Nicholas Dane

by Melvin Burgess

  Urged on by Nick, Davey kept asking, but although he saw plenty of kids come out from the other Homes round about Manchester, no one had any more news than that. Oliver had simply disappeared.

  ‘Somewhere in Cheshire, maybe,’ said Davey. And that was it. Not a day went by that Nick didn’t think about his friend, but Oliver seemed to have vanished off the face of the earth.

  Much of the time, Nick was bored. Davey stayed with him a few nights a week, but he had such a huge network of friends he was always out and about. He saw Red most days - Shiner was away a lot and she wanted the company too, so she was always popping round or calling him across for something to eat. It wasn’t enough, though. There were so many sad things to think about, all Nick really wanted was to be doing - anything that stopped him thinking. There just wasn’t enough to do.

  He went to see his old friends back in Ancoats over the remains of the summer, but he found he had less and less in common with them these days. In September they started the lead up to their O-levels, which was about as far from Nick’s life as it was possible to get. He felt jealous of them - jealous of school! That was something he never expected to happen. He found himself less and less inclined to go round and see them.

  He found himself living for those nights out with Davey, walking the streets at night and keeping an eye out for open cars or houses. People sometimes didn’t close the door properly when they went in, or left the keys hanging in the door, or maybe the children might leave it open...Then you could sneak in and help yourself. They were making quite a killing. Shiner would buy pretty nearly anything - cameras, stereos, leather jackets, you name it. The idea was to sell it, but quite often it just ended up heaped in boxes up in the attic along with the other stuff. He never seemed to give them as much money as they expected, that was the only thing.

  Davey was frequently outraged.

  ‘A tenner? I saw those jackets going for over a ’undred quid in the Amdale,’ he complained.

  ‘There’s no money in stolen goods,’ Shiner replied sadly, shaking his head. ‘I only do it as a favour for you. You know me main business lies elsewhere.’

  Davey moaned and grizzled, but the fact was, Shiner fed them, gave them a fair bit of pocket money and a safe place to stay, so perhaps there wasn’t so much to complain about after all.

  His main business, though, was selling weed, ganja as he called it. Sometimes people came round to the flat to collect, but Shiner wasn’t too happy about that unless they were old friends. He didn’t want to attract attention. He was out and about himself most nights, never leaving the house before ten o’clock and not getting back till the small hours, delivering the goods to his various customers - and calling in on his other women. Pretty soon, Nick found himself helping with this side of things too, running around Manchester ferrying first of all sealed bags of ganja, then later, great lumps of it wrapped in clingfilm. He could come back to Shiner’s with anything up to a thousand pounds snuggling down his pants.

  Shiner refused to deal in other drugs, though.

  ‘Powders ain’t natural, man,’ he exclaimed, when one of his clients asked him if he could get some speed. ‘And I am a natural man. I’m here doing mankind a service. We only do the best quality, high-class ganja. It clears the lungs and lightens the spirit. A stoned man is closer to God, but speed is the devil’s drug, man!’

  He liked to claim he was a Jamaican Rastafarian, but according to Red, he'd been born and brought up in Bolton.

  ‘He’s only bin Jamaican since Bob Marley got famous,’ she said. And sure enough, when he got excited or angry, his Jamaican accent disappeared and his true Bolton accent began to show through.

  Despite the other women he visited every night, Shiner simply adored Red. He was always treating her to clothes and jewellery and other treats and couldn’t take his eyes off her. Sometimes he’d just sit there looking at her, like she was made of honey.

  ‘What?’ she’d say, turning round to find him gazing at her. Shiner would shake his head and always asked her to do things for him - cook something, fetch a beer, or just come and sit down by him to keep him warm. He was over twice her age - she was only eighteen and he wasn’t far off forty. But Nick didn’t get the feeling she loved him like he loved her. Perhaps as a result of that, they were always having rows. The other women were a real bone of contention. So was the fact that Shiner hated letting her out on her own. The fact is, she was jealous of him; but not as jealous as he was of her - and with good reason.

  It was a wet Manchester afternoon in October. It had been raining for days. Shiner’s roof was leaking in several places and there were pots and pans on the floor to catch the drips. The flat was freezing, too - you’d need to set the place on fire to warm it up, with all those holes in the roofs and draughts blowing in through the floorboards. Shiner himself had a nice warm bedroom, of course. He heaped blankets on the bed, piled them up at the door, covered up the windows, built a huge roaring fire, got in a calor gas heater and stayed there all day, only emerging after midnight when he left to do his rounds. Sometimes he’d be out all night, much to Stella’s annoyance. He was obviously staying round with one of his girlfriends who had a half-decent house. He refused to see any callers unless they were very close friends, and floated through the cold weather on a pile of cushions and ganja and reggae.

  For Nick and Davey, though, there was no escape. The whole place was icy, and nothing they could do could keep them warm. Red ended up spending most of the day in bed with Shiner, but was getting more and more furious with him at nights when he was gone. He was in a warm place he certainly could never invite her to, that was how she saw it.

  So that was it. A miserable Tuesday afternoon, wet outside, freezing cold inside, nothing to do but sit around and wait for nothing. Shiner was in bed. Davey and Nick were sitting wrapped up in blankets, sipping hot tea to try and stay warm, and Red was in the kitchen making coffee for Shiner.

  She was in a temper. ‘You should be outside,’ she grumbled at them.

  ‘You sound like my mum,' said Davey.

  ‘I’m goin’ mad, locked up in here,’ she replied. ‘If I could go out, you wouldn’t see me.’

  ‘Why don’t you, then?’ asked Nick, teasingly. She jerked her head angrily at the bedroom where Shiner slept in a glorious haze of weed. And it was at that point that the intercom made its crackly hiss.

  Red slouched irritably over to it. She bent to listen to the crackle.

  She paused. She stood up straight and put her hands anxiously to her face, glancing over her shoulder at Nick and Davey before bending down to the intercom again. The crackle was louder, now, and it didn’t sound very happy.

  Red stood up again and looked at Davey. ‘It’s Jonesy,’ she said.

  Davey sat up straight. ‘Shit,’ he said. He looked at her and scowled. ‘What you going to do?’ he asked. But before she could answer, Shiner himself appeared at the bedroom door. One glance at Red was enough. Evidently he knew already that Jones was out.

  ‘Is it him?’ he asked. Red nodded. He lifted a finger to his lips. ‘I’m not in, and neither are you,’ he told her. Red shrugged. The intercom was beginning to splutter and crack ferociously.

  ‘You deal with him, then,’ she said. ‘Because he don’t sound very ’appy to me.’

  Shiner walked over to listen, and Nick and Davey got to their feet and followed after him. After so many weeks of listening in, Nick was able to work out the voice behind it, but you had to get close up.

  ‘I know you’re in there, Shiner. You better open up for me,’ said a voice. There was a pause. The crackle sounded again, louder and more angry. ‘You’re gonna open up sooner or later, you might as well make it easy.’ They waited some more.

  ‘You know who I am,’ said the voice. ‘You know what I can do.’

  The boys glanced at each other. Shiner put his face in his hands.

  ‘But I’m not in,’ he groaned to himself.

  ‘Open up, open bloody up!’ screa
med the cackle. And from far away came the sound of a distant but violent banging.

  ‘He’s kicking the door in, Shine,’ said Red quietly.

  ‘Bastard, you bastard! Kicking me door down, everyone for half a mile around will hear that,’ wailed Shiner, flinging his hands up in outrage. He stalked away from the door. ‘He don’t care about nothing, not even himself. Let him in then,’ he snapped at Stella over his shoulder. ‘Which is all you want anyway, hey?’

  ‘Not me, Shine,’ she said, and pressed the switch.

  The banging stopped. The intercom snarled at them one more time and there was another huge amplified bang as Jones slammed the door behind him.

  ‘Red, you and Nick go and wait next door.’

  ‘Shine!’

  ‘Go.’

  ‘He’ll want to see me,’ she warned.

  ‘So you’re out. Go. Not you, Davey. You stay here with me.'

  Davey, who had got up to leave with the others, sat back down, although he didn’t look too happy about it. Red and Nick went into one of the rooms off from the big sitting room.

  ‘What's up?’ asked Nick when they closed the door.

  ‘You’ll see what’s up when you see Jonesy,’ said Stella. She sounded so excited, Nick couldn’t help glancing at her. She glared at him. ‘What?’ she demanded. ‘It’s all over, you know that,’ she added. But it didn’t look like it was.

  Shiner put his door ajar and went to sit down at the kitchen table to wait for Jones to come upstairs. After that noise at the door, you’d have thought he’d come up in a storm, but it was only when he was right outside the door that they all jumped when they heard the boards creak. Then the door banged open and there he was, a tall, lean man, dressed in jeans, a baggy leather jacket, a black T-shirt, and pair of army boots. He had pale, spotty, unhealthy-looking skin, the result of months in jail. His sandy blond hair was cut so short, the grey of his scalp showed through and made him look far older than his thirty years. He stood on the threshold, his wide, fishy eyes fixed accusingly on Shiner, who immediately jumped to his feet and spread his arms with a wide smile.

  ‘Man! The notorious Jones! Fresh out on the streets among us. And straight to the arms of your old friend. Jones, how’s it? Come here, you big mother!’

  Shiner stepped forward and wrapped his arms around the pale man and banged his back so hard you’d have thought they were long-lost brothers. But Jones obviously didn’t see it that way. He stood there with a scowl on his face while Sunshine made merry with him, and ran his cold eye around the kitchen, at Davey, at the steaming mugs of tea on the table, and then, suddenly, with a suspicious glint, on the door behind which Nick and Red hid. Red stepped back as his eye fell on them - it really looked for a moment as if he could see through wood.

  ‘You spooky bastard,’ whispered Red, and bent close to the door again to try and overhear what was going on.

  Shiner stepped back. Jones looked at him for the first time.

  ‘So! How long’s it been?’ asked Shiner, backing off and sitting down, still wearing his broad smile.

  Jonesy stepped further into the room and dumped his rucksack on the table. Sunshine looked at it suspiciously.

  ‘A year or so, I’d say, thanks, Shiner. A lot of time to catch up on.’

  ‘They made you serve every second,’ said Shiner.

  ‘Time on for bad behaviour,’ said Jonesy. ‘You know me. Sunshine; I don’t take no shit. Now I just have to find the bastard that shopped me up, and I’ll be spending a few years making him pay, when I find him.’

  Jones paused and looked at Shiner, who spread his hands.

  ‘I hope you aren't accusing me, Jones,’ he said quietly.

  ‘I’m accusing everyone,’ said Jones. ‘Now where’s your hospitality gone? You get thirsty twelve months without a drink.'

  ‘You haven’t even had time to get a drink, yet?’ asked Shiner in surprise.

  ‘I didn't say I hadn’t had one. I said a year inside builds up a thirst.’

  Shiner waved to Davey to fetch beers from the fridge, took his tin from his pocket and began to roll a spliff for his unwelcome guest.

  Davey did his best to put the beer down by Jones without being noticed, but Jones looked up at him and raised an eyebrow, waiting for him to speak.

  ‘Here you go, Jonesy,’ he said. ‘Nice to see you.’

  ‘Is it?’ Jones turned his eye on Shiner. ‘Still king of the kids, are you, Sunshine?’ He took a long swallow of his beer. ‘And I don’t appreciate being kept waiting on the doorstep like that, either,’ he said, suddenly angry again.

  ‘A man has the right not to open the door,’ said Shiner. ‘It’s nothing personal, you understand. Rainy Tuesday. Winter. Time to relax.’

  ‘You know my voice, and you know me. You always answered the door to me in the past, Sunshine, and I expect you to always answer it in the future. You leave me standing there with a bag full of goodies in the rain? I don’t think so. I really do not fucking think so!’ He surged forward in his chair and stuck his chin angrily towards Sunshine, who lifted his hands peaceably.

  ‘That intercom’s even worse than it was, all the voices sound the same to me, Jonesy. I promise you! Come on, don’t be like that - it’s good to see you, man! Cheers!’ Sunshine lifted his drink and reluctantly, Jones raised his in return. The two men sat and drank in silence for a little bit, before Shiner lit up his spliff, took a puff, and his eyes reluctantly fell on the bag that lay on the table between them.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Jones.

  ‘How long you been out?’

  ‘Twenty-four hours.’

  ‘Very quick. What is it?’

  ‘What is it, he says! What do you think?’

  ‘The usual?’

  Jones nodded.

  Shiner rolled his eyes. ‘You know, Jones, I don’t do that business anymore.’

  Jones turned his face to him and, for the first time since he came into the room, he smiled, revealing a set of tobacco-stained teeth, that had been neat at one point, before he lost a couple of them at the front. The gaps stood out like dark holes in his face.

  ‘There are only two types of business with me,’ he said. ‘Good business and bad business. This is good business. Let’s keep it that way, shall we. Sunshine?’

  Sunshine shrugged and picked up the bag for a look.

  ‘What happened to the bling, Jones?’ he asked. He was referring to Jones’ teeth. When he went inside, those gaps had been filled with gold.

  ‘It was the bling got me put away, so the bling had to go. Too recognisable. I’m going to get some white ones put in soon as I get the money.’ He thrust his hand into his pocket and holding out his fist, opened it up to show a pair of gold teeth. He laughed, rattled them in his hand. ‘I knocked 'em out myself, a few days after someone told me they planned on helping themselves in the nick. Kept them up my arse for a year. They’re not going back in my mouth after that,' he said, threw back his head and laughed.

  He put the teeth back in his jacket pocket, accepted the spliff off Sunshine, took a huge drag and broke into a fit of coughing. ‘Need to get me throat back, everything’s out of practice after a year’s time.’ He waved his hand at the bag. ‘Price it up, will you? I gotta be getting on.’

  Shiner reached into the bag and took out a box of pharmaceutical drugs. He looked closely at the label.

  ‘Nobody takes this stuff anymore, Jonesy,’ he remarked.

  ‘What, are they all dead already?’ asked Jones. ‘I don’t think so, Shiner.’

  ‘It’s not easy to sell. There are new products on the market.’

  ‘You can tell me all about that once you’ve paid up.’

  Shiner tipped the bag up on the table. Out tumbled a further array of packaged drugs.

  ‘Where from?’

  ‘Chemist on Blair Road.’

  Sunshine looked up. ‘That’s the one you got done for in the first place.’

  ‘Serve ’em right. I’ve changed me modus operandi,
haven’t I? Always used to come in through the roof. They knew it was me as soon as they looked up.’

  ‘So what do you do now?’

  ‘Well, now, that would be telling.’ Jones drew on the spliff, but in the end, he couldn’t resist it. ‘I found the old man who gave evidence against me.’

  ‘What, the pharmacist?’

  ‘Him. Once I reminded him who I was he was only too pleased to take me round and show me the drugs cabinet.’

  ‘But he’s seen you already, man!’

  ‘He wasn’t doing a lot of looking.’

  Shiner stared at him, and decided he didn’t want to know anymore.

  ‘It’s your business.’ He hefted the bag. ‘Three hundred.’

  ‘Piss off.’

  ‘Can’t do much more.’

  Jones banged his fist down on the table, hard. ‘Don’t fuck me around, Sunshine. I’ll find out what the street value is. Don’t you take advantage of me because I done time and I’m out of the swim.’ Shiner looked at him from under his brows and sucked his teeth.

  ‘It’s an arguable point what the street value is,’ he said. ‘This stuff isn’t often sold.’

  ‘Rarity value, then.’

  ‘And since I don’t sell it anymore, how would I know? But you’re an old friend, Jones. For your sake, let’s call it four.’

  ‘No. Let’s call it five.’

  ‘Man, Jones! I have a profit to make. You don’t want no favours, do you?’

  The two men stared at each other a while. ‘Split the difference,’ said Jones.

  Shiner shrugged, looked unhappy, but agreed to the deal. Jones was a dangerous man to barter with. Jones counted the money carefully and then stuffed it into his coat.

  ‘Now then, Sunshine,’ he said, leaning back in his chair. ‘We have some unfinished business, you and me, don’t we?’

  Shiner gave him a sickly smile. ‘And what might that be, Jones?’

  ‘I think you have something of mine, and I think you have it right here,’ said Jones. He stared at the door behind Shiner’s back. Red and Nick stepped back, and Jones nodded slightly at them, as if in greeting, even though he couldn’t see them.