The pain always came when Ricky Budgeon least expected it. Right now a wave swept from within and hit him between the eyes like a needle pushing hard into the bridge of his nose. He put his hands up and gripped his scalp, pulling and clawing at the burning sensation which spread across his forehead to his temples. The last attack had had him writhing on the floor, but this time the jabbing ceased after a few seconds and he merely needed to steady himself. He moved his hands from his head, clasped them tight around the cool metal bar of the gate, and stared across the field into the night.
A scan had showed nothing but the old scarring, afterwards the doctor muttering reassuring words about migraine and mentioning therapy, maybe acupuncture.
Crap.
The idiots must have missed whatever was in there that was causing him such misery. Some sort of mutation of the cells, a cancer or a tumour, the latter growing fat on bad memories, enmity and bitterness.
When the doctor disagreed with his self-diagnosis and said surgery was out of the question he’d thought of taking a drill to his own skull, imagined placing the bit against his head and pressing the trigger. The whine of the motor would come first, followed by agony as the drill ripped into skin and bone. Then the spinning metal would seek out the tumour and chew it to a pulp. The pain would be gone forever. He had even gone so far as to go to his workshop and set up the equipment. With the drill in its stand all he had to do was press the switch, put his head beneath the bit and pull down on the lever. Eventually he had decided against it. Whatever the thing was inside his head frightened him, but it motivated him too. Remove the pain, and what would drive him forwards?
Budgeon stood in the darkness, gulping air and then biting his lip until he tasted blood. The throbbing in his head subsided and ebbed away. He bent and picked up his fag: a half-smoked roll-up, dropped as the agony had come on. Drawing on the cigarette, he looked out again and took in the landscape spread before him.
Close at hand, the hedges and trees appeared black against the sky. In a nearby field, the occasional sheep bleated, and from a copse off to his right the hoot of an owl rang out. But beyond the empty countryside lay the city, a corona of brightness where a thousand glittering lights promised excitement and danger, their individual pinpricks of heat coalescing like a mass of stars at the centre of a distant galaxy. Moving outward from the core, white dots crawled between avenues of static orange; cars heading for the soft radiance of the suburbs and home.
A twinge in his forehead caused him to screw his eyes shut.
Home.
He opened his eyes again and took another drag from the roll-up, pinching the end between the tips of his thumb and forefinger so he could extract every last piece of worth without burning himself. The way he had smoked in prison.
Years ago, before he had gone down, he’d had friends in the city. Friends who’d grown up on the same street as him. As kids they’d pinched sweets from the same shop and sworn at the same old ladies whose flowerbeds they trampled across. Later on, as young men, they’d thrown bricks at the same police cars, shared the same prison cells and sworn vengeance on the same enemies. They’d been like brothers, the three of them. Blood brothers.
Those days seemed so long ago now. As if someone else had lived the time for him.
Budgeon took a final drag from his fag and then dropped the butt to the floor, stamping the orange glow into the mud.
Everything had been fine until she came along.
Why did it always come down to a woman? Almost biblical. Garden of fucking Eden and all that shit.
In the end, he had been the lucky one, sliding around on silk sheets, relishing how sweet she tasted, promising her everything. But afterwards, as they shared a cigarette, he realised things weren’t going to be the same. Not with the others wanting her too.
He shook his head and took one last look at the distant lights, before moving back to the van and clambering in. The thin, pale man in the driver’s seat grunted and asked him if he was ready to go.
Was he? Peering down on the city and reminiscing about his childhood, thinking about the group of them as little boys, without a care in the world, had made him reconsider for a moment. Now, as the warmth of the van slipped around him, he felt cocooned and cut off from everything but those memories. He could easily get misty-eyed again. Half a lifetime later perhaps it was time to forgive and forget, move on.
An ache flickered across his brow.
No, life didn’t reward that kind of thinking. He’d gone soft over the girl and when his guard had been down he’d been betrayed. There were rules, unwritten maybe, but rules all the same. If you broke them, you paid; and some debts took more than money to settle.
Much more.
Of course he was ready to go. And the sooner they got the show on the road, the better.
Nr Bovisand, Plymouth. Sunday 13th January. 4.05 p.m.
The noise carried through to Savage in the kitchen. Laughter. Samantha and Jamie’s high-pitched squeals layered over her husband’s voice as he sang an inane song in a mock-Swedish accent. The cause of the frivolity was Stefan, the family’s unofficial au pair, who had just returned from his home country laden with chocolates for the kids and two matching sets of stupid-looking knitted gloves and hats for Savage and Pete. Pete had shoved the hat down on his head, pointed out the window at the daffodils in the garden, and teased Stefan about being a little late with the winter gear. Stefan responded in kind, putting on a thick West Country drawl, muttering something about pilchards.
Savage had retreated to the kitchen to make a pot of tea, thinking Pete was right about the change of season. Mid-January, Christmas not much more than a few weeks ago, and already the east side of their garden a swath of gold, ochre and lemon. Other changes too: Pete returning from deployment at the back end of November, after nearly nine months away.
The celebrations had run on into the Christmas period, resulting in one long spell of parties, relatives, more parties and more relatives. Now the holiday season was over Savage was pleased for life to settle down a little. Pleased too that spring had arrived early in Devon. The forecasters had spoken of a hard winter, but despite some snow in November, so far they had got it wrong. Out of the kitchen window the sun hung low in the sky, a cool yellow rather than the deep red of a summer sunset. Below the sun the Sound lay placid, only a hint of a swell disturbing the surface. A yacht, black against the light, motored in past the eastern end of the breakwater. The crew on the yacht waved to a trio of dinghy sailors struggling to catch a zephyr to take them home before the chill of nightfall. Last night the frost had returned, but the first two weeks of January had been unseasonably warm, pushing the temperatures close to the mid-teens. Weather more suited to t-shirts than to a gift of hats and gloves.
A couple of days earlier Savage had received an altogether different type of Christmas present. One of the best ever, although Pete hadn’t seen it that way. He told her in the kitchen, as she prepared a pizza, her hands floured with dough. The news stunned her and she could hardly take his words in.
‘Scrapped?’ she asked.
‘Yes,’ Pete said. ‘Decommissioned. Mothballed. Sold off. Cut up and made into ploughshares for all I know. Seems as if I’m to be based ashore now. For good. Bloody stupid cuts.’ Pete’s face looked ashen and his eyes brimmed with emotion.
‘I’m sorry.’ Even as she said the words she knew she wasn’t. Pete might be losing his ship but for the past fifteen years and more she had lost her husband – and the kids their dad – for months and months on end. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t known what she was getting herself into when they got married, but back then heart very definitely ruled head, and the day-to-day practicalities of juggling a job and young children appeared to be years off. Pretty soon though, the twins, Samantha and Clarissa, had