I have no blood left! I’m like a vampire’s victim after it’s feasted!’
‘Don’t make it more difficult than it is, Vince.’ (Why not?) ‘You’ll get a good redundancy package.’
Good, my arse, Vince thought. It wouldn’t keep him going for a year. The universe was having a laugh at his expense. An unemployed divorced man nudging fifty – was there a lower life form on the planet? A year ago he was a fully functioning human being – husband, father, worker – now he was redundant, in every sense of the word. A scrap at the bottom of the fryer.
‘Get a move on, Vince!’ Tommy Holroyd’s voice boomed in his ears, interrupting his thoughts. ‘Thirsty men here.’
‘Did you hear the news?’ Tommy asked casually as they sat at a table near the window that had a great view of the fairway. (Tommy always got the best table, the club’s female staff liked him.) ‘Someone said that Carmody’s up for early release. They’re going to let him out on licence.’
‘Jesus,’ Vince said. ‘How did he wangle that?’
‘Compassionate grounds. His wife’s dying. Supposedly.’ Tommy and Andy exchanged a look that Vince found hard to interpret. Both Bassani and Carmody had been members of the Belvedere. They were never mentioned at the club now, but their ghosts still lurked somewhere in the shadows. They had left something tainted behind, a question mark over everything they’d touched. And, of course, there’d always been rumours of a third man. Was it someone who was still here? Vince wondered, casting his eye around the clubhouse, alive now with alcohol and the leisurely exchanges of the self-satisfied. Vince had never really felt like he belonged here, even less so now that he had had his own fall from grace.
Bassani and Carmody had been charged with awful things, the kind of things that made Vince feel sick to think about, mostly to do with underage kids. There’d been all kinds of accusations – ‘parties’ that had been held, children that had been ‘supplied’, trips abroad to somewhere ‘special’ that they owned. A black book that contained the names of judges and bankers and policemen. The great and the good. Not to mention corruption: they had both spent years in local government. Most of it hadn’t been proved, just (just!) indecent assault on underage girls, prostitution of children and possession of child pornography. It was enough to send them down, or at any rate to send Carmody down, because Bassani had hanged himself in Armley Gaol while on remand. Carmody had been found guilty on all counts and been shipped off to Wakefield Prison, still protesting his innocence. Neither of them gave up the contents of the little black book, if it existed at all.
‘I heard,’ Tommy said, ‘that Carmody’s sick.’
‘Who told you that?’ Andy asked.
‘A little bird. Or quite a big bird – that retired ACC who drinks in here.’
‘The tall bloke with the gay beard?’
‘Yeah, that one. He says Carmody’s not got long left. He’ll be eligible for parole in a few months and wants out early. Says there’s talk of him making a deal.’
‘Deal?’ Andy said sharply. ‘What kind of deal?’
‘I dunno,’ Tommy said. ‘Naming names, maybe.’
‘Who?’ Vince asked, trying not to be left out of the conversation. ‘Like the third man?’
Both Tommy and Andy turned to look at him as if they were seeing him for the first time that evening. It took a beat before Tommy laughed and said, ‘The third man? That’s a film, isn’t it, Vince?’
Tommy and Andy exchanged another look, one that entirely excluded Vince. Friend friends.
Holding Out for a Hero
As soon as he got home Jackson stripped off his sodden clothes and threw them in the washing-machine, then he stepped into the shower and blasted himself with hot water. It might be summer but a dip in the North Sea was still enough to give you hypothermia.
It felt good to be back safely on land. The sea really wasn’t his element, Jackson would take earth over water any time. Good to be in a nice warm cottage, too. Logs in the wood store, honeysuckle round the door. The cottage was on an estate dating back hundreds of years to when the Normans appropriated this land. Everything well kept. Jackson liked that. It wasn’t where he would have predicted that he’d end up. Not that he had necessarily ended.
The cottage was set back three hundred yards from the sea, tucked in at the end of a small valley, a cleft in the