Knight & Culverhouse Box Set - Books 7-9

Chapter 10

10

‘That’s it, my son! Left hook, quick in with an uppercut on the right — yes! Come on, feel that burn!’

Tyrone Golds grunted as the beads of sweat cascaded over his eyebrows and splashed gently to the floor, the salty sting getting in his eyes as he felt the lactic acid build up in his arms. It was a feeling he loved — something that made him feel free and liberated. He’d been boxing since he was six, and he adored every second of it.

A couple of hours with the punchbag in his local boxing club was his idea of a morning well spent. And having someone like Kai here to spot him and spur him on was an added bonus. Friends and trainers had always said he could have performed competitively — perhaps even professionally — but that had never interested him. He liked the spit-and-sawdust backstreet boxing clubs like this one. He liked being his own man. If he was completely honest with himself, he didn’t have that competitive edge that he’d need in order to win. He just loved boxing, loved feeling the burn, loved pummelling the s**t out of dangling bags.

Sure, his technique was impressive. It would be if you’d spent as many years as he had, boxing almost every single day without fail. But he’d had no desire to compete or get involved with boxing on any professional level. After all, he knew far too many people who’d combined their loves with their jobs and had ultimately become disappointed. As soon as you start receiving money for something you love doing, it becomes a burden. And he never wanted boxing to become a burden. He never wanted to fall out of love with it.

After all, it had kept him out of trouble — largely. There’d been the odd occasions where he’d been tempted across the line, but that was completely unavoidable. Growing up on the estate he’d lived on as a child, he could no more have avoided criminality than he could breathing oxygen. It was there, all around him. For many of his peers, it was a way of life. It was about survival. And Tyrone’d had plenty of surviving to do.

After his dad had walked out on him, his mother and his older sister Shanice, things had changed almost overnight. His mum had to go from being the stay-at-home mother to the working mother, grinding her fingers to the bone on twelve-hour shifts, leaving Shanice to bring up both Tyrone and herself. His mother never really recovered from the heartbreak, and Tyrone credited that alongside long hours working in a pharmaceuticals factory for the cancer that caused her early death at the age of thirty-five. It was barely a week after Shanice’s sixteenth birthday, which at least meant they weren’t taken into care but were instead allowed to take on the council flat as tenants in their own right. Boxing had been his way of channelling his anger and frustration, and he credited it with saving him on more than one occasion.

Life on the estate hadn’t been easy. It wasn’t exactly a cakewalk for anyone, but a recently bereaved sixteen-year-old is never going to be able to give you the best upbringing. It wasn’t through lack of effort or dedication, by any means. Although Shanice had shown great academic promise and was planning to go on to do A levels, she’d left school that summer and gone straight into work, choosing instead to provide for herself and her brother. That was something that had made Tyrone feel both grateful and guilty.

‘Bruv, I’m done,’ he said, dropping into a crouched position as he felt the burn in his biceps and triceps.

‘You getting old!’ Kai quipped as he slapped Tyrone on the back playfully and helped him back to his feet.

‘Three rounds, bruv. Three rounds. You and me. I’m tellin’ you, I wouldn’t even need the last two.’

The pair laughed and joked as they made their way towards the showers. The banter and camaraderie was one of the upsides of coming here, as far as Tyrone was concerned. There had, at times, been a similar sort of brotherhood and solidarity on the estate, but there was always that sinister edge — the chance that things could very quickly turn nasty. And they often did. He’d seen friends shot and killed in gang attacks, flats torched by rival groups. But at the boxing club, things never threatened to turn violent — despite the fact that they were all here specifically to fight. Boxing, though, was different. There was no malice involved. It was pure sport.

He’d known fairly quickly how boxing had changed him, had made him see things in a different light. That was why he’d decided to earn some money by training others on the estate to box. He didn’t have as much of the anger, didn’t feel the need to rail back against the system that had treated him so badly. He knew a number of boys on the estate who could benefit from that, but precious few had ever shown a serious interest. Once they were stuck in their ruts, they were happy to stay there, chasing the next batch of notes, constantly looking over their shoulders for guns or knives.

He’d earned the nickname Bruno for a while — a nod to the success of British boxer Frank Bruno at the time. But that was a nickname he’d left behind. Too many people associated it with one or two of the times he’d been tempted the wrong way, had succumbed to the offer of a quick buck in exchange for bending the law ever so slightly. After the last time, he decided he was going back to being good old Tyrone Golds. A man with a proper name and nothing to hide.

But deep down he knew that was just another cover in itself. Because, where he came from, everyone had something to hide.