Devil Take The Hindmost

Chapter Eighteen

I lay on my back, looking up at a fluorescent tube light flickering in its cracked plastic housing, my breath misting on the breeze and my teeth chattering like the castanets of a drunken flamenco dancer in an earthquake.

I was cold to the bone; a kind of dull ache causing parts of me to shrivel like a penguin's foreskin, making any form of sleep impossible.

Ty and I trekked around the city centre for an hour or so, scouting out likely places to spend the evening, looking for somewhere just conspicuous enough that we might, in Ty's words, "get noticed".

From my close-minded perspective, his plan seemed to be to bed down for the night and wait to get murdered.

I wanted to point out this seemed the exact opposite of his declared intent to be less passive and to spring into action, but I thought better of it because I hadn't seen him this happy for weeks. The prospect of a night of even-more-roughing-it-than-usual had him positively whistling with glee, and the whole situation saw him bounding about with the air of a dog with two dicks.

Eventually we settled on a corner of the underpass on the edge of the ring road, just off Darlington Street, where Chapel Ash melted into the fringe of the city.

The brewery only a few hundred metres away was working overtime and the part fruity, part acrid whiff of hops and malt scoured my nostrils like an alcoholic scouring pad. Normally I would have taken umbrage at this nasal assault, but on this occasion the thick brewed air was doing me a service by overpowering the ammonia tang of urine staining the concrete walls and floor around and about in dark sticky rivers.

In the hubbub of calming Widdershinz down and collecting what small amount of gear we thought we could get away with while remaining authentic, we arrived at the underpass having skipped both lunch and dinner.

I was so hungry I could eat the arse off a low-flying duck, which was convenient given that West Park was only ten minutes away. When I raised the lack of provisions with Ty, he simply pointed out it made the experience all the more authentic.

We secured two armfuls of cardboard, mostly crushed and flattened packaging, from a large skip behind ASDA. Upon selecting our spot for the night we formed the brown sheets into two rudimentary mattresses to keep the biting cold of the concrete floor from sapping the heat from our bodies.

It didn't work.

Ty was sleeping contentedly, tucked into his bag like a babe in swaddling with only a few mud encrusted curls of dark hair poking out of the drawstring cinched hole. He wished me goodnight about half an hour before and was now setting about breaking some sort of snoring world record.

I wriggled restlessly, all of a sudden very aware why mankind did not rely on corrugated cardboard for comfort or warmth, and grew increasingly frustrated with the situation.

This plan was half-arsed at best. What possible evidence or insight could Ty hope to gain by being fast asleep? How could he sleep at all given the chill October air and the discomfort of lying on the hard ground? He assured me the sleeping bags he had dug out of his Land Rover were three season.

"Rated down to just below zero, these things will keep you alive on a mountain," he said.

But as I shivered and wriggled for warmth, I realized the yawning gulf that exists between being kept alive and dropping blissfully off to sleep.

Unable to bear it any longer, I clambered out of my rudimentary bedding and stretched, trying to loosen some of the knots from my back.

"Ty!" I whispered.

"Ty! I'm going for a look around," I continued hissing before wondering why. It didn't matter if anyone else overheard, and, if I wanted Edge to get the message, then whispering to someone fast asleep is a poor choice of communication.