by Adam Millard
“Shit, I don’t know, kid,” Scottie said. “What is he? Sixteen?”
Jamie nodded. “He’s a few months older than me.”
“They’re gonna have to test him, make sure he’s not, you know, cuckoo.” Scottie didn’t know which was worse, having all your marbles but going to prison or heading off to some mansion in the middle of nowhere for a lifetime of padded cells and medication. There was probably less chance of being raped in the latter scenario. “This is just… fucked up. I liked that kid. Bit on the dense side, but he was alright.”
Behind Scottie, the queue for the new game was becoming raucous. Children were whooping and hollering—some even applauded—as the player at the controls reached a level previously unseen by the crowd. Scottie didn’t recognise the boy hammering the buttons on the console. A gangly lad wearing a beanie hat and glasses which were too big for his face.
“Can you believe this shit?” Scottie said, motioning to the line stretching halfway across the arcade. “It’s been like that since you left. And for the life of me, I don’t have a clue how those kids know what they’re doing. The game makes no sense.”
“Maybe you have to be young to understand it?” Liza said.
Scottie grimaced. “Yeah, thanks for that, Liza.” He shook his head. “That machine’s made more money today than the rest of them combined.”
“You should order more of them,” Jamie said. “Two or three more, just to cut down the size of that queue.”
Scottie had thought about it, but he really didn’t want to have to get in touch with the distributor, and three of the same machine in the same arcade? Wouldn’t that look a little… odd? “Knowing my luck,” Scottie said, “I’d order more of them at around the same time the novelty wore off, then I’d be stuck with a bunch of games no one even wants to play.” He surveyed the line. “No, it’s just a fad. It can’t be that addictive. It’s just a bunch of fucking dots and triangles.”
“Tetris was just a bunch of shapes, too, but do you remember when that first came out?” Jamie said. “People were hooked.”
“That,” said Scottie, pointing at the indistinct machine, “is no Tetris.”
A tinny tune interrupted the conversation, and Liza reached into her handbag and retrieved her phone—that sparkly pink thing—and pushed the button to accept the call. “Hey, Mom,” she said, looking nervously toward Jamie. After a few seconds, she said, “No, everything’s cool here. I think I’ve burnt my nose, but apart from that, nothing to report.”
Scottie watched in silence as the girl continued to placate her mother with lies. There was no mention of what had happened over at the dodgems, nothing about a dead baby, or about some fucking kid who wouldn’t normally say boo to a goose being the perpetrator. There was none of that, and Scottie knew why. It’s like the whole illegal party thing, he thought. Even when your parents find a used condom underneath their marital bed or a beer-bottle label down the side of the couch, you’ll deny having anything to do with it for as long as possible. Nothing good could come from owning up or telling the truth. Just like nothing good would come from Liza telling her mom and dad that she had witnessed the murder of a baby.
“Yeah,” Liza said. “Actually, I’m with a friend, so I’ll just head back to the apartment later on and wait for you.” She rolled her eyes. The voice at the other end of the line was audible, even over the beeps and music of the arcade. “No, I’m not going to put my friend on, Mom. Just go, enjoy the show.” She stuck a finger in her free ear so that she could hear her mother over the cheers of the queue. Another level beaten, she thought. That kid is good. When Liza next spoke, it was in an irritated tone: “Yes, Mom, I will eat something. I’ll probably just get some fish and chips on the way back to the room.” Another eye-roll. “Yeah, I promise. Okay, I have to go. I’ll see you around eleven?” A nod, an exhausted sigh, a tiny smile. “Cool. See you later. Byeee.” She hung up, dropped the phone into her handbag, and waited for someone to say speak. When no one did, she said, “Apparently, there’s some Agatha Christie play on tonight in Lowestoft and Dad’s managed to get tickets.”
“That’s good, right?” Jamie offered. “That means they trust you.”
“Yeah, I don’t feel too great about that at the moment,” said Liza. “I had the chance to tell them the truth, and I didn’t. If they find out about what happened here today, they’re never going to let me out of their sight again.”
“It’s not like it was your fault,” Scottie said. “People die all the time. You’re bound to see someone bite the dust eventually. Sod’s Law.” He had never seen a person die, for which he was grateful. Jake was already long gone by the time Scottie returned home all those years ago. Like most people, he had seen dead people—bodies, corpses, cadavers, lying there in the morgue—but he had never witnessed the moment a person went from walking around, oblivious, smiling even, to dead, gone, forever. He was right, though; it happened all the time, and nine times out of ten there would be bystanders. That was how therapists made their money.
“I know. I just don’t like keeping stuff from them,” Liza said. “Especially my dad. He always knows when I’m lying. Reckons my nostrils flare, though I don’t think they do.” She stared down at her own nose, causing her eyes to cross. It was adorable, and Scottie could see that Jamie was enamoured by this girl. Pity it was never going to happen. These things (long-distance holiday romances) seldom got off the ground. Scottie knew that better than anyone. Sure, you start with the best of intentions. Perhaps you start texting—or sending letters, if you’re over forty—but she’s already talking about some other guy who’s forced his way into her life, and you’ve already begun to forget what she actually looked like, face-to-face. In fact, if you didn’t have that one picture of her stored in your phone, you would have already forgotten. The texting or letter-sending becomes less frequent, and then it just stops, because it was just a holiday thing—the heat of the moment—and that feeling can never be emulated from a council estate in South Birmingham.
“Right,” Scottie said. “I’m going to get back to work. Feel free to stick around, or—” He was cut off, though, as a teenager shoulder-barged him on his way past. It was enough to knock him off-balance and enough to interrupt his flow, but that was all. “You little prick.”
Beanie-Hat just kept on walking, heading for the exit, and there was something about the way he moved—serpentine, and very, very slowly—which Scottie didn’t like. He thought he knew all the kids’ gaits these days. There was the limp-shuffle, the hop-on-hop-off, the swinging kneecaps…
“Can you believe that shit?” Scottie said, pointing at the retreating wanker. He must have just finished his game; another child—a young girl wearing far too much make-up for Scottie’s liking—had taken his place at the controls of Gēmuōbā. “I have to put up with that all day, every day, Liza. You think you’ve got it tough!”
Laughing, Liza said, “You should have knocked that dickhead out.”
Scottie shook his head. “Rule number one of running an amusement arcade: do not, under any circumstances, render unconscious your clientele. If they’re on the floor snoozing, they’re not putting money into the machines. Business 101.” He wished them both a very good afternoon and headed back to the cage. Was he already yearning for another mouthful of whiskey? The news about Barry Mills had come as something of a shock.
He settled into his seat, pulled open the desk-drawer, and reached for the bottle. Poor Barry, he thought as he unscrewed the cap.
Poor fucking mental Barry, apparently.
SEVENTEEN
Angela had been run off her feet since lunchtime, and since she was the only one working, it had put her in something of a foul mood. Now it was quiet again, she decided to speak up. “Why doesn’t Ted hire more staff?” she asked Deirdre Porter. The landlady was sitting at the bar, working her way through a cheese panini and reading one of those gossip mags with the endless fat-shaming and ridiculous names, like Heat or Now or What?.
“You’re probably going to be surprised to hear this,” Deirdre said, a piece of stringy cheese dangling from the corner of her mouth, “but we can’t afford to take anyone else on at the moment.”
Angela wasn’t surprised to hear it at all. The whole country was going to shit—seaside towns included—but after the lunchtime she had just worked through, The Lacon Arms had to be doing something right. It had been chaos. She had worked it out (as she was wont to do when she was absentmindedly pulling pints) that at least seven-hundred quid had gone in the till in the space of just three hours. That was the equivalent of almost a month’s salary, and yet they couldn’t afford another girl just to cover a few shifts.
“You’re doing a great job anyway, Angie,” Deirdre said, shoveling far more panini into her mouth than was acceptable.
A great job? Angie thought. It wasn’t as if she had a choice. And yet whenever the topic of a raise came up, she was met with the same bullshit excuse from both Ted and Deirdre: That’s why we let you keep your tips, dear. As if they were doing her a favour.
It wasn’t that she disliked the Porters. They were decent, hard-working folk, and they had done great things with the pub, considering the closures of many of the bars and watering-holes in the surrounding area. They had good business heads on them, and they weren’t afraid to move with the times. It was just a pity that they didn’t move in line with inflation.
Angela left Deirdre to her grilled sandwich and bullshit magazine and collected up the glasses for the dishwasher. See? They had a dishwasher; if that wasn’t progressive, Angela didn’t know what was. She loaded up the machine and programmed it to do its duty. Then, after straightening the menus on the tables and serving a couple of construction workers—they were securing a row of houses just off the main stretch which had begun to subside—she set about restocking the bar-snacks.
“That was really nice,” Deirdre said, standing from her stool and unsticking her magazine from the counter. “My compliments to the chef.” And with that she was off, through the double-doors at the other end of the bar. Angela guessed the old bint was off for a nap while it was quiet. It would get busy again in a few hours—it always did.
Angela took Deirdre’s plate through to the kitchen and dropped it into the sink. When she returned to the bar, she almost had a conniption fit. Standing in the doorway, almost as if they were afraid to come any closer, were two young lads. They were shirtless, had stuffed the removed garments down the front of their shorts. Both wore trainers, the sort with the massive tongues that were popular these days. She couldn’t see their faces through the gloom of the bar, but they clearly weren’t old enough to be in there without an adult. Great, she thought. Just what I need…
“Lads, come back when you’re over eighteen, yeah?” She kept her tone playful. The last thing she wanted to have to do was explain to Ted and Deirdre why the windows had been put through.
The boys—for that’s what they most certainly were—didn’t budge. They just stood there, silently watching her across the room.
For some reason, Angela found herself looking around the bar. She quickly realised that she was searching for someone—anyone—to back her up, if need be. The construction workers, the kind of burly bastards you would want in your corner, had taken themselves off to the fruit machine at the other side of the room. She could just about make out their hi-vis vests through the partition. Over there, they were about as useful as tits on a fish.
She turned her attention back to the shirtless youths standing in the doorway. Why were they just standing there? That was the creepy thing. Were they just trying to wind her up? Had they been sent into the pub as part of some elaborate prank? Were their mates outside, laughing and joking, filming the whole thing through the window on mobile phones? If so, it wasn’t funny, and Angela wasn’t in the mood for nonsense. Despite being more than a little unnerved, she decided to assert herself. She stepped around the bar. “Look, I don’t know what your game is, but you can’t come in here without an adult if you’re under eighteen. If you want to book a table for dinner? That’s fine, but you’ll have to come back with your par—”
The one on the right—the one with the huge tits—suddenly rushed forward, and it was then that Angela knew she had made a huge mistake. She staggered backwards as the youth snapped and drooled at the air, as if trying to catch a tricky fly. His eyes were black pits, as if the balls had been snatched right out of his face, leaving only dark hollows. Fortunately, because he was a fat fucker, he was only halfway across the room before Angela stepped around the bar and slammed the counter down.
“Get the fuck out of here!” she screeched, searching below the bar for anything that could be used as a weapon. Apart from the occasional fist-fight, there was never any trouble in The Arms, but in that moment Angela could have screamed the place down, reproaching Ted for not keeping at least a cricket bat to hand.
The fat fuck—he looked familiar to Angela, but she couldn’t quite put her finger on it—lunged across the bar, reaching for her. She took a step back, narrowly avoiding his grasp. His maw snapped open with a crack, and there it hung, listlessly, for a moment before clicking back into place. It was one of the most disgusting things Angela had ever seen, and, she thought, quite impossible.
The construction workers must have heard the racket over the low instrumental Muzak the pub liked to pump out during the day. They came through the archway, pints in hand, confused expressions etched across their faces, to hell with the thirty pence still in the bandit.
“Pack it in and fuck off, lads,” the one on the right said. He was still wearing his hard-hat, unlike his mate whose skull bandanna made him look more like a silly pirate than a hard-knock.
Angela watched as the youth peeled himself from the bar. His tits stuck there for a second, stretched, and snapped into his chest as he turned his attention to the hi-vis newcomers. He growled, and a thick black viscous drool dripped down his double-chin and slapped onto the carpet below.
“The fuck’s wrong with him?” said Bandanna Man, taking a step back.
The fat kid suddenly roared, so loud that the glasses lined up below the bar chinked together. “The pool cues!” Angela screamed, motioning to the table next to the dart board. The construction workers turned, saw the pool cues resting on the table, and made for them.
The youth in the doorway ran across the room, teeth snapping together, jet-black eyes seemingly taking in everything and nothing. Angela was just glad she had a clear path to the door, now.
“Don’t come any closer, you cunts!” Hard-Hat said, wielding the pool-cue as if it were a sword and he was cut from the same cloth as Zorro. Angela found it funny that Hard-Hat was still holding his pint in the other hand. “This is your last chance. I suggest you get the fuck out of here before Dave and me do you a mischief.”
“Yeah!” Bandanna Dave added. For some reason he tried to snap his pool-cue in half across his knee, and failed miserably. He winced as the cue refused to break, seemed to think about giving it another go but changed his mind, which, Angela thought, was probably for the best.
The fat kid moved slowly around the pool table and the construction workers, keeping his distance. The other one crept to the left, snarling and drooling, occasionally reaching for Bandanna Dave only to withdraw at the last minute as the construction worker lashed out with his pool cue.
Angela raised the counter and stepped through it, being careful not to draw the attention of the maniacs away from the construction workers. Even from where she stood, she could smell the youths. It was as if they were rotting from the inside out.
“Fuck this!” Hard-Hat said. He brought the pool-cue around in a wide arc, smashing it into the fat one’s temple. The cue broke on impact, and the fat kid whined like a fox caught in a trap, but he didn’t go down. He staggered a few steps to the right, shaking his head, before refocusing on Hard-Hat, his lips drawn back in a sneer, a sonorous rattle emerging from within. Hard-Hat—now unarmed apart from a st
ub of wood no longer than a magic wand—looked horrified. He knew that the pool-cue should have dropped the fat kid, and yet it had barely fazed him.
Angela took a few steps back. Was she really going to leave them to it? Make good her escape and hope it all turned out well for the construction workers? She should have turned and rushed for the door. In walking backwards, trying to remain stealthy, she failed to spot a protruding chair, and her calf clattered into it.
Momentum did the rest.
As she went down, head cracking against the side of Table Seven, the last thing she saw was the skinny kid turn and howl at her. Then everything went fuzzy, and soon after that everything was black.
EIGHTEEN
The cell was freezing cold. A stainless steel toilet in the corner of the room hissed as water leaked from somewhere it probably shouldn’t be leaking from. The window over the bed—barred, frosted, and triple-glazed—admitted the smallest amount of light. Names and dates had been carved into the cell’s bare walls. Jack Bridge was ere 21/12/12… Fuck Da Polis… Amy Robbins 07732379382 Sexy Tym… On the plastic bed, sitting hunched over so that only his feet were visible, Barry Mills tried to piece together what had happened earlier that afternoon, and why he was now incarcerated. Nothing made any sense to him. One minute he had been fetching coffees for him and his father, the next…
The arcade. He had stopped by the arcade, just like Jamie had told him to. Jamie hadn’t been there, though. Just Scottie, and Scottie wasn’t in the best of moods, according to his father. It was best to stay away from Scottie, his dad had warned him. Barry remembered that conversation very well, because he had thought his father was overreacting, making a mountain out of a molehill. Scottie wasn’t dangerous; he certainly wasn’t any more dangerous than his father.