Devil You Know

by Cathy MacPhail

  “I used to swim all the time. Used to love it,” Baz went on. “Diving, got medals as well.” I’d never known that. “But here,” and now he sneered again. “Bunch of amateurs here. Weans splashing about. Old men farting in the water.”

  “Maybe if you had your own private pool it would be different, eh?” Gary said, and I wondered was he being sarcastic?

  “I will one day,” Baz said. He said it as if he meant it.

  Just then, a boy I didn’t recognise came hurrying up to us. “Hi Gary, Mickey…”

  “What’s up, Tadge?”

  “You lot better be careful. Word on the street is the Young Bow are looking for you.” He included us all in the ‘you’. “You better watch your backs.”

  We were all alert in a second. “Tonight?”

  Tadge nodded.

  “Are they coming here?”

  He nodded again.

  “How come they can come here, but we can’t go there?” I asked.

  “This is rubbish!” Baz spat on the ground.

  This Tadge looked around, almost as if he expected the Young Bow to suddenly rush from between the shops, armed and ready for battle. “Just watch yourself, Gary. If I hear anything, I’ll let you know.”

  “They said they’d get us,” Gary said. “And now they’re coming. What do we do?”

  “Run!” Claude said. He would have been off if Gary hadn’t held him back.

  “I’m going home.” Mickey was always the first to leave the sinking ship. Him and his dog.

  Baz stood up. “So, we just hide in our houses till they go away?”

  Mickey only thought about it for a moment. “Sounds like a good idea to me.”

  “And tomorrow night… if they come back? What do we do then?”

  Even Gary saw the sense in that. “They’re going to just keep coming back.”

  “I’m not going to fight with the Young Bow,” Claude was shaking his head. “Once was enough for me. We don’t do fighting.”

  “None of us wants a fight with them,” I agreed.

  They were coming to get us. I imagined them, like the villains in an old cowboy movie, a line of them heading our way.

  “So tell me, smart alec. What do we do? Face up to them, fight them, get taken home again in a cop car? Or… run back home and hide under the bed?”

  “We should never have gone there the other night,” Claude said.

  “And if we hide, we’ll get a reputation. Cowards.” This was Gary.

  I shook my head. “There has to be another way, something else we could do.”

  It seemed we were trapped. No matter what we did, we were done for.

  We were all silent for a moment, trying to think up a way out of this that wouldn’t involve blood being shed. Our blood.

  Baz stood up, a big smile spread across his face. He snapped his fingers. “I think I might have an idea. And if it works… our troubles will be over.”

  Twelve

  We had all listened to Baz’s idea, our mouths hanging open – at least that was the way I imagined it. What he was suggesting was dangerous, and could end up getting us into even more trouble. But he was right, if it worked…

  So here we were, doing exactly as he wanted us to do. We had talked about it, discussed it, argued about it and finally decided to just go for it. Or had Baz decided for us? I’m still not sure.

  We had to ask this Tadge to help us. He had come out of the takeaway and Gary had called him over. Told him what we needed him to do. He was up for it, but only if Gary would put in a good word for him with a girl in their class. Then we had waited at the shops for Mickey while he ran home with his dog. To be honest, none of us had been sure if he would ever come back.

  But he did. He looked nervous and he was shouting as he ran towards us, “They’re heading here. A couple of boys told me. Does Tadge know what he’s got to do?”

  Gary held up his phone. “He’s just texted me. He’s done it.”

  Mickey was looking back as if he expected the Young Bow to be running at his heels. “We’ve got to move.”

  Baz held us his hands. “Right, we know exactly what we’re doing?” He looked around at us. We all nodded.

  It was Gary who had decided where we should go. He knew the estate better than anybody. “We know where we’re heading, don’t we?” His phone buzzed then. He checked it. “That’s Tadge just texted me again. The Young Bow are crossing the bridge.”

  My heart drummed in my chest. “Ok, let’s go.”

  We didn’t run. I think I remember that more than anything. Now that we had a plan, we moved confidently. I can picture it in my mind still, and I love how we walked, a line of us, like… like the Magnificent Seven. Ever seen that movie? Ok, there weren’t seven of us, but the feeling was the same.

  My legs shook though. We weren’t running away from the Young Bow. We were heading straight for them. It was dangerous, and exciting at the same time. Gary was up there with Baz, they knew exactly where they were going. Me and Mickey and Claude followed behind.

  We saw them in the distance, the Young Bow. I still thought they looked stupid. Trying to be so cool in black leather and studs, trying too hard. They stopped dead when they saw us.

  “Heard we were coming, did you?” the leader, this guy Fury, shouted at us. His lip curled up in a sneer.

  It was Baz who spoke for us. And what he said made my legs shake even more. “Is that you, Furry? Didn’t recognise you under all that gel.”

  Fury’s eyes went wild. “It’s Fury! Fury!” he yelled at Baz.

  Baz answered him, cool as could be. “I think Furry suits you better.”

  If I hadn’t been so scared, I think I would have laughed.

  Furry – can’t call him anything else now – turned to his gang: “Get them!”

  Before he had even finished saying it, we had turned and were running like crazy.

  I heard one of them shout behind us, “Aye run, but we’re going to get you anyway!”

  We kept close, the five of us. We knew where we were going, at least Gary did. The Young Bow didn’t.

  “What if they catch us?” Claude whispered breathlessly. He could never run as fast as the rest of us.

  “Then we fight,” I told him. “If that’s what we’ve got to do. We fight. We don’t leave anybody. I promise.”

  And Baz agreed with me right away. He turned and yelled, “All for one…”

  Gary finished for him, “And every man for himself.”

  So I ran with Claude, behind the rest. I had promised him I’d stay with him, and I wasn’t going to let him down. Even when I could hear the Young Bow closing in, and Claude stumbled beside me, I didn’t run on ahead.

  We ran through streets, and up lanes, and climbed over walls, and finally burst into open ground where houses had been demolished and new builds would soon spring up. The Young Bow were close behind us, and the chase was only making them mad. “Turn and fight!” they were all yelling.

  We didn’t waste our breath answering them. I glanced at Claude, he was breathing heavy, his face bubbled with sweat. “You can make it, Claude,” I whispered.

  “We’re nearly there,” Gary shouted. Now we were back among canyons of tenements and lock-ups and warehouses. “Round the next corner. Up here.”

  He held up his hand and waved in the direction we were to go, and we all followed him. We found ourselves in an alley. There were lock-up garages on one side, and a big empty warehouse on the other. Signs plastered all over the walls and windows:

  TO BUY OR LEASE

  And in front of us, brick wall. We had run into a dead end.

  Gary and Baz and Mickey were already there, standing in front of the brick wall, facing us.

  “Good for you, Logan,” Gary shouted, when he saw I had paced it with Claude. And even in that moment when I was so scared, I felt proud.

  “Hey, we made it, Claude.” I took his arm to help him on those last few steps.

  When we reached the others, Claude stop
ped. He bent over, hands on his knees, trying to get his breath back. He glanced up at me and smiled. “Thanks, Logan. I’ll not forget that.”

  We were all waiting, standing in a line, when the Young Bow came into view. Fury let out a yell of triumph, “Rats in a trap!” He pointed all round the alley. “You ran into a dead end. You idiots. Nowhere to run now, boys!”

  They all laughed, Fury and his gang, sure there was nothing we could do.

  We were trapped.

  And then, as if they had all the time in the world, the Young Bow started walking up the alley towards us, one slow, menacing step at a time.

  Thirteen

  And at that moment, behind them, another group of boys arrived. Skidding round the corner into the alley, forming at once into a line and looking every bit as menacing as the Young Bow. The Dragos had come.

  “Guess who’s caught in a trap noo, Fury?” one of them called out.

  Fury swung round. He looked at them and back to us, then back to them again. He was puzzled. They were all puzzled.

  That had been the plan all along. Baz’s brilliant plan. The Young Bow might have thought they were chasing us, but actually, we had been leading them. Leading them into an ambush.

  Gary had told Tadge where we would run to, the dead end where the Dragos could find their archenemies, and Tadge had let the Dragos know our plan.

  We didn’t wait to see what happened next, though we heard about it later. Turned into a running battle through the streets of the estate. Baz was on the roof of one of the lock-ups as soon as Fury’s back was turned, and then in the same moment Gary was up there too, jumping on a wooden crate that had been left lying about, helping each of us in turn. They were taller than the rest of us; Mickey, Claude and I could never have made it up there on our own. And then we were off, running over the roofs of the lock-ups, and leaping back down onto the ground, out of sight. As we ran we could hear yells and shouts in the distance. The fight had begun.

  “That was brilliant!” Gary’s face was red with excitement. “It worked.”

  “I didn’t think it would,” Mickey said. “I was sure they’d catch us.”

  “You were in front of everybody else, wee man,” I told him. “I’ve never seen you run so fast.”

  “It’s called terror. I’ve never been so scared.”

  We stopped for a moment to catch our breath. We couldn’t stop laughing and going over it again and again. “Furry! Where did you come up with that one?”

  Baz was laughing. “He’ll never be called anything else from now on.”

  “Furry of the Young Bow!”

  “Hey,” Baz began to run again, and we all followed him. “I’ve got a great idea.”

  “Another one!” Claude shouted.

  We followed him to one of the underpasses, where I had seen the graffiti earlier.

  FURY AND THE YOUNG BOW RULE

  Baz picked up a piece of slate from the ground and began scraping it against the wall, using it to add one more letter.

  “What are you doing?” Gary asked him.

  Baz didn’t answer. He stepped back when he was finished. And when we saw what he had scrawled, we all laughed.

  FURRY AND THE YOUNG BOW RULE

  He’ll know that was you, Baz, I almost said. But I didn’t. Our mood was so great. Was it adrenalin? We felt we had been clever and smart and I didn’t want the feeling to end.

  That night, for the first time, I really felt like one of the gang. Claude slapping me on the back, thanking me. Gary grinning at me. A grin that said I’d done good. I had a feeling of belonging I had never had before.

  Fourteen

  We kept running through alleys and underpasses, leaping from walls, seeing how high we could jump, still talking about the chase. We were all totally hyper.

  We stumbled across a long line of cars parked outside some houses. All expensive-looking Mercs and BMWs and even a red Porsche. “Look at all these cars,” Baz said. “Bet some of them are unlocked.”

  Gary agreed. “My dad says people always leave cars unlocked. You wouldn’t believe how many.”

  Baz turned to him and laughed. “That how he gets all his cheap stuff, Gary, eh? Nicks it out of unlocked cars, does he?”

  Gary’s smile disappeared in an instant. He would have flown at Baz, but Mickey held him back. “Hey, that’s a bit much, pal,” he said to Baz.

  Baz knew he had said the wrong thing. He held up his hands. “Sorry, sorry, I open my big mouth and my foot flies right in.”

  He grinned at Gary, and finally Gary grinned back. I was so glad that, for once, Baz had apologised. This wonderful mood we had was too good to lose.

  Mickey took a step closer to the Porsche. “Hey look at the trim in this one. It’s real class.” Claude came up beside him, and leaned against the car. All hell broke loose: the alarm began to sound, ricocheting around the street. Suddenly, a window was flung open, someone shouted, “What do you think you’re playing at!”

  And then a front door was pulled wide. A man came running out. Then another, then three. Hard men, and they were angry.

  Gary held up his hands. “We were just looking!” he yelled.

  “I’m not waiting to explain,” Claude said.

  Baz was off first. “Let’s go!” he shouted. And we were right behind him.

  And yet we were still laughing as we ran. It only added to our mood. We almost flew round corners, up flights of stairs, raced across streets, threw ourselves over walls, as if they were still on our tail, though they had given up the chase long ago.

  So many areas here were just waste ground, with weeds springing up through cracks in the old pavements. Buildings demolished, waiting for new houses to be built in their place. There was not a soul to be seen. We were maybe only fifteen minutes from home, yet it was so deserted and silent, it felt like a million miles. It felt like another world. We were heading towards blocks that were still standing, but they all looked derelict and empty. The night was growing darker, heavy clouds covered the setting sun, the wind whipped up litter and leaves.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Claude said. “This place is creepy. You could make a great horror movie here.” He screwed his face up, trying to look scary. “You know – something coming out of these empty buildings, or something inside them… watching us…”

  “Is that your horror face, Claude?” Baz shouted. “Wouldn’t have known the difference.”

  Claude began running backwards, arms outstretched, face in horror mode, roaring at us.

  He was so busy pretending to be some kind of monster that he back-stepped round a corner and fell over someone crouched on the ground. The guy fell back, so did Claude, and we were all running so fast behind him that we tumbled on top of both of them.

  Claude jumped to his feet. “Sorry Mr—”

  The guy lay back on the ground, looked up at us and grinned. One of his front teeth was missing and he had the bluest eyes I had ever seen. “Just come at the right time, boys. Need a hand here.” He scrambled to his feet. “I’m trying to lift this.” It was a roller-shutter door into what looked like an empty warehouse. “I think it’s stuck.”

  Baz was the first one to step forward to help. He crouched beside the guy and tried to lift the door. It was still stuck.

  Baz turned to us, puzzled, with a ‘What are you just standing there for?’ look on his face. “Come on boys, is nobody gonny help here?”

  I glanced around. The street was deserted. There was a long line of boarded-up shops and premises on this block, some with derelict flats above them. Why was this guy going into this warehouse? It looked abandoned. And I decided he must work here, or he owns it. That’s what I genuinely thought. Yet another voice was warning me to stay back. The guy’s a junkie. You could tell by the greyness of his skin, and the black circles under his eyes.

  “Come on then!” Baz said again.

  I think it was the mood we were in. We’d tricked the Young Bow and now we were up for anything, wanting more. We all
crouched down beside him and began hauling at the shutter door.

  The guy grinned at us again, and I thought those oh-so-blue eyes of his had a coldness in them. With that tooth missing he reminded me of Long John Silver, you know that pirate out of Treasure Island? Kneeling there on the ground with this vacant smile on his face that didn’t seem like a smile at all. What he said next made him sound even more like a pirate. “If you help me get in you can take a share in the loot.”

  The loot? What did he mean, the loot?

  Gary got to his feet. He was shaking his head. “I know this guy. Al Butler,” he whispered. “Bad news.”

  I stood up too, and looked all around, sure someone must be spying on us. But this one block seemed to be out of sight of everything. The sky was heavy and dark. The wind whipped past us again. It gave me a funny feeling. We’re not doing anything wrong, I told myself, yet even at the time I remember thinking: If we’re doing nothing wrong, why do I feel guilty?

  Fifteen

  We all helped in the end, even Gary, and we hauled and dragged at the edge of the steel till it bit into my fingers.

  “Right, after three. Everybody pull together,” this Al Butler said, and with one supreme effort we pulled. At last I could feel the steel rising, an inch at a time, until it suddenly flew from our hands and rolled to the top with a metallic clang. The noise made us all jump and look around, sure someone must have heard it. But no one came. There was no one to hear any sound.

  Al Butler stepped inside the darkness of the warehouse and beckoned us to follow. None of us did. He swung round, spread out his arms, as if he was opening Ali Baba’s treasure cave. I was almost waiting for him to say ‘Abracadabra’. Instead he said, “Come on boys. One good turn deserves another.” He took another step further inside and it was as if the gloom swallowed him up.

  “I think we should just go,” Gary said. But he didn’t move.