understand — he empathised with the man’s desire to hide, to lock himself away from a mocking world.
He remembered the names he’d been called at school:
The man with the bandaged face made a low, soft sound, somewhere between a cry and a sigh.
“It’s okay, mate. I won’t hurt you. Come on; let’s get you out of here. I have food and drink back at the cabin.”
The man reached out a hand and it flailed in the air like a damaged bird.
Brendan grabbed the hand and tugged, helping the man across the detritus-covered floor. Close up, the bandages were surprisingly clean. They looked fresh, as if they’d been recently applied. Somebody somewhere was looking after this man, and they were making sure he kept his dressings clean. That was something, at least; it meant that he wasn’t completely alone in the world. There was someone to tend to his most basic needs, to treat him like a human being.
Brendan guided the man towards the door, feeling invisible eyes upon him as he turned his back on the interior of the Needle. He always felt this way, as if the building itself were watching him, waiting for him to slip up. He’d overcome his surface fears, but other terrors ran deeper, caught in the blood and the marrow. Some terrors could never be beaten, no matter how hard you fought against them.
“Come on, mate,” he said, as they left the building and returned to the relative safety of the night. “I’ll put the kettle on and we can have a little chat. Have you been living here?”
The man allowed himself to be led but he did not reply. He walked in silence, unable or unwilling to communicate. His hand was limp; the fingers felt boneless. His lumbering steps carried him wherever he was taken, and he acquiesced without as much as a whimper of protest.
Just as they reached the security cabin, Brendan heard the sound of a car engine as it cut out and tyres simultaneously coming to a halt on the gravel beyond the hoardings. He stopped, patted his companion on the arm, and left him there as he approached the front gate to the compound. Who was this so late at night? Drug dealers, using the place for their transactions? He stood at the gate and peered through the railings. There was a black 4x4 parked a few yards away where it had driven off the edge of Grove Street to stop just outside the pool of street light, and someone sat behind the wheel staring at the tower block. All he could see was the dark outline of a man or a slim, mannish woman: short hair, square chin, sunken patches where eyes should be.
Brendan turned on his torch and pointed it at the vehicle, trying to illuminate the person inside. The figure moved quickly, as if panicked, and the engine started up again. The tyres spun on the gravel, and the vehicle reversed at speed, heading towards the southern edge of Grove Crescent.
CHAPTER FOUR
“WHAT HAPPENED TO you?” Brendan was making tea. The camping kettle had boiled on the small portable gas-powered hob, and he’d poured it into two large mugs along with some long-life milk and teabags. He stirred the cups, waiting for the milky water to turn dark, and then he scooped out the bags and dumped them into the plastic carrier bag he used to collect his rubbish.
His guest sat at the small table in silence, staring at the wall.
“I know you, don’t I? I’ve seen you before.” Brendan picked up the mugs and carried them to the table. He placed one in front of the bandaged man and sat down in the plastic chair opposite. The furniture in the security cabin wasn’t exactly comfortable, but it was practical.
The man didn’t move. He just sat there. The bandages were wrapped tightly around his head and there were slits left for his eyes, nose and mouth. What little skin was visible looked raw and shiny, like badly healed scar tissue.
Scars.
That was it. Brendan suddenly knew who this was sitting in his cabin.
“You’re Banjo, aren’t you?”
The man twitched slightly at the sound of his name. He tilted his head sideways and glanced at Brendan, as if he’d suddenly realised that he was not alone.
“You’re the junkie… sorry, the bloke who escaped from the fire at that gym on Grove Street. I read about it in the papers. That loan shark Monty Bright and his mate died. You were seen in the area before the fire started, and everybody said you must have started it.”
Banjo’s eyes were shining. He looked like he might be crying.
“Did you? Was it you that started the fire?” Brendan remembered the news reports of Banjo scratching off his own face in the street, and his subsequent disappearance from hospital. Because of an eyewitness stating that Banjo was back in the Grove on the night of the fire, it was assumed that he’d been the one who burned down the gym, and that he had run from the scene when the sirens started.
Banjo turned his head away, glancing at the far wall. He couldn’t make eye contact; there was something he didn’t want to communicate.
“It’s okay, man. Let’s just get some hot tea down you. And a sandwich. Do you like ham and cheese?” He stood and crossed the room, retrieving his lunchbox from the bench near the window. He took out a small cling- filmed package, unpeeled the wrapping, and handed Banjo a sandwich. “There you go. Here — have them both.” He took out the second sandwich and handed it to his guest.
Banjo grabbed the food and began to stuff it into his mouth, without any consideration for manners. Brendan wondered when the guy had last eaten. It looked like it must have been days ago. “Here,” he said. “Have it all. There’s an apple in there, and a chocolate bar. Take it.”
Banjo took the lunchbox, glanced into it, and smiled at Brendan. His mouth, beneath the dressings, was twisted, but Brendan got the gist. He knew he was being thanked.
He watched Banjo eat, trying to discern the extent of his wounds through the bandages. He thought again of the news reports at the time — statements about a local drug addict trying to tear off his own face with his bare hands. Apparently he’d had some kind of seizure, and suffered brain damage as a result. When he walked out of the hospital, the police had issued an announcement that he wasn’t dangerous, but the public should be wary of approaching him. His mind had snapped.
“Jesus,” he muttered, watching as Banjo bit the apple in half with a single lunge of his jaws. He ate the lot: even the core. “You must be starving.”
He made another two cups of tea and sat back down, smiling. “You’re safe here. It’s okay; I won’t call the police. You’re not doing any harm, or causing any damage. I know that.” Brendan knew he was a soft touch; his wife, Jane, never missed an opportunity to tell him this. But better to be soft than hard as stone, like a lot of the other people he knew around here. If he could help someone out, he would. It was in his nature. He was, he supposed, a caring sort of person.
“So, what are we going to do with you, then? I mean, I can’t keep you here — in the hut. I’d get fired.”
Banjo was still eating. There was apple juice on his chin.
“Fucking hell, mate. You’re like a child. You should really be somewhere that people can help you.” Brendan felt such a wave of pity and compassion that he thought he might get up and hug the man. But he got himself under control and simply sat and stared, wishing that he could do something practical. When he was a kid, he’d been the most selfish little shit imaginable, but as an adult, he felt such empathy for those who suffered. He supposed it was something to do with that time when he and his friends had been taken. That’s what everybody had said: they’d been snatched. But the truth was that none of them could remember; all they knew was that they’d been building a tree house one Friday evening, and then they’d come staggering out of the Needle the following Monday morning, scratched and bloody and aching.
He didn’t like to think too hard about that time, but he knew that it was impossible to erase it completely from his mind. That weekend was part of him; it was a piece of his personal history. Sometimes, in the early hours, when he couldn’t sleep and Jane lay snoring beside him, he’d try to grab hold of the images inside his head.
