by Ally Kennen
Promote the woman I say. She must have amazing powers of persuasion. Still, I hope she’s all right.
“Pull over,” orders Carol, because just ahead is Eric with his thumb sticking out. I’m not surprised he hasn’t managed to get a lift. He looks like my dad. A rough old tramp.
I don’t know if I should stop. What if Eric kicks us out? But Carol insists so I slow down and get a blast on the horn from the Audi behind.
Eric recognizes the sound of the engine and turns to face us. He’s not happy. He looks like he’s trying not to cry. I reckon I’ve got a fifty–fifty chance of a beating. What do you think? He had every excuse to do it last time I nicked his truck but he didn’t. But I’ve gone and done it again so he might think I need a proper lesson rather than the guilt trip he laid on me last time. But I’m not scared. I’d rather have Eric do me over than a crocodile. At first Eric says nothing, he just gestures for me to move aside. I’d quite like to get out and get in the other door so Carol is between us but I don’t want him driving off and leaving me here with all these pigs about.
“Where is he?” he asks.
I can’t speak so Carol answers.
“We ran out of petrol, so we left him at the meat factory.”
“Anyone see you?”
“No,” says Carol.
Eric grunts and takes off, he’s driving too fast, crashing the gears and overtaking the wrong cars.
We drive for some time with nobody saying anything. No less than seven police cars and two riot vans pass us. And as we get near town an RSPCA van burns by.
“You two are nasty little shits,” says Eric.
I can’t protest because it’s true.
Back at the workshop we stand around awkwardly. Dog acts really weird. He won’t come to any of us. I reckon he can smell the croc.
“I’ve done so much for you,” says Eric. He’s fiddling with his radio to see if he can find anything on the news.
“I know,” I say. “I’m sorry.”
Eric puts down the radio and gives me a sickened look.
“You’re not really sorry are you, Stephen?”
“No,” I say. But in a way, I am.
Carol comes back from the bog. She’s washed her face and re-tied her hair. Women are crazy. They’d want to look their best if they were going out to face a nuclear winter.
“Have you told him?” she asks.
“Told me what?” Eric takes a long drink of water from his bottle.
I kneel and scrape a chunk of mud from my shoe. I pick it up and deposit it in the bin. If Carol can keep it together, so can I.
“He escaped,” I say. “The door broke open.”
Eric goes pale.
I tell him we saw it run into the meat factory.
Eric collapses on his welding bench.
“Thank God it didn’t happen here,” he says. He sees the rip in my jacket. “How did that happen?”
I swallow. I can’t speak.
“It had him in its mouth,” says Carol. “Just for a few seconds.”
Now I do feel weak. I join Eric on the welding bench. No one says anything for ages. We sit and listen to the morning traffic. Every other vehicle seems to have a siren.
Then, to my amazement, Eric pats my arm and nods at Carol.
“Take her home.”
Of course I can’t stay away. And once I’ve seen Carol safely home, I burn off down the road. I park my Renault in a field near the meat factory making sure it can’t be seen from the road. Then I skirt along the hedges to the boundary surrounding the car park. I have to duck into the hedge three times as a police helicopter flies over. I find myself a nice little spot in a thick bush where it’s not too damp and there’s a good view of the car park.
It’s pandemonium. There are police everywhere. There are megaphones and guns and two RSPCA vans. There’s a helicopter and a TV crew and a couple of blokes in white paper suits hanging round the doorway. A black van arrives and ten pigs in riot gear get out.
They’ve cordoned off part of the factory with red tape and police are trying to get people to stay back but everyone is well curious. It’s like a siege or something. I recognize Naomi in the crowd. She doesn’t look sleepy now. A couple of the butchers stand close together. They don’t look so big outside. Maybe it’s because they’re not holding their knives. I can’t take my eyes off the door. It’s closed and three armed police are guarding it. They don’t know whether to look at the door or at the crowd. I wouldn’t want to turn my back on that door I can tell you.
A woman is helped out of the back of an ambulance. She’s leaning heavily on the paramedic’s arm. I suppose she must be the cleaner. Poor old biddy. The crowd cheers. She’s given a fold-up chair and cup of something.
Then everyone falls silent to listen.
He’s roaring. The sound echoes out over the car park and everyone moves back. Some people even get into their cars. He’s still alive then. I don’t know why but I feel pleased. To be honest, I feel sorry for the poor animal. I hope they don’t kill him. None of this is his fault. I only hope he’s had a great time in there. I imagine him, tearing the cow carcasses down from their hooks, hoovering up chickens and munching kebabs. The last meal of a condemned man. I reckon he’s in heaven, only now he’s going to get shot. I can’t see any other outcome. Maybe I shouldn’t have left him here, but it wasn’t my fault the cage broke, was it?
A white van turns up and two blokes and a woman get out. They’re all wearing green uniforms. They’re carrying black, long bags. I reckon they’re from a zoo or something because the police let them through the lines. They disappear into the factory. Now that is brave.
I wish I could get closer. It feels wrong for me to be stuck up here, away from the action. He’s my boy. I have this dream of me walking through the crowd and going in through that small, grey door. Someone hands me a chicken. I find him, weak and bleeding and deadly, crouching under the mincing machine. I hold out the chicken and he trots after me like a dog. Everyone gasps. I lead him outside and through the car park and the crowd parts to let us pass. I throw the chicken in the cage and he follows. The door is locked. Carol has seen the whole thing and runs to kiss me. Josie joins her.
I want to be a hero.
I finger the tear in my coat.
Maybe I’ll stay here.
It’s nearly an hour later and people are getting bored. I scan the crowd but I can’t see Josie. I don’t know if she still works here. I hope not. Nothing new is happening. I can’t hear him any more. I hope they haven’t killed him. At least they haven’t brought out a body yet. His or anyone else’s. It’s getting quieter every minute. People aren’t running about like they were. I wonder if I should change my position. There might be a window further round. Maybe I could get in. I have to know what is happening.
The crowd have fallen silent again.
I know what this is. It’s white noise.
I want to put my fingers in my ears but I don’t. I have to face this. I am shivering. I am freezing. Poor Beast. He hates the cold.
I’m sorry, boy.
There is the sound of a deadened shot.
E P I L O G U E
I’m up here in our favourite place, watching the shoppers in the high street. I look at the cracked tiles on the roofs and the disused chimney pots. Do you remember how we pretended to be Supermen and jump from building to building? I was never very good at that, was I? Remember that woman who looked up and saw us one time? I was expecting abuse, but she only smiled and walked on. We once had a long conversation up here about how we were going to get out of this country and run us a beach bar in the Bahamas. I might still do that. I’ll call it Selby’s. How about that? Hey, I’m the same age as you now. Mad.
You know, I’m glad I followed you out that night. The night you died. I knew you’d be in the car park with your mates,
Arnie Perch and Matt Glissons. I also knew you’d tell me where to go if you saw me. You didn’t like me hanging round when you were doing that stuff. But I was there all right. I was behind the frozen food lorry. It’s always there on a Friday night. I was sitting there watching you lot messing around. Maybe you knew I was there all along. I saw you do that stuff. I saw you drinking. I was deciding whether it was worth a thump to come and ask for a can. I came out from behind the lorry when you fell over. Your mates were all laughing. But I wasn’t. I knew something was wrong.
“He’s not good.” That’s what Arnie said. And him and Matt ran off.
Did you know I sat in all that mess and held your head? I told you stuff too, I told you about my boy. I thought, when you came round, you’d have forgotten. But you didn’t come round. And when the paramedics came I was still there and they had to pull me away so they could do the resuscitation.
I only went to your grave twice, Selby. Once for the funeral and once a few years ago. But you weren’t there. I couldn’t feel you. Up here, on the roof. This is where you are.
My boy lived, can you believe it? I saw it on telly at the Reynolds’s. It was all there on the screen. They were all set to destroy him but someone noticed his movements were getting slower and that he was making less noise. The reptile expert from the zoo figured it out. The factory was too cold for my boy. He couldn’t cope and he just shut down. He found himself a hidey-hole in the basement and went into a kind of coma and they were able to tranq him. I’m not surprised the cold nearly killed him. It nearly killed me when I was working there. The zoo has him, but only temporarily. They say they haven’t got the facilities. On the telly it said that when he gets better he’s going to be flown right out of this country back to India where he is going to be kept in a special enclosure. They say they can’t release him in the wild because he doesn’t know how to hunt as someone has been keeping him in captivity. That’s a laugh, isn’t it? Sure he can hunt. We know that. He hunted me!
There’s national speculation about where he’s come from. Everyone’s talking about it. Of course I haven’t said anything and neither have the others. Not yet anyway. People are saying all sorts of crazy things. One bloke reckoned my boy was part of a terrorist plot. Someone else said he may have escaped from an illegal crocodile-skin farm. And there was this wildlife expert on the telly who swore the crocodile had swum across the sea in a warm stream of water or something. He said it was a warning sign that the earth was getting hotter. Everyone has something to say about it. One of the newspapers started calling him “The Kebab Croc” and the name has stuck.
I saw him on telly and I swear he looked right at me.
I can’t believe no one has blamed me yet. I get done for everything else that goes wrong. And while we’re on the subject, no, it wasn’t me who set fire to St Mark’s. It was an accident, caused by some piss-head setting fire to his bed with his fag.
I’ve been allowed to stay on at the Reynolds’s, but not for long. Jimmy has sorted it for me to go and work for his brother. This brother lives near Aberdeen and has a fishing boat. Jimmy says I should just go there for a couple of months for a change of scene.
It’s like he knows.
Who I am trying to fool? The real reason Jimmy wants me out of the way is because I’m getting rather friendly with his daughter, if you know what I mean. I can’t see it lasting. I know what she’s really like. But I’m sure as hell enjoying it while I can. Last night, I slept right through. There were no dreams, good or bad. I can’t remember when that last happened.
I went to say goodbye to Eric. I was nervous but he’s not mad with me any more. He’s started making weathervanes. He showed me the one he was working on. There’s a steel arrow that can spin north, south, east or west. He’d made a spine that goes up and he said he was going to fix an animal to it. He scrabbled around his tool box to find it. I expected him to bring out a chicken or something but instead he showed me a black metal crocodile.
He’s given me the weathervane. One day I might have a house to fix it to. Or maybe I’ll fix it to the beach bar in the Bahamas.
I’m not going to bother Gran or Chas by saying goodbye. And Mum won’t know any different. And Dad, well he’s just off on another one of his walkabouts, isn’t he? He’ll turn up again. He always does. So it’s only you I’ve got to say goodbye to. I thought this would be the best place to do it. I’ve got my car and one hundred pounds to get up to Scotland. But before I go, there’s something I have to do.
The sun is shining through the leaves on to the grass. There are blue flowers everywhere. Birds are singing and it’s warm enough for me to wear just a T-shirt and trousers. The ground is dry. It’s amazing how the weather can change in just a few days. It seems like ages since I was here last, though it was only a month ago. In places where trees have been cut down, all the green stuff is growing up and I have to fight my way through. The air smells good and fresh, like a clean bathroom.
I reach the clearing with the bender. I brush dead leaves and twigs from the hammock. It’s not been used for ages. A plank in the roof of the hut has come away and as I get near a couple of pigeons fly out. Inside, a furry mould coats half a cabbage and a carton of rancid milk sits on the floor.
I hear a noise and go outside. Passing round to the back of the hut I am biting my lip. It could be my imagination. I’m slightly mad now, you know. Ever since the meat factory car park, things feel different. Like the world has shifted to one side. Like my eyesight has changed. I can’t explain it. But it makes life feel smoother.
I see him.
He’s so thin he looks like a starvation victim. He’s too weak to move far but there’s a stagnant bucket of water he must have been drinking from. Just enough to keep him alive. There’s rubbish all around. Turds and food, a broken open box of biscuits, a wrapper of ham. A bread bag.
“Poor old bugger,” I say gently and touch his head. He looks up at me and sighs. His coat is wet through. I wonder how he hasn’t died of exposure. I reckon he’s been out here for nearly two weeks. I untie my top from round my waist and wrap it round him.
I loosen the rope. It’s so tight it’s bitten right into him. The skin is red and raw underneath. I only allow myself to think briefly of what it must have been like tied up out here, for day after day, night after night out here on his own, slowly starving to death.
“It’s going to be all right,” I say. “I’m back. I’m looking after you now.”
I pick him up and hug him to my chest. He’s so light.
“Come on, Malackie, my boy,” I say. “Let’s go.”
First published in the UK in 2006 by Marion Lloyd Books
This electronic edition published in 2012 by Marion Lloyd Books
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Copyright © Ally Kennen, 2006
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eISBN 978 1407 13218 1
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