead for a second there,’ the ticket collector says. ‘Never seen such a deep sleeper.”

  Jack thanks the man, and waves a half wave as he walks off. There’s no one else in the carriage, probably not on the whole train. His knee is immovable. It’s stiffened completely, like it’s splinted itself. It’s less agonizing than before, when he puts weight on it. Still not what you’d call fun. But there isn’t another option.

  The carriage doors are open, the platform empty. The tracks stop abruptly at wood buffers. This is indeed the end of the line. Beyond them, British Rail-blue letters on a white sign read ‘Blackpool’.

  Things make sense then. Jack can see what’s meant to be. And he is finally beside the seaside. Beside the sea.

  The station empties on to a road. It’s the sort of road that leads inevitably somewhere. So that, even if you have a leg that shrieks with every stride, you can’t help but hurry down it. It’s the sort of road that smells of salt and sand, and salted chips and sandwiches. And also cooking fat, cheap fags, candy floss. It’s the sort of road that only seems to run one way, even though there are two sides for the traffic. Everything heads down on roads like these. Everything must end at the sea.

  Jack is emptied out on to a promenade, and across from it is a pier. ‘North Pier’, a street sign says. And he takes this as another achievement: some bit of northerliness finally reached. The air fills his lungs in a way that makes it seem like all the breaths he’s taken before were imitations. This is what air should be like. This is what someone had in mind when they first made it.

  To his left Jack can see the Blackpool Tower. No, not can; he has to see it. It demands it. Huge, dark-girdered, unashamedly phallic. Love me or fuck off, it says. Like all of Blackpool see
ms to. Fortune tellers, fish and chips, kiss me quicks. But Jack is drawn to the pier. This is what has brought him here.

  He walks past an arcade, which advertizes free toilets, and rattles out the sound of tumbling coins so loudly he’s sure it must be on speakers. Or is it that everything is magnified in Blackpool? The pier seems to go on for miles. There is even a tram to take you to the end. But, despite his protesting leg, Jack wants to walk along it.

  He passes a Punch and Judy stand, abandoned, out of season. He’s never seen the show, but he knows the plot: deformity, domestic violence, infanticide. Kids’ stuff.

  The sea, through the gaps in the planks, jostles itself about. It’s calling to Jack, knocking him up, asking him out to play. His mum would tell it he’s not in, say it’s too rough. But she’s not here. There’s nobody home but him. And it’s true what they say about sea air being good for you. Jack can feel his knee healing with every step. He can feel his soul healing too, his spirit lifting. This isn’t about the choice. This is about abdicating choice altogether. Leaving it to the sea to decide. Sometimes you don’t want to take any decisions at all. None, nada, nil, nothing, zip, zilch, zero. He realizes it’s not the gaps. The gaps are good. The contents cause the problems. It’s the filling that makes the holes. For once he wants to be totally unfilled. As empty as the wire Jesus the day they buried his mother. A crucifix which had seemed cruel at the time, but which he now sees was only honest.

  There are boats moored to buoys, a way out from the end of the pier. Little white motor launches. He’s sure they’ll have blankets on board, and probably food. And Jack thinks that if he swims, then he’ll swim out to one of them. He knows how to hot-wire. They must be easy enough to drive. It’s not like you can crash them; you’ve got the whole of the ocean to learn in, the whole of the world to reach. He could head round the coast, head for France, across la mer. Head for who knows where. It doesn’t matter, they’ll never catch him if he’s got a boat.