Chapter 41
614 Words
41
John Lucas’s head was starting to feel groggy after the half-bottle of whisky he’d consumed earlier. It was that horrible late-in-the-day fug you got from lunchtime drinking. There was only one way round that: carry on.
He poured himself another glass and thought about what had happened at Benjamin Newell’s house. He’d not seen the man for years, but he’d barely changed. He was still the same weaselly, pathetic human being he remembered. He was the sort of person who’d mastermind stealing the Crown Jewels then get nicked for pinching a tin of Brasso to clean them.
What really irked him, though, is that Newell wouldn’t deny thinking Lucas had murdered Freddie Galloway. There’s no honour amongst thieves, as they say, and there was certainly none where Benjamin Newell was involved.
His head was buzzing with a thousand and one thoughts. He’d had years to get his mind straight and concentrate on the future, and all of a sudden that prospect had disappeared, replaced with having to look back into the past, back at a time he’d rather forget. It was clouded with double-crossing, lies, betrayals and he-said-she-saids. In that sort of world, the truth didn’t exist. What was true to one person was completely false to another.
That was the world he’d wanted to escape from, the world he had now been thrust back into. He guessed you could never really, truly escape. Once you were marked, that was it. That history would follow you around like a bad smell, creeping back up on you when you least expected it and least wanted it to.
He knew he’d never get his chance to start again. Not properly. Just a few days ago his prospects had looked remarkably good, considering. He was able to walk out of prison and straight into a job with the shoe repairs company and he had been planning to sell the house, enabling him to set himself up somewhere on his own. Somewhere without the hassle. Somewhere without the baggage.
The job would’ve even allowed him to transfer to another one of their branches elsewhere in the country. Despite having thrown it all away eleven years ago, there were still people willing to give him a chance. But while the baggage of the past kept coming back to haunt him, he was in no position to take them up on those offers. He risked losing too much. He couldn’t have those worlds colliding.
If truth be told, he’d love to just up sticks and go. He could do so legitimately, but that’d involve leaving a trace. If people wanted to find him, they’d find him. He’d need permission from the probation officer and he’d have to apply for that transfer at work. If he still had work to go back to, of course. Even that was a known unknown at the moment. He’d need to do it all through the official channels or he’d risk being categorised as an absconder and would be straight back in prison before he knew it.
But that wouldn’t help. That wouldn’t be the fresh start he needed. He’d still be looking over his shoulder everywhere he went, worrying about being betrayed, found out.
He was stuck between a rock and a hard place. He was damned if he did and damned if he didn’t. As far as he saw it, there was only one way out. It wouldn’t have been his favoured option, but right now it was his only one. To lose all hope and have an olive branch handed out to you — a final chance at redemption — only to have it taken away and snapped in half by the people who got you there in the first place... That hurt. That hurt a lot.
Yes, there was only one option. He had no choice. He’d made his mind up.
This was it.
- Writer
