“How d’you work that out?”
“She’s got somewhere to hide. Right, Sanky?”
He reckoned I’d be blown away by that. But I just yawned. I’d let the dreno trickle out, sitting in that comfy beamer. I wasn’t in the mood for more running around. Just wanted to be on the settee with a can of Burn and a Dime bar. Bit of Battlefield. Bit of a nap.
I flopped back against the headrest again.
“Soz, Paz, chief,” I said. “Paterson always told me to stay away from the bizzies.”
“And why’s that, la’? If they’re all on the same side?”
I opened my eyes. Stared up at the grey leather of the ceiling. Maybe I knew the answer. But I couldn’t think now. My brain wasn’t turning right.
“Paterson doesn’t want the pigs getting hold of Maya. Or you,” Pazzer said. “He doesn’t want them knowing about any of this. That’s why he sent me.”
I stared at the grains in the leather. My brain was freezing up.
There was something else, though. Below the mad, sloshy feeling in my head. Something in my chest and my gut.
Paterson was the one meant to be looking out for me. He’d had me sign those papers at the start. Like everything would be alright in the end. Like there was always a safety net somewhere down there in the dark, for me and Maya, even if we couldn’t see it.
I’d never asked too much about it, but I’d always thought that meant the bizzies. So if something went wrong, someone in the real world would have to answer for it. Someone like Paterson. Or if he was gone, someone behind or above him. Someone who was more or less a bizzie.
I didn’t like the thought. But it was all there was.
It wasn’t the bizzies though, was it. Paterson could rub shoulders with them, like I’d seen him do at the school. But that wasn’t for me and Maya. We were off the grid. To look after us, he had to hire the Toxteth mob.
Now I really felt loved.
Pazzer looked at me sitting there, daydreaming.
“Time to go, Az.”
I stretched and yawned. “Fuck that,” I said.
He pulled something out of his jacket and rested it in his lap. I rolled my head round to look.
A revolver. A Smithie.
Bit of class, eh.
“Well I’m scared now, aren’t I?” I mumbled. “You think you’re the first quiff to pull his cock out on me?”
He smiled. Around his eyes, pale wrinkles cracked out of his tan.
“May not be the first, lad,” he said. “But it’s the biggest. I’d tell you it won’t hurt but I’d be lying.”
I sighed. Looked out of the window at the conky shelter round the tunnel mouth. “Either of you got any ciggies?” I said.
“Once you’re done.”
“Cup of tea?”
He laid the Smithie on my thigh. His trigger finger stayed out of the guard, tapping the barrel.
“Do I get one of them?” I said.
He shook his head.
“Don’t tell me you’re giving me something bigger?”
“Sorry, matie. We’re short.”
I nodded towards Sanky. “Send him, then. He’s got one.”
“You don’t need one of these to bring some bird in.”
“Have you met Maya?”
He pressed my thigh with the gun. I looked down at it and then out of the car window again.
“You said tunnels?” I looked at Sanky. “So there’s more than one?”
He turned round and winked.
“And how d’you reckon Maya’s made it back?” I said.
“There’s tunnels the bizzies don’t know about,” said Sanky. “They run all the way to The Grace.”
30
Dark. No sound. Not even a drip. I flicked the light on my phone. Saw stuff I’d not spotted that first time in the tunnel with Sanky. Stuff left by the railside. Stacks of old bricks, pots and jars. Grains and knobbly streaks in the red stone walls.
I wondered how long it would take the bizzies to get down to the old slave hall and along here. Whether I’d run into them head-on. Which of us would get to Maya first, somewhere in the middle.
I put out the light. Looked and listened for sounds ahead. Nothing. But my ears weren’t the best.
I plodded along in the dark.
When I reckoned I was about halfway I stopped. Just stood. What was I doing there? It was daft. There was no sign of Maya. And if I went much further the bizzies would be on top of me.
No Paterson. Just bizzies. I knew what that meant now. He couldn’t save me from them. He wouldn’t.
He wouldn’t do it for Maya either.
That was up to me.
I walked on. There was nothing else to do. I was just waiting for something to jump out of the dark and swallow me up.
The colour of the darkness started to change. Creamy red seeping in. There was a glow up ahead as I neared the big vault. The bulbs were on.
I stopped again and listened. Still nothing.
The glow flickered and shifted. A light was moving down there.
I flattened my back against the wall of the tunnel.
The glow got brighter. It was moving towards me. I heard echoes. Footsteps.
Torches.
They were coming towards me.
There was another sound. Like footsteps but quicker, lighter, a kind of skittering sound. I heard the slink of a chain.
I breathed in to try and calm myself. I had a thing against dogs. Ever since that time the year before, with the Yank in the shipping crate.
I looked back the way I’d come. I couldn’t run off down there. Couldn’t see a thing. I’d trip and twat myself. I’d have to switch on my phone light. But then they’d see me.
I braced my back against the stone side of the tunnel.
Nowhere to hide.
That shady bellend Pazzer. I couldn’t believe I let him make me go down there. Like he would have shot me. That would have got him nowhere and he knew it. I’d been too mixed up in my head. I should have thought about it more clearly. Should have told him where to shove his posh gun.
Didn’t matter now though, eh. That dog would be along in a sec.
They’d all smell me if I stood there much longer cacking myself about it.
I started edging sideways along the wall of the tunnel, away from the light of the torches.
This awful sound. It filled the place. Jabbed into my eardrums and set my heart banging.
The dog was barking.
I turned to face down the tunnel and trotted forward. I should have put my phone light on. It wouldn’t have done much harm now. But I didn’t want to see the dog. The sound of it was bad enough.
I trotted faster. I was beside the rails, hoping I’d stay in a straight line, not trip over them. Under my feet, the earth of the tunnel floor, packed hard and flat. My feet scuffed on the odd brick and flagstone. A clink as I stepped on an iron chain.
I stopped for a sec and held my breath. Looked back. Yards behind, the torches seemed to go still as well. A voice muttered. I stood there.
Another clink. Not like the chain I’d stepped on. Lighter, more tinkly. The dog barked and I heard its pawsteps again, but faster. Heavier. A swishing, pattering sound.
They’d let it off the lead.
I ran faster. Slipped. Thrust my hands out in front of me to break my fall. Hard ground up against my knees and elbows. A din of clinking and rattling and breaking glass. Something cut into my chin.
I swore and groaned and pushed myself to my knees. I couldn’t hear the dog anymore, just the stash of old bottles ringing as they rolled around against each other. I got to my feet. Broken glass crunching under my trainies. Blood trickling down my chin onto my chest.
I turned to face the torchlight. Held out my hands to try and fend off the dog. Waited for the teeth on my forearm.
Something grabbed it. But it didn’t hurt. Firm, but not sharp. Warm and clammy.
A hand.
It tugged me away towards the wall and i
nto a shadow. And in, and in.
Something shifted and crunched behind me. The draft of the railway was cut off. We were leaving it behind. We were in another tunnel. Hotter, narrower. Sloping down.
The hand was round my wrist. It dragged me to my knees. I couldn’t see an inch in front of me in the black, but the ground was firm. The hand let go. We crawled. In and in. Deeper and down.
We stopped. I asked the hand where we were. Where we were going. No answer. No echo. No light.
No time.
I couldn’t find the way out. I crawled around on all fours, bumping my head into the wall, till I lay down on my front, knackered.
I fell asleep, drooling into the earth.
31
The hand pulled at the back of my shirt. I rolled onto my side. It tugged at my arm. I tried to reach out to steady myself on the ground as I got to my knees. But my wrists were cuffed behind me. I scrambled and jerked up.
The hand pushed my back. Forward a couple of steps. Then it switched to my shoulder and pushed me back down to my knees.
A light went on.
I tried to turn my head to look at her.
She squeezed a knife against my throat.
I stopped turning and looked ahead. She had Rodney’s big torch. She’d laid it on the floor in the corner, spilling light all up the wall and over the ceiling.
A dusty space, ten yards square.
A tunnel gave into it on the side we’d come through. It led off again at the far end, into the black.
A kind of cell. Like the ones we’d slept in back in the vault. The same red stone walls. Same rusty old chains running through rings. Black holdalls on the ground below them.
In front of me, a tripod, holding a phone sideways.
“Kinky,” I said.
“Up.”
I felt weak. Hungry.
“What time is it?”
“Up.”
I stood. She shoved my back. I took two steps forward.
“Down.”
I sank to my knees again.
Her palm touched the top of my head. Her fingers stroked it, then meshed in my hair. She rocked my head around in a circle. I watched it on the phone a few yards away. The top half of me, framed in the touchscreen.
“Look at the dot on the right,” she said.
I twisted my head round. I was level with her crotch.
“You’re doing it wrong,” I said. “My cock goes up there.”
She gripped my head tighter and twisted it back round to face the front.
“Come down here,” I said. “I’ll show you.”
She squeezed the blade. “Big lad,” she said.
I shrugged. I looked at myself on the screen. My manky t-shirt with poo-coloured bloodstains. I was a sad case alright. I was about to have my head sawn off and all I could do was make jokes about my cock.
I sighed. “So how did it go?” I said. “With Paterson?”
“You tell me.”
She let go and left me kneeling there. She walked over to the phone.
“He didn’t turn up?” I said.
She loosened a screw on the neck of the tripod. She twisted and jiggled it and tightened it again.
“I wanted to help you,” I said. “I wanted to keep you safe. Help you get free.”
She looked at me. “Then you should have let me have him.”
“He’d have had you first.”
She tapped the touchscreen in and out of focus. “I’ll have him next.”
I coughed. “Won’t you need help?”
“From you?”
She hadn’t pressed the red spot yet.
“So what’s this for?” I nodded at the phone. “The web?”
She shook her head. “The ones who asked for this. They want to be sure when you’re dead.”
“And if they don’t get it?”
“Then it’s me. Jala. Her kids in Syria.”
“The light’s shit in here, love,” I said. “You won’t catch a thing on there.”
She looked at me.
A sound came from the tunnel on the far side.
Jala came in.
I didn’t get who it was at first. Her miniskirt shone pale green in the torchlight. Her vest was pink. She had a white jewel winking in her belly button. Her arms caught the weak light of the bulbs overhead. She’d sprayed on glitter.
Her black hair was down on her shoulders.
She stopped a few paces away and looked at us. Her eyelids caked in black.
“Where do you plug your hairdryer in?” I said.
“There’s another safe house at the end of this tunnel,” Maya said.
“A what?”
“House. All these tunnels give out somewhere.”
“All?”
“Name a place in town. We’ll get you there. Or rather, don’t. You’d have bizzies up there waiting for us. But they can’t cover all the tunnels. There’s too many.”
“More like this?”
“We can get all over town in them. Or all under it.”
I looked at Jala. “Where do you think you’re going dressed like that?” I said.
Maya stepped in front of me. For the first time in months, she looked me in the eyes.
I held her gaze. My brain started to ache. I didn’t know how long I’d been down there. But I felt light-headed, like I’d been asleep for hours.
“What time is it?” I said.
“Clubbing time.”
I closed my eyes and shook my head.
I got it at last.
She looked the part at least. She must have seen a few English clubbers while she was in and out of Pazzer’s dive. Soon she’d be in there herself, dressed up just like them. Past the bouncers, across the dancefloor. Into the storeroom. Out of it again, into the dark passages of The Kingston with two guns and a vest of C4.
“Isn’t she going to wear a coat?” I said.
“A nice Scouse girl like her? She’d never wear a coat to a nightclub.”
I sniggered. Not at what Maya said. More at myself. Kneeling there in a dungeon, in front of a smartphone, so my ex-bird could cut my head off.
I was a joke.
“Well I hope she’s got my tea ready, before she goes.”
Even my jokes had stopped meaning anything.
“I want jam butties,” I said.
I listened to myself. Sniffed and shook my head. Tried to clear it. So it was evening. I’d been asleep for hours. It had just made me want more sleep.
I’d been half dozing off again there. Half dreaming. So much the better. It would save me from facing Maya. Stop me thinking about what I’d just done in the school.
I’d been dreaming about my mum. Why? I hadn’t thought about her for months. I was a broken record when it came to my dad, I knew that. But my mum? I hardly ever thought about her. I’d blocked her out ever since she’d run off on me that school night. Now she just popped in my head, like that. I must have been more touchy about her than I thought.
I couldn’t even remember what she looked like.
I sighed. I turned to Jala.
“Do you need a lift?”
Maya stepped forward and raised the knife. I flinched, jerked. She slapped my cheek with the blade.
“Don’t tell me she’s getting the bus,” I said.
Jala came up to me. She looked at my face.
She knew me from that day in the club. She knew it was her I’d been snooping on. I wondered whether she knew I was on her side.
I wanted to talk to her. But she didn’t understand a word I said. Where was Becky when you needed her?
I stared at Jala. I strained to make out her eyes in the gloom.
I shook my head. Turned back to Maya. “No one’ll be out tonight after what happened at Saint Rock’s,” I said. “They’ll all have shat themselves.”
She smiled. “Scousers miss a Friday night out? Never. They said it on the news. They’re telling everyone to get on with their lives.”
The two of them lo
oked at me.
“She thinks she’ll get her kids back after this?” I said.
“She’s got no choice.”
“I know how that feels.”
Maya linked her hands around Jala’s waist and hugged her. She pointed the way, off into the darkness.
She kissed her and let her go.
32
“Why did you come back?” Maya said.
“For you.”
It was true, eh. Not in the way she thought. But she didn’t need to know that. Anyway. I meant it in both ways. They’d made me go down there after her. But I liked to think I’d have come anyway.
I tried to twist my head round to look at her. She squeezed the knife against my throat.
“I know the stuff they taught you,” I said.
“No you don’t.”
“I got the same from Raz and Mossie.”
“Go on then.”
I coughed. Tried to think back to some of what Raz had taught us in the house of lads. What Mossie had said to me that first time I met him. And before that, to what those spods had taught me in training, in the posh jail.
“I know… There’s something that’s bigger than all of us. Something truer,” I said. “And we’ve got to give these folks here a kick up the arse about it. Teach them. They’ll not learn by themselves.”
She was frowning at me.
“See,” I said. “I have been listening.”
She tilted the blade against the skin of my neck.
“I’m not a teacher,” she said. “I’m here to fight my way out.”
I swallowed. My throat chunked against the knife.
“I was nothing before, here,” she said. “In Syria I was something else.”
“Something better?”
“Someone who can fight."
“What for?”
“For others like me. So they’ll not get treated the same.”
“So they’ll be looked after right. Like you’ve been.”
“Right. No one cared about me before.”
“I did. I do.”
“You did when I was stoned and randy.”
“I liked you as soon as I met you.”
“Then you made me meet him.”
“He came after me. I didn’t want to share you with him. I liked you. I felt better about myself. About everything. I thought you did and all.”
House of Birds: Forget who you were before... (The Azo Coke thrillers Book 2) Page 15