Peter May - Runaway

A long, mournful wail cut into their exchange, and they turned to look at Ricky. He was very nearly in tears.

‘My car’s been stolen,’ he shouted. ‘And all you can talk about is the tenner you’ve got in your wallet and a stupid bloody credit card that doesn’t work. My car has gone! It’s gone! My car, my bag, my Nintendo, everything. My dad is so going to kill me.’

‘What do we dae?’ Dave said.

And Jack saw him looking lost and old somehow for the first time. He shrugged. ‘Report it to the police.’ He turned to Ricky. ‘Have you got the log book on you, son?’

Ricky bit his lower lip and shook his head. ‘No.’

‘But you know the registration number, right?’

‘Er...’ He blinked rapidly, trying to think. Then he grimaced and shook his head. ‘I don’t, Grampa. I never had any reason to memorize it.’

Jack slumped down on to one of a row of yellow posts that separated the street from the car park. He thought about it. ‘Well, your dad’s going to have the paperwork from when he bought it. So he’ll have the number.’

‘I’m not calling my dad!’ Ricky was emphatic.

‘You don’t have to call him, son. Just send him an email. Use your phone to take a photo of the place where the car was parked, and email your dad with the details. He can contact the cops.’

Ricky was almost hopping on one foot with agitation. ‘I can’t.’

Dave said, ‘Yer grampa’s right, sonny. Yer pa’s the only one who can sort this oot.’

‘As long as you report the theft, the insurance’ll cover it,’ Maurie said suddenly. ‘And your old man can do that for you, okay? No need for us to hang about here any longer than we have to.’

Dave cocked an eyebrow at him in surprise. ‘Where are we going?’

‘London, of course.’

‘How?’ Jack shook his head. ‘We’ve no wheels, Maurie. No money.’

Maurie said, ‘I’ll make a phone call. Have some money wired to us.’

‘Wired?’ Jack said. ‘Do they still do that?’

Maurie waved a dismissive hand. ‘I don’t know. However it’s done, it shouldn’t be too difficult.’

The peep of a horn startled them, and they turned to see a minibus pulled up outside the Wing Lee Hong Kong Chinese supermarket opposite. The driver jumped out and slid open the side door. He was a middle-aged man, wearing turned-up jeans and a knitted jumper. He had a florid face that warned of high blood pressure, and a bird’s nest of wiry hair arranged around a bald crown.

‘Sorry I’m so late, gents,’ he said. ‘The traffic’s right bad this morning, and I’ve still got a few calls to make, but we should get you there on time.’

For a moment none of them knew what to say.

Then Jack improvised. ‘Where are we going?’

‘Well, you’ll be meeting the coach at Bramley. But you’ll get a bite to eat first with the old folk at the lunch club in the community centre. That’s where you’ll get picked up.’ He looked at Ricky. ‘You looking after them, young fella?’

‘Aye, he is,’ Jack said, and he nodded the others towards the van.

Ricky glared at him and hissed under his breath, ‘What now?’

‘You heard the man. Going to get something to eat, son,’ Jack said, and grinned. ‘Better take that photo before we go.’

He and Dave helped Maurie across the road and into the van while Ricky rattled off several quick pictures of the empty parking space where his Micra had been, then hurried over to join them.

The driver smiled. ‘Doing a bit of sightseeing are you, son?’

Ricky didn’t trust himself to speak and just nodded.

‘Funny sort of thing to show the folks back home. A parking space in Leeds.’ And he chuckled. ‘Alright, gents. Everyone safely aboard?’ He slid the door shut, then rounded the van to climb back into the driver’s seat. ‘Hope you don’t mind, but I’ve a whole load of stuff in the back there to drop off at the Farsley Food Bank. Shouldn’t take too long.’

Farsley was an old mill town halfway between Leeds and Bradford, subsumed now into the Leeds metropolitan area. It seemed to comprise a main street that ran steeply up a hill to a church at the top of it, with roads like spokes going off left and right to factories and former mills and micro housing estates.

‘It’s a bloody shame,’ the driver said as they drove up the hill. ‘There’s folk in Farsley worked hard all their lives, till them bankers went and ruined the economy. Bloody gamblers, that’s all they are. And it’s honest working folk like what live here that are paying the price of it. Nearly ten per cent unemployed, if you even believe the figures.’ He snorted his disgust. ‘Those that have jobs don’t even earn enough to pay their bills. And these bastards are still picking up their bonuses!’

‘So who employs you, then?’ Jack asked.

‘Oh, I work the night shift at a factory in Bradford. This is just volunteer work.’ He half turned. ‘You’ve got to do your bit, don’t you? Because the bloody government won’t. One of the richest bloody countries in the world, we are, and we’ve got more than three and a half million children living in poverty. One in four! And nearly half of those in severe poverty. Never been a gap this big between rich and poor since the First World War. Bloody disgrace!’

Jack said, ‘When I left school in the sixties, unemployment was one per cent.’ He shook his head. ‘Hard to believe it now. Jobs were so thick on the ground, if you didn’t like the one you were in you could quit, walk round the corner and get another.’

Dave chuckled. ‘I remember old what’s-his-name, Harold Macmillan, saying we’d never had it sae good. And we thought, bloody Tory!’ He made a sound that was halfway between a snort and a laugh. ‘If only we’d known. But the auld bugger was right.’

They turned left off the main street into Old Road, climbed to a turn before a row of old brick terraced houses, and then drove into the car park of the Farsley Community Church.

‘Used to be the Methodist church,’ said the driver. ‘And there’s still a working chapel inside. The hall’s given over now to the food bank.’ He pulled up by a tall wooden entrance porch built on to the blackened stone church, and turned to Ricky. ‘You can give me a hand in with these boxes, young fella, if you don’t mind.’

Ricky looked like he minded very much.

But Jack said, ‘He’ll be only too delighted to help, won’t you, Rick?’

He saw Ricky’s jaw clench, but the young man said nothing. He climbed out of the van and went round the back to help the driver unload.

Jack turned to the other two. ‘Wonder who we’re supposed to be.’

Dave smiled. ‘Does it matter? As long as we dinnae let on that we’re no’ who he thinks we are, the least we’ll get is a free lunch.’

‘I guess so.’ Jack looked up at the big old church. ‘Never seen a food bank myself. Fancy taking a look?’

Maurie said, ‘On you go. Life’s depressing enough.’

Jack and Dave followed Ricky and the driver up the stairs and into the main hall. Beneath a polished wooden ceiling sunlight streamed in through tall, arched windows to fall across tables laid out around the perimeter. Tinned and packaged foods were organized into blue plastic crates, and groups of people, some with children, shuffled from table to table filling their bags with the necessities of life.

Jack and Dave stood by the door watching. There was some discreet banter going on among the volunteers, but the recipients themselves moved around the tables in sombre silence, with just the occasional whispered exchange over a pack of rice or a bag of sugar. It dawned, then, on Jack that what he was witnessing was humiliation. People stripped of all dignity and forced to come here to feed themselves or their children. And he immediately felt a sense of prurience.