A sort of urban gothic(ish) story

[Draken]

A blast from the past. Wrote it in the early 90s.

Broom Grove

Dark lent a menace to Broom Grove all of its own. The dispassionate concrete slabs of its Seventies pre-fab architecture, the steel shutters of the few remaining shops, the futile rows of broken street lamps all combined to make it a place of gloom and shadow. And then there were the kids. Scores of them, prowling menacingly in packs, slouching in the piss-stained recesses of boarded-up shop fronts, walking around with exaggerated swaggers as they swilled their cheap canned lager, swearing and laughing raucous laughs.

It was impossible to like them, and impossible not to be afraid of them. Alicia told herself that she of all people must not judge. Unwanted at home, unwanted in the workplace: their only encounters with parental emotion most likely a good hiding, their only encounters with the forces of law and order most likely the same. She told herself that every time she was summoned to Broom Grove police station to defend them from the latest charge of squalid thuggery, but still she despised them. She had to disconnect her emotions from her work: she was a duty solicitor, this was her job, and compared to most she was very well paid for it.

Broom Grove police station stood out from the rest of the district, if only because of the intact state of its barred windows and beacon-bright exterior lights. She drove her Renault into the high-walled car-park to the rear and entered, after presenting herself to the closed circuit camera, through the back door. She headed straight for the cells, nodding to a couple of non-uniformed staff in passing.

“Alright, Alicia love,” greeted a familiar voice as she pushed through the door into the holding area. It was Sergeant Ellis. Coppers like Ellis always gave her back her appetite for her work: people like him could not be left to administer what they thought of as justice.

“Evening sergeant,” she replied evenly. “What have we got tonight?”

Ellis rolled his eyes theatrically. “You tell us. Real joker, won’t give us his name.”

“What’s he in for?”

“Affray and assaulting a police officer.”

“Another criminal mastermind safely behind bars....”

Ellis’s ruddy complexion flushed a deeper red. “Not a problem for you over on the posh side of town I dare say, but round here there are decent folk that won’t leave their homes for fear of tossers like him. And he’s not just your normal tosser either: he’s only been around a week, nobody’s seen him before. He’s stirring up the rest of the little sods, no mistake. They flock to him. Right little ring leader he is.”

Alicia sighed. “Just let me see him.”

*

Her latest client was sat on the bed in the cell, legs drawn up before him, head resting on knees. He looked to be seventeen or eighteen. He had black shoulder-length hair that fell in curls and wore two or three days’ stubble. He was dressed all in faded blue denim. What she really noticed though - in fact what literally stopped her in her tracks for a moment - were his eyes. He looked up at her and they sparkled. There was no other word for it. They shone with an intelligence and depth and knowingness that she had never seen before, least of all in the blank stupidity of her normal Broom Grove clientele. But beyond that, deep down in those intense brown orbs, their kindled devilment, arrogance and - she was sure of it - contempt.

She pulled herself together instantly. “My name is Alicia Barnes. I’m your legal representative. I’m here to help you.”

He looked up at her and smiled.

“What is your name?” she asked.

“Johnny,” he replied. His voice was soft, almost lilting.

“Johnny what?”

Again he smiled. “Who’s Johnny?”

She took a deep breath. “Johnny, you’re not helping yourself. You can trust me: anything you say to me is in confidence. Between you and me.”

“Between a man and a woman,” he said, his eyes gazing through her.

She sighed. “Why are you in here Johnny? Can you tell me why you think the police arrested you?”

“No lies impress the court,” he answered with a shrug.

“That’s right Johnny, there’s no point lying. So what happened?”

He leant back against the cell wall, disinterested. “If the boys wanna fight you better let them,” he said.

He was talking in riddles, and enjoying her bemusement. She felt a flush of anger.

“Listen,” she said, her tone harder now. “This is not the nick to be a smart-arse in, I’ll tell you that now. Help me to help you.”

He looked her in the eye and the soft voice became serious for the first time.
“If you've done all there is to do, ain't nothing left for you. Just walk away.”

“In my opinion this young man is not fully mentally capable,” stated Alicia to Ellis. “I want that to go on the record.”

He grinned patronisingly. “Of course, love, of course. But might I humbly suggest that as he was plenty mentally capable enough to lead his pals on a wrecking spree and then belt PC Harper one, he might just be trying to pull a fast one? He might be talking cack but anybody can do that, love, can’t they? Not for me to suggest that you’re not infallible, of course - but you’re not.”

She refused to rise to him. “This needs to be decided by an appropriately qualified person, not you or I.”

“And so it shall, love. Appropriately qualified persons? I can’t get enough of ‘em in my nick. But for now, if you don’t mind, I think we’ll interview your client, if it’s all the same to you.”

*

The interview was conducted by Harper, the arresting officer. He was an old style hard-as-nails plod whose black eye presumably bore witness to the “assaulting a police officer” charge. Alicia had no problem with Harper - he was gruff but straight as a die and strictly by the book. Unfortunately Ellis sat in and soon started to boss the questioning.

Johnny - he still refused to give a surname - sat with the same air of amused disinterest he had shown in the cell. His answers were elliptical, evasive, almost poetic at times. She could see Ellis getting redder and redder. At times she warned the sergeant that his questioning was becoming repressive, but otherwise she tried not to antagonise him further. He was getting wound up enough as it was. Bad things were said to happen away from prying eyes in Broom Grove nick, and Ellis was rumoured to be involved in many of them.

Eventually he gave up. “Interview terminated at 01:27,” he snarled into the tape recorder. He punched the STOP button angrily, then he stood up and leaned across the table, his florid face just a few inches from Johnny’s.

“Listen sunshine, I know your game. You’ll talk, one way or another.”

“Talk, talk,” replied the teenager mockingly. “All you do is talk.”

Ellis’s eyes flashed and his lower lip quivered with fury. Harper stood up quickly, evidently knowing what was coming next. He put a restraining hand on his sergeant’s shoulder. “He’s not worth it sarge. Rise above it.”

Ellis looked around at Harper and seemed to regain some composure. He stepped back from the table. “You’re right, constable, he’s not. Book him back into his cell.” The sergeant left without a further glance at Johnny or Alicia, the door slamming shut behind him.

“That was bloody stupid,” she berated. “Haven’t you listened to a word I’ve said? Why won’t you do as I advise?”

Johnny looked up at her, face solemn but eyes sardonic as ever. “You’re not the girl you think you are,” he answered.

She shook her head. “Forget it.”

[Draken]

She escorted Johnny and Harper to the holding cells. None of them said a word. There was an atmosphere of foreboding that Alicia could not dispel. The door of the cell clanged shut behind the prisoner: Alicia looked in through the small hatch. She had been about to say something mundane about seeing him the next day, but instead he caught her eye and - for the first and last time - said something of his own accord. “They’re afraid of what they see,” he said, those deep brown eyes sad yet somehow fierce. Harper slammed the hatch shut.

As they walked back along the corridor, Alicia turned to the taciturn policeman. “I saw what Ellis was like in that interview room,” she said quietly. “You make sure he remembers that. If anything happens I’ll end his career for him. I mean that.” She realised as she said it that it was not the sort of statement she had a habit of making, but something about this whole case was getting to her.

Harper looked back, his face blank. “I’ll try,” he muttered.

*

She never saw Johnny again. The office called her early the next morning: her latest client was dead. He had apparently gone into a frenzy in his cell, smashing his head repeatedly against the walls before anyone could reach him. He died from head injuries in the infirmary without regaining consciousness. There was a note in the station’s log that she herself had been concerned about the youth’s state of mind.

She went straight into the office and saw the senior partner as soon as he came in. She spent the rest of the day writing up a report on what had happened the previous night and preparing an official complaint. She knew what had happened in that cell after she had left. She knew Johnny’s wounds had not been self-inflicted. And all the while, something tugged away at the back of her mind. Something about Johnny. About what he was.

At six a Chief Inspector called her from Broom Grove: he would like to see her, immediately if at all possible. She said it was and got straight into her car. Here’s where you get yours, Ellis, she thought as she started the engine.

The radio came on as the car revved into life: it was playing a New Order song:

“When I was a very small boy, very small boys talked to me.”

She had never really been a New Order fan, but she liked this one.

“Now that we’ve grown up together, they’re afraid of what they see.”

She stopped in mid-reverse. “They’re afraid of what they see.” Johnny’s last words to her. Suddenly it came to her. That something at the back of her mind at last broke through. Johnny hadn’t been talking in riddles: he had been talking in lyrics. Fragments of songs.

She continued to reverse out of the parking space and then set off, trying to remember the things he had said.

“Between a man and a woman.” The first of his obtuse statements to her. There was a Kate Bush album track called that in her CD collection at home. She identified more of his riddles as she drove, all lines from an eclectic range of songs and singers: The Damned, Thin Lizzy, Cast, Crowded House.... There were plenty more she couldn’t identify, but then if he had been able to quote obscure album tracks the chances were a lot of his sources were unknown to her. If that was true then the breadth of his knowledge of popular music had been astonishing. How had he acquired such knowledge? He had just been a kid.

And why? What did it all mean?

*

It was dark by the time she reached Broom Grove. Glowering clouds reared up to block the last vestiges of twilight as she drove through the unfriendly streets. Tonight they seemed even more hostile than usual. There was something about them that did not belong in the Twentieth Century. Something dark and medieval. She noticed that there was nobody else about. Not a single car. Not a single person. Not a single kid.

They descended upon her so quickly that she had no time for thought. One second the streets were empty, the next, as she rounded the corner near the police station, her way was barred by a throng. Instinctively she hit the brakes. They closed around her car, laughing. Before she could find reverse gear the door was open and she was being hauled out.

It was the kids. Laughing and swearing and spitting at her. They flung her between them like a rag doll, propelling her away from the car until she slammed into a wall. She crumpled to the floor, winded and petrified.

A torch shone in her face, dazzling her.

“I know this cow! She were my brief.”

The speaker was a shaven-headed boy holding the torch. He craned over her. She didn’t recognise him.

“Said she’d help me!” he shouted. The crowd behind him laughed. They closed around her in a tight semi-circle of adolescent malevolence. She was too frightened to try to say anything. No words would come.

“Johnny could help us,” hissed the skinhead. “But you killed him, didn’t you? You with your laws and your rules, you had to bleeding kill him didn’t you?”

Then he laughed, and the rest of the mob laughed with him. Hysterical, whooping laughter.

“Well you killed nothing. You can’t kill what can’t be killed. Screw your laws and your rules. And screw your God. We got our own god now. A kids’ god we made for ourselves. A kids’ god just for us. A kids’ god you won’t ever understand, all you’ll know is it scares you. Just like we do.” There was a light in the skinhead’s wide eyes that could only be called evangelical.

“Look,” he said, pointing. “A sacrifice.” The crowd parted before his finger like the Red Sea. She looked, and for the first time noticed the flames billowing orange-bright from the police station down the street. The whole building was ablaze. Around it ran more teenagers, shouting excitedly, petrol bombs in their hands.

“And now...” whispered the skinhead.

“Don’t do it.” It was a command. Softly spoken yet somehow cutting through the tumult. It was a girl’s voice and sounded strangely familiar.
The skinhead stepped back immediately. The mob fell silent. Somebody walked through it toward where Alicia sat at the foot of the wall. She looked up slowly, the torchlight enough to reveal high-heeled boots, long legs hugged by skin-tight jeans, a scuffed black leather jacket. Then she saw peroxide blonde hair and a flash of bright red lipstick. And finally the eyes: deep and brown, knowing and mocking. She did not know the girl but she had seen those eyes before.

Suddenly Alicia understood all the skinhead had said. A god in their own image. And not just in their image, but in that of kids now grown. Not just an icon for now, but a reminder for people like her. A reminder of what she and her kind had been before jobs and mortgages and marriage and kids of their own had drowned them.

The girl gestured, and the kids around her disappeared. Not a word, not a sound: they just hurried away into the shadows, melted into the night. There was just Alicia, the girl and an overturned Renault, illuminated by the flickering bonfire that had been Broom Grove police station. A cold wind gusted grey smoke along the street. Alicia got to her feet.

The girl smiled. A sardonic, knowing smile. “Go now.”

Alicia nodded. She took a few steps down the road away from the blazing station. Her legs felt unsteady beneath her. In the distance she heard approaching sirens. She turned to look back at the girl: she too was listening to the sound of the sirens, still smiling. Her eyes caught Alicia’s.

“They’re afraid of what they see,” she said.

Again.

A sudden swirl of smoke obscured her for a second, and she was gone.

Alicia kept walking.



Apologies for the dated music! I got the idea after reading that 'Johnny' was the commonest all time name in UK chart singles.