House of Birds: Forget who you were before... (The Azo Coke thrillers Book 2)

by Roland Lloyd Parry

  She eased the knife but kept my hair in her fist.

  “Perhaps I should go to Syria too,” I said.

  “Perhaps you should.”

  I swallowed again.

  “Is this payback for your mum?” I said.

  I couldn’t see her face.

  “I told you that wasn’t me,” I said.

  “You’re working for him.”

  “Not anymore.”

  “Who’s paying you then?”

  There was that, wasn’t there. Just four hundred quid a month in cash I got from Paterson. But I got the flat off Lodge Lane for free. On top of the dole.

  If I cut loose from Paterson, I’d lose it. And I’d not be able to pick up my dole money if he was hunting for me. I’d have to vanish for good.

  I’d have nothing.

  Maybe then she’d trust me at last.

  “Fuck him,” I said. “I’d rather have you.”

  The teeth of the knife prickled on my neck.

  “That Dicey,” I said. “You’re better than her. Without her, you can be a good person.”

  “This is getting good.”

  I’d been trying not to think about Dicey. But I couldn’t shut her out for ever, could I. If I was going to be straight with Maya, I’d have to tell her.

  Who knew, maybe talking about it would make me feel better and all.

  “I did her for you,” I said.

  Maya took the knife away. I felt her looking down at me. I twisted my head round to see her.

  “I left her dead on the classroom floor.”

  She put her palm over her mouth.

  She kneeled beside me. Reached out with one hand and touched the side of my face. She gave this hard, sad little laugh.

  “Oh, Azo,” she said.

  I shuffled round on my knees to face her. She switched the knife from one hand to the other and raised it, keeping me back.

  I froze. She’d learnt a few things in Syria. While I’d been forgetting everything I’d been taught.

  “Do you do that for all the girls you fancy?” she said.

  “Eh?”

  “I guess with your dad it was all for you."

  “It was him or you.”

  “And with your mum?”

  “Eh?”

  “Her or you, eh? Cos she’d never let you get away with doing him.”

  “Fuck off.”

  “Raz never told you?” she said.

  I stared at her.

  She moved closer with the knife.

  I felt that school-morning sickness again. Like I’d felt on the pavement by Saint Rock’s. Like I’d had that time when the yank spook was working on me. Telling me all about my dad, the dodgy Iraqi interpreter. And my mum. The goodie English nurse.

  I was just Azo.

  I was Ali’s dad.

  I was Dicey’s son.

  No, I hadn’t known it. Deep down? Deep down where? How could I?

  Fuck off. Regret? That didn’t mean anything anymore, with what I was. With what I’d become. I was all I had. I was all there was. Regret doesn’t come into it for lads like me. Could have had this, could have done that. Could have had a mum? I didn’t though, did I?

  Could have, could have.

  Fuck could have. Fuck regret. I had no room left. Not with everything I had to regret already.

  Maya’s knife touched my neck.

  Dicey. All this time I’d been scratching my head trying to work out what drove her.

  It was me that drove her.

  When I did my dad. Just when she thought she was getting him back.

  I could have told her what a tit he was. How he wasn’t worth it. We could have worked together. Me and my mum.

  Then maybe I was wrong. She knew him better than I did.

  Too late now, eh. It was too late for a lot of things.

  It was always too late.

  I couldn’t hear what Maya was saying. This frothing, chuffing noise filled my ears. I could hardly see anything. Just this tunnel from my eyes, with the red dot on the phone screen at the end of it.

  I eased my head back a tad, opening up my neck to the knife.

  I heard Maya’s footsteps moving away. A soft bong as she pressed the red circle. A few more steps and she was behind me again with my hair in her fist.

  She tugged me around to face the lens. She yanked my head up and back.

  I closed my eyes and tried to breathe steady.

  My mind was somewhere else. I didn’t feel the thoughts come. But I heard my own voice, all faint over the bubbling in my head.

  “I mean it,” the voice said. “About Paterson. I’ll help you do him.”

  “You’d not last five minutes without him.”

  “That’s better than none.”

  I couldn’t feel the knife on my skin anymore. I glimpsed the blade in the gloom.

  “You got a laptop?” my voice said.

  “Eh?”

  “I’ve got something on him.”

  “What do I care?”

  “He set up Jala and Hanzi. He was the one who had them sent to the church group. He put Hanzi in the school.”

  “Why?”

  “He wanted them to try and hit it again. Then he swoops in at the last minute to stop it. Shows everyone how bad these refugees are. How he’s the one to keep everyone safe.”

  “Says who?”

  “Becky. He’s got her stitched up in it too.”

  She was quiet.

  The knife was gone. My head buzzed. My ears rang.

  My eyes cleared.

  “What happened?” I said. “After you went to find him in The Grace.”

  She brought her face close to mine.

  “He wasn’t there,” I said. “Why?”

  Quiet.

  “He was at Saint Rock’s instead,” I said.

  She looked over at the phone.

  “He did your mum so he could get his hooks in you,” I said. “Now he’s had me do mine.”

  “He likes orphans.”

  The blade touched my neck.

  My eyes closed, slunked up in their sockets. I heard myself talking again.

  “We can have him,” I said. “We’re the only ones who can.”

  She was quiet for a sec. Then she sighed. This long, painful, vacuum-bag hoon, in and then out. The blade squeezed.

  “We’d all love to do Paterson,” she said. “Can’t get near him though, can we?”

  “Becky can.”

  She sniffed in, long and hard.

  “Paterson thinks he’s got Becky,” I said. “We’ll get to him through her.”

  “You trust her?”

  I nodded. Becky had looked after me in the cell. She’d done stuff she didn’t have to do. Maybe she was too kind. That was the worst you could say.

  “She does daft things sometimes,” I said. “But I can handle her.”

  “So I need you?” Maya said.

  “Right.”

  “You’d say anything right now.”

  “Maybe. But there’s other things I want too.”

  I heard a soft scratching sound behind me. Maya was rubbing her eyes. Her head.

  The blade stayed where it was, cold on my throat.

  I held my breath, reached up and touched her hand.

  “Save it for him,” I said.

  She lowered the knife. Stood facing me for a minute. The blade hung twitching in her hand.

  She sheathed it on her belt. Walked over to the tripod.

  “So what else are you after?” she said. “Once you’ve saved your neck?”

  “There’s something you can do for me.”

  “You dirty sod.”

  “No. About Jala.”

  She stared at me.

  “Call her off,” I said.

  Maya stood dead still.

  “We’ll get her kids back,” I went on.

  I felt the rage and heat from Maya’s body. It pulsed towards me.

  “I don’t know how,” I said. “But not like that.” />
  I spread my arms wide as I kneeled there.

  “Do Paterson. I’ll help you,” I said.” But don’t do any more Scousers.”

  She took the phone out of the holder on the tripod. Looked at the screen, turned it off. Slipped it in her jeans pocket.

  She looked over her shoulder.

  A noise from up the tunnel.

  Voices. Bossy, bizzie-sounding ones, moving down the hole towards us.

  Maya was in front of me. She touched my wrist. Pulled me up.

  “Call her off,” I said again.

  “Ssh.”

  I steadied myself on my feet. I heard Maya moving around, grabbing her things.

  The clouds cleared from my eyes one pixel at a time. I looked around. Blackness. The torch was out. The phone was off.

  Her hand closed around my wrist. She pulled me sideways and after her.

  A space opened up. A tunnel peeled off into the dark, behind a bulge of brick. Off the way Jala had gone.

  I couldn’t see an inch in front of me in the black. But Maya was leading me. Our footsteps filled the space. Our breath.

  The ground sloped down. My shoulders scuffed the sandstone on each side. The tunnel narrowed. Tightness and dark.

  Paterson worked in the darkness. But I was born in it. I lived in it. Killed in it.

  No more.

  I heard a voice. Not mine this time. And not out loud. In my head. It sounded like my dad’s.

  Don’t look so shocked, it said. Liverpool’s full of tunnels. Everyone knows it. We just never dare go down them. Where’s the fun in that?

  Praise For Author

  “Fantastic... A cracking spy thriller with a highly original voice. Like Callan or Harry Palmer updated for counter-terror in the 21st century - and gripping from start to finish. I can't wait to read more of Azo Coke.”

  - Jeremy Duns on "House of Lads"

  Books By This Author

  House of Lads

  Show them whose side you're on...

  A fight in a Liverpool pub wrecks it all for Azo Coke, a pizza-delivery man and petty delinquent. He’s staring at jail time and they will not let him see his little boy, Ali.

  Azo knows how a boy needs a dad - his own left when he was a child and he has felt lost ever since.

  But on the night Azo is arrested, the shadowy spymaster Paterson walks into his cell. Work for me, Paterson says, and I will wipe your slate clean. The job: spying on a gang of violent extremists, led by Raz, a sadistic mercenary-turned-arms dealer.

  Raz has gathered a squad of homeless misfits under his roof and is training them for an attack - among them Maya, a disturbed hacker on the run for bank fraud. Azo falls in love with her - but Paterson has plans for Maya too.

  Forced to play along with Raz, Azo does what he must to stay alive and protect his son: informing on the gang while fighting to keep his real identity hidden. But his cover is starting to unravel.

  Once the Liverpool docks were called the warehouse of the empire. Now, Azo discovers, they’re a gateway for fighters seeking to attack Britain. His bloody mission through the city’s underworld lays bare a deadly plot and the terrifying truth of who Azo and his long-lost father really are.

  House of Lads is the first in a series of explosive Azo Coke thrillers by Merseyside-born writer Roland Parry, told in Azo’s unforgettable voice - as hard-boiled as Raymond Chandler, as gritty and irreverent as Irvine Welsh and as topical and suspenseful as Mark Dawson.

  COMING SOON

  AZO COKE WILL RETURN IN "HOUSE OF DOGS"