At least it was polite. It gave a sort of grave, shy smile, lifted a rather odd skullcap and mouthed at me. A pretty earnest question, by the look of it, and I could just about lipread ‘happenings’, and maybe also ‘curious’. It was the old gink from that horrible house – and come to think of it, the hairy fellow was the other one, the one I’d landed on. Well, wasn’t that nice? Practically old mates. I screamed and dived under the bed.
A tidal wave of old beer cans, sweet wrappers and used contraceptives – God, how old were those? Were they mine, even? – shot out the other side, so it wasn’t exactly deep concealment. But Christ, it felt better. Until, that is, I opened my eyes again and saw the old man’s face peering myopically under the blanket on that side.
‘I do most earnestly beg your pardon, my esteemed sir, but I do desire your further acquaintance—’
I squeaked, because my throat was too tight to scream, twisted around and found myself almost nose to nose with the hairy fellow. He had nostril hairs like corkscrews, and a small crop of warts around his nose.
‘Begging your pardon, young sir, lest I give you cause for unease! But in the matter of which I enquired but now, namely some degree of strange happening in your life—’
I tried to speak. Nothing came out.
‘Some sudden irruption into your daily affairs,’ intoned the old apparition from behind me. ‘Everyday acts growing unexpectedly potent, perchance? The unexpected arrival of assistance in difficult situations, even?’
I fluttered my lips and nodded weakly. Anything to make them go away.
‘Ahhah!’ said the old fellow in a satisfied kind of way. ‘See you now, Brother Edward, the truth of my contentions?’
I looked around. Edward was still there, but his features had crumpled up in deep thought, practically to the point of disappearance. He looked like an abstract arrangement of hair and warts, and believe me, it wasn’t an improvement.
‘Aye, aye,’ his voice muttered, with a much grimmer kind of satisfaction. ‘And the agent of this assistance, my master? A … sturdy fellow, sans doubt?’
I shook my head, and flapped my fingers. He seemed to read the gesture.
‘Not one, then? Several?’
‘Y-yes,’ I managed.
‘Ah.’ They nodded sagely to one another. ‘Well, my good sir,’ the older man continued. ‘I must pray that patience of you which Elihu counselled unto Job. Although, I trust, your visitations will be less severe. But fear not! At some moment not long distant we shall appear again unto your good self. There we shall unfold unto you the several actions and causes of this unfortunate error!’
‘Oh – you don’t have to—’
‘And we shall offer you a sure and certain release,’ he continued relentlessly, bobbing and bowing. ‘Until then, good master—’
Blink. He wasn’t there. Neither was brother Edward.
I lowered my face weakly on to the floor, and raised it hastily as the dust in the rotten old carpet got up my nose. They say ninety per cent of your household dust is you, and if that was right I’d just inhaled about half of me back. I sneezed, repeatedly, and hit my head on the bedsprings every time, with a sort of spavined twang. The tart downstairs started hammering on the ceiling.
‘Don’t ya know there’s people tryin’ ta fuckin’ sleep down ’ere?’
‘Well, that’ll make a change!’ I shouted back, and heaved myself wearily out from under. Wait a minute – if she was trying to sleep, it must be dawn, after six even. Where had the night gone? I was still sneezing, I was still damp, and unless I assumed I’d just had a nightmare, I’d hardly slept a wink. Wonderful. No wonder my eyes felt like pits of rat’s pee. I slopped the dust off my face, dodging the broken glass in the bowl, and fell face down in my vomitous pillow.
So they were coming back were they? Just let ’em try.
I drew one deep breath, felt sleep wash over me like comforting layers of black silk – and was jolted by hammering at the downstairs door. I shot up on one elbow and reflexively screamed, ‘Piss off!’
There was a sudden rumbling on the stairs, a scream from the tart cut off by a single barked word. Even the first explosive letter triggered an instant reaction.
‘Police!’
I was off the bed in an instant, snatching my still wet jeans and trainers off the line and wriggling into them, writhing as the soaking seams squeezed their little trickles down my legs. I was already jamming my feet into the squelchy trainers when the door boomed and bent under a heavy fist.
‘Oi! Open up in there! ’
My instincts were doing all the work. Call it a conditioned reflex, if you like. The rational Me was wittering with panic. I hadn’t expected Plod anything like this soon. Then a thrill of horror trickled down into my crutch, just like the jeans only chillier still. There was a quicker way they could have linked me with the night’s doings – information received.
Chaddy, the son of a bitch! Hearing what Ahwaz had told me, knowing Fallon’s form as well as I did – he could put the two together when the news hit the grapevine. As it would in less than no time. And wouldn’t he enjoy turning a penny on it from his bed of pain – or maybe throne! Too dangerous to grass on Ahwaz directly, of course; but on me, who’d care? And the cop computers could find citizens even quicker than Ahwaz, sometimes.
Isn’t reflex amazing? By the time they had the strainer jack across the frame and burst the door open, I was already halfway out of the window with hardly a conscious thought, all driven by sheer stark terror. Beat that, Dr Pavlov!
I was vaguely aware of rushing and shouts at my back, but I was above all that, scrabbling out on to the window ledge in the grey, dank dawn. A little way along an extension roof branched out at ninety degrees into what had been the back garden. I could scramble along, but jump across more easily – I thought. I dithered about making a grab for my money, thought better of it and sprang. Great sausage fingers clawed at my collar, then something seemed to give and I landed with a crash that dislodged several tiles and most of my breath. Clinging on like a monkey, I half expected to see the cop dangling shreds of my shirt, but instead the great oaf was gaping at a handful of what looked like coarse red-brown hair. Maybe I was a monkey.
Then I had something else to worry about. Another thug bulged out on to the ledge and leaped. He reached the ridge too, but the overstrained ridge-tile split beneath his great Doc Ms and he skidded, flailed and slid – both ways at once. His boots shot down the crackling tiles with a shower of ruddy sparks and he landed heavily astride. His eyes bulged, his mouth opened so wide he could have moonlighted as a goldfish, and he sprawled flat along the ridge, conveniently in the others’ way. I wasn’t hanging around. I reached the end of the roof, clinging like a minor ape and gibbering like one too, and slid down into the gutter among the leaves and dead pigeons. I reached over, grabbed the drainpipe, dislodging a foul old nest, and began trying to shin down it.
That wasn’t too easy. I was a floor lower now, but that left three to fall and it looked a lot further than it did on the nice solid stairs. The pipe shifted and creaked at every move I made. I whimpered and hugged it as if it was my only friend in the world, which wasn’t too far off the mark right then. Then I heard a cheery shout from below, and felt a great wash of despair. I should have known even the Blue Meanies would have the sense to cover the back yard. Somebody was humorously opening a dustbin and inviting a little turd to drop in.
Who could they possibly mean?
I leaned over to see if I could grab the next pipe. Immediately there was an ominous grating creak and a little trickling rain of mortar as the pipe fasteners pulled out of the wall above me. I wailed horribly, then shrieked in even greater fright. About a million miles below my slipping feet the end of the pipe that was still fastened to the wall exploded outwards in a scarlet flare and snapped off just above the ground. It swung outwards, with me still clinging like the Night Lemur, or Aye-Aye – aiaiaiaiaiai!
I saw the rubbish-strewn remnants o
f the lawn flash by before my eyes. I’d expected my past life, but maybe this was symbolic.
Then the pipe hit the solid old garden wall, and we parted company. There was, as they say, a moment’s confusion. Then there was a tremendous thump, a horrible shower of fragments, and an enveloping stench that could have given the marsh lessons.
I threshed feebly in a slimy black sea. Either it was the Styx, or I’d landed with lethal accuracy right in one of the neighbourhood garbage mountains, binbag Vesuviuses that the council trucks passed by hurriedly, presumably in case somebody jumped out and hijacked them to Morocco. Morocco might have been an improvement, mind you; we bred a pretty fierce strain of trash around here.
I struggled upright, wheezing and cursing; a black bag savaged my ankles. I fell down again in a shower of fruit peel and pizza boxes – who was crazy enough to deliver round here? – then sprang up again as a wave of bulky bodies crested the wall behind me like the Rwandan Olympic Hurdles Team (Mountain Gorilla Division).
I took a running start, trailing streams of everything you can imagine but wouldn’t want to. How is it deprived areas have so much more to throw out? Especially since we’re really hot on recycling our garbage, usually by cooking it. The only consolation was the crashes and cries of disgust behind me. I hadn’t noticed yet that I was running the wrong way.
I was that little bit disoriented. Instead of weaving a way through the back alleys, I’d headed straight for the main road. I registered this important fact round about the time I turned the corner and came face to face with three running uniforms and a panda car with its roof-light flashing. I yelped and wheeled, but I hadn’t a hope in hell. I whipped back around the corner, and straight into a tangle of strong arms. I threshed and fought. Then I realised they weren’t in uniform, those arms; in fact, they were mostly bare, and they didn’t smell of Old Spice, either. And they rattled and jangled when they moved.
‘Hi dere, Maxie!’ said a gruff voice.
My hair bristled, and I had just time to suck in a deep breath and scream, ‘No killing!’ That wasn’t enough, God alone knew what they might do instead. ‘Nothing serious!’
Then the panda car rounded the turn, and ran straight into the bandits. I half expected to see bodies fly, but a morning-star mace flailed down against one wheel, a tyre burst with a resounding bang and the car screeched around and stopped. A huge cutlass smashed down through the bonnet into the engine, unleashing a fountain of milky coolant; a spear butt starred the windscreen from end to end. The siren bleated, and somebody shot it.
A steel-tipped whip whined across the car roof and caught one of the oncoming coppers around his anoraked chest. He was a huge bugger with a moustache like a yardbrush, but the whip plucked him right off the ground and sent him skidding across the roof, smashing the light.
‘Jesus Christ!’ he screamed, goggling at the bare-breasted bird hauling him in. ‘Get the Vice Squad!’
Another cop flicked out a telescopic baton, only to have a great broadsword take it off an inch above his hand. He stood stupidly for a second, and the brigands piled in on him and the others, more or less barehanded.
‘Don’t hurt anyone!’ I screamed. ‘That’s an order, you hear me?’
‘We hear you, señor Maxie!’ giggled the brown-skinned girl. She hauled on the whip. Nose-Fungus spun off the roof in a blur and crashed into the garden behind. Then she thrust both arms through the crazed windscreen and bodily yanked out the screaming policewoman at the wheel, considered her an instant, turned her upside down and thrust her back, head down into the footwell and instant Folies Bergère above, all suspenders and frilly knickers and very nice too.
The other woman came leaping up the back of the car like a springboard and took off with a whoop, over my head and down on to the cops who’d come over the wall. With a wild scream of ‘Maxieee-eee!’ the others went streaming by and flowed over them, while I danced around gibbering.
Sort of a giggle, when you think about it, me screaming not to hurt the Sod Squad. All right, I was doing it out of common humanity and because citizens who raise serious blisters on the Law tend to get into the tabloids – TOERAG TOFF MAIMS OUR BOYS IN BLUE, with sentence to match. Not to mention getting these sort of dizzy attacks and falling down the cell steps, sometimes as often as twice a day. Even so, it didn’t feel right, somehow. I’d have got blackballed from my clubs, if you could get blackballed from my kind.
I peered cautiously at the groaning heaps the bandits left behind. One had his parka forced down over his arms and his legs jammed up into it, and another was handcuffed into a sort of granny knot, leg over neck. For one sickening instant I thought they’d decapitated the third, but appearances were misleading. The trousers over his head he might have got out of, if he hadn’t had his legs down the arms of his jacket and his belt wrapped tight around the package.
‘Nothing serious,’ I told them over the sound of smashing glass. ‘Just youthful high spirits.’
Something clanked against the car, staggered by and rolled over, a dustbin on legs. Naked legs. The abraded boots looked familiar, though. Definitely not his day.
‘You’re all under arrest!’ screamed somebody from the centre of a rolling scuffle among the garbage. ‘Every bloody one of you! Oh Christ, woman – get off—’ A brief flurry, a pair of trousers flew triumphantly in the air and something like a giant skinned rabbit dived back across the wall – to judge by the wild scream, straight into a nettle patch. Along the path the straggle-haired woman stood beneath one of the few trees left hereabouts, peering up into its lower branches, from which two pairs of naked legs dangled. She was idly stringing a vile pair of boxer shorts on her sword.
‘You friggin’ well give those here at once!’ roared a voice. She nodded amiably and poked the sword upwards. There was a sharp squeal, and the leaves shivered.
‘Don’t encourage ’er, sarge!’ quavered another voice. ‘She ain’t bloody human! They’re mine, anyhow!’
Personally I’d have kept quiet about that, but there you are.
It all looked very fine and right and proper, everyone seemed to be getting acquainted, and evidently I was no longer needed here. There was the money, of course, but it was well stashed; I could come back later for that. A lot later. A shame not to be able to say goodbye and thanks, really, but it was getting properly light now; time I was off. I was just tiptoeing away past the squirming parcels of cop when I was caught up in a sudden rush and entangled in a thicket of muscular arms and cheery idiot shouts.
‘Hey, Maxie! No sweat, baby! Alla pigs hogtied just fine!’
‘Arr, and ne’er so much as a broke bane among ’em! All alongside of yer merciful command, my fine young sir! Aharr!’
Any minute now he’d be calling me Jim, lad!
The grins; the voices.
‘You think we let them get you ’way from us, Maxie mi capitan?’
I was spun around from one to another, and the gathering light showed me them more clearly this time. It hadn’t been the dope. They were very much there, and they were just exactly as weird as I remembered them; and ghosts they weren’t. The black guy was still grinning, rubbing the protruberant breastplate as if it was his real belly; his jet-black cheeks were ridged with cicatrix marks, but elaborate gold bracelets jangled on his arms. The wild old guy with the Robert Newton voice really did look piratical, and it wasn’t just the dirks and cutlasses in his huge belt, or his ragged jerkin and pantaloons and stocking-cap. Over every inch they left bare he sprouted tattoos, some of them the usual mermaid and anchor stuff but others apparently done by a sex-mad Tibetan on bhang, all punctuated by a nice assortment of scars. His grin was gap-toothed, with tobacco juice drooling out of the corners to stain his scrawny beard yellow; his wiry forelock had evidently been smoked the same shade. He looked really vile, and you could tell he just loved it.
There was the lanky Teutonic type, or maybe Scandinavian, with blond-beast looks that stopped short at a vicious-looking slot of a mouth and receding ch
in beneath, a bodybuilder frame with an adolescent sod-you slouch. I’d seen a couple of killers who looked like that. There the Oriental, twirling his moustache and looking about as inscrutable as a red-hot skewer. He didn’t look Chinese – Korean, maybe, or something more exotic, a Burmese Karen maybe, with that great plume of hair. He did look stark raving mad.
There were those bloody women, leaning on one another and giggling manically till their bare brown boobs bounced and their daggers jangled. They were waving their trophies, including a crinkled old jockstrap and those eyewatering shorts (mauve, with dayglo teddy bears). I hated to think what they might have taken instead. There were …
A couple of others I still couldn’t make out. But they were crowded to the back as the others all came pushing enthusiastically in on me. All told, they were about as reassuring as Attila the Hun’s PR team.
‘Listen!’ I panted. ‘Look, thanks, thanks a whole heap – I mean thanks very much, très très professional and a treat to see and all that – but I really have got to get out of here fast, still – and—’
Me and my big mouth. I was about to ask them to help me get the money down; I should have done that first. I knew how fast they reacted, didn’t I?
The next thing I knew I was swept off my feet, right up to shoulder height – and I really hoped that hand was a woman’s. Then before I could get my breath back they literally ran away with me. The pace was terrific, and they just flowed over anything in their path. When they came to a wall they boosted each other over, and whirled me across from hand to hand, too dazed and winded to call out. It was like one of those races at army shows, with teams of panting squareheads manhandling guns or casualties or something over an obstacle course. This lot could have given them teamwork pointers. They went over a railway fence, barbed wire and all, without so much as breaking stride. Or even looking out for a train.
Maxie’s Demon Page 8