Boy A (29 page)

First things first. Just get out of Manchester. He stares around the small station building for a map or a timetable, something to tell him where he can flee to from here. There is a news-stand to one side, racks of tabloids facing out in rows. With heart-stopping horror he sees that one, the
Sun
, carries the headline: ‘Milton killer in violent attack’, and then: ‘Bruiser’, above an almost full-page photo of him. Not just any photo. The one taken by the
Evening News
. They’ve cut it off, so that instead of standing shoulder to shoulder
with Chris, he’s on his own. Alone, and wearing exactly the same clothes as he is now. It could have been taken outside the station.

Jack looks around him, expecting to see a police snatch squad or a baying mob. But no one seems to have noticed, no one is even looking at him. The danger gives him an explosion of energy. He rips off the DV cap and hobbles, faster than his knee could have stood a second before, towards the matchstick man that marks the toilet.

Inside a scrawled stall, Jack sets about changing his appearance. The cap he stuffs into the cistern, once he’s prised its lid off. But deciding this might be found, he takes it out again. With the cut-throat from his pocket, he cuts it into strips thin enough to be confident they’ll flush. He pulls off the fleece and T-shirt, and hangs them from the lock. And with toilet paper he tries to buff a shine onto the steel roll-holder. He gets it good enough to see his reflection, though it appears stretched and ghoulish, the sickening spirit of a muppet. With the razor, he starts to strip away his hair. He washes the blade after every long stroke, in the still-open cistern. Which burbles away to itself like a baby, unaware of the anguish around it. Halfway through the shaving process, Jack realizes he’s probably marking himself more by doing it. The skin of his scalp is as white and crinkled as an arse in the bath, but with angry red blotches where he’s cut too close. Only he’s gone too far to stop. He has to go forward. So many clumps of blond swim about in the cistern by the end that he can’t get the razor clean. He has to scoop out some of the wet chunks of hair, and put them in the bowl with the sliced-up hat.

His top is lined in blue, so he cuts off the washing instructions and size label and puts it on inside out, to change the colour and hide the company logo. With more toilet roll, he cleans up the most obvious bits of scattered hair, and watches to make sure everything flushes away. For
a moment it looks like the bowl is going to flood. But the blockage bursts, and hat, hair, labels and paper are sucked into the sewers. He pockets the cut-throat in his trousers, closer to hand in case he needs it.

Examining himself in the mirror by the wash-basins, which are crusted with ancient soap smears, Jack decides that the fleece looks all right, not obviously on wrong way round. His head isn’t too bad either. Maybe it was a good idea to shave it. He’s managed without any major cuts, even at the back, and it’s certainly altered his appearance. He looks like a Romanian Aids orphan: sickly, sad and doomed.

He gets on the first train that’s heading out of the city. Not knowing where it’s going, not really caring, so long as it is far away. He finds a seat at the end of a carriage, so nobody can sit opposite him. No one on board so far can even see his face. With the weight off his knee, and his leg extended, the pain almost subsides. Exhaustion hits him like a PP-9. He hopes it’s not the tablets acting as well. He needs to have his wits about him.

It’s a struggle to hold down the panic when the ticket collector comes round. The guy is a kindly-looking, middle-aged West Indian, but Jack has a deeply drilled fear of uniforms. This one is Nazi grey, and a ticket machine hangs Uzi-like from a polished leather shoulder strap. Jack tries to control his breathing, fights the urge to bolt, as the inspector moves down the carriage towards him. But there’s nowhere to run to on the train, even if he could run. He has to brazen it out and buy a ticket. Shit, he doesn’t even know where the train’s going. He strains to hear a destination from another passenger. They’ve all paid at the station, just hand over slips of card. Which are clipped with a click that goes right through Jack.

‘Ticket?’ the collector says.

‘Haven’t got one,’ Jack says, keeping his voice monotone. ‘Had to run for the train.’ His knee twinges at the very idea.

‘Where you going, son?’

‘All the way.’ He forces a smile. It must look false; his face feels contorted.

The inspector seems not to notice. ‘Right you are,’ he chuckles. ‘All the way. Are you coming all the way back as well?’

‘Sorry?’ Has he been rumbled after all?

‘Single or return?’ The man’s pink-nailed hand hovers over the buttons on his machine.

Jack wants to say return. Single is suspicious, surely, but suddenly the question of payment hits him. He has no idea how much this costs. He’s only been on a train once before. On a trip from the home with Terry. The thought of Terry nearly breaks him. He feels a gulp, a gasp for air shuddering through his chest. ‘Single,’ he says, quickly. While he still can.

The machine makes an electronic clatter, the rapid crunch of tiny printing wheels, ejects a cream and orange credit-card-shaped sheet. ‘Ten pound thirty,’ the guard says.

For a moment Jack believes he’s lost his wallet somewhere on the trail. But tracks it down by panicky patting of the numerous pockets of his trousers. He struggles to get it from his second zippered hip, fumbles it out on to his lap. Then knocks it to the floor like a spider, when he sees the branded letters of his name, burned script like a Western ‘Wanted’ poster.

‘Are you all right, son?’ asks the inspector, his eyebrows wrinkled in concern.

‘Fine, sorry, I’m fine.’ Jack opens the wallet, with his hand over the name on it. To his relief, he has a twenty inside. He knows the police could track his switch card.

The man gives him the change and ticket, watches while he slots them into the wallet, and says: ‘You look after yourself now.’ And he nods to emphasize the importance of his advice.

Jack watches him through the window into the next carriage. He doesn’t talk into a radio or phone, just carries on collecting tickets. It looks like he’s got away with it; he’s unrecognized.

A fat man in a tweed jacket gets on at the next stop, still in the city outskirts. He sits down across the aisle from Jack; who slumps his head as if asleep, so the man can only see the top of his shaven scalp. Traces of the tablets must be still swimming through Jack’s bloodstream, because, before he’s even aware he’s drifting, the sleep is no longer an act.

He wakes with a shake, dispelling dreams of a vanished lady. It’s not him that’s shaking though, or rather it is, but someone else is doing it. He comes round to pain, and a brown mouth blocking his vision. For a moment he’s back inside, in Feltham, the tooth-spitting beating of his first day. He often wondered whether it might have been better if it ended then. But this mouth is smiling, laughing to itself.

‘Come on, son,’ it says. ‘You’re here now. “All the way”, end of the line.’

Jack pulls himself upright on the seat.

‘I thought you were dead for a second there,’ the ticket collector says. ‘Never seen such a deep sleeper.”

Jack thanks the man, and waves a half wave as he walks off. There’s no one else in the carriage, probably not on the whole train. His knee is immovable. It’s stiffened completely, like it’s splinted itself. It’s less agonizing than before, when he puts weight on it. Still not what you’d call fun. But there isn’t another option.

The carriage doors are open, the platform empty. The tracks stop abruptly at wood buffers. This is indeed the end of the line. Beyond them, British Rail-blue letters on a white sign read ‘Blackpool’.

Things make sense then. Jack can see what’s meant to be. And he is finally beside the seaside. Beside the sea.

The station empties on to a road. It’s the sort of road that leads inevitably somewhere. So that, even if you have a leg that shrieks with every stride, you can’t help but hurry down it. It’s the sort of road that smells of salt and sand, and salted chips and sandwiches. And also cooking fat, cheap fags, candy floss. It’s the sort of road that only seems to run one way, even though there are two sides for the traffic. Everything heads down on roads like these. Everything must end at the sea.

Jack is emptied out on to a promenade, and across from it is a pier. ‘North Pier’, a street sign says. And he takes this as another achievement: some bit of northerliness finally reached. The air fills his lungs in a way that makes it seem like all the breaths he’s taken before were imitations. This is what air should be like. This is what someone had in mind when they first made it.

To his left Jack can see the Blackpool Tower. No, not
can
; he
has
to see it. It demands it. Huge, dark-girdered, unashamedly phallic. Love me or fuck off, it says. Like all of Blackpool seems to. Fortune tellers, fish and chips, kiss me quicks. But Jack is drawn to the pier. This is what has brought him here.

He walks past an arcade, which advertizes free toilets, and rattles out the sound of tumbling coins so loudly he’s sure it must be on speakers. Or is it that everything is magnified in Blackpool? The pier seems to go on for miles. There is even a tram to take you to the end. But, despite his protesting leg, Jack wants to walk along it.

He passes a Punch and Judy stand, abandoned, out of season. He’s never seen the show, but he knows the plot: deformity, domestic violence, infanticide. Kids’ stuff.

The sea, through the gaps in the planks, jostles itself about. It’s calling to Jack, knocking him up, asking him out to play. His mum would tell it he’s not in, say it’s too rough. But she’s not here. There’s nobody home but him. And it’s
true what they say about sea air being good for you. Jack can feel his knee healing with every step. He can feel his soul healing too, his spirit lifting. This isn’t about the choice. This is about abdicating choice altogether. Leaving it to the sea to decide. Sometimes you don’t want to take any decisions at all. None, nada, nil, nothing, zip, zilch, zero. He realizes it’s not the gaps. The gaps are good. The contents cause the problems. It’s the filling that makes the holes. For once he wants to be totally unfilled. As empty as the wire Jesus the day they buried his mother. A crucifix which had seemed cruel at the time, but which he now sees was only honest.

There are boats moored to buoys, a way out from the end of the pier. Little white motor launches. He’s sure they’ll have blankets on board, and probably food. And Jack thinks that if he swims, then he’ll swim out to one of them. He knows how to hot-wire. They must be easy enough to drive. It’s not like you can crash them; you’ve got the whole of the ocean to learn in, the whole of the world to reach. He could head round the coast, head for France, across
la mer
. Head for who knows where. It doesn’t matter, they’ll never catch him if he’s got a boat.

And if he sinks, well then it just wasn’t meant to be. It’s a beautiful day, down beside the sea, and he feels free. Empty of guilt and sadness. He’s known love, he’s had a job, he’s made friends, had sex, saved a life. He’s had his day in the sun and it’s still shining. There could be no better time or place to end than this. And that’s supposed to be the way to go: drowning. If you’re going to go, then that’s the way to do it. He can picture himself, over-brimmed with salt water, spiralling downwards to a sandy bottom. If the waves taste like they smell, then it won’t be so bad. That’s the way to do it.

He climbs the railing and swings his bad leg over first. He wants to be quick, before anyone spots him. Doesn’t want to be saved or stopped from reaching his boat. He’s seen which one he wants. It’s not the biggest or the grandest of the craft,
but it’s the one that looks the best to him. It’s the one he can imagine himself curled within.

The trainers would hinder his attempts to swim. He doesn’t want to give sinking an unfair advantage. So he kicks them off. One. Two. Watches them plunge into the sea. Then he toes his socks off too. They take longer to sail down. Show him the true distance. But he’s confident he’ll survive the fall. It’s just the drowning that might get him.

He stands on the lower rung of the railings, savouring the moment he needs to get his balance. His launch outwards almost takes him by surprise. No count down. He just jumps.

It’s a glorious leap, there’s no doubt about it. Framed in the sun. Far away from this last outpost of a country that hates him. Up above the pier. Rising higher than he started.

And, like he suspected, there is a moment, when ascension has stopped but before the drop, where everything pauses. Neither falling nor flying. An instant where time is frozen. It doesn’t last as long as in the cartoons. It could be less than a second. But it’s long enough to consider, with arms outstretched and bare feet together, if it might be better not to struggle anymore.

Research shows that children who commit murder (of whom there have been around 100 in the UK in recent times) and other violent crimes have themselves suffered abusive, neglected and brutalised childhoods. To what degree, if at all, can suffering ever be a mitigating factor in crime?

Does Jack’s own childhood in any way explain his involvement in the crime?

Does Terry’s relationship with Zeb affect how he deals with Jack, and vice versa? Is Terry a good father?

How much responsibility for Jack’s fate lies with the media? How much is of his own making?

Society struggles with its attitudes towards childhood, and child killers are arguably portrayed as even more ‘evil’ than adults who commit similar crimes. Why do we struggle to understand these acts?

It can be argued that fiction has a role to play, in allowing us to discuss subjects that are taboo or uncomfortable. How does
Boy A
fit with this argument?

Boy A
prompts questions of liberal versus conservative values,
particularly when it addresses our preconceptions of child offenders. Is this liberalism as damaging as the mob mentality of the tabloid press?