Free Breaking East by Bob Summer

drawer slid open. Yowzy – always knew I was wasted as a listener. Something panged as I wondered if I’d ever be able to brag about this natural talent at lock-breaking to Joe.
    Inside the drawer lay a folder. I opened it for a quick scout and paper-clipped to the top page, thank you all the gods everywhere, was a picture of Gemma. I didn’t stop a second longer than necessary but ran for the front door. A complicated double-slip-lock type system almost had me peeing my pants, but once I tucked the file under my armpit to free up both hands, I managed to unclick the latch and was away. Outside, I leapt the steps and legged it across the road like my bum was alight. ‘Quick, run!’
    And we did. Up the street, onto the tracks, off into a field, along its edge and down into the old quarry. I heard dad whisper in my ear, Don’t look back, Atty. Run. I scrabbled down the bank towards the water, gravel rolling beneath my feet, dust clouding and sticking to my damp skin.
    ‘Stop!’
    I stopped and sat down with a bump that rattled my teeth, panting like a dog at the races. I must have held my breath the whole way out of there. I looked back at Stuart leaning over, his hands on his knees.
    ‘Bloody hell, Atty. You can’t half run.’
    I grinned and waved the file. ‘But I got it.’
    He skidded his way down and sat so close our thighs touched. ‘Quick, let’s see.’
    The file shook in my hands. ‘Is that you trembling or me?’
    He laughed. ‘Bit of both I think.’ And he moved away, just a little.
    I handed him the sheet with Gemma’s photo and looked at the next in the pile. I examined the picture of the girl, the same one I’d seen Goldy talking to in the park. It listed her details as twelve years old, her address somewhere over the east side. So he’d got her after all. The next page put my nerves right on edge. The podgy, smiley baby in the snapshot looked the spit of Fran’s. The address confirmed it. I read on as Stuart’s arm tensed beside mine. There were minutes of a meeting and numbers. It didn’t make sense. ‘What does it all mean?’
    Stuart’s jaw twitched. His warm, clean, twinkly, blue eyes turned an icy grey. ‘The git. The dirty, selfish, scheming git.’
    ‘What?’
    ‘My dad sold her. Sold Gemma. Look.’ He pointed to a signature next to a number big enough to buy the whole of Shanks estate.
    I looked back at the paper in my hands. Carl’s signature, next to a sum of £300,000. Under that another signature, supposed to be Fran’s. But I knew Fran’s writing and that wasn’t it. It was her name, but in somebody else’s hand, maybe - no, probably - it was Carl’s.
    I’d been mad angry before, of course I had, everybody knows what it’s like, but the anger that I felt towards Carl exploded bigger than anything I’d ever experienced before. It slammed huge and uncontrollable into every nerve and muscle of my very being. Tunnel vision, red haze, black hole, whatever. I knew, without doubt, Carl would pay, my head cleared and my mind focused into one stripped-clean thought – kill Carl. I scrambled back up the side of the quarry and strode west towards the toxi-plant.
    Stuart followed, prattling away. ‘Where are you going? You can’t go back there. We have all we need now, look, we know where Gemma is. You said you’d help.’
    But nothing and nobody was going to stop me.
    Carl had worked at the toxi-plant since baby Stacey had been born. He didn’t get the job because he was smart, but because fathers took priority whenever a position came free. The chance to earn money was probably why he stuck with Fran and Stacey in the first place.
    The bloke on the gate answered pleasant enough, if abrupt. ‘Carl James? Not turned up for a couple of weeks. Lost it now, plenty of others needing work …’
    I walked away.
    There are only two pubs left in the west, both are twenty-four-hour fleapits. The first I headed for not only sold alcohol, but the local addicts their