The Criminal Escapades of Geoffrey Larkin Read Online Free Page B

old council house. The key fit and he let himself in to the familiar front hall. But it was all slightly different now, someone had been and cleaned the place, the musty smell that had always been there in the past had disappeared. In the kitchen, the hole in the skirting board at the side of the gas cooker, where the mice appeared, had been replaced.
    His mother’s furniture had been removed, along with the carpets that stuck to your feet as you walked across them.
    He came down the stairs, his shoes making a hollow sound on the bare wooden floorboards. There was no food in the pantry but that was nothing new. There was no water from the taps so he couldn’t even rinse his face or quench his thirst. He was now quite hungry having finished the bread and cheese on the train journey to Stockport. His thoughts returned once again to the warm bed, the hot cooked meals that his first foster parent, Mrs. Dixon, used to prepare for all her family. He knew it was impossible for him to return there after taking their belongings. As Sir Reginald would say, ‘
He had burnt his bridges behind him’.
    He eventually curled up in the corner of his old bedroom, remembering the very few pleasant things that had happened in his short life, before he eventually fell asleep. He was awakened early in the afternoon by the cold.
    Later that day, after he had swung his arms around and run on the spot to try and get warm and loosen the stiffness from his uncomfortable slumber, he decided to pay a visit to the small baker’s shop in a side street near his house; he had been there many times before in the past for his mother. He had managed to obtain enough money from the sale of the hair brush and other items to buy a hot meat and potato pie, plus a bottle of cheap plonk, a packet of fags and a box of matches from another nearby shop and he still had the money that he had taken from the Dixons.
    The man was used to selling packets of cigarettes to the kids in that area, he was also used to Geoff coming for these very same items for his mother. Geoff left the full bottle alongside the half bottle of cheap wine in the secret place in the derelict house at the bottom of the street, along with half the packet of cigarettes. ‘For the attention of Sir Reginald,’ he said aloud, he knew the old man would know who had left them.
    He then made his way back to the council house just as it was getting dark. ‘This suits me,’ he said aloud to himself, there would be no inquisitive eyes to watch him enter the property. There was a large white van parked outside when he arrived, so he hung around until two workmen loaded two bags of tools in the back of the vehicle and then drove off. He waited until the van was out of sight before slipping around to the back door of the house. The key he tried fit the lock but would not turn the latch. After several vain attempts to unlock the door it suddenly dawned on him that the workmen had been from the council to change the locks. New tenants would be moving in shortly. He could not gain access to the property and it was obvious his mother would not be returning to this house again. He was stumped!
    As he sat on the rear back doorstep pondering what to do next, the old tramps saying,
‘Make do and mend’,
came to mind, it seemed to be most appropriate. He would have to find alternative accommodation, and pretty fast, if he was not going to spend the night walking the streets. He was relieved that he had not left his haversack in the premises, which he had considered as it was quite heavy to lug around and it was leaving a red sore weal on his shoulder.

    *
    Ada, the office cleaner, had prepared her family’s breakfast and sent them on their way. She was sitting in her kitchen soaking her aching feet in a bowl of hot water as her bunion was playing her up again, but she could not get the sight of the young boy at the railway station out of her mind.
    She was weary; she had been