Chapter 6 FALLOUT
“Jack, Bill’s MOT was booked in at yours, but he’s turned up here, and I don’t have the staff to cover it. His daughter thinks he has early onset Alzheimer’s. She’s really sorry. He’d forgotten he wasn’t supposed to be driving.” The worry in Steve’s voice came through on the phone as Jack sat alone in his Mercedes-Benz.
Pulling on the last drag of smoke, Jack looked at his dashboard clock. Halliday had called to rearrange their meeting until tomorrow due to some emergency, and since then, he’d done a repair on a Renault, set up a respray, and this was supposed to be him, off on his mid-morning break. “Okay.” He held back on his sigh. “I can be there in about forty minutes. Just keep him happy with Gray’s coffee until I get there.”
Steve sucked in a pained breath. “You’re telling Gray I’ve… borrowed some of his fancier stuff.”
Jack snorted a smirk as he flicked his cigarette out the car window. “Fucking wuss.”
“Hell yes. And you sure you don’t mind?”
“About Gray’s coffee? Can’t stand it, mate.”
“I meant coming here, ass.”
Jack laughed. “No,” he said gently. “No worries. I’ll be there. Just remind Bill’s daughter we offer a pick-me-up and drop off: it’s part of the service if the customer’s going to be without a car or is disabled.” Fuck knows he knew what it was like to have a licence taken away.
“Will do. And you’re a diamond, mate.”
“That’s boss to you. I’ve got the baseball bat to prove it.”
Steve laughed. “I’ve got a Sam. Fight you for the whole boss thing.” Jack winced, and then the Merc fell quiet as he ended the call. Eventually, he eased an elbow out the window and stared out at the building ahead.
The wind rattled a For Sale sign a few car spaces down, sending a blue plastic carrier bag dancing over the cracked concrete that had seen better days. Almost lost to the woods behind him, a B road ran close by, just beyond the gated land, but no soft sound of tyre on road drifted over. “Ashes of Eden” kept him company in the cooling car, the guitars soft, the lyrics barely heard with how low he kept it. Occasionally the wind kissed the Mercedes, rocking him slightly, but it didn’t disturb his look out at the building ahead of him.
Two huge stacks of steel containers used for transport played bouncers either side of the rusted roller doors to the main building, yet the loading bay ahead stood open, almost welcoming the offer of life from the wind that raced inside, taking dust and dirt onto the floor before being swallowed by darkness. The factory itself split itself into two: one large building with three floors, one smaller just a walk away. With the rows of steel shelving, the latter looked like it had had a lifetime of storing parts that the main building made. The newer brickwork also called out office space and the main reception. Both had seen better days, more love in its time, and the echo of workers, forklifts, and clocking out cards punching out carried on despite the factory been closed.
Jack’s look stayed on the main factory building, its grey crumbling brickwork and broken windows. The morning sun caught one pane, almost as if it felt sorry with how life passed it by on the roadside, so it sent over a light wave, and the window reflected it back its way with a tired thank you.
“C’mon. They’re missing you, y’stubborn bastard. And it’s getting hard to find new ways to do this,” he mumbled. Leaving his playlist on, Jack opened the door and got out of the Merc.
Wind battered him, buffeting him enough to fasten his leather jacket and turn his collar up against the winter bite, and he ran a hand through his hair after it whipped into his eyes. His saloon S-Class Merc looked at odds with the car park and factory: sleek, black, whispering modern luxury and first-class comfort in amongst an underpaid working-class system that refused to let go of its broken-boned hold on the land.
Didn’t matter the class, a building used to be pretty much that to Jack: a building. A house made from brickwork. The people inside gave the make it, break it feelings that pulled or pushed him away.
But this place?
Jack made his way over to the roller doors. For a moment he stopped by the steel containers, his head tilted up to get a close look at the bouncers that looked set to mimic Gray and tell him to Move on, stunner, for your own peace of mind .
Jack offered a soft smile. “Don’t need you saving me, mukka.” After a moment, he stepped over the picket line, the kiss of infected wind whipping around him as if to encourage it.
Concrete dugouts ran the floor in two rows. The skeleton of a crane above added to the old oil marks on the floor. Along with the dugouts, they told tales of how huge transfer presses had once been housed on the shop floor. So too did the scent of sawdust used to soak up the oil spills, but that could have been Jack’s scent association, along with the pallets used to transfer the parts over to the storeroom. If he had to take a guess, the factory had seen a good portion of its life as an Original Equipment Manufacturer, so no scrap yard parts used to piece together an engine, only original ones with this OEM. For whom, he didn’t know. He didn’t exactly care anymore.
A long glass partition showed an office of some sorts off to the left, and beyond that, a broken sign marked where the toilets were. No doubt there’d be a canteen close by.
Giving everywhere the once-over again, Jack headed for the glass partition and the offer of a set of stairs leading up to the second floor.
Up here, the door had been removed. Jan had mentioned there had been one there, but Gray had given the description Jack knew all too well: a reinforced frosted glazed white RH external door with a half-moon glass window on the upper half.
The kind of front door that led into a house, never a factory.
The kind that had once led into Jack’s home. Or a damn good replica from Vince of what he used to be able to call home.
Jack shook his head, more annoyed with himself than anyone. Yeah. He hadn’t seen the door was a damn good replica either. He’d needed Jan to tell him that too.
Shaking it off with a rough exhale, Jack headed in.
As with the first floor and its innards, floors and walls stayed stripped bare, leaving only concrete. Everything torn out. Every tear out of screw and bolt calling out Gray’s demons and rage, maybe Jan’s too. Gone was the laminate flooring of his hall. To the left had stood his coat stand, the stairs just ahead. Then a little farther, only the old arch called a way into what had been a mirror of his lounge. He made it through to the kitchen where dust marked where his breakfast bar had been, Christmas decorations….
“Jan still here, over there in the corner?”
A breath came down the back of his neck, and Jack glanced over to the corner.
Jan sat bound back under the window, tears streaming his cheeks, face so pale, so bloody scared.
“See?” Vince’s lips almost touched the back of Jack’s neck, hovering over the fine hairs. “You’re doing fine, our kid. Just fucking fine.” A snort. “Although this cleaning shit is still obviously a concern. But we’ll sort you, kid. Don’t—”
Don’t…
Jack dug his hands in his pockets, his look going around the wreck of the room.
Yeah, he’d never felt much for a building, the people inside making or breaking it. But with this one? Poison had once run through the brickwork, creeping over the empty floor, infecting the air, his skin… his head.
Only not lately, and he turned back for the stairs.
“Fucking ballsy, Jan.”
Jack stopped and frowned as his front door came open, or the ghost of at least. He managed to wait until Jan had at least allowed enough of a gap between him and the door before he kicked it shut and pushed him up against the wall, kissing the fuck out of his mouth, hands slipping under his shirt.
The muscle under Jan’s shirt was alive, all moving, contracting as Jack dug his fingers in, forcing a hiss out of Jan. His shirt shaped him well and looked expensive, but he’d needed to feel skin as much as he’d needed to see it. Two buttons tore free, the rest took the hint, giving up any fight to keep Jan away from him, and he’d promised himself he’d buy him another one as Jack traced his hands up, pushing his shirt away from his shoulders.
Great shoulders, kissable ones.
Jack whispered appreciation, playing left collarbone, right, sometimes biting, wanting to mark and—
“Back off, soft lad,” whispered Jack with a smile as the chill of the empty stairway bit deep into his bones. “I don’t need you saving me either.” Although this was more Halliday’s game play: naturally countering a bad memory with the good.
Only so much time had passed, too much of the good to bury the bad, and that… that was part of the problem here.
Jack took the stairs slowly, then frowned as a thud hit the top of the stairs, followed by a draught as something bumped into him and passed him tumbling by.
Humpty…
Dumpty.
Sad bastard had been pushed off the wall after all.
Looking down on himself at the bottom of the stairs had him unable to look away. His head and left shoulder had taken the worst damage. Face down, arm shaping his head, nose bleeding and running into the hair escaping over his cheek… he looked ill, skin pale, all—
“Maybe I should go call Vince?”
Jack glanced back up the stairs.
“You remember Vince now, don’t you, honey? He did that to you.” As she stood there, his mother pulled back her usual wild and long black hair into a ponytail, her beige trouser suit calling a need for business. Thirty-five. That’s all she looked as she stood there. No wrinkles aged her beauty, certainly not around her eyes that she later carried with the weight of the world. Her wilder Italian look and accent had always had his school mates sneaking over to get a hi off her and… how old had he been back then? Fourteen? It almost seemed unfair that she had youth here, not the poison of her later years.
He hated that he still loved the wild beauty of her youth. There had been good times.
“Don’t confuse the two.” Halliday whispered in his ear. “You’re not seeing her goodness, just your ability to love. That’s a part of you, not a reflection of her.”
Jack offered a smile down to his feet. “I don’t need you saving me either, Doc.”
Up the stairs, someone stood next to his mother, a mass of blurred face and body, yet countering his stench with Jan’s softer, sensual scent.
Yeah, he should have known that was Vince stood next to her not Jan, all if, buts, and—
“Christ, Jack…” Gray sounded angry and let that fade into nothing. “You fuck up my world in so many ways, but only ever in every right way that matters anymore.”
“Fuck.” Jack snorted the softest smile. “You bastard, Gray. Back off for a moment or two as well, yeah?”
Every single ounce of good buried the bad so easily lately.
All pieces of the jigsaw together on the board.
But now, they were his to play with in moments like this.
“Back again, Jack?” A chuckle came from back by the lounge door. Vince stepped from behind it, or the echo of at least. “Now why keep coming to play with me, hmm?”
Jack glanced around the hall, then rested back against the wall, arms folded. He shrugged. “Making a call.”
“On Martin? He didn’t exactly help you out last time with me, though, huh?”
He looked Vince’s way. “Wasn’t just you here, though, was it? You needed drugs, friends, and a whole CCTV safety system.” A snort. “You’re no Gray.” A smile. “And I’m not drugged now.”
Vince shifted, giving a snarl, but Jack’s phone vibrated in his pocket, and he tugged it out, then cursed when it slipped from his hold as Vince whipped away with a draught blowing through the doorway.
“Fuck.” For a moment he swore a text from Gray flickered up tagged to a Nottingham notification, but the hard hit on concrete shattered the screen, burying it.
Jack snorted a smile down at the damage, at the echoes of someone always losing his phone.
Martin.
“Yeah, yeah.” He glanced around the hall again and found he stood alone. “I know, I know. You’re loving the break, you asshole. Have a beer on me. But one of these days you’ll answer me when I make calls like this, because you’re missed.” He slipped the phone into his back pocket. “Just don’t grass on me and tell anyone we were here, okay? They don’t need this shit.” He cocked half a smile. “Or come out and grass on me, be the bastard. Choice is yours.”
Only the dance of dust through the open doorway answered, and waiting just a moment longer to see if he could catch any other kind of reply, Jack headed back the way he’d come when none came.