“You don’t trust the plods to help you out?”
He arched his eyebrows, all cheesy and sad. “There was one bizzi-ette who I thought could help us. Sadly she is not available.”
“That Sandra?”
He nodded slowly.
“You were grooming her to work for you? Was that before or after she saw what Maya was up to?”
He stood up and looked out of the window.
“So she’s gone missing,” I said. “You don’t trust the other plods and I don’t blame you. Shall we just order a bird online?”
He smirked to himself, still looking out. A bunch of bizzies were playing rugby on the field against a team of lad-spies.
“I met your friend Becky the other night,” he said.
“She’s not my friend.”
“She will be.”
“What did you do?” I said. “Pick her up in your beamer and take her for a drive on the beach?”
He still didn’t look at me. He pulled a folded gum wrapper from his breast pocket. Took the chuddy out of his gob and wrapped it up.
“Have you got your hooks in her?” I said.
“I made a first approach.”
“And?”
“I’m going to recruit her.”
“You’re joking.”
“She’ll be our girl in the house of birds.”
“She’ll not last five minutes.”
He tossed his wrapped-up chewy in a bin under his desk.
“She’ll be alright.” He winked at me. “You’ll see to that.”
I puffed and swore.
“You can do it, Azo.”
“You’ll have to talk her into it first,” I said. “She’ll not do what I tell her.”
Paterson winked. “I can manage that. I’ll make her see why it’s right.”
He winked again. The dodgy bastard. Make her see. So bully her. It sounded simple. But to make someone see something you had to grab their head and twist it round.
“I’ll get her on board,” Paterson said. “Then you keep her on the straight and narrow.”
Lovely. So I was his pitbull now. Just like Sanky was for Pazzer. I wondered if my knackers hung as close together as a pitbull’s. Next chance I got, I’d look in my boxies and check.
I thought back to when it had happened to me. When Paterson had swooped. He’d had me by the bollocks with Ali. But he’d used a bit of carrot as well as the stick. He sorted me out with some cash. A flat. He’d built me up after he’d knocked me down.
It hadn’t taken much to get me on board. But Becky had a real job and everything. What was Paterson going to wave under her nose?
He sent me off to the gym to play basketball with Ralph. The old para who’d trained me up at the start. He had a couple more grey hairs but he was still solid. I couldn’t get past him. I was a wheezy sack of shit.
They kept me in for weeks, checking me up. Working me out. Getting my strength back. The cloud in my head started to lift.
Paterson had me in his room again.
“I’ve been looking into that house of birds,” he said. “I mean the house itself.”
I took a sip of Lucozade.
“On paper, it’s held by a trust,” he said. “Run by an old friend of yours.”
“Oh aye?”
“He’s dead now.”
“My dad?”
He shook his head. “The man Raz shot in his kitchen. Name’s Ghazi.”
The skullcap feller who tried to slot me.
“Who was he?”
“Quite a story.”
He gave me tea and a biscuit and told it to me.
You get all kinds in Liverpool. You always have. Folk only see as far as their own arse. They think it’s only lately all the foreigners have shown up. But they’ve been here forever. There are no foreigners and locals anymore. Just old enemies who haven’t had a fight yet.
So there was this feller back in the day, Paterson said. An English feller, but he was a smartarse and he travelled all around. Lived in the Middle East. Built railways and drilled their oil for them. He liked it so much he came back a Muslim. He showed his mates the way too.
He bought the house in Tocky from an old slave trader and made it into a welcome place for homesick Syrian and Yemeni sailors. So many came that he opened up the old tunnels for them.
Some of the neighbours took against him, but he wasn’t short of friends. Sailors and shippers and bankers and lawyers and smartarses from all over. They all came to Liverpool. And they all knew old Sheikh McGurk. He died in the war and left it to them in a trust. His friends took over the running.
The Germans were bombing Liverpool. All the neighbours were let down in the tunnels to shelter. All the kids that hadn’t been sent away to the country. Later the prisoners of war came. Krauts. Itais. They packed them down in the tunnels an’ all. There was loads of room.
The trust held onto the house. One Scouser after another headed up the trust. Then in the nineties some dickhead took over.
“A Saudi up from London,” Paterson said. “He died six years ago and the Egyptian stepped in.”
I got the gist. There were the kind of believers Paterson’s lot liked and the kind they didn’t, and who didn’t like us. It was orcs against elves and I was the hobbit who had to keep on the good side.
Paterson was doing his teacher bit. He was good at it. It wasn’t boring like at school.
“So now the nasties were in charge,” he said. “They wanted a spot to settle in. What better place? You’ve got the shipping containers to bring your weapons in. You’ve got quiet little bays all down the coast in Wales to land your fighters where the coastguard never looks.”
“You’ve got Toxteth,” I said.
“Right. Where runaways have been blending in for hundreds of years. And now you’ve got the clincher. An underground cavern that all the Scousers have forgotten about. Somewhere to house your killers and build your bombs.”
10
They drove me out of the place in the back of a van. A hood over my head so I wouldn’t know my way back. They dropped me on a street corner and sped off.
I hadn’t been outside the big white walls in a month. There was a bunch of stuff I wanted to do. I couldn’t get straight in my head what to do first. I wanted to see Ali. But he had to get to the back of the queue like always, didn’t he. To see him, I’d have to find Leanne. Or Frank. But it was too big a risk if I didn’t have Paterson on side. I’d have to do the job first. He’d always said I couldn’t see Ali till I was done. Made out it was for the lad’s safety. Really it was one of his levers. Dangling my son in front of my face was his last way of keeping me in line.
Maybe the whole job wouldn’t take that long after all. I just had to work through my list. I had to find Becky. That was top of it now.
I looked around me. Hello. The bastards. They’d dropped me miles from mine. I was in Crosby.
Before letting me out, Paterson had made me learn by heart where Becky lived. A terraced street off the main road in Waterloo. A few minutes’ walk away.
She wasn’t in when I rang her doorbell.
It was a mild evening. The cold had eased while I’d been in the place. It was alright to sit outside in. I waited around for half an hour. There was no sign of her coming back.
I couldn’t be arsed going home all the way to Tocky. I made up my mind to break in. I’d stretch out on Becky’s settee and wait.
I found the jigger that passed along the back of the houses. Old cobblestones and overturned bins flecked with drops of rain. I counted the back gates along the row till I got to Becky’s. Hoisted myself up on top of the old gate. I was getting good at that.
I sat there on the gate. Unvarnished wood between the orange brick walls. Splinters. I’d had worse in my arse than splinters. I was the arse master. I had the scars to show it.
I looked down into Becky’s back yard. Weeds. A barbecue like a round metal pan on wheels. A deckchair. Ashtray on the flagstones on one side of it
. A box of fags and a purple Bic lighter. A stack of notebooks on the other.
The back door was open. The kitchen light was on.
I jumped down into the back yard. Landed on my feet and stopped myself in front with my hands. Alright. I wasn’t Iron Man but I was in better shape than a few weeks ago.
I crept in through the kitchen door and looked around.
I’d thought Becky’s place would be posher. She must have earned less than I’d thought. She did her job because she liked it. She thought she was helping.
Not much to the place. Clean. Simple. Packs of Ryvita and Mister Men mugs in the kitchen. Big black sofa in the front room, the cover made out of old Iron Maiden t-shirts stitched together. No other chairs, just beanbags. Upstairs, a double bed with a yellow-wood frame. Notebooks and makeup pots on the desk. Spare room with a desk and a Mac.
There was no one there.
Back downstairs. I couldn’t see her leather jacket on any of the pegs by the door. Her floppy handbag was hanging over the end of the banister. No phone in it.
I went back out through the kitchen door to the yard. Sat down in the deckchair. Sparked up one of Becky’s ciggies and opened one of her notebooks.
Some of it was full blocks of writing, like stuff that had come out of Becky’s head when she couldn’t sleep. English-sounding names of folk I’d never heard of. A lot of thoughts and question-marks. Some of it was just scraps of words and phrases, scribbled across the lines like she’d written it in a hurry. I could hardly make out a word.
Some of it was just squiggles.
I put the notebook down and lolled my head back against the wooden bar of the deckchair. Stared up at the white sky, blowing out smoke.
I woke up when I heard something from inside. In the hall, the squeak of the door handle. The squish of the rubber seal.
I twisted round in the chair and looked behind me.
The front door had shut. The house had gone quiet.
I stood up and crept through to the sitting room.
Becky was sitting on the settee, not moving. She still had her leather jacket and scarf on.
Last time I’d seen her, she’d been legging off down the alley in a piss while I was breaking into the big house. I’d told myself not to worry, I could handle her. I wondered if I was right.
“‘Ey,” I said.
She turned to look at me. Her eyes were red, even with the dark makeup around them.
I parted the curtain with a finger and looked out the front window. A neon yellow car was moving off down the street.
“Bizzies?” I said.
She said nothing. She looked at the floor. She spread her hand over her mouth like she wanted to stop it coming out, whatever it was she had to say. Like she wanted to keep it all stuffed in there.
She leaned over and swept her legs up onto the settee. Curled up on her side.
She lay like that for fifteen minutes. Then I heard her speak.
She said it so softly I didn’t hear it.
“Again?”
“Sandra’s gone,” she whispered.
“Where?”
She clamped her hand on her mouth again. I reached out and squeezed her wrist. She took her hand away.
“They shot her.”
“Who did?”
She shook her head. She curled up tighter. I touched her shoulder. Rested it there. She was burrowing into the corner of the settee.
I knew who, didn’t I.
I didn’t get it though. Why Raz’s lot would even want to slot some bizzie woman. It didn’t fit.
I let her sleep.
I lay down on the rug in the lounge. At right-angles to her settee, by a fireplace with a big white candle in it.
I tried to think how she must be feeling. I was in shock. Her head must have been all over the place. I wondered if I could help her through it. Maybe in a normal world I could. Not in my case. It wasn’t enough to help her now. I had to handle her, like Paterson handled me.
I had to steer her towards the house of birds.
Start talking her into going down there. And at the worst time you could think of. Her head was in an awful place. I didn’t know if I had it in me to ram it down where Paterson wanted it to go.
I snuck out to the back yard in the dark. I lit one of Becky’s fags and sat down in the deckchair and called him.
He knew about Sandra already.
I told him about the state Becky was in.
“You’ll have to hold her hand, Azo,” he said. “Help her through it.”
“How long will that take?”
“You’ll have to work fast. Then start training her.”
“Easy for you to say. You’re letting me dangle.”
“Far from it. To show how much I care, I’ve got a little goodie for you.”
“Winchester rifle?”
“Something a bit less showy.”
“When can I come and get it?”
“Any time. I’ve had it dropped off at your flat.”
“I’d rather have it here.”
“You don’t want to be hanging around there, lad. Get Becky out of her house. Before they come for her too.”
Becky got up early and made porridge. She drizzled honey on it and sprinkled in raisins and berries and seeds. I sat down to eat it anyway. There was no bacon in the fridge.
When she’d finished, Becky got up and had a shower. She got dressed. She fussed around in her handbag and headed into the hall like she was going to work.
I followed her to the front door. I called her name. She stopped there. She leaned her forehead on the frosted glass and started crying.
I put my arms around her.
I sat her on the settee. She took a few deep breaths. She looked at me. Not the way she used to, like she wanted to charm me into spilling my life to her. There was this sick glimmer in her eyes now.
She needed my help.
I didn’t know what to say to her. What do you say? Best you can do is listen to them. But she wasn’t talking. So I did. I didn’t know what else to do. I just started gabbing.
I told her about the house of birds.
She curled up on the settee.
I stood up. Bent down and lifted her. Hugged her to me. Got a hand round her chin and turned her face to mine. She opened her eyes and looked at me.
“You still want to write about this?” I said.
She didn’t look like she understood. Or she did, but she didn’t know. Life had changed. She thought for a sec. She looked at me.
“I’ve got nothing else,” she said.
“Do you want to find out who did it?”
She nodded, just about. One of her eyes looked like it could see me. The other was bleary and half shut, like it was seeing somewhere else.
I thought of Paterson. Train her. The heartless shit. But it was that or nothing now, eh. Either she’d dive in with me, or she’d bolt and I’d never see her again.
I wished Paterson was there. To keep her in the game for sure. To turn the screws on her so I didn’t have to.
She stared at the candle in the fireplace.
I peered hard into her face to try and work out what it would take. Before I’d thought it would be a soft sell. After all her reporter bullshit. I’d thought it would be all about the story and Maya and that woman in the bathrobe, whoever she was. It was about more than that now though. It was about Becky.
“We can do something good,” I told her. “We can stitch up the twats who did it.”
She sat up and reached for her handbag. I thought she was going to try and go to work again. But she stayed where she was. Rooting through the things in her bag like she was half asleep.
“I can help you do it,” I said.
She laughed for a sec between the tears. Her face was soft and sleepy.
She was slipping away from me.
“You’re joking,” she said. Like that was that. She didn’t think I could do anything. I was still just a scally to her.
I told her
what I’d seen. What I knew. About Raz and the men he worked with.
About Paterson.
I told her what I was.
11
I took her to a pub on Park Road. Dusty old place, a bit like The Grace. It had rooms upstairs. I’d kipped there one time when Leanne had booted me out, not long before Ali was born.
Becky gave her card to pay for the rooms. She turned in without saying anything.
Next morning I got up first. Hovered outside her door. After a bit it opened. She was dressed and ready. For what? She didn’t look sure.
I made her sit with me down in the bar while I ate my scrambled eggs. She had a Coke. The chairs were still upturned on the tables. Light came in shafts through gaps in the curtains.
Becky looked at her phone.
Work would wonder where she was, she said.
If things went well, she’d have something to feed them. Big enough lead for them to give her more time off, she said. To let her keep digging. The story was as big as I let it be. If she helped me.
I chewed my buttery toast quietly and tried to think what to do about Becky. How to stop her going to work. How to keep a lid on her.
After brekkie she sat on her bed, thumbing at her phone, reading the news. I thought about that. I knew they could track you through your phone. Even if you thought it was switched off. Paterson had told me. He could do it.
Could Raz’s lot manage that? The ones who’d done Sandra? I wasn’t sure. They’d not been the most hi-tech bunch of knobs when I’d known them. The best thing they’d had going for them in that way had been Maya.
I let her keep it. It was all she had to take her mind off things. And I was in a rush to get round to my flat and pick up Paterson’s gun.
I walked there, looking over my shoulder the whole way. I stopped a few cars down from mine on the far side, staring at the green door.
No way to tell if anyone was waiting for me inside the place. If some twat was sat on the sofa facing the door, watching Netflix with a Glock in his hand.
I looked up and down my street till I was sure no one was watching.
The gun was in the kitchen bin, with a box of ammo. I swabbed it off and stuck it behind in the waistband of my trackies.
I put two t-shirts, boxies, socks and a spare trackie in a Reebok rucksack with my phone charger and the bullets.
House of Birds: Forget who you were before... (The Azo Coke thrillers Book 2) Page 5