Silent Voices

CHAPTER ONE

SIMON RIDLEY SAT at the window and stared out at the seething darkness of King’s Cross. His torso was bare; he’d spilled some wine on his shirt earlier, when he’d been preparing a late dinner, and it was warm enough in the flat that he had not bothered to put on a clean one. The July sky was clear and the thin, fragile clouds drifted like skeins of semen in bathwater.

The room was dark, too. He had not turned on the lights. The dinner he’d made sat cold and untouched in a bowl on the kitchen counter, the pasta stiffening and the tomato and garlic sauce congealing like old blood. He rubbed his face with his hands, and realised that he needed a shave. His head felt emptied, hollowed out.

A creased, padded manila envelope lay on the dining table before him, and he tried his best not to look again at the printed handwriting. The package had been posted here, to his home address, rather than the office, and it had arrived after he’d left for work. So he’d only seen it when he got back a few hours ago, after leaving the office early because of the overnight car journey he had scheduled.

The book sat next to the discarded packaging, the outer edges of the cover slightly blackened, perhaps by fire. The title was illegible, the author unknown. But he knew what the book was. Once, a long time ago, it had belonged to Simon. He had owned it in another lifetime.

The book was called Extreme Boot Camp Workout by Alex ‘Brawler’ Mahler. It had once belonged to Simon’s father, a man who enjoyed keeping fit more than he liked spending time with his family. Simon had lost track of the book years ago, when he left home to come to London. But now it was here, back in his hands.

A helicopter hummed past his window, miles away but still visible in the crisp evening sky. Simon turned his head and watched it go by, reminded of something he had seen or been told of a long time ago but could not quite grasp with any level of clarity right now — something to do with hummingbirds.

He reached out and touched the other item that had been inside the envelope along with the book: a single immature acorn, its shell caught in the process of darkening from green to brown. Carved roughly into the shell were his initials: SR. His fingers traced the letters, and then he pulled his hand away, as if he were afraid to touch the thing for much longer than a few seconds.

His laptop sat open on the table, its screen the only bright spot in the room. The web browser displayed an article from the Northumbria Times newspaper. It was old news, from before Christmas. November, to be exact: almost nine months ago. He couldn’t even remember what he’d been doing back then. Lately his life seemed to be running away from him, leaving him with vague, unsubstantial memories of business meetings and social events, deals and parties and random encounters with people who held little interest for him.

The article was about a fire on a housing estate in Northumberland which the locals called the Concrete Grove. Simon had grown up there, and left as soon as he was old enough to get out on his own. But despite him not setting foot back there in the best part of fifteen years, the place had never really left him.

You can take the boy out of the Grove…

According to the reporter a small gym owned by a local gangster had been set alight, and the fire had killed two people: the owner, Monty Bright, and one of his associates, a man called Terry Bison. Both men’s bodies had been so badly disfigured in the fire that they could only be identified by partial tattoos and dental records. The second man had also been identified by his prosthetic arm.

A few columns down the page, printed as an unrelated side bar, there was mention of unidentified birds gathering over the local landmark known as the Needle. The old tower block — derelict for decades — seemed to have been the focal point for the congregation of tiny birds on the night of the blaze. Hundreds of them had hovered around the tip of the tower, remaining there for half an hour, and then disappeared once the blaze was under control. It was reported as a natural phenomenon, a weird bit of local colour.

A hard copy of both of these articles had been included in the envelope, along with the book. Their headlines were crudely circled in red pen by whoever had sent him the package. Simon had no idea why anyone would send him these now, so many months after the fire in the report. The postmark on the front of the envelope showed that it had been sent from the northeast. It didn’t take much to put the clues together and realise that someone from the Grove had sent him the information. Probably the same person who regularly sent him clippings from the local rag, leaflets taken from the Tourist Information Centre, and countless other pieces of seemingly random information. He’d been receiving this stuff for years. Even when he moved house — which was often — the anonymous sender somehow managed to track him down.

But none of this information was random — not really. It was all connected by geography.

Simon reached out and grabbed his mouse, double-clicking on the left button and opening a shortcut on his computer desktop. The icon was a link to an online server, where he stored all the information he collectively termed the Concrete Warehouse.

The rented space on the server acted as a depository for anything that he felt might be linked to his old home town — things he’d been sent by his nameless informant, information he’d gathered himself. He also had copies of everything on a portable hard drive that he kept hidden in a drawer of his desk back at the office. He had been updating these files for years, since he moved away from the area to live in the capital. The files weren’t exhaustive; he had probably missed a lot of things, mostly due to his inability to afford a decent computer until his business concerns had begun to do well. Before that, he’d done what he could, storing information when he was able. Only when he was in a position to buy good equipment had he switched to the server.

If asked, he would struggle to give a reason for doing this. It just felt right. He thought it was a thing he should do, an interest he should maintain. It was also for these vague reasons that he’d kept an eye out for the names of his old friends on the estate, particularly the two boys he’d shared his childhood with. The boys he had never made contact with since leaving the Grove. Only one of those names had proved fruitful, and he’d kept tabs on its owner for quite some time. The other name was as good as lost.

Simon ran his hand across the roughened cover of the book. It felt calloused, like old skin. He turned back to the window and stared out at the night. He picked up the book and opened it, thumbing through the pages at random. Scrawls and scribbles; doodles and diagrams. A page from an old A-Z map was pasted over the centre pages, and the word ‘Loculus’ was written in black pen and underlined several times on the back page; other words had been written, too, the handwriting different for almost every one.

He turned to page twenty-nine and stared at the words he knew he’d find there. His own handwriting, years out of date, looked like a fake, a forgery. But he had written the words himself, just after the single biggest event of his life. This single sentence was the reason he knew the book was the same one he had owned when he was ten years old.

The Concrete Grove is a doorway to Creation

He had never known what the phrase meant, but it had been in his head when he and his friends had emerged from the derelict tower block that morning, battered and bruised and covered in filth. Like a message in a bottle, it was meant for him: a warning, a declaration of war, a reminder from his childhood self that he could never escape the shadows of his past.

He shut his eyes and closed the book, placing the palm of his hand across the cover, as if trying to hide it from view. He felt like crying, but he wasn’t sure why. Sorrow grasped him, squeezing him tight.

“I need a drink,” he said. He was already feeling light-headed, two Martinis to the wind, and he had a long way to drive later. But he no longer wanted to drink alone; he needed company, even if it was the company of strangers.

Making a decision, Simon put on a T-shirt and checked his reflection in the mirror. Then he grabbed his coat, shrugging it on as he crossed to the door of the penthouse flat, went out onto the private landing and pressed the button for the lift. He watched the lift lights flash on and off as he waited, showing the elevator climbing through the floors. He experienced the absurd notion that somebody was in the lift, coming to meet him.

The lift doors opened, and after only a slight pause he stepped inside the empty chamber, hitting the button for the ground floor. Nobody else got on during the downward journey. It was late — the other tenants in the building were either entertaining at home, enjoying a quiet Friday evening in, or out and about in the pubs and clubs of the capital. He had picked this apartment block specially, because none of his neighbours was aged over thirty-five and they were all well-heeled executive types, with busy social lives. This was a young place, a vibrant environment, and the endless activity in the rooms and corridors helped him not to dwell on the past — or, at least, the parts of the past that he could remember with any real clarity.

Simon felt his mobile phone vibrating in his inside jacket pocket. He retrieved the phone and glanced at the screen. Natasha was trying to call him. He made no move to answer the call. He didn’t want to see her, not tonight. He needed to clear his head, not muddy it by having to deal with her demands and recriminations. Things had been strained lately, because of his fuzzy plans to return to the estate of his youth, and the fact that he had not invited her along for the ride had irked her, making her angry and paranoid. For reasons of her own, Natasha was unable to fully trust any man.

“Sorry, darling,” he muttered, and put the handset back in his pocket. Before he reached the ground floor, the vibrations ceased. Then, as if on cue, the lift doors opened. Simon stepped out into the lobby and walked towards the main doors. Norman, the aged security guard, was sitting at the front desk reading a slim paperback and ignoring the flickering bank of CCTV monitors to his left.

“Going back out, then?” He smiled and lowered his book.

“Yeah, I fancied a few pints. I couldn’t settle up there on my own… not tonight.” Simon liked the old man. He had a good face: all lines and creases, but with sharp bones underneath.

The security guard smiled and nodded, as if they were sharing a private joke. “Enjoy,” he said, and raised a hand, palm open, fingers splayed. “Have one for me, would you?” He made a slow fist, the sight of which set off tremors inside Simon’s mind.

“You bet. See you later, Norm.” Simon went through the sliding doors and stepped out onto the footpath, aware of an obscure fear dogging his heels. The night was warm; there was no breeze. It was going to be a hot summer. Part of him was glad that he’d be in the milder climate of Northumberland, while the rest of him was beginning to yearn for London before he’d even stepped outside her borders.

London, he thought, becomes a part of you. It slips under your skin without you knowing, and before long you ache at even the thought of leaving.

He headed southwest, in the direction of Caledonian Road, where his friend Mike owned a small bar called The Halo. An odd place, never quite full but rarely what would be called empty, and the rough-edged clientele made for an interesting and varied bunch. Simon felt safe there; he found himself drinking at The Halo more and more these days, as if it offered something he craved but could never quite identify.

Cranes dotted the skyline, rearing against the darkness like strange prehistoric beasts. The area was being renovated, cleaned up and made into a tourist-friendly location: the word was that the Borough of London wanted King’s Cross to be a destination itself rather than simply a way station for weary travellers on their way to somewhere else. The old porn shops and stripper bars were slowly being forced out of business, and in their place had sprouted chain sandwich bars and coffee shops. Simon knew this was a good thing, and that it could only raise the profile of the area, but he would miss the seediness he had always associated with the streets around the station.

The Halo was situated on the corner of Caledonian and All Saints Street — a street name he’d always found amusingly inappropriate. The windows bled light, and music and the buzz of conversation drifted from the open doorway. The jukebox was playing Bowie, which meant that Mike was back behind the bar after his trip to Dublin.

Simon walked into the bar, feeling a sensation of belonging. Mike was the closest thing he had to a real friend, and he was glad that he’d get the chance to say goodbye. He wasn’t sure why this was important, but he knew that it was.

“Hey, Simon! Good to see you.” Mike started pulling a pint of Guinness. By the time Simon reached his usual stool at the bar, the glass was being put down on the scarred bar top to settle.

“How was Dublin?”

Mike shook his head. His tousled blond hair was a mess, as usual, and his blue eyes glistened. “Not bad. The stag couldn’t hold his drink, the best man was pick-pocketed by a stripper, and half of us ended up going for an Indian meal instead of to the nightclub.” He smiled. “I think I must be getting old.”

“You and me both, brother. That Guinness settled yet?”

Mike topped up the glass and pushed it towards Simon, his eyes scanning the bar. It wasn’t packed, but there were enough customers in there to keep him busy, especially if they all wanted serving at once. Robert, a tall, thin transvestite who drank there every night, stood by the jukebox idly flicking through the playlist. He turned and nodded at Simon, then returned his attention to the music.

“On your own tonight?” Simon took a sip of his drink, closed his eyes and savoured the cold iron taste on his tongue. It wasn’t the best pint of Guinness to be found in London, but it was good enough.

“The girl’s meant to be here, but she hasn’t arrived yet. I haven’t even had a call to tell me she’s running late.” ‘The girl’ was a short, dark-haired Goth named Betty who helped out at The Halo three or four nights a week, and more often when the place got busy. Mike had a crush on her but had never got up the nerve to make a move.

“She’ll be here. She can’t keep away from you, man.” Simon grinned.

“Fuck you, rich boy.” Mike grabbed a rag and started wiping down the bar. He moved away for a moment to serve three middle-aged men double whiskies, and then returned to stand opposite Simon.

“I’m going away, mate.” Simon put down his glass. “Tonight.”

“Prison? I told you not to shag that girl — she only looked about twelve.”

Simon stared at his friend. “I’m serious. I might be gone… for a while.”

“Is anything wrong? Can I help?” Mike leaned across the bar, falling short of grabbing Simon’s arm but clearly thinking about it.

“No, no. It’s nothing like that. No trouble. Just some stuff from my past that I need to confront.” Simon tried to smile but he didn’t quite manage a convincing attempt. “I’m going home.”

“Northumberland? I thought you’d turned your back on that place for good. Didn’t think you’d ever go back.” Mike’s eyes were hard, like chips of ice. He was worried, and that made Simon feel sad. It was nice to have someone who cared, but in truth he’d always found this kind of close personal attachment difficult to deal with.

“Nor did I, but sometimes you have to go back just so you can move forward.”

“Ah, Confucius say, ‘you pretentious prick’.”

Simon laughed; the moment was broken. The tension vanished.

“What about Natasha?” Mike raised one eyebrow. It was a comical gesture, but hidden behind it was a serious question.

“I don’t know. I really don’t. One minute I can’t get enough of her, the next I wish she’d just leave me alone.”

“Nice problem to have, that. A Russian supermodel hassling you for sex.”

“Please. I know I sound like a complete tosser, but seriously it isn’t as neat and tidy as it sounds.”

“But is it as good as it looks?” Mike threw the rag at Simon, and then stalked the length of the bar to serve a heavily tattooed young woman in a low-cut vest top. He took longer than was necessary, revelling in the attention, and Simon smiled as the woman wrote something down — probably her telephone number — on a piece of paper before handing it to him, smiling, and walking away. When she sat back down at her table, her friends let out a muted cheer.

“Jesus, mate,” said Simon, when Mike returned to his spot behind the bar. “I’ve seen you do that with at least two or three women a week ever since I’ve known you, and still you’re too scared to ask Betty out on a date.”

“Tell me about it,” said Mike, shaking his head. “I’m an idiot. But what can I do? The girl brings out my inner awkward teenager.”

Simon had almost finished his pint. He drained the glass, listening to the comforting throb of noise in the bar. “Do me a favour?” he said, finally. “Keep an eye out for Natasha while I’m away. I don’t know how long I’ll be gone or what’ll happen while I’m there, but I’d like to know that someone I trust has her back.”

Mike nodded. “It goes without saying, mate. When she and all her model friends decide to pop in here for a few pints of bitter, I’ll make sure she keeps her hands out of Robert’s fishnets.”

“I’m serious. I have a bad feeling, a weird feeling about things. Just let me know if you hear anything. Or even if you don’t hear anything and just have a suspicion that something’s wrong. Just call me. You have my number, so use it.”

Mike nodded. “Okay, man. Don’t get so heavy.”

“Sorry. Things on my mind; I’m under a lot of pressure.”

“Yeah, it must be tough being a millionaire.”

A few minutes later, after exchanging several more insults and shaking hands, the two men parted. Simon left The Halo, feeling as if he were leaving a part of himself behind, lost in the beer-smelling shadows. He glanced over his shoulder as he walked out the door, and saw Mike staring at him, a strange expression on his face. When he realised that he’d been spotted, Mike did not smile; he did nothing but raise one hand in farewell.

Simon gave the thumbs-up sign and stepped out into the night, wishing that he could turn back and order another drink, then another, and another, until he was more drunk than he’d ever been in his life. But even then, he knew, he would be unable to cut the shackles and let himself loose from the ties that bound him, the invisible chains and ropes connecting him to a past he could barely even remember.

CHAPTER TWO

SIMON LIKED TO drive at night, especially if he was going a long way. The darkness soothed him, and he had trouble sleeping anyway so the constant motion of the motorway held a strange kind of appeal. Less traffic meant that he could open up the engine and get where he was going a lot quicker than during the day, and most of the night traffic was made up of long-distance heavy-goods vehicles, hauling God-knew-what to God-knew-where, so he got to sit in the fast lane and cruise past them all.

It took him a while to get out of London, but he made good time along the A1. By the time he passed Scotch Corner and the road turned into the A1(M) it was almost two in the morning. The dual carriageway was deserted; there weren’t even vans and trucks on this stretch of road. He felt sober now. Parts of the road were badly lit, so he drove through entire stretches of darkness, glancing at the flat black fields and the occasional stunted buildings.

He began to crave coffee, so decided to stop at an all-night service station with an annexe that was done up like an American diner from the 1950s. Chrome sides, signs proclaiming 24-Hour Eats! and a large pool of yellow light in which were parked a few cars and a motorbike.

Simon sat in the car until the song playing on the radio ended. It was one of his favourites: ‘No Alarms’, by Radiohead. When the song faded he reached out and turned off the engine. Silence rushed in to swallow the retreating sound.

He got out of the car and walked across the gravel car park, feeling oddly exposed in all that open space. He glimpsed a man sitting in the window seat of the diner, drinking Coke directly from the bottle and reading from a Kindle. There was a crash helmet on the table next to him; this must be the owner of the Kawasaki he’d parked next to. Simon paused at the door and looked up. The moon seemed impossibly distant, and the sky was sharp and clear, as if it were waiting to be filled. All the Hollywood alien invasion films he’d ever seen started with a sky like this one.

He grinned to himself and went inside the diner.

A skinny woman with dyed blonde hair stood behind the counter. She could have been anywhere between thirty-five and sixty. Her hair was dry, like straw, and the lines around her eyes and her mouth were as deep as stab wounds.

“Evening,” she said as Simon bellied up to the counter, grabbed a stool and settled in. “What can I get you?”

“I’ll have a coffee, thanks. No milk. No sugar.” He smiled at her and took out his phone, checked it for text messages. There was one from Natasha, just as he’d expected. He opened the message and read it: miss u already. call me when u can. x. He fucking hated it when she used text-speak. Simon was the kind of person who properly punctuated his texts, even to the point of using semicolons. He deleted the message and placed the phone on the counter.

“One coffee,” said the woman behind the counter. “No milk. No sugar.”

“Thanks,” he said, and grabbed the cup. It was almost too hot to hold. “That’s lovely.”

“Anything else?”

He took a sip, burning his lips. “Lovely,” he said again. “Yes, I suppose I could use a bite to eat. Do you have a sandwich, or something?”

“Whatever you like, love. We serve food 24-hours here. Hot and cold. Sweet and savoury.”

“How about a tuna salad baguette?”

“Speciality of the house.” She winked, and it was a grotesque sight. The eyelid moved slowly, as if it had been damaged. The motion reminded Simon of a faulty roller blind going down over a dirty window.

“Thanks,” he said, and spun around on his stool.

The motorcyclist in the window seat was still absorbed in his Kindle. A young couple sat at a table by the toilet door, holding hands across the tablecloth. They were staring into each other’s eyes but not saying much. The woman had been crying; her cheeks were grubby from the tears. The man was biting his bottom lip.

Further along the counter from where Simon was perched, an older man sat staring at his hands as they made knots on the countertop. He looked like he was puzzling over an intense riddle. He kept frowning, shaking his head, and then frowning again.

These places at night, Simon knew from experience, attracted only the lost and the lonely. Long after all the normal travellers — the families and the truckers and the salespeople — had got wherever it was they were headed, these troubled souls remained on the open road, and they were drawn here like moths to a guttering flame.

The woman brought out his baguette. It looked surprisingly good.

On the counter, his phone began to vibrate. Simon picked it up and looked at the screen. It was another text from Natasha. She was either out late with her modelling clan or sitting up unable to sleep and thinking about him. He supposed that Mike was right; he was in an enviable position. He was a rich man and had a Russian underwear model pestering him to settle down and make their relationship more stable. If he detached himself from his life, and examined it all like an outsider, it seemed perfect. But in reality, nothing had ever been perfect for him. Since his youth, Simon had felt dogged by something. Whatever good things happened, he was always expecting the other shoe to drop, or waiting for the hammer to fall… he only ever acknowledged the dark cloud to every silver lining. It was as if he were tainted by darkness, and where other people saw the connections in human relationships, all he ever saw were the cracks.

He switched off the phone and considered throwing it in the bin, severing all ties. He wasn’t sure why this urge came upon him, but he felt that it might be something to do with the surroundings and a hell of a lot more to do with the fact that he was going home.

Not for the first time, Simon admitted to himself that he was more comfortable in places like this diner, among people like these, than he was in his penthouse flat sharing space with his girlfriend. All his life he’d felt cast adrift, untethered, as if the normal rules of society did not concern him. He only ever felt at ease when he was in transition, between destinations; he only ever sought companionship from those who would not hang around for long. The single constant in his life was that there were no constants; he held to no routine and followed his whims as if they were sent to guide him.

He ate half of his sandwich, paid the bill, and got up from his seat, ready once again to answer the call of the road. Lights flared in the distance, and he couldn’t tell if they were approaching or moving away. As he drove the car past the diner’s windows, the woman behind the counter stared at him. She lifted a hand, as if to wave, and then looked at the hand as it hung in the air, unmoving. Her expression was troubled; she didn’t know why she had begun the gesture. By the time she worked out what to do with her hand, Simon was leaving the diner behind him to rejoin the dark stretch of dual carriageway.

The rest of the journey unfurled just as smoothly. Before long, Simon found himself driving past the familiar landscape of Birtley and Low Eighton before Antony Gormley’s Angel of the North statue reared majestically into view.

Simon felt a vague tugging sensation inside his chest as he watched the statue rise above him, as if the hill upon which it stood were slowly lifting away from the earth. The Angel was a massive, imposing structure, twenty metres tall and fifty across the wings. The blank face of the statue gazed impassively, overseeing the region like some cold, emotionless deity.

Simon pulled over into a lay-by and parked the car facing the hill. He switched off the engine and stared through the windscreen, feeling strangely attracted to the controversial structure. He remembered the uproar when it was first conceived; how a lot of people had spoken out about the faux rusted effect on the metal figure, and complained at the waste of the million pounds it had cost to create and erect. But now, all these years later, the figure had become an icon, an emblem of the northeast. Simon had always thought the Angel an unsettling sight. Its straight, razor-edge wings, the rigid stance, and the suggestion of the figure looking on in disdain… it was as creepy as it was compelling. He wasn’t sure if he loved the thing or loathed it.

“So I guess this means I’m home,” he whispered, staring at the Angel. The dark sky offered a dramatic backdrop, and the thin clouds and the distant stars seemed to retreat from the figure, afraid to get too close. As Simon watched, he was overcome by the sensation that the hulking figure was just about to move, that it was going to turn its massive rusty head and gaze down at him, judging him unworthy of entry into the land where he had been born, the place where his forefathers had set down their roots and carved out a life for themselves. He became convinced that the two-hundred-tonne metal figure was poised to shift, tilt, and then perhaps tear its feet from the concrete foundations in order to chase him, crush him, and finally send him back into the bosom of the earth from which he had sprung…

He shook his head, smiling. “Jesus. I must be going mad.” He gripped the steering wheel, clenching his fingers around it. He left the car, not bothering to lock it, and entered the site of the statue. He climbed the hill, feeling drowsy yet energised, as if the air up here were fresher and cleaner than that on the road.

When he drew level with the elevated feet of the Angel, he reached down and touched the rough metal. He expected to feel something — anything: a shudder along his spine, an itching at the back of his neck — but nothing happened. He remained unmoved. The feelings he’d experienced back at the car, whatever they meant, had deserted him, and all they left behind was a curious emptiness.

“You don’t want me, do you? I’ve come home, and you don’t even care.”

The Angel did not respond.

Simon sat down between its feet and stared at the sky. There was no light yet visible at the edge of the horizon, and for a moment he felt that he might never see daylight again, that he was trapped inside some endless night, populated by lonely waitresses and heavy metal sculptures. Then, sighing, he got to his feet and walked back down the hill to the car, feeling as if the giant figure had slowly twisted at the waist to watch him depart. He paused, stood still, suddenly too afraid to turn back and take a look. Then, allowing the feeling to pour through him and out the other side, he finally glanced behind him. The Angel had not moved.

“Of course not,” he whispered, trying and failing to smile. He hurried the rest of the way to the car, and once he was inside he locked the doors before starting the engine.

He’d be home soon. In half an hour he’d reach Morpeth. From there it was less than twenty minutes to the Concrete Grove, where God knew what was waiting for him.

The Angel receded in his rear-view mirror as he drove further north. It did not move, nor did it register his departure. It was just a hunk of metal parts. A grim angel of broken promises standing at the border of a land whose dreams had always been dark and restless.

CHAPTER THREE

BRENDAN WAS DOING the hourly rounds. His lower back ached from sitting in his chair and he was feeling sorry for himself because of the way Jane had been acting earlier that evening, but the work had to be done. The work always had to be done.

He walked one more circuit of the Needle, feeling the rash across his shoulders bristle as he stepped into the tower block’s night-time shadow, and then turned back towards the squat, modular grey shell of the Portakabin that served as the on-site security station. The stars looked impossibly tiny in the black night sky, and the moon hung there like a polished silver coin left underwater: vague, almost ghostly.

Brendan heard a sound behind him, coming from the tower block. He turned, waving his torch at waist level so that the beam skittered across the base of the structure. Nothing moved. He saw rampant weeds hugging the concrete, debris and litter on the uneven ground, and a lot of building material that had been dumped over the years when previous refurbishment or development projects had been abandoned.

The sound came again. This time it was louder, and he thought that he might be able to pinpoint its source. One of the ground floor windows — the ones with steel security shutters over them. Several of the shutters had been replaced when the site was shored up and the perimeter fence erected, but others had been randomly removed. He wasn’t sure why; it seemed a silly thing to do, especially in this rough and rundown area, where putting up a barrier was tantamount to an invitation to break and enter for the local street kids.

“Hello?” He felt stupid saying it, but what else could he have called?

There was no reply.

Brendan walked slowly towards the Needle, his torch beam slicing through the darkness to illuminate parts of the whole: a sealed door, a barred window, a cracked wall, a plastic bin leaning against a pile of bricks.

“This is private property. I’m legally obliged to remove you from the premises.” More empty words. He wished that he had a dog with him, but the security firm wouldn’t pay for him to do the dog-handling training, even though he’d asked them countless times. When he’d asked for a partner to accompany him on the night shift, his boss had just laughed and told him to “man up” and “grow a pair.”

They were real investors in people, Nightjar Security Services…

Hearing nothing but the late-night urban lullaby of barking dogs, distant voices and revving engines, Brendan moved closer to the side of the building. He flashed his torch across the wall, looking for an aperture by which someone might have gained entrance to the place. The graffiti was illuminated briefly: swear words and sex words and obscure gang tags sprayed in blood-red paint. None of the security shutters had been interfered with; everything seemed secure. He walked along the wall, then turned and advanced along the side of the Needle. He did another complete circuit before finally coming to a halt beside the main doors.

Brendan stepped forward and tried the handle. He wasn’t expecting the door to open, so when it did he simply stood there, staring at his hand as it pulled the door wide.

“Shit,” he muttered, wondering if he had forgotten to lock it.

Now that he’d discovered the way in, he knew that he couldn’t walk away without inspecting the interior of the building. He didn’t like it in there. Apart from the fact that it was a spooky old building, and he was alone here at night, there was the part of his past that he never liked to think about. The time when he and two of his friends had come here, and everything since had turned sour.

Everything.

Sometimes he felt that whatever had happened to them that night had stained his life, each day that followed becoming steadily darker as a direct result of them coming here, to the Needle. And the end point, the final blackness, lay just up ahead, at the end of his days, waiting for him like an open mouth.

Brendan’s throat was dry. He tried to swallow but it was difficult.

There came another sound from deep inside the building: a short, sharp impact, like something being thrown against the wall.

“Shit.” He said it louder this time, but the curse brought with it little bravado. Brendan was scared, and there was no way of ignoring that fear. So instead he embraced it, tried to take strength from his terror. For a second he could even pretend that it was working.

Brendan had been inside the Needle many times since the childhood experience that even now he struggled to remember; he had fought long and hard to conquer his fear of the place, and had finally arrived at a state of compromise. He was physically able to enter the tower block, but he would never feel truly at ease within its walls: his psyche began to tremble whenever he walked there, and he knew the footsteps he heard echoing around him as he did so were not necessarily his own.

Brendan pushed through the main doors, feeling as if he were taking a step backwards through time, drawing close to an event that he could never quite grasp and claim as his own. A soft breeze stroked his cheek; dust drifted in the dimness; tiny sounds seemed to move towards him from all sides.

“If you don’t get the hell out of here, I’m calling the police. There’s a fast response time. They’ll be here before you can even get past me to the door.” He tried to sound brave, to make his words seem fierce, but all he felt was small and lonely, like a little boy trying to act like a TV tough guy. He didn’t even have his two-way radio; he’d left it back in the security cabin.

More sounds emanated from the depths of the building. There was definitely someone else in there, moving around on the ground floor. He tightened his grip on the torch, the only weapon in his possession. It was heavy, rubber-coated, and once, on another job, he’d knocked someone unconscious with a blow to the head. He’d been trained in subduing an opponent, but wasn’t what anyone would call a natural fighter. He knew some basic technique, but that was all. If he came up against a hard man who knew what he was doing, then Brendan would have no chance.

He peered into the dimness, trying to make out shapes. There was evidence of someone staying here: an armchair, a row of old television sets, all turned to face the wall, several heaps of what looked like clothing, a burst mattress, the remains of a kebab and its wrapper scattered across the floor. The walls, when he flashed the torch beam across them, were covered with graffiti: gang tags and obscure band names, phone numbers that you could call if you wanted a blowjob. The air smelled of hops and old cannabis fumes. The floor was covered with all kinds of loose material, and for a moment he caught a whiff of what smelled like shit.

He stared at the doorway ahead of him, and it was only after the figure crossed the space from left to right that he realised he’d seen someone.

Brendan twitched in shock; a delayed reaction, a strange little side-step because his body was unsure how to react. “I’m armed!” He gripped the torch even tighter, hoping that he would not have to use it — or if he did, that he managed to get in the first blow and it was hard enough to count.

The figure crossed the doorway again, a dark silhouette moving this time from right to left. It moved with a staggering gait, as if whoever it was had been drinking heavily.

It’s a doper, he thought. He’s stoned and doesn’t know where he is.

He relaxed slightly, more sure of himself now that he could put a name to his fear. Drug users had been known to break into the Needle to shoot up or smoke crack; kids sometimes came here to fuck; once or twice the most desperate transients had even popped in for a night’s sleep.

“Show yourself. Come into the main space here, and I’ll escort you off the premises. If you do not comply, I will be forced to call for police back-up and you will be arrested.” He thought that he sounded like some sad old rent-a-cop: a pathetic character in a shitty movie. “This is private property. You are trespassing.”

The figure stumbled back into view. It was thin, unsteady on its feet, and had now turned to face the doorway.

“That’s right. Just come through here and we can sort this out the easy way.”

Brendan flicked his wrist to bring the torch beam around, so that he might highlight the figure. The man stood framed in the doorway, his clothes dirty and ragged, his hands clutching the shattered wooden frame, and his face a white featureless mass hovering above his narrow shoulders.

“Shit.” Brendan stepped backwards, almost tripping on a pile of something directly behind him. “What the fuck?” The torch beam danced across the walls, striping the figure as it advanced through the doorway and into what used to be the main entrance hall, but was now just a vast space filled with junk.

The man moved slowly. His arms hung loosely at his sides. His bloated white head was rigid, locked facing forward. He had no eyes. No mouth. Just a tattered white mask, an image from a nightmare…

…and then Brendan realised that the man’s face was bandaged. He was limping; he wasn’t drunk or stoned, but injured. He dragged his feet across the filthy floor, twisting his hips awkwardly and moving towards the sound of Brendan’s voice.

“Are you okay, mate?” Brendan no longer felt threatened. The man was unwell. He had clearly come here to hide his infirmities away from the world. Cursed with his own medical condition, this was a reaction Brendan could understand — he empathised with the man’s desire to hide, to lock himself away from a mocking world.

He remembered the names he’d been called at school: Rashback, Beam-Me-Up-Spotty, Dot-to-Dot… and a hundred more, each worse than the last. The skin across his shoulders and the top of his back cried out in sympathy; his pain reached out to this other man’s agonies, like a hand across a chasm.

The man with the bandaged face made a low, soft sound, somewhere between a cry and a sigh.

“It’s okay, mate. I won’t hurt you. Come on; let’s get you out of here. I have food and drink back at the cabin.”

The man reached out a hand and it flailed in the air like a damaged bird.

Brendan grabbed the hand and tugged, helping the man across the detritus-covered floor. Close up, the bandages were surprisingly clean. They looked fresh, as if they’d been recently applied. Somebody somewhere was looking after this man, and they were making sure he kept his dressings clean. That was something, at least; it meant that he wasn’t completely alone in the world. There was someone to tend to his most basic needs, to treat him like a human being.

Brendan guided the man towards the door, feeling invisible eyes upon him as he turned his back on the interior of the Needle. He always felt this way, as if the building itself were watching him, waiting for him to slip up. He’d overcome his surface fears, but other terrors ran deeper, caught in the blood and the marrow. Some terrors could never be beaten, no matter how hard you fought against them.

“Come on, mate,” he said, as they left the building and returned to the relative safety of the night. “I’ll put the kettle on and we can have a little chat. Have you been living here?”

The man allowed himself to be led but he did not reply. He walked in silence, unable or unwilling to communicate. His hand was limp; the fingers felt boneless. His lumbering steps carried him wherever he was taken, and he acquiesced without as much as a whimper of protest.

Just as they reached the security cabin, Brendan heard the sound of a car engine as it cut out and tyres simultaneously coming to a halt on the gravel beyond the hoardings. He stopped, patted his companion on the arm, and left him there as he approached the front gate to the compound. Who was this so late at night? Drug dealers, using the place for their transactions? He stood at the gate and peered through the railings. There was a black 4x4 parked a few yards away where it had driven off the edge of Grove Street to stop just outside the pool of street light, and someone sat behind the wheel staring at the tower block. All he could see was the dark outline of a man or a slim, mannish woman: short hair, square chin, sunken patches where eyes should be.

Brendan turned on his torch and pointed it at the vehicle, trying to illuminate the person inside. The figure moved quickly, as if panicked, and the engine started up again. The tyres spun on the gravel, and the vehicle reversed at speed, heading towards the southern edge of Grove Crescent.

Some terrors, he thought again for no apparent reason, can never be beaten.

CHAPTER FOUR

“WHAT HAPPENED TO you?” Brendan was making tea. The camping kettle had boiled on the small portable gas-powered hob, and he’d poured it into two large mugs along with some long-life milk and teabags. He stirred the cups, waiting for the milky water to turn dark, and then he scooped out the bags and dumped them into the plastic carrier bag he used to collect his rubbish.

His guest sat at the small table in silence, staring at the wall.

“I know you, don’t I? I’ve seen you before.” Brendan picked up the mugs and carried them to the table. He placed one in front of the bandaged man and sat down in the plastic chair opposite. The furniture in the security cabin wasn’t exactly comfortable, but it was practical.

The man didn’t move. He just sat there. The bandages were wrapped tightly around his head and there were slits left for his eyes, nose and mouth. What little skin was visible looked raw and shiny, like badly healed scar tissue.

Scars.

That was it. Brendan suddenly knew who this was sitting in his cabin.

“You’re Banjo, aren’t you?”

The man twitched slightly at the sound of his name. He tilted his head sideways and glanced at Brendan, as if he’d suddenly realised that he was not alone.

“You’re the junkie… sorry, the bloke who escaped from the fire at that gym on Grove Street. I read about it in the papers. That loan shark Monty Bright and his mate died. You were seen in the area before the fire started, and everybody said you must have started it.”

Banjo’s eyes were shining. He looked like he might be crying.

“Did you? Was it you that started the fire?” Brendan remembered the news reports of Banjo scratching off his own face in the street, and his subsequent disappearance from hospital. Because of an eyewitness stating that Banjo was back in the Grove on the night of the fire, it was assumed that he’d been the one who burned down the gym, and that he had run from the scene when the sirens started.

Banjo turned his head away, glancing at the far wall. He couldn’t make eye contact; there was something he didn’t want to communicate.

“It’s okay, man. Let’s just get some hot tea down you. And a sandwich. Do you like ham and cheese?” He stood and crossed the room, retrieving his lunchbox from the bench near the window. He took out a small cling-filmed package, unpeeled the wrapping, and handed Banjo a sandwich. “There you go. Here — have them both.” He took out the second sandwich and handed it to his guest.

Banjo grabbed the food and began to stuff it into his mouth, without any consideration for manners. Brendan wondered when the guy had last eaten. It looked like it must have been days ago. “Here,” he said. “Have it all. There’s an apple in there, and a chocolate bar. Take it.”

Banjo took the lunchbox, glanced into it, and smiled at Brendan. His mouth, beneath the dressings, was twisted, but Brendan got the gist. He knew he was being thanked.

He watched Banjo eat, trying to discern the extent of his wounds through the bandages. He thought again of the news reports at the time — statements about a local drug addict trying to tear off his own face with his bare hands. Apparently he’d had some kind of seizure, and suffered brain damage as a result. When he walked out of the hospital, the police had issued an announcement that he wasn’t dangerous, but the public should be wary of approaching him. His mind had snapped.

“Jesus,” he muttered, watching as Banjo bit the apple in half with a single lunge of his jaws. He ate the lot: even the core. “You must be starving.”

He made another two cups of tea and sat back down, smiling. “You’re safe here. It’s okay; I won’t call the police. You’re not doing any harm, or causing any damage. I know that.” Brendan knew he was a soft touch; his wife, Jane, never missed an opportunity to tell him this. But better to be soft than hard as stone, like a lot of the other people he knew around here. If he could help someone out, he would. It was in his nature. He was, he supposed, a caring sort of person.

“So, what are we going to do with you, then? I mean, I can’t keep you here — in the hut. I’d get fired.”

Banjo was still eating. There was apple juice on his chin.

“Fucking hell, mate. You’re like a child. You should really be somewhere that people can help you.” Brendan felt such a wave of pity and compassion that he thought he might get up and hug the man. But he got himself under control and simply sat and stared, wishing that he could do something practical. When he was a kid, he’d been the most selfish little shit imaginable, but as an adult, he felt such empathy for those who suffered. He supposed it was something to do with that time when he and his friends had been taken. That’s what everybody had said: they’d been snatched. But the truth was that none of them could remember; all they knew was that they’d been building a tree house one Friday evening, and then they’d come staggering out of the Needle the following Monday morning, scratched and bloody and aching.

He didn’t like to think too hard about that time, but he knew that it was impossible to erase it completely from his mind. That weekend was part of him; it was a piece of his personal history. Sometimes, in the early hours, when he couldn’t sleep and Jane lay snoring beside him, he’d try to grab hold of the images inside his head. Something about a white mask with a beak, screams, shadows… and trees. Of all the things that came to him in the night, this image of huge oak trees was the strangest.

Massive oaks, all set out in a rough circle, with Brendan and his two best friends in the world sitting in the centre of that circle. Screaming.

But that was all he could hang on to before the images faded. However hard he tried, focusing intently on the pictures in his head, they still faded away. Perhaps it was for the best. The doctors had told his parents at the time that the boys had been ‘interfered with’, that someone had torn their anuses and mauled their genitalia. They’d been sexually abused. And none of them could remember a thing about it.

Brendan, Simon and Marty: not one single reliable memory between them. Brendan retained nothing but fuzzy mental pictures… soft-focus images from a dimly recalled film.

Banjo suddenly got to his feet, pushing away from the table and sending the chair scraping across the floor. The noise disturbed Brendan, pulling him from his thoughts. He glanced over at the bandaged man, and tried to smile in a reassuring way. “It’s okay, mate. Nobody can hurt you here.”

Banjo’s eyes blinked rapidly. He turned his head briskly from left to right, as if searching for something.

That was when Brendan heard the noise. It was a faint clicking, like someone shuffling a deck of cards or flicking the pages of a new glossy book. It sounded like it was coming from just outside the window. Brendan got up and crossed the room, all of a sudden afraid of the sound. It connected somehow with his vague memories of that night twenty years ago. The mind pictures stirred, like embers raked into a pit, and the clicking noise set them flaring up again into weak flames.

He’d heard the noise, or one very much like it, before. Back then; during that lost weekend.

“Clickety…” The word came out of his mouth before he was even aware of speaking it out loud. He stopped, turned, and looked at Banjo. The other man was backing away, moving towards the door. His hands were raised in front of him in a protective gesture, as if he thought Brendan might attack him.

“No,” said Brendan. “It’s okay. Just a noise. Out there, in the dark. It’s probably something blowing in the wind… a bit of sheet metal or something.”

Banjo shook his bandaged head. He’d reached the door now, and his back was pressed against it. Giving one final, vigorous shake of the head, he spun around, opened the door, and ran outside. The door swung slowly closed, and Brendan watched the slim, shattered figure of the junkie as he pelted towards the Needle.

The clicking sound had stopped. Outside, there was no wind. The night was calm.

“Clickety,” said Brendan again, but he had no idea what it meant. “Clickety.”

He walked over to the door, pulled it tight to the frame, and locked himself inside the cabin. He would not make another circuit of the site tonight, and he certainly wouldn’t be going anywhere near that damned tower block. Something had spooked him, and it was more than the noise, more than the word he’d uttered three times now. Perhaps it was the same unimaginable thing that had scared his guest enough to run back inside the ruined walls of the Needle, that somehow made him feel safe there?

Perhaps it was something they should all be afraid of; the whole estate, and everyone who lived here. Maybe it was a sign that something was coming. Something from the past: something that had always been there, biding its time and waiting for the right moment to return to finish what was started twenty years ago, when three boys had lost a slice of their lives and emerged at the other side bloodied, abused, and bearing much more than physical scars.

Brendan looked down at his feet and saw the large acorn on the floor. It was at the side of the door, as if Banjo had dropped it as he ran out of the cabin. The acorn was turned over onto its side, and roughly three inches long by an inch broad. The seed shell was turning brown but the acorn had not yet fully matured; it was still set firmly in its cupule.

Bending down to pick it up, he noticed some kind of markings on the acorn. When he examined it closely, he saw that there seemed to be two letters cut into the meat of the seed: B.C.

He felt dizzy, so straightened up, still clutching the acorn.

His name: Brendan Cole. Somebody — perhaps Banjo, perhaps someone else — had etched his initials into the acorn. The work was clumsy, childlike, but there was no doubt that the scratches were meant to stand for his name.

He pocketed the acorn, turned back towards the window and looked out into the darkness. His reflection stared back at him from the black glass. He looked thin, pale; a ghost of himself. The thought unsettled him even more, so he turned away. He was clenching his fist around the acorn inside his pocket. For some reason this disturbed him, so he took his hand out of his pocket and stared at his fingers. They were fine. Had he really expected them to be tainted in some way?

Brendan sat back down at the table and drank the rest of his tea. It was cold now, but he barely even cared. The rash on his back was burning. It felt like someone had laid a hot iron between his shoulder blades and pressed down on the handle, applying as much pressure as they could.

He couldn’t wait to get home and take off his shirt, have Jane apply a soothing balm to his pustules and cysts, and then go to bed and chase sleep so that he might put this strange night behind him.

CHAPTER FIVE

THE SUN WAS shining when Simon woke up late the following morning. Pale fingers of daylight reached for him through the window, clutching through the space between the curtains he’d neglected to close when he arrived at the flat last night.

He was sprawled face-down on top of the bed sheets, with his legs dangling off the side of the bed and his hands and forearms jammed under the pillows. His neck ached. His mouth tasted stale and salty, as if from the residue of bad takeaway food. He pushed himself off the mattress and stood before the full-length mirror, struggling to open his eyes. He had not slept long; after driving back from the Needle he remembered drinking a large whisky and then stumbling to bed.

He scratched his head and cupped his balls. Then, yawning, he headed towards the bedroom door, and went through into the bathroom. He brushed his teeth — twice, to remove that terrible taste — and sat down on the toilet. The seat was too small. He’d owned the flat for almost ten years, a bolt hole he’d never used until now, but had felt like a lodger as soon as he stepped inside. This was not his home. These unknown rooms did not readily accept his shape within their walls; the flat seemed to fight against his presence.

He flushed the toilet and took a long shower, trying to wash away the layers of exhaustion. Last night he’d driven right up to the hoarding that surrounded the Needle, parked the car, and stared at the portion of the old tower block that was visible above the timber boards. He knew the place well, but mostly from his dreams. He hadn’t set foot inside there for two decades — not since he and his friends had emerged from the building into early morning sunlight, blinking and stumbling as they walked hand-in-hand away from the centre of the estate.

The blood had stopped flowing, the scars had healed, but the damage done to their minds had sent shockwaves into their future — a future that had too quickly become the present. Even now, all these years later, he was afraid of cramped spaces and hated the way early evening shadows moved lazily in a dim room. The sound of rustling — bushes, leaves, even papers disturbed by a breeze through an open window — brought him out in gooseflesh.

He wondered how his friends had managed for all this time, living in the shadow of that building, and the darkness it generated. How had they survived the rest of their lives after the puzzling, nightmarish thing that may or may not have happened to them all?

Simon had built fragile barriers of wealth and success; his business deals and property developments formed a vulnerable defence against the blackness that he sensed radiating from this place like ripples on a pond. He had escaped, leaving the Grove when he was only sixteen; this distance alone had prevented the ripples from reaching him. But his friends had stayed behind, like ancient guardians or gatekeepers: holders of the flame. What coping mechanisms had they erected to protect themselves from the lack of memories, the lacuna in their recollections from that long-lost childhood weekend?

Once he was dressed, Simon made a cup of instant coffee. Black. There was no milk in the fridge; he’d forgotten to take some from his fridge back in London or pick some up at a service station last night, on his way here, even though he’d remembered to bring the whisky. He would need to go to the local supermarket for supplies, later, once he’d come to terms with being back here, right at the heart of his broken past.

After the coffee, he ate some stale biscuits he found in his briefcase, and then left the flat and checked the rental car hadn’t been broken into. The doors were secure; nobody had tampered with them. The alarm had not sounded during the night, but still, it paid to be sure.

Simon left the car where it was, parked at the kerb in a narrow lay-by, and walked west along Grove Road, tracing the perimeter of the circular streets at the core of the estate. Even this place, he noted, looked okay when the sun was shining. The sky was clear; the glare was powerful enough that he put on his shades, and the clouds were high and thin and wispy. Yet still, beneath the scene, he was aware of the darkness twitching.

Passing the north end of the old Grove End Primary School, he glanced through the railings. He’d gone to that school, had spent his infant years playing and dreaming inside its gates. He could not remember what he’d learned there, other than how to survive, but suspected that the lessons had served him well.

Last night, after he’d made his abortive drive-by of the Needle, Simon had attempted to explore the area around it and reacquaint himself with the streets he’d once known. But after years away from the estate, the Grove made him nervous. The sounds of revving motorcycle engines from the direction of Beacon Green, the loud voices carried on the night-time breeze, the barking of dogs, the intermittent wail of a car or a house alarm from one of the streets adjacent to the Arcade — these had all set his nerves on edge. So, instead, he’d retreated inside the flat and locked the door, watching the estate through the windows as he slowly unpacked the few clothes and belongings he’d brought along with him.

Now, during daylight hours, the threat was a lot less apparent. Yet still, as he walked the streets, Simon felt like a stranger, an interloper. He’d been away too long to consider himself a native, and he knew that if he tried to pass himself off as one they’d smell it on him like shit on the soles of their shoes. The people who lived in the Grove were insular; they had their own defences. There were good folks here, people simply trying to get on with their lives, but also a high proportion of scroungers and criminals. The trick was to recognise which was which and make sure you moved in the right circles.

So he walked with his shoulders hunched, and kept glancing over his shoulder. He didn’t want any trouble. Not here, not now. He’d paid his dues to this damned estate years ago, and he refused to allow it to take anything more from him than it had already stolen…

Brendan Cole lived in a small three-bedroom, semi-detached council house overlooking the Embankment. They were all the same, these properties: identical dwellings built for identikit families. Even the gardens looked similar, with their overgrown lawns, wild borders, and children’s bikes and scooters and trampolines littering the space like the detritus from a rowdy street party.

Simon crossed the road and stood in the bus stop adjacent to Seer Park, an old patch of ground that had once boasted new swings, a slide and a roundabout, but now had become a dumping ground for empty beer cans and fast food wrappers. The remains of the swings — a buckled, rusty tubular steel frame — looked more like a hangman’s gibbet than a plaything. He leaned against the clear PVC panel, squinting through the marker-pen mural of ancient graffiti, and watched the house.

He tried to remember what had been here before the bus shelter, and an image of an old-fashioned red telephone box came to mind. He’d used it to speak to girls so that his parents couldn’t overhear his conversations, and had once even phoned emergency services to report a traffic accident he’d witnessed from the same box.

After about twenty minutes, a woman with dirty-blonde hair pulled back into a severe ponytail — what he’d heard referred to as a ‘council-estate facelift’ — emerged from the front door. She was wearing white running shoes, baggy grey sweatpants and a voluminous purple sweatshirt with the words ‘Will Dance for Money’ printed across the front. She carried a large sports bag to the silver Citroen people-carrier parked on the drive, opened the boot, and placed the bag inside. She jogged back to the front door, closed and locked it, and then climbed into the car and started the engine.

Simon knew her. It was Jane Fell — Jane Cole, now — the girl he used to go out with, back in the day. A twinge of what might have been guilt or simply regret tugged at his guts. He knew that he’d done wrong by the young girl he had left behind, but he was glad that the woman she’d grown into had found someone to settle down with — even if it was one of his best friends.

He watched her from the bus shelter as she sat in the car fiddling with the dashboard stereo, looking for a song she liked. She used to be beautiful, but now she looked tired, worn out. She was old before her time. He knew that the Coles had kids, twins: a boy and a girl. He also knew that she worked part-time in a Pound Shop in Near Grove, just to help out with the bills. Her hair was a dull shade of yellow rather than the pure blonde it had once been. She was carrying two, maybe three, extra stone of weight. He guessed that she was going to the gym or a dancing class — which would explain the obscure slogan on her sweatshirt. He wished that he could walk over there, open the car door, and say hello. Just say hello to the girl he’d once loved, who was now trapped inside the body of a woman who looked too exhausted to even care.

Smiling — presumably she’d found the right song — she pulled out of the drive and turned left, heading back the way he’d come. Simon huddled inside the bus shelter, tilting his head down but still managing to keep track of her as she passed him by.

For a moment he felt stranded there, caught in a moment between the past and the present, but once the car had turned the corner and vanished from sight he was able to shake the feeling and break free. She was no longer the girl he had known. She had a life now, a family. He had his own story, too, and it was a tale of success and hard work, of money and models and penthouse apartments. They were both different people, now; they were not the kids they had once been. All that had changed, it was gone.

He turned his attention back to the house. The bedroom curtains were open wide, which meant that Brendan must be up and about. Simon checked his watch. It was 1:30 PM. Perhaps, like him, Brendan had trouble sleeping. Maybe he sat up drinking after his night shifts, trying to quieten his demons.

Simon left the relative safety of the bus shelter and walked across to the house. He stood on the pavement outside, feeling exposed, trying to see through the net curtains strung like giant grey cobwebs across the ground floor windows. He could not make anything out: the place might even be empty.

“Here we go,” he said, blowing air through his lips.

Simon walked through the gate and along the front path, took one hand out of his jacket pocket and knocked on the door. Then, impatient to get this over with, he rang the door buzzer. Through the etched glass panel, he watched a blurry shape appear at the far end of the hallway, grow closer, and finally reach out to open the door. He almost ran away then; his instinct was to bolt, to get the hell out of there and never come back. But he put his hands back in his pockets and stood his ground, remembering that they used to be friends. Best friends. He tried to focus on that fact more than any other, because it might just stop the man who was now opening the door from punching him in the face and kicking him into the street.

The man — short, with thinning fair hair, watery eyes and a nervous grin — opened the door and took a step back into the hallway.

“Hello, Brendan,” said Simon, tensing against a potential blow.

“Simon Ridley? Is it really you, Simon?” The nervous grin became a smile, and then faded, dropping from his face like a sheet pulled away from a corpse. His eyes narrowed; his cheeks tightened. “What the fuck are you doing here?”

“Yeah,” said Simon. “It’s good to see you, too.”

Brendan’s mouth was hanging open, his lower jaw slack and immobile. Simon had only ever seen this expression in films, and the sight of it now, in real life, was almost enough to make him laugh out loud. But he didn’t. He kept it all inside, because he didn’t want to alienate his old friend before they’d even had a chance to talk. He didn’t want to push too hard. “It’s been a long time,” he said, smiling. “Too long…”

Brendan seemed to compose himself; he shook his head, smiled, and took a step forward, onto the doorstep. “I suppose you’d better come in. We don’t want to stand talking out here. I’ll get us a couple of beers from the fridge.” He opened the door wide, turned away, and walked along the hall.

“Okay,” said Simon. He entered the house and closed the door behind him. He followed his host into the kitchen, where Brendan was leaning into the fridge to pull out two cans of bitter.

“Is this okay? I don’t drink anything stronger for breakfast.” He winked. It was a purely instinctive action, and the quip was probably one he’d used a hundred times before, but the very fact that he was able to make light of the situation made Simon relax.

“That’s fine,” said Simon. “Thanks.” He reached out and took a can, popped the ring pull and dropped it into the bin by the back door. The kitchen was small and neat, with modern silver appliances, a pine breakfast bar, and varnished wooden cabinets. “Nice place.”

Brendan took a long swallow from his can, burped quietly, and then looked around the kitchen. “It’s okay, I suppose. Probably a lot different from your millionaire’s mansion, though.” He saluted Simon with his beer can.

Simon shook his head. “I live in a small flat. I have a tiny kitchen, two cramped bedrooms, and a view of grungy London streets. It’s hardly Buckingham Palace.”

“And a mattress stuffed with fifty pound notes, no doubt.” Brendan winked to show that he was joking. “Come on through. We can talk in the living room.”

The other downstairs room was twice the size of the kitchen, and dominated by a huge flat-screen television with cables streaming out of the back to connect the set to three separate games consoles. The Mario Brothers were paused mid-leap on the screen, their legs flickering, as if they were desperate to start moving again. There were framed landscape prints on the walls and family photographs on the mantelpiece, and the room contained too much furniture. A pine bureau was pushed up against the party wall, a bookcase stood packed with ornaments, and a pair of leather sofas and matching recliner armchair were gathered around a coffee table in the centre of the floor.

Brendan sat down on one sofa, so Simon took the other. They stared at each other at an angle. Suddenly Simon forgot why he’d come here. He’d run out of things to say before he had even said anything. He’d lost his bearings, and forgotten where the door was. The room was a box with a sealed lid. The net curtains at the window were opaque; he could see nothing of the outside world through them. They were spider-webs blocking his view.

He opened his mouth and said the first thing that came to mind: “How’s the new job?”

Brendan put down his can on the shelf by his arm. “How do you know I just got a new job?”

“Because you’re working for me. Well, specifically, I contracted the company you work for to keep an eye on one of my investments.” The room returned to its proper dimensions. Sunlight brightened at the window.

“Nightjar Security Services? Why them? Why us?”

“Because it’s the company you work for.”

A silence threatened to overwhelm the two men. They drank from their cans simultaneously, arms rising and falling in syncopation. Brendan crushed his can in his fist. The sound — a loud creaking — made Simon think of something that he couldn’t quite grasp. It sat there, the image, crouched in the shadows at the back of his eyes, waiting to be seen.

“Why are you here?” Brendan’s voice was low, almost a whisper. He put his empty can on the floor by his feet. “After all these years. Why have you come back?” He reached up and scratched the back of his neck, wincing as he moved his hand back and forth across the same spot. “What’s left for you here?”

Simon finished his own drink. “Any chance of another?”

Brendan nodded. He stood up, picked up his own can and grabbed the one from Simon’s outstretched hand, and went through into the kitchen.

Simon rubbed his cheeks. His hands felt dry, dusty. Was he doing the right thing by coming here? Did he even know what the hell he was doing?

“Here.” Brendan was standing next to him. Simon had not even heard him come back into the room.

“Cheers.” he took the can, opened it, and drank. His head felt light, as if he were on the way to getting pissed. One can of weak bitter and he was already dizzy. It was pathetic.

“So?” Brendan looked at the television screen, frowning at the Mario Brothers, as if he’d only just noticed them. He grabbed a remote control from the floor and turned off the set.

“I got all your little gifts.” Simon sat forward and took off his jacket, setting it down next to him. He was suddenly hot. The air was heavy.

“What are you on about?” Brendan sat back on the sofa, stretching out his legs. “I haven’t sent you a thing. I don’t even know your address — just that you live in some swanky gaff in London. Why the hell would I send you anything, man? You walked out of here and never looked back. You didn’t even say goodbye. Not to me, or to Marty, or to–” He stopped himself from saying his wife’s name, gritted his teeth, exhaled. “Not to anyone.”

“I know, and I’m sorry. I should have at least spoken to you before I left, but it all happened so quickly. My mum died, my dad moved to Whitby to be with his psycho older brother, and the only other option I had was to run away. I couldn’t stay here…” He didn’t want to complete the thought.

“We did. None of us had a choice.”

“You all had a choice — we all did. Nobody forced you to stay here.”

Brendan didn’t respond. He looked at his can, staring at the rim, into the small dark hole.

“Listen, I didn’t come here to stir up bad feelings. I’ve come to apologise for leaving things the way I did, and for not keeping in touch.”

Brendan sighed. The sound was too loud; it seemed faked. “What did you mean about gifts? What am I supposed to have been sending you? Letter bombs?”

Simon put one hand on his jacket. He squeezed the leather. “The newspaper clippings, the emails. The little reminders of what’s been happening here for all these years, while I’ve been away.”

“Sorry, mate.” Brendan pursed his lips. “No, that wasn’t me. I’d tell you if it was. I’ve had other things on my mind, like trying to raise a family, keep a roof over our heads, and hold down a shitty job. You know — crap like that.” He crushed his second can. “Another?” He lifted the can to eye level and jiggled it, a small challenge.

“No, thanks. I haven’t eaten properly since last night. I’ll be pissed if I have another.”

Brendan shrugged. “Please yerself. All the more for me, then.”

“So it wasn’t you? You didn’t send me any of those things?” Simon stared at the other man, into his eyes, looking for deceit.

“Why the fuck would I bother? Who the fuck are you, anyway, you self-centred prick? Do you think that all the time you’ve been away all I’ve done is think about you, collect things, and then post them to you? Get real, man. This might come as a bit of a shock, but you’re not the centre of the universe. You never were.”

Simon pushed his hand into his jacket pocket, fumbled around for what he was looking for, and then withdrew his hand, the fingers clasped around an object. “So,” he said, reaching out towards Brendan. “You didn’t send me this, either?”

Brendan looked at the acorn sitting on Simon’s palm. His face went slack, like the blood had suddenly run from his head and into his feet. He was pale; his eyes began to water.

“Did you?” Simon didn’t break eye contact.

“No,” said Brendan, standing. “No, I didn’t.” He went back through to the kitchen and returned with yet another can of beer. This one he drank quicker, as if he were trying his best to get drunk.

“What’s wrong?” Simon closed his hand over the acorn. “You look like you’ve just seen a ghost.” It sounded like something he’d said before, a hundred years ago.

Brendan lowered his can and stared at Simon. “A ghost or a monster…”

Simon’s chest tightened. He squeezed his fist around the acorn. A sense of déjà vucame upon him, and he felt ten years old again, standing in the shade of the trees on Beacon Green. His cheeks were warm and wet; he was crying and he didn’t know why. He quickly wiped the tears away with the back of his hand.

Brendan was standing at the centre of the room, the backs of his knees pressed against the coffee table. It looked as if that was the only thing stopping him from swaying.

“Maybe I will have another drink,” said Simon. The world tipped back onto its axis and the muscles in Simon’s chest slackened, allowing him to breathe again.

“No,” said Brendan, shaking his head. He took a step forward, away from the coffee table, and his legs almost buckled. He staggered slightly, a man in need of support, and then moved across the room and grabbed the wall. “No, I think you need to leave.”

“We have to talk, mate.” Simon stood and made a move towards his old friend, but then thought better of it. He stood there, watching and waiting, wishing that he knew what to do. “Please. I have something I need to run by you — it’s important. It might help us all. Me, you… Marty: the three of us, the Amigos. Remember that? The Three Amigos? It’s what we called ourselves back then, when this fucking place was the whole wide world. Our club. Our gang. The Three Amigos.”

Brendan closed his eyes. He was scratching at the top of his back with his free hand. His lips formed a tight line; his entire body was tensed, rigid.

Simon persisted: “Seriously. This might be the thing we’ve all needed for twenty years. Maybe even a way out, a way back, a way beyond whatever it is that none of us can remember.”

“I can’t, not now.” Brendan opened his eyes. His shoulders were hunched, as if he were in pain. He spoke through gritted teeth. “Give me your number. I’ll call you later — we can meet for a pint before I have to go to work. We’ll talk then. I’ll listen to what you have to say. No promises. But I’ll listen…”

Simon grabbed his jacket, took a pen from the coffee table, and wrote down his mobile number on a till receipt from the petrol station last night. “You promise you’ll listen?”

Brendan nodded. He was still in pain. “For old times’ sake,” he said, and opened the living room door: it was as clear a signal to leave as a person could possibly give.

Simon set down the till receipt with the scrawled number on the arm of the chair and left the room. He didn’t look back, just in case he spoiled things. He didn’t want Brendan to change his mind. He needed the chance to speak — even if it was just for ‘old times’ sake’.

He wanted to try and put things right for them all.

CHAPTER SIX

BRENDAN WAS ALREADY on his sixth beer by the time Jane got home. He was sitting at the breakfast bar, staring at the wall, and trying to keep his mind blank. Drinking; just drinking, and not thinking about anything at all. Afternoon sunlight streamed through the window, but it didn’t quite reach him. He stared at the patches of brightness as they crawled slowly across the kitchen floor.

“Don’t tell me you’ve been sitting here drinking all day.” Jane hefted a couple of shopping bags and put them on the breakfast bar beside him. “Well?”

“No,” he said. “Not all of it… I slept a bit this morning, and then I had a visitor.”

“Was it that freeloading idiot Mark Maginn again? I hope you didn’t lend him any money. This shopping doesn’t come cheap, you know.” She started to unpack the shopping bags, placing the tins in the cupboard above the sink and the fresh stuff in the fridge.

Brendan watched her in silence. Then, feeling the need to break into the moment, he spoke again. “No, it wasn’t Mark Maginn. Not this time. It was someone else — somebody I haven’t seen for a long time.”

Jane had her back to him so he couldn’t see her face. Her chunky arms were raised above her head as she shoved two boxes of cereal — the twins’ favourite — into the cupboard alongside the tins of beans and spaghetti hoops. Her hair was still sweaty from her dancing class. She loved to dance; it made her feel young again. She’d told him this once, as they lay in each other’s arms after making love. Brendan couldn’t remember when it was. Nor could he remember the last time they’d made love.

“It was Simon Ridley.”

Jane stopped moving. Her hands were still inside the cupboard, pushing a cereal box through the blockage of tin cans. She was standing on her tiptoes. She paused there, unmoving, and the cereal box dropped from the cupboard and fell onto the floor. It made a rattling noise, like someone shaking a bag of bones.

“He’s come back. He says he wants to speak to me about something important.”

Jane started moving again. She bent over and picked up the cereal box. Brendan stared at her backside. It was bigger and wider than when they’d first met, but it was still one of her best features. She was a beautiful woman, his wife. He used to tell her that all the time, but he hadn’t for years, now.

“I said I’d meet him later.” Brendan drained his can, belched. “Pass me another beer, would you?”

Without objection, Jane crossed to the fridge and took out two beers. She opened both cans, passed him one, and poured the contents of the other into a tall glass. She took a sip, paused, and then took another, bigger mouthful. “Fucking hell,” she said.

Brendan did not respond. He hadn’t heard her swear since the cat was run over in the road by a boy racer last summer. She didn’t like expletives; she was proud of her broad vocabulary.

“Fucking hell,” she said again.

Brendan could not tell if she were smiling or grimacing. He decided that he’d rather not know. Sometimes it was safer to play dumb — often, it saved your marriage.

“What did he want?” She walked over to where he was sitting, placed one of her hands over one of his. She squeezed. Her fingers were cold from the beer glass. “Is he back for good? I can’t imagine that. Isn’t he rich now, some kind of property investor?”

“Yeah. He’s loaded. From what he told me, I think he might have bought the Needle.” Admitting this out loud, in the bright light of day, Brendan realised that it didn’t sound quite as crazy as it had when Simon had alluded to the fact earlier.

“Why would he buy that old place… especially after what happened to you all there? I mean, what’s he trying to prove?” Jane sat down. She moved her hand away.

“Maybe he bought it because of what happened to us. Perhaps he wants to try and remember.” He stared at her face, her hard blue eyes, her sunken cheeks, and the once-knife-sharp bone structure still visible through her sagging face. Her hair needed dyeing again; the roots were showing.

“Do you think he has remembered? That might be what he wants to talk to you about. I bet he’s spent a fortune on posh psychiatrists and dug up the memories of what happened that weekend, and he wants to throw it all in your face, have his Jeremy Kyle moment in the spotlight.” The bitterness behind her words was astonishing. Brendan hadn’t realised she hated Simon Ridley this much.

“I doubt it,” he said, lowering his head so that she couldn’t look into his eyes and see the hurt there. “I think he might be planning to renovate the bastard, turn it into apartments or something.” He looked up.

Jane grinned. “Ha! Right. Like anyone would buy a nice apartment in the middle of the Grove. He’s not that stupid — he can’t be if he’s made his fortune down south.” She shook her head and took another mouthful of beer. “So, are you going to meet him?” Her eyes were hard again. The smile had vanished.

“I thought I should. If only to hear what he has to say. I’ll let him buy me a beer and talk out of his arse for a while, and then I’ll go to work and forget about it.” He wondered if she could tell that he was lying. Jane knew him better than anyone — even better than he knew himself. She’d been finishing his thoughts and ending his sentences since they’d first got together. So, yes, she knew that he was lying. Of course she did.

“Just be careful.” She touched his hand again, but this time tenderly. “Don’t let him push you too hard, or talk you into anything you don’t want to do.”

Brendan flipped over his hand on the breakfast bar so that it was palm-up, and then he held her fingers. “We’re not ten years old anymore, pet. I’m an adult. I can’t be talked into anything against my will.”

“Only by me,” she said, smiling again.

“Only by you,” he agreed, squeezing, squeezing, and wishing that he never had to let go.

“Listen, I have to finish putting this shopping away, and then it’ll be time to pick up the twins.” Jane stood, gulped down the last of her beer, and put the glass in the sink.

“Do you want me to go for them? I don’t mind.”

She turned to him, the sunlight catching in her dyed hair. “No, it’s okay. You didn’t sleep much this morning, did you?”

He shook his head.

“I’ll go. You have a shower and put on your good jeans. We don’t want Simon-bastard-Ridley thinking we’re a couple of scruffs now, do we?” She turned away quickly, but still he saw the smile drop away from her face; and the way her eyes went distant, as if she were staring inward, at a place that he could never go to, no matter how close they were as a couple or how much love they shared. It was a place that she kept secret; somewhere she went when she needed to, her own private store of memories that she would never open up to let him see.

Brendan stood and left the room, leaving her there with her face to the wall as she rearranged the food in the cupboard. He knew that he should go to her, turn her around, and hug her, perhaps even tell her that he loved her and he always would. But there was something in the way: Simon, and all the things he represented. He’d never been a man who could talk freely about his feelings, and right now that reticence was worse than ever. There was so much he could have said — should have said — but none of it would come. He kept it all inside.

He went upstairs and undressed in the bathroom. His body ached. He felt older than his years. Staring at himself in the mirror, he saw a small man with too much loose flesh around his middle; a beer belly hanging down over his waist. Thin arms. Pale skin. Thinning hair, pale as straw. When he’d looked at Simon earlier that day, he’d seen a man who spent a lot of time in the gym, dressed in expensive clothes, and ate good food. The two of them could not be more different, and yet back then, when they’d been children, they had been like brothers.

Sometimes memories acted like a wedge, coming between people and pushing them apart. Time broke your heart and skinned you alive. It was a madman with a flensing knife, grinning as he stalked you from behind, drawing incrementally closer to his prey with each passing moment.

The shower was hot; the water prickled his scalp, burned the tops of his shoulders and sent a shiver of pain down the back of his neck. The spots and buboes across his back and shoulders at first flared up, and then the hot water began to soothe them. It drew out the sting of pain, made him feel for a moment that he wasn’t suffering from this dreadful acne, that his flesh was fine and unblemished instead of ravaged by infection.

Brendan reached over his shoulder and gently patted the wounds. They were always wet; they never seemed to dry out. But this time, under the shower jet, it was a clean wetness. The water washed away the vile yellowish ichors which had bled from the burst pustules and crusted over the top like a fine honeycombed layer of cinder toffee. The skin around the infected areas felt smooth and clean. Brendan closed his eyes and pretended that he was healed. That he was normal and healthy, that he was like Simon Ridley.

Sometimes he was certain that the damaged flesh could hear his thoughts, that it knew exactly what he was thinking, and it was displeased. The response would be a massive flare-up, where the blisters would rise, and burst, and bleed… sometimes it felt like he were being punished, but he had no idea what his crime might have been, or when he was supposed to have committed it. He tried to be a good man. His only vices were alcohol and self-pity.

Just as he was dabbing himself dry with a towel — one of the ones only he was allowed to use, because they got dirty quickly from his back — Jane knocked on the bathroom door.

“Are you decent?”

“Never,” he said, rubbing his leg with the towel.

“Well, I’m coming in anyway, so you’d better put that weapon away.” She was smiling as she pushed open the door and walked into the small, cramped room. “Here, let me.” She took the towel from his hands and finished drying him off. “They look a bit better than they did this morning,” she said, standing behind him as he leaned against the shower glass.

“They always look better just after a shower. They’ll be clogged and clotted again in an hour.” He closed his eyes and wished that he didn’t need his wife to do this. He knew Simon didn’t have open sores on his back; his skin would be toned and tanned. It would be flawless.

Jane hung up the towel on the hook and moved to the sink, where she opened the door of the cabinet on the wall — the one that was mounted too high for the kids to reach. She pushed a few bottles of pills and mouthwash out of the way and then brought out the tub of benzoyl peroxide ointment. “Here we go,” she said, smiling at him in the mirror. The smile lit up her face, but it didn’t touch her eyes. She washed her hands with disinfectant soap, using her elbows to turn off the taps, just like Brendan had seen actors do in Saturday night hospital dramas. Then she walked back over to where he was leaning against the bathtub, his forearms resting on the edge of the tub and his knees pressed into the cool tiled floor.

“I’m sorry,” he said, wishing that things could be different — that she didn’t have to do this for him.

“Don’t be silly.” Her hands were shockingly cold — the lotion was smooth and clammy against his inflamed skin.

Brendan closed his eyes. He pretended that there was a stranger tending to his needs, and not his wife. He often did this; imagined that she didn’t have to see his wounds. He wished that someone else could do this in her place.

“You’re right. They’re really bad today, babe. The worst I’ve seen them for a while, now that they’re dry. I’ll try to be as gentle as I can, but you’re probably going to feel some discomfort.”

He nodded. He kept his eyes closed, hoping it would help stop the tears from falling. He winced, his entire body tensing and stiffening, bit his bottom lip, and bent his head forward over the bath.

“Sorry… God, this is bad. Most of them have popped. The rest of them are filled with fluid. I’ll try to be gentle.”

“How can you do this? How can you do it and still love me?” Immediately, he wished he hadn’t said the words.

“Don’t be stupid.” Her voice was hard, sharp. “I love you no matter what. You know I do. Why should this change anything?” Her hands moved over the infected area slowly and gently, sparing him more pain. She was good at this; she’d had a lot of practice. “I’ll always love you, whatever happens…”

You wouldn’t have had to do this for him — for Simon fucking Ridley. The thought hurt him. It was like a knife stirring around inside his skull.

“Feeling any better?” Her hands… they were magical.

“Yes. Thanks.” No. No, I feel worse. I feel like a bastard, a hideous monster, for having you do this. I wish it could be different. I wish I was different… “That’s much better.”

Afterwards, Jane stood up without saying anything more. She brushed the back of his neck with her lips, a small show of affection. Then she went to the sink and washed her hands again, put away the lotion. “I’ll go and get the twins from school,” she said, leaving the bathroom. “I won’t be long.”

She hid it well, but he could sense the revulsion behind her words. Despite what she said, and how she acted, he knew that she secretly hated him for what she was forced to do. He could smell it on her, like a strange spice. The resentment, the bitterness, the regret that she’d ever become involved with him and his loathsome flesh. It was all compressed inside her, held in by the cage of her bones: some day, he knew, it would come spilling out and everything would change.

Brendan went into the bedroom and started to get dressed. He picked out the newest pair of trousers he owned: a pair of black chinos Jane had bought him last Christmas. Then he selected his best shirt, the grey one with the fake Lacoste emblem on the breast pocket. The front door slammed shut as he buttoned the shirt. His hands trembled.

Perhaps she’ll take the kids and never come back. Maybe Simon will take her away and show her a better life… better than this one, anyway.

Why did he do this to himself? It was a form of flagellation, a self-imposed punishment for crimes he had not even committed. He knew that in reality Simon would want nothing to do with Jane, not now. Their time was past. He probably spent his time shagging models and B-movie actresses, so why the hell would he want to take a faded, washed-up ex-beauty from the old estate to his bed?

He instantly regretted thinking of Jane in those terms. She was still beautiful, despite the hard times they’d gone through. She still shone; was always the light of his life. Her beauty was a counterbalance to his ugliness.

Trying to distract his mind, he thought again of the acorn Simon had shown him during his visit. He’d feigned ignorance, trying to make out that he had no idea what the acorn meant or who might have sent it to his old friend, but the truth was that he had more of a clue than he’d let on. He wasn’t quite sure why he’d been so reticent to speak, but it had seemed like the right thing to remain silent, to keep a secret.

Brendan walked over to the fitted wardrobes, pulled a sturdy wooden box from under the bed and moved it in front of the wardrobe doors, and then stood on the box. The timber joints creaked, but the box held, as it always did.

He reached up and opened one of the small doors at the top of the wardrobe, near the ceiling. Behind the doors was one long storage space, stretching the entire length of the unit. Jane never used the space; it was Brendan’s little hidey-hole, where he kept his stash. She pretended that the doors were not there, and ignored the things which lay behind them. It was not her concern; she refused to even acknowledge what he kept there.

He moved a stack of imported bondage magazines out of the way, and slipped his hand behind a box set of hardcore fetish DVDs imported from Amsterdam. There was a moment of panic when he couldn’t find what he was looking for, but then his questing fingers closed on the acorn. He paused for a moment, unsure. It felt bigger than before, when he’d stashed it here, but that couldn’t be right. Acorns didn’t continue to grow when they’d fallen from the tree. Did they?

He gripped the seed and pulled it out into the open. He was right; it was bigger. Much bigger… almost twice the size it had been when Banjo had left it for him.

Brendan closed the door, shutting away his pornography. He promised himself a treat this weekend, when Jane took the twins to her sister’s for tea. That new DVD set had not even been opened; it was still in the cellophane wrapping.

He stepped down off the wooden box and backed away from the wardrobe doors, towards the bed. When the backs of his knees met the mattress he sat down heavily, acorn held to his chest, eyes closed, mind floating somewhere else. He thought that he heard the wind soughing through treetops, the soft rustle of undergrowth, and the sound of distant singing… and then, from somewhere far away, a clicking sound began to draw closer. It was still a long way off, that sound, but it was approaching steadily, and whatever was making it would be with him soon. The sound both scared him and put him at ease. It was a contradiction, a paradox, and although he wanted nothing more than to see the owner of what he was already thinking of as a strange voice, he also wished that it would turn away and leave him alone.

Brendan did not know what he wanted, but he was certain that he didn’t want this, whatever the hell it was. But he was sure that the owner of the arrhythmic, clicking voice wanted him… and for a moment he felt sure that that he had encountered it once before, perhaps a long time ago.

He looked down at his hands, drew them away from his chest. They opened like pale pink flowers, without him having to control them. He stared at the oak bud. Although the acorn had almost doubled in size, the carved initials had remained their original size. The two letters — a B and a C — looked tiny now, but they were still legible on the side of the seed.

The acorn felt warm and soft, like a small, living animal. It twitched in his hand, pulsing slightly — growing again, even as he watched. Then it was once again still and dead, just a discarded seed from an old tree, a small piece of nature’s detritus.

But for a moment there, as he’d held the acorn, Brendan had begun to think that it was alive, and it was reaching out to him.

Or that something was.

CHAPTER SEVEN

SIMON HAD BEEN in a lot of pubs that were worse than The Dropped Penny, and had mixed with clientele even rougher around the edges than those currently surrounding him, drinking their pints and their shots and watching the world through rheumy, alcohol-blurred eyes. Back when he’d still lived on the estate, the pub had a reputation as being an old man’s drinking den — the haunt of ancient crones and wizened old blaggers who spent their days winding down towards the grave. It had always been a hotbed of gossip, the place you came to find out who had double-crossed whom, which bloke was sleeping with his neighbour’s wife, what the latest drug of choice might be on the streets of the Grove.

Brendan had called him thirty minutes ago, asking him where he wanted to meet up. The Dropped Penny had been the natural choice; a hotbed of street-level information, the place seemed tailor-made for this kind of meeting. And what kind was that, he asked himself as he sipped his pint? Was it just two old friends catching up after twenty years, or something more? What was the real reason behind them coming here, to this shabby little boozer that probably should have been pulled down years ago?

Simon stared at himself in the mirrors behind the bar. He looked tired, pale and gaunt. His hair was a mess and his cheeks were hollow. He had not been sleeping well, not since receiving the acorn. London seemed a million miles away, or part of another existence altogether. Right now, he felt that he’d stepped back into a cloudy past that had not changed, while out in the world everything about him had altered dramatically.

He had been shopping at the Tesco Express in Near Grove when he’d taken Brendan’s call. He’d gone straight to the checkout, paid for his meagre provisions, and then returned to the flat to unpack the bags. He didn’t have time for a shower or a coffee; he left the flat and came straight here, where the only reasonable thing to do was buy a drink.

An old man brushed up against him and leaned across the bar, interrupting his thoughts. “Pint of bitter,” he mumbled to the skinny barmaid. She was standing against the wall reading a fat, dog-eared paperback with a water-damaged front cover. Most of the title had been rubbed off — something about kicking a hornet’s nest. The barmaid glanced up from the page, nodded, and pushed away from the wall like a swimmer moving away from the shore. She put her book down on the bar and pulled a pint, her thin, hard forearms tensing as she tugged on the pump.

“Ta, petal,” said the old man, leering as he handed her a five pound note. She sighed, shook her head, and gave him his change.

“Stupid old fart,” she said to herself, as she picked up her book and drifted back to her spot against the wall.

Simon laughed, but she didn’t even acknowledge him. He coughed lightly, dipped his lips to his glass, and looked around at the rest of the drinkers.

The Dropped Penny had not changed a bit since he’d last been here. Even the faces looked the same, only older, more worn and wrinkled. It had never seemed to get too busy back when Simon used to sneak in for an under-age drink, nor was it ever empty. Always roughly the same number of punters, drinking quietly, chatting in low voices, and watching the world from over the rim of a dirty glass.

He saw Brendan enter the pub, watching him in the mirrored wall. His old friend looked twitchy, on edge. His eyes were rimmed with red, as if he’d already been drinking heavily. Or perhaps he was simply deprived of sleep, like Simon.

He was just about to turn around when Brendan saw him. A look of regret — or was it sadness? — crossed his face, and then he walked towards the bar.

“What can I get you?” Simon smiled. It took some effort, but it was the least he could do. He had to try and get the man on-side.

“Pint of Landlord. It’s good in here.”

“It certainly is,” said Simon, nodding towards the remains of his own drink. “Two Landlords, please,” he called to the barmaid, who was lost in her book.

The woman looked up, sighed, and trudged to the bar to pour the drinks.

“If it isn’t too much trouble, that is.” Simon smiled.

“Don’t get smart with me, son, or I’ll bar you.” She did not return the smile.

“The old Ridley charm… it never fails.” He turned to Brendan and winked.

Despite himself, Brendan smiled. “I remember you could charm the pants off a nun… an old nun, with a smelly crotch and poor personal hygiene.”

“Thanks, mate,” said Simon, handing Brendan a pint. “You always knew how to make me feel better about myself.”

“Let’s sit down. There’s a table over here.” Brendan moved away from the bar and sat at a table near the window, more relaxed now that he had a drink in his hand. He took a long swallow with his eyes closed, and then placed the pint glass on a soggy beermat but kept hold of it, as if he were afraid that someone might try to take it away.

“Shall we start again?” Simon sat down opposite him.

“What do you mean?” Brendan hunched his shoulders, and winced, as if he was experiencing mild pain.

“I don’t think I handled our reunion very well when I came to your place. I barrelled right in like a bull, ignoring all the pleasantries.”

Brendan shrugged. “Aye. Whatever. It doesn’t matter.” He took another swig of his drink, draining the glass to the half-way point.

“But it does matter. These things do matter, don’t they? We were best friends. We haven’t seen each other for twenty years. And what do I do? I charge into your house and demand answers to questions I barely even understand. I was out of order. I’m sorry.”

Brendan shrugged again. He looked uneasy. “No harm done. Want another?” He drained his glass and stood, moving towards the bar without waiting for an answer.

Simon watched him as he ordered two more pints of bitter, sharing a quiet joke — no doubt at Simon’s expense — with the barmaid. They seemed familiar; he wondered if she was an ex-girlfriend, or part of a crowd Brendan had hung around with after Simon had left the estate. He realised that he knew little of his friend’s life history. He’d known him as a child, and less so as a teenager, but was now meeting him for the first time as an adult.

“Thanks,” he said as Brendan sat back down and slid a glass across the table. “So. How have you been?”

Brendan laughed. “Jesus… you’re really asking me that?”

“Why not? We barely even know each other anymore. The last time I saw you we both had bum fluff on our chins.” Simon raised his glass in a small salute.

“I thought you’d kept tabs on me? You seem to know enough about where I work.”

Simon shook his head. “No… I’ve not kept tabs, not exactly. My Aunty Annie still lives in Near Grove. Whenever I call her, she mentions you — tells me what she’s heard. She knows we used to be close.” It was only partly a lie.

“Christ,” said Brendan. “Good old Aunty Annie. I remember her — she always used to give us those old-fashioned sour sweets.” He grinned. “I fucking hated them, but was always too polite to tell her.”

Simon laughed softly. “Me, too, mate. They were bloody horrible.”

They sat for a while in a silence that was almost companionable, or would have seemed so to a casual observer. They sipped their drinks slowly now, the initial nerves having dissipated. Someone put a song on the jukebox, an old number Simon didn’t recognise; a woman singing the blues. Her voice was strained, almost painful to hear. It was beautiful.

“How’s Jane?” He glanced at Brendan, wondering if he’d pushed too far.

Brendan’s eyes flashed, but then he relaxed again. “Took you long enough to ask.”

“Well,” said Simon. “It’s none of my business really, is it?”

Brendan licked his lips and blinked rapidly. “She’s fine. We’re fine, in case that was your next question. We’re more than fine, actually.”

“No, that wasn’t my next question.” Simon leaned back in his chair. “But I’m glad. I’m really glad that you’re still together. It makes sense; the two of you, it’s logical. Know what I mean?”

“Yes,” said Brendan. “It does make sense. It makes a lot of sense. We were always close…”

Whatever was left unsaid, Simon felt it prudent not too push too hard to find out. Had the two of them slept together when he and Jane had been an item? They were only fifteen, barely old enough to know their own hearts, never mind anyone else’s. That made sense, too: them sleeping together behind his back. He hoped that it was true; their infidelity would make him feel a lot better about the way he’d abandoned them.

Simon nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, I know. You have kids, now, don’t you?”

“Aye,” said Brendan. “Twins: Harry and Isobel. They’re ten years old… the same age we were when, well, you know. When that shit happened to the three of us.”

There was another short pause, when neither of them spoke, but this one was strained. Something sat between them now, something that had not been there before. It licked its lips and waited; it had all the time in the world.

“Are you still in touch with Marty?” Simon leaned forward; his back was aching. The bar seat was old and the cushion was too soft.

“No,” said Brendan, shaking his head. “We lost touch years ago, when he went off the rails. Did you know about that?”

Simon nodded. “I know a little. Didn’t he start boxing, and then some kind of injury cut his career short? Then he went… dodgy?”

“Dodgy’s the right word for what he is.” Brendan pointed at his glass. “It’s your round.”

Simon got up and bought two more beers, then returned to the table.

“Marty Rivers,” said Brendan. “What a fucking psycho he turned out to be.”

Simon said nothing. He just let the other man speak.

“He used to train for hours: up at dawn for early runs, then in the gym every night for sparring sessions. He was intense; serious about his sport. Then he crashed his motorbike and his girlfriend was killed in the accident. He was a mess. His injuries never healed, not properly, and his career was over before it even began. A lot of people said that he might have been a great, that he would have gone places. But we’ll never know.”

Simon blew air though his lips. “Jesus, I didn’t know he was ever that good. I remember he was always fit, and hard as nails, but I didn’t realise he took the boxing that seriously. I thought it was just something he did because of his dad — you know, the cult of the hard man, and all that.”

“No,” said Brendan. “He was serious. He loved to box. When it all went tits-up, he had nothing else to fall back on. He wasn’t academic; he wasn’t driven, like you. He didn’t have anyone special in his life, not after the bike accident. So he started working the doors on the roughest pubs in Newcastle. I heard a lot of rumours about illegal boxing contests in social club basements, maybe even bare knuckle bouts. Somebody told me Marty took on and beat the King of the Gypsies about ten years ago, but people tend to talk a lot of shit around here. You never know what to believe.” He stood up quickly, then reached out and steadied himself by gripping the table. “I need a piss. I’ll get a couple more pints on my way back.” He belched and then headed off towards the gents at the other side of the room.

Simon was starting to feel drunk. He wasn’t used to drinking this much during the day, just the occasional half-bottle of wine over a lunch meeting, or a cocktail with clients. The strong beer was making him dizzy; his vision was blurred.

Before Simon had time to properly register his absence, Brendan returned with more drinks. “Get that down your neck,” he said, slamming down the glasses. “Our old mate Marty got involved with drugs, and he did a few jobs for a local gangster named Monty Bright. I’m not sure how much he was involved with that scumbag’s affairs, but when Bright’s gym burned down, with him in it, most people around here waved goodbye to bad rubbish.”

Simon tried to focus on the words. “Yeah… I heard about that. Someone sent me the news item, a page from the paper. I don’t know why, but whoever it is who sends me this stuff seems to think I’m still interested in what goes on in the Grove.”

“Maybe it’s Marty,” said Brendan. “It might be his way of keeping in touch, of trying to cling to the memory of the Three Amigos.”

Simon raised his head. “Hey, that’s a good point. I never thought of that. All this time, I just assumed it was you. We were best friends.”

Brendan put down his glass, gripping it tightly. “We were all best friends — the three of us. The fucking Three Amigos, remember? Best friends, until whatever happened that weekend tore us apart.”

Simon wasn’t sure how he felt about one of them speaking the thought aloud. It was true, of course it was, but he had not felt confident enough to vocalise what he thought. But clearly Brendan thought that way, too — and maybe Marty did, and that was why he’d been sending all that stuff, trying to keep the Amigos together, even in this small way.

“I need you to help me contact Marty,” he said, leaning across the table. “Don’t ask me how I know this, but I think it’s important that the three of us at least get into a room together and talk about the past. Even if it’s just for our own mental wellbeing, we need to sit down around a table and try to work through what happened back then.”

Brendan clenched his teeth. His face was thin, the colour fading from his cheeks. “This isn’t some Hollywood blockbuster, mate. We can’t re-form our little gang and slay the monster before running off into the sunset. That’s not how it works in the real world. The Three Amigos don’t exist anymore. I’m a broken-down, drink-dependent security guard, you’re a phoney little rich-boy with a chip on his shoulder, and Marty is a fucking maniac who’d probably break your neck if he ever saw you again…”

He bowed his head, letting go of his glass. “We’re not heroes. We can’t even stand the sight of each other.”

Simon tried to counter his remarks, but could think of nothing to say. Brendan was right. This was stupid. What the hell had he been thinking to even come here? “Do you want to know why I bought that place — the Needle?”

Brendan nodded. “Tell me,” he said, his voice low, a whisper.

“I bought it because I want to tear it down, brick by brick, timber by timber, bit by bit. I want to reduce that fucking building to its component parts, and then sift through them, looking for what we all lost. I want to find out what happened to us, so I can move on and put it behind me. I’m sick and tired of being haunted. I’m fed up of running away from my demons. Look at us — we’ve both been hamstrung by whatever happened twenty years ago, and neither of us has the slightest fucking idea what it was. What happened to us in there? What did we leave behind?” He felt hot tears running down his cheeks and wiped them away with the back of his hand. “What was taken from us?”

“I don’t know.” Brendan could not look him in the eye. He kept his head lowered, gazing at the stained tabletop. “I wish I did.”

“This place,” said Simon. His voice had taken on a strange hissing quality. He was speaking quietly, trying to make sure no one overhead him, but the rage had altered his tone. “It’s the place — the Concrete Grove. Have you never noticed how there’s always a strange atmosphere here, like a constant gas leak? And what about the streets? Even the layout of the estate is fucked. I mean, why is Grove Street West at the east end of the Grove? And why does Grove Drive West point north to south? It’s like someone was playing games, or the place has been flipped over so many times that the compass has lost all meaning. I remember several times, drunk and walking home, I would end up in a part of the Grove that I shouldn’t be in. Somehow, I’d get lost, even though I knew exactly where I was going…”

Brendan looked up. His eyes were filled with tears. “It’s just… just the Grove. The whole place is fucked. It’s like a town planner’s worst nightmare, or something.”

Simon pulled back; he’d already said too much. He could not risk pushing any harder, not yet. “I dunno, Brendan… really, I don’t. Nothing feels right here. It’s like confusion and anxiety is the natural mental state.”

“Okay,” said Brendan. “I’ll help you. We’ll go and see Marty. If it means that much to you, we can sort it out.”

Simon did not know how to respond.

“You and me, we’ll find out where he’s living and we’ll go round there, see if he’s willing to talk. What harm could it do, right?”

As Simon gazed deeply into Brendan’s eyes, he knew that his friend was lying. But for the life of him, he did not understand the nature of those lies, or what truths they were meant to hide.

CHAPTER EIGHT

“ARE YOU SURE you want to do this now?” Brendan’s voice sounded dry and croaky, as if he’d smoked a whole packet of cigarettes in one sitting. “I mean, there’s no real need to do it now. We could wait until the morning, if you like.”

Simon shook his head. “I’ve waited twenty years to come back here and see this place again. If I don’t go in there now, I probably never will. But I can’t do it alone, not the first time anyway. We’re both here, so why not?”

“Okay, if you’re sure.”

Simon increased his pace and drew level with Brendan. He’d been walking a couple of steps behind, taking in the gritty early evening atmosphere as he tried to sober up. “Yes, I’m sure.”

Brendan turned his head. His mouth was a grim line. “I’ve been in there hundreds of times now, and there’s nothing. I’m not sure what you’re expecting to find, but the place is empty. Empty of everything. There are no ghosts, no memories clinging to the walls or ceilings like bats. Just a lot of dust and filth and old drug workings.”

The two men walked a little way along the curve on the east side of Grove Road, and then crossed the road to enter a narrow, overgrown cut between gardens that led on to Grove Crescent. The east side of the estate was the roughest part; the worst kind of scumbags lived here. The west side was relatively peaceful, and many of the residents along the roads that skirted the Embankment — including Brendan’s street — were honest, hard-working families. But here, on the opposite end of the Grove, the rules were not as clear cut.

Grove Street itself was wrapped in a kind of murky haze; the streetlight at the end of the short road had been vandalised. It was still early, and the sky offered some brightness, but the other lights around the estate were already coming on, illuminating the corners of this strange world in a frantic effort to beat the oncoming night. Simon had the strange thought that darkness always fell early on the estate. The lights always came on here before they did elsewhere. Maybe it was part of some plan by the council: they switched on the streetlights to try and fool the yobbos into thinking it was later that it really was, in an effort to send them home off the streets.

“Come on,” said Brendan, taking the lead again. “Let’s get this over with. I want to get back home to see my kids before I have to come back here and start my shift. I’ve barely seen them all day.”

“Sorry,” said Simon. “I didn’t realise…”

“Don’t worry about it.” Brendan approached the gates of the compound and took a set of keys from his pocket. He rattled the keys as he selected the correct one and then slid it into the main lock. “So that was you last night — in the four-wheel drive?”

Simon nodded, then realised that Brendan couldn’t see him because he had his back to him, and answered. “Yeah, that was me. I did a little drive-by.”

“You should’ve come over. I would have put the kettle on.”

Simon sensed more untruths, but he was unsure whether or not Brendan was simply being cautious, afraid to open up too much because of the dead weight of years that stood between them.

“Come on. Let’s get this done.” Brendan pushed open the gates and stepped inside.

Simon followed him into the enclosure, feeling as if he were walking into a prison — or perhaps a complex trap. He knew that he was being impulsive by coming here right now, but he also realised that he couldn’t put off this confrontation indefinitely. It had to be done; he needed to face the past if he stood even a chance of unlocking its secrets.

The Needle glowered down at him. That was how it felt, as if the building were leaning over slightly and staring at the top of his head in silent rage. His skin itched; his vision swam. Simon considered himself a brave — and sometimes even reckless — man, but this was something different. This was madness. In his time, he had stood toe-to-toe with some of the most feared businessmen in London, negotiated with fierce adversaries over money, and once had even grabbed a renowned investor by the throat in a boardroom and threatened to break his nose… but those were safe battles. The numerous enemies he’d bested were made of flesh and blood, not brick and mortar and the essence of lost memory.

He had a flashback then, as he knew he would: a vision of oak trees, with soft, pale moonlight filtering like dust motes through the canopy of branches. Something moved beyond the perimeter of the circle of trees, slowly circling the three of them — Simon, Brendan, and Marty, whining and sitting with their backs to each other on the hard ground.

There was nothing more. That was it; all he was given.

“The trees,” he said, not even realising until it was too late that he’d spoken the words out loud.

“I remember that, too.” Brendan turned towards him, his face pale and devoid of any readable expression. “There was a circle of oaks… with us sitting terrified in the middle.”

Simon nodded. He rubbed his cheeks with the palms of his hands and felt the tough stubble as it rasped against his flesh. “Yeah… I haven’t thought about that for years. I’d forgotten about the trees. How could I ever forget something like that?”

Brendan smiled, and it seemed to split his face in two. “It’s because you weren’t here. You went away, and you broke a connection. The trees are one of the few memories I have. I dream about them. And I dream about being tied up by their branches.” He broke off then, as if he wanted to say more but had changed his mind.

“What do you mean?”

“Nothing,” said Brendan. “It’s nothing.”

They walked on, towards the towering form of the Needle. Its grey walls were impassive; its dingy presence was a glimpse into another time and place. Simon felt the present shiver, as if the very fabric of time and space was straining at the seams and attempting to transport him back in time twenty years. The sky stretched above him like a thin sheet, the ground threatened to shift beneath his feet, and the landscape around him seemed like it was poised on the cusp of a change.

The day’s alcohol intake drained from him, leaving him cold and sober.

“This way.” Brendan walked to the main doors. They’d been exposed; the wooden boards that had once protected them from vandalism now lay in pieces on the ground beside them. Brendan reached out and unlocked the doors, opened them slowly, and stepped aside. “Are you ready?”

“Yes.” And Simon was ready. At last he was ready to enter the tower block and reclaim at least a fragment of his childhood. He clenched his hands into fists, as if preparing for a fight, and stepped forward, walking stiffly up the steps and into the building. His skin went cold, hot, and then cold again; it felt like he was passing through different rooms, each with its own temperature. He’d never been so detached yet so curiously involved in a single moment. The muscles in his neck tightened and his head ached.

The ground floor was in ruins. Graffiti, broken concrete, piles of rubbish all over the floor. It was nothing like what he’d expected. The interior was a tipping ground for broken things, and it was only fitting that he and Brendan should be here: two broken men looking for a way to fix themselves.

“How does it feel?” Brendan’s voice sounded as if he were perched on Simon’s shoulder, speaking directly into his ear.

“Weird. I thought… I expected to be more afraid, but all I feel is tired and reluctant. It’s like a chore. Something I have to do. Does that even make sense?”

“No.” Brendan’s tepid laughter echoed, bouncing off the walls and giving it a false sense of vigour.

“Okay, okay… you know what I mean. It’s like an anticlimax. I’ve built this up so much, and for so long, that it’s almost disappointing now I’ve finally got here.”

“Yes,” said Brendan. “I do know what you mean — I had the same experience. I hadn’t been back here for years. Then, when I was twenty-one, I just broke in through one of the first floor windows and took a look around. I wasn’t afraid; it was just an empty building. Like I said, there are no ghosts here. You won’t find our childhood selves waiting for you in a cramped little room.”

Something scurried across the floor, and when Simon glanced in the direction of the movement he saw a mouse or a rat burrowing into a pile of old clothes.

“They’re the only monsters you’ll find here, mate. Plenty of vermin nesting in these old walls… they’ve made it their home.”

Brendan’s phrasing made Simon momentarily nervous, but he shrugged off the feeling. It was nothing; just words.

Then, gradually, he became aware of another sound — this one far off, coming from somewhere deep inside the building. It was like slow dragging footsteps, perhaps somebody moving lazily through the rooms, wandering aimlessly. He listened for a moment, trying to pick out the direction of the source of the noise, but he couldn’t be certain of where it originated. The sound seemed to be coming from nowhere and everywhere at once.

“Is there somebody else here?”

Brendan took a step forward, in front of Simon. “Not that I’m aware of.”

More lies. He’d always been able to tell when Brendan was lying; his voice lowered, he was unable to look whoever he was speaking to directly in the eye.

“This place is empty.” Brendan stayed where he was, with his back to Simon.

“Don’t lie to me,” said Simon, moving forward and placing a hand on his friend’s shoulder. “There’s no need.”

Brendan shrugged off the contact, but did not turn around. He kept staring ahead, into the dusty shadows and along a narrow hallway leading off from the main reception area. “There’s nobody here. Or if there is, it’s just some kid mucking about.”

“Okay,” said Simon, unwilling to force the issue. “Sorry — I didn’t mean to get at you.” The shuffling sound had stopped. In its place, Simon could just about make out a low, soft humming, like air forced quickly through narrow pipes.

Brendan sighed heavily. “Just like old times. You always were a bit of a bully, talking us into things, convincing us to get into trouble.” His voice seemed to hold an element of humour, but it was only a sliver.

“That was then and this is now.” Simon backed away. He didn’t want to get into this, not now: not here. He’d lived with the guilt for twenty years, and it was too soon to bring it out into the open. He’d been the one who’d cajoled the other two into coming here, and following… whatever it was Brendan said he had seen. The clicking figure: the beaked man with the stick. Captain Clickety. Simon had been the one to come up with the idea, and despite the other Amigos’ reluctance, he’d forced the issue, calling them babies…

Back then, as now, he’d always kept pushing until he got his way.

Pushing… it was his major skill, the thing he was best at. That was how he’d made his first million; it was the one trait that had kept him going while others had fallen away, giving up when things got too difficult. But not him: no, not Simon Ridley. He just kept pushing and pushing until something gave, and then he pushed some more, just for the hell of it.

The curious humming sound waxed and waned; it was still audible, but only just. Was it an old boiler? Faulty air vents?

Simon had already decided that he would not push now. He’d pull back and rein that tendency in, because sometimes pushing was just a quick way to fall off the edge. That was the real key to his success — the knowledge that although brute force and focus could often get you places, there were times that called for a soft touch, situations in which a gentle nudge was more effective than a hard shove if you wanted to open a door.

The humming sound moved away, becoming fainter and quieter as it shifted deeper into the body of the building

Sometimes, Simon knew, a whisper could be louder than a scream.