Walk Away

Chapter 2

2

I throw another suitcase on the top of the belt. The last of the lot.

It’s a hot day in New York. T-shirt soaked through under a high-vis vest flapping open in a warm, dry wind.

I tie the canopy off on the last trailer and drive the baggage truck back to the depot. I park up and turn down the offer of a cigarette from Mick, one of my workmates.

I grab a cold drink from the water cooler, crush the cup and toss it in the bin. Removing my safety gloves, I peel off the luminous yellow vest and open my locker. I slide out my bag, hook it over a shoulder and wish my new pals on the British Airways baggage team a good weekend.

On the way to the bus stop, I slip on my headphones and listen to an audiobook. It’s one of the self-help ones I’ve been wading through.

I’ve been trying everything lately. Books, courses, seminars. Anything to learn how to think and act better—like a real person.

Meditation is one of the things I’ve been trying. It’s helped a lot with my condition. No hallucinations in over a month. And I’m pretty chuffed with myself for sticking with it. Though I stop short of doing the ‘om’ chanting—makes you look like a right dickhead.

While I listen to a chapter on karma and the law of attraction, I hitch a ride on the staff bus to the bus stop for the Q3. It takes me to my digs in Springfield Gardens. A studio apartment on the second floor.

Grabbing a bag of groceries on the way, I bypass the broken lift and plod up the stairs, tired and sweaty. I stash the groceries in the fridge. The internal light is on the blink again. I give it a slap. It holds. I take a shower in a bath made for a midget, mould creeping up the shower curtain and a handheld shower head. It’s like trying to wash an Alsatian in a bucket, water splashing everywhere. But it gets the job done. I dry off and wipe down the floor. Mosey into the living area and microwave a spag-bol ready meal to within an inch of its life.

The TV goes on as I open the second-hand laptop I bought down at a nearby pawn shop.

I’m starting to get myself sorted money-wise now. Got a bag of cash under the dodgy floorboard under the faded Persian rug. But I want to fill another bag before I start investing in new stuff.

Stuff like a bigger place, a car, a phone that gets a signal and a computer that doesn’t crash.

I’ve been working every shift going the past few months. I’m in the best financial shape I’ve been in for ages. Physically, too. The job has knocked the creeping belly fat into touch. My shoulders are like boulders. And my biceps like bloody rocks.

I reckon I look like I did ten or fifteen years ago. Well, maybe not in the face. But then I was never exactly a GQ model.

Yep, after a summer of throwing heavy cases on the back of trailers, I’m fit as a fiddle. And tanned from the New York sunshine.

I slurp a mouthful of rubber spaghetti and browse the internet. I like to check the news at home. Politics—a waste of everyone’s time. Football—new season, same teams winning everything. So I scroll through the local stories on the Manchester Evening News website.

There’s a feature about a recent rise in break-ins and gang violence. Some of them related to organised crime. Yeah, no surprise there. now that I’m no longer around to maintain the order.

I suck up a long string of spaghetti and click on a story about a murder. A thirty-eight-year-old woman dead in her apartment. Found by her elderly neighbour. The door to the apartment left open. The woman found on the floor of the living room.

Raped. Murdered. I shake my head. Terrible.

I read more on the story. The dead woman has a name . . . I drop the fork. Spaghetti falls from my mouth. I sit on the tiny, battered couch, numb. Utterly f*****g numb.

I scan the article again. Make sure I read it right. Make sure I’m not imagining things.

No, I'm not imagining it. That’s her name, right there. I pick up a glass and take a drink. My hand shakes. It never shakes.

I feel sick to my guts. The ready meal curdling in my stomach. I stare at her name. Kim Yunjin.

Yunjin. My hand squeezes. The glass explodes.

I shake off the fragments and pick the shards out of my palm.

I Google some more on the story. No motive. No witnesses. No suspects.

I snap the laptop shut, a fire rising in me. I’m up on my feet, pacing the studio.

Hanging’s not good enough for the scumbag who did this. And the police can’t be trusted to catch the fucker. Their record stinks.

Someone’s gotta do something. But if I go back . . .

I clean up the mess. The glass. The water. Scrape the remaining spaghetti into the bin. Pour myself a whisky. Two. Three.

Staring at the infomercials on TV, I watch a guy cut through a shoe with a kitchen knife.

As dusk turns to night I decide to sleep on it. For all of ten minutes. I spring out of bed and grab a large black holdall from the top of the wardrobe.

I stuff it full of clothes, move across the floor and shove the coffee table out of the way.

Lifting the corner of the rug, I throw the whole thing aside. I remove the wonky floorboard and pull out the brown grocery bag with my saved up cash.

I take out the stacks of bills and hide them away in the holdall, inside the lining of a coat I don’t wear anymore. I had it customised by a cheap, local tailor with a zip up the inside, which makes it perfect for transporting cash through customs and scanners.

I replace the floorboard, flatten the rug and put back the table. Zipping up the holdall, I hook it over a shoulder and leave the apartment.

I stride down the street to the bus stop. The Q3 isn’t long in coming. I get on and ride it all the way back to JFK.