Goth - 5. Chapter 5: Attention Seeker

Sammy was waiting for me at the entrance to the visitor’s area, and after saying our gratitude to the guard who had waited with him, we were off. I ran Sammy through where I had left the bag, and we jumped on the train back into Liverpool City Centre. From there we both went our separate ways, but not before Sammy said one crucial thing.

“I’m tagged”

He lifted up his pants leg, and sure enough there was an ankle bracelet, an LED flashing green.

“Shit… Right, I’m coming with you to Starbucks.”

“Why?”

“Trust me babes.”

It was 5 o’clock. Plenty of time. We ran to Starbucks, walked straight through to the toilets and went to the cupboard where I had stored my bag. I pulled it out as fast as I could and pulled out my knife. After tying the sheath to my thigh, I told Sammy to sit on the toilet and not to move an inch. I slowly started to use my combat knife to cut through the tag, taking extra care to go slow as not to cut any wires. When I hit a wire, I would holster the knife and cautiously begin to unwind the wires to give them a bit of slack. After 30 minutes, I managed to slip the bracelet off Sammy’s ankle and over his foot, allowing me to dispose of it in the stock cupboard. I unzipped the main compartment and tossed a pair of shorts, a pale blue t-shirt, sandals and a cap to Sammy.

“Really?”

“Do you want to get caught?” I asked, slipping my t-shirt off over my head.

“Well, no… But why are you getting undressed?”

“Same reason you are. Since you’re on leave with me I’m associated with you, which means if one of us is recognized both of us can be named and shamed.” I changed into a black Adidas track suit, Nike trainers and a fishing hat I’d ‘borrowed’ from my uncle. We left Starbucks at 6 o’clock, and headed straight for Lime Street station. We sat there for about 2 hours before I realized I had my phone with me. I disposed of my sim card and went into WHSmiths to purchase a new one, before getting a £10 top up voucher. We began to board the train at 10 minutes past eight, and these next 20 minutes were going to the most important of the day so far. If we were caught in these next 20 minutes, the gig was up, and Sammy would have to go back to Altcourse, most likely accompanied by me this time.

We took our seats and stayed in absolute silence for 20 minutes. Finally, we heard the droning noise of the whistle, and the train began to move. We both sighed in relief. Here we were, 2 teenage boys from Liverpool, and we had just pulled off quite the escape. After having to pay for Sammy’s ticket and dealing with my phone situation, I had £639 left. Still plenty to live on.

“You never explained one thing to me Davey. Why Glasgow.”

“Well who do we know in Glasgow Sammy?”

“Nobody.”

“Exactly, so what reason do we have to go there?”

“No….. Ah. I see where this is going. We know nobody in Glasgow, so there’s no way they could tie us to it straight away. That way we’d have time to settle down in Glasgow, and then we can make a move if we have to, somewhere else where we don’t have any links.”

“Bingo. Now shush, people are going to catch on”

This led us to have a normal conversation about what we would do in Glasgow, what sights we would see, etc., and we settled on seeing the city outskirts every night to avoid ‘the noise of the clubbers and party animals’ and walk around the city center during the days to blend in with the crowd. We pulled in to Manchester Piccadilly at around quarter past 9, and the next train came in at about 10pm, which went directly to Glasgow Central. We spent most of the journey enjoying each other’s embrace, and having the occasional kiss. People were staring at us, but we didn’t care. Who should? Love is love, simple as.

We walked out of Glasgow Central hand in hand, surprised that two teenagers were able to outsmart the justice system. My combat blade was sheathed at my side, waiting for somebody to try and attack us, and we had over £600 to get us by. By now it was 12:35, and we needed some sleep. So, we found our way to the outskirts of the city before pulling 2 sleeping bags from the bottom of my bag, rolled tightly enough to take up barely any space. We lay them out on the floor and with that slipped into our bags and lost ourselves in each other’s warm hug, falling asleep within minutes.

I was awoken at 6:30am by Sammy yawning, clearly just waking up himself. His body clock had a nasty habit of waking him up at this hour, no matter how much sleep he’d had, and being a light sleeper myself it didn’t take much to awaken me.

“Morning” I mumbled, clambering out of my sleeping bag.

“Good night’s sleep?”

“Yeah, not bad, yourself?”

“Bit rough…”

“You’ll get used to it baby.” At this I hugged him for the first time of the fresh day, rolling up my sleeping bag and burying it in my bag, before proceeding to do the same with Sammy’s crumpled mess of what could only be described as blue PVC with a fleece lining. It wasn’t in great shape, but it was enough to allow him to get some comfortable sleep.

“Right!” I proclaimed, attracting quite a few glares from early morning runners enjoying the crisp air. “We need to head into the city center.” This would allow us to mingle in with the crowd. We went to a small café heading into town to get a morning cup of coffee, and whilst in there, we heard the BBC News tune. We both turned our heads to see the small screen, and surprise surprise, our faces and names were plastered on it, along with the title ‘Missing fugitives’.

Wrong! I’m not a fugitive, I’m an accessory. Sammy is the fugitive, I just helped him a little bit. Well, ok, fair enough I’m probably ore in the shit than he is, but he’s my boyfriend, and I would do anything for him, even if it meant spending the rest of my life in prison. You know that song “I’d do anything for love (but I won’t do that)” by meatloaf? Take off the parenthesized bit and you’ve got the song that fits the situation perfectly.

I walked over to the counter and gave the barista the money for our coffees before she could see our faces on the wall mounted television and left the coffee shop, heading further into the city. However long it lasted, we were going to have to change our appearances to blend in at Glasgow. If we were caught, we were done for. I gave Sammy £100 and told him to go find a hotel for the night. Then I proceeded to look for a shop that sold prosthetics. I bought 2 bags of plaster, liquid latex and makeups in all tones of skin before coughing up £62 and heading to meet Sammy at our meet-up point. Whilst heading there, I noticed a shop that sold hair dye, and without thinking about it went in and bought 2 bottles of blonde hair dye. I met Sammy at the rendezvous and he directed me towards the hotel. When we arrived I instantly ripped open the first bag of plaster and mixed it with the volume of water stated on the packet. I called Sammy over and he appeared in an instant, keen to see what I had in mind. In a Mrs. Doubtfire fashion I went about molding his face, and vice versa, before pulling out the other prosthetics and molding our new faces. It took a few attempts but I finally managed to get mine to a lifelike standard and left it to set, before shifting over to help Sammy by showing him how to use the tools properly to get his style. Fair enough, these were cheap tools from a small shop on the high street, but they did the job and he also managed to get a look similar to what he desired. It was now 12:30, so we headed out to get some lunch. We now had just over £450 left between us. Damn, this money isn’t lasting as long as I expected, we need to be careful.

“Davey, what if someone recognizes us?”

That was a fair point. What WOULD happen?

“We’re getting a late lunch then, go into the plastic bag on my bed and get the hair dye out.”

“Hair dye?!?”

“It isn’t much, but it could still make us unnoticeable, people are looking for 2 kids with ginger and black hair, not blonde.”

“True.”

With that, we followed the instructions on the box and dyed our hair a sandy blonde. After letting our hair dry, it was edging towards 2 o’clock, so we decided it was definitely time to grab a bite. We left the hotel and over the road was a subway, so we nipped over and got a couple of pulled pork subs, before heading upstairs to enjoy the succulent sandwiches.

After staying for 15 minutes, we headed back outside, and went on a walk to learn our way around Glasgow for an hour or 2. We returned to the hotel to find our new faces had set, and proceeded to lay a plastic wrap over the beds and begin painting them. First we did a complete wash in our preferred skin tones, then we darkened the colours for the dips in the skin, setting them back on the side once we were happy with them and cleaning up after ourselves.

We had new hair, new accommodation, new friends (hopefully) and most importantly of all, new faces. Let the manhunt begin…