Dead End Street

by Trevor Wood

Genres: Noir; Vigilante Thrillers

Synopsis

A group of vigilantes are carrying out a campaign of harassment against the homeless, hounding them to get them off the streets. Jimmy Mullen is approached by his friend Gadge, who wants to confront the people behind it, but Jimmy has finally got his life back on track and is reluctant to get involved in anything dodgy. Gadge decides to go it alone but is found unconscious in an alley, covered in blood. Problem is, there's a dead body in the alley too and it's his blood that Gadge is covered in. He's also got the murder weapon in his hand. Convinced that Gadge has been set up, Jimmy returns to the streets to try and find out who's behind his friend's difficulties. Unfortunately, he's about to discover that Gadge has a lot of enemies to choose from.

Release date: January 20, 2022

Publisher: Quercus Publishing

Print pages: 400

Sample

1

He liked sleeping with the dead.

Some people might think it weird but sod them and the horse they rode in on. There was a reason they talked about laying people to rest. Graveyards were an oasis of calm, a place to think about where it all went wrong – or, as in his case, how others had screwed it up for you and how you were going to make them pay.

But this wasn’t really a graveyard. It used to be, according to the sign by the road, on the other side of the grassy expanse where he was lying down. Ballast Hills Burial Ground was the place they buried non-conformists in the eighteenth century.

These days it was practically invisible, unless you looked very closely. On the surface it was just a small park with a winding footpath around it; a footpath made up almost entirely of old gravestones. How many people had even noticed that they were literally walking over people’s graves? The one beneath his feet read:

 

Burial place of Richard Dunn Cabinet Maker.

Henry, his son, died August the 8th 1753. Aged 2 years.

 

It was one of several kids’ graves scattered along the path. What a miserable fucking era to be born in. Two was no age to die. At least these days most people managed to make their three score years and ten. Most people.

He reached into his rucksack, searching for another can of lager to take the edge off but he was out of luck – could have sworn there was one left. Instead he pulled out a steak pie that someone had dropped in his lap earlier that day when he’d been sitting in a doorway on Dean Street, studying the passers-by, hiding from some but mainly hoping to see his face. He hadn’t been hungry then and it was stone cold now, obviously, but, in his current circumstances, when life gave you a meat pie you ate the bastard and enjoyed every last morsel of it.

Voices carried to him on the wind, moving closer, he reckoned, and then footsteps, coming up the stairway from the riverside. A few moments later two men appeared by the entrance to the park, stopping as they caught sight of him sitting on the grass. Though it was getting pretty gloomy he saw them put their heads together, as if they were having some kind of quiet chat, before they started moving towards him again. He was pretty new to all this but there was a bad vibe about them, like the guys who’d chased him the other week – how he wished he’d stayed in that shed, ignored the screams, minded his own business like usual. He wolfed down the rest of the pie and started to get up. He was way too late, his reactions dulled by one beer too many. They were almost on top of him now.

A camera flashed in his face, momentarily blinding him.

‘What are you doing?’ he cried, turning his head away and blinking furiously as he tried to clear his vision.

‘D’you think it’s him?’ one of the men said.

‘Fucked if I know, they all look the same to me.’

‘You look familiar. Have we seen you before?’ The first guy again.

Maybe they really were the same ones who’d chased him? He looked back up at the taller of the two men, who he thought had asked the question.

‘Well?’ Lanky said. The man’s voice was muffled by a scarf wound tightly around his mouth but it was obvious he was a local.

‘Don’t remember.’

Lanky laughed.

‘Trust me, you’d remember us. Where you from?’

‘Round and about.’

‘You don’t sound like you’re from round here,’ the second, shorter, man said, edging around his mate, closing off any possible escape route. If there were any doubts in his mind about the threat level, they’d disappeared. He glanced around, looking for help. There was no one in sight.

‘Well?’ Shorty said, adjusting his old-fashioned balaclava. Both men were clearly attempting to hide their faces. There was never a good reason for that. He needed to get out of there.

‘I’ve been away.’

‘That right? How about you go away again?’

‘No problem,’ he said, struggling to his feet. If he was upright he might be able to outrun them.

‘Let me help you,’ Lanky said, holding out his hand.

The man instinctively reached out to take it and was yanked up, too quickly to keep his balance, his rucksack slipping from his shoulder and falling to the ground. Lanky picked it up for him.

‘Got your car keys in here, have you?’

‘I don’t drive.’

‘Aye, right.’

The tall man looked across at an old Nissan parked just across the road.

‘Whose is that then?’

‘Not mine.’

Lanky felt around inside the rucksack then checked the pockets on the outside.

If he was going to run, now was the time, but all his worldly possessions were in that bag. He watched in horror as the contents were tipped onto the ground.

‘Pack it in!’ he cried, reaching out to grab the bag. His hand was slapped away which stung like a bastard in the bitter cold. ‘What d’you do that for?’

‘Sorry, but my mam always taught me snatching was rude. Here you go.’

Lanky held the rucksack out but pulled it away again as he tried to grab it. Then the bastard did it again.

‘Try saying please,’ his mate said, sniggering.

‘Please,’ he muttered, ashamed of himself but wanting this over before it got out of hand.

‘That’s better,’ the tall prick said, holding out the bag.

He reached out for it again but once more it was pulled away.

‘Stop messing about, you twat,’ he said, immediately regretting it.

‘Twat, am I?’ The tall man looked over to his friend. ‘If you think I’m a twat you haven’t met my pal,’ he added.

The kidney punch sent him to his knees where his head collided with Lanky’s knee, which was no accident. Neither was the kick in the balls from behind which had him rolling around on the floor.

The kicks came fast and furious from then on, any pretence at this being anything other than a planned beating long gone, each kick punctuated by a word.

‘Fuck. Off. Back. To. Manchester. Or. Whatever. Shithole. You. Crawled. From. You. Benefit. Scrounging. Freeloading. Twat.’

He covered his head with his hands but glimpsed one of the men’s steel toecaps through his fingers as it thudded into his face, several teeth snapping, broken chunks falling into his mouth. Half-choking on the bits of enamel and old fillings floating about in his throat, he tried to sit up. That only made him more open and the kicks rained in again.

A rib cracked, then another. He moved his arms to his side to protect them but got another boot in the face for his troubles. Through the blood he saw one of the men – he’d lost track of which was which – slip a pair of knuckledusters onto his hand. The first punch broke his nose. The second crashed into the side of his head, making his ears ring. It would have knocked him out cold if he hadn’t turned his head at the last minute.

When he looked up and saw the blade of the Stanley knife glinting in the light of the nearby lamp-post, he almost wished it had.

2

April 2015

Jimmy paced around the waiting room as if it was a prison cell. Why wouldn’t anyone tell him what was going on?

A door behind the reception area opened and a woman in scrubs that he’d never seen before came through to the counter and picked up some notes.

‘Any news?’ he said, anxiously, as she turned to leave again.

She looked back at him, clearly not having a clue who he was or what news she might give him.

‘Mr Green will come and talk to you as soon as he’s finished with his patient,’ she said, eventually. ‘You may as well sit down instead of wearing a hole in the carpet.’ And with that she left.

As usual, when someone in authority spoke to him, he did as he was told, happy to move away from the counter – the opening of the door at the back had let those sickly smells that always linger around medics into the room, a combination of illness and disinfectant that you didn’t find anywhere else.

Jimmy stared at his feet. How much longer? If the worst had happened he’d . . . He shook his head. What would he do? It would leave a hole the size of a planet in his life just when he was finally getting things back on track.

He got up and walked over to the noticeboard, desperately needing a distraction. Staff vacancies, appeals for donations and information on parking charges didn’t provide one so he sat down again, staring at the backroom door, willing the doc to come through it with a smile on his face. Anything else was unimaginable.

Jimmy could feel his anger building. He made a vow on his pal’s life. Whoever was responsible for this would have no hiding place in this city. A dead man walking. It had been a while, but he’d tracked down psychopaths before and could do it again.

Suddenly a door at the back of the room opened and Mr Green came out. He was talking to someone behind him so Jimmy couldn’t see the man’s face. He sounded sombre.

‘He’s dead, isn’t he?’ Jimmy said, far louder than it needed to be in the small waiting room.

Green turned. A puzzled look on his face that quickly turned into a smile.

‘Calm down, Jimmy, man. Dog’s fine.’

 

Dog was curled up on a chair fast asleep. The last time Jimmy had seen him he’d been struggling to breathe, unable to stand by himself and had blood pouring from his mouth.

‘Poor thing’s exhausted,’ Green said. ‘I had to get him to vomit up everything he’d eaten and it’s really taken it out of him. He’s sturdier than he looks, mind.’

The vet glanced back at Jimmy.

‘You’re the one I’d be worried about, you seem stressed to hell; you’ll have a heart attack if you’re not careful.’

‘I was just worried, that’s all.’

‘Aye, fair enough, I suppose, he looked pretty rough when you brought him in.’

Jimmy sat on the edge of the chair and put his hand on Dog’s chest. His breathing was much more regular now, thank Christ.

‘Was it rat poison, like you thought?’

‘All the symptoms point to it. It’s the fourth time I’ve seen something similar this year. Some sadistic arsehole is leaving poisoned meat lying around in the parks, apparently. One of my other customers actually brought a bag of tainted meat in with them that they found lying under a rubbish bin. I passed it on to the police but it’s pretty hard to stop unless you catch them in the act.’

‘Why would anyone do that?’

‘Don’t ask me. I’d cut their balls off if I got hold of them.’

Dog twitched under Jimmy’s hand. He always had something going on in his dreams. Jimmy would bet that rabbits were involved somehow. Or seagulls. Dog hated seagulls.

‘Is he gonna be OK?’

‘Aye, don’t worry. There might be a bit of internal bleeding but I’ve given him a big dose of vitamin K which will stop that in its tracks. I’ll give you some more to take away with you. One tablet a day.’

Jimmy nodded, reaching into his pocket. Money was no object where Dog was concerned but he had no idea whether he’d be able to cover it. He wasn’t exactly flush.

‘Thanks. How much do I owe you?’

‘Put your wallet away, Jimmy, your money’s no good here. I don’t charge the homeless to look after their pets, you know that.’

‘I’m not homeless any more, Bill, I’ve gone up in the world.’

3

The flat was small but self-contained with a kitchen area set off from the living space and a separate bedroom. Compared to the hostel rooms Jimmy had dossed down in it was like a penthouse suite in the Malmaison. Obviously he’d never been to that particular hotel, only slept in the pavilion across the road from it, so he didn’t even know if it had a penthouse suite. The point was, for the first time since his life had imploded after the Falklands War, it finally felt like he had a home.

He’d started working for the House and Home charity as a volunteer, at a hostel for kids aged 18–25, offering advice to the youngsters in their care about how to survive and stay safe, where to go for help, that kind of thing. Using his ‘lived experience’ they called it. Once he’d got settled, they let him do some of the admin, nothing complicated, just checking that people were signing in and out, not using, and keeping their rooms tidy, baby steps to get him back into the working routine.

Jimmy was as shocked as anyone when Caroline, the boss there, suggested making it official. At first he’d thought she was winding him up and he actually checked the calendar to make sure it wasn’t April Fool’s Day but she wasn’t that kind of woman. He’d had to get references, but Andy Burns had stepped up. Saving the cop’s life a few years back was still paying dividends, even though Burns had more than paid him back for that in favours. He was the gift that kept on giving.

After that it was just a matter of keeping his nerve at the interview and he was in. When they told him that the job came with on-site accommodation he nearly cried.

Which was what he felt like doing now as Dog spat the vitamin K pill out for the third time.

Jimmy sighed with frustration. He didn’t have time for this. The vet had given him several tips and none of them had worked. He’d hidden it in his normal food; Dog cleaned out the bowl leaving just the pill behind.

Next up he’d carefully placed it into the mutt’s mouth and blown up his nose, which seemed really stupid but he’d been assured was foolproof. Not for this fool.

In desperation, he’d stuffed it into a bit of bread like a sarnie and dropped it on the floor. Again, the food was gobbled up but, somehow, the tablet had been ejected. The bloody dog would normally eat anything, including his own shit, but not a little white pill apparently.

Jimmy glanced at the small radio alarm clock by the side of his bed. He had to get going. Gadge reckoned he had something important to tell him and he didn’t want to be late. The man had grown increasingly cranky recently – his heavy drinking really starting to take its toll – and he didn’t want to do anything to make things worse.

‘One last chance,’ he muttered as Dog settled down in his basket again.

He looked into the fridge. Another bonus to his new accommodation – it had been a long time since he’d been able to store his own food. Not that he did a lot of that, he thought, seeing just a couple of tomatoes, a small bottle of milk and some crunchy peanut butter on the shelves. He went for the latter, scooping out a spoonful and pressing the pill into the middle, keeping his back to Dog just in case the crafty mutt was watching. Once he was done, he turned and knelt down by the basket, holding the spoon out towards the cautious animal. Dog sniffed at the peanut butter for a moment, then to Jimmy’s relief he swallowed the lot.

Jimmy waited, watching carefully, but this time no pill appeared.

‘Eu-fucking-reka,’ he said, grabbing his rucksack and heading for the door. Since the poisoning Dog had been very happy to be left in the flat during the day. The rest was doing him good and one of the other staff would take him for a walk at lunchtime if Jimmy wasn’t back. He remembered to switch the radio on – Dog seemed to like the sort-of company.

Jimmy left the flat and tapped on Deano’s door. Another bonus of getting the job was that he’d managed to get the kid a place in the hostel. It was great to have a friendly face around and Deano had responded brilliantly. Coming up to six months later he’d stayed off the gear and generally kept his nose clean, in every sense. The kid had been trying hard to clean himself up ever since the untimely death of his brother, Ash, a couple of years earlier but had, inevitably, suffered the odd relapse along the way. This time it seemed to have stuck. He was even holding down a part-time job at the local greyhound track.

Deano bounded out of his room, raring to go. He loved their Saturday morning trips out to the city library. And today they both had an appointment: Jimmy with Gadge in a nearby pub and Deano for his adult literacy class. The kid was finally learning to read.

As they walked down the corridor another door opened and Aaron, a recent arrival at the hostel, walked out. Jimmy frowned, he had a number of questions about the baby-faced youngster that he hadn’t yet got satisfactory answers for and was beginning to suspect he was younger than he was claiming – too young to be staying at the hostel even. He seemed almost incapable of looking after himself. He never used any of the equipment they provided for him, even the microwave went untouched. And he was barely able to dress himself. Jimmy glanced down. The kid’s shoes were on the wrong feet.

‘How you getting on?’ Jimmy said.

‘What’s it to you?’ Aaron muttered, turning to walk off.

‘Just trying to do my job.’

The kid didn’t bother looking back.

‘Just because you get paid doesn’t mean you really care though, does it?’ he shouted as he headed out the door. ‘If you did, you’d try harder.’

The kid was proving a difficult nut to crack. Stubborn as fuck. Fortunately for him he wasn’t the only one.

4

Gadge was pissed off. Given that he was sitting in the pub at eleven in the morning, this was unusual. Normally that would be enough to make him very happy indeed.

Fair play, he was pissed as well, but there was nothing unusual there. Being pissed off though, that was different. He just didn’t like being the odd one out. He, Deano and Jimmy had always been the three street musketeers, all for one and one for all, but now, with the pair of them practically shacked up together, he was often on his own. Like now. Jimmy was already ten minutes late. The last time they’d arranged to meet he hadn’t shown up at all, not even a bloody text.

And the number of times he’d come into the Pit Stop lately to find the pair of them chatting about someone he didn’t know, or laughing about something he hadn’t seen, didn’t bear counting. It was getting to him. All members of a team had a role and if that got messed up the team fell apart. He was the story-teller, the gagsmith, the funny one. Jimmy was the worrier, always thinking someone was out to get him, and Deano was the fuck-up, the one they had to save. Now the roles were changing. Now he was the outsider, often on the back foot, playing catch-up, and he didn’t like it. Not one bit. He couldn’t complain though because that was even worse. Once you had a whinger in your team your days were numbered. And he wasn’t going to be that guy, no siree, team-player was Gadge’s double-barrelled middle name.

But being the outsider wasn’t why he was pissed off – well, maybe a bit but it wasn’t the whole reason. He was angry because he was sure someone had been following him. He’d spent years taking the piss out of Jimmy because of his paranoia and now he was even worse. Time after time he’d had the sensation that he was being watched but he’d never managed to catch anyone in the act. He’d whipped his head round to get a glimpse of his follower so many times that he was getting a stiff neck – but still he’d seen nothing. It had got so bad that he’d done some research on the internet and discovered the existence of Persecutory Delusion Disorder. Sufferers from it were convinced that they were being hunted or threatened and often self-medicated with alcohol to help them deal with it.

That wasn’t him though. No chance.

He necked the rest of his pint and ordered another one. With a whisky chaser. If Jimmy didn’t hurry up, he wouldn’t be in any fit state to show him the other thing he’d discovered.

* 

The Facebook page was packed with photos of homeless men and women in various locations in the city. Each one was captioned with ‘Do you know them? Do they live near you? If so, contact us immediately with their name and address.’

Jimmy stared at Gadge in disbelief.

‘So this knobhead reckons there are only six genuinely homeless people in the whole city?’ he said.

Gadge nodded. ‘It would seem so.’ He yawned and leant back on his chair, nearly going arse over tit, but correcting himself at the last second. Jimmy pretended not to notice, though he could see the man’s eyes were starting to close. At least he wasn’t continually looking over his shoulder as he had been in the pub.

Jimmy had dragged him to the library as soon as they’d eaten to stop him drinking, though it hadn’t been as hard as expected because Gadge was desperate to show him this site on the computers there. Now Jimmy could see why.

‘And he thinks all the others are just pretending to live on the streets?’ he asked Gadge, to try and keep the man focused. It seemed to work as he sat up straight and turned his full attention to Jimmy.

‘Aye. That’s why he calls his page Fake Homeless.’

Jimmy shook his head. They’d started talking about the recent spate of attacks on the homeless in Newcastle over breakfast – which in Gadge’s case, as was always the way recently, was mainly made up of liquid. At least half a dozen people they knew had been harassed in one way or another, and one or two of them badly beaten, including Gandalf, a regular at the Pit Stop who, though being tall and having a long beard like the guy from the Lord of the Rings movie, had actually got his name from the card tricks that he occasionally entertained people with when they were eating their scran.

Jimmy glanced across the room to make sure Deano was still in his class. He could see him through the glass walls, sitting near the front, rapt with attention as Aoife, the librarian, spoke to the small group. The kid had managed to shelve his ADHD for the time being, though maybe he was just terrified of incurring Aoife’s wrath; she was a friendly but formidable woman. Even Gadge had been known to button his lip around her.

‘Am I boring you?’ Gadge said, grumpily.

‘No, man, just checking on Deano.’ Jimmy returned his attention to the screen. ‘I don’t get it,’ he went on. ‘Why are they doing this?’

‘The prick who runs the site thinks the homeless figures are part of some scam to get more funding,’ Gadge explained. ‘He reckons the council get funded per head which means it’s in their interest to overstate the numbers. So they don’t care whether people are genuinely homeless or not and don’t do anything to clear them off the street.’

Gadge waved a hand at the photos, clipping the edge of the screen as he did. His perspective was clearly all over the place.

‘And another thing,’ he rambled on. ‘He also believes that most of these people live in a comfortable semi outside the city and can’t be arsed to get a proper job cos they can get two hundred quid a day begging. Apparently they just pop into town every day, drop themselves down in a doorway somewhere, stick a cap on the ground with a sign and Bob’s your uncle.’

‘So he thinks they’re commuters?’

‘Aye. Man’s a nutcase.’

Jimmy laughed. That was pretty rich coming from Gadge, the man normally saw conspiracies everywhere. Aliens built Stonehenge. Tick. The Queen was descended from lizards. Obviously. A particular favourite of his was that Paul ­McCartney had died in 1966 and had been replaced by a lookalike who took over his role in the Beatles and had been pretending to be him ever since. So if Gadge thought this was crazy then it was really fucking crazy.

‘Who did you say he was?’

‘He’s called Archie Simons; he owns a bar in the centre of town. Reckons the numbers of people on the streets are driving the punters away. If you saw the price he charges for beer you’d know that’s bollocks. It’s mostly shite lager as well. He even wants the Pit Stop closed down because he thinks that offering free food attracts the homeless to the city.’

‘That’s a bit arse about face, isn’t it?’

‘You’d think so, wouldn’t you? But it’s all about the bottom line for Simons.’

‘He’s just doing it because he thinks it’s costing him money?’

‘Obviously. You always have to follow the money, man. That’s why they killed McCartney.’

Jimmy laughed.

‘Same with Elvis, I suppose?’

Gadge gave him a sympathetic look. ‘You think Elvis is dead?’

Jimmy didn’t bite. He knew when he was having the piss taken out of him, he’d had plenty of practice where Gadge was concerned. The man may have been shit-faced but he still had his wits about him.

‘Seriously though, you think this site is why our lads are getting beaten up in the street?’ Jimmy asked.

‘No doubt. This gives all the nutters a licence to kill. It’s like porn for psychopaths.’

‘Can’t the police get it taken down? It’s incitement to violence.’

‘I doubt it. Divvn’t you read the news, bonny lad?’

It wasn’t a genuine question; he knew fine well that Jimmy didn’t.

‘Facebook claim to believe in free expression and it’s hard to get them to take anything down. If it had existed back in the 1940s Hitler would have a page. And a hell of a lot of followers.’

Jimmy sighed. He didn’t really understand what had happened to the world. One day he took his eye off the ball and the next it had changed completely; people’s lives were an open book and everyone was talking to themselves in the street. Technology had a lot to answer for. Gadge poked him in the chest.

‘Ya knaa what we should do, right, rather than ganning to the polis?’ Gadge continued. He often became more Geordie when he’d had a few.

‘No, but I’m sure you’re going to tell me.’

‘You and I should pay this wanker Simons a visit and kick the living shite out of him.’

5

‘What’s wrong with this picture?. . .