Little Triggers (17 page)

There was only one thing for it. He pulled on the gloves and stepped up to the bag. The few people using the gym parted to let him pass, perhaps recognising the urgency of his need. He positioned himself in front of the bag and gave it a few practice hits. It felt good. Steadying. Suddenly —

There was the face again. Etched on the bag. He focused, swung at it, gave it a roundhouse with his right, and the face disintegrated into a thousand tiny particles. It was gone. He couldn’t believe it. He’d defeated it!

But as he watched, fear clutching his insides, the face slowly reformed, assumed the same position. Sneering: belittling him, mocking him. He hit it again, harder this time. The same result.

So he hit it again. And again, harder. And again. And again, and again, and again …

Twenty-seven minutes later he was pulled from the bag, his body unable to take any more punishment, his mind far out of reach. They had to prise his arms from the bag, so tightly had he clasped it.

As he was laid out on the floor, his arms started to flail. He was still punching: still fighting. Trying to defeat an adversary only he could see. And he wouldn’t stop. He wouldn’t give up. He couldn’t.

The Strawberry opposite St James’s Park was doing only minimal trade. The height of summer: no students, no football, just sad solo drinkers who had stumbled into the city centre on a Sunday afternoon. Lost, lonely; virtually all men. None of them talking, but silently acknowledging the others’ presence. The brotherhood of the bottle, drinking away the seventh day of the week – the ghost of the other six.

Moir sat alone in a corner, nursing his third pint. He had woken up at home, sprawled on the sofa. For the first few seconds of waking he hadn’t known who or where he was, had been able to breathe easily. But slowly, identity had oozed back into his empty mind, replacing the temporary comfort of alcoholic amnesia with a full, painful, realisation of just what sort of man he was.

Trying to stand induced the maximum effects of his hangover and he rushed to the toilet. Stomach empty, he felt more human, but the physical purging of his body didn’t extend to his mind. He replayed the events of the previous night, and found that he could remember it all. His good memory, even when drunk, was sometimes a blessing – but in this instance nothing but a curse.

He showered, hoping the scalding water would sweat the remaining booze out of his skin. Then he dressed and quickly left the house. More and more he was finding that he couldn’t bear to be in the place for longer than was absolutely necessary.

Moir headed for his den on Stowell Street, where he arranged all the updated reports on the discovery of Jason’s body carefully on his desk. He’d photocopied them and dropped them off the previous evening before going to Ruby’s, knowing that he would be here again today. He had nowhere else to go – and the gloom of his private office was, for him, a more conducive working atmosphere than the strip-lit, flush-doored, sterile CID incident room.

He stared hard at the photographs, the written reports and statements, though he already knew them all by heart. He was looking
for clues, connections; something hidden which would suddenly reveal itself. But nothing came. He sat there for quite some time, but he knew that ultimately his forensic meditation wouldn’t uncover the truth. His team was working on it – there was nothing for him to do.

The pictures of Jason, alive and dead, began to blur into one until Moir no longer knew which was which. Slowly the images began to dance before him, metamorphosing into a different face, a face he knew and loved.

Moir left his den and started walking. He ended up at The Strawberry, where he ordered the first of his afternoon’s drinks. Although he wouldn’t admit it to himself, he was drinking because he needed to, not because he wanted to. He never took pleasure in it, and only sometimes found comfort. But those times were enough.

He sat himself opposite the payphone: staring at it, seeing Karen’s face in his mind. He willed himself to stand up, walk across the pub, put the money in, pick up the receiver and dial. He’d rehearsed the conversation over and over again; going through every possible permutation, every possible outcome.

He would do it. He would phone.

He looked at his near-empty glass on the table. He thought of Jason. Nothing he could do for him now. Karen. Yes, he thought, he would phone her. He drained his glass and stood up.

But he’d have just one more pint first.

Feet, legs and arms were all abused and aching. But Ezz didn’t care.

When he’d been pulled from the bag in the gym he was incoherent with rage and exhaustion. He had struggled upright, shrugged off offers of support and stumbled into the shower – water as hot as his skin could bear without blistering. Then he was off again, searching for some way to end the nightmare.

The face had disappeared. Only temporarily – Ezz knew that from bitter experience – but the frenzied workout had bought him time. He knew he could postpone the face’s reappearance for longer still, even forever, but to do that he needed some sacrificial appeasement. Some action.

Ezz walked with no direction; legs propelling him, in-built radar guiding him as he moved unknowing through city streets populated by handfuls of strollers, the summer sun beating down on him. He
was looking for something only he would recognise when he found it.

Gradually the shining city streets gave way to poorer residential ones. Shabby houses, rusting cars. Hot, dusty air choked with the smells of fried cooking and cheap lives. At the end of one such street Ezz saw a patch of green. He headed towards it. A vague tingling began to churn in the pit of his stomach. Perhaps this was it – his catharsis. His final reckoning.

The area was badly tended: overgrown grass burst through cracked paving stones, wrought iron benches and railings were eroded down to abstract, oxidised sculptures, sabotaged streetlights turned wildwood pathways into rapists’ pleasure gardens. Dot-to-dot dogshit on the grass. An inner city park. Museum-grade perfect.

To the left was a fenced-off area: a children’s playground. Constructed of old tyres, wooden trunks, chains and bolts, the slides, swings and climbing-frames sat stunted and dark, bedded down in wood shavings. Kids with cropped heads and baggy jeans were punishing the equipment; venting pent-up emotions on a strictly urban assault course. Boys and girls: genders matched in aggression.

A frisson ran through Ezz. There was a reason he’d turned up here. He knew it. Eyes coming back into focus, he walked towards the children, searching.

Suddenly, from the corner of his eye, he glimpsed movement. With an abrupt halt he turned to where his attention had been grabbed. Hidden by a thick, gnarled tree-trunk and an unkempt mane of hedge was a figure. A man, furtively watching the kids play, pulling back into the shadows whenever one of them chanced to look his way.

This was it, Ezz knew, the chance to cleanse himself, to seek release from his suffering. With a single-minded sense of purpose, he strode over the grass to where the man was hiding.

He was so engrossed in watching the children he didn’t notice Ezz until the skinhead was upon him. Ezz’s right arm shot out, pinning his target to the tree by his throat. His eyes bulged with surprise and fear as Ezz looked him over. Cheap denim jacket and jeans, old trainers, T-shirt barely containing an expanding beer gut. Thinning blond hair, badly cut. An ageing Friday-night pub fighter: no contest. Ezz wouldn’t even break sweat.

“You have a good look first, get yourself turned on, is that it?” snarled Ezz, his emotionless voice, for once, curling at the edges.
The man didn’t see the swift left fist that connected hard with his stomach, but he certainly felt it. Ezz let him go, watching him slump to his knees and vomit over his stonewashed thighs. A quick kick to the side of the jaw knocked the man over on his side.

“You won’t be doin’ anythin’ now. Not ever again.” Ezz landed the man a kick in the balls that curled him into an agonised foetal position.

“Wait,” the man groaned, “I’m not — ”

“You never are,” said Ezz calmly, pulling back his leg to take another swing.

“Don’t,
please
don’t …” The man began to claw frantically at Ezz’s foot; Ezz relaxed his leg and dropped down next to him.

“You goin’ to beg?” Ezz asked, a note of polite inquiry in his voice belying the rage in his eyes.

“Beg for what?” spat the man through ragged, shattered gasps. “Who the fuckin’ ’ell are you anyway, eh?”

“I protect children from scum like you.”

The man looked over at the playground, confused; the children were abandoning their games, crossing towards the two men, curious about the commotion. Suddenly the penny dropped and the man gave a short, bitter laugh. “You think I’m a paedophile, is that it? You think that’s why I was watchin’ them play? You’re fuckin’ thick as well as sick, you know that?” The man gestured with his arm, anger giving him strength. “That’s me
son
over there. Me bitch of an ex got the court to stop us goin’ near ’im, ’cos I was late with me maintenance a couple of times. It’s the only way I can get to see him, hangin’ round ’ere. Got that? Understand?”

Ezz’s heart turned over. He couldn’t have been more stunned if the man had bested him, one to one. He opened his mouth to speak when, suddenly, he felt a sharp pain in his left calf. He looked down to see one of the boys from the playground. Dirt on his face; fury in his eyes.

“Me da! You hurt me da! You bastard!” Kick. “You hurt me da!”

Ezz felt a pain larger than the damage being inflicted would ever have allowed. He swallowed, turned his head from the boy to the father, searching for something to say, some words that would heal the situation. He found nothing.

The tension began to build inside Ezz again, forcing his heart to thump faster and his head to pound. Sharp tears of self-pity and
helpless rage began to stab him behind his eyes. He turned and blindly ran, oblivious to anything but despair. He didn’t hear the accusatory shouts of the children and the man directed at his back, didn’t even feel the thrown stones as they hit him.

He had tried to help others to help himself. He had only made things worse. He saw the face. Sneering, taunting, mocking.

Ezz ran harder.

Eventually darkness had fallen; Ezz’s pain was still unresolved. He felt like a human pressure-cooker: body of sculpted metal constraining a hot, combustible, poisonous stew.

He had been standing since dusk, lost in the shadows of Heaton Park, waiting. The lights in the flat still weren’t on; not that he had expected them to be. But he had patience because it was Sunday night and only a matter of time.

As he watched, he saw a car pull up in front of the flat and douse the headlights. A Fiesta, almost new. Ezz’s stomach lurched as he watched Noble get out, take a bag from the back seat, lock the car and enter the flat. He watched the lights going on and the curtains being drawn.

Ezz counted off five minutes in his head and stepped out of the shadows. If the ache in his head hadn’t been clouding his thought processes, he might have been able to see a trace of irony in the situation. He was back where he had started. Where his current bout of pain had been triggered. Full circle.

Heart beating, he walked along the pavement and up the path towards a hope of salvation.

The powerfully sleek automatic eased through the light Sunday morning traffic on the A1 into Northumberland, gliding like the tyres were oiled and the road was ice. Pavarotti was trilling from the Blaupunkt, the sun was shining, and two boys, young bodies brimful of pleasures, were waiting at the other end of the journey. The man sighed, allowing himself the ration of a small smile. The car throbbed with energy and the temperature-controlled interior was like a warm cocoon. He was in his own world: safe. Secure. What more could he possibly want?

The people he was going to visit weren’t friends – he didn’t have any. They were – barring his brother – the people he’d known longest and most intimately, but they were not friends.

He had been approached by the two of them while he was still at college. Colin and Alan had both been misfits, their lack of social skills marking them out as lepers in the closed environment of the university. At first the man thought they just wanted to be friends, bask in the reflected glory of his popularity. Then, with a shudder of recognition, he realised that he and they were the same; all they lacked were masks. His first reaction was to panic: how could they have recognised him?

He forced himself to think rationally. To turn the situation around. They were outsiders. He could teach them the skills of acceptance, of protective camouflage. He was ready to push his predilections further; perhaps this association could provide him with a way forward.

So he became their teacher, passing on all his little tricks. All the while keeping his dealings with them at arm’s length, until they were truly ready to be integrated. On their own, the three of them
swapped dark, obsessive fantasies fuelled by alcohol and pornography, the sessions usually culminated in mutual masturbation.