Hidden Sin: Part 2 of 3: When the past comes back to haunt you

The lad was mixed-race, like he was, around fourteen or so. He held up his hand to reveal a fiver and grinned before stuffing it decisively into his inside parka pocket. ‘Nice one,’ he said, giving Joey a satisfied smile. ‘Gives me a couple of days to earn this back then, doesn’t it?’

Joey laughed. ‘That’s my bloody wages, that is, you little toerag. Well,’ he added, as he began to collapse his ladder. ‘On your own head be it. If she kills you, she kills you.’

He was just about to add that he at least admired the boy’s sense of enterprise, when he felt a buzzing starting up in his jeans pocket. Managing not to jump – the bloody pager surprised him every single time – he puffed out his chest as he produced it. ‘You’ll have to excuse me a minute, mate,’ he said, noting the kid’s look of awe. ‘I’ve got to be off now. Got to get hold of my business manager.’

‘Fucking hell,’ the lad said. ‘Didn’t realise window men even had business managers.’ He hoicked a thumb up and jabbed it over his shoulder. ‘You can use our phone if you want. Mam’s out shopping but I know the pin code.’ Joey smiled. Impressed by the pager, the lad was clearly keen to impress as well. ‘Always uses my birthday, she does, the dozy cow.’

Joey pondered for all of five seconds. The lad’s mam wouldn’t mind – she was one of his regulars. And if Mo was trying to contact him this early in the day, it was odds-on that it would be something important.

He followed the boy into the stuffy interior, then stood and watched as he broke his mother’s code to use the phone.

‘Cheers, kid. You’ll go far,’ he said, as he took the receiver and punched out the numbers, turning his back slightly so the lad couldn’t see them. Not that he was paranoid, exactly, but neither was he careless, and Mo had told him it was confidential.

‘Where are you, lad?’ Mo asked as soon as the line connected.

‘At work. Well, I was,’ he said. ‘Fucking rain’s put paid to that now.’

‘Good,’ said Mo. ‘Good.’

‘Well, I’m not sure about that, Mo. It’s –’

‘So you’re free?’

‘Well, I suppose so.’

‘And your Paula’s not with you?’

‘Nah, she’s at work, she’s –’

‘Good. I’ll send Billy round to you then.’

‘Billy?’

‘Big Billy. To bring you over to mine.’

Joey was struggling to keep up. ‘What, to the club?’

‘No, to the house.’

‘But I’ve got my cart and that,’ Joey pointed out. ‘I’ll have to take that home first –’

‘Twenty minutes then? Let me see. At The Bull car park? Yes, that’ll work. He’ll see you there.’

‘But –’ Joey began.

‘Nothing to worry about, son,’ Mo said. ‘I just need a word.’

The line clicked to end the call before he could answer.

Joey had been home two days. Paula had made him. So he could wake up at home on his birthday, which she’d insisted was important. He smiled at the memory of his first birthday present, too, because Paula had stayed over as well. And he’d been glad that his mam and dad had had a bit to drink that evening, because she wasn’t that good at keeping quiet about giving him his present, either; she’d been giggling and larking about like a bloody schoolgirl. Who knew sex could be so funny? But it was. And he’d jammed a pillow down the back of the headboard for good measure.

She’d bought him a beautiful pair of drumsticks with his name engraved on them, and a posh brand of aftershave, and a denim shirt. And Nicky had slipped him a surprising twenty quid – which Joey knew he couldn’t afford – and had been all wet-eyed and soppy and embarrassing about it too. He didn’t quite get his uncle Nicky now he was properly getting to know him – half the time he was this ex-con hard man, who nobody would dare mess with, and the other half as emotional as fuck.

His mam had even baked him a birthday cake. Chocolate, three layers, the full eighteen candles. ‘Got up early specially,’ she’d told him, ‘while you were both fast asleep in bed.’ Which had made him and Paula blush to their hair roots.

And bit by bit they’d arrived at a strained kind of truce. Nothing said. Well, bar his mam saying sorry for slapping him and him apologising for what he’d said. Least said soonest mended. Done and dusted. Forgotten. And it was okay. Not quite normal, but okay.

Still, given where he was going now, he didn’t want to face her – or his dad or uncle, for that matter – so, just in case they were in (he wasn’t sure what shifts they were working, he could never keep track) he took the cart round the back way, where it was unlikely they’d see him, and wheeled it behind the shed before walking down to The Bull.

Big Billy was already there, revving up Mo’s black BMW, one pudgy pink arm – it was almost like a leg of lamb, Joey thought – hanging from the open window. Seeing Joey, he raised it in greeting.

‘What’s the emergency then?’ Joey asked as he slid into the embrace of the smooth leather passenger seat.

Billy shrugged. ‘Fucked if I know, lad,’ he said. ‘I’m like the three wise monkeys’ dumb cousin, me – hear fuck-all, see fuck-all and say fuck-all.’ He laughed loudly at his own joke as he pulled out of the car park. ‘I’m just the hired muscle, mate. No good asking me owt.’

So Joey didn’t. He was happy enough to listen to the radio anyway, and just enjoy the sensation of being driven around Bradford by a hired driver, in a top-of-the-range Beema. Though, were it his, he’d be the one behind the wheel. And it wouldn’t be a BMW, it would be a Jaguar. Though he couldn’t help wondering about his unexpected summons. And to the house rather than the club. Alone. Why?

It was no more than fifteen minutes before Billy pulled up at the gates to Mo’s mansion, which looked no less imposing than when he’d been there before. More, even, on account of him not feeling quite prepared. He wished he’d nipped inside and changed into a different pair of jeans – his were still slightly damp, and a small mark on the thigh that he’d only just noticed made him feel slightly anxious and scruffy. He can take me as he finds me, he told himself sternly as he climbed out, echoing another of his dad’s endless sermons.

‘You can walk up from here,’ Billy said, ‘while I fuck off and play with the car for a bit. I’ll see you when I see you.’ He then must have pressed something – or Mo had, from inside the house – because the gates began parting to admit him.

Just like the previous time Joey had come here, Mo was already standing on the doorstep, only this time he was dressed in normal clothes. Well, normal for Mo – which was a world away from normal for Joey. A dark grey suit – had he come from, or was he heading to, a meeting? – and a brilliant white shirt to match his teeth.

His dreads were tied back, and a pair of shades was stuck into them.

He pulled them out and donned them as Joey began taking off his trainers; placing his left foot behind his right so he could wriggle the first foot out. ‘Don’t worry about that, son,’ Mo told him, touching his arm. ‘Just wipe them. This isn’t Buckingham Palace – just my home.’

It seemed an odd thing to say. But then this felt like an odd encounter. Joey didn’t know why, exactly, but it felt so even so. He wiped his feet on the coir doormat, then followed Mo over the threshold, where he wiped his feet on the inside doormat as well.

This time, he followed Mo into the vast chrome and granite fitted kitchen – which, even more than last time, looked like somewhere no one actually did any cooking. Had Mo’s ‘girl’, Marika, just been? But then he reflected that Mo probably didn’t spend much time here. Living alone, in this vast place, must be a very different business than in the overcrowded terrace he shared with his mam and dad, and now Nicky. He wondered if Mo ever felt lonely.

He felt glad, then, that Paula had persuaded him to go home. As his dad had said gently to him only yesterday, he’d punished his mam enough.

‘Take a seat, boy,’ Mo said, pointing to a black leather bar stool – one of four that were arranged around a freestanding breakfast bar. ‘It’s called an Island,’ Paula had whispered to him the last time. ‘You want some coffee?’ Mo asked him, nodding in the direction of a complicated machine that stood hissing on the adjacent worktop.

Joey climbed up onto the nearest stool, careful not to place his hands on the pristine and fingerprint-free granite.

Joey had already smelled the coffee, and he nodded a yes. Wake up and smell the coffee, he thought to himself. Well, he was certainly doing that right now. He drank in the aroma. Proper coffee, too. He couldn’t wait to tell Paula. And with the thought came a memory that he held very dear. Of Paula saying, when she’d stayed over, the night he’d gone back, that when they got their own place, the first thing they would do would be to buy a proper percolator. How did that happen? How’d you get from going out a couple of times to planning to live together in so short a time? It was as unexpected as it was exhilarating, but it was infinitely more exhilarating. Was that how it worked? That when you knew, you just knew?

After some ceremony – elegant cups in matching saucers, a fancy cream jug, tiny teaspoons – Mo finally handed Joey his coffee and sat down opposite him.

‘This is the life,’ Joey said, because the occasion seemed to call for it. ‘I tell you what, if me and my Paula ever make it big, we’re going to have a place just like this too.’ He felt himself redden under Mo’s benign scrutiny. ‘“If” being very much the operative word,’ he added quickly.

Mo, who’d taken a delicate first sip, set down his cup and shook his head. ‘Don’t use the word “if”, boy,’ he said. ‘That’s just setting yourself up to fail. Use the word “when”, always. Say “when” you make it big. And even if that isn’t what you’re doing right now – yet – always intend on making it big. Always.’

Joey grinned. ‘Is that what you brought me here for, Mo? A pep talk?’ Then cursed himself for his boldness because it seemed to displease Mo, who stood up abruptly, and went to the window, where he stared silently out across the vast expanse of garden. Or at least that was what it looked like; he could be staring into space. He had his hands in his trouser pockets and Joey could see the tense way in which he was holding himself.

Joey picked up his own cup – the handles were so small it was a job getting his finger into the hole – and wondered if Mo was about to let him go. Or tell him things at the club weren’t working out. Something bad, anyway. The little speech – and the way Mo had said it – had felt altogether like the sort of thing you’d say when you were about to let someone down.