Lucky Star

by Cathy Cassidy

  I think maybe we will.

  Of course, Psycho Sam collars Fitz and Chan for dog-walking duty, so Cat and I tag along for company. We leave Lucky with Mum, Jake and the garden centre man, sipping coffee made with a second-hand kettle, out of brand-new Woolworths mugs.

  We head down to the first floor to collect the dogs. ‘Here they are,’ Psycho Sam says, handing them over. ‘Be good, Jordan. Be good, Jade!’

  ‘Jordan?’ Cat echoes as we sprint after Fitz and Chan, who are now being towed rapidly along towards the lift. ‘Jade? Sam’s a big softy, isn’t he? I bet these dogs wouldn’t hurt a fly.’

  ‘Dunno,’ I say, seriously. ‘Sam lives next door to a drug dealer. I suppose he reckons the dogs are good security.’

  Cat blinks.

  ‘He lives next door to a dealer?’ she repeats. She stops short, staring back along the corridor, open-mouthed.

  ‘Don’t,’ I hiss, dragging her towards the lift. ‘It’s no big thing. Everyone knows.’

  ‘Everyone knows?’ she asks, horrified. ‘Everyone knows, and yet they don’t do anything?’

  I bundle Cat into the lift. ‘What can we do?’ Fitz asks, reasonably. ‘The Eden Estate is full of dealers. You learn to live with it.’

  ‘But those losers are the people who got Scully into drugs,’ Cat says. ‘They’re his friends, right? They wreck lives. They probably helped to torch the Phoenix. And you guys are OK with all that?’

  Jordan and Jade lurch out across the lobby, beneath the icicle lights. They bound out across the floodlit courtyard. ‘We’re not OK with it, obviously,’ I say. ‘Fitz is just saying, that’s the way things are around here. You get to know stuff.’

  ‘Up on the tenth floor, there are two flats next to each other where a couple of dealers live,’ Chan tells Cat. ‘Scully’s in Eagle Heights, next floor down from me. There are dealers in every block.’

  ‘You know where they live?’ she asks, incredulous. ‘All of them?’

  ‘Not all,’ Chan admits. ‘Some, though.’

  ‘Shut it, Chan,’ I snap, and he shrugs.

  ‘Just saying.’

  It’s cold, and the first real frost of the year has blackened and shrivelled the last of the flowers poking up through the ash and wreckage.

  ‘Why won’t the police do something?’ Cat wails. ‘It’s crazy! It’s wrong!’

  ‘You need proof, man,’ Fitz says. ‘Nobody wants to point the finger.’

  ‘Well, Mrs S. did,’ Cat reminds us. ‘She’s probably the bravest person around here! If we could get a list together of where the other dealers are … mark them, somehow …’

  ‘No,’ I tell her.

  ‘Bad idea,’ Fitz chimes in. ‘Haven’t you had enough of trouble?’

  Sometimes, though, I think that’s the one thing Cat will never get enough of. She tugs at my arm, pulling me back as the dogs drag Fitz and Chan out of earshot.

  ‘Mouse, listen!’ she whispers, her eyes gleaming. ‘If we could just find out who all the dealers are …’

  ‘We could,’ I say. ‘But what’s the point? We couldn’t go to the police – they’d need proof, and we don’t have that. Besides, it would be dangerous, and like Fitz says, we can’t risk more trouble. It’s not an option.’

  Cat narrows her eyes. ‘Not the police,’ she says, slowly. ‘I’ve got a better idea …’

  Cat can wrap the world round her little finger. Before long, she’s got me convinced that her crazy plan is worth one last risk, one last effort.

  ‘You have to stand up for what you believe in,’ she tells me. ‘You can’t stand by and let bad things happen without trying to stop them.’

  I think of Mrs S., who stood up for what she believed in, even though it meant sending her grandson back to prison. The old lady looks crushed, beaten, lately, as if all the hope has been taken away from her. I suppose nobody ever said that doing the right thing was meant to be easy.

  ‘People are learning to fight back around here,’ Cat points out. ‘They’re angry about the Phoenix, they’re fed up with being pushed around. Look at what’s happening – the lobbies, the lifts, the flowers people have planted.‘

  ‘I suppose,’ I say, doubtfully.

  ‘We’re not going to the police,’ Cat promises. ‘We’re just going to make sure people know exactly who and where the dealers are. We’ll shame them, right?’

  I’m not convinced. I don’t think the dealers have any shame.

  ‘It’s too dangerous,’ I tell Cat. ‘If we get caught –’

  ‘We won’t get caught,’ Cat says.

  It takes us two days to gather a list of the dealers on the Eden Estate. We talk to Fitz and Chan again, picking their brains without letting them know what we’re planning. ‘The less people know, the safer it’ll be,’ Cat says, but what we’re doing is not safe, no matter how I look at it. We’ve just got one local thug off our case, and now Cat wants to stir up trouble with a whole bunch more? Bad news.

  There are nine addresses, scattered across each of the four high-rise blocks. ‘Just nine?’ Cat demands. ‘I thought there’d be more.’

  It doesn’t sound so many, but those nine people and their lackeys are responsible for a whole lot of misery, fear and pain. ‘Nine,’ I tell her. ‘Fitz thinks the new blokes along the hall from his place are dodgy, but he’s got no real evidence. They’ve been hanging around, getting pally with some of the dealers, but I think most likely they’re just buying stuff.’

  ‘We’ll stick to the known dealers,’ Cat says. ‘We can’t afford mistakes.’

  I think that this whole idea is a mistake, but I swallow my fear and do my best to make sure nothing will go wrong. We plan our hit for Thursday night, when Mum, Luke and Julie are travelling to Liverpool to spend the following day checking out the anti-drugs charity working alongside the council up there. ‘They’re getting fantastic results,’ Mum explains. ‘We can learn so much from them, for when the Phoenix is back on its feet. Things are going to be different here, Mouse, I know they are.’

  ‘When will you be back?’

  ‘Friday night,’ Mum says. ‘Look, Mouse, I know Scully’s safely out of the way again, but still, I don’t like leaving you alone, not the way things are right now. Can you and Lucky stay with Fitz?’

  ‘Maybe,’ I bluff.

  ‘D’you want me to call his mum, check it’s OK with her?’

  ‘No, no, I’ll sort it,’ I say. ‘No hassle.’

  Mum has learnt to live with the occasional graffiti hit, but I don’t think she’d be as understanding if she knew what we’re planning this time. It’s better that she doesn’t know.

  ‘Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do,’ she says before she goes.

  ‘That gives me a pretty free rein,’ I quip.

  ‘Cheeky,’ she laughs. ‘Seriously, though. Take care of yourself.’

  ‘I will. Don’t worry, Mum. And good luck in Liverpool!’

  Everything is ready.

  It’s four twenty-five in the early hours of Friday morning. Cat’s parents think she’s at Aditi’s house, curled up in her Hello Kitty nightdress, spark out after a night of French revision and popcorn. Mum thinks I’m at Fitz’s place, tucked up in the spare bunk with Lucky at my feet.

  They’re all wrong. Cat is dressed in an old jumper and ragged jeans, face disguised by a black fleece ski-mask with just a slit for the eyes and mouth. I pull on a black beanie and wrap a scarf round my mouth and nose, but I know that if we are seen, a scarf and a ski-mask won’t save our skin.

  ‘Scary,’ I tell Cat, and she pulls the ski-mask off, grinning.

  Lucky licks his lips and starts to whine. ‘Be good, Lucky,’ I say in a muffled voice, wondering how he can manage to look worried and disapproving at the same time. ‘Don’t wait up for us.’

  Cat hugs me quickly in the darkness. ‘Let’s go.’

  My heart is racing as we creep along the corridor, ride down in the turquoise tinselled lift and skulk across the courtyard. The estate is desert
ed and still. My senses are sharp with the adrenaline, but there’s a heavy dread in my belly that feels like real fear. If I was the kind of boy who prayed, I’d be praying now, but the best I can do is look skywards, searching for stars. A bright, blinking light falls slowly through the darkness.

  ‘Look,’ I whisper to Cat. ‘Shooting star! That’s good luck.’

  She rolls her eyes. ‘It’s a plane, you idiot,’ she says, and when I look again I can see that she’s right. Typical.

  We start in Skylark Rise, on the seventh floor. Cat pulls on her ski-mask as we leave the lift. The corridor is empty, each scratched and ancient front door hiding nothing but silence. We linger outside number 83, uncertain, and then Cat hisses, ‘Go!’

  I start to spray, a quick blast of red that blooms like a flower against the dull, grey paintwork and drips down like blood. I step back and Cat uncaps her spray can, painting the words dealers out in spiky black letters. Before the paint has even begun to dry, we are back inside the lift, spray cans hidden, hearts hammering.

  ‘One down, eight to go,’ I tell Cat.

  The second hit, down on the third floor, is just as smooth. Nobody sees us, and within minutes we’re back in the lift, clunking slowly downwards. We come out through the lobby, cross towards Raven’s Crest, and Cat elbows me in the ribs.

  ‘Look!’ she whispers. ‘In the playground! They weren’t there, before.’

  Under the thin orange lamplight, two men are sitting on the battered roundabout, smoking and talking in low voices. The tips of their cigarettes glow red in the darkness. We tug off the scarf and the ski-mask, try to look casual.

  ‘They’re not interested in us,’ I say, hoping I’m right.

  Cat links my arm and we move out of view, into the lobby of Raven’s Crest. The third graffiti hit goes without a hitch, and then we move on to the tenth floor. I’ve just sprayed my burst of red when a door opens along the corridor. ‘What d’you want?’ a voice asks.

  Somehow, I drag up the name of the dealer who lives here. ‘Looking for Carlo,’ I answer. ‘Seen him?’

  ‘Don’t you know what time it is?’ the voice snaps back. ‘People are trying to sleep! Clear off!’

  The door slams, Cat sprays her dealers out slogan and we’re off at a sprint. ‘Close one,’ Cat says, in the relative safety of the lift.

  ‘Four down,’ I whisper. ‘Five to go.’

  As we cross towards Eagle Heights, I see the figures in the playground, quiet now, still smoking. They make me feel faintly uneasy, as if they’re watching us. Inside, there’s a party going on at one of our target flats. Loud music booms out along the corridor, and it takes every bit of courage we have to walk towards that noise, but I spray my blood-red mark and Cat scrawls her message, and we’re out of there. The next hit is easy by comparison, and now there are only three doors left to mark, all of them in Nightingale House.

  ‘Almost there,’ I say, as we come out of Eagle Heights, but straight away my scalp prickles and I look around me. I can smell trouble – something is going on. A couple of dark vans are parked across the way at Skylark Rise, two more down by Nightingale House. As I watch, another dark van slides into the road and turns down towards Raven’s Crest.

  ‘Weird,’ says Cat.

  The men from the playground are watching us, their faces moon-pale in the darkness. ‘Kids,’ one shouts across to us, his voice steely-cold. ‘Go home. You hear me? Get out of here.’

  We keep walking, heads down. ‘You hear?’ he repeats, falling into step behind us, and suddenly I feel cold all over. ‘Go home.’

  ‘OK, OK,’ I say, trying to keep the fear from my voice. ‘We’re going.’

  We make it to the lift in Nightingale House, wide-eyed. ‘What was all that about?’ Cat wants to know. ‘Something dodgy, I bet.’

  ‘Too right,’ I say. ‘Let’s get this over with, yeah?’

  On the tenth floor, our targets are side by side, two smartly painted doors. It should be fast, it should be easy, but my hand shakes as I start on the second door, and my scalp is still prickling with fear. I want to get out of here. I want to get out of here now. ‘Cat,’ I hiss. ‘Leave it.’

  Her green eyes blink, astonished, through the slit in her ski-mask. She shakes the spray can. ‘Leave it? We’re almost there!’ she argues.

  Suddenly, the lift clanks open at the end of the corridor and a whole bunch of men and dogs come charging towards us. Cat drops the spray can. I grab her arm and try to run the other way, but at the end of the corridor the fire-escape door bursts open and we’re just about flattened in the stampede.

  ‘Grab those damn kids!’ someone yells.

  Someone grabs my hood and yanks me to one side as the half-tagged doors splinter and give way. Men shove their way into the flats, uniformed men with bulletproof vests and guns. Policemen.

  ‘Whoa,’ Cat says from under her ski-mask. ‘It’s a raid!’

  ‘Shut up,’ a policeman snarls in her ear, and for once she does. A barrage of screaming, swearing and scuffling erupts from inside the flats, and I feel sick with fear.

  A tall, sandy-haired man with breath that smells of cigarettes appears in front of us. ‘I thought I told you kids to go home?’ he says in that same ice-cold voice I recognize from earlier. ‘Now look what’s happened. You’ve got yourselves mixed up in something you really don’t want to be mixed up in.’

  ‘We’ll go home now,’ I squeak. ‘Promise.’

  The plain-clothes policeman sighs. ‘Too late for that,’ he says. ‘Graffiti vandals, aren’t you? And playing a very dangerous game, if you’re doing what I think you were doing. I think we’d better take you along to the station, get your parents in.’

  Cat pulls her ski-mask off, revealing golden-brown corkscrew hair and wide, anxious eyes. ‘Noooo …’ she says. ‘Please. Can’t you let us go? This was a mistake, a stupid mistake.’

  The policeman raises one eyebrow. ‘It’s that all right, miss,’ he says. ‘Boys, take them down to the car.’

  Two policemen walk us down to one of several squad cars that have joined the black vans outside Nightingale House. As we emerge into the cold night air, Cat wriggles and ducks and tries to make a break for it, but the policeman holds her firm.

  ‘You’re goin’ nowhere, miss,’ he says. ‘Except for the station.’

  As we are driven through the Eden Estate, it’s clear that we’ve chosen the worst of all possible nights for our hit. The police, who for weeks have seemed less than bothered by the estate’s problems, have clearly been planning this raid for a while. Outside every high-rise block, the black vans have been joined by police vans and squad cars. Officers are watching each exit, talking into radios, coordinating everything. I wonder if they have the same nine addresses we had. I hope so.

  At the police station, we get put in a bare little room with a sleepy policewoman for company. I’ve been in police stations a bunch of times. When I was a kid, with Mum, once with Dizzy and Finn that long-ago summer, and more recently, of course, for crimes against a bus stop in Islington.

  After a long wait, the sandy-haired plain-clothes cop from the raid turns up. He eyes us, coldly.

  ‘We need names and addresses,’ he says. ‘Get your parents in.’

  ‘My mum’s away,’ I say. ‘Won’t be back till evening.’

  He raises an eyebrow. ‘Other relatives?’

  ‘None.’

  ‘You’ve been in trouble before,’ he says to me, scanning a print-out in his hand. ‘Vandalism. Graffiti damage is a serious offence, you know!’

  ‘I know,’ I sigh.

  ‘You have a named social worker, David Thomas. I’ll call social services, see if they can send someone out.’

  ‘He’ll be overjoyed,’ I say. Cat squirms with discomfort, and I remember that Dave is her social worker too.

  ‘It may not be him, personally,’ the sandy-haired guy is saying. ‘Not at this hour of the morning. They’ll send someone, though. What about your parents, Catrin?’

>   ‘Please don’t tell them,’ Cat pleads. ‘I’m so, so sorry. I promise –’

  ‘We have no choice,’ he snaps. ‘You were caught committing criminal damage outside the homes of two notorious drug dealers. Have you any idea at all how dangerous that could have been? You could have fouled up a police drugs raid that has taken us months to plan. It’s a miracle you’re still here to tell the tale.’

  ‘We didn’t know!’ Cat says. ‘We thought you didn’t care about the dealers. You let that creep Scully out on bail, and look what happened!’

  I think of Lucky, tied by his washing-line lead in the corner of the lock-up, and Mum, determined to speak out at Scully’s trial. I still can’t let myself imagine what might have happened if Scully had come calling when we were all at home. Sometimes, when you think nobody else cares, you take crazy risks, to make a point, to make a difference.

  ‘We were only trying to help!’ Cat appeals.

  The sandy-haired guy shakes his head. ‘Remind me to stay well clear the next time you kids decide to help anybody,’ he says. ‘You could have wrecked the whole operation. We’ve had plain-clothes officers on the estate for weeks now. We let Scully out on bail because we wanted him to lead us to his suppliers – we’ve had him tracked, the whole time. What happened to your flat, son, that was unfortunate – but we’d have nailed him for it, with or without his gran’s statement.’

  I open my mouth and close it again, speechless. The police let Scully out deliberately, so he could lead them to the drugs suppliers? All of the bad stuff that’s happened over the last week or so could have been avoided. It’s like it was all a game, and one we were never going to win.

  ‘You knew?’ Cat asks, frowning. ‘You planned this, all the time?’

  ‘And you kids almost blew it,’ the policeman says. ‘Still … you didn’t, I guess. I’m going to let you off with a caution, but if I ever see either of you in this place again, I’ll be down on you like a ton of bricks. Got that?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ I say. ‘Thank you, sir.’

  ‘So. Catrin. Your parents, please.’

  Cat bows her head and gives out her mum’s name and address, and the policeman scribbles down the information and walks away, leaving us alone with the silent policewoman.