I parked in the side road.
Fifteen minutes it had taken us to get there. I wanted to warn Paterson, but I didn’t have time to be holding Maya’s hand walking in there. Wait to see what happened, run, hide, shout. Wait for the dust to settle and then tell them all about the school. I didn’t have time. Plus I didn’t want to go in The Grace. I wouldn’t keep my hummus butty down.
I’d just see her through the door and then bolt. I could rag it back up to Aigburth in time. I could call Paterson on the way.
Maya opened her door.
I stepped out my side. I locked the Mazda and looked up to speak to her. But she was already crossing over to The Grace.
I called to her. She looked at me over her shoulder.
“Give me your phone,” I said.
She just turned away. She reached the corner. That red painted door with the orange frosted glass.
She had her hands in her fleece pockets. She took out the left one and turned the handle. Kept her right hand behind her near the gun.
I couldn’t stop her now. It was up to Paterson’s lot to handle her. I was feeding her to them. For her own good, I thought. But I was giving her up.
I was giving up on her.
Paterson said they’d not hurt her. Just take her down and keep her safe. They knew she’d go armed. He said they had ways of stopping her. Tase her, maybe, I guessed. Or just jump on her. He hadn’t gone into the whole thing.
What else could I do?
Twenty minutes since Dicey had set off. I had no phone. And in the pub on the corner, a few yards away from me behind the smokey old walls of The Grace, Paterson’s men would be waiting.
I had to tell them.
I had to go in.
The pub door clacked as Maya slipped inside. I ran to catch up with her. Something caught my eye on the far side of the dock road. A little white Suzuki van was slowing down to take the corner.
I took hold of the door handle. Long straight placky one. Pearly white. The shape of it in my hand made my heart jump. A shot of that Friday feeling from back in the day.
I curled my fingers round it.
I stopped myself.
I didn’t know what was going on inside. They could have their guns on Maya right then, and there I’d be, bursting in and spooking them.
I had to tell them though, didn’t I.
I stood there with my fingers round the handle and just froze.
I tried to listen. My ears were all messed up. All that time underground. I couldn’t tell if there was any sound from inside; everything on the outside seemed so loud. There was steam hissing and motors humming over in the docks. Cars crackling by on the road. Some ship honked out on the water. And now someone was speaking. Calling to me.
I turned.
Becky had parked on the corner. She was trotting towards me in her woolly hat.
She reached for the door handle.
I grabbed her arm and stopped her.
“Give me your phone,” I said.
I told her about Dicey and the school run.
She stood there with her hands over her mouth.
I reached out and rummaged in her bag. I got hold of her iPhone. I wasn’t used to them. Needed her thumbprint to unlock it.
I handed it back to her.
She took it and just held it and looked at it.
“Come on,” I said.
She put her thumb on the spot and gave it back to me.
“What’s up with you?” I said.
“I helped her.”
“Who?”
“Dicey. I helped her get the little lad in school.”
“Eh? Why?”
“Paterson told me to.”
I turned and stared at the nobbly plastic glass of the door. Tried to train my mind on just one grain of it. Tried to think clear and straight.
“He wanted Dicey to have the refugee lad in the school?”
She nodded. “I thought it was for his own good.”
“So you weren’t just Paterson’s ears and eyes down there,” I said. “You were working Dicey for him.”
“Maybe you're used to playing this game,” she said. “It’s my first time."
“Dicey put one of their gang in my lad’s school.”
I started walking away with her iPhone still in my hand.
“Paterson said he’d get me a job if I did it,” she said.
I turned again.
“Working out of the Middle East,” she said.
“A spy job? You’ll not last five minutes.”
“A newspaper job, Azo.”
“Let me guess. A big story about the Syrians.”
“There’s a lot to write about.”
“I didn’t know Paterson was in the news business.”
“He’s got a mate.”
“I bet he has.”
“A mate in the papers who’ll get me the job.”
I looked at the door of The Grace. I still couldn’t hear anything from inside. I reached for the door handle again and rattled it. Nothing.
I turned back to Becky.
“Don’t tell me. Paterson asked you to come.”
She nodded.
“Why would he want you?”
She shrugged. “He said they need good people to work on the refugee story. He said we have to work behind the scenes.“
“To keep the foreigners out, eh? That’s how he told it to me.“
She was nodding to herself. Slowly, like she was just working it out.
“So he’s got the papers in on it too,” I said.
I looked at the screen on her phone. I got the keypad up alright but didn’t know how to find Paterson in her phone book.
“Let me,” she said. “I’ll Snapchat him. He gets back straightaway.”
“Lovely.” Paterson still had me doing things the old-fashioned way. Calling and letting it ring. But he let Becky send him smartphone messages. I was almost hurt.
I left her thumbing away at her touchscreen and legged it back to the Mazda. I unlocked it. I stopped and thought for a sec.
I didn’t want to be ragging up to Saint Rock’s in that heap after last time. The bizzies would have it on file. The caretaker would remember it. Even Paterson would have trouble talking it away if they nicked me driving that.
I ran back round to The Grace. Becky was tapping away at her phone with both thumbs. Eyes down. Not watching out. Not thinking.
I reached in her bag from behind and found her car keys.
26
Mums and dads were heading away from the gates. Most of the kids had gone in. School run, eh. A mad scramble before the bell. A puff of relief once the little crazies were safely inside.
I walked against the flow towards the gate.
Halfway down I saw Dicey. She was walking ahead of me with Hanzi.
He had a thick dark fleece on. Zipped up and lumpy like hers.
They were getting further away from me. Soon they’d be up to the bizzies at the gate.
I made myself keep walking.
I couldn’t look at Hanzi. I fixed my eyes on Dicey instead. Her one hand in her fleece pocket and elbow bent. Her straggly grey ponytail. It cocked up as she looked down in front of her. Then it straightened. She turned her face sharply to Hanzi and I saw her side-on. Just for a sec, then she clicked her face forward again.
I stopped again. I didn’t know why. My gut felt mushy. My legs were weak.
It wasn’t fear about what they were doing. It was something else. Something I couldn’t help. It just took hold of me when I looked at her.
Most of the times I’d seen Dicey up close we’d been in the half-dark. I’d never got how blue her eyes were. Deep, bright. But it wasn’t the colour that got to me. It was the look in them. The way they made me feel.
I staggered on. They crossed the side road where Maya got jumped that last time. Across it on the far corner they stood still. Dicey was bending down talking to Hanzi. Not talking. She was touching his face. He had chocolate on it.
She pulled a handkerchief from her pocket. Spat on it and dabbed and jabbed at his cheek.
This time I stuck my head right over the wall into someone’s front garden. I threw up into their bushes. When I straightened up and looked ahead again, Dicey had turned. She was standing with her sticky hankie in her hand, staring at me.
My legs gave way. I swore and my voice was groggy and raw like a tired kid. When I straightened up at last, they were out of sight inside the school gates.
I forced one foot in front of the other and wiped the tears from my eyes. I made it across the side road. I swore again. I’d almost bumped into someone. They yelped and sprang back. I mumbled sorry as I looked up. Then I shut up.
It was Leanne.
She spent a sec taking it all in. She was wondering whether to yell or hit me. In the end she got on top of it. She took a deep breath.
“How many have you had?” she said.
“Nothing. Have you dropped Ali off?”
Another deep breath.
“You know you can’t see him,” she said.
“That’s not why I’m here.”
She looked at me and nodded. Calm. Too calm. She was like me. She’d had to learn to keep a lid on it. She was trying hard. She was just trying to chill me out so I’d go away.
“I’m not pissed,” I said.
“Alright.”
I started walking again.
She stepped in front. Put a palm to my chest.
I looked beyond her to the gate where the two bizzies were standing. There was no way I’d get past them on my own. I had to just go and tell them. That’s what it had come to. Go running to the filth. That was a laugh. I’d spent enough time running away from them.
It wasn’t what Paterson had wanted. I was meant to stop things getting this far. They’d find me out. Who I was, what I was doing. I’d get nicked. Paterson would vanish into the woodwork. Game over. But there was nothing for it now.
It was the only way to stop them.
The one time I really needed to talk to the bizzies and I couldn’t get to them. Leanne was blocking my way. Quiet, calm. She was even smiling a bit. Hard, sharp smile, just the mouth and not the eyes. Like she was sucking in her stomach ready for a fight.
She’d not let me near the school.
I knew her. She’d chin me. I couldn’t waste time getting bashed and then nicked by the bizzies before I got to tell them about the bombs.
I looked at her ginger fringe. Down at her blue polo shirt. No fleece for Leanne. Not even on a winter day like this one.
I could tell her. But I was scared it would come out wrong. If I told her about the bombs she’d think they were something to do with me. She’d blame me for them. I didn’t have time to talk her through the whole thing.
Only one thing I could think of to say. Make her see I meant business but not push her buttons. Only one way out. I took a breath.
“I’m not here to see Ali.”
She frowned and didn’t budge.
I breathed deep again.
“I’ve got to talk to them bizzies.”
She frowned harder. She was staring over my left shoulder.
I turned to look. A black trackie. Then I whipped my head the other way. Leanne grabbed my right shoulder. A roly-poly muddle of blue polo shirt and trackie leg, and I was down. She threw herself face-up on top of me on the pavement.
Rodney steadied himself on his feet. His knife hand had swung out into nothing. I peeped round from behind Leanne’s ginger bun and saw him straighten up.
He stepped towards us and raised the hunting blade.
Mums and dads were shrieking and running. Some stopped to watch from across the road. No one was coming over. They were all looking at Rodney.
He swung at Leanne’s left side. She kicked out. I heard a zip as he slashed through her trackie bottoms.
She panted but didn’t yell. Her back flattened against my chest. She braced her hands on the ground, either side of me. Her body tensed. She let out her breath. She planted her slashed-up left foot, swivelled and whipped her hips round, kicking out with her right. Thwacking her trainie into Rodney’s chin.
He grunted and flipped over onto the pavement. He rolled over into the gutter. He stood and picked up his knife.
Leanne pushed herself up with one hand and faced him.
“Come ’ead then,” she said.
There were voices from the school end. Shouts from inside the fence. I got to my knees and looked over to the gate. One of the bizzies stepped out of sight into the playground. The other was running our way.
They left the entry bizzie-free.
Leanne was standing there eyeballing Rodney. He was coming at her now. The sun had popped out from behind a cloud. It caught the red hairs and freckles on her arm as she raised her fists.
I passed the bizzie coming the other way as I ran for the gate.
27
I looked through the railings into the playground.
Kids were going through into the school building, ahead and to the left. Some were taking a short cut through the gym to the classrooms. Mums and dads were milling around and passing in and out of the gate.
Dicey was crossing the middle of the yard. Hanzi was a few steps beyond her. They were heading for the gym doors on the far side.
“‘Ey, love.”
Dicey stopped. Someone else was coming towards her from the side.
“‘Ey.”
Blue overall.
Dicey stood still and sized him up. He turned and looked towards Hanzi. He raised his voice.
“’Ey, lad. Ey, come ’ere lad! Lad!”
Hanzi turned. He looked at the caretaker, then beyond him, at me. Something lit up in his eyes.
The caretaker followed Hanzi’s gaze and looked at me too.
While his head was turned, Hanzi started to move. This snakey look in his eye.
He reached with a hand for his chest. A silver grey flash. He lengthened his stride but didn’t slow. As he reached the caretaker, he took this little jump like he was running up to bowl. The feller turned back to him. Hanzi’s little arms windmilled into his chest with a thud and splat.
The caretaker went down.
It was quiet for a sec. Then a teacher started to scream.
Dicey slipped through the half-open door into the gym hall.
I ran after her.
There were chairs set up at the front for morning prayers. The classrooms were across the corridor on the far side. They’d shown me, back when we were getting Ali ready to start school. The kids gathered in class in the mornings so the teacher could tick their names off.
Dicey strode over the red tramlines on the floor, heading for the classrooms. I yelled at her. She turned and frowned.
She said nothing. Just raised her right hand with the deto in. Opened her fingers to show the little switch in her palm.
I started to leg it towards her. Didn’t get far. Something whacked me from behind. I tripped and fell, roaring and clutching my side. I rolled over, swabbing blood over the gym floor. I looked up.
Hanzi waggled the knife. Flicking it at me like a paintbrush. Flecks of my own blood spotted my face.
He held it out in front of him to keep me back. I lurched to my feet. My trainies slithered in the mess and I crunched down again, on my bad side. He span the knife round in his hand, stepped forward with it raised over his shoulder.
He came at me.
He had his eyes fixed on mine, but he blinked when the yard door banged behind him.
Hanzi took his eyes off me for the shortest sec.
I swept his leg.
I kicked myself backwards over in a somersault and rolled away. The gash in my side wrecked as I scrambled to my feet. Someone else was on Hanzi, wrestling him on the floor. He had no knife now. It had spun away across the floor.
I picked it up and ran.
The corridor was lined with kids’ coats on hooks and drawings along the walls. Some of them had real flowers and fir cones stuck
on them. One kid had drawn a red squirrel and made it a bushy tail out of dry pine needles.
I looked through the upper glass of the first classroom door. There were kids in there, milling around. A teacher in tights and boots was standing at the front by her desk. She caught my eye and froze.
I saw myself through her eyes. My dodgy bashed-up face. Basted with sweat and spotted with blood. A knife in my hand.
I went up to the door and peered in, moving my head left and right behind the glass. The teacher stepped towards me, shaking. The kids were quiet and still. There was no Dicey in there. I moved on.
Same deal in the next one. The teacher didn’t see me. She was chattering to the kids.
The third classroom was Ali’s.
They didn’t know what was going on.
I peered in through the glass.
Dicey was in there. But the kids weren’t running away screaming. They were gathered around her.
Little Ali.
He was among them, kneeling near Dicey on the floor.
Grey trackie bottoms, claret top. Leanne had cut his floppy mop short. He looked bigger, fatter. He looked well grown-up.
He was listening and laughing along with the others. Dicey was reading them The Gruffalo.
She wasn’t in a hurry. She had the switch up her sleeve. She could do it any time she wanted. She had enough kids sitting around her already. If any more heard the laughter and came to see, so much the better. If the pigs came, best of all. She’d take them too.
And sitting there in Ali’s class, she knew she’d draw me to her.
They didn’t know what was happening. They didn’t know who she was.
I watched them through the glass.
She looked at Ali as she read. Reached out and stroked his head. Smiled with her crooked teeth and twisted mouth.
I didn’t want Ali to see me the way I was. The way the others saw me. I didn’t know what I could do to stop Dicey touching him. But I couldn’t just stand there. I had to do like always. Just chuck myself in there and make a mess.
She was cuddling him. She still had her fleece on, zipped up over the vest. She had the story book in her left hand and her right around Ali. The other kids were craning their necks to see the book. The teacher was leaning on her desk and smiling. None of them were watching Ali. But I was.
House of Birds: Forget who you were before... (The Azo Coke thrillers Book 2) Page 13