by Nick Oldham
‘Couldn’t say,’ Jack responded, not sounding too concerned.
‘What about the police?’ Mark asked.
‘What about ’em?’
‘Shouldn’t we go to them?’
‘I don’t think so,’ Jack said stiffly.
‘But we’re witnesses!’
Jack’s eyes closed and then reopened in a moment of disdain. Now he looked slowly round at Mark. ‘What planet are you on?’
‘Eh?’
‘Things like that, you don’t get involved with. Once you get hooked up with a job like that, it’s like a noose around your neck.’ His voice was brittle.
‘But suppose someone’s got shot—’ Mark began.
‘Not our problemo.’
‘But, those guys, they could get away with what they’ve done!’ Mark persisted.
‘Then let ’em get away with it. What could we tell the cops, anyway? Two guys in a blue Subaru? No good description? They’ll get that from the other people. Or – supposin’ we did finger those guys – have you ever thought what could happen to us? They’d be after us. Witness intimidation at the very least. Death threats, houses burned down. All that sort of thing could happen. We’d end up on the witness protection programme. They’d hunt us down, those kinds of people. We were in the wrong place at the wrong time, our paths crossed, so let’s leave it at that, eh?’
‘Jack – that’s a bit farfetched isn’t it?’
‘Trust me – forget what you saw. Being Mr Sensible and putting your head over the wall will only get it shot off. Guys like that mean business and if you mix it with ’em, they don’t take kindly to it. Not worth it, believe me.’
Mark scowled and folded his arms haughtily.
Jack pulled the Cayenne into the side of the road, sat there for a few moments, then turned in the leather seat and looked squarely at Mark. ‘Hey.’ He touched Mark’s right elbow affectionately. ‘You’re a good lad and you’ll make good when you’re older. You know the difference between right and wrong and most of the kids round here haven’t a clue’ – he pointed a finger at Mark – ‘but you’ve got to realize the world’s a grey place and you need to know when to step in or step back. Today was nasty, big boy stuff. Serious.’ His pointing finger reinforced his next words. ‘You do not want to get involved in this, not if you want to stay unhurt, yeah?’ He peered closely at Mark. ‘The important thing is that you wanted to do the right thing.’ Jack leaned over and embraced Mark with a big bear hug.
‘Right, right, I get what you say, but what if we’ve already been identified by someone else? Say someone took your car number and the cops come knockin’?
‘You worry too much. Let’s cross that bridge when we come to it, eh?’
‘OK,’ Mark conceded. ‘I’m being an arse.’
‘Yep, you surely are.’ Jack smiled, looked slightly relieved. ‘So keep it zipped’ – he imitated pulling a zipper across his lips – ‘keep mum and it’ll all pass over.’
‘OK, will do.’
‘Good lad.’ He patted Mark’s knee.
Jack drove the Cayenne back into the traffic, whilst next to him Mark stayed tight-lipped. Yet, as much as he would like to have been comforted by Jack’s words, he couldn’t help but think he hadn’t heard the last of it.
Drive-by shootings don’t just curl up and die.
Jack dropped him and his bike – which was in the back of the Porsche – close to the estate, then, after giving Mark a tenner out of his wallet, he pulled away.
Mark realized two things.
First, he hadn’t had a chance to talk about Bethany.
And second, there was a bullet hole in the rear wing of the Porsche.
Sleep would not come. Impossible. The images of the day wheeled in circles around Mark’s inter-cranial TV screen and prevented him from even nodding off.
1 a.m. came and went.
At 2.15 a.m. he heard a noise outside.
He jumped up and peeked through a crack in the curtains, knowing, but dreading, what he would see: Bethany arriving home accompanied by Jonny Sparks.
Again – Mark felt sure it was for his benefit – Jonny made a big show of snogging Beth and when he slid his hand up her top, Mark twisted away from the window and threw himself back on to his bed, face down in one pillow, another pulled over the back of his head.
He cursed himself for not gripping Jack about Bethany. But that chance had passed for the time being.
Mark’s thoughts spun to his mother. She was out somewhere, probably at ‘Uncle-bloody-Jim’s’, or whoever else she was seeing at the moment, staying overnight. It was really her job to get Bethany sorted, but there was no chance of that. She was as out of control as her daughter and didn’t seem to care. She just made sure there was food in the house – sometimes – clean clothes and bedding, turned up occasionally and that was it. As far as she was concerned the kids were just a nuisance.
Then he wondered about his dad … but his feelings became all confused and emotional, so he tried to put everything out of his mind except the new computer game he’d just got, one of the Harry Potter ones. He imagined each stage of the game as he walked through the levels, a lone boy against the world around him.
He began to tremble, though, as he confronted the darkest wizard of them all.
Six
Next thing it was 5 a.m. and his alarm clock was clattering in his ear. Mark leapt awake, plunged out of a strange, deep dream into the reality of the morning. He was sweating, breathing heavily as though he’d been running hard. Something had been chasing him in the dream, but as he rubbed his eyes he found he couldn’t recall any detail. He groaned and swung his legs out of bed, sitting there, dying for a pee, his hard-on tenting his boxer shorts, his bladder aching.
Light chinked through the gap in the curtain, the one he’d looked through to watch Bethany and her boyfriend trying to swallow each other in a gunge of saliva. He jumped up and got moving. Within five minutes he’d splashed water on his face, had that wonderful relieving pee, got dressed. Before heading downstairs he checked the other bedroom doors on the landing. His mum’s was open. He tiptoed to it and put his head round. The room was empty, bed unmade, clothes strewn everywhere, the stench of stale cigarettes hanging there. Mark’s face screwed up distastefully as he withdrew and glanced at Beth’s door, which was closed. He didn’t recall hearing her come in – obviously he’d dropped asleep quickly with his head sandwiched between his pillows – but he didn’t look in.
He trotted downstairs, thought about shoving a piece of toast down his throat, but decided he didn’t have time. He manoeuvred his bike down the hallway and out through the front door, making as much noise as possible in the hope of waking and annoying Bethany. He slammed the door – satisfyingly – behind him and pedalled off into the dawn.
It was the start of a beautiful day. Early June, lots of light, lots of birds singing. A fantastic time of day, and as he rode slowly around the edge of the estate, no one else around, it felt good to be alive.
The newsagent’s he delivered for was in a row of shops just off the south side of the estate. It was in a fortunate position, not being actually on Shoreside, because all the shops on the estate itself had all been vandalised, put out of business and the owners forced to move out. There wasn’t a single legitimate business on the estate and everyone had to leave to buy anything. The newsagent’s was just far enough away to have escaped the attentions of the more destructive criminal elements and if it had been on the estate there was no way in which it would have lasted more than a few days anyway. An Asian family ran it and they would have been hounded out from day one. As it was, they still suffered daily racial abuse even off the estate, but they tolerated it because the shop made good money.
Mark liked Mr Aziz. He always treated Mark fairly and paid slightly more than he should in order to keep his paperboys and girls. They were like a little army, descending on the shop and delivering to a wide area. Mark had two rounds in the morning, six days a week, one in the afternoon, also
six days a week, and a huge, heavy one on Sunday mornings which nearly broke his back and took about four fours to complete. He worked hard, was paid reasonably for his efforts, and quite enjoyed it – especially in summer.
The hi-viz delivery bags were already loaded when Mark arrived, yawning, at 5.25 a.m. Mr Aziz was up at 3.30 a.m. each day, opened at 5 a.m., closed at 10.30 p.m., seven days a week. He made a small fortune, Mark guessed, yet despite the hours and the harassment, he was always cheerful and perky. Mr Aziz handed Mark the first bag of the day and a cup of tea in a lidded Styrofoam cup. Mark apologized profusely for missing yesterday afternoon’s rounds. Mr Aziz said OK, said at least he’d sent someone to let him know, told him not to do it again, smiled and shooed him out on to the road, then did the same with the next boy. It was like a little production line.
Mark wobbled on his bike, getting his balance, ensuring the shoulder bag was perfectly arranged for weight distribution, took a sip of the tea, which was thoughtfully provided each day for the little team, and hit the road.
The route was embedded in his brain. He could have done it with his eyes closed – riding using one hand, drinking tea with the other – but that morning his eyes were wide open as he enjoyed the start of a great sunny day and breathed in the already warm air into his chest whilst whizzing from house to house.
Just before eight he’d finished the second round of the day.
Things were busier now. The world had woken up. People were rushing around, traffic had clogged the roads and it was all a bit less pleasant.
He landed back at the shop with an empty canvas bag and threw it down on top of the pile of other empty bags. One of the Aziz specialities, sold in the shop as part of a take-away breakfast menu, was a double fried egg roll. As he charged only cost price to the paper-round kids, Mark, who was usually famished by the time his rounds were over, occasionally took advantage of the offer and succumbed to it that morning. He gave Aziz the ‘feed me’ look and Mrs Aziz set about creating a mega-butty for him.
‘Give him three eggs today,’ Aziz told his wife. ‘He deserves it. He’s a good worker, this one.’ He ruffled Mark’s short hair – having no effect on the style whatsoever. ‘In fact, you can have this one on the house.’
‘Thanks,’ Mark responded enthusiastically to the generosity. Three eggs was good. Free even better.
Unlike most of the other kids who delivered, Mark did not want his money at the end of each round. He preferred it to accumulate over the week because he knew that if he did take it each day, he would only end up spending it like the others. As it was he got Mr Aziz to pay him each Saturday morning, then Mark would fly round to the building society and salt ninety per cent of it away in his savings account. Then he would blow the remaining ten per cent.
Whilst waiting for the sandwich, Mark hovered by the magazine rack, leafing through a few comics he couldn’t afford. He thought they were a waste of cash anyway.
‘Eeeh, dear, dear,’ he heard Aziz mutter behind him. Mark turned. Aziz was behind the counter. Unusually, there were no customers in the shop. Mostly there was a never-ending stream of them. Aziz was taking a precious moment to have a sip of tea and a snatch-read of a daily rag.
‘What is it?’ Mark asked curiously.
‘This town, this town,’ Aziz sighed, shaking his head sadly, reading an item inside the paper. He laid the paper down on top of the stack of other newspapers and swivelled it round. ‘What is it coming to?’ Mr Aziz laid a finger on what he’d been reading. ‘So dangerous now. You can’t even eat safely anymore.’
Even before he read it, Mark knew what Aziz was referring to. His throat suddenly constricted, dry like he’d just eaten a mouthful of dust, and his heart began beating unhealthily quickly.
It was an item on the inside pages of one of the tabloids. The headline read, ‘Waitress Critical After Shooting’. Next to the headline was the KFC logo – the kindly looking Colonel Sanders with the goatee beard.
Mark bent over and read the first few lines of the story. ‘A young waitress is critically ill in hospital following a drive-by shooting in Blackpool yesterday …’
‘Very bad, uh?’
Mark looked slowly up, feeling colour creeping up his neck. It was as though Mr Aziz knew, was taunting him, even though Mark realized he couldn’t know anything.
‘What’s it say?’ Mark asked with a choke.
‘Oh, not much … a waitress got shot in the chest …’ Mr Aziz swivelled the newspaper back, closed it and replaced it on the appropriate pile. ‘Police want any witnesses to come forward … but who would?’ Aziz shook his head again. He did a lot of that. ‘The world is such a dangerous place, eh, Mark?’
‘Yeah.’ He just wanted to turn and run.
Everybody knew! He was the witness the police wanted to find. Him and Jack.
‘You OK, my boy?’ Mr Aziz asked. ‘You look white as a sheet.’
‘I’m good.’ He wasn’t. He felt ill.
Mrs Aziz appeared from the rear of the shop bearing Mark’s free three-egg sarnie in a paper bag. Already at least one of the eggs had burst and the yolk was seeping through the paper, turning Mark’s stomach. Mark took one look at it, wanted to retch. He turned and did a runner from the shop, leaving the couple open-mouthed.
‘Wonder what’s eating him?’ Mr Aziz speculated.
Outside, Mark leapt on to the BMX and pedalled furiously away.
He had to stop, get his breath, calm down. He veered into the side of the road and sat astride his bike, trying to slow everything down so he could think. If only he had a mobile phone. But Mark had always thought there were more important things in life than mobile phones – and he wanted to use his hard-earned cash for more exciting things – but just at that moment he could have done with one. He could get on it, call up Jack, and tell him they were now witnesses to an attempted murder, maybe even a murder if the waitress died. But what would Jack say? He’d only shrug it off, say chill out, don’t worry, not our problem, don’t get involved.
But here he was, fretting away like a steam train on drugs. There was a word for it. He searched his mind … that was it: hyperventilation.
The story had gone national. The big papers had got hold of it. It might even have been on the telly. Probably had been, definitely would be. And the cops were after witnesses to come forward.
And a girl had been shot.
Mark remembered her. There had been two members of staff at the front counter, a lad and a girl. She’d been quite pretty.
What was it like to get shot? he wondered. He’d seen all the American TV shows with bullets flying through the air in slow motion, then slamming into the flesh of a human being, entering a body and doing incredible damage. Slick TV. Didn’t go any way to describing how it must feel to have a lump of hot lead piercing your body, causing horrendous internal damage.
His nostrils flared as he tried to imagine.
Smack!
He winced, feeling the pain, then feeling sick.
Suddenly he lurched, almost fell off his bike. He scrambled to the edge of the footpath where it met a stone wall and spewed up nothingness from his guts.
But he knew what Jack had said was true.
What his brother had meant was that the DBS would only be a noose around their necks if they came forward as witnesses … what he should have said was that, whether they came forward or not, there was still a noose, an inescapable noose, which was tightening around Mark’s neck because, whatever, he and Jack were involved and the cops would find them. How the hell do you hide a Porsche Cayenne in an almost empty KFC car park? And the fact it drove away after a shooting? That it had smoked glass and a personal plate … and also a bullet hole in it?
But worst of all was the noose of conscience. Someone had got shot, could die, and if he and Jack contacted the police, their evidence might just catch a killer.
Why was nothing simple?
Mark threw up again. Horrible, green-grey bile, making him wish he’d eaten the eg
g sandwich. At least there would have been something to bring up. As it was it felt like he was wringing out his intestines.
He crawled back to his bike, then with his head down, he pedalled for home, deciding he would give school a miss today.
Arriving home minutes later, he manoeuvred his bike into the hallway and burst into the living room, switching on the TV in the corner of the room, channel hopping to see if he could find any mention of the shooting. It was all fashion tips, political crap and cartoons. He went on to the local Teletext news page – 160 – and found the index. Sure enough, page 161’s headline read: ‘Police investigate Blackpool shooting.’ Mark sat down heavily in front of the screen and waited for it to scroll to page 161.
As it revealed, he read it slowly.
The details were sketchy, but enough for him to feel rising panic.
He slumped back against the settee and read it a few times more.
He knew there was nothing he could do. Just follow Jack’s advice. Keep quiet and keep your head down and hope it goes away. One thing was for sure – he wouldn’t be going back to that KFC in a hurry.
The problem was, something inside Mark told him he should do the right thing and go to the cops.
But he wanted to keep on Jack’s right side too and he could see the logic of his big brother’s argument. Eventually he came round to accept the situation.
He and Jack had been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Just one of those things. Bad Karma, he’d heard people say, whatever that meant. One of life’s little hiccups. Fate. All that sort of crap …
… Just so long as the girl didn’t die.
He pointed the remote at the TV and it went blank.
The house was quiet.
All he could hear was his own breathing, which had calmed down now.
Suddenly his hunger returned with a vengeance. He needed something to eat. Beans on toast sounded good. Maybe he would go to school after all. Maybe nothing would happen now. Maybe the cops wouldn’t come knocking – and why should they? Maybe, maybe, maybe. He stood up stiffly, trying to shake it off.