‘Are you all here?’ said Juice. ‘Full fire engine?’
‘Yes, Juice, you’ve got all five of us,’ said Sal.
Juice responded to the pitch of her voice. ‘It’s you – the woman fireman again. Fuck me, are you still with ’em?’
‘Firefighter to you,’ said Sal, with good humour. ‘And yes I am.’
‘Women firemen, whatever next?’ he went on, ignoring her correction.
‘You’d be grateful for me if I had to carry you out of a building next time you decide to have an indoor barbecue.’
‘Oh I’m not doing that again,’ said Juice, trying to shake his head. ‘Burned all my bridges as well as my sausages. They won’t let me back in there.’
Andy tried to spread the bars a little so that Juice could wiggle out but not even he and his mighty arm muscles could budge them. Then Pete took one rail while Andy concentrated all his strength on the other as Krish tried to gently manoeuvre Juice’s head so that his large ears weren’t impeding the process, but the bars remained stubbornly rigid.
‘You must remember who put you here, Juice,’ asked an exasperated Andy, gathering his breath.
‘Can’t remember. Likkle kids I think,’ said Juice.
‘Unless they were all on steroids, it wasn’t kids,’ replied Pete.
‘Around here, they might be,’ said Andy. He’d grown up on the large sprawling sink estate and knew anything was possible. The police once broke the neighbour’s door down in the 1990s and took a five-foot live alligator away that was being kept as a pet in their bathroom.
‘We’ll have to chop,’ Andy decided, walking to the vehicle to fetch the hydraulic cutters.
‘I hope you don’t mean my head,’ said Juice with a snort of laughter. ‘I could carry it under my arm like Anne Hathaway.’ He started giggling to himself.
‘Anne Boleyn, you mean,’ said Pete.
‘I used to know all the seven wives of Henry the eighth at one time,’ said Juice with a thoughtful hmm. ‘Anne Hath— . . . Boleyn, Jane Seymour, Catherine Tarragon, Elizabeth somebody or other, Bloody Mary.’ He ceased reciting as Andy knelt beside him.
‘Now I need you to keep still, Juice. And preferably quiet.’
‘There won’t be sparks, will there? I don’t want my hair set on fire,’ said Juice, a note of fear in his voice. The state of him, and he was worried about damaging any of his hair, thought Pete.
‘There’s no sparks with these and hardly any noise, your mane is safe.’
There was barely enough of Juice’s hair to set alight these days, just wisps of faded peach around the back. He’d tried to dye it blonde once at school, Andy remembered. Used household bleach and burned his scalp.
As the cutters pinched the metal, Juice farted.
‘Oops, pardon.’
Jacko, who was supporting Juice’s head, turned his own head away into clean air.
‘What the hell have you been eating?’ he asked.
‘That’s a combo of beer and fear,’ said Juice.
The stench reached Andy and pushed him to make his snips faster. Within the minute, Pete and Krish were hefting Juice to his feet. He was surprisingly heavy considering his wiry build.
‘Any chance of a lift back to town, lads? Oh, and lasses,’ he added with a head-bob in Sal’s direction.
Andy opened his mouth to reply but Juice flapped his hand as if flicking away the answer to come. ‘I know, I know. You’re not allowed. Insurance, health and safety and all that bollocks.’
‘Sorry, Juice,’ said Pete, clapping him on the shoulder. ‘You all right?’
‘More or less,’ said Juice, rotating his neck. ‘Probably need a bit of medicine now for the pain, if you know what I mean. Cheers, boys . . . and girl.’
He grinned and began to weave off, hands stuffed in his trouser pockets, in the direction of the main road where he would try to thumb a lift to one of the town pubs for his ‘medicine’. His gait was jaunty, hopeful, devoid of cares. He’s happier than I am, thought Pete. Maybe happier than he ever would be again.
Chapter 4
February, earlier that year
The last conversation Pete had with his wife was short, to the point. He picked up his mobile, alerted by Tara’s assigned ringtone.
‘Are you finishing on time tonight?’ she said.
‘No, I’ll be a couple of hours late. Rav’s dad’s had a fall so I’m covering until he gets back from the hospital.’
‘Well get home as soon as you can,’ she said. ‘I’ve got something I want to tell you.’
‘What is it?’
‘No. I want to tell you to your face.’
‘Sounds intriguing.’ He smiled. ‘Where are you now?’ He looked out of the window at the lumpen clouds, the heavy precipitation, hoped she wasn’t too far away from home.
‘On the M1, just coming back from my last appointment in Leeds.’
‘Drive carefully in this, Tara.’ Rush-hour traffic on a freezing February night with a sky full of sleet that would likely turn to snow at any minute. ‘Don’t take any chance—’ Three curt beeps. The line had gone dead. The M1 had patches where the signal died. He contemplated ringing her back, but didn’t want to distract her. She was a sensible driver, of course she’d take care.
An hour and a half later, he’d been checking the breathing apparatus when the fire station alarm had gone off, the persistent beep-beep calling Red Watch to arms.
‘I hope this isn’t another bleeding parrot stuck in a tree,’ said Jacko, who’d spent two hours the previous day trying to coax an escaped African Grey down from a giant conifer.
It wasn’t. It was a major road traffic collision on a dual carriageway. It was carnage. A lorry driver had skidded on the wet snow, crossed the central reservation and caused a ten-vehicle pile-up. And smack in the middle of all that bashed and mangled metal was a red car with a customised black stripe, just like the one Pete’s wife drove. Because it was the one his wife drove.
It was weird the things a brain remembered. That day had started so normally and he could recall it all – even now – in glorious technicolour. Meeting Krish by the office door, who took the piss out of his new haircut: ‘Bet that clogged up someone’s Flymo.’ He could remember Dave Prigmore nearly crying because he dropped his ‘Mr Wonderful’ mug and smashed it. He could remember Sal Thomas being giddy as a kipper because she’d won the lottery – well, one hundred and forty pounds. He could remember Jacko talking to a reporter at the Daily Trumpet who wanted to run a piece on him rescuing that parrot. But everything that happened after his eyes picked out that red car sat as a jumbled mess in his head and the events would not unpick themselves but stayed there, scratching against the inside of his skull like a big, knotted ball of barbed wire.
*
Three weeks later, Tara’s funeral had been jointly arranged by her family and Pete, both carefully respectful of the other’s wishes. Tara’s dad owned twenty florist shops across Yorkshire and his youngest daughter’s funeral was as flower-filled as her wedding had been; no expense spared for Bob Ollerton’s girl. She rode to the church to be buried in a carriage with six white horses as she had ridden to it to be married two years previously. She would be interred wearing a white suit, white flowers studded in her long caramel hair; white lilies punching out heady perfume sat on top of her white coffin. The organist played ‘All Things Bright and Beautiful’ on both occasions and Tara’s sisters each stood at the pulpit and gave readings. Her mother was a bastion of dignity, her father was an emotional wreck. At the funeral he sat holding his wife’s hand and his son-in-law’s, squeezing tight as if they kept him from falling into an abyss. People said it was the most beautiful funeral they had ever been to, which was a consolation to the family because they wanted to do her proud.