version – knocked into shape during those nine months in prison – was one he no longer felt he knew. He’d been difficult to deal with from the minute he’d been released, as if he had to roll around town like some sort of gangster to prove a point that he was harder than everyone else. No longer just the local baker’s wayward son, but a drug-fuelled not-to-be-messed-with ex-convict.
Convict. A hard word. Gurdy really hated ‘hard’. Hated the whole notion of what men thought they had to be. Hated all those horrible masculine trappings – even more since he’d accepted the person he was. He was counting the days now till he could get out and reinvent himself too.
Away from here. Away from this. He thought of Steve. Just a shag, but a watershed moment. Get away so he could finally become himself.
He really had absolutely no idea where they were going. Obviously not to anywhere he’d been to before. So where? They seemed to be headed out of town. On some dodgy secret job for Mo perhaps? Hadn’t Paddy already mentioned the word ‘mission’? He hoped not. Lucy’s concerns kept coming back to him and he feared for his liberty. Couldn’t get the tone of her voice out of his head – her implication that some sort of ‘net’ was closing in.
They screamed towards another junction, and Paddy glanced left and right, looking for crossing traffic, and, as he did so, Gurdy noticed just how manic he really looked. His eyes seemed glazed and unfocussed, like he was looking but not seeing, and Gurdy wondered how much – and what – he might have taken. Always the bloody drugs, these days. Paddy seemed always high on something, and no longer just in the nights, but in the days. Tenfold, since he’d come out of prison. When Gurdy felt braver, he’d say something. Someone had to say something. Didn’t he realise what he was doing to himself?
He brushed clammy hands along the legs of his jeans. ‘Pads, mate, what’s going on? Where are we off to?’
Paddy swung the car onto the main road, a grin plastered on his face now, and, instead of answering, simply clicked on the radio. It blared a dance song, mid-track – ‘I’m gonna run away from you’ – which was so entirely at odds with the mood in the car that, had he not been so dry-mouthed with fear, Gurdy might have laughed.
And the fear was only growing as they got further out of town. Paddy Allen was a lunatic of the highest fucking order, and this little trip they were taking was all wrong. All so wrong.
And as the car sped past bits of town that Gurdy knew to be dodgy, he felt his insides begin to churn. Why wasn’t Paddy speaking? Why wasn’t he telling him where they were going? ‘Paddy!’ he said again, adding a little volume to his voice now that it was having to compete with the radio. ‘Stop messing around, man. Where are we off to, and why are you driving so fucking fast? There’ll be coppers all over up here.’
Paddy glanced at him, that same crazed look in his eyes. ‘No coppers where we’re going, my little Paki mate,’ he said. ‘In fact I doubt we’ll be disturbed by anyone at all.’
Gurdy’s insides churned some more. What the fuck did that mean? ‘Please stop, Paddy,’ he tried. ‘I really need a piss, and I feel sick.’
‘You fucking pussy,’ Paddy taunted, laughing so much that he was actually rocking in the driver seat, making the car buck and lurch. ‘You think I’m fucking stupid, eh? Eh?’
Then, out of nowhere, he landed a punch on Gurdy’s ear.
A hard one. ‘Fuck, that hurt!’ Gurdy gasped, astonished.
Paddy glared. ‘It was supposed to! You think I’m as fucking stupid as that fucking Jimmy? Eh? Or his ugly fucking bird, eh?’
Gurdy’s terror now ramped up to a whole new level. ‘Bloody hell, Pad – what the fuck are you on about, mate?’
‘I’m fucking on to you, “mate”,’ he hissed. ‘Got it? I fucking know what you’ve been up to. I know everything.’
Gurdy couldn’t help it. He suddenly lost control of his bladder and could only look down in horror as a hot urine stain began to bloom across the crotch of his jeans. Fuck, and the smell. It made his eyes smart.
Though Paddy didn’t seem to notice. He was banging his fists on the steering wheel as he drove – down some country lane, hedgerows zipping by in a green blur. Fuck! What the hell was all this about?
‘I swear, Pad, I don’t know what you’re on about,’ he pleaded. ‘I’d never do or say anything against you. You know that. I’m loyal, man. I swear on my mother’s life.’
Another stinging punch connected with the side of his head. He saw stars – tiny diamonds that danced around in front of him, and all he could think was how hard it must be to drive a car and punch him all at the same time. Perhaps they’d crash now, as well, and he welcomed it.
‘Shut the fuck up, you Paki cunt! It’s all down to you! You and that fucking Daley have been plotting against me all along. Shagging my bird, too? Eh? Eh? It’s all making fucking sense now. That it? You forget, “mate”, that I’m NOT A FUCKING IDIOT! I’ve seen stuff. I’ve got fucking eyes in my head!’
Cringing now, braced for the next punch, and pressing his body against the car door, Gurdy was spared the necessity of trying to respond to Paddy’s nonsense. And spared another punch, too, as Paddy needed both hands on the wheel to turn the car into a broken concrete forecourt beyond which stood a big old metal building, largely screened from the road by high fences and trees.
He thought he knew where he might be now. At one of Mo’s fabled hideaways. But there was no time to ponder the whys and the wherefores of the situation as Paddy leapt from the driver’s seat, scooted round the bonnet and yanked open the passenger door to drag Gurdy out by his hair.
And then came the next humiliation. It was pointless trying to fight it. The body did what it did – you couldn’t control it. And he’d now lost control over his sphincter as well. And it was pointless trying to struggle, to try and get away, because Paddy, who was a good five inches taller than he was, could beat him to a pulp with one hand behind his back. So there was nothing for it but to allow himself to be dragged along, stumbling and sobbing, into a filthy, deserted building in the middle of nowhere.
Only now, Paddy saw how his body had betrayed him. Smelled the smell. Saw the shit running from the bottom of his jeans. ‘You fucking, dirty, smelly cunt.’ He booted Gurdy in the back of the knees. They obediently buckled.
‘Just wait,’ Paddy raged. ‘Just you wait till I tell everyone what a shitty-arsed cunt you are, you fucking pussy!’
Gurdy realised he was in the hands of what was commonly referred to as a raving maniac.
Perhaps he always had been.
Vicky was annoyed. It was almost half six already and it was only a bloody Tuesday, for Christ’s sake. One of the few nights in the week when she could be sure of getting home on time. She hated being beholden to her mother at the best of times, and this would make her worse.
She was mostly annoyed with Leanne, though. It was all very well her having her bloody aunty in for a cheeky end-of-the-day perm, knowing the boss was away, but to expect Vicky to have to stay late to help her bloody wasn’t.
‘I can’t be doing this all the time, Lee,’ she snapped out of earshot of the hapless aunty. ‘My little Chantelle hates being left all day with my mam as it is. And I can almost hear the steam hissing from her ears from here. I’m going to have to set off.’
Leanne seemed to find that funny. But not in a good way. ‘For Christ’s sake, Vic, keep your hair on. She’s only a baby!’ Vicky wasn’t sure if she meant Chantelle or her mum. Either would apply, after all. ‘Look, I said I’d slip you some extra tip money, and I will, because I’m grateful. But you know, you really don’t need to worry about your little one like this – she won’t even know who she’s with at her age.’
Vicky was about to ask Leanne when it was she’d taken