by Jane Davis
Shamayal woke again to the sound of rain pelting the asphalt roof close above his head. He soon wished he hadn’t. An uneven rhythm was being played out on some kind of percussion instrument. Plink-plink, plinkity-plink. It took a while for the boy to work out - I see, I see: the sound of fat raindrops bouncing off an empty can, trapped some place in the gutter.
The scrape of wood on concrete was Shamayal’s next alarm call - or call for alarm, depending which way you looked at it. Chances were, it was someone come back to see if he’d stuck to his side of the bargain and disappeared himself, or to offer a likkle more encouragement. His greatest fear wasn’t blades - although he’d seen the damage they can do. Flames are slower. You’ve got time to reflect exactly what’s going on. The broken door was propped open. A crescent of morning light revealed to him what his senses had hinted at. He was seven feet from the rusted rim of the drum, lying on a bed of all kinds of miserable trash his weight had squished out of tie-handled bin bags. A flurry of wings, a new level of fear grabbed hold of his guts and twisted. He blinked away the last scene from The Wicker Man: Sergeant Howie’s face full of horror - his cries, the silence and the single drumbeat - before you see the thing itself, there, on the hillside. He wished he hadn’t watched some of those things with Ayisha, even though it was him who had insisted.
The rustle of plastic baggage and a happy-old-man whistle. Relief, sweet relief, urine warmed Shamayal’s pants. He pushed his back into the curve of the barrel: incoming. A plain plastic carrier bag landed close to his face. It was so tempting to cry out Please! Someone! Get me out of here! But this was a test. Some do-gooder would have half the Met blue-lighting it round here within five minutes, and next time he found himself in a blind alley there would be no negotiatin’ his way out. They would finish what they’d started. A half-hearted attempt was made at closing the door - his bright crescent was snuffed out - but the broken hinge protested and it swung outwards. As footsteps receded, Shamayal wanted to shout Hey! Come back! Instead he stared miserably into the carrier bag. The smell of cold tikka massala made him want to puke, but at least it was something identifiable.
He was lying in his woodlouse position with his T-Rex hands, listening to throaty cooing, when the next pair of shuffling feet arrived. This is it, Shamayal thought, speeding heart. You don’t get lucky twice. The feet halted. That’d be the doorway. He prepared to beg: ‘See? I din’t tell. I could of, but I din’t. I got your backs, all of yous.’ He heard a cough; the sound of dry palms being rubbed together, then: “You shall have a fishy on a little dishy. You shall have a fishy when the boat comes in.”
Was it? He needed to be 110 per cent sure. Shamayal redistributed his weight onto the elbow of the arm that would move, the contents of the bin redistributing themselves beneath him, as a new pain ripped through his torso, dissecting his chest. It was so far removed from anything he had felt before that he was sure there must be a stronger word for it.
The singing stopped. A pause. “Is anyone there?” a timid voice enquired.
“Bins!” Pushing himself to his knees was going to take a monumental effort. He had heard that only two things make pain easier to swallow: smiling and swearing. His face wasn’t willing to co-operate - either that, or his brain had forgotten how to send signals. Swearing it was, then.
“Who’s that?”
He blew a tunnel of air, hugged his poor ribs. “S’me.”
“Who?”
“Shamayal.” The boy heard shuffling, feet about-turning through 360 degrees.
“Who?”
Resting his forehead against the side of the barrel, the boy told himself Disconnect from the pain. You’ll be aware of it, of course, but it’ll be far enough away from your brain that you won’t experience its full force. Pressing his palms into the metal wall, he went through his fuck-wank-bollocks repertoire several times over inside his head. Up shot his right foot, his other knee sinking into he-didn’t-want-to-know-what. “Shamayal Stands For No Crap. I’m in here.” Amazed his voice could come out so normal, he knocked his head against the inside of the barrel.
The sound of cardboard scraping, Shamayal imagined Bins pulling aside overspill from the bins, continuing his low-level search. “I can’t find you.”
Perhaps he would have to embrace it, after all. No pain no gain, that’s what they say.
Here we go, here we go. Fuck, fuck, fuck: he brought his left trainer up to meet its partner. This was what they invented the word ‘excruciating’ for. Both feet sank. He was knee-deep in trash. “I’m in one of the bins.”
“Are you hiding?”
“Right, right.” The boy tried to get some purchase in order to straighten his legs. They were shaking as they had never shaken before. The last time he remembered feeling so off-balance was in the school gym, trying to stand on the blue crash mat after landing on the bar of the high-jump. “I’m playin’ hide-and-seek.”
“I won’t tell anyone where you are. You can trust me.”
Shamayal clamped his eyes shut in frustration. “I got stuck, innit? Think you could help get me out?”
“Got to find you first.”
Shamayal reached towards the rim, his hand clutching air, his jaw locked in a silent scream.
He heard the sound of a steel drum. “Hello, hello.” He imagined the likkle old guy with his ear to the first of the drums.
“You’re cold, Bins! Try again!”
“Hello, hello,” Bins tapped.
“Gettin’ warmer.” A boom! next to his ear caused Shamayal to throw his head aside. “Whoa! You win! Can you find anything to stand on?”
“Something for me to climb up on?”
“Yeah, yeah.” Shamayal realised he needed to be specific. “And bring it back here!”
“Like a step ladder?”
“Anything you can get your hands on, man. Just be quick.”
Five minutes passed, ten, and - hands tucked tight under his armpits - Shamayal wondered if his request had proved too big a challenge. Then, just as he was convinced he’d been abandoned, came the magnificent sound of something being dragged across the tarmac.
“Oh, yeah! Oh, yeah!” he sang, his spirit lifting with a hope he hadn’t allowed himself to imagine.
“Stupid birdies! Out of my way!” Bins snapped at the pigeons Shamayal imagined clustering at his feet. “I’ve got nothing for you, you hear?”
The scraping grew louder and then stopped. “Shamayal Stands For No Crap?” Bins knocked on the side of the bin, as if, like the ball under the cup in a magic trick, he might have mysteriously changed barrels.
“Still here, Bins! Still here.”
“I got the ladder.”
“You done good, man!” So near and yet so far, Shamayal suddenly felt weighed down with responsibility. “Open it out properly,” he supervised blindly from inside his industrial baked bean tin. “Make sure all four feet are on the flat.”
“Don’t worry. I’m good at ladders. I used to do window cleaning.”
“You never told me that! Man, you’re one dark horse.”
“Coming to get you! Ready or not!”
“Believe me, I been ready for hours.”
The sound of cautious climbing; the creak of the ladder as one foot was placed next to the other. Bin’s bent-down head inched into view, then the old man rested his chin on the rim of the barrel and lifted one hand. “High five!”
Shamayal had never been so pleased to see someone as he was to see goggle-eyed straggle-haired Bins. “High five yourself! You won!”
“Do I get to hide next? I know an excellent place. Once you’re there, no one will find you.”
He looked for signs in the old man’s face of how bad he looked. Nothing. The old guy’s eyesight couldn’t be up to much. “That might come in useful,” Shamayal conceded.
“Mm-mm. Is that curry I smell?”
“You got it.”
Bending down to retrieve the carrier bag then holding it up took a supreme effort, but it wasn’t enough
. With his arm extended as far as it would go, propped up under the elbow by his other hand, Shamayal was inches short of target. Hope sank inside him: “This ain’t gonna work. We got us a serious shortfall.”
Even if he could have reached Bins’s hand, the old man wouldn’t have the strength to haul him out, and Shamayal wasn’t sure his acrobatics would be up to scratch. Chances were they’d both end up inside. Waiting for the arrival of a lit match.
Bins puff-balled his cheeks. “Where’s Jim Stevens when we need him?”
“Man, you can say that again!” Cradling his ribs, Shamayal leant his backside into the curve of the barrel and stared despondently at a Domino Pizza logo. “Wait up…”
The stepladder rattled as Bins stood to attention.
One of Jim’s shaggy-dog stories might just come in useful. “Are the other bins full?”
Bins’s face disappeared. “Fuller than your hidey-hole.” He returned with renewed enthusiasm. “And there’s more bags on the ground.”
“Then we might be back in business. Chuck us a few in here.”
“Won’t you get buried?”
“I do the worryin’ about that. See, Jim told me this likkle story about a crow who found a jug half full of water. He needed a drink but his beak couldn’t reach, see? Instead of giving up, he collected a pile of stones and dropped them into the jug one by one. With each stone, the water rose up and up until, before long...”
Bins’s eyes blazed. “I get to be the crow!” His dirt-ingrained hands disappeared and then his straggle-haired head inched down. The ladder creaked and strained. “Kaw, kaw,” Bins called, throwing the first of the sacks over the top.
Shamayal rustled the bag into position and, with cautious knees, braced himself. “Bring it on, Mr Crow, bring it on.”
CHAPTER 37: JIM - AUGUST 1992 - RALEGH GROVE
Pulling up outside the red-brick block, the policewoman cranked the handbrake into position.
“What’s your surname, Jim?” she asked.
“Stevens,” he replied, preoccupied. People always left him in the end. Part of him argued that it was selfish to be thinking of himself: part of him knew they left because of him. He was the exact opposite of a lucky mascot.
Glancing sideways at him, her pencilled-in eyebrows dipped below the line of her uniform hat. Rings a bell, her expression said.
Eyes followed their progress as they walked the hundred or so metres from the panda car. Jim could almost hear people thinking, “Told you it wouldn’t be long.” “Both those boys were bound to go the same way as their father.”
As he turned his key in the lock, his mother shouted out, “How d’you get on, love?” Jean appeared in the kitchen doorway. “Any n -” Hands she’d been drying on her pinny froze. The sight of police uniform wasn’t welcome in her home. It brought shame and it brought gossip. And she looked to Jim for an explanation.
“Mrs Stevens.” The policewoman took off her hat and smoothed her tied-back hair. Slightly more human - but for those drawn-on eyebrows of hers - she apologised, “I’m Police Officer Cowley.” Cow: cow eyes, cow bells, how now brown cow? “Sorry for the intrusion. I need to ask Jim a few questions. Is there somewhere we can talk?”
“Come through to the kitchen,” Jean said stiffly, circling Jim’s shoulder and steering him ahead. “I’ll put the kettle on.” She moved a cake that had been in the centre of the table to the work surface.
“Somebody’s birthday?” Police Officer Cowley asked brightly.
“It was supposed to be a surprise.” Jean gave a wary smile. Instinctively she stood beside Jim: two against one.
He eyed the untouchable shop-bought cake: chocolate sponge with chocolate icing studded with broken Flake. A lonely second-hand candle leaned crookedly near the centre. Jim blinked away the memory of flickering wicks as Aimee completed the circle.
“Am I supposed to guess what’s going on?” His mother’s patience had been tested.
“Let’s all sit down,” Cowley insisted.
His mother complied, her expression steel. Jim followed.
“I don’t know how much you know, Mrs Stevens.”
“I know my son’s spent his birthday looking for a friend who’s gone missing.”
“Well, he’s made a small find.”
Cold spreading to every cell in his body, Jim’s feet hooked the chair legs. Hold on, mate, hold on. He detected relief in his mother’s expression, but she had no idea what the policewoman was building up to, eking out the bad news like a game-show host.
“- What appears to be one of Aimee’s flip-flops.”
His feet gripped tighter.
“What I want to ask you, Jim, is why you’re so sure this means Aimee is dead.”
Jean gasped, “Dead?” One hand flew up to her mouth. The other clamped it in place.
“I’m sorry, I should have warned you. There’s nothing to suggest Aimee is anything other than missing.”
Jim couldn’t accept this. No one in their right mind would take a shoe off down by the side of the track. “It must have been her owl, Mum. It’s obvious, isn’t it?”
“Oh, love, that’s just superstitious folklore.” Jean turned her pitying look to the policewoman. “Aimee was here watching owls only last week. There’s a pair who nest down by the railway. She told Jim an Indian legend. How owls carry the souls of the living; and when one is killed, that person dies too. It was that same evening the children found a dead owl.”
“Her owl!” Jim pointed out. He was only half aware of the scraping of chair legs, the touch of one of his mother’s hands on each of his shoulders.
“They wanted to give it a proper funeral, but there was an accident. The Whites’ shed was burnt down.”
Jim’s head jolted backwards with the ten-tonne slap, his ears filling with the rush of the train. Perhaps Aimee chose to give the owl her funeral, somehow staking her claim in a ritual of candles and words, making sure none of the bad luck floated in Jim’s direction!
“Jim?” The boy started at the sound of his name. Jean’s hands had dropped from his shoulders but their weight remained. “I’d like you to show me where you watch the owls, if you wouldn’t mind. Would you do that for me?”
On automatic pilot, he led the policewoman to the living room where she mirrored his sofa-kneeling stance. Never properly dark, orange streetlights and moving car headlights provided a clear view of the tracks.
Cowley nodded to the binoculars that were still dangling from Jim’s neck. “Can I?”
“You may as well keep them.” He hauled the strap over his head, catching one ear, and thrust them at her. “I don’t want them anymore.” Then Jim turned and sat down heavily, staring at the carpet.
From the kitchen doorway, his mother said wearily, “You don’t mean that, love.”
“I do!” Jim kicked out his legs, one at a time. “If I hadn’t found them, none of this would have happened.”
Cowley skirted the binoculars from side to side, always returning her focus to the railway tracks.
“You probably won’t see anything,” Jean explained. “There’s been nothing since the night the owl was shot.”
“Didn’t I read somewhere that barn owls mate for life, Jim?”
Chin on chest, he looked down the full length of his body.
Suddenly, his mother’s torso straightened. “There!” She pointed.
Jim knelt back up on the sofa.
“Where?” Cowley turned towards her, taking her eyes away from the binoculars.
“To the right! Far side of the bridge!”
Jim heard Cowley’s intake of breath, slower than a gasp. Something of wonder and awe in it. It had been the same for him; for his mother; it was just the same for Aimee. If he’d had the vocabulary, he might have described her experience as spiritual.
Suddenly, he was back by the side of the railway that day early in the holidays when he’d seen Aimee for the first time: her wildness, her anger, but what he hadn’t recognised then - despair. And
there was no doubt in his mind, she’d been ready to do it. He had stopped her with a loan of his jacket, a cheese and pickle roll - but she’d been thinking about it ever since. All those ‘what ifs’. Aimee’s owl hadn’t changed anything. It had only reminded her of what she meant to do in the first place. The phoenix always knows when it’s time to leave.
“Aimee walked onto the tracks.” The shaking of his head was involuntary as realisation hit home, another punch in the guts. The reason must have already been there! Jim had been wrong to think Aimee had left him. He just hadn’t done enough to make a difference.
The policewoman glanced at his mother and nodded, and Jim recognised a pass when he saw one.
“How can you be so certain, Jim?” Jean asked, accepting the cue.
“Because she told me she was going to, that’s why!”
CHAPTER 38: SHAMAYAL - AUGUST 2010 - BINS’S FLAT
Holding onto the handles, Shamayal eased himself - gently, gently! - into the pink tub. A brown tide-mark stood proud of the water level. The taps were crusted with scale; not just white, but green. Mould had blackened the sealant and decorated the grouting. Lying back - the position that seemed to suit him best - Shamayal saw that a leak from the flat above had gone unheeded. A strip of wallpaper hung limply from the ceiling. Elsewhere, paint had bubbled and blistered. This was a place where silverfish made no attempt to hide. It wasn’t one Shamayal would choose to linger in. On any other day, he would have got to work with serious quantities of Domestos before he even considered taking a bath, but priorities had changed. Shamayal could only face dealing with one thing at a time (for now, he refused to contemplate what germs might be lurking in the shag-pile toilet surround). Bins’s flat was probably the one place it wasn’t necessary to fret about personal hygiene, but number one on Shamayal’s list was to rid his body of the bin-shed stench. Number two was Bins’s speciality: stocktakin’.