The Dying Place Read online

  LUCA VESTE

  The Dying Place

  Copyright

  AVON

  An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

  77-85 Fulham Palace Road

  Hammersmith, London W6 8JB

  www.harpercollins.co.uk

  First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2014

  Copyright © Luca Veste 2014

  Cover image © Alamy 2014

  Cover design © ClarkevanMeurs Design

  Luca Veste asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

  A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

  Source ISBN: 9780007525584

  Ebook Edition © October 2014 ISBN: 9780007525560

  Version: 2014-09-11

  Dedication

  For Angelina ‘Angie’ Veste

  11/04/1936 – 07/05/2014

  My nana. My nonna.

  She loved her family and her family loved her.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Now

  Before

  Part One

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  The Farm: Six Months Ago

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  The Farm: Five Months Ago

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  The Farm: Three Months Ago

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  The Youth Club

  Chapter 14

  The Farm: Three Days Ago

  Part Two

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  The Farm: Two Days Ago

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  The Farm: Two Days Ago

  Chapter 19

  The Farm: Yesterday

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Home

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  The Youth Club

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Part Three

  Home: Six Months Ago

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Toxteth: Liverpool 8

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Bootle

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Peter

  Chapter 36

  Epilogue

  In Conversation with Luca Veste

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  By the Same Author

  About the Publisher

  Now

  No one believes you. Nothing you say is the truth. They know it every time you open your mouth and start speaking, hoping to be believed. Everything is just a lie in disguise, dressed up nice, trying to be something it’s not.

  Mutton dressed as lamb.

  That’s just how it is. You go down the social – or the jobcentre as they call it now, although that’ll probably change to something else soon enough – and try to explain why you’re still worth sixty quid a week of taxpayers’ hard-earned money. Trying to justify yourself even though you haven’t worked in years. Get that look which seeps into you after a little while.

  I’ve heard it all before, love.

  There’s no let-up. Being judged at every turn. Lucky enough to have more than one kid? Unlucky enough to lose your part-time job working the till at some shitty shop? For your fella to piss off with some slag from around the corner? Doesn’t matter, shouldn’t have had more kids than you can afford. Doesn’t matter that you’re a single parent – I’m paying your benefits.

  You live on a council estate, on benefits, and that’s it. You’re scum. Do not pass go, here’s a few hundred quid to pay some dickhead landlord who thinks five ton isn’t too much for a terraced house that’s overrun with damp. Mould growing on the walls if you dare put any furniture too close to it.

  Your kids then become scum as well. Shit schools, shit kids. Bored with life, constantly pissed off because you can’t afford the latest frigging gadget that Sony or Apple put out. Every six months without fail, something new that every other kid in the school has, that they can’t be without.

  You try. You really do. But it’s never enough. Sixteen hours working in a supermarket, a few hours doing cleaning. Bits of crap here and there. Never enough.

  No one believes you.

  Your kids get older. Get in trouble. Bizzies knocking on your door at two in the morning, hand on the back of your fifteen-year-old son.

  He’s had too much to drink. Could have got himself into a lot more trouble. Should keep an eye on him more, love.

  That judgement again. Always there, surrounding you.

  You try and explain. Tell them he’d said he was staying at his mate’s, or staying at his uncle’s house. With his cousins.

  Get that look back.

  I’ve heard it all before, love.

  You want to scream. You want to pull the little bastard into the house by his stupid frigging head and beat the shit out of him. Like your dad would do to your brothers if they ever got caught doing stupid shit.

  You try your best. Every day. It’s never enough. The crap wages you get for working two, three, different jobs barely matches what you were getting on benefits. So you think, what’s the point? You’re tired. You want to be lazy. Exhausted by the sheer weight of being alive. Everyone else around you seems to be doing sod all. You want to do that for a while.

  The kids get worse. All boys, so the house is either deathly quiet whilst they’re all out, getting up to God knows what. Or, it’s a cacophony of noise. The moaning, the groaning. The smells of teenagers on the cusp of manhood, burning into your nostrils, hanging in the air.

  No one believes you.

  When one of them doesn’t come home for days, you shout and scream as much as you possibly can, but no one cares.

  They think he’s just done a bunk. Gone to see a girl. Gone to get pissed, stoned, off his face somewhere. He’ll turn up eventually. They always do.

  Your kind always does.

  You try and tell them it’s different. That your lads have always been good at letting you know where they are, or if they’re going to be away for any time at all. That they wouldn’t just leave without saying anything.

  They give you that look.

  I’ve heard it all before, love.

  You try and get people interested, but no one cares. The papers aren’t interested. Thousands of people go missing every year. No one cares about your eighteen-year-old son, missing for weeks … months.

  You believe he’s okay. You make yourself believe it.

  You know though. As a parent, you know.

  Something has happened to him.
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  It’s not until you’re watching his coffin go behind the curtain – fire destroying everything that made him your son and turning it into ash – that they start to believe you.

  It’s too late now, of course.

  Sorry, love.

  Before

  It wasn’t supposed to happen this way.

  The plan hadn’t been for him to be in this position. Not yet, anyway. He was supposed to be there to see it through. It was his idea, his design. None of them would have thought of doing it without him. He was the catalyst, the spark that brought them all together.

  That’s the problem with making plans … the master in the sky laughs.

  Flat on his back in the street outside his own home, a ghost of a smile playing across his face. Clutching his chest as his heart threatened to beat its way out, his vision going blurry. Not being able to see if there really was an elephant sitting on him, which was how it felt – crushing weight bearing down, strangling him, cutting off his breath.

  He should have known he was too old for it. Not that it would have made a difference. As soon as they’d come around to his plan, he wasn’t going to hide away whilst all the fun went down without him. He should have just stayed inside with a small whisky and some shite on the TV. Relaxed. Then maybe he would have had a few more years.

  They’d come back again. Laughter and voices penetrating the walls from outside. No respect for people’s private property. Just sitting on the wall outside his house, throwing their empty cans into his little front garden.

  He’d checked the time on the clock that took pride of place on his mantelpiece, a beautiful old-fashioned gold carriage clock which had been a retirement gift from a client.

  Half past midnight. Way past his usual turning-in time. Early to bed, early to rise. An old motto, but one he stuck to usually.

  Something that lot out there wouldn’t have a clue about.

  He had noticed the area changing around him for a while. What used to be a nice area of West Derby was being overrun with those yobs. Complete with their strange bastardisation of the Scouse accent. Couldn’t understand them most of the time, which was probably just as well. Couldn’t imagine they’d have anything of value to say.

  Back in his day, if you left school with no qualifications – as was the norm, to be fair – you took whatever job you could get, and got on with it. He’d left school at fourteen and went straight to work, doing odd jobs here and there. Joined the army a few years later, ended up in Korea. Got back home and worked for over forty years painting and decorating. Set himself up with a nice little business with enough customers to always have a bit of work on the go. Put a bit of money aside for the retirement years with the missus. They could have lived quite well for a good while.

  And then he was alone.

  Those lads wouldn’t know the meaning of work. Not employed, in education or training, as they say. A million of them apparently now, according to the papers. No jobs, you see. Whole world has gone the same way. It seemed like he’d blinked and the next minute everyone was saying it was better to live in China than anywhere else. Who’d have thought that would ever happen?

  She was ten days off sixty-five when they got to her. Walking back from the post office. Doctors told him it was probably a coincidence. Didn’t matter that she was left in the street for dead, she could have gone at any moment. He never believed them.

  He would go for a walk every day, tried to keep fit. Walked up to the village, into the county park. Past the red church sign he always stopped to read.

  Church of England

  St Mary The Virgin

  West Derby

  St Mary the Virgin. Odd name to give to a church. But then, he found most things about churches odd.

  He’d walk up the lane which ran alongside it, trees crowding in on each side. He’d find his bench, have a nice sit down and watch the world go by. Chat to people every now and again. Most people just walking on by, or smiling politely whilst thinking about their quickest escape route.

  The first time they’d showed up outside his house, he thought a quick word would do the trick. Not a chance. He’d given them an hour, until the shouting had become too much. So loud he couldn’t even hear the TV properly. Just a quiet word, he thought, let them know someone lived here, that he wasn’t going to let them take over his front. As soon as he’d walked out he could tell it wasn’t going to have any effect. The attitude of them … Christ. They hadn’t listened to a word he’d said. Just laughed at each other, whispering and turning their backs to him. He’d given up with a shrug of his shoulders and a hope that they wouldn’t be back anytime soon. That they’d find someone else to bother.

  He’d been wrong.

  The plan was supposed to change that.

  Forty years he’d worked. Up and down ladders nine hours a day. Hard work, but going home to Nancy and the kids made it worthwhile. He’d met Nancy when he was getting into his mid-thirties, her fifteen years younger. The mother-in-law had hated him from the start. Taking her little girl away. They’d had the last laugh on that one. Happily married for almost fifty years. Three children, two of them boys. When they grew up and had their own, they would have some of the grandkids over for tea once a week. Then they grew up as well.

  His only regret with the children was that they weren’t closer. Brothers and sisters should be there for each other, but there was always a distance between them.

  It would have been okay though. Whiling away their later years together. They would’ve had little trips here and there. Bingo once a week at the social club. Visits to see the offspring.

  The end of Nancy’s story began and finished with two boys, barely in their teens, wearing hooded tops and balaclavas. They’d grabbed her bag, but she’d held on. They’d found bruises up her wrists and arms where they’d tried to prise her hands off it. A broken nose, which the CCTV showed happened when the taller of the two delivered a straight fist to her face. She’d died weeks later, but even if they’d found the yobs who did it, they wouldn’t have been charged with murder. She’d died due to other complications, they’d told him.

  He knew they were to blame though.

  He checked outside again, looking through the curtains. Four of the little buggers. No older than sixteen or seventeen, he reckoned. He could feel the anger coursing through him, wishing he was a few years younger. Back in his army days he would have taken the four of them on and had them running home for their mothers. He wasn’t one of those old guys who believed everything was better back in the day, like the moaning gits at the pub, but he also couldn’t remember sitting outside someone’s house drinking cans of lager, shouting and swearing. Life moves on. Things change. Not always for the better.

  The fireworks were the last straw.

  It had been late. Gone midnight. Explosions ripped through the silence which had accompanied his sleep. Downstairs, the direction of the noise made no sense in his confused half-asleep state. Korea. It was sixty years ago, but the slightest thing could send him back. He wasn’t to know some little bastards had thought it would be funny to stick a few fireworks through his letter box. Sweat dripped from his forehead, down onto the wisps of grey hair on his chest. His chest. Constricting. Tight. Everything pulling inwards. Choking him. The phone was in reach, which probably saved him that night. Couple of days in the Royal. Told to take it easy for a few days, but he should be fine. Simon, his youngest son, had gone mad, wanting to protect his supposedly frail father. Called the police, but they couldn’t do anything without evidence. Said they’d look into it, but everyone knew what that meant.

  A week later, the plan had begun to be formed.

  The faces of war. The noise … explosions, gunshots, cries of anguish. The forgotten war is what they call Korea. He’d never forget it. Waking up silently screaming has that effect. It’d been a long time since he’d had the nightmares, but they had come back since the firework incident.

  He wanted to get back at them. Not just that thoug
h. To show them the error of their ways.

  Brazen as you like, sat on his wall, chucking their empties into the front garden Nancy used to spend hours tending to.

  He lifted the phone. Dialled and said a few words.

  He opened the front door and they didn’t even turn around. Reached his front gate and stepped onto the pavement next to where they were gathered. They started laughing amongst themselves as he tried to get their attention.

  It happened faster than he’d expected. He gave them another chance, tried being cordial with them, asked them to move on, but they weren’t having any of it. He tried explaining about the garden. They responded by laughing. Like a pack of hyenas, spotting the easy prey. He could feel his heart racing – bang, bang, bang. Beating harder than it had done in years.

  He wasn’t going to back down. Not this time. Things were different.

  Two of them walked off behind him, sniggering under their black hoods as he held his hands out wide, palms to the darkened sky. He heard the distant sound of a car towards the end of his road and turned towards it. A shuffling sound to his left made him turn back.

  Thunk.

  The sound reverberated around his head. The clatter of tin on concrete brought him back to his senses, just as another beer can pinged off his head.

  ‘What the …’

  The laughing had grown louder. Surrounding him, constricting his breathing.

  ‘You little shits …’

  They were grouped together, pointing at him, nudging each other hard as their laughter grew and grew.

  ‘Come ’ead lads’, the tallest one said between fits of laughter, ‘let’s get down to Crocky Park. See if the girls are about.’

  He stared after them as they left, mouth hanging open as they sauntered off, hands down the front of their tracksuit bottoms. Looked around at the mess they’d made of his garden and the pavement in front of his house, before reaching up to his head – damp where dregs of beer had splattered onto his hair.

  The van parked up his street shifted into gear and coasted towards him. He felt as if his chest was stuck in a vice, his breathing becoming shallower. He staggered backwards and sat on the small brick wall.