Bloodtide

by Melvin Burgess

  I was starving to death.

  I knew what I had to do: big fat pig, full of dripping. But I was too weak. I kept thinking, when I’m better, when I’ve got my strength back. I was telling old Melanie, only another few days, I’ll be off out there and when I come back, girl…

  The trouble was there was no way I was going to get any strength back unless I got myself properly fed. I did my best. Melanie didn’t bother locking me up now – we were on the same side, weren’t we? – so I did my share of scavenging. Not that I was very good at it. I crawled off one night into the cabbage field and gorged myself on wet grass, like a cow. What a feast! A least I had a full belly, I thought, but I was shitting wet hay for a day until I was exhausted. Put myself back weeks. Melanie did her best. She always had something to bring home, but mostly it was crusts of bread and mouldy vegetables. She kept promising proper food, but it was just wishful thinking. She’d given me everything she had and there was nothing left, not even her strength. She was more starved than I was.

  I was still doing the exercises. I was healed up. I could move around, I could lift weights, I could run, but it was just helping to kill me. There’s no point in exercises if you haven’t got the fuel to burn. I had to get the strength back to pull off that one heist!

  Well, would you believe it? Old Melanie comes up with the goods again. Chops! Pork chops, proper ones. And a loaf of good bread. She looked as amazed as I was. I don’t know if she’d ever even seen a chop before. She’d cooked ’em at home. There were three of ’em and they were still warm.

  ‘Where’d you get these from?’ I was amazed.

  ‘A present,’ she said.

  ‘Who do you know who has pork chops to give away?’

  ‘Ahh!’ She tapped her nose with a finger. I was being nosy. Oh, well, chops is chops…

  I picked up one of the chops. I held it in my two hands. Gave it a little squeeze. Ohhhh… It was firm. Sweet. Solid meat. I gave it a sniff. I was gonna enjoy this. Then I took a long slow bite. I made sure I bit off a big chunk of the fat as well as the meat. My mouth was so wet you could have done the laundry in it. It was glorious! Then I lost my cool and started to gobble.

  I was just nibbling bits off the bone when I saw Melanie looking at me sideways. I kept forgetting. Funny, when you’re hungry… I mean, I don’t know if it’s like this if you’re hungry all your life, but if you’re used to loads of grub and then you get hungry, really hungry, proper starving… you never think anyone else might be hungry too. I knew she was starving herself to feed me, but I kept forgetting.

  ‘Have you had any?’ I asked her.

  ‘Oh, yeah,’ she said. ‘Ad mine.’

  I ate half the loaf, offered her the rest but she said no. I got stuck into the next chop. I’d polished off the bread and I was a couple of bites into the third and last when I thought, hang on, she’s lying again.

  ‘You haven’t had anything at all, really, have you?’ I said.

  ‘I ave,’ she insisted. And, well, I knew she was lying, but I finished the chop off anyway. I know. I’m a bastard. My mouth did it for me. I just wolfed it down before I had time to think. Then I wandered off outside to have a good belch and to let her chew the little ribbons of meat and gristle off the edges of the bones without me having to watch her at it. I felt horrible. Horrible for having eaten so much meat so quickly after starving for weeks. I was getting these painful cramps. And horrible again for not leaving her any.

  That’s when I made up my mind. Weak I may be, but it was gonna be a long time before I was gonna get that much food in my gut again unless I got it myself.

  Inside, Melanie made out she was wrapping the bones up in a cloth. I could see fat on the edges of her mouth. I went to the pile of old bricks where I’d hidden the old gun she’d given me, and I took it out.

  ‘Melanie, that’s the last time you’re gonna do me any favours.’ I came up close and tapped her softly on the forehead. ‘Next time you see me, kid, you’re gonna be rich.’

  And she smiled like a kid at Christmas.

  Big fat pig, full of dripping…

  No offense. I’ve got nothing against pigs – some of my best friends, as they say. Face it, my only friend. But there are pigs and pigs. The kind I was thinking about weren’t anything to do with animals.

  It was gonna be different this time. I mean, back then me and Signy weren’t in it for real. It sort of grew out of when we were kids playing Robin Hood. It was pretty safe, really, so long as people knew who we were and everyone knew about Siggy and Signy. Who was going to fight the children of the biggest ganglord in London?

  It was gonna be different this time. No one was going to have any qualms about shooting me now.

  I said to Melanie, ‘Right, where do the rich go?’ I was thinking of getting into a casino, or a decent hotel and pulling myself some fat businessman. Well, the old girl looked down at me and I glanced down after her and I thought, oh oh…

  Everything’s hard when you’re poor! Dressed like that I wasn’t gonna get near anyone rich enough to be worth robbing. I suppose that’s why poor people steal from poor people and rich people steal from rich people. Well, sod that. Was I Val’s son or what? In the first place the poor can’t afford to be robbed and, anyway, no poor man was going to have enough for me.

  You got to use your brain.

  I got into town through the old Northern Line tunnel and came back up in Camden as soon as the light went. I got straight on with it. Appearances, I thought. The first place I rolled was a clothes shop.

  I snuck in round about closing time. It was a Tuesday, not many folk about. I slid in with a ripple and tucked myself away behind a collection of cheap suits while the staff were dealing with the last of the customers. The final shopper was edged out, the door was locked. I waited. There were just these two blokes, skinny lads with floppy hairdos, poncing about the place. I was waiting for them to leave. But I had the gun ready just in case.

  I was terrified. Funny thing, I’ve always been terrified. I was terrified doing it with Signy and I was terrified now. You have to treat it like stage fright: just ignore it and go through with it even though you’re hiding behind a wall retching five minutes before it’s time to go on.

  So there I was quivering away amongst the off-the-peg suits, while these lads dipped about straightening the place up. ‘What’s that smell, George?’ one of them wanted to know. I was offended. I could have stepped out and smacked him one just for that. He was right, though. I stank. It was just that I’d been breathing it for so long I never noticed.

  ‘Changed your underpants lately?’ asked the other one. And the two of ’em started some giggly routine about skid marks and the rest of it. Anyway, next thing, they’re looking for the source of the pong. Truth to tell I was pretty obvious. There’s no hiding place for a man if he smells strong enough. It wasn’t long before one of them came up close by the cheap suits going, sniff, sniff, sniff. He poked about, opened them up – and there I was. And there I was. I made sure he spotted the muzzle of the gun before he spotted me. His face went… plop. Then he saw my face.

  I said, ‘Hush, George.’ He backed off as I came out, his nose centimetres from the end of the barrel. Then I took a deep breath and I screamed.

  ‘RIGHT, YOU TWO! OVER AGAINST THE WALL! NOBODY TRY ANYTHING! GET GOING, GET GOING!’ This is when the face comes in handy. I’m good at that bit of it. I terrified the pants off them. I scared myself, actually. This is the sort of business you have to do on nerves. Your customers have to think you are serious – mad, bad and deadly. Even if you’re a nice boy really.

  They scurried against the wall. I grabbed hold of the one who looked the least scared. As a rule of thumb, always go for the biggest and the meanest. Once he goes down, you’ve got the others just where you want ’em.

  ‘RIGHT,’ I screamed. I was waving the gun in the air right in their faces as if I was wrestling with it to stop it going off, doing my best impersonation of a homicidal maniac. I was pul
ling that gristled-up, chewed-up, broken-up face of mine like I was gonna eat them boys. ‘I WANT SOME OUTFITS!’ I screamed. ‘MAKE IT SNAPPY! AND I DON’T MEAN THE STYLE!’ I screamed. I broke into a fit of coughing – all that yelling was doing my lungs in. The other one shot off the wall and went running around. ‘26 WAIST!’ I howled. Well, I hadn’t eaten much lately. ‘SIZE NINE SHOES!’ I howled. Then, almost disaster. I nearly got a fit of the giggles. I mean, screaming your waist measurement in a voice like Mad Max. I swallowed it back. ‘AND DON’T GET OUT OF SIGHT OR GEORGEY-PORGEY GETS DEAD!’

  Wow! Big time! You must think I really am mad, starving half to death and going in a clothes shop. But it was necessary. I’m not interested in fashion but you get a better class of victim if you look right. Anyway, the gun wasn’t loaded and I reckon even those two laddies could have taken me in the state I was in. I had to give them a hard time to scare them out of trying anything on. I even threatened to shoot them if the colours weren’t matching right.

  Once I got all the gear together, I tied George and his pal up with a selection of silk ties, and had my own fashion show, trying it on and poncing up and down in front of the mirror. I had the shock of my life. I mean, I’d seen my face, but not that often and anyway, you get to forget what’s on the front of your head. This was the first decent mirror I’d got a look in and Jesus! You never saw anything like it. No wonder those two guys were scared. I nearly laid an egg in my pants just looking. My jaw stuck out sideways and forward like a snapped piece of china, my hands looked like claws. I was all bones, my eyes glittered like polished stones. I looked the devil. I could have wept, but I swallowed it down and said to myself, ‘Siggy, you are going to haunt this town.’

  ‘What do you think, George?’ I asked. I got back to my usual friendly self once they were tied up.

  ‘The beige s-s-suits you, sir,’ he promised. It was a nice pinky-beige suit with a waistcoat. I also got jeans, several pairs of shoes, shirts, trainers, you name it. Socks, pants, the lot. By the time I was finished, I could have walked into any casino or hotel in the land. Except that I still stank. And except for the face. You can’t hide that in new clothes. Well, people were gonna stare but it’s a bad world. I wasn’t the only one out there who’d been half eaten.

  I gagged the two assistants and blindfolded them – give meself a nice long getaway – emptied the till and headed off into the night. It was December and it’d been pitch black for hours. I caught a taxi to Hackney, didn’t want to go too up market, not with my face. The driver was screwing his nose up at me. It was unpleasant, I wasn’t used to being a smelly.

  Even so I was feeling good. The plan was working! Like I thought, people winced when they had to look at me, but money-talk beats body language any day. I stopped off to buy half a dozen pasties and guzzled them in the back of the cab. The driver must have thought he’d picked up a pig. Then I booked into a hotel and – ah, I remember this bit. You can’t imagine – I went upstairs to have a ba-aa-aa-aa-aaaath. Man, it was heaven. Paradise out the taps. It was a decent hotel – not the best, but good enough to have their own hot water supply. I lay in the hot soapy water for hours, and the poverty and the pain floated off me in long, dark, greasy stripes across the water. The bubbles turned black. I emptied the bath and started again.

  I felt like a new man. I was saved. I’m a pagan meself, but if I was a Christian I’d say, Jesus is a bar of soap.

  Then I got dressed and went downstairs to have a meal, just a light one. I stayed in that hotel for two days, building my strength up. Oh, I know what you’re thinking. What sort of a toad does that, gets the money and then sits and guzzles for two days when poor old Melanie was starving back home. Listen. I was exhausted. I had to get some strength back. And I did too. Just a few days of decent food, lying in a decent bed, having baths. Shit, I needed it! And at the end of those two days I was up and ready for anything that came my way.

  I thought to myself, why stop here? We have the means, we have the technology. I went to do some proper robbing.

  I was ready for anything. I was thinking of Melanie’s face when I turned up in my smart suit, smelling of sweet soap with a little bag full of gold coins, or rings, or jewels. Oh, I wasn’t going for small change. I wanted the business.

  That hotel was a real sty. I don’t mean it was dirty. I mean, it was full of fat pigs, full of dripping.

  My pig of choice was both fat and old. The old ones are usually the richest, and they deserve what’s coming to them. They’ve got a lifetime of greed behind ’em. I spotted mine in the restaurant steaming his way through steak, chips, trifle for afters, bottle of wine on the table next to him. He had bleary, thick eyes and a stomach to match, and he sat there and chewed his way through the lot, even though they served huge portions, even down to wiping the grease off his plate with a roll and asking for a couple of extra after-dinner mints with the bill.

  I thought, ‘Too old to think, too fat to move.’ My kind of Pig.

  And me? I was feeling clean and I was thinking hard.

  I lurked by the lifts – they had their own generators – and I slipped in with him on the way up. He was huge. I thought to myself, they ought to charge you extra for using the lift. What it cost to drag that bag of guts and blubber two storeys up I dread to think. I got out with him. I didn’t follow too close, though. I waited back down the corridor while he got his key out and let himself in. There were a couple of other guests going to and fro. As soon as the way was clear I walked up and rapped on his door.

  ‘Hello,’ he grunted.

  ‘Message for you, Mr Harabin.’

  ‘I’m not Mr Harabin.’

  ‘Room 127?’ I read off the door.

  ‘Yes…’

  ‘It’s for you, sir. Would you have a look, please?’

  I could hear him lumbering about inside. The bed creaked. ‘Can’t be for me… the room number must be wrong.’ But of course he was curious. Everyone’s curious. He got to the door and opened it and I introduced him to my grin and the barrel of my gun.

  ‘Get inside.’ I gave him a shove on the shoulder. It was like pushing a car with the handbrake on. I poked him with the gun and he stepped back into his room. ‘Stand next to the bed and empty your pockets,’ I told him.

  He was so fat you wouldn’t believe it, a man that gross. He began to turn and as he did, he stuck out his hand and swiped at the gun in my hand. I stood there watching him do it, thinking, you idiot. I mean, if the gun had been loaded I might have killed him. Was his wallet worth that much to him? As it was I took a step back, but…

  I’d forgotten, hadn’t I? He was old, slow and almost certainly stupid. I was young and trained to kill. But I was also half starved. A couple of decent meals and a gun in your hand doesn’t do away with being torn to pieces and spending three months on your back getting put back together. I took a step back but my legs seemed to have gone into slow motion. I watched his hand whip across – he was fast for a fatty – and I knew he was going to connect. My crabbed, skinny fingers squeezed tight but he caught my hand and flicked his wrist and I watched in amazement as the gun went flying across the room and rattled against the wall on its way to the floor.

  He was about twenty times stronger than I was.

  He took two steps forward and fell on me.

  I almost blacked out. Next thing I knew he’d crawled up with his knees round my neck with his bum like a thirty-tonne cushion on my chest. I couldn’t even breath. My mouth was opening and closing. I went into a panic, just trying to move my arms half an inch and get a sip of air, but I couldn’t.

  ‘You little git,’ he breathed. His great porky fist went up in the air and then down, smack! My head rolled about on my neck and I felt the warm blood on my mouth. Smack! I squirmed about, desperately trying to snatch a sip of air, watching his fist going up and down, up and down. I tried to say, I’m just a kid, but I couldn’t get the breath. In between punches he was bellowing for help. I vaguely saw a couple of maids and blokes in sui
ts peering in, and after a bit they grabbed hold of him and pulled him off. I think that’s what they were doing anyway. They might have just been helping him to his feet.

  The fat bloke bent down and pulled me up after him. I was nothing but a bloody invalid. He pulled me off the floor as if I was one of his old shirts.

  ‘Bloody little thief,’ growled the fat man. ‘What sort of a hotel is this?’ He ripped my jacket off and went through the pockets, holding on to me with one hand on my neck. He pulled out the fat wad I’d taken from the till in the clothes shop. ‘I don’t suppose this is his,’ he said. Then he shoved me in the back so I went flying through the air into the arms of one of the geeks in the suits.

  He pushed hard. I was as weak as water. I put my head down under the strength of his push and went fluttering the couple of metres into the geek – plonk! Straight into his stomach. The geek curled off with an OUF! Me – I just kept on going. I didn’t feel clean and hard now. I felt like a feather blowing along in the wind. Wet me and I stick to something, blow me and I fly. Catch me, I have no weight.

  But feathers are hard to catch. The fat man, the maids, the suits, guests from the hotel were all running after me. I felt like the gingerbread boy. More and more of them kept appearing, jumping at me out of their rooms, coming round the corners, all yelling and shrieking, ‘Thief, thief, stop him!’ I was certain I was going to get caught at any second. All they had to do was touch me and I’d’ve hit the floor. My face helped. People are used to seeing ugly sights, but there was always a moment to flinch as they reached out their hands to touch me.

  I carried on, fluttering down the corridor, under their arms, over their legs. I fluttered onto the stairway and then I fluttered down it. The foyer was full of people. I fell straight into their arms, then out of them again a second before they knew I was being chased. Someone caught my shirt. I shrugged the shirt off. I made it to the doors, and now I was going hard, digging up strength from somewhere, full of fear. My legs were pounding up and down, bang bang bang! Another hundred metres – my lungs were bursting, my legs were going under me like two strips of damp paper in a stiff breeze. I slid on something wet, went down on my bum and bounced back up. At last an alleyway into the slums opened up and I ran into it, into the dense cloisters of people and stalls, and stink. I became a feather again and started dodging and dashing this way and that.