Paul Finch - Stalkers

‘I was just saying,’ Blenkinsop mumbled, ‘how easily life can unravel. You know, if you make … bad choices.’

Slowly and deliberately, the man folded his newspaper, running his thumb and forefinger along the top crease, leaving it razor sharp. He laid the paper down. His eyes never left Blenkinsop’s confused face.

The barman now returned — thankfully, because for some reason the attitude of the newspaper-reading man had become a little unnerving, even to someone in a semi-stupor. Blenkinsop fumbled for his money and banged it on the counter. He took a big gulp, and sighed with relief. ‘Nectar … believe it or not, I needed that.’

But the barman had gone again, heading for the till. Blenkinsop glanced to his right — and it was a cold shock to see that the newspaper-reading man was no longer there. One or two punters were still in the pub, small huddles of them in distant corners, but the chap with the paper had vanished.

For some reason, Blenkinsop found this even spookier than having him at his shoulder. Had he just seen a ghost — one of London’s many pub-dwelling spectres?

He tried to snigger, but his throat had gone dry. An icy memory was stirring inside his head. A string of words, uttered to him the previous night, were now uttered to him again, this time in a disembodied but equally menacing voice: ‘From now on, we’ll be keeping you under covert surveillance. Not all the time obviously, but you’ll never know when we’re there and when we’re not.’

Suddenly Blenkinsop’s brow was damp with sweat. He yanked at his collar; another button popped open. He stood up quickly, too quickly — almost overbalancing again.

‘I wasn’t …’ he said aloud, his breath coming in short gasps. ‘I wasn’t admitting to anything, I …’

Of course there was nobody listening. He glanced back across the bar. The barman and barmaid now appeared to be cashing up. He looked at his drink; at least half of it remained, but he no longer had the stomach for it. In fact, he desperately needed fresh air. He grabbed his coat and briefcase and stumbled across the room — only to hesitate before going outside. As befitted the pub’s gin palace origins, the glasswork in the inner door was misted with ornate designs. Beyond it in the porch, a dark shape was waiting.

Blenkinsop peered at it, his heart knocking on the inside of his tightened chest. ‘I didn’t,’ he whispered, ‘I wasn’t …’

Fleetingly, he was fixed to the floor; he could go neither forward nor backward. At the same time the effects of intoxication were fading with extraordinary speed. He looked around and behind him. A couple of women seated at a nearby table had stopped their gabbling and watched him curiously. He gave them a feeble half-smile, and slapped around inside his jacket, pretending that he was checking for his wallet. When his hand alighted on it, he nodded to himself, looked again through the patterned portal, and seeing no figure in the porch now, ventured into it.

The pub’s front door was ajar, and, tentatively, he stepped out through it onto the pavement. Intermittent traffic was moving, but when he glanced left and right, there were no other pedestrians around. Lights were still visible in the upper floors of some of the higher buildings, but the rest of them were in darkness, while down here at street level a mist had formed, creating an eerie sodium-yellow gloom. It wasn’t unusual in this part of London, only a couple of miles from the river, but it was the last thing Blenkinsop wanted. He was still breathing hard and fast. He glanced again left and right, then across the road to Goldstein amp; Hoff’s impressive marble entrance — and to the narrow alley alongside it, which wound off towards the company car park. That alley, a routine cut-through during the day, now looked as dark and sinister as any passage he’d seen. The mist hung in its entrance in twisting, silvery strands. He gazed at it. It was impossible to imagine there wasn’t somebody there, just out of sight, gazing back at him.

He wasn’t sure how long he remained in this mesmerised state before he was distracted by the sight of a black cab trawling along with its green light showing. He signalled for it, and it pulled up in front of him.

‘Hampstead,’ he said, jumping in and closing the door.

‘Ohhh …’ the cabbie replied doubtfully. ‘Long way for me, guv, at this time of night.’

‘I’ll pay you triple the fare.’

‘Triple?’ The cabbie sounded amazed, but quickly put the car in gear. ‘Didn’t want to go to bed yet, anyway.’

Blenkinsop glanced out through the window. A figure had emerged in the misty entrance to the alleyway; a man. It was difficult to make out who he was, let alone identify him as the man with the newspaper. But as the cab pulled slowly away, the figure stared after it intently.

Lauren gazed dully at the dashboard clock. It wasn’t yet six in the morning, but the Manchester traffic was already swarming around them.

‘Dana won’t be pleased that you left without saying goodbye,’ she said.

‘She won’t be surprised, either,’ Heck grunted.

‘You guys really don’t see eye to eye, uh?’

‘We see eye to eye as much as we need to.’

He was preoccupied with driving, so she said no more on the subject. It was nothing to do with her. And it wasn’t as if they didn’t have other things to think about. Her eyes flicked again to the Manchester A-Z in her lap; they’d almost reached their destination.

If there was any part of Salford that twenty-first-century modernisation still hadn’t reached, Gallows Hill was surely it. Lauren immediately saw what Heck had meant when he’d described it as looking like a prison. It sat with its back to the deep cutting through which the noisy M602 motorway ran, and was basically a giant horseshoe, consisting of five U-shaped, six-storey tenement blocks, all built from drab grey concrete. To make matters worse, they were now derelict. The vast majority of their windows had been boarded over, though many of these boards had been removed to allow what was presumably nighttime access for vagrants and drug users.

When they pulled off the motorway and approached it from the front, first having to thread through a network of terraced but equally depressed streets, they saw that the entire plot had been surrounded by a corrugated steel fence, which suggested that everything on the inside was earmarked for demolition. Parking about two hundred yards outside this perimeter, in a narrow alley behind a shop with caged windows, they made their way back on foot. Slipping through one of several gaps broken in the fence, they followed an overgrown footpath, which wound its way around the exterior of the abandoned project, before finally joining an access road leading into the heart of it. Regina Court was down at the farthest end of this road, and they felt increasingly exposed as they walked towards it, having to pass the entries to Hascombe Court, Goodwood Court, Merlin Court and Windermere Court.

Like Lady Luck Crescent, all of these places belied their attractive sounding names. They were gaunt, empty edifices, covered with filth and graffiti. Regina Court itself lay under a sea of rubbish; and not just household rubbish, real rubbish — as if people had been fly-tipping here. Once in the middle of it, they regarded the high galleries encircling them, the many doorways smashed and gaping like entrances to caves.

‘Take you back a bit?’ Heck wondered. ‘To Leeds, I mean?’

Lauren didn’t reply. She was too tense, and she could tell from his tone that even Heck was feeling subdued by the eeriness of these surroundings.

‘No offence intended,’ he added. ‘Just my attempt at levity. Would it be cowardly of me to suggest we stick together while we’re here?’