Concentr8

by William Sutcliffe

  ‘And he lives on the estate?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘So his family’s here?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Do they know he’s involved?’

  The kid shrugs.

  ‘Do you know where they live?’

  He turns to another boy, with a dark, round Somali face. ‘Where’d’s Blaze live?’

  The black kid examines me for a moment, as if he’s calculating something in his head. ‘How much?’ he says.

  All the boys laugh again. One of them, slapping a friend on the arm, says, ‘Yeah, man. How much. You tell her.’

  ‘Ten quid?’ I say.

  ‘Twenty.’

  ‘You have to take me. Not just tell me.’

  ‘Deal,’ he says.

  ‘I’ll pay you when we’re there.’

  ‘You don’t trust me?’

  ‘You don’t trust him?’

  ‘Why don’t you trust him?’

  ‘How do I know you won’t just run off?’

  ‘She don’t trust me!’

  ‘I don’t trust you!’ says his friend.

  More laughter. Without any real menace, the round-faced boy kicks the other kid on the thigh then turns and walks out of the playground.

  ‘Come on, then,’ he says to me.

  He walks off, and I follow. He doesn’t even glance back at me as he leads on through the estate. We cross a small area of broken paving stones dotted with overflowing dumpsters, past the incinerator, down a narrow road beside a long line of garages topped by three or four storeys of narrow-windowed concrete flats, the balconies festooned with laundry, children’s bikes, satellite dishes and semi-cast-off furniture. Some of the balconies are enclosed by metal bars. From the way the place is constructed, you’d think it was a settlement for thousands of cars, with human accommodation added on up high and out of the way, like the staff quarters in a hotel.

  There don’t seem to be any other pedestrians, or shops, or advertisement hoardings, which gives the place a dead feel that seems to match the idea of it being represented by an empty space on the map. It feels both fully inhabited and semi-abandoned, not like part of London at all. There isn’t even much graffiti, which I can’t imagine has much to do with civic pride. Perhaps this place doesn’t even seem worth defacing. The garage doors, unlike most garage doors in the city, are mostly untagged, though they are all scrawled with ‘DO NOT PARK HERE’ in drippy paint.

  One garage has a layer of mottled, slatted glass above it, bearing a message in yellow stick-on capital letters: ‘WENDOVER T&RA MEETING ROOM’. If the boy were next to me I might ask him what that means, but he’s still up ahead, maintaining a loping pace that somehow makes it clear he doesn’t want me to catch up and walk with him. He doesn’t turn round but he must be listening, because when I speed up, he speeds up, keeping the same few metres between us.

  When he comes to a high edifice of concrete, bearing a sign in a bulky Sixties typeface saying ‘MISSENDEN 166–255’, he makes a sharp turn, leading me down a wider street between two rows of low-rise red brick housing to which somebody seems to have tacked on plumbing as an afterthought. Pipes snake down the outside of the building spewing deltas of white scurf as if the entire building stopped weeping a while ago but never wiped away the tears.

  Around the next corner, a nine-storey concrete block appears in front of us, as long a football pitch. Our road curves to the right and goes underneath it, through a cavity painted lurid purple. The boy goes ahead, through the tunnel, without turning back.

  I pause for a moment and look around. There is nobody else on the street. Despite all the garages and all the parked cars, not one vehicle is moving. It occurs to me for the first time that this could be a trick. As far as I can see, I’m now alone. I can’t see into this tunnel, or through to the other side.

  In fact, I’m only assuming there is another side. This could just be a hollow under the building for rubbish or access, a hidden spot perfect for mugging. Or worse.

  Like one of those optical illusions that suddenly pops in your visual cortex, turning a young man into an old woman, I realise what I am doing, where I am, who I’m following. What appeared logical flips into foolhardy stupidity.

  I still have a choice. I can just turn and walk away, but if this kid means me any harm, he and his friends will find me and do whatever it is they want to do. I’m not even sure I know how to retrace my steps out of the estate. And if I just take off in a different direction, there’s no knowing where I’ll find myself.

  The boy doesn’t reappear from the tunnel. He’s either waiting for me in there, or he’s carried on. I sense that he knows I’ve stopped, and he must suspect what I’m thinking.

  It’s the memory of morning conference that pushes me on again. I’ve got that key in my hand. If I don’t push myself forward, find the lock, open the door, I may never get another chance. Journalism is a dying profession. If I want to keep my place I have to move on and up. Anyone who stands still is next in line for the sack.

  Fear attracts aggression, I mutter to myself. Fear attracts aggression.

  A few steps, and I can see through the tunnel. It’s the height and length of an articulated lorry. I can see light on the other side, and the boy is there, waiting for me. He isn’t moving, and his face is expressionless, cast downward, neither looking at me or not looking at me.

  There’s something sinister, cat-like, in this stillness, this patience. I can still run away.

  But I walk on, through the urine-smelling purple hollow. As soon as he sees that I’m coming, the boy turns away and keeps on walking. A pulse of relief radiates through my chest. If he wanted to jump me, this was the spot for it.

  I emerge in an oval cul-de-sac surrounded with more garages, topped by a concrete walkway along a building of four layers: doors, balconies, wall, windows. In the middle, a row of sickly trees is growing out of a patch of scrubby, densely packed soil.

  Above me, I see something that makes my spirits plummet. Halfway down the nearest balcony, outside one of the doors, is a crowd, sipping coffee from takeaway cups, chatting, fiddling with laptops and cameras. Journalists.

  When I turn, the boy is next to me, with his hand out and a smirk on his face.

  ‘Twenny,’ he says.

  ‘You never told me there were other journalists here!’

  ‘You never aksed.’

  ‘It’s asked, not aksed,’ I snap.

  He shrugs. ‘Twenny.’

  I hand him the money and he walks away. There barely seems any point in continuing, but since I’m there, I decide to press on.

  The men outside the door nudge one another and quietly laugh at me as I approach. I’m not sure how, but it’s obvious that I’m broadsheet and they’re red top. I should have known these guys would be here before me. They specialise in this kind of stuff. They can find anyone, anywhere.

  They give me a sarcastic round of slow applause, hailing me with mocking congratulations at the speed with which I’ve found the flat. I don’t respond.

  There was nothing on any news sites when I set off, but it’s probably up there for anyone to see now. I was dreaming if I thought I could be the first. The only thing I can do now is put a note through the door, but I’m bagless. I don’t have pen or paper. All I can find is my taxi receipt.

  The whole crowd of guys is watching me and they know exactly what I’m thinking.

  ‘Ain’t you got a pen?’ says one of them.

  ‘She don’t even have a pen!’

  More laughter, some genuine, some rasping and forced out for the pleasure of putting me in my place.

  One of the photographers passes me a biro, to the sound of groans and a wolf whistle.

  I scribble out the taxi driver’s writing and on the back scrawl down my name, newspaper, phone number and the words ‘CALL ME’. As I shove the scrap of paper through the tiny, stiff letterbox, there’s another little ripple of laughter.

  ‘What you offering? Two pound fifty in
Argos vouchers?’

  ‘A bag of crisps?’

  ‘Ticket to the ballet?’

  I don’t know what these papers will have offered, but it’ll be thousands, tens of thousands, just for any kind of interview. I feel so ridiculous I can’t make eye contact with a single one of them. Rushing away would seem like an acknowledgement of my humiliation, so I slip to the edge of the crowd and take out my phone, typing into it as if I’m engrossed in sending an important message.

  A voice calls out asking if I’m trying to get another Argos voucher out of my editor, but I pretend not to hear.

  Then, after a few minutes, something extraordinary happens. The door opens – just a crack – held firm by a fastened security chain. There’s a moment of panicked silence, followed by frantic activity as shutters click and whirr. A black face – sort of young, sort of middle-aged – is visible in the dimly lit space between the wood-veneer door and its chipped, metal-reinforced frame. A cacophony of questions is hurled at her. She flinches under the onslaught, and when she eventually speaks, she seems to say just a couple of words, both of them entirely inaudible.

  The crowd hushes. A barrage of microphones and Dictaphones almost obscures her from view. She speaks again.

  ‘Who’s Amanda?’ she says.

  For a moment, I’m too shocked to respond. After a puzzled silence, I say, ‘It’s me,’ and step forward.

  A hand comes out through the gap and passes me a scrap of paper. The instant it is in my grasp, the door closes.

  On the paper is a number, scrawled in blue ink. Five plumply inscribed digits, then below that six more. A mobile phone number. I close my fist, concealing it from view, and look up. Every person there is staring at me, jaw open.

  ‘What is it?’ says one of them.

  ‘Good luck, fellas,’ I reply, with a mock-sympathetic smile, before turning on my heel and walking away. Except that I’m not really walking, it’s more like floating, because at this moment gravity just can’t touch me.

  One mother was told that her son did not really need Ritalin, but her physicians suggested to her that ‘to please the school, why don’t you give him them anyway?’

  Matthew Smith, Hyperactive: The Controversial History of ADHD

  LEE

  I swear weirdest thing of all is it’s boring

  yeah it’s the maddest thing we ever done by miles but it’s on and on now day after day

  no TV no Xbox I swear I’m bored

  explored everywhere nothing left to find nothing left to smash just some old bloke tied to a radiator needing to be taken for pisses all the time

  and Blaze makes me go on lookout up at the top window and I don’t even know what for cause there’s nothing to see

  Femi don’t turn up for his shift this afternoon so I just give up and go down and he ain’t there but then he comes in with Blaze and Matchstick from out back with a weird look on his face like someone’s died

  nobody says nothing so I don’t go back and Femi don’t either so maybe Blaze has realised the lookout’s pointless

  and after that nothing happens literally nothing so I go up to the big room what’s got nothing left in it except that massive wooden table that you can’t get out the door but I’m thinking it must have got in

  so I go for it using it like a battering ram until one of the doors comes off the hinges then I’ve got it out on the balcony and I just keep pushing and pushing right up to the railings and I push some more up up up and I shout a warning then over it goes

  BOOOOM!

  and I look down and it ain’t even smashed it’s just at a weird angle kind of sad with two broken legs at one end and a crack down the middle

  and the others is looking up at me not saying nothing just the same look on all their faces like what was the point of that?

  so I laugh but it don’t sound right it’s kind of embarrassed

  then I go down and nothing else happens and then it’s dark and there’s no drinking no music no messing about nothing we all just get out the boxes that’s like our beds and lie down

  boring

  This sudden emergence of a genetic disorder is puzzling . . . Naughty and disruptive children have doubtless always existed. In the past their unruly behaviour might have been ascribed to poor parenting, poverty, impoverished schools, or unsympathetic teachers . . . Now we blame the victim instead; there is original sin in them there genes.

  Steven Rose, ‘Neurogenetic determinism and the new euphenics’, BMJ

  BLAZE

  Don’t sleep. Never sleep. Specially not on that sofa, man, no room, not enough space, Karen all stretched out hogging it all. Wouldn’t be no different without her, though, I just ain’t a sleeper, never have been. Too much to think about, too many voices, talk talk talk, too much to figure out. Not crazy voices, not schizo shit, just my own head chatting away won’t ever shut up. No off switch. Don’t know how everyone else does it, wish I did.

  Can’t just lie there all night not sleeping, drives you mental.

  I get up, stretch, scratch, do that thing with my neck what makes it click and eases some of the stiffness. It’s hot in here, man, day and night, always hot.

  Look down at Karen, naked on that shitty sofa, one arm hanging down towards the floor. She got an awesome body, just the swooping shape of it I swear it’s proof there’s a God right there, cause you can’t imagine nothing better, nothing you’d rather see. So peaceful, just lying there right in front of me, but in her head she’s miles away, somewhere so quiet and calm I can’t never get there. I go in proper close to see what it looks like. Tiny pool of sweat in the V at the bottom of her neck, going up and down with each breath. I want to lick it up but ain’t fair to wake her so I don’t. Her eyes is flicking left right left, you can see the bulge under the eyelid where they move, she away somewhere chasing something, all busy, doing I don’t know what, and probably she’ll never know, neither. Whole eyeball seems to go in deeper, sink into her head when she’s asleep. Robs her of something, it’s almost a dead look to her face. Ain’t the same her, without all that front, without the chat and the attitude, it’s like she’s almost hollow, you know?

  She’s fine, she’s as fine a woman as I’m ever going to get, but I don’t know, there’s something not there and you can see it when she’s asleep, see what’s missing. The way she looks, all fox, it’s a mask, ain’t it? Blinds you to what’s underneath, and with Karen I sometimes think there ain’t nothing underneath. Not literally nothing, but nothing for nobody else. Nothing real, nothing proper real so when you look at her you’re actually seeing her and she’s actually seeing you, like a real connection, that’s what you don’t get. Ain’t complaining, just telling it how it is.

  I lean closer, put an ear on her, all gentle so she don’t wake. It’s so late, so quiet, I can hear it perfect, the badum badum badum on and on, all day and all night, just inside under the skin. Amazing, when you think about it. We all got one, goes on and on, never getting tired, never fussing about whatever crazy shit is going on all around, just badum badum badum till one day it stops and you’re dead.

  Only seen a dead man once, it was a stabbing at a party. Can’t never forget it. When you seen that you don’t never forget, I tell you dead eyes got a look what cuts into you like a shank, it’s like staring into the coldest, darkest, furthest thing you ever seen and you know it’s the worst place and we’re all going there, we all got our time coming. Never felt mine was far away, neither. Always felt like it was just round the next corner, always, now more than ever. I ain’t afraid of much, ain’t afraid of no man, but I’m afraid of that.

  Ain’t good, thoughts going dark this time of night. This is the dead hour when all the worst things come back, memories I can’t let in, bitter fantasies, revenge that ain’t never going to happen on the people what messed with me, just bullshit chasing itself round and round my head till I’m dizzy and more awake than ever.

  I pull on my Calvins, walk out. Got to move somewhere, do something,
keep my head straight.

  Down the stairs, creaky rusted metal with a row of little holes in each step to stop you slipping, harsh on bare feet, then concrete at the bottom, flat, cool and proper nice. Need to watch out for nails and glass but it’s worth it to feel that cold concrete on the skin.

  Lee’s got the armchair for once. Always after a go in the armchair, makes him feel important, but nobody wants it at night so he gets it. His mouth’s open like always, chin lolling to the side. Femi’s on a pile of flattened-out boxes over by the door, across it so nobody can come in without waking him. Troy’s doing the same at the doorway where the hostage is.

  I go over and it’s weird watching Troy sleep. Ain’t never seen it before. He looks even smaller than normal, even more like something what might just break at any moment. Only time I ever seen him relaxed, not alert, not looking around for where the danger’s heading in from. He’s wired up well tight, Troy, so tight on a frame what don’t seem strong enough for it. Don’t know when but some day it’ll all snap – just collapse – can’t live a whole life the way he does, it ain’t possible.

  I step round him and go in to the hostage. Troy loosens him at night, gives him some cardboard for a pillow, but he don’t really look asleep. Something in his eyes. They’re shut but they ain’t flicking like Karen’s, aren’t sunk in or far away, and his breathing ain’t sleep breathing, I can just tell, even though his eyes are closed and he ain’t moving.

  I go up and poke him with my toe. He don’t move but his eyelids flash open, terror right there, straight away. Feels good to stand over him, naked except my Calvins, and he got to look up at me towering over him, cause I’m buff, I’m ripped, it’s just a fact, and he’s this lardy little white guy and I don’t need to say nothing, just look at him, stare at him, and he knows what’s what. Don’t need to speak, less I say the better. Just wake him, stare, freak him out. It’s beautiful.

  He’s mine. Ain’t never known nothing like it in my whole life. He’s mine.

  Sometimes just yesterday or the day before disappears like it was never even there, but the day we took the guy, that’s so strong in my head I can walk up to it and touch it, feel it, glossy and crisp like the front of a magazine. It was a beautiful day, perfect, the sky all bluest blue, criss-crossed with plane tracks. Days like that I always look up for the plane tracks, follow them across the sky, wondering where they’re going, wishing it was me.