White Goods (29 page)

‘
What’s with
the coat, Scotty?’ he asked me, taking steps forward and I found
myself automatically taking steps backwards. ‘It’s not that cold,
you know. You can’t be that cold.’ He paused, thinking, then smiled
again. ‘You will be though, very cold.’

My eyes darted to the
chest freezer and, for a moment, I had wondered. But it had a
padlock on it.

Rory saw me glance that
way and laughed.

‘
Not a bad
idea, I guess,’ he uttered, still inching forwards, with me inching
back again. Then I realised what I’d done: I’d moved right inside
the shed, into its shadow and I’d made it easy for them.

Suddenly, all four of us
were in the shed and the door was closed. I was completely
trapped.

‘
Take the coat
off.’

It was only Rory talking:
Jim and Roy simply stared at me. I wondered if either of them would
step in; stop this going too far. But their faces were blank,
giving nothing away.

‘
Come on, take
it off.’

I unzipped it, very
slowly, and let it fall to the floor. As it did, I heard them all
snigger – taking off the parka had revealed the wet patch on the
front of my trousers.

‘
Looks like we
don’t need to piss on this one,’ Rory sneered and the other two
joined him, laughing.

Then Rory stepped forward
again and I tried to go back further, but there was nowhere to go –
I was up against the first row of folded deckchairs. He came right
up to me and looked down; then he looked straight up, moving his
eyes slowly, ensuring mine followed. We were stood right underneath
one of the meat hooks in the ceiling.

‘
Perfect,’ he
said.

And then his hands came up
and I realised he’d made a noose with the rope they’d brought with
them, which he was gently, ever-so-gently placing over my
head.

‘
You’ll soon
feel the chill.’

It was the last thing he
said, before he tossed the other end of the rope up. After three
attempts, he got it on the hook above me and was ready to
pull.

Then two things happened
that saved me.

When Ian came back, he
found me sitting in one of the deckchairs, with Adrian Tankard
standing over me. Adrian had pulled it out of the shed and told me
to sit in it, despite the fact that my pants were both wet and
soiled.

The soiling was the first
thing that aided my rescue. As Rory went to pull on the rope, I
felt a bit of sick in my mouth and then my bowels exploded of their
own accord.

‘
Fear does
that,’ Adrian told me afterwards. ‘There’s no shame in it. No
shame.’

‘
Fucking
hell!’ Roy had cried out, covering his mouth, turning for the
doorway. Jim had reacted similarly, only the smell of my shit had
made him sick. He had vomited a measure to equal mine on Rory’s
boots.

‘
Jesus, Jim!’
Rory had cursed him. He still had one hand on the rope, but he was
distracted enough for me to consider my own attack. A swift kick in
the balls? Or one almighty push to see if I could knock them out of
the way. Crapping myself had brought me back to life somehow; a bit
of my petrifaction flooding away with my waste. And the group’s
sudden disjointed panic over the smell and the sick took away a bit
of their menace. They wouldn’t kill me. I was sure. Yes, this was
just scare tactics. No, not killers, just bullies.
Just-.

‘
Cowards.’

‘
What?’

Rory abruptly stopped
fussing over Jim and looked at me, eyes sharp again.

‘
What did you
call me?’

I repeated myself,
wondering where this was going.

‘
Cowards,’ I
said.

All three became still and
I felt just a little of that joint-freezing fear return.

I had missed my chance to
escape; maybe I had also underestimated the extent to which they
were prepared to go.

‘
Really?’ said
Rory. ‘We’ll see.’ With that, he put two hands on the rope again
and gave it one large tug.

Yet, I was liberated once
again: a force to be reckoned with put their boots into the shed
door, splitting it open and roared into the cold, shit-stenched
echo of the outhouse.

‘
WHICH ONE OF
YOU CUNTS PISSED ON MY LAD??!!’

They appeared
to leave in seconds. If they also pissed or shat themselves with
fear, I didn’t see. But all three were clearly scared of Adrian
Tankard, Roy was even snivelling. Adrian didn’t do a thing: didn’t
touch them; didn’t threaten them; apart from those first nine
words, he didn’t say anything to them. It was just the thought of
what he
could
do,
this mighty man that everyone was frightened of.

‘
Take your
brother home, clean him up and then come and see me,’ Adrian
instructed Ian, and Ian did as he was told: this was Adrian Tankard
after all and you didn’t argue with him. You didn’t even think it
in your head.

Once home, bathed and
changed, I told Ian everything. We were sitting on my bed, both
crying, as I recalled the full details of Justin’s
attack.

‘
They must
have seen Justin when you were attacked at the crematorium, that’s
how they made the mistake,’ I mumbled through tears. Once I’d
started, I couldn’t stop, but it felt good. I hadn’t really cried
about anything that had happened, not really: not about Mum going,
or Nan Buckley dying, or her replacement, Sylvie. Not true tears.
‘I’ve lost my friend, too, Ian. I didn’t do anything to help him. I
just let it happen. Didn’t know they were really after me, not till
after. But I still just sat back and watched.’

‘
I wasn’t
there to help you, either,’ Ian said, pulling me close to
him.

On his way
back to get the float, he’d bumped into
Uncle
Gary. My comment about Della
going shopping with Auntie Stella had come back to him and he’d
stopped to ask if the days had changed. No,
Uncle
Gary had confirmed, they were
still meeting on the Thursday; today Auntie Stella was having a
perm and then off to buy their weekly groceries.

‘
If I hadn’t
stopped for a chat, I’d have been there sooner,’ he apologised, but
it didn’t matter. Not now. It was odd, but I was feeling better. I
knew Adrian had terrified the boys, just by his presence. And I was
hopeful they’d be keeping away from me. I still had questions,
though.

‘
What is it
you owe them?’ I asked Ian.

He turned his head
away.

‘
Ian?’

It was a sobering question
and our tears seemed to stop.

‘
What they
said to Justin. They said
tell Ian we want
that money.’

He shrugged, still not
facing me.

‘
What money?
Did you take it from them?’

‘
No.’

‘
Then
what-.’

‘
I didn’t take
their money, okay?’ He was facing me. His eyes were red from all
the crying, but now they glared at me in anger. I considered just
letting it go, but I wanted to know more: I felt I had a right to
understand why I had suffered shitting my pants in
public.

‘
Who did
then?’ I asked him, and he went to say. He really was going to tell
me, but the name stuck in his throat at the last second.

I knew though: I knew
instinctively.

‘
I’m going to
see Adrian,’ Ian announced, standing. ‘He wants to talk to me about
this. You don’t refuse Adrian Tankard, now do you?’

As he reached the door, I
had another question on my lips.

‘
Why won’t
anyone talk about him?’

Ian wasn’t expecting that.
He stopped where he was; took in a deep breath. He didn’t look at
me. Just stayed where he was for a few seconds. Mulling it over;
thinking through a possible response.

‘
Don’t tell
Dad about any of this,’ he warned, moving again, his voice going
down the stairs, as he headed for the front door.

The mystery
behind Della’s white lies – the mix up over the day she was
shopping with Auntie Stella – was soon uncovered. Over the
remaining days of the holidays, we became increasingly suspicious
that
something-was-going-
on and this
provided a good distraction from what I had encountered.

On the
Thursday, she went shopping with Auntie Stella as previously
arranged. She came back with several bags we
were-not-to-look-into
, so it had
clearly gone ahead. She offered no explanation for where she had
been on the Wednesday; then again, no one asked her
directly.

On the Friday,
she said she had to go into town to meet
Julie
, although this
Julie
wasn’t someone we
had heard of before.

‘
She’s new at
school,’ Della explained, but the blush in her cheeks told us she
was lying.

‘
It’s got to
be a boyfriend,’ Ian said, once she had gone.

We were back to being
normal again. When he came back from seeing Adrian, I didn’t ask
him what had gone on. And I didn’t question him about anything
else, either. As for the incident in the pub shed, we didn’t talk
about it. I didn’t want too, either. So, it was as though it hadn’t
happened at all. Almost. Ian wouldn’t let me out of his
sight.

‘
We’ll hang
out,’ he told me. ‘And we’ll walk to school together, when it
starts up again.’

I normally walked with
Justin and Ian went his own way.

‘
What about
your mates?’

‘
It’ll be
fine.’ Then he changed the subject. ‘So, about this boyfriend,’ Ian
said, his voice all sparky, upbeat. ‘How about we find out who he
is?’

On the
Saturday, we got our opportunity: Della was off into town, to
meet
Julie
again.

We gave Della a
five-minute start: let her leave the house and then peeked out to
see which way she was heading.

‘
She turned
right at the end of the road,’ I reported back, and then we grabbed
our coats.

At the top of St James
Road, she turned left, as if heading for Beverly Courts, where Nan
Buckley and Sylvie had lived. Yet, she didn’t go quite that far –
she turned off down an alley, just before the shop that was
adjacent to the old people’s flats.

‘
That leads to
the Sheffield Road Estate,’ Ian said, something giving in his
voice. His excitement dropped a notch.

‘
What’s
wrong?’ I asked, but he didn’t answer.

‘
Let’s get our
speed up, before we lose her.’

So, we sped up to a gentle
run, following her down the alleyway, waiting and watching at its
opening, as Della continued towards her destination. The path led
to a main road. Della went straight across and then cut down
another alley, taking us into the warren of houses and flats that
was the Sheffield Road Estate.

‘
You were
right,’ I said, feeling a little uneasy. It was still only three
days since the attack, and, in spite of the release I had found
afterwards, and the fact that I knew I had Adrian Tankard’s
protection, I wasn’t completely confident. It had been fine on the
main streets, fine when I thought we were heading into town. I
paused, and Ian read my mind.

‘
They don’t
live here,’ he said, halting briefly, before tugging at my coat
sleeve. ‘Come on.’

And so we continued in our
pursuit of Della, right into the heart of the concrete jungle of
the estate, where breezeblock after breezeblock presented itself as
a house, flat or bungalow. I found myself lost very quickly: I’d
never come this far before. I didn’t have any friends this side of
town, so I didn’t know it well. Ian did, though. He was very
confident about what path or road led where and, after a while, it
seemed he was pretty certain of where Della was heading. I knew
this because he began to slow down.

‘
She might see
us,’ he gave as an excuse, but Della hadn’t looked back once. Her
head was elsewhere; she wasn’t thinking about who might be
following – she was just thinking about where she was
heading.

After a while, we lost her
completely, but Ian kept going.

‘
Come on, this
way,’ he’d say, and we’d turn down another road, cut across another
muddy green.

Eventually, we came to a
row of shops – a florist, a hairdresser’s, and a newsagent – and
Ian made us stop and wait on the other side of the road. Above the
shops were flats and this was where he thought Della had
gone.

‘
You sure?’ I
said and Ian nodded.

And he was right, too.
Just ten minutes later, Della came out of one of the flats,
followed an older boy I recognised. Ian recognised him too, but he
didn’t look pleased.

Ian knew the Sheffield
Road Estate well because he had come here a lot. He had a friend
who lived here. And that friend was Della’s secret boyfriend:
Russell Dunbar. The boy who had come to my rescue at the swimming
pool that afternoon.