Chapter 19
19
William
It was bizarre how those two minutes of William’s day had become his favourite, developing into something he really hadn’t been expecting. It wasn’t even two minutes, just a few seconds, the time it took to walk past the bakery window, but it was there, and it had meaning. Nothing much in William’s life did any more. There was something about Frankie which intrigued him – vulnerability mixed with determination. It was an odd combination.
She’d been hugely wary of him when they first met, and he couldn’t blame her – he’d run a mile if he met himself down a dark alley, too. But then the next time he managed to catch her eye as he passed by, and she had looked up and waved. And smiled. The connection was so slender, it almost didn’t exist, and yet he found himself looking forward to his walk home from work far more than any other time of the day. Sometimes she was dancing, and it struck him that he’d met precious few people who could hold that kind of joy inside them. It made something inside of him ache, and that complicated things.
He had come back to this town to keep a promise, but he hadn’t reckoned on Frankie, or Tam for that matter. And it put him in an impossible position. Listening to the way Tam had been betrayed by his best friend had made William’s deception feel even more poignant. Even if he was trying to do the right thing, the truth still mattered and lying hurt. He just hadn’t bargained on how much.
So now William was in a quandary. He needed Tam’s help this morning, but William had hidden his past for so long that allowing the ties that bound it to loosen wasn’t easy, so, much to his shame, he did what he always did and only told Tam as much as he needed to know and no more. Tam had readily agreed to help, but that didn’t make William feel any better.
William had no transport, that was the problem. But if he wanted to follow through with his plan then he also needed to follow Stuart, which was why he and Tam were both currently sitting in Curzon Street – far enough away from Stuart’s house not to cause alarm, but close enough to keep an eye on his grey van. It hadn’t been difficult to find out where Stuart lived. Several of the waitresses at the club had been happy to chat, and Stuart clearly wasn’t as popular as he thought he was.
Just as William had suspected, the grey van opened its doors to customers on almost all of the regular club nights, but William had also spotted it on a couple of other occasions too.
‘Don’t take this the wrong way,’ said William to Tam after a few minutes. ‘But the less you know about what’s going on the better. I’m really grateful for your help, but I don’t want to get you involved any more than you are already.’
Tam slid him a sideways glance. ‘In other words, don’t ask questions,’ he said, smiling at William’s sheepish expression. ‘Don’t worry, I don’t want to know what’s going on. My ex-wife used to laugh at me for being so naive about the ways of the modern world, and I readily admit to being a confirmed wuss. So, I shall drive you where you need to be driven and that’s it.’
‘Fair enough,’ replied William, somewhat relieved. ‘I’m hoping that sometime fairly soon, Stuart will be paying somewhere a visit in his van and all I need to know is where that is. I can take it from there.’
Tam nodded. ‘Are you going to say, “follow that van”?’
‘I can do, if you like.’ William slid him a look, smiling at the amusement on Tam’s face. ‘You really don’t get out much, do you?’ he teased.
Frankie had plied them with the remains of the toffee apple cake for the journey and William was halfway through his when he spotted Stuart leaving his house. He was wearing his trademark black jeans this morning but had swapped his usual black shirt for a hoodie and baseball cap, jammed on his head the wrong way round. William imagined he thought it made him look super cool and his dislike for the obnoxious man grew.
Tam started his engine as they waited for the van to pull away and, at William’s signal, he began to follow at a safe distance. William had been worried he’d never be able to follow Stuart’s van on foot, hence the need for Tam’s car, but ironically, they only travelled the length of two streets before Stuart turned into a small industrial estate which William knew of old. It had been scruffy when William was a kid; now it looked virtually derelict – the forecourt choked with weeds and littered with abandoned planks of wood and rusted metal signs.
Asking Tam to wait in the car, William picked his way across the scarred ground and began to skirt the edge of the nearest building, hugging the stained and blackened walls. Behind it was another yard which had once served as a car repair shop, and beyond that were three smaller lock-up units and a row of garages, all of which were hidden from the main road. William peered around the corner, holding his breath, but Stuart’s van was easy to spot. It was the only vehicle there, the trade in car repairs having long since dwindled to nothing. There wasn’t another soul about, but William only waited long enough for Stuart to climb from his van and open the roller shutter of one of the garages, before he retraced his steps. He didn’t need to know any more. Not yet anyway.
Tam’s eyebrows were raised as William climbed back inside the car. ‘That was quick.’
William nodded. ‘No point hanging around. I was just interested to see where Stuart went, that’s all.’
‘So that’s it?’
‘That’s it,’ William agreed.
‘I might not want to know what’s going on,’ said Tam. ‘But I did think it might be marginally more exciting.’
William didn’t return his smile. ‘Be thankful it isn’t,’ he replied.
They were about to return to the car park when William put a hand on the steering wheel. To his surprise, the van was already leaving, and so after the requisite gap had grown between them and it, he instructed Tam to set off in pursuit once more.
This time, they drove right across town, to a large residential estate which had almost trebled in size since William’s family had once bought a property there. And new houses were still being built. After a confusing number of left and right turns had been taken, Stuart stopped outside a row of small shops in one of the oldest parts of the estate, just a couple of streets away from where William had once lived. Asking Tam to pull up a little distance away, William swivelled in his seat to get a better look.
The shops were all different from when William had been a boy and sent to buy his dad’s cigarettes, but there was still a newsagent there, albeit in a different place. The other spaces were filled by a fish and chip shop, a tanning salon, hairdressers, charity shop and, largest of all, a convenience store-cum-off- licence. There was nothing curious about any of them, but what was curious was that, after pulling what turned out to be a bunch of keys from his pocket, Stuart unlocked the door to the tanning salon and went inside. It was already a little after nine o’clock, so presumably the business didn’t open until later, but it seemed an odd place for Stuart to be. He had a pale, pockmarked complexion, so if he owned the place, which seemed unlikely enough, he certainly wasn’t availing himself of any free sunbed sessions.
William thought for a moment, eyes narrowing in response to where those thoughts were leading him, and then he pulled a piece of paper from his coat pocket, together with a pencil, and made a quick note. Whichever way he turned it in his mind, it was clear there was only one thing he could do now. He needed to follow his thoughts to their end.
‘We can go now,’ he said to Tam, facing front again. ‘All done.’
Tam gave him another sideways glance and slowly drove away.