The Forger & the Traitor

by Ian W. Sainsbury

  "Shh." Bedlam Boy held up a hand, and they were quiet. "Let me think."

  The Hartnells had been ripping Tom off. They paid him half what they paid any other hod carrier and ignored the fact that Tom's custom hod held more bricks than anyone else's. They never paid overtime and had invented fictional fees to withhold even more of the money they owed him. The Boy arrived at a fair weekly figure and multiplied it by the weeks Tom had worked, before deducting the cash already paid. He took the messenger bag from his shoulder and threw it over to Hartnell.

  "I want two thousand, six hundred pounds. Put it in there."

  Hartnell opened the bag's flap. If he saw the knife inside, he gave no sign. He stuffed two cash bundles inside, then took the rubber band off a third and counted out four hundred pounds, putting the rest in the bag. He looked back at the Boy.

  "Don't you want the rest?"

  Mrs H looked at him.

  "No," said the Boy, then paused. "How much is there?"

  "Another nine grand."

  The Boy considered for a moment. "Okay. I'll take it. Keep it separate."

  Eager to please, and, to all appearances, grateful that the armed robber in his house would take more of his money, Hartnell emptied some papers out of an envelope and put the original twenty-six hundred inside it, stuffing the other bundles of cash into the bag.

  "Slide it back here," said the Boy. Bobby yielded his spot when the Boy picked up the messenger bag, put the gun back in, and left the room.

  "Les!" hissed Mrs H. Her husband got to his feet, looking around him in a daze. His wife pointed at the metal baseball bat he kept behind the office door. Hartnell was being offered a tiny chance to regain his dignity and preserve his reputation before it was too late. He took it.

  "Listen, pal." The Boy turned in the hall to see Les Hartnell emerge from the office, the baseball bat held in a double-handed grip in front of him. "I don't know who you think you are, but you're messing with the wrong man. I put bigger guys than you in the ground when you were still in nappies, you shithead."

  As Hartnell spoke, his voice grew stronger, and he straightened up, as if remembering how intimidating, and how violent, he was rumoured to be. He pulled back his arm for a swing, aiming at the Boy's kneecap.

  "I'm gonna kill you, you thieving—"

  Les Hartnell never finished his sentence. The arrival of a gloved fist in his face knocked four of his front teeth down his throat and sent his head snapping back into the doorjamb.

  Bobby followed Bedlam Boy all the way to the road before stopping, looking quizzically after the helmeted man with the familiar scent as he walked away. Then he cocked his leg at the gatepost before trotting back to the house.

  Chapter Twelve

  The paramedic's name was Glen, and he wasn't at all happy at being woken up a few hours before his morning shift. The huge stranger on his doorstep came straight to the point.

  "I have a cut that needs cleaning and stitching." He held up a messenger bag. "There's a gun in here. When you call the police later, tell them I threatened you with it. I'd rather not have to do that, if it's all the same with you. It's been a long night. What do you say?"

  Glen glued the wound closed in his tiny kitchen, after cutting away the duct tape and cleaning and disinfecting the wound. In an average weekend in the ambulance, he handled multiple lacerations, heart attacks, overdoses. He'd stitched up three knife wounds last week and held a kid's hand as he bled out. A muscled giant wearing a motorbike helmet with a stab wound to his side wasn't enough to freak him out.

  "All done." The stranger pulled down his T-shirt and stood up.

  "Wait," said Glen. He opened a drawer. "Fresh dressings. Leave the bandage on for twenty-four hours. Don't let the glue get wet. If it does, pat it dry with a towel. Any sign of infection, go to hospital. You should be fine, though."

  "Thank you."

  "You didn't give me much of a choice." Glen eyed the clock. Three-ten. He'd be getting up in just over two hours. The stranger put a bundle of cash on the table and left.

  "Hey!" said Glen. "I don't want your money."

  "I don't care." The front door closed. Glen stared at the cash as the kettle boiled. It was a lot of money. He put it in a drawer. Half an hour later, he called the police.

  At three forty-five, an industrial bin in North London was flung open to reveal a seventeen-year-old pizza delivery rider, who'd woken from an erotic dream involving his old science teacher, Mrs Thornton.

  When he remembered where he was, and how he'd got there, he froze. There was no sound other than footsteps, and they were getting further away. He risked standing, his legs shaking, in time to get a glimpse of the big guy who'd stolen his bike. He stood in the bin for another two minutes, listening.

  When he climbed out, he nearly kicked over his moped, which was leaning against the bin. The pizza bag had gone, which meant his boss would try to take it out of his wages. The key wasn't in the ignition either.

  He looked at his watch. That big, lying bastard said he only wanted the moped for an hour. He'd been gone all night. And he'd brought it back with no sodding key. Where was his bloody phone? Shit, shit, shit.

  Then he noticed the takeaway bag leaning up against the front wheel. He picked it up. Inside was his key and his phone. Also inside was four thousand, four hundred pounds, in bundles of crisp twenties.

  The owner of the office cleaning company went by the name of Chesterfield.

  "Chesterfield," he repeated, eyeing the big lad who'd come about the job. "Like the sofas,"

  "Mm," said Tom.

  Chesterfield shook his head. "Don't get it? Never mind. You look like a strong boy. You gonna give me any trouble? Anything I ought to know?"

  Tom pulled the bandana tighter onto his scalp and shook his head.

  "Well, then." Chesterfield stuck out his hand. It looked tiny up against Tom's. "I'll give you a week's trial. Fair?"

  "Mm. Mm. Fair."

  "Good lad. See you in the morning."

  Tom walked back to the hostel. On the way there, he thought he saw someone, or something, in the shadow of a doorway of a boarded-up hotel. He stopped and looked, but couldn't be sure.

  In the hostel's tiny private room, he turned onto his left side in bed, fingers tracing the dressing over his latest scar. Through the thin walls, someone sang in a language he didn't recognise. The sound wove itself into his dreams.

  As sleep claimed him, Tom thought he saw a list on an old writing desk, one side of it blackened by fire. The first words on the list had a line through them.

  In his dream, he could write, just like everyone else. He took a fresh sheet of paper and wrote his words down, wielding the pen with a confident flourish.

  Tom knew what the words said.

  Bedlam Boy is coming.

  13

  Part Two: The Traitor

  Tom hovered on the edge of sleep. He didn't see the men get on the bus. He heard them, though. They talked to each other while they climbed the steps to the top deck. Something about their tone signalled danger. A bit too loud, with a harsh edge to their laughter. But they walked past Tom without comment on their way to the back, and their conversation became quieter, so he gave in to his tiredness, resting his head on a folded jacket to stop it knocking against the window.

  The bus ride from Charing Cross to Barking took nearly an hour, but Tom didn't mind. He slept both ways, mostly. The motion soothed him, the hiss of the doors opening and closing. He even welcomed the moments when noisy passengers half-woke him, as they gave him the opportunity to slide back into sleep.

  Three rows behind him, across the aisle, two women had been chatting since boarding at Canary Wharf. Their animated conversation was punctuated with laughter, and the burble of their voices became the ambient background to Tom's sleep.

  When their chat became quieter and more hesitant, then stopped, he opened his eyes.

  The front window of the double-decker made a good mirror, but the vibrations of the vehicle blurre
d the reflections. Tom picked out the four men. They had moved from the back of the bus, occupying the rows behind, and in front of, the women.

  The women sat closer together now, their faces brown smudges in the glass. One of them kept glancing at the man standing next to their seat. Tom risked a quick look. The man wasn't steadying himself with the pole; he was covering the button requesting a stop.

  If people talked quickly, or when more than one person spoke at once, Tom struggled to follow. When that happened, he gave up trying to identify words, instead listening to the sounds like music. He might not understand, but he could hear tone, pitch, volume and timbre. Music could be comforting, exciting, teasing, angry. So could voices.

  The music of the men's conversation was discordant and dishonest. The obvious sounds—the melody—suggested good humour, fun, flirting. But everything else made the melody a lie. Like a horror movie soundtrack, a simple tune was subverted by dark, abrasive harmonies; a shifting soundscape underneath the men's words spoke of entitlement, lust, shame, and an easy, tribal violence.

  Before he knew he was doing it, Tom was on his feet in the aisle, facing the group behind him. His legs and shoulders ached, but he didn't know why. Pushing a mop around an office block every evening couldn't account for the tightening of the muscles across his chest, the burn in his shoulders.

  One of the men sitting behind the girls leaned out. He raised his voice, directed something at Tom. The others went quiet. Now the soundtrack had faded, Tom tuned into the words.

  "I said, what the fuck are you looking at?"

  Tom was familiar with this sentence. There was no correct response. Ignoring the man would lead to an angrier challenge. Whatever Tom said, the next words he would hear were either, "You calling me a liar?" or "What did you say?"

  Despite knowing this, Tom didn't walk away. It was the same impulse that saw him move snails from the path outside the Barking house every evening. Even if he didn't accidentally stand on the snails himself, someone else would. He was the only one there. So he moved them. What else could he do?

  "Asked you a question, boy."

  The nearest man moved into the aisle, adopting a loose-limbed, wide-legged, leaning stance. He wore black cotton trousers and a white vest stretched tight over a shaved chest. Tattoos covered both his arms. He was young, possibly still in his teens, but his facial hair and studied, world-weary expression suggested he wanted to appear older.

  Tom looked at the two women. They were silent, hands in their laps, all the fun gone out of them.

  "Mm, mm." Tom wasn't sure of the correct words, but it didn't stop him trying to form them. They were close, waiting to be strung into sentences. Clever words, words to paint a picture in someone's head, or commanding words that others would obey.

  "Spit it out, retard." The others laughed. Not the women. Their lips formed thin lines, their eyes dropped away from Tom.

  Tom shook his head, pointing at the women. "Mm. Mm. No. Leave alone."

  More laughter. The bus lurched around a corner, and both Tom and the tattooed man steadied themselves, Tom grabbing a pole. As he took hold of it, he found the stop button. Without thinking, he pressed it, and a ding signalled that the bus would pull in at the next stop.

  The bus slowed, moving across the road, branches scratching the roof. When it shuddered to a stop with a hiss of air-brakes, the tattooed leader put a hand in his pocket and pulled out a knife. It looked like a magic trick, as his pocket couldn't have contained such a long blade. A picture flashed into Tom's mind; a knife strapped to the man's leg, the pocket slit. Holding the knife where Tom could see it, the man yelled down to the driver.

  "Sorry, mate, pressed it by accident."

  The bus rumbled back into motion. The leader shot a glance at the camera mounted above the steps. Tom did the same. Someone had sprayed the lens with red paint.

  "That's right. Now go back to sleep. This has got sod all to do with you."

  Tom knew the women were in danger. Someone needed to stop these men. Their soundtrack had been confident. Sometimes boys played at being tough. Not these boys. They had done bad things before; they had enjoyed doing them.

  But what was he supposed to do? Tom scooped spiders out of bathtubs before releasing them outside, and rescued pollen-drunk bees from roadsides, seeing them safely to the shelter of a hedge. His instinct, rather than his confused thoughts, told him these men would only back down if confronted with greater strength than their own. And the thought of violence made tears spring into Tom's eyes.

  "Bloody homo." One of the men pointed. "Look. He's gonna cry."

  The leader sneered, casually waved the knife towards Tom. "Go on. Sit down. Cry yourself to sleep. We're getting off at the next stop. All of us."

  The gesture he made included the two women, who stiffened, one of them sobbing. The leader laughed. "Now look what you've done. Upset my girlfriend. Sit the fuck down."

  Shaking, Tom hesitated. His thoughts swirled like washing-up water round a plughole. One idea at a time was manageable. Take the bricks from here to there. Mop that floor. Empty this bin. More than that, and it became difficult to do anything, often freezing him in place.

  The tattooed man took a step towards him. "I won't ask again."

  The way he said ask sounded like axe and this confused Tom even more. He heard the word axe, looked at the knife, the mute women, the swaggering leader. His head was heavy, his legs and arms leaden. Too much. His mind full of rain.

  Then, a light switching on. A ray of sunlight through the clouds. Go to sleep, Tom. It's okay. Go to sleep.

  He looked away from the leader's grin of triumph and shuffled back to his seat. He didn't see the second woman squeeze her friend's hand, her own eyes now filling with tears.

  The smeared streets slid by through the rain-streaked window.

  Tom closed his eyes and slept.

  Callum Perkins had worked for Transport For London since his mid-twenties, driving buses throughout the capital. He enjoyed the challenge of the constant traffic, the rich soup of nationalities and personalities travelling with him every day. Best job in the world, his dad always said, and he'd driven buses in Northumbria for fifty years.

  What Callum didn't enjoy was the aggro. There wasn't much; not as much as the papers would have you believe, but enough that he'd developed a nose for it. The four guys who boarded at Stratford reeked of it. They each boasted a pistol tattoo on the backs of their hands. They didn't pay when they boarded the bus. Three of them walked past while the fourth rested his hand on the Oyster card reader, long enough for Callum to see three bullets on his wrist above the gun tattoo. According to his ink, this kid—eighteen, nineteen years old?—had already murdered three people. Callum let them on without a word.

  He drove without the radio after the gang boys boarded. The CCTV system hadn't been working all week, and the camera upstairs was permanently vandalised. He knew which passengers were up there, though. One method of staving off tiredness on late shifts was to keep track of who was aboard. The big shy guy with the bandana had been on since Charing Cross. The two girls from Canary Wharf were on the top deck, too.

  At the ping of the stop request bell, Callum pulled over and waited until someone shouted that they'd pressed it by accident. He hoped they were just horsing around. He didn't much like the look of those boys, particularly the leader. Hard-faced, like he hated the world and was looking for an opportunity to prove how much. The eleven passengers downstairs had gone quiet since the gang boarded. Six of them got off when he stopped, deciding to walk despite the rain. Callum couldn't blame them.

  When the bell rang again three minutes later, he checked the mirror. None of the remaining five passengers downstairs showed signs of moving.

  In the silence, the voice from the top deck rang clear. "I warned you, retard. Should have stayed asleep. Now you're gonna bleed."

  Another voice answered, and the sound of it lifted every hair on Callum's arms and up the back of his neck. It was a man's
voice. And it was singing.

  It's when next I have murdered, the Man-In-The-Moon to powder

  His staff I'll break, his dog I'll bake, they'll howl no demon louder

  Callum guided the bus to the kerb and stopped. The downstairs passengers scurried out. None of them looked back.

  "Oh, thanks, off you go then, that's just grand." Callum picked up the radio to call in, but hesitated. There'd been no actual violence. Kids threatened each other every day. What was he going to report? Unsavoury characters having a singalong? They'd take the piss for months back at the depot.

  The first voice again. "What the hell? That's right, sing on, you mad fucker, sing on."

  The mad fucker in question did just that, but his voice got louder, and when he didn't sing, he laughed. Then the words of the song were punctuated by screams.

  Still I sing bonnie boys, bonnie mad boys,

  Bedlam boys are bonnie

  The bus started to shake, rocking from side to side. There were hisses of pain, a horrible snap followed by shrieks of agony, then two thumps as something heavy hit the window. The third thump shattered the glass. A second later, the gang leader landed on the pavement alongside the bus.

  Callum lifted the handset again. "This is 692. I'm at Roman Road Playing Fields. I need police and an ambulance."

  A second gang member landed next to the first.

  "Two ambulances."

  Another thump on the pavement.

  "Maybe three."

  For they all go bare and they live by the air,

  And they want no drink nor money

  At the sound of descending footsteps, Callum dropped the radio handset and twisted round in his seat. The youngest gang member, sweating, eyes wide with terror, ran for the door. He ignored his fallen friends on the pavement, sprinting away.

  The two women were still upstairs. Callum Perkins didn't consider himself to be a coward, but it took every bit of courage he possessed to slide out from under the steering wheel, unlock the glass box he called his office, and climb the stairs to the top deck.