by Steve Tasane
“It’s mine by rights,” he says, with a smile, “but you know what? The Digit don’t have much need of money. He has all he needs – donated by generous friends. You have it, Alfi-Boy. I reckon you need it.” He tucks it into me breast pocket. “Come on, Angel-Face, Virus has got beddybyes all set up for you.” He tugs us up. He’s right. I’m shattered. I throw me arm round his shoulder, pretending I’m too tired to lift meself. He struggles to hold us up, giggling at me big fake yawns.
Grace appears, gives him a hand lifting me. She whispers in his ear, private-like, but I catch it. “So,” she says, “another one of yours, Didge?”
“It must be you, Grace,” says Digit, “you’re magnetic, ain’t you, to us Tender Boys.”
Tender Boys.
I’m between ’em, wi’ me arms round their shoulders, pretending to sleepwalk up to me room. I’m only half pretending, en’t I? Grace pulls back the duvet, while the Citizen takes off me shoes and lifts me legs up onto the bed. Dead comfy.
Grace leans down, all smiley-eyed. “Alfi,” she whispers, “I got sumfink for yer. I think yer might ’ave misplaced it.”
Me birth certificate. She must o’ fished it out o’ me old clothes. How did she know?
She fixes us a look, like no one’s ever given us before, like she can see right inside us. “Seems your mum must have bookmarked you as her Favourite Number One.”
I dunno what to say. No one’s ever said owt like that to us before. She pushes me birth certificate into me palm and squeezes me fingers around the folds.
“Keep it safe,” she says. “It’s proof of yourself.”
It’s who I am.
Grace knows. She looks into me eyes. Sees me.
“Don’t let no one delete it.”
Her and the Digit share a look, like they know summat, and both their eyes flick back at the other room, towards Mr Virus, just for a second, like they’ve played the best trick o’ the night – on him.
She turns round, skipping back, hair bouncing. She turns her head, gives us one last look. “Pleasant dreams … Alfi Spar.”
5. MAN AND DOG
Alfi Spar suffers from a humour haemorrhage. He ain’t even ticklish. How Grace has managed to get Grumbly Guts giggling along with the rest of us is proof she’s a proper Mary Pop-in.
Trisha and Dee used to tickle my feet, when I was still Byron. Even though they always watched out for me, ’cos they were older, they’d still tease. As a matter of actual fact, they’d tickle my feet with feathers. Trish would hold me down while Dee unlaced my footies, unrolled my socks, and then they tortured me. Other times, we’d play Garden Gorilla and I’d chase them up the tree and wouldn’t let them down. Before Mum dropped out of the picture and Dad moved in down the pub.
After me and Grace put Angel-Face Spar to bed for the night – sleepybyes, soon as his head hit the pillow – Virus got down to serious busyness, fidgeting with his gadgets, trying to figure out what online accounts he can hack at. He ain’t called Virus for nothing. All the shoplifting is just for daily spends. Hacking is his real investiness. He sets up his swotboys at their laptops to begin their nightshift, while me and Tex set about licking clean whatever’s left of the grubbings. Our job is to bring the gear in. We avoid the tedious shiftwork: cracking access codes, guessing passwords, so Virus can spread his technoworms.
Grace is sitting there, agitated. It’s catching. Virus is agitated too. And Tex. We’ve all caught agitateditis. There’s only one individ who spreads illwill as rapidly as this, and the Citizen knows full well who that is.
After a while, there’s a hammering. It’s the coded rhythm, as banged by a mob of toddlers on a sugar high.
“Jackson,” says Grace, getting up.
She unbolts the door and it crashes wide open, smashing against the wall, almost giving her a faceful.
He never enters a room quietlike.
Jackson Banks stromps in, a boy with a limp on one side of him, a dog with a torn ear on the other. JB gives a slow glance round the room, like he’s looking for someone to play with. He’s got the thumb of one hand hooked into the pocket of his strides, casualitylike, but the ring fingers of his right hand are clenched tight. He’s got four rings, glistening, twenty-four-carat diamond knuckle-dusters.
His boy is called Crow, a sore-faced, skinny kid with a jutting, sulky lip. He’s got a scar running down his face, and it ain’t no fancy one like Harry Potter’s, just an ugly scribble. The dog, Obnob, is of the permanently shifty variety, his ragged ear all torn, like he lost a bit of it in a fight.
Word of advice: never put your hand down to give him a stroke.
Jackson wraps an arm round Grace’s waist and pulls her into him for lipsmacks. In his other hand he’s got his gym bag, bulging with loot.
“Intercom system’s bust,” he grins. Bust, as in smashed to smithers. Anything Jackson Banks lays his fingers on seems to disintegrate.
“I do wish you wouldn’t do that, Jackson,” says Virus.
“If I can, the Sherlocks can.” Like that settles the matter. His nostrils twitch in the direction of the table, where Tex is mopping up the last of the egg with a slice of bacon. “Meat.” Jackson appropriates a smile.
Jackson Banks is one of those peeps who’s got a shark of a smile. It’s like his gnashers are the real him, his lips are just clothing, like a jacket for teeth.
“I’m sorry, Jackson, you’re a little too late. Twenty minutes ago we had a feastful.” Virus shrugs sorrylike.
Obnob snarls, leaps onto a chair, then right up onto the table, shoving his maw into Tex’s plate.
“Oi!” Tex makes a grab at the plate and the dog bites his hand. He continues snarfing, growling and gobbling stimulatiously.
Tex’s hand drips red fingerjuice on the tabletop and Virus tsks. “Does it have to? Its claws are scratching the finish.”
Jackson laughs, like it’s the funniest thing since armpit farts. He flings his arm across the table, clearing it of dog and plate with one swipe. The plate shatters on the floor. As Jackson chuckles, Obnob rolls back onto his feet, gives a dirty, big bark and lunges for Jackson’s boot, clanging his canines against the steel toecaps.
“Crow.” Jackson addresses his boy. The dog instantly drops his grip and scurtles towards a corner. The Digit’s seen this before. Crow reaches a hand down his tracksuit bottoms – the limping side – and produces a crowbar almost the length and width of his own leg, and hands it to Jackson.
For your inf, this is why he’s known as Crow and why he appears to have a limp. He carries that crowbar everywhere. It’s Banks’s main housebreaking tool, so he wants it close by, but not too close, in case the Sherlocks take an interest.
Jackson Banks hurls the crowbar at his dog, which ducks behind a chair just in time, where he sits and grizzles. Jackson applauds. “Who’s a clever boy?” he clucks. “Who’s a good boy?”
Then he shifts his gaze back to Crow. “Fetch it then.”
Crow scurries across the room to place the dangerous weapon back in its righteous place. He limps back to Jackson’s side. “Good boy.” JB pats him on the head.
Sufficient to say, Citizen Digit always avoids making himself a playmate of Mr Jackson Banks.
Banks is the only one of Virus’s acquaintances who don’t bother with no pseudo-name. Everybody knows Jackson Banks. He parades himself round in broad daylight regular as the 29 bus. He don’t need no invisibility. Who’s going to grass him up? Who’d dare? Jackson’s a regular Gym Bunny, got muscles on his nipples. Looks like one of those peeps who tows tractors with a bit of string hooked through his lower lip. Addicted to steroids, cortisone and human growth hormone, is Jackson Banks. The Lance Armstrong of burglars. He actually injects testosterone, and worst of it is, he injects his dog as well. They share the same needle. The Digit’s seen it.
“Goodies.” Jackson picks up the gym bag and deposits its innards all across the table, like Bad Santa. Virus grimaces as a pile of iPads, iPods, laptops and phonies make fresh scratches
on his polish. Jackson tosses the empty bag aside. He likes gym bags, on account of their consistency. They look the same empty as they do stuffed. Handy, if you’re a housebreaker.
“How much?” he asks Virus.
Virus is squinting and tut-tutting over the stash, making mumblings about outdated this and old-school that and prehistoric thingy and redundant whosits, writing down figures on a scrap of paper. All the while, Jackson is chuckling away to himself, like he’s remembering one of his own jokes. Grace is smiling along with him, dutiful girlfriend, like he’s R-Patz instead of the Wolfman’s uglier brother. Finally, Virus totes it all up and hands Jackson the paper.
Jackson looks at it, snorts, scrunches it up, then eats it. When he’s done, he burps and looks round the room like he’s expecting applause. Then he smiles back at Virus and repeats, “How much?”
Virus mutters in reply. Ain’t a satisfactory answer. Jackson snarls.
“J,” says Grace, softlike. He glares at her, like she’s spoken out of turn, his humour all gone. She looks away.
“Aaah…” Virus attempts a smile. “You’re in a playful mood tonight, Mr Banks, but I can assure you this figure is more than fair. Most of these items are so outdated as to be practically worthless. I’ll get hardly anything for them in the shop.”
“Ain’t the items, Fairy Cakes – it’s wot’s in ’em.”
Banks is right. Selling these electronic toys is a mere sideshow. Virus specializes in sucking them dry of their data. His icepick mind can hack into anything. If you’re misfortunate enough to have one of your gadgets fall into his whiter-than-whites, you’ll find an email sent to all your friends saying you’re stranded in Strandenovia with a lost wallet and need hundreds of dosh put into an emergency bank account pronto. Et cetera, et cet. He’ll suck your gizmo dry like a cyber-vampire, then sell the empty plastic shell on the shop floor.
It’s tidiness itself.
But that ain’t even the beginning of it for old V. What gives him the deepest shivers of delight is mental torture and blackmail. The Digit has seen it in action, ain’t he? Seen Virus at work on one of his hacked accounts, and had the privilege of being talked through the process. Which goes like this: just suppose yourself to be – for one half a mo – a mappily harried Groan, with a well-respected job – schoolteacher maybe – and lovely kids – Olivia and Jeremy, say – but you’ve got a few dirty little habits. Unsavioury websites you like to visit now and again. Supposing one of your FB “friends” sends you a message, about how they know all about it, and wouldn’t it be a shame if your wife was to find out, or your kiddlies, or your boss, or all your other FB friends. But don’t worry, that’ll never happen … and maybe you could do this “friend” a small favour, a weekly financial outgoing that needs addressing….
It’s a Privacy Tax, ain’t it? A hi-tech Protection Racket. Virus gets the regular weekly payment, but – and this is his real job satisfaction – also the knowledge that said respectable Pillow of Society is quaking in their boots at the fear of being uncovered as the perverated individ they really are.
Nothing gives Mr Virus more delight than to twist the twisted.
The Cash Counters buying and selling trade is just a front. Even so, Virus hates parting with his hard-earned. He wants to haggle some more. “Banks by name, banks by nature,” he smiles. But when JB matches his smile with his own sharkful, he adds, “All right, all right – add another fifty.”
“Hundred.”
“Fifty, and I’m swizzling myself.”
“Swizzle. Swizzle. Like it. I like it. Let’s play Swizzle.” Banks waggles his fingers, like Swizzle is something fingers do to other body parts.
Virus offers up a small laugh. “Old friends,” he chuckles gratingly. “As we’ve been acquaintances such a long and lustrous time, let’s agree on sixty.”
“Seventy. Or I get me crowbar and we’ll have a game of Bishbash. Posh dinin’ furniture an’ all.”
The Great Manager gives a small clap. “Well, then, I think we have ourselves a deal.”
Banks holds out his hand, fingers all a-flap for the cash.
“Ah, now, dear Jackson, you know as well as I do that Cash Counters empties its coffers at closing time. No Cash Is Kept on the Premises Overnight, yes?”
Jackson Banks snaps his teeth together, snippety snap. “Listen, Fairy Cakes, I want money.”
The Digit has seen these exchanges before. JB always wants cash. Virus never wants to part with it. Jackson threatens Virus while pretending he ain’t. And Virus hands over the cash.
“Jackson…” Virus squeaks.
“Crinkle,” Jackson says. “Thick roll of crinkle.” He waggles his tongue in Virus’s general direction. “Please,” he whispers, making his tone all high-pitched like a girl’s. “Pretty please?”
Virus croaks and reaches inside his pocket. Course, he could always zap JB, couldn’t he? But he wouldn’t dare. Even at maximum voltage, Jackson could snap Virus’s neck in a millisec. So Virus fumbles with his wallet and hands over a wad of notes. “There’s half there,” he says. “That’s all there is. You’ll have to come over for the rest tomorrow.”
Jackson winks at Virus, all conspiratorial. “We know otherwise, don’t we, V? All about your special savings account, hey?”
“Don’t know what you mean,” Virus says, in a grump.
Mr Banks lets it drop. He smiles his fangful smile and pockets the cash. “Grace’ll come tomorrow. Don’t disappoint.”
Virus looks like he don’t know which is offended most, his scratched tabletop or his wallet.
And what is Citizen Digit doing during all this, you may well ask? I’m sitting quiet, ain’t I? In the shadows. If Jackson Banks don’t notice me, then Jackson Banks can’t share with me none of his playfulness.
Don’t be seen. Don’t get heard. That’s the way to Digit.
I reckon that’s why Crow ain’t big on the chattables – if he keeps quiet enough, Jackson might forget he’s there altogether. Invisible-ize himself like the Good Citizen.
Crow belongs to Jackson, see. He’s got all the authenticates, documents and unsurance cover on the kid, so it’s all legit. The Digit don’t know where JB got the docs. I reckon Virus hacked a few files and inputted the data. Like I say, once your story’s on the interweb, it’s God’s honour. So if Jackson and Crow ever get stopped in the street by the Sherlocks, online references confirm it all: Jackson Banks is Crow’s Foster Dad. Can you like it? The Digit never heard anything so ridic in his life.
JB uses the poor sap to squeeze through spaces too tiny for most burglars. And what the Digit does know, is that that’s how Crow got his scar – trying to squeeze through a smashed-in window that still had a shard of glass wedged in the frame. Ouch.
Jackson gives Grace a celebratory slap on the booty. “Come on, Gracie. The night is young. So are we.” She spares me a parting smile as he slides her towards the door. Leastways, her mouth is smiling. Her eyes are somewhere else all together. She catches my look, and her mouth goes into cheery overdo. She is not right, and it’s the one thing Digit can’t figure out – why’s she with Banks?
Crow-Boy limps along by his side, as ever. “Obnob,” Banks mutters, and the dog comes scurrying from his hiding place, sniffer slung low to the ground. He bares his fangs at me as he passes.
Banks doesn’t bother closing the door behind him.
“Always a pleasure doing business with you!” Virus calls, sliding the bolt shut, before capsizing into a chair and wiping his sweaty brow vehemously with a wad of tissues.
6. UP AND AT ’EM
Best kip I’ve had in years. Now I’m set for the day. Always rise early. Get a head start on all the other lot. Advantage: Spar.
First up I put on me Cash Counters uniform, before having a look around. It’s a titchy room, not much more space than for this little bed and bedside table. Me room at the Barrowclough’s were much bigger, and had a window overlooking the garden. There ain’t no window here, but it is clean and it d
on’t smell. Not that the Barrowclough’s smelled – well, it did smell, o’ fresh air and cooking. After the cooped-up pongs o’ the residential unit, the Barrowclough’s were heaven.
Here, there’s not more than the whiff o’ disinfectant. I reckon Mr Virus likes to keep it nice for us all.
This room could be all right. I could pin up some posters, put a rug down over the lino. Maybe paint over the white walls – bright blue, or a mix! A different colour for each wall. Planets and stars on the ceiling.
A room. My room.
I open the door soft-like, so it won’t creak and wake t’others. At Tenderness House I were always up and at ’em well before Byron and the rest were awake. They’d get narky if I woke ’em too early. But I like dawn. I like the sun coming up, greeting the day.
Also, you get first dibs at any grub.
There’s a latch on the outside o’ the door.
Why din’t I notice that last night?
I were shattered, weren’t I?
I guess Mr Virus used it as storage before converting it into a bedroom for his lads.
I mean, even if there’s three floors, including the shop floor, and the dining room is huge, and the bathroom posh like a hotel, there’s still, what, seven of us kipping here, including Mr Virus. Maybe more, who knows? So you’d reckon the rooms ’ud have to be quite small. I don’t mind. It’s me own room. I wonder if Mr Virus’ll let us keep a dog. A small dog. He could sleep under me bed.
I’ll ask him later.
I creep downstairs, see what grub’s in the fridge. At Tenderness you made do wi’ what you were given, when you were given it. But I bet Mr Virus says all for one and one for all.
I slide noiseless into the dining room and then I freeze. He’s at the table. Like me, Mr Virus is rise and shine, up and at ’em, work to be done. He’s got his back to me, poring over his computer.
So I stand there. I lean against the wall, soaking it all up. The first light o’ the sun is beaming over Mr Virus’s shoulders. He’s sitting straight, good posture like grown-ups allus drum into you so you don’t grow crooked. He’s got a clean white shirt on, ironed an’ all. It wun’t be surprising to see he’s wearing a tie.