The Killing Jar

by Nicola Monaghan

  She told him she was. Her voice was as little as her nutty brown eyes. She looked different here, with Mark standing next to her, and it made me wonder why I’d ever had owt to do with her.

  ‘You look like a baby,’ Mark said.

  Jaqui didn’t speak back. She looked like she’d cry if she had to open her mouth. I spose you could see why. There were police with guns all over outside her house and then I turned up with Mark Scotland.

  ‘It’s just me and Mark,’ I told her.

  ‘We need your help,’ Mark said. He took hold of a strand of her dirty hair and wound it round his finger. She pulled away from him. ‘You know where the attic hatch is?’ he said.

  Jaqui shook her head. She let out a sob.

  ‘Your mam in?’ I asked her. She shook her head. ‘When’s she back?’ I said.

  ‘Tomorra,’ Jaqui said. I could see the tiny muscles round her mouth squeeze hard to stop any more sobs coming out.

  ‘Good,’ I said.

  We found the attic hatch easy, on the landing where ourn was too. Mark gave me a leg up and I pushed it open. I crawled in through the hatch onto the rafters. Mark vaulted up, one long movement, strong as a gymnast with his arms as he pushed up his body. I have to admit this did impress me.

  Mark crawled along the attic floor on his hands and knees. I was taking the piss though, balancing and leaping round like a frigging ballet dancer.

  ‘You’ll be through some bogger’s ceiling if yer keep that up,’ Mark said. I realised he had a point and stopped messing, clambering catlike across the dark space with him.

  The attics were all connected, just the same as in the book I’d read. There was a low wall dividing each one from the next. This was the hardest bit to get over without falling onto ceiling plaster. It were hard to tell which house you’d got to cause the dark and the endless rafters sent your head funny.

  ‘How’ll we know we’re in your attic?’ I said.

  ‘We’ll know,’ Mark told me.

  A short while after, I felt a wooden crate in front of me. I pushed it, but it were so heavy it didn’t even budge a little bit. I delved into the top and could feel summat cold. Metal. I pulled the thing out and felt its shape.

  ‘Are these toys?’ I asked Mark and he told me no. I dropped it back in the crate then jumped back, scared it might be loaded and go off or summat. It didn’t. There were two crates of the boggers.

  ‘We got a load ter move,’ Mark said.

  ‘Yer not kidding,’ I said.

  We climbed over the crates and found the attic hatch. Mark stopped by the edge. I felt his body close and still, began to see his outline as my night vision kicked in. I could hear his breathing.

  ‘What if they think it’s the police or summat and shoot us?’ he said. I shrugged. I felt for the small square of wood what was our way into the house. I thought of Uncle Frank the other side. I imagined pushing the wood aside and seeing him, but I also thought of sliding one of the crates across the top so’s no one could move it ever again.

  ‘We could move the hatch and shout before we jump down there,’ I said. But Mark didn’t shift at all. I opened the hatch. Light flooded in, making Mark and me look like ghosts and the crates glint like treasure. I shouted Uncle Frank. He came onto the landing, holding a sawn-off the way Mark’d predicted.

  ‘Don’t shoot, Uncle Frank. It’s me, Kez,’ I said.

  ‘There in’t none-a-them pigs up there, is they Kez?’ he said.

  ‘Just me-n-Mark,’ I said, jumping down. Mark followed, and by the time he hit the floor Uncle Frank had me held tight against his big fat belly with the gun against my head.

  ‘It is just us, Frank,’ Mark told him. Frank believed him and let me go.

  ‘I’m sure glad to see you boggers,’ he said.

  ‘Funny way-a-showing it,’ I told him. And we all laughed. It wasn’t right, though, our laughing. We looked like a group of evil terrorists from a badly shot old spy film.

  Mark and me walked out the back with our arms full of guns. We were shitting it. We didn’t have any clue whether the police would be in Jaqui’s back garden, lurking in the shadows. We crawled near the ground all the way to the back hedge so’s we wouldn’t be seen. When we got there, Mark looked for a hole in the privet. There wasn’t one. He dropped his guns, making more racket than he should of, and charged at the hedge like a frigging bull. He bounced back off it and yelped. He’d hit a load of nettles. I rolled my hands along the grass after dock leaves but could only find a couple, and some of the rash was near his eyes, which must of stung like I don’t want to know about. I grabbed one of the bigger weapons, a shotgun thing. I rammed it in the hedge and gored out a hole big enough for me to squeeze through. Mark made it bigger by following me through it, making the privet yield a bit more. Jaqui’s place backed on to Cinderhill tip. There was no proper lighting, just fallout from streetlights round about. For all the world it looked like the surface of the moon. I stepped out with my guns, expecting to float. I could smell the gone off version of whatever chemical makes your fridge cool down.

  We walked to the middle of the tip and used two of the shotguns to dig a big hole. We shoved the guns all down the bottom and left them without filling the hole back in. We headed to the house to get more. As we walked towards the hedge we heard voices. Police. We threw our-sen on the ground right next to Jaqui’s garden.

  ‘I’m sure I heard summat,’ the first voice said. Torchlight shot across the moonscape, slashing the night wide open. It probed the wasteground, but flicked past the hole without hardly lighting it up. I had a tickle in my throat and had to work well hard not to cough.

  ‘Nah, mate, nowt there. Must-a-bin cats or summat,’ someone said. We heard steps getting quieter.

  ‘Think it’s a trick?’ Mark asked me.

  ‘Don’t know,’ I said. We lay still for a couple of minutes, listening hard for more voices or steps. I couldn’t hear owt cept our own breathing, which sounded too loud. I pushed my head through the hedge. There was no one in the garden and I told Mark so. We shot across to Jaqui’s back door, hoping she’d not panicked and shut us out. It were open.

  We made our way along the attics again and found Uncle Frank and Big Mark. They were laughing and playing cards as we climbed through.

  ‘What shall we do next? Rest-a-the guns or summat else?’ Mark asked them.

  ‘Tell yer what,’ Frank said. ‘Tek this and go get us all some chips or summat.’

  He gave Mark a crisp clean tenner.

  ‘Wun’t it be better to get all that shit out first?’ Mark’s dad said.

  ‘Chippy’ll be closed soon,’ Frank said. ‘I’m starved.’

  I thought Mark’s dad was right, but I didn’t say owt. I didn’t mind so much losing my sleep and crapping me-sen to help out when it were desperate. But just to get chips was a bit much. I wouldn’t of dared argue about it though. Mark and me climbed back up to the attic and made the slow journey back to Jaqui’s, where we left by the front door.

  We went up Broxtowe Lane and bought chips and pie for four. We went to the offie too, who never would of served me, but didn’t hesitate with Mark cause they knew his dad. He bought two six-packs of Tennants and we carried them back. We took one each across the attics with the food balanced on top and it wasn’t easy. I let mine drop over the house between, just managing to grab it up before it crashed through the neighbour’s ceiling. We got back and shared the chip supper, and had some beer. It made me burp really loud, and the blokes all laughed.

  Mouths shining with chip fat and high from beer we weren’t used to, Mark and me got back to work. It were quicker then, cause we were a bit hyper and warm from the beer. We finished the guns in two more trips and covered the hole we’d made, stamping on top of it to make it flat as we could. Then we went back to get the most important stuff. Valuable stashes of whizz and coke and brown. We took loads in our special coats and hid it under fridges and cookers what’d been dumped on the tip. It were five in the morning b
efore we’d cleared the lot. I wasn’t even tired, just wired by how clever and quick we’d been.

  ‘Get out-a here now, Mark duck,’ his dad told him. ‘Home ter yer mam’s or summat.’

  Neither ‘Big’ Mark nor ‘Uncle’ Frank told me I could go home.

  The three on us left a half-hour later. Frank and me went first, him with one of his thick arms wrapped round my neck, the other held up in a gesture of surrender. He was worried they’d just gun him down, and that was where I came in, he said. ‘They wun’t shoot at a lickle gell, would they now?’ he’d said. He held me tight and ‘Big’ Mark followed the pair on us. We got handcuffed and bundled into cars. It didn’t feel real. A massive policeman with hands on my shoulders and my head, pushing me into a car while I kicked and bucked against him. The cold of metal against my wrists. The warm feeling of blood in my mouth as I bit the tosser.

  SIX

  They didn’t know what to do with me, the police. Them days it wasn’t so common for young-uns to be involved in this kind of shit. They even kept me in a cell at the station overnight, though I’m sure that wasn’t no way legal. This nicey-nicey policewoman cow kept coming to talk to me. She asked me how I felt about everything, and who’d got me involved in all this. She didn’t have a clue. The more she stroked my hair and said ‘ah’ the firmer my mouth jammed shut. I wouldn’t of told the silly cow a bloody thing much as I couldn’t stand Uncle Frank after what he’d done. Then this good-looking police bloke came and told me to pack up my stuff and I said ha ha cause I had nowt with me. Mam’d not come to find me or owt, and she admitted later that she’d hid behind the sofa when they’d come knocking to find her. Said after she couldn’t stand being inside a police station or nowhere near any police. Selfish bitch. And she would of come running to find me anywhere I’d gone if I’d of had some drugs or money or owt else she needed.

  It were a shock after all Frank’d said that they could do owt to me at all. Besides, they never found the stuff Mark and me’d hid, never realised he’d been there. This kid copper told me it were mostly about my own safety they wouldn’t let me go home, cause they couldn’t contact my mam and she hadn’t come looking for me. They were sending me to this place in Loughborough.

  The East Midlands Home for Girls it were called. I was scared cause I thought it’d be like prison, though I couldn’t of known how wrong I was. They took me there in this van with blacked-out windows. It went dead fast all the way down the A60 and I enjoyed the ride. It made me feel important, like a great train robber or someone famous. Over the top for taking a ten-year-old to borstal. I arrived on the back of sirens without a change of clothes or a toothbrush ner nowt.

  They made me have a shower and put this dressing gown thing on when I got there. Then this woman looked at my skin and checked my head for nits.

  ‘I an’t got none. I wash it,’ I told her, pulling away as she tried to run her fingers through my hair. She held me firm with both hands.

  ‘They like clean hair,’ she said. But I knew adults only said this to make you feel better about having nits. She didn’t find none anyhow. She took me to what they called a ‘cell’ but it wasn’t at all. It were just a plain room with two beds in it, a wardrobe and an old-fashioned dressing table with a big mirror. It wasn’t a bad place at all and bigger than my bedroom at home. Sitting on one of the beds was this gell a few years older than me. Her name was Bek.

  ‘Haven’t you brought anything with you?’ she asked me.

  I shrugged. She walked over to the wardrobe and went inside. She took out this dress, a denim thing. It wasn’t all that but it were much better than owt I had at home.

  ‘This doesn’t fit me anymore,’ she said, holding it out to me, ‘if you want it.’

  I took it off her and measured it up against me. It were at least two sizes too big. I was well developed for my age but Bek was a woman compared to me. It were a nice dress, though, one of them what were well trendy at the time with buttons down the front.

  ‘What have you done then?’ she said.

  ‘Bit a policeman. And some other stuff what I’m not telling you case you grass it,’ I said.

  Bek laughed. ‘You really bit a pig?’ she said and I nodded. ‘Did you draw blood?’ And I said yes and she shook my hand. ‘Want some whizz?’ she said. I hesitated then thought, well, it’s just whizz.

  ‘Okay,’ I said.

  She went under her mattress and took a wrap out. ‘If I give you this then you can tell me what you did. If I sell you out you’ve got just as much on me,’ she said. I noticed then she had a really posh accent.

  I took some of the speed and rubbed it in my gum.

  ‘Bit more than that,’ she said, smiling. I took some more. I didn’t feel owt at first and wondered what all the fuss was about.

  ‘Don’t they look under yer mattress?’ I said.

  ‘Nah. They’re thick as shit,’ she said.

  I was laughing and didn’t know why. There was nowt funny to laugh at. I was choking on saliva over what Bek’d said. She was killing her-sen about it too. That’s when I realised the whizz was working. She’d took some too, and was bouncing on her bed with a huge white grin. Her teeth were well shiny, like summat out of an advert. She was about four years older than me and dead pretty. She told me her mam and dad were rich as fuck and didn’t take much notice of her. Let her do what she liked and gave her money to do it. They still gave her money while she was in here, with the nod of the carers, who even took her out to spend it from time to time. That’s what they called them: carers, like we were old people or summat. Mostly the time there was the best I’d had but it were shit like that what did my head in.

  Bek’s mam and dad reckoned the police’d got it well wrong about what their daughter was supposed to of done. This was beat up this gell really bad then take the poor cow’s white stiletto off and shove it in her eye. She’d lost her eye, the gell. Bek told me her parents were wrong. She’d done it all right. The bitch had stole her feller and her stash of coke and it were fair enough. An eye for an eye, she joked, and I laughed even though I didn’t understand what she was on about. I told her about me and Mark and the rubbish tip. Don’t know if it were the whizz, or summat else she’d took, but she thought this was the funniest thing she’d ever heard.

  The EMHG was all right. There was a telly and a pool table, and they weren’t strict on making us do schoolwork. And Bek always had drugs. Got them in parcels marked as being from her mam what the carers never opened to ‘protect her privacy’. What a laugh. I was the lucky one sharing a room with Bek and she was a social whizz head and always shared what stuff she got. I missed Morph, and Mark a bit too and Jon loads, but I didn’t miss Mam one little bit. Or Uncle Frank. I wasn’t ever going to forgive him for what he’d done to me.

  Being in the EMHG was like this. We got up about nine and had tea and toast in the big drafty refectory. Then we officially had lessons but we were all so mad in the classroom the teachers soon cottoned it were easier to sit and have a chat with us rather than try and make us work. Then it were dinner and the food was okay. Better than school muck. Afternoons we pretty much could do what we liked. And what me and Bek liked was taking drugs.

  Bek introduced me to all the other gells. There wasn’t one as pretty as she was, or what I liked as much. There was Ginny, this skinny thing with a piggy little face, all pink and shiny. I kept expecting her to snort loud in the middle of dinner and it put me off my food. Then there was this psycho bitch called Caroline. She wanted everyone to call her Callie like the pretty gell off Grange Hill. But her name wasn’t Callie and she wasn’t pretty neither. If you called her owt else she lost it. I saw her smash Ginny in the face till her piggy nose was red as a berry. Then there was Paula. She was different from the rest of us. She’d bumped off her little brother and this made us all mad at her. We’d all done wrong things, but you don’t no way hurt your little brother. I loved Jon, and the worst thing about being in the EMHG was not seeing him, so Paula made me sick.
She’d put the poor sod in the freezer. The carers reckoned she was a bit slow, didn’t realise what she was doing. But I didn’t care. There wasn’t no excuse for doing that to your brother far as I was concerned.

  One time I got Paula on her own. It were in one of the shower rooms. She’d forgot to lock the door, and I was walking in to use the shower, not knowing she was in there. She turned, dog-eyed, her long black hair dripping down her back like oil. I grabbed that hair, took hold of it and slammed her face against the tiles. I saw blood drip down. I loved the colour of the red next to her black hair and the white tiles. She let out a whimper like a dog, to match her big sad eyes.

  ‘You’re a fucking bitch, what you done to that lickle boy,’ I told her. I don’t know to this day what brought out this nastiness. It wasn’t like me. I wasn’t no psycho like Bek or Mark. Maybes it was being left to fend for me-sen like that, without no one I knew.

  She didn’t answer, just howled. I smashed her face into the tiles another couple of times. Then the thought of the carers patrolling the corridor made me step out, wrapping my towel round me. I stood outside the shower room like I was waiting. One of the carers ran up.

  ‘What happened?’ she said.

  ‘Don’t know,’ I said. ‘I just got here and heard her wailing like some fucking banshee.’

  ‘Watch your language Kerrie-Ann,’ the carer said. ‘Are you sure you didn’t see anything?’

  I nodded and she looked in my eyes.

  ‘You’re not going to tell me who it was, are you?’ she said.

  I stared back at her with this look I’d been practising. It were what Bek’d showed me. She’d taught me three different dirty looks.

  Bek kissed me on the lips when she heard what I’d done. We all hated that Paula bitch.

  The week after I made Paula’s blood run down the shower wall, the police came to talk to me. Not about her – they didn’t care about that silly cow. They wanted to talk to me about what went off in the house with Frank. He sent his solicitor Tim Hesketh to sort it. I’d met Tim before but didn’t know he was a lawyer. He was as dodgy as Frank, into just as much stuff and that was why I knew him. I found out after he represented all the dealers and well dodgy types. That he turned up told the police loads about what I was on with. But they couldn’t prove owt. Tim was a tall man with the kind of chest what made you wonder if he had a heart problem. He did and it killed him not long after. They took me into this room to meet with him and the police idiots. He made them go out so’s we could have a minute alone. Said I was entitled to that.