The morning deadline explodes into chaos as Billy discovers he is too late to stop Greg from handing over the statement to the postal investigators. Meanwhile, Jim Harrison returns to a fortified Dockside crescent to face both a community preparing for a siege and a devastating truth about his own son.
The brown envelope felt incredibly light as Billy Harrison sprinted down the narrow alleyway behind the Copperas Hill sorting office. The clock on the Lime Street station tower was already chiming eight dull, metallic thuds through the Liverpool mist. His chest was burning, his breath ripping out of him in ragged white gasps.
He banged through the fire doors of the sorting depot, heading straight for Greg’s usual locker near the loading bay. "Greg!" Billy gasped, his eyes darting across the room. "Greg, I’ve got it! One hundred quid! Tucked in the envelope!"
The room was empty except for Ste, who was sitting on a wooden bench, nervously tying the laces of his postman’s boots. Ste looked up, his face turning instantly pale under the flickering fluorescent strips. "You’re too late, Billy lad," Ste whispered, his voice trembling. "The assistant supervisor, Vaughan... he was down here ten minutes ago with two fellas in suits from the Post Office investigation branch. Greg was already in the glass office. He handed them the statement."
Billy froze, the envelope of hard-won cash slipping from his fingers and hitting the dirty concrete floor with a dull slap. Danny’s sacrificed turntables, Tommy’s cash-in-hand from the Duke Street bricks—it was all for nothing. The clock had run out.
"They’re looking for you now, Billy," Ste hissed, grabbing his leather mail pouch. "Vaughan’s checked the log. He knows your afternoon delivery bag from the south docks was never cleared yesterday. They know about the university rave tickets."
Before Billy could turn to run, the heavy double doors at the end of the locker room swung open. It wasn't Vaughan or the investigators. Jim Harrison walked in, his regional convenor badge pinned firmly to his donkey jacket, surrounded by three older shop stewards from the docks. Jim’s face was a mask of cold fury, but when he saw his son standing over the dropped brown envelope, his shoulders dropped an inch in absolute defeat.
"Get your jacket, Billy," Jim said, his voice dropping to a terrifyingly calm whisper that cut straight through the hum of the depot machinery. "You’re done here. The investigators are drawing up the suspension paperwork now. I’ve cased it as a union dispute to buy you ten minutes to clear your locker, but I can't save your job this time. You’re off the books."
Billy didn't look at his dad. He grabbed his personal holdall, shoved his locker door shut with a loud, metallic clang that echoed off the brickwork, and walked out into the cold morning air, the blue uniform suddenly feeling like a stranger's clothes.
A mile away on Dockside crescent, the watery sun was doing nothing to melt the frost on Tommy Higgins’s barricade. The white council Granada had gone, but the atmosphere remained tight, balanced on a knife-edge.
Jim’s Austin Cambridge rumbled onto the estate twenty minutes later, its tyres crunching over the black ice before stopping just short of the wooden pallets. Jim climbed out, his face etched with the exhaustion of a man whose entire structural world was collapsing at the joints. He walked straight up to the center of the road where Eileen, Martha Green, Sandra, and Chrissie were still standing by Mike the milkman’s float.
"They came early, Jim," Eileen said, her hand reaching out to touch his sleeve. "A clerk from the municipal office. Chrissie and Martha saw him off, but he said the development corporation’s got a warrant."
Jim looked at his wife, then at the women of the crescent who had finally dug their trenches together. "The clerk's the least of our worries now, Eileen," Jim said grimly, his voice cracking as he looked down the road toward Danny’s parked blue van. "The Post Office has suspended Billy. He’s been scalping those rave tickets with the university crowd on the clock, and the investigators have got it down on paper."
Eileen gasped, her hand flying to her mouth as the color drained from her cheeks. Martha Green lowered her eyes, the old gossip circle suddenly feeling entirely too heavy to carry.
Chrissie stepped forward, her jaw set, her fingers tightening around Sandra’s hand. "The investigators can wait, Jim. And the Post Office clerks can wait too. Look down the hill."
The low, heavy rumble of a commercial diesel engine echoed from the south dock road. It wasn't a council Granada this time. A massive yellow mechanical excavator, its steel bucket glistening under the pale winter light, was turning the corner, flanked by two police Rovers. The London developers weren't waiting for the thirty-day tribunal review; they were bringing the iron to the gates of Dockside tonight.
Dockside has been developed using AI.
