‘Grab hold on that,’ he said to his mate. The junkie bloke held Rob’s hands down. It were like summat out of Reservoir Dogs. Mark took the hammer from round his neck and lifted it into the air.
I closed my eyes every time the hammer hit. I heard Rob screaming, the sound of bone cracking.
When Mark’d finished, the junkie bloke let Rob go. He wasn’t crying, I’ll give him credit, but he let out little yelps, like a dog being kicked. He was all dignified though and picked up his briefcase. It were painful to watch, the way he had to grip it with the palms of his hand. His fingers were all swollen and red. I wanted to think they’d get all better in the end but wasn’t sure how it worked when your fingers’d been smashed to bits. I didn’t want to think about it much.
Rob walked out the door and the bogger smiled at me. Talk about a death wish. He was lucky Mark didn’t clock him.
We all stood there in the dining room till we heard the front door click. This junkie mate of Mark’s had a sick grin on his mug. I didn’t know where to look or what might happen next. Mark came over. He cupped my chin in his hand and made me look into his eyes.
‘Don’t you ever go leaving me gell,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t handle it.’ And he grinned this crackhead grin at me, his eyes all shiny that way coke makes them. Then he winked, like it were all the biggest joke in the world.
He’d said this before to me, about leaving him, used pretty much the same words. But it’d been different then. I didn’t know exactly what he meant by it this time, the way he’d said it an-all. But there was one thing I did know. It wasn’t good. If he found out what I was on with in the back garden I’d have to run, and run fast.
SEVENTEEN
This one morning we were sitting round getting some breakfast when there was this ringing at the doorbell. It went right through me, specially with all the other stuff what’d been going off. It wasn’t the normal time for Mark’s junkies to be coming round. We’d been nervous as hell since that shit’d gone down with Rob. He was the sort what might go to the police, even though that’d of been one of the stupidest things he could of done.
‘You expecting anyone?’ Mark said to the pair on us. I shrugged back and Jon said no. Mark looked at me all intense and I returned the look. The corners of his eyes folded over as he frowned, a cute look I hadn’t seen much compared to the animal what set over his face sometimes. He got up and went into the other room, and I followed not far behind. He switched on the telly, turning it to the channel set up for the security camera. We saw a couple standing outside our door, junkie types. It wasn’t no one who usually bought from Mark, and I thought they must of been tipped off to come see us. Mark went to answer the door.
‘It’s for you,’ he said, coming back in the kitchen where I’d sat me-sen back down in front of some toast. He nicked a bit, and sat down with the paper.
‘Me?’ I said. ‘Who the hell is it then?’
Mark shrugged. ‘Din’t ask,’ he said, through a mouthful of my toast.
The woman at the door was well skinny, and had that look about her what told me she was a junkie. Clothes what hung from her body, rough skin, pockmarked all over, tracks showing on the bits of arm poking out from under the sleeves of her jumper. I didn’t know her so I looked at the bloke she was with. I’d been wrong when I looked at the telly. Unlike the gell, he wasn’t a junkie. His skin was nice and olive, shiny, his teeth white. His eyes were sparky, like he was looking round and taking everything in. No way was he into brown or he wouldn’t of been so healthy. I didn’t know him neither though.
‘Can I help you?’ I said.
‘Kez?’ the gell said. She examined my face as if she was expecting me to recognise her. ‘It’s me, sweetie.’
The only thing left of the gell I used to know was that voice, dripping with money. It were Bek from the EMHG.
‘Oh my God,’ I said. And I walked out and hugged my mate. I could feel how she was all skin and bone and she smelled a bit like sick, so I soon drew back. ‘You better come in,’ I said. I stared dead careful at her as she came through the door, trying to see any resemblance to my mate from the gell’s home. It were there, the same features, nose and eyes and all that. But her skin was awful. I mean, she would of been about twenty by then, but she looked closer to thirty-five. It were sad to see it.
Bek introduced me to the man who was with her. His name was Duggy and he was her fiancé. He was dressed all street in a hooded top and shell bottoms, and had the bolshy accent like Mark and Jon. But there were summat about him didn’t ring true. The clothes were too new, and his voice didn’t quite sound right. It were like he was an actor playing the part of an estate kid. But maybes it’s just hindsight has me say that.
We went through to the kitchen and I put on the kettle.
‘This is me mate Bek from that gells’ home I was in for a bit,’ I said to Mark and Jon. ‘And her bloke Duggy,’ I added. Mark nodded at the pair of them. Jon grunted hello. ‘Tea or coffee?’ I said.
‘We got some beer,’ Mark said, walking up to the fridge and getting some out, cracking them open as if they was standard after-breakfast fare. He passed cans round and we all took one, even Jon. I frowned at Mark but didn’t say owt. I’d never of made a fuss in front of company, not unless it were summat really bad. Mark would of killed me. He was busy producing various packages and laying them out on the table. He rolled a couple of joints. The first he melted hash on and stuck down, handed it to me. I lit it and took a big drag, noticed my hand shaking as I passed it on. It were so fucked up, seeing Bek here in my house looking the way she did. Mark rolled a second joint.
‘This one’s a special,’ he said, winking at Bek. This was Mark’s own word for a joint with heroin in it, but Bek got what he meant. Mark lit up and sent it past me to Bek, who took a couple of drags then handed it back to Mark, rather than on to Duggy. He held it out to Jon. That was way past the boundaries of my patience. There was no way I could let it pass and Mark knew it. It were like he was trying to wind me up in front of my mates. I grabbed the doobie from Jon’s hand and passed it to Bek.
‘You give that ter him again an I’ll put it out on yer face,’ I said to Mark, who let out this gruff laugh. Then I turned to Bek and smiled, my mood turning on a coin. ‘What you doing here? How’d you find out where I live?’ I asked her.
Bek held the doobie to the side as she let out smoke from the corner of her mouth. ‘It was Duggy, really. He’d heard about you through some friend.’ She waved her hand round. ‘You’re well known round these parts.’
I smiled at that, wondered if it were good or bad.
‘You’ve done a lot since you left that shithole in Loughborough,’ she said.
‘Yeah, we’ve done all sorts. You look like you have too,’ I said.
Bek giggled, but it didn’t sound at all lighthearted. She flicked her joint in the ashtray and looked away. ‘You know me. I’m always after having a laugh, and’ll pay what I need to get there. But I hear where you’re coming from,’ she said.
I felt shitty then. Bek’d been good to me in that place, and I didn’t want to upset her now she’d sought me out. ‘I have this thing about brown. It killed me mam,’ I said. Jon and Mark looked over but didn’t contradict me. So she wasn’t dead, not so far as I knew, but she might as well of been. ‘I like to have a laugh too. Just not brown,’ I said to Bek.
‘What you into then?’ Duggy asked me.
‘E mostly. Does more fer me,’ I said.
‘I see that,’ he said. He sat tapping his fingers on the table. Then he said, ‘You sell that too?’ and I nodded.
‘Remember that time you beat up that odd girl, in the home, the one who used to walk round muttering to herself?’ Bek said.
‘Yeah, that Paula bitch,’ I said.
‘Those carers were idiots. They didn’t cotton on it was you even though they found you right outside the showers,’ she said. We both smiled at the memory.
‘You want a proper hit?’ Mark asked her.
Bek shrugged. ‘I’ve got no money,’ she said.
‘S’all right for an old mate-a Kez’s. On the house,’ he said. This was well out of character for Mark, it just wasn’t summat he did. It made me wonder if he fancied Bek. Years before I would of bet on it. But by then . . . well, honestly, she looked a right mess. I wondered what he thought he’d get out of giving her free smack. The pair of them left the room, and Jon and me sat looking at Duggy, all uncomfortable.
‘Want a pill?’ I asked him, more to break the ice than owt.
‘How much?’ he said.
‘On me,’ I told him, following Mark’s lead. We were selling them for about five or six quid by then in any case, got hold of them for a few quid a piece, so it wasn’t much of a cost to me.
‘Ta,’ he said. And it struck me again he didn’t seem quite real.
I gave Jon a pill too. By then he was taking them regular, and I didn’t see no point in trying to stop him. It’d be too easy for him to get them elsewhere, they weren’t exactly expensive. At least this way I knew he was getting decent pills without no crap in them. I’d educated him too. I’d done a lot of research, after I heard about some gell what died. Sip liquids so’s you don’t get dehydrated, but not too much cause that’ll make you sick too, I’d told him. Isotonic drinks if you can get them, rather than just water. Then you’ll be all right. He’d listened. Cause I was giving him a bit of freedom I spose, so he tried to keep me sweet. That way we both got what we wanted.
Duggy took the pill off me and swallowed it down with a big slug of Lucozade and an exaggerated flip of the head. It struck me as an OTT way to take summat, but all’s I thought was that he wasn’t used to doing stuff and was fronting it. And that were part of the truth.
Bek and Mark came back then. I looked into my old mate’s hazel eyes, the pupils like pinpricks, this glazed expression all over her face. Mark the same. The return of the evil dead, zombies from a crappy horror flick.
‘Ever been riding?’ Bek asked me. I shook my head. ‘Jon?’
He shrugged. ‘Spose,’ he said. And I turned and glared at him. He shrivelled away from me and looked at Mark. It were beginning to feel like the two of them were ganging up on me.
‘Lighten up. All teenagers are into it,’ Bek said, touching my arm. She took my hand and led me to the door and I was reminded of that time she’d kissed me, when we’d both had a hit of coke.
We went out then and walked up Aspley, to that same road where Danny Morrison’d lived and we’d set him on fire. Like I said before, there was all these greens inbetween the houses and the roads. It made it easy to take cars from round there. People couldn’t park nowhere near their houses and couldn’t get out to stop no one if they saw them getting into their car.
Mark examined a few cars, looking through the windows like he knew summat about what he was doing. I could of laughed out loud about this, cause I knew he’d never done owt when it came to joyriding and didn’t get why he had to act the expert. Again it made me wonder if he thought summat of Bek. Maybes it were a bloke thing I couldn’t understand. Bek was ignoring him, though, doing her own thing. That much about her hadn’t changed. Mark was going for the sporty-looking ones what you knew must of belonged to nobs. That was how I cottoned Bek knew exactly what she was on with. She was only looking at the Escorts and Cortinas.
‘Easy to get into,’ she told me. She looked specially hard at this silver Escort, then took this bit of coathanger out her pocket. In seconds the door was open. I gestured at Mark and Duggy. They were staring in the window of a BMW, looking like right crooks. They came over.
‘You know how to trash an ignition column?’ Bek asked me and I shook my head. She asked Mark for his hammer. He hesitated, but handed it over to her. She bashed the plastic below the steering column till it split open, then pulled out a couple of wires and touched them together. The engine growled alive and Bek pushed down on the pedal, making it roar. ‘Get your arses in here,’ she said to us.
We all climbed in the car. I made Jon fasten his seatbelt. He tutted and rolled his eyes at me.
‘We’re going joyriding,’ he said.
‘Yeah, well we need to talk about how much yer know on this joyriding lark,’ I told him. And I gave him one of them looks of mine and he went all quiet. Everyone did.
Bek made the car fly off. It were the beginning of November and the air smelled sweet with bonfires and gunpowder. As we pegged it down the road, dead leaves shot up and danced round the car in the spinning air. They reminded me of walking to school when I was a kid. Leaves used to line the road and I’d crunch them up, and watch the gells who wore pinafores the same colour as the leaves were. They went to the Catholic school down the road, the one I’d gone to for a few days. When I tried to talk to any of them, they were jolted away by the arm. Their mams made it clear I was different to them.
We dumped the car on Denewood, set it on fire. It spluttered and sparked and added to the smoky air. All’s I could think about was how lovely autumn smelled. As we walked home grinning, Bek put her arm round me.
‘We got thrown out of this halfway house place, Duggy and me. Got nowhere to go,’ she said.
‘He’s bin in prison too then?’ I said, finding it hard to imagine. Bek nodded. I figured I owed her summat, the way she’d looked after me when I was in the gells’ home. And I’d not realised till I saw her how I did miss her, even all them years on. ‘The pair-a yer can stay wi-us,’ I said.
‘You sure, sweetie? I wouldn’t want to impose.’
I nodded. ‘Course I’m sure. Don’t be ser daft.’ And Bek kissed me on the cheek and I shivered. It wasn’t like when she’d made me shiver before, hyper off coke in the EMHG, but cause she scared me to death. It proper creeped me out this gell what used to be so full and shiny and a picture of health could of ended up like this. Sunken-eyed, and bones covered in a layer of skin without hardly any fat. Shrivelled like a mummy. Well on the way to being a corpse. And I looked at Mark and saw he was the same too. That’d happened behind my back, when I wasn’t looking. He was halfway dead. I thought about Morph, imagined him sitting on a branch then taking to the air, fluttering through the currents and getting buffeted here and there. I didn’t look at Morph often them days. Didn’t have to. In the case, hidden in my drawer, he was dead and dry behind glass. But in my head he was moist to the touch and could fly, suck nectar from flowers and land on branches, shutting his wings like he was saying a prayer. He was alive.
I thought about the money in my garden.
When we got home, it were obvious Duggy was tired. He kept yawning, and his eyes looked sore and red. He kept going on about how he needed his bed. I thought it were strange that he should be like that already, when he’d had the same I’d took. I was still in that mode where your eyes feel stuck open like you’ll never need to sleep again. Course Bek and Mark were both ready to sleep too, but that made sense given they’d shot up brown. I wondered if Duggy was a heavy user, so’s it didn’t have the effect on him it used to. But it seemed unlikely, given how much I’d took over the years and I was still rolling. I sorted some bed linen for Duggy and Bek, showed them the spare room and where everything were. We didn’t have a proper bed in there, just a blow-up mattress, but they both said they didn’t care and that beggars couldn’t be choosers and all that kind of thing. I left them to it.
I went downstairs and sat on the sofa. Jon’d gone to meet some mates and I wondered if he was going to steal another car. I could see what he liked about it, I was quite into doing it again me-sen. But I did worry about my little brother. I felt on my own. Not just that I was sitting in that room alone, wide wide awake while they all were snoring, but also on my own when it came down to Jon. Every bogger else seemed to think it were all right to let him go off and do whatever the fuck he pleased. I leaned back, sipping at some pop, and reached behind me, pushing my hand right down the back of the sofa to push me-sen upright. I felt summat small and slippy wedged there.
I
wriggled my hand around till I got a decent grip and pulled the thing out. It were an ecstasy tablet, a Mitsubishi same as the ones we were selling at the time. I was sitting where Duggy’d been, so I knew it must of been his. For some reason, he hadn’t took it. I wondered why. I thought he must be green as owt, scared or summat. He could of just said, we would of sorted him. He’d been fronting, like I thought. That was why he’d made such a big deal of looking like he was swallowing summat. I put the pill in my pocket. I’d have him about it later, I decided. Find out what he was on with.
Just then the phone rang. We didn’t get loads of phone calls, specially not at that time of night, and it made me jump. I picked up the handset. The voice on the other end was all slurred. It were Rob, the teacher with a death-wish, drunk.
‘Meet me. Just to talk,’ he said.
‘You know that in’t a good idea,’ I said.
‘Just come out onto the park and meet me now.’
‘Yer on the park?’
There was no sound on the other end of the line.
‘Rob?’
‘I’m nodding.’
I opened the door, slow so’s it didn’t creak. I guessed Mark’d be dead to the world but wasn’t taking no chances. I walked up the path and crossed the little road. Rob was sitting on top of the webby climbing frame, staring in my direction. I came over and climbed to the top with him.
‘I miss you,’ he said.
‘How did yer phone me from there? On yer fucking Spiderphone?’ I said. He waved a mobile at me, which I have to say impressed me. That was back when no bogger had them. It were like a brick, course, the way they used to be.
‘Flash bastard,’ I said. And he giggled. The way drunks do.
‘I miss you. Miss our chats,’ he said.
I shook my head. ‘You know this in’t possible. You know what’ll happen if Mark finds yer here.’
The Killing Jar Page 14