THE DOMINO BOYS (a psychological thriller) (3 page)

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 Craddick. 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.

Duncan was surrounded by members of the Slag Gang. He tried to barge his way through and Craddick sent a plump fist into his shoulder, and Duncan staggered back. ‘Bugger off, Craddick,’ he said, trying to push through again. He met with another thump, this time harder.

‘Think you’re tough, Winslade?’ he said.

‘Didn’t your dad teach you any other words?’ He stared hard at the leering face. He could see Craddick’s mind working overtime behind the eyes.

‘My dad could kill your dad. And your mam, if he wanted to.’

‘I’m scared,’ he replied, clearly not.

The two boys gazed at each other, one of the other boys beginning to rhythmically barge his shoulder tauntingly against Duncan’s.

‘I’m going to kill you,’ said Craddick, ‘if you don’t tell me I’m tougher than you.’

‘Bugger off,’ he fired. The shoulder-barging grew in its intensity. Duncan Winslade turned in a flash and landed a meaty punch in the boy’s face and he fell backwards, yelping shrilly in shock and pain. ‘Now get out of my way, Craddick,’ he said as they both watched the stricken boy’s eyes begin to fill with tears, a little rosette of blood appearing at his nose, ‘or I’ll do the same to you.’

Mickey Craddick found himself in a dilemma. To allow Duncan to pass, to effectively win, wasn’t an option; he’d look weak in front of his gang. But the large, quiet Winslade kid had proved he had what it took to take him on. ‘Say you’re sorry first,’ he said. ‘Say you’re sorry for busting his nose.’

‘Sorry for busting his nose,’ Duncan said flatly. Craddick grinned. ‘Sorry it wasn’t yours.’ Craddick’s smile shrank.

He had no option. Mickey Craddick threw himself at Duncan and the pair was soon an untidy, flailing mound of arms and legs beating the hell out of each other on the dusty concrete. Attracted by the word ‘Fight!’ pretty soon they were surrounded by a shifting fence of cheering boys all eager to get close to the action.

A teacher barged through, yelling at the top of his voice for them to stop. When they didn’t he bent down and grabbed each boy by the collar and yanked them to their feet. They continued to lunge at each other until he adjusted his hold and instead grabbed them by their ears, lifting them to their tiptoes.

‘You ruffians!’ he thundered. ‘I might have known it would be you two! Inside, both of you!’

He marched them across the yard to the door and screamed at the rest of the boys to stop gawping. Both boys were give six-of-the-best without allowing time to discuss who was wrong and who was right. Afterwards they were made to stand against the blackboard, like the dunces they were, said the teacher, and told not to move a muscle the rest of the day. They exchanged fiery glances at each other the whole time, Mickey Craddick mouthing silently that he was going to kill Duncan, and Duncan mouthing back ‘bugger off’.

It was a turning point for Duncan Winslade, in more ways than one. Mickey Craddick never openly challenged him again, though they both made it plain they loathed each other. And after the scrap that’s when Alfie Parker and Barry Stocker came up to him and asked him if he would be their gang leader. They’d had to endure Craddick’s bullying daily and they felt they needed some security. Their dads already knew each other – they were on the same shift in the mine, and they played dominoes together down at the Coach and Horses every Friday night. Duncan thought it would be one in the eye for Craddick if he formed a gang of his own. Sure, he agreed, we can have a gang, though his heart wasn’t really in it. He’d always been a loner.

They decided their hangout would be in the line of trees that fringed the railway embankment through which the trains rumbled down the track to the colliery to fill up with coal, and the boys met up once a week to play and discuss business related to the effective operation of a gang, like had they enough money to buy four-for-a penny Black Jacks or two-for-a-penny Flying Saucers from the sweet shop at the top of their street. They deliberated for ages about a name for the gang, hunkered down in a clearing made under the spreading hawthorn trees, the Sun filtering through the gently shifting leaves and showering them in shimmering patches of dappled sunlight.

‘Our dads play dominoes,’ Alfie observed, sitting on the ground and poking at the dry earth and weeds with a stick.

‘So?’ said Barry, rolling his eyes. ‘What’s dominoes got to do with anything?’

‘So we could be called the Domino Boys,’ he returned.

‘That’s lame,’ said Barry sullenly, mainly because Barry hardly ever had good ideas; he always figured he wasn’t bright enough to think of them. And because Alfie was a full year younger than him and better at coming up with ideas than he was. Alfie got praised by teachers for being able to write good stories, one of the reasons he’d been targeted by Craddick; being good at anything was bad enough, but writing? You were just asking for it.

‘Yeah, I like that,’ said Duncan, staring down the grassy embankment alive with tall grasses and slender stems carrying swaying heads of creamy-coloured cow parsley. ‘The Domino Boys. I like that.’

And so it stuck. The threesome would always be known as the Domino Boys.

Duncan Winslade was saying goodbye to the town. Or good riddance. He couldn’t make up his mind which. He’d spent the morning walking around Overthorpe, visiting old haunts, the places where he used to live, to play, to court. And the last stop was Victoria Street. It should have been the junior school, but the old building that had been built at the turn of the last century had been demolished to make way for more houses. That made him sadder than anything. He couldn’t quite understand why, as he’d hated school. But he guessed it was chiefly because when something like that disappears it takes something of you away too. A bit of your past, who you were, the things that made you.

He didn’t mope long. He wandered back home and shrugged away the memories.

For sale. The sign that had been hammered into the ground outside the front door was again an amalgam of sadness tinged with happiness. It wouldn’t be long and he’d be leaving Overthorpe – leaving England – for good. Now that he’d recently retired from the police service he was free to do as he pleased. And he was sick and tired of living on his own. Sick and tired of living with the secret, having to be careful what he said in case he inadvertently revealed even the tiniest detail.

And with Mickey Craddick now dead, that made things even easier for him. God, it had been such a relief to hear he’d snuffed it. Even though Duncan heard on the grapevine about Mickey Craddick’s late turn of mind, who, realising death was inevitable and being a staunch though lapsed Catholic, confessed readily to all his sins and said all the holds he’d ever had over people were finally severed, he never quite believed him. Like a good many people in Overthorpe, tied to Mickey Craddick for one thing or another, Duncan Winslade couldn’t wait to hear that the bastard had finally died, taking his goddamn blackmailing ways with him.

He tested the sign, making sure it was planted into the ground firmly enough. He’d be seeing the other members of the Domino Boys tonight, he thought. There wouldn’t be many more occasions when they’d meet up, like their fathers before them, to play dominoes every Friday night.

That, too, brought a tinge of sadness, but not for long. Duncan Winslade’s capacity for friendship was as shallow as his capacity for nostalgia. Since coming back to Overthorpe after being in London he’d never adapted to living in the dead-end, filthy little town of his youth. Once you leave an old place you can never fully return.