Chapter 6
We’ve Got to Get out of Here
The inevitable knocking came and Barry, readying himself for this inevitability was
fast asleep. Eventually he awoke, and then Barry knew that before he opened his eyes
he was going to be confronted by some very angry Park Rangers and a pack of vicious
dogs. To his immense relief he was wrong, and instead there stood his good friend
Psycho.
‘Bloody hell; that was a bit hairy last night wasn’t it?’ said Psycho.
‘How did you get away?’
‘I just legged it and hid. I thought you’d been caught.’
‘I almost was; I had to run through a stream to get those dogs off my tail.’
Barry showed his friend his still wet legs. ‘They know about us now and they’re
gonna come looking for us. They’ll find us eventually. We’re gonna have to do
something to get out of here.’
‘Leave the Hickeys!’
‘Yes leave, we can’t stay here now. Even if they don’t find us they’ll put more
security on the Visitor Centre, and then we won’t have anything to eat.’
‘What do you suggest we do then?’
‘We’re wanted criminals. They’ll have informed the police about us. What
other choice do we have?’
‘Become career criminals?’
‘We can rob corner shops. The place I used to work at was always getting
robbed, people were continually making off with money and never getting caught.’
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‘They’d have a getaway car.’
‘We don’t need a car, we can just leg it into the woods and hide. Once we’ve
done our first robbery we can buy a car or just steal one. Look, this is the only option
we have. I don’t know about you but I’ve had enough of living in here, getting
abducted by aliens and chased by dogs. I’ve lived my whole life honestly and look
where it’s got me. You can stay here if you want, but tomorrow—I’m gonna rob that
shop.’
The Shop Barry had once worked at as a paperboy was now owned by another
company, and the majority of the old employees had had their jobs returned to them.
Unknown to Barry the new management controlling The Shop had wanted to reinstate
him as a paperboy, but they’d been unable to contact him because he’d given his
Mum’s phone number and address as his contact details. Because she had not seen
him, not since that fateful day she’d kicked him out and made him homeless, he never
got to find out. It is quite amusing that the once model employee who was ridiculed
by the other paperboys was now planning to commit the gravely serious crime of
armed robbery on his former colleagues.
Barry and Psycho made their way down to the store. Barry carried a large
spanner he’d taken from the boot of his car, while Psycho held a hefty branch taken
from the Hickeys: these were to be the crude tools of their trade. Barry would have
felt a lot more confident if he had something more appropriate for the job like a sawnoff shotgun, but seeing as the spanner was the best thing he could find at short notice
it would have to do.
‘Right there’s no backing out,’ said Barry. ‘We go all the way, you and me.
We’ll be living it up in a hotel somewhere come tonight, living like kings, you’ll see.’
Psycho said nothing.
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Barry continued in the same deluded, desperate tone: ‘Once we’ve robbed a
few places and gotten a bit of infamy we’ll have to come up with a name for
ourselves. Yeah, somfin like the erm—the Badboy Bandits.’
The Badboy Bandits had forgotten to enter The Shop incognito. Choosing not to
disguise themselves was a particularly foolish move when you consider Barry was
known to many of the customers and people that shopped there.
‘THIS IS A ROBBERY, NOBODY MOVE A MUSCLE.’
‘Barry is that you? Nobody’s seen you for ages, where’ve you been?’
The person who recognised Barry was Rachel Coombs: an obese Sales
Assistant that knew Barry because she’d worked with him when he’d been a
paperboy. She was standing behind the counter.
‘Gimme all the money outta the tills, then get all the money out of the safe in
the back.’
Rachel’s chins wobbled as she spoke. ‘Come on Barry don’t be crazy. God
look at you, you look a mess. How much weight have you lost?’
A possessed Barry was infuriated his new life as a career criminal wasn’t
being taken seriously, and so in a vengeful riposte he cracked Rachel round the face
with the spanner. She lay unconscious on the floor and blood trickled from her head.
He’d never liked her much anyway.
Barry shouted to Psycho: ‘GET HIM,’ pointing to the other Sales Assistant
currently on duty, a spotty teenage boy who was shaking and looking at Rachel’s limp
body.
‘W-ww-who a-aaa-rre you t-t-ttalking to,’ said the terrified teenager.
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Barry was puzzled by the Sales Assistant’s comment. ‘What do you mean who
I’m talking to? I’m talking to that toothless wonder over there.’
The Sales Assistant looked over to where Barry was pointing but could see
that there was nobody there. Thinking fast, the young man realised this guy was
clearly a nutjob.
‘Oh y-yy-yeah s-s-s-sorry I didn’t s-ss-ssee him over there.’
‘Come on enough of this flirting, get the money Barry,’ said Psycho.
‘You heard the man,’ said Barry towards the Sales Assistant.
‘What?!’
Barry was getting exasperated. ‘Give us the bloody money, don’t play dumb
with me sunshine.’
‘Oh o-okay—’
The Sales Assistant did as he was told, having seen enough films about the
exploits of crazed psychopaths to know not to mess about, particularly as this guy
made Hannibal Lector look well-adjusted.
The two tills were emptied but Barry wanted the mother lode: he wanted to get
to the safe out the back. He ordered all the customers that had unluckily been caught
up in the robbery at the time to lay face down on the floor, bouncing the spanner in
his hand as he did so to instil fear and to show that he wasn’t afraid to use it again.
When one of the said customers looked up from the ground to see what was going on,
Barry would shake the spanner in their general direction and growl.
‘Want some of this do ya?’ said Barry to an old lady who must have been
pushing a hundred. He turned his attention to Psycho. ‘Right, me and this young man
are going out the back to empty the safe, you stay here to keep watch of the front.’
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Psycho nodded his head whilst browsing through a pornographic magazine
he’d grabbed off the top shelf: he hadn’t seen a naked woman in a very long time.
‘Right then we’re off,’ said Barry to Psycho, returning after a few minutes from the
back of The Shop. Looking around, Barry realised that all the customers had
disappeared. ‘Where are they all? You were supposed to be keeping watch, making
sure nobody left and that anybody who entered was kept on the floor while I got the
money from the safe. You bloody idiot, they’ll have phoned the police by now.’
‘Sorry Barry but I was reading.’ Psycho handed Barry the dirty magazine.
Barry had a quick flick through it.
As if on cue, the sound of fast approaching police sirens loomed ominously in
the distance. While Barry and Psycho argued, Rachel Coombs (the woman Barry had
hit over the head with a spanner) came to her senses, and she wanted revenge. She
knew in her training for the job at The Shop she’d been told to always comply with
robber’s demands, but this was Barry Broomfield, she felt that it would be a mortal
sin to let an oaf like him get away with hitting her. She knew she had to move fast, a
task her body was not altogether well suited to, but as Barry was grabbing the bags of
cash and getting ready to bolt out of the door she moved silently over to the freezer
compartment, picked out a leg of lamb and wielded it as a mace.
At the last moment, out of the corner of his eye, Barry saw the advancing she
beast. Terrified, he turned to run out of The Shop entrance, dropping his spanner in
the process. Miss Coombs threw the leg with all her might; her aim was good, the
meat hit her target squarely on the back of the head.
Barry had been bracing himself for the impact and because of this it didn’t
knock him cold, but it certainly stunned him, jumbled his senses, and more
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importantly drastically changed him. Barry looked to his side, Psycho had
disappeared.
Rachel was picking up the spanner he had dropped, preparing to launch into an
attack with the weapon that had only recently been used against her own head.
I’ve got to get out of here, thought Barry, his eyes wide with panic.
He headed off in the direction of the adjoining Hickey Woods, still carrying
his bag of cash. The first thing he had to do in the confusion was hide himself from
the oncoming police, not that he expected it was much use, but he had to try. Rachel
was still after him with the spanner, determined to exact retribution for Barry’s earlier
savagery. She hefted her giant body in the escaping criminal’s direction, but the new
slim-line Barry was far too quick for her efforts as he sped off into the woods. She
pursued him diligently for a millisecond until she remembered that she didn’t like
physical exertion or getting sweaty.
The frozen leg of lamb that had hit Barry had been flung at him with the sole
purpose of doing as much damage as possible, but quite incredibly it had done the
exact opposite. Since he first arrived in the Hickeys Barry’s sanity had progressively
eroded: the stress of surviving in the wilderness when he’d been accustomed to the
shelter under his mother’s wing had nearly killed him. Even when Barry lived alone at
the time his window cleaning business was thriving, he still made sure his Mum did
his washing, and provided him with a steady source of reheatable nourishment for the
microwave at his flat.
Also, the knowledge that his father had disowned and abandoned him, coupled
with the loss of his business, paperboy round, his lifetime of loneliness and rejection,
his long list of failures, and of course the humiliating Spanish brothel incident, had all
contributed to sending him off the deep end. In fact with this long list of foibles it was
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a wonder that Barry hadn’t thrown himself off the Very Big Tree outside Hollywell
Primary School ages ago, although that option was still open.
Running through the woods that he called home, Barry knew it wouldn’t be
long before the authorities caught up with him. Whilst aimlessly trying to evade the
police, he happened upon a place of great significance in his insignificant blip of a
life: Barry looked at the hole he had dug when he’d tried to capture Psycho for
stealing his food but had inadvertently ensnared himself. This was where he had first
encountered his only friend in the woods and his only friend other than Bob, his
beloved pet rabbit who he hadn’t seen for months.
Barry thought back to his time in the hole. Stuck in it for nearly two days, he
recalled on the second night a huge thunderstorm, then the following morning Psycho
saving him. The branch that he’d used to climb out, and that Psycho had placed there
still lay across the opening. The epiphany struck Barry right between the eyes: the
thunderstorm he had cowered beneath had unleashed lightening onto a nearby tree,
and by a miraculous stroke of fortune blown a branch onto the trap’s opening, thus
granting Barry a way out.
‘That’s why the branch had been charred,’ he said, comprehension dawning on
him. ‘But then who stole my food and tin opener?’ he thought, remembering why he’d
dug the hole in the first place.
He headed off to a location nearby to his Den where he found hidden under
some bracken and ferns the missing tins and tin opener.
‘I put them here when I was acting as Psycho—’ Barry paused and hesitated,
not fully believing what he was saying. ‘I-I am Psycho.’
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This statement was correct. It was a lot to take in for one day, so he sank down
to the ground, struggling to absorb the enormity of what he now had to face: that he
was two tangerine oboes short of a fudge pie.
Above the treetops a police helicopter hovered. Using its thermal camera to
peer through the leafy canopy it stalked its helpless prey. No longer caring whether or
not he was to be captured, Barry just sat down and stared blankly at the big hole in the
ground with its burnt branch while the helicopter above him led the police on the
ground straight to his location. He was handcuffed and placed in a patrol car, before
being whisked off to the local police station.
A group of bystanders had gathered around The Shop that Barry had just tried
unsuccessfully to rob. Women in pearl necklaces and obscenely large golden earrings
shook their heads in disgust at the damage this man had done, a person who only a
short time ago had been delivering their newspapers and cleaning their windows.
Barry was disgraced; a community outcast; some things never change.
‘Maggie Broomfield’s son! Who’d have thought it? I always reckoned he was
a bad egg though,’ said one woman in a pearl necklace, relishing the scandal.
A month later, Barry, looking considerably more presentable compared to the shabby
mess that the police arrested in the woods, stood in court, waiting to hear his fate.
Maggie Broomfield, Barry’s Mum was present, and she looked tearful
throughout the majority of the proceedings. Most in attendance realised how hard it
must be for this woman to watch her only son be sentenced, and that tears were an
understandable reaction to this very serious criminal trial. But as it turned out, she just
had something bothersome in her eye.
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The defence attorney had brilliantly portrayed Barry as a raving lunatic who
was not in control of himself during his one-man crime wave.
‘This man, this shadow of a man, this pathetic attempt at a man could not have
possibly known what he was doing. He entered The Shop without any attempt at a
disguise despite having worked there previously and being well known in the area.
The people in The Shop that were unlucky enough to witness the attempted robbery
saw a clearly unhinged individual who talked to a person that existed only in his
mind. I bring to the court’s and jury’s attention Mr Godwin who was working behind
the till at the time of the robbery.’
Mr Godwin was the spotty-faced teenager who emptied the tills and safe for
Barry. He was about to be cross-examined by Barry’s lawyer.
‘Mr Godwin, you were there working in The Shop at the time of the robbery?’
‘I was.’
‘And do you recognise the man who is the defendant today?’
‘Yes, he was the man who robbed The Shop!’ Mr Godwin pointed at Barry.
The judge presiding over the trial interrupted. ‘We are not here to dispute
whether or not Mr Broomfield robbed the convenience store in question. The CCTV
footage, the DNA trail as long as my arm, the fingerprints on the weapon used to hit
Rachel Coombs over the head, the numerous eyewitnesses in The Shop who saw the
robbery take place and who have positively identified Mr Broomfield, the
eyewitnesses who saw him fleeing from the scene of the crime with a bag of cash that
was later found on his person, and which totalled the exact amount that had been
stolen already confirm this.’
With this mountain of evidence put against him, it is a fair assumption that
Barry’s robbery was not the work of a criminal mastermind. It is upsetting to inform
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you he’d actually been the figure of fun for police officers, who’d said they wished all
the crooks they caught were as easy to prosecute as him.
‘Mr Godwin, while Mr Broomfield was performing the robbery did you notice
anything unusual about his behaviour?’
‘Yeah, he was nuts. He kept talking to a person that wasn’t there. I think the
imaginary person was talking back to him and telling him to do things. It was well
weird.’
‘Do you think that Mr Broomfield had any idea the person he was talking to
was imaginary?’
‘No I don’t think so. I think he thought the person was real because he said
