Strangers by Paul Finch

wondered tautly.
    Kev rolled his eyes in that exasperated way he’d so perfected during the many years of their relationship. ‘You tell me, Barn. Who’s actually going to see us? Look …’ He pointed through the van window at a patch of diminutive lights twinkling some distance away. ‘That’s Bickershaw.’ Now he pointed in the other direction, indicating a similar scattering of lights, so distant in this case that they were only noticeable because all other landscape features were hidden by the autumn darkness. ‘And that’s Leigh. So where are we, Barn?’
    Barney didn’t know for sure, even though he’d driven them both here in his uncle’s shuddery old van. The truth was he didn’t even think this area of wasteland had a name. As far as he could recall from his daylight travels, it was a patch of emptiness lying just east of the B5237.
    He shrugged, helpless to answer.
    ‘A shit-tip where nobody lives,’ Kev said irritably. ‘Where you’d be lucky to find rats, because rats are generally not that fucking stupid. Nobody wants this place. So not only is no one likely to see us … why should it matter if anyone does?’

    Even to Barney – who was a bigger, heavier lad than Kev, but tended by instinct to defer to his lifelong mate on all matters where complex thought was required – the answer to this one was more than obvious.
    ‘Because it’s public land and fly-tipping’s illegal.’
    Kev snorted. ‘But it was alright to dig coal mines out here, wasn’t it? And dump mountains of slag?’
    ‘I’m just saying,’ Barney cautioned. ‘Let’s be careful.
    ‘We’ll be careful. But for fuck’s sake, don’t let these bastards guilt-trip you.’
    ‘These bastards’ was Kev’s signature phrase, and his catch-all term for anyone he perceived to have higher control than himself, be they employers, bailiffs, police officers, the local authority, central Government itself, or anyone at all who qualified in his mind as part of the establishment.
    ‘Hypocrites, the lot of ’em,’ he ranted on. ‘If they wanted a rubbish tip out here they’d soon okay it …’
    ‘I said alright!’ Barney didn’t normally interrupt his mate in mid-flow, but of the two of them, he, ultimately, had most reason to be nervous.
    They’d spent the whole of that dreary Sunday clearing out Kev and Lorna’s new flat, which the couple were about to move into at mates’ rates because its owner was Lorna’s brother-in-law. He’d offered to lower the asking price even more if they disposed of the pile of rubbish that the previous tenants, a bunch of art students at the local Technical College, had left behind. There were boxes of broken brushes, paint pots, turps bottles, easels, torn canvases, along with the ruined carpet from the main lounge, the festering contents of several bins, two mattresses, and even the bedding as well.
    It had been a lot more work than the two lads had expected, taking them several hours to bring it all downstairs and load it into the back of Barney’s uncle’s van, which ensured that all the municipal recycling centres were closed by the time it came to dump the stuff. Having opted – at Kev’s insistence – for this other, simpler solution, it now looked as if they’d be at least another hour out here, on a one-time colliery wasteland which it had been quite a challenge just to access. They’d prowled its edges for half an hour or so, both driver and passenger tensing every time another vehicle drove past, before locating a track of sorts. This was little more than a ribbon of rutted, rubbly ground, but at least it was driveable and it led away from the B5237 in a straight line, running a couple of hundred yards before terminating in front of what looked like a burned-out Portakabin.

    They halted here, and even though it was a desolate spot, the undefined outlines of rocks and stunted vegetation standing left and right, the pale flood of their headlights picked out a muddy footpath