The Redemption Factory Read online

  “I thought that was all sorted?”

  “Did you, Goodman? You’ve got a long way to go before I can ever trust you again.”

  Within seconds, silence crept into the room, disturbed only by the wooden ticking of a clock above his head. Paul felt a creepy feeling resting uneasily in the room, as if someone or something was watching him. He thought he could hear the muffled sound of an argument coming from some place upstairs and decided it was best to be going. It was late, as it was, and he felt sure Kennedy would understand.

  “C’mon,” said Paul to Geordie, walking towards the door. “I’ve got to be in the Tin Hut before –”

  “Sorry. These thing weigh a ton,” said Kennedy, making Paul jump just as his hand touched the door handle.

  Kennedy proceeded to open a large mahogany box, placing it atop the wooden counter, unhooking the tiny brass question marks at the side.

  “One day, you’ll use these on your very own snooker table. I have no doubt about that, lad.” Kennedy was smiling.

  In the case nestled a complete family of snooker balls, gleaming, pristine, all encased separately and wrapped in silk.

  “God … they are beautiful …” Paul was speechless. Their beauty was overpowering. “They must be worth a fortune.”

  “Worth more than a fortune, lad. These are the genuine articles. Pure ivory. Not like the manufactured garbage they use nowadays.”

  Hypnotised, Paul simply wanted to touch them, feel the beauty of their hardened skin.

  “Twelve elephants had to be slaughtered to make this set,” continued Kennedy. “Twelve great beasts. Can you imagine that? Of course, you wouldn’t get away with that sort of stuff these days, and I’m not saying I agree with killing elephants. But …”

  “Beautiful …” whispered Paul, staring at the perfectly sphere-shaped objects of desire. “So powerful, just looking at them makes you feel invincible.”

  A look of bewilderment crept across Geordie’s face. She didn’t know what all the fuss was about.

  “They’re yours, for the asking,” said Kennedy.

  Paul was taken aback. “I could never afford these, Mister Kennedy. Perhaps one day, when I become a great player. But I wouldn’t hold my breath. You’ll probably have sold them ten times over by then.”

  “I’m not selling them to you. I’m giving them to you.”

  “Giving? I … I don’t understand …”

  Kennedy’s face was beaming. He hadn’t expected this reaction. It had been worth it, regardless of the cost.

  “There is no need to understand. Now, if you don’t mind, I’m sorry, I must ask you to go. It’s late, and I think I can hear that old, annoying bird flapping about up there.” Kennedy smiled. “I hope you don’t mind carrying them, but the incentive should alleviate their weight. Don’t you think?”

  Paul could only nod.

  “I’m sure you’re very proud of Paul, Geordie?”

  “Proud? Oh, ever so,” she replied, mockingly flashing her eyebrows lovingly at Paul. “So proud of my Paul …”

  “Well, it was a pleasure meeting you, Geordie. Don’t ever be a stranger. Understand?”

  “You’ll regret saying that, Mister Kennedy,” replied Geordie, grinning. “I love getting a good bargain. I’m sure there’s plenty of stuff in your shop to interest me. And now that you know I know Paul, and how proud I am of him, I’m sure a wee discount will be waiting for me the next time I drop by.”

  Kennedy laughed. “Of that, you can be certain. Come by anytime, Geordie. Now, goodnight to both of you.”

  Paul waited until they were a couple of streets away from the shop before asking, “You liked him, then?”

  “Hmm,” replied Geordie, vaguely. “I don’t know. A bit too nice, perhaps. Tried a bit too hard to be nice. Nice people make me suspicious.”

  “No. He’s always like that,” replied Paul, defensively. “He really is a kind person.”

  “Kind to you means strange to me. He rarely looked in my direction, but couldn’t take his eyes from you.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  Geordie simple shook her head. “The jury is still out on Mister Kennedy. I’ll see you in the morning.”

  “What? You’re going home already?”

  “Don’t let the bedbugs bite,” she said, cutting across the street.

  “No goodnight kiss?”

  “Probation, Goodman.”

  He watched her disappear among the twisted walls of streets, feeling isolated. “I won’t screw up again, Geordie,” he whispered to himself. “That’s a promise …”

  Kennedy hadn’t even given Geordie a second glance because her disability was invisible to his eyes. She would have complained had he been staring at her. He was in a no-win situation. He’s a class act. Not a fool like me, thought Paul, torturing himself for his own stupidity. He was lucky to have people like Kennedy and Geordie. He had learned a lesson tonight. One he wouldn’t forget in a hurry.

  Rain was falling softly. It looked like a downpour was in the making. He’d have to be fast if he didn’t want a good soaking. The snooker balls were heavy, but his anticipation and adrenaline made them float, like balloons, all the colours of the rainbow. Unbelievable, he though, gripping the mahogany box tightly against his side like a thief in the night. What the hell has come over that old man …?

  CHAPTER TEN

  THE HUNTER IN THE FOREST

  “God bears with the wicked, but not forever.”

  Cervantes, Don Quixote

  “If you go down to the woods today, you’re sure of a big surprise …”

  The Teddy Bears’ Picnic

  FROM THE OPPOSITE side of the road, Lucky watched as tiny bugs bounced off the security lights, their amber glow attracting them like drunks to whiskey.

  What the fuck is keeping him? He told me he always finished at five. Lucky was dying for a shit. He wondered how long he could keep it imprisoned?

  One more cigarette. If he’s not out in five minutes, then fuck it. I’ll call over to his house, later tonight.

  A few minutes later and the finished cig butt tumbled to the ground, joining a family of others that littered his feet like spent ammo from an old war movie.

  At last! Workers began to drift out from the large metal gates of the abattoir. Lucky craned his neck to get a better view, cursing the large angry trucks whizzing by, obscuring his view.

  Then, just as Lucky had surrendered all hope, Paul emerged, coat flung over his shoulders.

  “Paul! Hey, Goodman, you bastard!” shouted Lucky, waving frantically, his voice competing with the din of traffic.

  Paul stood at the gate, glancing at his watch, his ears not capturing Lucky’s voice.

  “Deaf bastard,” mumbled Lucky, taking the initiative to cut across the manic motorway.

  Just at he found a safe gap, Lucky’s eyes captured Paul being joined by someone else emerging from the abattoir. They seemed to be talking, laughing. A few seconds later, they both turned, walking in the direction of the old gasworks.

  “What the fuck …?” Disbelief stung in Lucky’s voice. His eyes strained to make out the person. He couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman, only that the person seemed to be walking weirdly, clumsily, like a robot learning to take its first steps.

  He thought about shouting Paul’s name again, but pride kept his mouth firmly shut. Instead, he crept behind the unsuspecting pair, staying securely in the shadowed boundaries of the gasworks’ walls.

  “I can’t believe this. Who the fuck is that?” he whispered, just as Paul and the stranger stopped and peered into the darkness – in his direction!

  Had they seen him? Fuck. He felt a real fool now. What would Paul say, catching him spying like a pervert in the night’s darkness?

  But Paul hadn’t seen him. Instead, he pushed the stranger against the wall, and – to Lucky’s shock – began to kiss.

  Momentarily taken aback, Lucky could only stare helplessly as his best mate made movements like a s
nake coiling in the heat.

  “Bastard …” Why hadn’t Paul told him about seeing a girl? Why had he kept this a secret?

  Lucky pulled himself back, retracing his steps, cursing himself for not having the balls to confront Paul, there and then.

  He cut across the road, no longer caring about the traffic narrowly missing his arse. Blood was in his eyes and all rational thoughts were banished.

  “Best of mates, my fuck, you sneaky bastard …” On and on he went, mumbling and cursing, not realising he had strayed from the designated route leading homewards …

  Its thumb-shaped body unmoving, the owl blended perfectly with the diseased tree. Tiny specks of blood and meat stained the bird’s beak from an earlier kill and a suicidal night bug hovered dangerously close, flirting with death as it licked greedily at the feast’s remains.

  The owl’s eyes pierced the dark, watching and observing.

  Not too far from the tree’s shadow, a rat’s head made epileptic twitches, sensing the eyes somewhere close. The rat had already lost its mate tonight to the eyes but the terror in its stomach told it that it had little choice: stay and die; run and perhaps …

  The skinny rodent moved fast, its tiny feet burning despite the cold. Food was in sight, close. It could smell it, taste it in the air. It knew the eyes watched its every move but it no longer cared. It would die soon if it didn’t feed.

  It came across the decaying fruit just as the owl swooped, its bloody beak now dry and caked. The bird would clean its beak later, after this kill, then rest for the night. It wasn’t really hungry, but the prey had shown no respect. Now it would pay.

  The talons opened in mid-flight at lightning speed, like a flick-knife zooming in on its target, swooping down with mathematical precision.

  The rat knew it was coming but still it fed, feeling its stomach swell with fear and food, as if it knew this would be the last supper, the last pleasure it would ever feel and it would relish every death-defying second of it.

  Without warning, the bird froze in mid-flight, inches away from its target, its feathers in disarray. Something had startled then terrified it, sending it fleeing away from the rat, into the safety of the dark.

  “Feathered bastard …” Lucky pushed through the bushes, ignoring their biting thorns. The owl had startled him as much as he had startled it, making him jump, his heart pounding wildly in his throat. But the real damage had been inflicted upon his stomach, melting it, making him lose what little control he precariously had. He was ready to explode as panic set in, making his intestines slippery like mercury.

  Quickly, he released his jeans from the belt’s enclosure and hunched down, hating his actions for being caught out like this.

  The owl hooted, causing tiny sparks to nip the back of his neck. He though of ghosts and weird thing hiding in the woods. “Fuck off, you hooting bastard.”

  This part of the forest was known as Warriors Field, a place rumoured to be the burial ground of fighters slaughtered in their hundreds by the conquering Romans. It had the perception of strange happenings accurately conveyed in its certainty of location, like a picture framed in the stillness of time.

  It was said the bodies rotted to the very core of the ground, fertilising the soil, the blood seeping endlessly into the insatiable wound of the earth, like a dark ribbon brimming with ink. The poppies, which grew here each year, were so beautiful and red some people thought them to be stained in blood. It was said that if you listened at night, dreadful sounds could be heard, sounds of the vanquished screaming for mercy mingling with the unrelenting roars of denial from the victors, filtering through the earth like scattered spiders and cascading waves of melting skulls.

  It shamed him, a bit, taking a shit in public but he had little option, even if it did make him feel like an animal, making his spine burn with the dread of someone seeing him, hunched there, exposed. A few years ago – before his teen years – he literately wouldn’t have given a shit about being caught taking a shit.

  The dirt beneath his feet charted the passage of others, their footprints wet and perfect. They looked fresh, even in the light’s dying breath, making his wonder how long ago they had walked this way? The thin air about his face felt like it could drown an unwary traveller, as if it were placing a plastic bag over him. As a kid, he had always loved the solitary feel of the forest with its fearful loneliness avoided by others – but not under these circumstances. Above, a full moon emerged from ink clouds, glowing like a giant spotlight from an old war movie, reflecting an invisible pool of lamplight, and immediately the entire forest was exposed, shattering his immediate sense of shelter. The glow emitted an eerie colour of chalk and attached itself to the skin of a battered car standing silently, silhouetted, its heavy orange-rust shadow streaking the heads of wild wheat like a great beached whale.

  The moon’s shape made him think of one of the nude statues he once saw in a book, all fat and naked – just like his arse, at this minute. Under his breath, Lucky cursed the moon, hating its knowing grin and winking, pervert-face staring at him as the air became thick with the promise of rain and something else, something he could not relate to. Not yet, anyway …

  He was almost finished and quickly looked about for something to wipe himself. He could use a few leaves, but that didn’t appeal to him. Not one bit. Once, as a kid, he had mistakenly used jaggy nettles. He couldn’t sit down for week. No, fuck the leaves. That’s all he’d need; walking like John fucking Wayne for the next few days.

  There had to be something he could use.

  Normally, old newspapers and wrappers would be littered throughout the forest in tons. But not tonight, of course, he thought bitterly. They must have cleaned it up special, knowing he would be taking a shit in the forest, the litter-free forest.

  If only he hadn’t come looking for Paul. He would still have been at the Tin Hut, finishing another pint, scrounged from a cousin he hadn’t seen in years.

  What he would give to be back there, in the club’s toilet with its nice soft paper and no wind whistling up his arse. He would appreciate wee things like that in future.

  “I can’t believe there’s nothing …” he mumbled, knowing a decision must be made quickly. The backs of his legs were tightening and he felt cramps slowly take hold.

  What was that? A feathery whisper of night sounds touched his ear making the hair on his neck rise. Probably an animal. A hare. He knew it was his imagination constructing things that hid in the dark, but the noise became heavier, more acute as damp leaves were trampled on. A badger? Lucky’s imagination ignited. Rats? Oh, God! He always hated rats. He thought about the rats grabbing him, biting viciously with their plank-shaped buckteeth. What if they went for his face? He remembered the body of an old homeless man he once saw, down near the docks. Rats had lived on his face for two days, making a nest in it, making him recognisable only by the rags he wore. Oh, fuck!

  The thought of being found, dead and half naked, covered in his own shit quickly galvanised him as he quickly pulled his jeans up, no time for cleaning, ready to run like hell. Let the dirty bastards try and catch him. He’d show them.

  The three figures appeared, like magic, a few feet in front of him, freezing all his movements. Dread swept over him at the thought that it could be someone he knew, someone from town. They’d laugh and tell everyone. He’d never live it down.

  He cursed Paul again, the treacherous bastard.

  The three figures were talking – arguing? – loudly but inaudible. They looked like men, but it was impossible to be certain. One seemed completely naked. Lucky imagined seeing the bony line of spine snaking its way down to the tip of deflated buttocks, of an arse bristling with its coarse hairs.

  Instinctively, Lucky stopped breathing when one of the figures violently pushed one of the figures. Then again. But he wasn’t being pushed. The crafty moon emerged again from filthy clouds and caught the lethal sliver shining in the man’s hand, just as he plunged it again and again. The screams formed a lin
e straight to Lucky’s ears. A ghastly, wounded animal scream. He wanted to cover his ears, block the screams with his fingers, but he couldn’t move.

  Lucky wanted to stop watching the metal plunging in and out with its sickening dull thud, felt obliged to glance away, but the scene was so strangely compelling he could not close his petrified eyes as the body slumped, disappearing in the night’s shadow and blackness, distinguishable only by texture and its ugly jagged shape, stark in the bleak light.

  There is a class of occurrences so far from the norm they become surreal, residing in their own realty, occupying where the improbable is commonplace and this was what Lucky was experiencing as he held his breath for what seemed an eternity, waiting for the silence of the forest to return, quietly, observing the tiny details of this ghastly event.

  Blood surged in painful waves while he closed his eyes, imagining bright spatters of crimson gushing from the body, and despite the coldness, tiny freckles of sweat mapped his own body while blue and white sparks danced in his head. He feared he was ready for fainting.

  As one figure left the scene, Lucky heard the words ‘shovels’ and ‘be quick about it – we haven’t all bloody night.’

  Bloody night … bloody night …

  Lucky wanted to vomit, but the strength of desperation forced the food and alcohol back down to were they belonged.

  The one who had the knife lit a cig, and that tiny light – in Lucky’s mind – lit up the entire forest, screaming for him to be seen.

  In the play of light and shadow, the light was pale, yet bright enough to hurt. Any moment now and the maniac would spin on his heels, seeing him hunkered there like an animal; an animal that now knew too much. Lucky could see the man’s silhouette in the fragmented light and it radiated something so terrifying, something so real it seemed arrogantly autonomous.

  A disturbing realization settled over him as fear heightened his senses: an out-of-body experience was taking place. He noted the man’s style of dress. Immaculate. The shoes he wore gleamed in the moonlight and the he remembered a saying his father always said: The shine on your shoe says a lot about you …