Nick Oldham - Hidden Witness

The older, more experienced lad said, ‘Maybe we’d better just quit for the night now, eh? Don’t wanna keep ridin’ our luck.’ He handed his mate his share of the cash and kept the phone for himself. ‘Not much, but I told you it was ace, didn’t I?’ The older boy — he was seventeen — had deep-green eyes and curly black hair, as though he could have been a descendant from the Romany gypsies. He had a wild, untamed look and a face that mirrored this.

‘Yeah, great.’ The younger one snaffled the money, but his voice, though enthusiastic, broke slightly, as though perhaps he didn’t feel entirely comfortable with their actions. That possibly he found himself doing something he didn’t really enjoy. He stuffed the money into his tracksuit-bottoms pocket and zipped it away. ‘I probably need to be getting home now… my mum’ll be wondering…’ His voice was thin with the lie. There would be no chance of his mother wondering anything about him, but it didn’t matter because the older lad wasn’t listening anyway.

He’d stopped abruptly, placed a hand on his mate’s forearm, then drawn him back into the recess of a shop doorway.

‘What?’ the younger lad asked.

‘I take it all back,’ he said excitedly, ‘because our luck is still riding high and we need to keep going while we’re on a roll.’ He jabbed a forefinger, pointing across the road. ‘That guy will be freakin’ loaded,’ he stated, and the younger lad saw what was being pointed out, and just to confirm, was told, ‘Victim number four.’

An old man was emerging from a shop across the road, turning to lock up and stepping back as he pulled down the security shutters covering the door, which he fastened with a sturdy padlock, giving it a shake to test it. He was obviously locking up for the night.

The younger lad watched, a worried feeling clawing at his guts.

The shop was a large, but inconspicuous unit selling male and female clothing and associated gear. The younger lad had been in once during opening hours and had seen stacks of designer jeans, tee shirts and dresses, all claiming to be at least half the price of the same goods in department stores. And all still too expensive for him to buy. So he’d stolen a pair of D amp;G jeans that did not fit him and sold them on for a couple of pounds.

He recalled the shop being staffed by young people, didn’t remember seeing an old bloke on the shop floor. ‘Must be the owner,’ he whispered.

‘Which is why he’ll be stacked with cash.’

The old man was satisfied the shutter was locked, the shop secure. He stood upright, turned, looked up and down Church Street. He was dressed immaculately in a black Crombie, brown brogues and well-cut trousers. His hair was thick and grey, combed back from his face which was tanned, healthy looking. He had a silver tipped walking stick and settled a trilby on his head that he adjusted against his reflection in the shop window. He looked dapper and sprightly.

Happy that all was OK, he crossed Church Street quickly and entered Leopold Grove, which ran across the top edge of the Winter Gardens. The older boy held his mate back, allowing the old man to get slightly ahead. Then they emerged from their dark doorway and started to follow, keeping to the shadows. As they turned on to Leopold Grove, the old man, walking briskly, was quite a way ahead, picking up momentum with the incline of the street. He went across Adelaide Street towards Albert Road, quiet, badly lit streets on the outer edge of the town centre. Ideal hunting grounds for opportunistic criminals.

They tracked him on to Albert Road where he turned right in the general direction of the seafront, but then quickly cut over into an unlit alley leading through to Charnley Road. He was moving with purpose, but the boys were closing in, the older one already chanting, ‘Vic-tim, vic-tim,’ under his breath, winding himself up for the attack. The younger one was less certain this time. There was something about the way the man walked, held himself. He might have been old — maybe seventy — but he had a confident aura about him, someone who could take care of himself, was unafraid. Nothing about him said, ‘Victim.’ If anything, ‘Victor’ was more appropriate and the younger lad sensed this.

The alley was dismal, but a streetlight at the far end illuminated the last five metres of it and the boys had to get their assault in before the man reached this pool of brightness.

They closed in, the older boy ahead, picking up the pace. The younger one was in his slipstream, carried along with the moment, heart hammering, legs weak, a taste of something unpleasant in his mouth that he tried to swallow down his dry throat.

With three metres separating hunter and hunted, the old man suddenly stopped, turned around completely and faced the boys. They stopped in their tracks.

‘You think I didn’t see you!’ the old man roared. He had an accent of sorts, but neither boy could say what it was. ‘You think I don’t know you follow me!’

‘Don’t give a toss if you did or didn’t,’ the older boy sneered, but he was now apprehensive. The man seemed to have grown physically and was almost challenging them, his head tilted back and the fluorescent streetlight slashing down across his heavy features.

The man raised his walking stick, laughing harshly. ‘You may move quicker than me, but you will come off worse, I promise.’

The boys stood unsurely. The younger one touched his friend’s sleeve, a gesture to retreat. The older boy shrugged off the fingers, his anger building at the challenge. ‘Give us your cash and you won’t get hurt — that’s all I can promise you, old man.’

The old man shook his head, amused, unafraid.

‘C’mon, Rory, let’s leave this one.’

‘No chance — he’ll be fuckin’ minted.’

The older boy launched himself at the old man, hoping to catch him off-guard. He went in with his head low, but the man took half a step sideways, swung his hip and in the same movement brought the walking stick around with incredible accuracy — hard. He cracked it across the side of the boy’s charging head just the once. The blow glanced off, but still knocked him sideways into the alley wall. He moved in then and raised the stick, the boy now cowering behind his raised forearms.

‘No, please.’

‘You have had enough?’ the old man demanded.

‘Yeah, yeah,’ the lad said, scrambling away, backing into his mate, stepping into a pile of dog shit.

The old man addressed the younger boy. ‘You, too?’ He brandished the cane and the lad backed off, saying, ‘I didn’t go for you.’

‘Mm,’ he said doubtfully, gave them both the evil eye, turned and strutted out of the alley.

The boys stood together, side by side, the older one holding a hand over his bleeding head. ‘Bastard!’ he shouted.

The old man ignored the insult.

They watched him step out of the alley and begin to cross the road.

He was halfway across when the car hit him. Then everything slowed right down.

He was walking at ninety degrees to the car, which was a big Volvo estate, and the heavy vehicle was still accelerating, maybe travelling over thirty miles per hour when it struck. It connected with the old man’s right-hand side. It smashed full on into him, instantly shattering his hip and femur. The old man twisted appallingly with the impact, his body contorting out of shape. The car seemed to scoop him up, taking his legs from underneath him, driving on as his right shoulder smacked into the bonnet. His head, hat still in place at that moment, smashed into the windscreen, indenting it, and his whole body flicked up like a frog being thrown from a spade. He cartwheeled across the roof of the car, his right arm snapping, his cane spinning through the air, his legs flipping upwards, the car passing on under him. He cleared the vehicle and from a height of about twelve feet, crashed head first into the roadway.