FALLEN IDOLS

He’d had no choice. At least this way he might be able to talk her out of it.

He spun around, looking for her, hoping no one else had seen him. This wasn’t a time for photographs.

He heard a crack, and then it hit him in the head like a hammer blow.

As he went to the floor he saw faces. People on the street, twitching from the noise, eyes wide. Then he saw his children, smiling at him, laughing with him. His wife. The warm smell of her body. They rushed through his head as he saw the pavement get nearer, all the time getting darker.

The world had already turned black by the time his head hit the floor.

TWELVE (#u1d220fda-349c-55ef-a6a0-695b99a8a5f9)

It was late afternoon before I arrived in Turners Fold.

I was surprised at how nothing had changed, like it had a different time-frame, existing in a bubble; like driving around a photograph album, sepia print, reminders of why I’d had to leave.

I entered the Fold the usual way. There were just two ways in, from the north and from the south. All the roads that headed for the hills either turned into tracks or turned back on themselves. Pre-war bay fronts were at the entrance to the town, and then came the terraces. But these weren’t the narrow two-storey strips found nearer to the centre of town, the old mill-workers terraces with doors right onto the street. These were much grander, three storeys high, with neat gardens at the front protected by low stone walls. They gave way eventually to shops, but they were tiny affairs, crammed into Victorian fronts with stone-edged door frames, the insides dark and uninviting.

There was grey as far as I could see, lines and lines of it, the severe stripes brightened only by the fake red of suburbia as new developments filled the gaps left behind by derelict industry. I dodged slow drivers and bolting dogs for half a mile and then passed my old high school. I gave a look left. I always did when I passed it, the sign by the entrance announcing what it was, the view over the town reminding me why I had to get away.

I saw a flash of the sports fields just behind. There was a football field, goals warped and irregular, and beyond that there was a cricket pitch, really just a rectangle of short grass protected by a rope, surrounded by benches framed against the rising hills. That would be a good place to get a picture, and so I made a mental note to call back early in the morning, when the light would be sharp blue. It was where the career of David Watts had started, where he had dominated the school league and ended up signing for Burnley before making the trip to the south. From then on it had been millionaire and superstar.

I shrugged off my school memories when I drove into the town triangle. I pulled over at Jake’s and stepped out of the car, feeling the Pennine breeze on my face for the first time since Christmas. The air felt clean, like it was coming in straight off the craggy tops, packed full with chill. It didn’t have that urban warmth of London, where the air was sodden with smoke and fumes. I’d forgotten what it was like, this clarity, this purity.

I looked up at Jake’s Store and smiled.

Jake’s had been there as long as there’d been Turners Fold, or at least that’s how it seemed. It had an old wooden frame around the front, painted blue, casting shadows over the windows, making it impossible to see in. The front had been painted many times, the wood now bending with age and the effects of the sun, when it came, so the paint had chipped and flaked and pointed jagged fingers.

As I walked towards it, I could hear the sound of a brush on the old tiled floor drifting out to the street, like it always did when trade slackened off.

I turned as I heard a car rumble over the cobbles running alongside the town hall. It was an old Mondeo, windows down, someone from my old school at the wheel. His arm rested lazily out of the window as he drove slowly along, tapping lightly to the beat of his radio. Robbie Williams swirled around the square and washed over me like cleanser, the simple pop anthem a change from the usual club-land thump that seemed to bang out of every bar in London. The music matched the slow crunch of the tyres as I watched them roll away.

I walked into Jake’s. The shop was dark and shaded, so it took my eyes a couple of seconds to adjust, and when they did I saw Jake by his broom, nodding his head and smiling.

‘Well, look who it is,’ he chuckled. ‘Jack Garrett. You tired of old London town?’

I grinned and held out my hand. Jake took it and gave it a gentle shake. His fingers felt old and brittle in mine. His skin was soft and cold, and I could feel the thinness of the skin. He looked bonier than I remembered, and he seemed to be stooping more than he used to. His skin just didn’t fit as tight these days.

‘I think London’s tired of me,’ I replied, laughing. ‘How are you, Jake?’

He skimmed the brush across the floor absentmindedly. ‘I’m fine, Jack. The winters get colder and the summers make me want to sleep, but I feel fine.’

‘How’s Martha? Is she still working?’

‘Oh, she’s still with the police. They tried to retire her a couple of years ago, when she got to sixty, but the inspector talked the big shirts around. She mans the front desk now, checking for forged car insurance.’

‘And looking out for my father?’

He cocked his head. ‘And some of that.’

Martha, Jake’s wife, had worked for the police for as long as my father had been in the service. Her title was now a Civilian Support Officer, but in a small place like Turners Fold, it had always seemed like she was the station mother. She used to man the radio, draw up the shift roster, kept the station running properly. She did it so well that no one noticed, but when it was all centralised and taken out of the Fold, things never went as smoothly again. Ask any police officer who they treasured most at the station, and they would all reply Martha, because she looked after everyone. When she was in charge of things, if a young officer had a baby he didn’t get a night shift for the first year. Martha made sure of that. Things had changed now, but people remember.

‘You here to see your dad?’ asked Jake.

I shook my head. ‘He doesn’t know I’m here. I’m here for work.’

He gave a small laugh. ‘You won’t find much around here.’

‘No, no, I’m here for a story, connected with the Henri Dumas shooting, the footballer.’

He looked surprised for a moment, and then glanced out of the window. ‘The world is going crazy. And now Nixon as well.’

I felt my stomach turn. ‘What do you mean, “Nixon”?’ I asked, my head already telling me the answer.

Jake looked surprised. ‘Haven’t you heard the news?’

I gave a thin smile and shook my head. I’d had the radio on for the first part of the journey, the stop–start crawl out of London, but once I got onto the motorway, flying through grey and green emptiness, I needed more lift, so I did the last hundred miles with the CD player on.

Jake stood up straight and flicked his brush across the floor again. ‘Same as Dumas. Johnny Nixon, stood on the corner of a street in Manchester.’

I leant against the counter. If this was just some nutcase, it was a well-organised nutcase. Two cities a couple of hundred miles apart.

Jake snapped me from my thoughts by asking what I wanted. I looked around the shop at a loss. I couldn’t remember. Maybe I had just wanted to say hello. He smiled at that and told me that was free. Everything else in the shop had a label on it.

Then I thought of something.

‘I’m going home next. Does he still have a sweet tooth?’

Jake smiled and nodded to a shelf at the back of the shop. ‘Army and navy.’

‘Okay. I’ll take some of those. Is it ounces or grams in here?’

He tapped his nose like it was a secret. ‘For you it can be ounces, but don’t tell everyone.’

He walked to the back of the shop, slow and deliberate, and then said over his shoulder, ‘He’ll miss you when you go back.’

Jake’s comment halted me for a second, made my throat catch. ‘Oh, he’ll survive,’ I said glibly. I paused then, realising that I didn’t know what my father did with his time. What did he do when he went home to that empty house?

Jake sensed my thoughts. ‘He spends most nights in the Swan.’

I felt a kick of guilt, thinking of my father with just a pub and his job to keep him company. Then I thought of how he could have called me. I would have come up, if he’d asked. He never had.

I paid Jake for the sweets and went outside, leaving him with a promise that I’d call back before I returned to London. Then I went for a walk round the triangle.

I knew where I was headed: the Valley Post, the start of my career.

Laura looked out of the window of Dumas’s home.

It was a tall Georgian house with pillars, bright white, part of a sweeping crescent, overlooking a small patch of green. This would normally be a quiet street, apart from the purr of Ferraris. It wasn’t quiet today, she thought, the street outside packed with reporters and cameras. They were kept back by two policemen, the line broken periodically by the delivery of flowers, the pavement outside now bright with colour and cards.