Fall From Grace (29 page)

‘Do you think it’s funny? You’ve destroyed everybody’s hard work and you think that’s funny? You’re sick, pal, sick and twisted in the head.’

Tyrone didn’t quite see the funny side of that and moved up close and threatening to Paul, the rest of his mates forming closely behind him. At this point Paul wondered if he should’ve challenged them. They could pull a knife on him or anything. But he wasn’t going to back off. They weren’t going to intimidate him especially this streak of shit who was acting like the big, hard man.

‘Watch your mouth, social man,’ Tyrone threatened, ‘it could get you in a lot of trouble.’

‘You don’t deserve it,’ said Paul. ‘You don’t deserve for people like Colleen Price to try and get you to believe in a future. There’s people all over the world going out onto the streets to demand their freedom and liberty. And what do you do? Sit around like slobs all day waiting for the next handout, throwing away all the rights and responsibilities that people throughout history have fought to get for you. You’re not worth it. You’re not worth anybody’s sacrifice.’

Paul turned and walked into the school, not looking behind him and noting the silence that followed him.

Once inside he stood with Colleen in the computer science room, or what was left of it, it made him so bloody angry. Colleen had fought tooth and nail for the funding to buy the computers and get them set up and now some… some little shit had come along and smashed all of her good work away. She’d been really making a difference with these kids. She’d been determined to get for them the same facilities that schools in more advantaged suburbs benefited from and she was succeeding. Or she had been.

‘It beats me why some people choose to be so destructive,’ said Colleen, her heart breaking with all she could see around her.

‘It doesn’t beat me,’ said Paul. ‘Whoever did this doesn’t want this community to move on. They want it to stay in the pits because they’re too idle to take advantage of what people like you are trying to do for them.’

‘But it’s just that it’s happened at all! Somebody has come along and laid into everything I’ve done to help the kids round here. It’s not fair!’

‘I know, love, I know,’ said Paul, holding her tight. ‘But one way or another we’ll sort it.’

They were shaken out of their embrace by the sound of a single gunshot. Their first instinct was to get down but they managed to make the way, crawling along the floor, to one of the smashed in windows. What they saw was Tyrone lying dead on the ground, with blood pouring out of a wound in his head. Some of the assembled crowd were looking down at him whilst the rest were looking in the direction of a man who was running down the street and heading further into the estate.

*

Sara and Joe went down to Gatley Hall only to be told that Colin Bradley had gone off duty two days previously and that although he was due back today after his days off, he hadn’t shown up for work. This was unusual by all accounts. He hadn’t missed a day since starting at the Hall almost twenty years ago.

‘Oh go ahead, sir. In fact, feel free. You must be so out of practice after leaving your storm trooping and torturing days behind? In fact, what did it feel like to cure people of their pain, rather than being the one who was causing it? That must’ve been quite some transition.’

‘I have given decades of service to this country as a medical professional, young lady.’

‘Then I appeal to that… that side of the man you are. Help me to save those girls, Mr. Naumann. Help me to do the decent thing for once in your life.’

‘Go to hell.’

‘Oh I don’t think I’ll be going there, sir,’ Sara snarled, ‘but I think you might.’

After their encounter with Naumann they drove to the terraced cottage in Bollington, up in the hills east of Macclesfield, where Colin Bradley lived.

‘I always feel dirty after I’ve been in that Nazi’s company,’ said Sara.

‘I know what you mean,’ said Joe, ‘both him and her Ladyship are quite something.’

‘He really believes he’s done no wrong,’ said Sara. ‘That’s the really hideous thing about it. There’s nothing to link him with the relationship between Glenn Barber and her Ladyship but I bloody wish there was. Anyway, let’s see what Bradley is up to.’

There was no reply when they knocked on the door and when Sara peered through the window there was no sign of life. Then one of the neighbours emerged from next door, a short, plump woman in a knitted cardigan and a tweed skirt. Her hair was going grey and was in no discernable style, just short and wavy.

‘Well they left here in a taxi yesterday morning. Colin and Monica and the two boys. You should’ve seen the taxi. I thought its suspension was going to go with all the stuff they were taking with them. Come to think of it, it did look like they were going on more than just a holiday and even that surprised me because I thought they were supposed to be broke.’

‘Well all they said was that they were on their way to catch a flight at Manchester Airport,’ said Julia Treadwell. ‘There wasn’t time for them to tell me where to before they sped off.’

When they got back to the station Sara ordered a check on the passenger lists of all flights departing Manchester Airport yesterday. Superintendent Hargreaves then asked her to come to his office.

‘Close the door, Sara,’ said Hargreaves, ‘and then you’d better take a seat.’

‘I don’t like the sound of that, sir,’ said Sara. ‘Have you got some bad news for me?’

‘You could say that,’ said Hargreaves who was sat behind his desk. ‘You’re to drop all charges and any pending investigations involving Lady Eleanor Harding.’

‘And this is from the Home Office?’ she demanded rather sharply. The look on Hargreaves face said it all. ‘Sorry, sir. It’s just a bit of a shock’

Sara paced to the window and rubbed the back of her neck. All that work. All that pushing to get a confession out of both Harding and Naumann was now all going to be pissed down the drain because those who sit at the top table of the British establishment always look after their own. It made her sick. She’d never been a revolutionary but she was wondering about it now.

‘All is not lost though, Sara’

Sara turned back to him. ‘How do you mean, sir?’

‘They tried to impose a news blackout on all this,’ said Hargreaves. ‘But they were too late. Someone had already leaked the story to the press.’

Sara could see the obvious look of pleasure on the Superintendent’s face and she returned it with a smile. ‘And that will prove very inconvenient to those with something to hide.’

*

Charlie Mason was only doing his job at the petrol station to earn some extra cash for his intended trip next year. He planned to get a working visa for Australia and maybe even settle there permanently. Since his mother had died, his father had married ‘the bitch’ with unforgivable haste – his mother hadn’t even been dead three months before she marched his Dad into a register office and tied the knot with him. They’d been having an affair for years before Charlie’s mother had been killed in a car accident. Now he had to listen to them at it all night and every night through the thin walls of their terraced house on the east of Oldham. Their love-in had frozen him out and he felt alone in his own family home where once he’d felt safe and happy. It was as if his mother had never existed. The bitch had changed everything she could into the way she wanted it and his father had raised no objections. He hated his father now. How could he have been so indecent? His father wasn’t an old man, only just into his forties, and Charlie had wanted him to be happy. But not like this. Not with someone who wanted to take over his life and freeze out everyone who’d gone before. His Aunts and Uncles, especially on his Mum’s side, had all noticed and had even offered him a room at theirs when it got too much. His maternal grandparents didn’t want him to go to Australia. They’d lost their daughter and didn’t want to effectively lose their grandson, too. But they understood that he had to find his own way and promised to go and see him if he did end up settling there.

But all of that was still a few months away. He had to save some more cash first. He liked doing the early shift. If there was no overtime going in the afternoon he’d usually spend the time walking on the moors close to where he lived. The open space and the peace it offered made him feel close to his mother. He spoke to her out there on the moors. It felt like she was all around him. He still missed her like crazy even after all this time.

It was just before half past nine and the busy period had just passed. Those who refused to use the trains to commute into Manchester usually started their journey around this time and would often curse for not having filled up the night before. They could be quite temperamental by the time they got to pay and Charlie had to ask them to put their pin number into the card machine. But Charlie never let it get to him. It was like water off a duck’s back. They could all just go and fuck themselves. He wouldn’t give them a second thought when he was lying on a Sydney beach in a few months time with some hot girl beside him. Like his father and the bitch, he would be a million miles away in his own world.

He didn’t see the man come out of the bushes on the other side of the garage forecourt. He didn’t notice him marching up purposefully to the shop where Charlie was engaged behind the cash desk. He didn’t see him take the gun out of his pocket and blast Charlie’s dreams of a future in Australia into the next life.

*

Paul had just got back from a meeting with the head of Salford social services when Anita told him he had a visitor.

‘She says her name is Tiffany?’ said Anita. ‘She says you’ll know her? She looks heavily pregnant. It can’t be long before she drops it.’

When Tiffany stepped through into Paul’s office he didn’t know quite what he’d been expecting but it wasn’t the girl who was stood before him. Yes, she was pregnant but she carried quite a bit of weight on her anyway. She was a big girl. She wasn’t classically beautiful. Her cheekbones weren’t high and her mouth was small giving her face a kind of pinched look. She was quite ordinary and if it wasn’t for the wonders of make-up it struck Paul that she was just the sort of girl a soldier chooses to keep the home fires burning whilst he’s out there risking his life for Queen and country. Someone to push out a couple of kids for him and make him feel like the returning hero as soon as he walks through the door. Sexually she was probably pretty ordinary, he guessed. But she no doubt knew enough to fill in the gaps for him between tours of duty. Her hair was breast length and dyed a bright copper colour which Paul didn’t think suited her very white face. He hated himself for appraising her like this but he couldn’t help it. Sizing up the opposition was always too tempting to resist despite the circumstances.