THE DOMINO BOYS (a psychological thriller) Read online

  ‘So?’

  ‘So there are more than six jobs on the boards right now, Mr Stocker.’

  ‘Some of those are out of town. Most of them don’t pay enough to live on, you know that.’

  ‘Other people get by on the Minimum Wage, Mr Stocker. You’re nothing special.’ Her eyes were emotionless, unblinking. Looking through him to somewhere better.

  Nothing special. That really got him all heated up. It was like a body of steam was building up deep inside him and he had great difficulty putting a lid on it.

  ‘I need transport to get to get there, because they’re far away in the middle of nowhere – you can’t get to them on public transport and I don’t have a car, can’t afford to run a car on what you lot pay me – have you tried living off dole money? And if I landed one of those jobs they don’t pay enough to buy a car either. Makes no difference what they tell you in the papers or on telly, lady, dole is peanuts, just enough to scrape by on. Do I look like I live the life of bloody Riley? You try telling the wife there’s bread and jam for tea again. Christ, it’s like living in the 1930s! I don’t smoke, a beer’s a luxury. I ain’t a scrounger! All I can say is let those higher-than-thou busybodies who’ve never had to take a step into a stinking Job Centre like this try it for a week or two. You think I like begging for the government’s money? I’ve still got pride, you know. And you know what? I paid National Insurance all my life; so what the hell is it for if when you need it you get the government coming over all tight-fisted over giving you what’s rightfully yours, branding you a scrounger in the process? That’s what National Insurance is for, ain’t it? For when you need it?’

  He exhaled noisily, looked away from her, his hands clasped tight on his lap. How the hell did he end up here, he thought? Being lectured by a young snip of a thing fresh from school; she hadn’t the faintest idea what it was like in the world yet. What had he done so wrong?

  ‘There are a number of jobs on the board. Plenty more on the computer,’ she said evenly.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said, his breathing starting to come under control.

  ‘We have to have proof you’re actively seeking a job to enable you to continue your entitlement to unemployment benefit.’

  ‘I applied for what I could!’ he pleaded. ‘I showed you the rejection letters, those that bothered to reply.’

  She cocked her head, looked at the papers again. ‘I think you could try harder,’ she said.

  ‘You do, huh?’ he said, desperately trying to hold himself in check. ‘You ever been out of work, lady? Ever been out of work in a recession, made redundant? In my time I’ve seen three recessions and been made redundant twice, and I can tell you it ain’t a barrel of laughs. That’s what successive governments have done to the North. They’ve taken the heart and soul out of it till there’s nothing left.’

  ‘You need to try harder.’

  He sighed in resignation. Nodded meekly. It killed him to do so. Another bit chewed out of him. Soon, like the North there’d be nothing left of him if his luck didn’t change. ‘Sure,’ he said.

  ‘We’ll review your case in another month, and I hope by then you’ll have something more to show me.’

  He fixed her in a steely gaze. ‘Sure,’ he said.

  ‘I’m not a bad man,’ he said.

  The doctor didn’t say a thing, just looked intently at him. His consulting room was small, the tiniest of windows looking out onto a thick evergreen bush. Even his computer looked small. He turned to the screen, tapped on the keyboard. ‘Let’s see,’ he said. He rolled his tongue around the inside of his mouth in thought. ‘The medication isn’t helping?’

  ‘I dunno, maybe. I dunno. I still feel so damn down all the time. I’m not a bad man,’ he added.

  ‘No one is calling you a bad man, Mr Stocker. That’s just the way you’re perceiving things at the moment. And given your current circumstances it’s perfectly natural to feel depressed. Shall we up your medication? You’re on 20mg; I think we should increase it to 40mg. When it starts to take effect you’ll begin to feel a whole lot better about things.’

  ‘I didn’t ask to be made redundant,’ said Barry Stocker. ‘It just happens.’

  The doctor tapped away at the keyboard. He produced a prescription and handed it over. ‘Try this new dose, see how you get on.’

  ‘I’m used to working hard for a living. I was a miner. That’s hard graft. Worked hard all my life, and then I end up like this.’

  ‘Have you given any more thought to seeing a counsellor?’

  Barry shook his head vigorously. ‘I ain’t a nutcase.’

  ‘No one is saying you are, Mr Stocker, but it can often help, along with the medication, to overcome depression.’

  ‘I ain’t a nutcase,’ he reiterated. ‘They go for that over in America; I’ve seen it on telly enough, but over here…’

  ‘It’s a perfectly acceptable practice.’

  ‘Yeah, maybe for some people, but for me it ain’t. All that psycho-stuff, it freaks me out.’

  The doctor smiled. ‘Not psycho, Mr Stocker; that has other connotations. Anyhow, give it some thought and maybe we can discuss it again in a month’s time. I can put a referral through to Mental Health whenever you feel it’s appropriate for you.’

  ‘There you go, Mental Health – what does that say about you if you go down that route?’ He rose to his feet, clutching the prescription. ‘I’ll try this, thanks. I’ll let you know about the mental stuff.’

  He hated collecting his prescription at the chemist. Hated the fact they knew he was on tablets for depression. That was something he wanted to keep secret, not the sort of thing he wanted broadcasting. Every visit, without fail, he searched the woman’s face as she handed him his small white paper bag containing his box of tablets, trying to read what she was thinking about him.

  ‘Do you pay for your prescription?’ she asked.

  ‘No,’ he said. And that pained him, too, because he was receiving benefits and qualified for free prescriptions, and she knew this also. It cut him up more than anyone knew, visiting the chemist.

  He called at the newsagents to pick up the cheap local rag. Went and sat on a bench in the town’s small park, still hanging on despite the council’s budget cuts; they had to pare down some services and reckoned they couldn’t afford the upkeep of the park, so wanted to sell the land off. The locals rose up and prevented it, for now. He was glad. It always gave Barry Stocker a buzz to see the rose leaves bursting from their buds. Like they promised something special. Summer, hot weather, shorts, beers on the grass, barbeques, driving somewhere on holiday. Most of the things he couldn’t afford to do these days.

  He flicked idly through the pages full of small-town gossip and troubles, made his way to the back page for the racing results. He liked to bet on the nags, once upon a time, but that was another joy he had to forego. He checked out the obituaries as a matter of course. He’d become increasingly obsessed with reading about who had died. Concerned that he knew a lot of them. Time was when he was reading about their weddings, then christenings, and now the guys he worked with in the mine were dropping like flies. Gave him the jitters. But he couldn’t help but read about it. Made him wonder what they’d say about him when he kicked the bucket.

  Mickey Craddick’s obituary was there. A fair-sized spread, too. That figured, he thought. Mickey never did anything that wasn’t showy, even in death. He had the money for it. Sure, he loathed the man. Hated the fact he ever had to work for him, desperation biting so deep that he had to sink to Mickey Craddick’s level to get a bit of ready cash. The bastard loved that. He liked to think he could buy anybody.

  Truth was, he could, and did.

  Made him think, though, what justice there was in the world when a man like Mickey Craddick could afford that big Victorian house on the edge of town, God knows how many fancy cars, jetting off to foreign countries at the drop of a hat, and manage to have all those beautiful young woman – a man who looked like an Italian, in heave
n’s name! OK, so maybe he never considered himself as handsome as him, but at one time he was a better catch than ever Mickey Craddick was. And yet Craddick was the one who had all the birds with the long legs and big tits. He had everything Barry Stocker ever wanted out of life and never got.

  Well, that wasn’t strictly true. During the 80s, after the miners’ strike that rocked the town to its foundations, Barry was one of those who decided to take one of the early redundancy packages they offered. Some of his pals fell out with him over that, said he was selling out, especially after the bloody hard times they’d had during the strike. But Barry Stocker saw that the writing was on the pit wall and opted to get out while he could. Got a good payout, too. Fifty-five thousand pounds. Justly so, he thought; he’d been down the mine since he left school in 1975. Later on, as they gradually closed all the mines across the country, the redundancy payouts got progressively smaller, a fraction of what he got, so he was glad he did it when he did.

  The money didn’t last long. He blew most of it on all the fancy things he’d never had. A big car, holidays abroad, TVs, new kitchen, new bathroom, new everything. For a while he knew what it felt like to have the cash that Mickey Craddick had. Some guys were using their redundancy to set up small-time businesses. Carpet cleaning was all the rage back then. That’s where his mate Alfie Parker bought his equipment, from an ex-miner who didn’t know the first thing about running a business. That was sad, though, thought Barry; why the hell would you need to do that, clean someone else’s damn carpets? Having worked all his life it was time to have a bit of me-time.

  Anyhow, he had this idea that he’d keep twenty thousand pounds back so he could set up in business for himself. He had his eye on a little shop on High Street. He always wanted to run a sweet shop, the old-fashioned kind where they had jars of things lining shelves, like they used to have when he was a kid. He told his wife the twenty thousand was off limits. She complained about that, but it was his money, he said, and they needed a future now the mines were going down the pan.

  When he heard his friend Duncan Winslade was in trouble, needed the money desperately, he freely gave it to him on the understanding he’d get it back. Seemed OK at the time, when he still had a fair bit still in the bank; sure, no problem, he could spare the cash for a mate in trouble. That’s what mates do. But he never got it back and he never put the money down on that sweet shop.

  Then the next thing he knew he had nothing left of his redundancy and he was in debt. He hadn’t even bought his council house like others had done, so he ended up owning nothing and owing others plenty. Especially Mickey Craddick. He should never have taken anything from that bastard, avoided him like the plague, but he had no choice. The bailiffs were set to come to his house and take everything he owned. He had a wife and two kids, for Christ’s sake! They needed feeding, clothing, and he discovered his wife couldn’t kick the spending habit once she’d been bitten by it. Felt it was her right, like he thought it had been his. The debts mounted like snow on a roof. It was only a matter of time before it slid off in an avalanche and came thudding down.

  And what now? Here he was, made redundant from a shitty factory job that had to rationalise because of the recession, his wife and he hardly talking, his kids grown up and left home with hardly a word from them, like they were ashamed of him or something; on the dole, no money and being talked down to by a kid half his age. Is that what they’d say about him in his obituary when the time came? That he was a loser? A nobody?

  But at least there was one glimmer of satisfaction. Mickey Craddick was dead, and what he’d done for him had died with the bent bastard. At least that particular issue had been resolved for him. Tonight, when he met the lads for their weekly game of dominoes, he’d celebrate.

  Mickey Craddick was dead, in spite of all his money, and that was worth raising a glass to.

  * * * *

  3

  Duncan Winslade

  He couldn’t wait to be rid of the place, if he had to be honest. For him there wasn’t that strong pull of nostalgia for the town of his birth. He’d spent years trying to escape it, for one thing, and his long career in the police force had ensured he got what he wished for, ever since he was a kid. To leave Overthorpe and never look back.

  Except he did come back. Seven years ago. Things didn’t work out for him in the Met and he ended up returning to South Yorkshire. Bought a house on the outskirts of Overthorpe, where all the best housing stock in the town was. As far away from the street where he’d been born as possible; Victoria Street, a long, seemingly unending row of back-to-back terraced houses in time-grimed red brick. The street had always been rough, had its fair share of problems, but it had gone downhill of late.

  Back when he was a kid of about seven or eight the street didn’t have cars parked all the way up it, because nobody could afford cars in those days, and work was a short walk to the colliery for the majority of men who lived there. But the 1980s had slit the town’s throat, slowly bled it to death, and people nowadays had to commute to wherever they could find work, and there wasn’t a lot of that around. The road was crammed with souped-up Subaru Imprezas, lowered Renaults and Fords, the occasional battered Mercedes, and a host of rust-buckets that he just knew were dodgy. What with all the cheap white double glazing, the litter collected in the gutters and dog mess on the pavements it had been ruined, he thought.

  Duncan Winslade chided himself for getting unduly sentimental as he stood in the narrow street, gazing up to the bedroom window of the house where he’d first come screaming into the world. It wasn’t like him. He’d always been a bluff, unemotional kind of guy. When the teachers caned him at school – a regular occurrence through junior and then secondary school – he never even winced, much to the amazement and admiration of his fellow pupils, and the teachers would lay into him all the harder to provoke a reaction. But he never gave them the satisfaction. ‘You’ll end up going bad, Winslade!’ one of them snarled into the ear he’d got a sharp hold on. ‘I’ve seen boys like you. The prisons are full of them.’

  He had the last laugh, because he defied everyone’s expectations and went into the police force. Turned out there were only two choices for young lads leaving school anyway, the mines or the police, and by the time he was sixteen he’d had enough of Overthorpe and wanted to leave it, not get buried under it. Turned out he was brighter than he thought, and the detached demeanour everyone used to get so worked up about was a distinct advantage in his chosen career.

  As a copper on the beat he’d been called out to Victoria Street many times in the early days. It wasn’t exactly a den of thieves, but it was pretty close at times. All it takes are a few problem families and a place can go downhill fast, he thought. He still knew where they used to live, could point out the houses if he had to, tell you what colour door they had, how many kids, married or divorced, unemployed or employed, thick or sharp. The Baxters, the Coghills, the Websters, the Craddicks.

  Worst of all were the Craddicks.

  The father – Donald Craddick – had been in and out of prison for one thing or another all his life, carving out a career path of his own from petty theft to GBH through to manslaughter. Surprisingly, his wife seemed a decent sort, relatively attractive, but he’d seen many such women drawn to thugs like Donald Craddick. In a small backwater like Overthorpe, characters like Craddick offered a twisted sort of glamour for the young and impressionable. Even if she realised her mistake there was no escaping it once Donald Craddick had his hooks into her. She eventually had three kids, grew fat, ever more timid, drank herself into oblivion, and pretty soon the attractive young woman he married was swamped forever under a mire of daily drudgery, drink, worry and crime.

  The kids were no better. Two daughters, one of whom became a prostitute in Leeds, and another who got herself carved up by her brute of a boyfriend, who in turn got carved up by his girlfriend’s brute of a father as recompense. Nothing was ever pinned on Donald Craddick, though. Then there was Mickey Craddic
k. The image of his father. He inherited his swarthy, almost Italianate good looks, and coupled with the best of his mother’s pretty attributes was always going to be a honey trap for the girls. But he also inherited his father’s black mantle, his selfish, thuggish, no-holds-barred approach to life. People wrongly thought they were finally free of Donald Craddick, sentenced to rot for years in prison. He was born again in the guise of his son Mickey.

  As a boy, Mickey Craddick terrorised the young kids on the street. As soon as he could walk he was trouble. They used to say his mother drank so much he was breastfed on Guinness. He grew stocky and strong, and cocky with it. Stone throwing, breaking windows, beating up other kids for the fun of it, a little shoplifting, he soon attracted other lads who were keen to bask in his black light, and he proudly formed his first gang at the age of eight. They hung out near the black mountainous slag heaps that fringed the colliery and blighted the generally flat land thereabouts, and they called themselves, rather unimaginatively, the Slag Gang.

  Mickey Craddick was the bane of Overthorpe Junior School, with each teacher in turn glad to wash their hands of the errant pupil as he moved up. Duncan Winslade and Craddick were in the same class, along with Duncan’s friend Barry Stocker. Alfie Parker, another friend, was a year younger and in the class below. Strangely, it was Craddick that would bring the three friends together for the first time, the beginnings of their lifelong friendship forged in their mutual dislike and fear of Mickey Craddick and his young gang of thugs.

  The small Slag Gang, made up of some of the town’s outcasts and no-hopers, plagued the other boys, especially at playtime in the schoolyard, and when the boys made their way home after school. Seeing how Duncan Winslade had stoically endured a severe caning one day, Mickey Craddick sought him out in the playground afterwards.

  ‘You think you’re tough, Winslade?’ Mickey growled.