JAMES
FOUR MONTHS EARLIER
‘We’re just the same, you and me,’ said Grady.
James looked at the shrivelled man sitting beside him, with his toothless gurn and beaten-up trainers that smelled of piss. He was eating a pasty one of the street pastors had bought him, and he didn’t seem to care that there were baked beans dripping down the front of his coat.
No, we’re not, James thought. I’m nothing like you.
‘Resourceful, you know?’ Grady went on. Beside him, his dog Biggles, wearing a set of fluffy reindeer antlers, lifted an eyebrow hopefully, as flakes of pastry fell on to Grady’s legs. He brushed them off. ‘Survivors, right?’
Just because you’re still alive, doesn’t mean you’re not dying. James had no idea of Grady’s age. He looked seventy, but he might have been thirty years younger. That’s what decades on smack and dashed hopes would do to you.
A cold December wind whipped along the street where they sat, and James pushed his hands into his armpits, hugging the green field combat coat more tightly around him.
‘Fuck, it’s cold.’
Grady didn’t seem bothered as he chewed. ‘This is nothing, lad,’ he said. ‘When we was on the boats we had a warrant officer would get us out on deck in our undies on Christmas Day. Not a word of a lie.’
James didn’t doubt it. For all his repulsive traits and crippling addiction, Grady was pretty honest. They’d met at a soup kitchen run by ex-servicemen a few weeks ago, and since that day he’d bumped into the old navy boy several times and couldn’t shake him off. He quite liked Biggles, who attracted more than his fair share of kindness from the public – especially with the antlers – but Grady’s endless tales of life on the high seas made James’ blood boil.
‘One fella got frostbite on his bloody cock!’ Grady chuckled to himself at the memory, then offered the remains of the food to James. ‘You want this?’
‘No,’ he said, taking in Grady’s tattooed fingers and yellow nails. He stood and stamped his feet, trying to get the blood to flow into his freezing toes.
‘Going somewhere?’ asked Grady, handing the scraps to Biggles.
James spat on the ground. ‘None of your fucking business.’
‘Only asking,’ said the old man. He looked afraid, his eyes watery under his woollen hat.
‘I need to get warm.’
‘If I were you, I’d head to the library then. They keep the heating on.’
‘And if I were you, I’d do the world a favour and kill myself,’ said James.
‘Eh?’
‘Go to the top of the multi-storey and throw yourself off.’
‘What’s got into you, lad?’
‘You,’ said James. He nodded. ‘Give me that hat.’
‘No,’ said Grady.
‘Give me the hat or I’ll stamp your fucking dog’s head in.’
Biggles, sensing the sudden animus, whined, the very tip of his tail wagging timidly.
Grady reached up slowly, and pulled the hat from his head. James realised he’d never seen him without it. Beneath, his hair was wispy and grey over a scalp scabby with eczema. He looked every day of seventy now. He offered the hat to James, who snatched it away.
‘I thought we were mates, lad.’
James left the old man mashing his gums and wandered out into St Anne’s Square, where the tourists milled about under the festive lights. He put on the hat, feeling instantly better. He’d never been good with the cold, and it was worse since he’d returned from abroad. The library wasn’t a bad idea, but there were cameras everywhere, and he needed some cash urgently. So he went instead to one of the chain coffee shops. As usual in the middle of the day, it was filled with mums and their pushchairs, queuing for their skinny caps or whatever. It smelled of mulled spice. No one paid any attention to James, and after a show of looking at the menu board, he lifted the purse from a bag hanging over the handlebars of one of the buggies crammed in by a table of gossiping women. He was in and out in less than a minute.
Round the corner, he checked the contents beside the back door of a Chinese restaurant kitchen, air thick with rich, savoury smells of garlic and ginger. Sixty-five quid, bank cards and the like. There was a picture of a bloke and a baby, their noses touching. He kept the cash and dropped the rest in one of the restaurant’s dumper bins. A guy in chef’s whites stuck his head out of the door and shouted at him to clear off.
On exiting the alleyway at speed, tucking the money away, he almost collided with a couple walking arm in arm.
‘Woah!’ said one. ‘Easy does it!’
James looked up. ‘Go fuck your …’ The words dried up in his mouth. The two strangers were both men, but that wasn’t what caught his attention. ‘I know you,’ he said to the man on the right, tall and square-jawed, tanned, with short greying hair, maybe fifty. He wore a long navy coat that looked pricey.
The man’s partner – smaller, boyish, with tight trousers and a tweed jacket – gave an amused smirk and glanced at his companion. ‘I hope not, Chris.’
James swallowed thickly, unable to move. He couldn’t place the face, but it was right there, like a word on the tip of his tongue.
‘I don’t think so,’ said the older man. ‘Sorry we bumped into you.’
They walked off and James stared after them. It was as they disappeared around a corner that his mind dug out the memory he was looking for. He remembered where he’d met the man before. Before he even stopped to think why, he followed.
The cold of the January evening suddenly meant nothing at all. Every inch of James’ skin was hot, the atoms of his body vibrating on a higher frequency. New possibilities opened up ahead. If the man was who he thought, this changed everything. And even as the hope fired him, doubts set it. It couldn’t be him, could it? What were the chances, after all these years? He walked around twenty paces behind them, and James’ eyes bored into the back of the man’s head. The face had been familiar, but as he tailed them, he became more certain. The ages would be about right, too. Even the man’s gait, the way his upper body remained perfectly erect while his feet moved in small steps, aroused a deep-seated discomfort.
The men entered a restaurant on Deansgate, and James drifted past the front window, stationing himself beside a taxi rank. He watched as the men were shown to a table, took off their winter coats, and handed them to a maître d’. Then they sat opposite one another, reaching across the table to clutch hands. James felt a bit sick. Bracken, another private in his barracks, had once suggested he was a poof, solely on the basis that he didn’t spend his free time poring over pornography like the rest of them. James had pinned him down and got a thumb into the soft flesh beside the top of his nose, threatening to scoop out his eye if he cared to make the insinuation again. Neither Bracken, nor any of the others, ever did.
James watched now, confident that the harsh light of the restaurant’s interior and the relative darkness outside would keep him hidden. It was the guy all right – every mannerism rang true.
Falling right into my lap …
But there was still work to be done. He stood in place for a half-hour, observing the ebb and flow of customers from the restaurant, the waiting staff drifting from kitchen to table to bar. He saw their patterns of movement and the opportunities these allowed. The maître d’ did the same for each new arrival, checking a computer, then leading the diners into the restaurant, before returning to the wall beyond the front desk to hang the coats. There was a twenty- or thirty-second window he could exploit.