That might just be down to the rain and the fact it was midweek. Or alternatively, perhaps this district too had fallen onto hard times. Maybe muggers and street-gangs haunted its shadowy backstreets; or perhaps the escalating underworld violence in general was oppressing everybody.
That said, the Old Town wasn’t exactly dead. Not quite yet. Here and there, streams of warm lamplight filtered through curtained windows, though none at all showed from 23 Cranby Street, the Heckenburg family home.
Heck pulled up in front and switched his engine off. The tiny terraced house’s front curtains were open, but the house itself stood in darkness.
He sat still, pondering.
Not much in Cranby Street had changed, except that there were fewer houses. At least half of them had been demolished at some point in the past, but down at the far end there was still open access through to the canal and the lock-gates, and on the other side the reclaimed spoil-land that had later been turned into the rugby league pitch where a juvenile Heck would score many of his tries. But that was so long ago, and so much had happened since, that it seemed hard to equate this desolate little backwater with the place where he’d spent his early life. And the fact that the house was still in his family made no difference.
Dana – Dana Black, as she’d kept her married name despite having long separated from her waster of a husband – was the sole occupant of number 23, along with Sarah, her sixteen-year-old daughter. Heck hadn’t expected that they wouldn’t be here. It wasn’t quite Easter yet and the kids were still in school, so it had never entered his head that they could be away.
His gaze roved again over the sorry little façade. Like the rest of the street, number 23 only ever seemed to change by getting smaller. It felt incredible that all the Heckenburgs had once dwelled here together: George and Mary, the parents, and their three children, Dana, the eldest, Mark, the youngest, and in the middle … Tom.
It was a deep irony that the head of the Heckenburg clan, George, and Heck’s older brother, Tom, had looked so like each other. Tom had been tall and lean, whereas George had been burly, but there were clear similarities: prominent noses, high, hard cheekbones. Of course, whereas George always stuck with the sober grey suits of his own youth, the sensible ties, the short, brilliantined hair, Tom had preferred the disorderly ‘mophead’ look of the late-80s rock scene (dyeing it straw-blond into the bargain), the tour T-shirts and stone-washed jeans with the knees torn out of them. Father and son had been worlds apart in so many ways. In fact, back in that era, Heck, who was younger than Tom by three years, had been the success story, the ‘normal one’ as his mum and dad would say. Mainly this was due to his star-athlete status at school, and because he and his mates were less a group of intellectual rebels, more a bunch of lads around town, which was something factory worker George Heckenburg could more easily understand.
But the real schism between father and eldest son had only come when Tom got into drugs.
Heck shook his head, deciding he was getting nowhere with such painful reminiscence.
Briefly, he rubbed at a crick in the back of his neck, which was stiffening fast, a result of the long motorway journey he’d just completed. He could certainly have used a warm bath right now, not to mention a hot meal, but it didn’t look as if that was going to happen here.
That said, he at least had to check before resorting to Plan B. He climbed out into the wet and knocked on Dana’s door. There was no response.
He retreated to the car and assessed the building again. The absence of light was very telling, not to mention the absence of drawn curtains or of a television left playing to itself – the kind of precautions an everyday householder would take if they’d just popped around the corner to the chippie. He glanced along the street. A few cars were parked, and there were lights in other windows. But it was improbable there’d be anyone living here now who’d recognise him. If anything, an unknown bloke of his age, wearing jeans, trainers, a zip-up jacket and hoodie, wandering around in the dark and knocking on doors would elicit fear rather than neighbourly assistance.
He climbed back into his Megane, glancing one last time at the house he’d used to call home.
*
With a crunch of brakes, Heck stopped on the car park to St Nathaniel’s. Another place he’d once called home, albeit very briefly. Though it didn’t feel that way now.
The towering religious edifice had been the focal point of this district since the Old Town was first built to house Irish immigrants shipped in as part of the Industrial Revolution. All Heck’s life this had been the beating heart of Bradburn, though again he couldn’t help but wonder how vigorously it beat in the twenty-first century. He hadn’t encountered too many people in the past few years for whom spiritual succour was a high priority. He wasn’t here himself for that reason. He had a more practical purpose in mind – to get directions to a decent billet, and maybe at the same time say hello to his late mother’s younger brother, Father Pat McPhearson, who also happened to be parish priest at St Nat’s.
Heck climbed out and looked the church over. Some parts of its venerable old structure were clad with scaffolding, while its windows were dark and doors locked – though that was no surprise at this time of night. Once, England’s churches were left open twenty-four/seven, their interiors shimmering with candlelight so they could provide a haven for souls in distress whatever the hour. But now a church was just as likely to get robbed and vandalised as any other easily accessible building. Heck crossed the car park on foot to the presbytery, skirting around tins of paint and tools propped against its gatepost. It looked as if extensive refurbishments were under way, probably not before time, given the state of the two-hundred-year-old church.
The presbytery itself wasn’t quite so old, perhaps dating from the late-Victorian period, but evinced the simple austerity of the ecclesiastical life: a narrow building, but tall, again built from red brick, with a steeply sloped roof of heavy grey slate. The fanlight above its large front door was filled with stained glass, as were sections of the two arched windows to either side of it. Both of these were curtained, but dull lamplight speared out.
As Heck rang the doorbell, he recollected the brief time he’d spent lodging here after his family had unanimously decided they didn’t want an officer of the law living under their roof. He’d taken official police digs at first, but those had been in short supply back in the mid-1990s – most of the old section-houses were being sold off. So he’d soon finished up here. His uncle, Father Pat as the local schoolchildren had known him, though equally bemused by his nephew’s decision to join the force, had at least shown a spirit of Christian kindness. Heck had crashed in the presbytery’s spare room until he could afford his own place.
‘How can I help you?’ came a terse Irish voice.
Heck had been so lost in his thoughts that he hadn’t realised the door had opened.
An extremely short woman stood there – five feet at the most – with a truculent, weather-beaten face and thinning red-grey hair. Heck recognised her as Mrs O’Malley, his uncle’s housekeeper. She’d filled out a little since he’d last seen her, which was roughly nineteen years ago. She’d been stocky before, but now was quite plump – an impression enhanced by the thick raincoat she was in the process of buttoning up with a set of stubby, ring-covered fingers.
‘Erm … Mrs O’Malley?’
‘Yes?’ she said impatiently, as if this was something he should surely already know.
She’d been the official housekeeper here for the last thirty years, but she clearly didn’t recognise him. And it was hardly fair to expect otherwise. He hadn’t changed too much in physical terms. He’d been six feet tall then and was six feet tall now. He’d been lean, weighing in at an athletic thirteen and a half stone, and was only slightly above that all these years later. But the smart police uniform had gone, along with the short-back-and-sides, and the unscarred, unlived-in face. It was tempting to say: ‘Hey, it’s me – Mark. I’ve come back to see you after all this time.’ But Mrs O’Malley, who’d always been an