6. Dec, 2022

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A Spring tide of young people surged through the bars of the city to vast clubbing events housed in waterside venues around the network of canals.  Even in the daytime, runners and walkers enjoying a little decayed countryside in the city centre, had to beware of the water parallel to the edge of the cobbled paths, lapping at their heels. There were deep sumps of water where the locks dropped and in the undercroft tunnels, where rubbish and the detritus of furtive human encounters collected.

Every year, young men (almost always), disappeared at night, elusive glimpses of them sometimes captured on CCTV, walking, or running and then, nothing, before some time later, they turned up dead in the canals.  Mostly, no signs of foul play were found, nor any clue as to what might have happened.  Drink, drugs, mugging, accidents, or a sinister serial killer, named in local lore as 'The Pusher', variously being blamed.

In the early hours of that night, where music beats coursed through the old warehouses, the crowds were both concentrated and chaotic.  Luke and his friends were at The Jetty, currently underground trendy.  You could get anything you wanted, but you had to be careful, there were some dodgy tablets about, laced with all sorts.  For the first time in a hundred years or more, the old mill the venue was housed in, was thronged with as many young people as once worked there, as deafened as its workforce had been by the vast machines.

Several hours in, drunk, high, hot and dehydrated, temporarily separated from his companions, Luke went in search of water.  The bar was in another area of the ground floor, but after a visit to the toilets first, he turned the wrong way on coming out and, disoriented, asked one of the looming bouncers for directions, then followed signs to what he thought he'd been pointed towards.

So it was, that his slight teenage figure, in white t-shirt and jeans, no coat, was caught on the CCTV camera at the exit, tumbling out into the dawn, then walking, it seemed purposefully, forwards.  There was a suggestion of another figure, perhaps alongside, which appeared briefly in the grainy footage, as Luke walked from view.

It was pleasant at first, the air cooling him from the sweaty turmoil of the club and he thought, unclearly, that he would walk a bit, then go back in.  There were apartment flats alongside the canal for some distance, big windows dark now, then an old bridge, beyond which the regenerated area lapsed back into a twilight of half cleared pathways through scrubland, where a funereal cortege of unlit streetlamps, aping an avenue of trees, led on to nowhere, for the developers' money had run out a decade ago. 

Luke stopped at the far end of the tunnel under the bridge, looking out at it, beginning to wonder where he was and how far he had come.  It was then that he realised there was someone there behind him and that he had half sensed their presence earlier.  He turned to see a tall, skinny young man in a grey hoody, leaning against the wall of the bridge, one foot up behind, resting on the brickwork, considering him expressionlessly and smoking a roll up.

"Lost, mate?" he asked finally, in a flat, rough edged voice.

He had the pale face of having grown up poor, three deep lines already across the white forehead, cropped wiry hair showing a strong widow's peak but, unusually for these days, there were no tattoos showing on his neck or hands.  Luke and his friends had them.  Luke had one on each upper arm, circling them like tribal bracelets.

The stranger's question was just a blank enquiry, neither hostile nor helpful.  Luke looked back, still too out of it for instincts to help him react but sobering fast now, little threads of fear starting to shoot through.

"Nar" he said, affecting urban cool. 

The other smiled slightly round his roll up, not fooled.  He threw down the roach of his joint, the rank, coarse smoke of weed drifting off it to Luke.

"Want some?" he asked.  Luke shook his head.

"I'm all right", he replied, dizzy as it was.

Taking out his phone, he turned to go back the way he had come.  But this would mean brushing past the young man, which might disturb the delicate balance of the standoff and precipitate something.  He played for time, starting to ring his three friends in turn.  Each went to voicemail, nobody looking for him yet, then, wondering where he was, waiting for a text or a call.  The young man watched on, saying drily, after Luke made his calls:

"Oh, dear - nobody home?"

Luke shrugged, as if unconcerned, then making his mind up a little, took a step back towards the tunnel entrance of the bridge.  The young man took his foot down off the wall and turned more towards him.  Luke stopped.

"Why don't you ring your mum?" the guardian of the bridge asked blandly.  "Nice phone," he added. " Latest model and everything.  Present was it?"

(For the coddled child, from mummy and daddy, his tone suggested, the voice of someone who had always had to provide for themselves).   Luke frowned, piqued, then announced, a little defiantly:

"I'm going to go back now."

"Oh?" said the other. "Are you now?"

Was there a sneer, a glint in the deep-set eyes?  Luke couldn't tell.

"To the Jetty", he added.

"Ah.  There."  A small bag was produced from the grey hoodie pocket.  "You'll need a few of these, then, for you and your mates".

Bright little pills like sweets, printed with a smiley face, were proffered.  What to do?  Which response would bring Luke safe passage past him, buying, or refusing and walking firmly on by?

"How much?" asked Luke, stalling again.

"Doesn't matter" the other told Luke, still regarding him with that deadpan white face.  "You have to say yes or no."

"No!" Luke blurted out, suddenly braving it.

The other put the bag back in his pocket and started towards Luke.

"Pity," he said calmly.  "Wrong answer".

Luke turned abruptly the other way, running blindly into the wasteland, too afraid to look back at what was surely coming after him.

An early dog walker giving a witness statement later, said that he had seen a youth running across an old wrought iron bridge to the other side of the canal around then, but there wasn't anyone else in sight and at the time, just noticing the white t-shirt, he assumed it was someone out for a dawn run and thought no more of it.