The Concrete Grove

PART FOUR


The Killing of a North-East Loan Shark

“I won't let anyone hurt you.”


– Francis Boater



CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX


THE BLACK-PAINTED STEEL frame of the bridge formed a shadowy grillage around her as Lana strode along the walkway. Sunlight danced through the gaps, stuttering in bright little flashes to blind her momentarily as she made her way towards the waiting figure she assumed was Tom. The dazzling light behind him didn’t allow her to make out any details: he was just a tall, dark silhouette standing with his hands in the pockets of his overcoat.

When she’d called him on the telephone earlier, desperate to hear his voice once Hailey had left her alone in the flat, he had seemed distant and elusive. When he had asked her to meet him here, at a point suspended above the River Tyne, she had at first been filled with trepidation, but then her desire to see him had overcome any doubts prompted by his odd request. Of course she would come, she’d agreed. Of course she would meet him on the bridge.

What else was she supposed to do?

The riverside air was cold. The water below her looked as thick and black as crude oil. People stared at the water from the riverbank on either side – Gateshead and Newcastle – and watched as a small working boat moved slowly under the bridge, following the flow of the river towards its mouth, and then possibly out to the open sea.

Tom didn’t turn to greet her when she approached. He just stayed in the same position, staring eastward along the Tyne, perhaps looking for a way to follow that little boat out to sea.

“So what’s with all this Man from Uncle shit?” She tried to glimpse what it was he was looking at, but all she could see were the things right in front of her: the low-set red and white Swing Bridge with its stumpy blue watchtower, the green-webbed assemblage of the Tyne Bridge, and the broad curve of the river as it swung around to the right beyond these manmade structures. “I mean, why are we meeting here like spies, at the middle of the bridge?”

“I… I’m not sure.” He kept staring along the river. Then his gaze drifted down and off to the right, towards the tacky nightclub-boat that was always docked at the south side, beside a grubby concrete access road. His hands remained inside his pockets. “It’s just, this has always been my favourite place. Ever since I was a kid, when I used to come down here with my parents, I loved it, the sense of being cut off and standing above everything. And I didn’t want to meet you in that awful place – the Grove.”

“Why not?” She looked at him. The side of his face was slightly swollen, the skin shiny and red. She’d not noticed before, but there were fresh bruises smudged along the edge of his jaw. “I don’t understand.”

Finally he turned to look at her, and as he lowered his face towards her the sun blazed behind his head, creating a glaring nova. “Neither do I. There’s been some stuff happening that I just don’t get. It’s like I’m living inside a dream.”

“Or like a dream that was living inside you has finally broken free?”

“You, too?”

She nodded. “It isn’t just you. I can’t explain anything that’s been happening, but the only part of it that feels real – feels right – is us. You and me. What we seem to have between us.” She lifted her hand and opened the fingers, like a pale pink flower. Sunlight bulged through the gaps.

Tom removed one hand from his coat pocket and grasped her wrist. “What’s going on? What have we started?” He licked his lips. The nova around his head dimmed as he shifted position, turning fully to face her. He held both of her hands with his own, squeezing them firmly but not so tight that it hurt.

“I don’t think it has anything to do with us. Not really. A lot of different things are combining to create something that’s bigger than us all. Hailey’s condition, that loan shark Monty Bright, his hired hands… and it all starts with the Concrete Grove. I think what’s coming through the cracks we’ve created has always been there, and that it’s using our desperation as a doorway.” She tried to laugh but all she managed was a sort of croaking sound. “I know how stupid and melodramatic this all sounds, but I’ve been doing a lot of thinking. I’ve seen things, stuff that I could never have thought of as real before now.”

“I’ve seen things, too.” Tom smiled but it seemed to pain him. He raised a hand and touched the side of his face.

“Those bruises,” said Lana. “What happened?”

“Last night. I fell down the stairs. I’d been drinking, and thinking about us.”

She could see that he was lying. He couldn’t even maintain eye contact; his gaze drifted back to the river, the route to the sea at Tynemouth.

“Don’t start lying to me, not now. I think all we have is the truth. If we lose that, then everything will just turn into a series of fictions, all linked by whatever’s in the Grove. Like a giant spider in a web.” She didn’t quite understand her own analogy, but something about the words made sense. It was the image of a giant spider, sitting at the centre of a web made of human life lines and spinning its own stories. Somehow that seemed right: it was an apt image. She could feel it, right down in the marrow of her bones. “Just be honest with me.”

Tom stared down at the ground. A soft wind ruffled his hair. He looked back up again, and there were tears in his eyes. “My wife. Helen. You know about her, of course, that she’s a paraplegic. She lost the use of her lower body, from the waist down, when the car her lover was driving crashed.”

“Yes. You told me all about it.” She moved closer to him. A group of teenagers ran by on the other side of the bridge, laughing and throwing coins into the river. Several cars and a bus drove towards the Newcastle side of the river, thumping over the steel joints in the tarmac decking.

“She did this to me.” He turned his face so that she could see clearly the bruising. “Last night, she… changed. She became something monstrous and she attacked me. She hasn’t been out of that f*cking bed in years, but last night she managed to get out and drag herself after me through the house. I fell. She grabbed me and tried to smother me…” he turned away again, ashamed.

The sunlight flashed, making Lana close her eyes for a second. Then she couldn’t stop blinking. When he had mentioned monsters, she couldn’t fail to think of Hailey: and of the things she’d been carrying inside her. The monsters – if that’s what they truly were – she had delivered. Along with these thoughts came ones about Monty Bright. The deformities on his body; the screaming faces trapped in his flesh.

“We can help each other, you and me. If we stick together and use the strength we seem to have when we’re side by side.” She took a step back. More cars passed them on the roadside. A young couple strolled by, hand in hand; the man stared at Tom, as if he could see something strange about him. Then he looked away. “Last night I went to see Monty Bright. He and his men… they did things to me. Raped me.”

Tom made a sound deep in his throat: half sob, half moan.

“I thought I was doing the right thing. I thought they’d leave us alone if I went there, and did what they wanted. But it didn’t work out that way.” She kept her eyes on his battered face, refusing to look away in shame. Even though she’d kept quiet about what had happened with Hailey last night, she felt that she was being as honest with Tom as she ever had with anyone. She realised now that she’d placed her heart in his hands. All he need do was to squeeze it tight, or open his fingers and let it fall. Either way, it would hurt; but one way would cause far less pain than the other.

“I don’t know what you want me to say.” His mouth was a slit in his face. His eyes were now hard and empty.

“I want you to tell me that it doesn’t make any difference. That you still want me, and still want me to want you. I want you to say that you’ll help me. We’ll help each other.”

Another bus chugged by. Raised voices were carried to them from the riverbank. To Lana, the moment felt as if it might shatter like glass at any minute. “Of course I still want you. I mean, you’re the only person I know who’s as f*cked up as I am.”

It was a feeble joke – desperate, really – but in that moment she loved him for even trying to lift the mood.

They walked along the side of the bridge, holding hands and looking up through the steelwork at the wedges of bright sky visible between the girders. Traffic grew heavier and as they approached the south side they began to see people making their way across the arching eye of the Millennium footbridge towards the old Baltic Flour Mill. There must be some kind of exhibition in the new gallery; the redevelopment of the building had raised the profile of the area and brought with it a fresh interest in the local art scene.

“I know a little place where we can have coffee. It’s nothing flash, just a greasy spoon café where the taxi drivers go.” Tom led her sharp right off the end of the bridge, heading down Bottle Bank, where there was a row of old shop fronts, most of them boarded over. “It’s just down here.”

A few taxis were parked at the kerb on the narrow cobbled street that led back down to the river’s edge. Set amid the timber-boarded frontages were two premises that had not succumbed to financial ruin. One of them was a taxi rank and the other was a tiny café with no name and badly whitewashed windows.

They went inside and sat down at a low table. The place was gloomy; not much light could get in around the patches of white on the window glass. If she twisted her head and leaned across the table, Lana could catch a glimpse of the street outside. “Nice place,” she said. “How many Michelin stars does it have?”

Tom laughed. “I used to do a lot of business round here, when these were all going concerns. I have a few clients on Gateshead High Street, too. Whenever I’m in the area I come in here for a morning coffee and a read of the papers. Nobody bothers you here. They all want to be left alone.”

There were three other customers in the café. A skinny middle-aged man with a facial twitch sat near the toilet door reading a battered paperback novel, and two other men sat in silence drinking milky tea from large mugs.

“They’re all taxi drivers,” said Tom. “Nobody else even knows this place exists.”

“Except you.” She reached across the table and stroked the back of his hand.

“Yeah, except me.” He stood and went to the counter, where he ordered two black coffees from a shapeless woman in a long grey sweater and grubby jeans who appeared from a door to one side. She went back through the door and emerged less than a minute later with two mugs filled with what looked like tar.

“You expect me to drink that?” She took the cup Tom offered her as he sat back down, peering into the contents and pretending to be disgusted.

“Just think yourself lucky I didn’t ask for it with milk. At least black it’s drinkable. Just about.” Tom added sugar to his mug from a chipped bowl on the table. The end of the teaspoon was frosted with an off-white crust and the discoloured clusters in the bowl looked like singed crystal meth.

Someone turned on a radio – probably the saggy woman who’d served them coffee – and a droning traffic report filled the empty spaces in the room.

“I have to ask you something.” Lana curled her fingers around the mug. The coffee was hot, but she liked the way it made her skin hurt. “Something important.”

Tom took a sip of his drink and put down his mug. “I’m listening.” His swollen face looked better in the dim light. Not so damaged.

“I plan to-,” she licked her lips. “I plan to kill Monty Bright. It’s the only way out of this I can see now. I have to kill him.” Just saying the words in daylight, even at such a low volume, forced Lana to fully consider their true meaning. It didn’t sound so bad, she thought. Not in terms of the chaos invading her life. What was a little murder to add to the mix, especially when the proposed victim was no longer even human? “I need to know if you’re willing to help me do that.”

Tom stared at her. His face went pale beneath the fresh contusions. He swallowed. The radio droned on. “If you’d said this to me a few days ago I would’ve run a mile. But now – after everything that’s happened – I’m still here. I’m still listening.”

Lana paused for breath, took a drink of the scalding coffee, just to drive the moment home, and then continued. “He isn’t a man. I think he used to be, a long time ago, but he isn’t now. Not anymore. Prolonged exposure to whatever’s festering in the Grove has changed him into something else.” She examined Tom’s face for signs of doubt, or possibly a hint that he might stand up and leave.

“Okay. Go on.”

“He showed me something that I still can’t quite get my head around. He has these tumours all over him – on his chest, mainly. But they aren’t tumours. They’re not cancers. I think they’re the remains – or maybe even the souls – of the people he’s bled dry with his debt. He doesn’t stop at money. What he wants from them – and what he wants from me – is everything. Everything his victims have to give. He wants it all. He starts with the money, and then the possessions, and then moves on to the flesh. Finally, all that’s left is the spirit, and he wants that, too.”

Tom leaned back in his chair. The legs scraped loudly across the floor, drowning out the radio newsreader’s voice. A fragment of the report caught Lana’s attention: “…the prisoner, known locally as Banjo, last night escaped police custody. He is not considered dangerous, but if anyone knows of his whereabouts they are requested to…”

Lana knew the man they were talking about – it was the drug addict they’d seen trying to rip his own face off in the street. God, she thought. Right now, that seems like it happened a lifetime ago.

She returned her attention to Tom.

He was looking up at the dirty ceiling, as if inspecting it for cracks. Without moving, he began to speak. “Last night my wife physically turned into something else. I meant it literally when I told you that.” He lowered his head and looked at his hands, which he laid out flat on the table. He looked like one of those old-time circus sideshow performers, just before they start to slam a knife into the table top through the gaps between their fingers. “She turned into a creature and attacked me. If it wasn’t so scary it would be funny,” he dipped his head, exposing a tiny bald spot at the centre of his scalp that she’d not noticed before. She wanted to reach out and touch it, to penetrate his armour.

“I think we’ve both moved way beyond the normal now,” she said. “The decisions we make here, the way we act, will define how this all ends. If we ignore the obvious – that there’s something, well, supernatural, happening, then we’re f*cked.” Talking about these things made her feel that she was actually doing something to fight against the situation. In all the books she’d ever read and all the horror films she’d seen, the main characters only ever admitted far too late that the supernatural had invaded their lives. That was the thing that usually got them killed: a refusal to accept the obvious, no matter how insane it might seem.

Lana was not willing to make the same mistake.

“There’s some sort of power in the Concrete Grove and, for whatever reason, it’s noticed us. Killing Monty Bright won’t send it away, but it will get rid of an immediate threat and give us a chance to think about what we do next.”

Tom rubbed a hand through his hair. He winced as he did this, causing his injuries to flare up in fresh pain. “After what happened to me last night, I’m willing to believe that anything is possible.”

The radio broadcast changed to a music chart show. The woman behind the counter turned up the volume and began to hum along to the tune. Her feet shuffled dryly across the dusty, crumb-littered floor.

Accompanied by the soundtrack of the latest number one record, playing from a tinny little radio on a shelf in a cheap riverside café, the deal was sealed, the pact was made. Such were the circumstances under which two ordinary people became murderers.