He would have told you that Big Greg probably had a secret, like almost everyone on the street did. With some it was a violent relationship, with others it was drugs or drink, but with Big Greg, there was apparently nothing. The man didn’t smoke or drink, and he certainly did not use drugs. The only vice that he would have agreed to was a propensity to read, and he could always be found with a book or two in his hand. Also, others had noticed him writing in a notebook. Once it was filled, he would start another, discarding the old one in a bin.
Nobody knew why, not even Bob Robertson, and he had asked him enough times.
Robertson had once taken one of the discarded notebooks from a bin and read through it. Even he, a literate and educated man, had difficulty understanding what was written. All that he could see were disconnected paragraphs of five hundred words or so, with complex mathematical formulas and technical drawings.
He knew that an admittance that he had read some of Big Greg’s writing would have been met with a rebuke, although he was curious to know more.
Robertson had run the charity for fifteen years. During that time, he had met a disparate group of people, but no one like the big man who every day presented himself at the charity’s premises. There, he helped himself to two helpings of whatever food and drink were on offer. Some days it would be meat, others fish, even a good salad on one occasion, but that had not gone down well with those who ate only one meal a day. But with Big Greg there was no complaining. He came in, loaded up his plate, spoke congenially to everyone, and then left. No fuss, no fanfare, no interest in anything else.
The last time, Robertson had stood to one side of the room where the street dwellers ate. He studied the man that intrigued him. There was no question in his mind that Big Greg had a story to tell, a story so shocking that the stories of the others who relied on the charity would pale in comparison.
What did he know about Big Greg, Robertson thought as he sat in front of his computer: tall, well-spoken, obviously educated and articulate, and able to recite poetry, Shakespeare mainly, although also the other English poets of note, and then the man could write mathematical formulas that he could not understand.
Robertson entered one of the formulas from the notebook he had kept into the computer, and pressed search: no success. He entered two others with the same result. The fourth time, a result. Robertson looked at the screen, attempting to understand what it was telling him. The mathematical paper that he had discovered was far too complicated for him.
With no more to do, Robertson left his office and walked outside into the street. It was ten in the evening, and for once the area outside the charity’s premises was quiet, save for a couple of the homeless dossing down for the night, wrapped in blankets, the ubiquitous shopping trolleys full of their possessions and whatever else they had picked up off the street nearby.
A man came close to Robertson’s left-hand side as he rounded a corner. ‘You’ve been spying on me,’ he said.
‘Big Greg, I never expected to see you around here at this time of night.’
‘I’ve told you enough times.’
‘I’ve no idea what you’re talking about,’ Robertson replied. He looked up at the man, only to see a metal pole coming down at him. Robertson fell down, cracking his head against a concrete kerb. The two vagrants, no more than twenty feet away, did not even look in the direction of the noise. If they had, they would have seen a dead body, another man walking away.
***
Inside Bob Robertson’s hostel, most had been asleep, although one, a woman in her late thirties, struggling with the pangs of withdrawal from a drug habit that had blighted her life, had been fluctuating between sleep and wakefulness.
The woman, Katrina Ireland, had led a troubled life: an abusive father and an equally abusive boyfriend who had introduced her to drugs and eventual prostitution, but now she was trying to wean herself off the drugs. Robertson had taken her under his wing, as he did with so many others. During the day, she attended a clinic in the morning to assist with her drug dependency, and in the afternoon, she helped out with stacking the shelves at a local supermarket. It wasn’t much of a life, she knew that, but considering the options she didn’t complain.
Regardless, she knew it was not too late to make something of her life, and because of Bob Robertson, a man she admired, her future looked brighter than it had for a long time, but the drugs were still proving difficult. To her, they had been so seductive, and she knew that the urge for them would never fade. She was planning to move into a small flat in the next few weeks and the idea frightened her. In the hostel she felt safe, and as long as Bob Robertson was around, there was always a willing ear, someone who understood.
Katrina, awake and eventually tiring of a never-ending knocking on the door and abusive shouting, got up from her bed and walked down the two flights of stairs to the back door of the building. ‘It’s three in the morning,’ she shouted.
‘I need a bed.’
‘Come back later. Bob’s asleep.’
Katrina recognised the voice, one of the men usually huddled around an open fire on
