Gun Dog

by Peter Lancett

  ‘Starting to get cold.’

  Alan smiles and rubs his hands together before reaching to open the gate.

  ‘So long as it’s not raining.’

  My reply is feeble, but I have to say something if only to be polite. Actually, I’m staring at the long narrow green canvas bag slung over Alan’s shoulder with a broad leather strap. I know that it contains a shotgun – Alan sometimes shares the spoils of his morning activities with us – but I have never seen it. Alan is careful to keep it concealed and unloaded until he’s out in the woodland where he’s going to shoot. He’s lucky enough to be friendly with a farmer not too many miles away who has woodland. It’s mostly wood pigeon that he kills, but there have been other game birds. Mum plucks and dresses them and we have game pie, which I’m told you would only normally see on the menus of fancy restaurants. Amazingly I like this game pie when we have it, even though now and then I’ve come close to breaking a tooth on lead shot.

  ‘Rain, shine, it doesn’t bother me.’

  Alan is already opening the tailgate of his Subaru wagon, and the dogs are jumping in as he says this.

  ‘Just getting out in the fresh air is good. And they love being out and about.’

  He’s nodding at the dogs as he slides the shotgun, still in its canvas carry-bag, into the back of the car.

  I look at the dogs, just before the tailgate shuts to close them in. The spaniels are gun dogs. They’ve been bred to retrieve and trained to fetch shot game without eating or damaging it. Powerful jaws that can be very gentle.

  Gun dogs. I find myself thinking about that as Alan slides into the driver’s seat of the Subaru, closing the door carefully behind him, still respectful of the hour, of his neighbours. Surely it’s wrong to call the dogs by that name. The dogs are only acting in accordance with their nature. Surely it’s the people who carry the guns who are really the gun dogs.

  Ruger P95

  Calibre: 9mm

  Capacity: 15 rounds

  Rifling: 6 grooves, 1:10

  Rifling of six grooves refers to the number of narrow slots cut in spirals along the inside of the barrel. 1:10 means that the rifling goes through one full rotation every ten inches – not that the Ruger has a ten inch barrel. Rifling keeps the bullet straight and accurate when it’s fired.

  Calibre 9mm means that the diameter of the inside of the barrel – and therefore the ammunition needed – is 9mm. That’s a powerful round. And it carries fifteen such rounds in a fully-loaded magazine. The magazine is a metal box that slots into the base of the handle. I’ve heard the wannabe Gangstas at school talking about guns – as if they’d ever been near one – and saying that such and such a gun carries a twelve round clip or a ten round clip or whatever. I now know for certain that they’re talking crap. A clip is a disposable device that lets you speed-load a magazine.

  The Ruger P95 in my hooded sweatshirt pocket carries a fifteen round magazine and it’s fully loaded.

  Alan’s car pulls away from the kerb and I watch it as he accelerates gently down the road. The dogs are standing in the rear of the wagon, looking at me out of the window. I look back at them as I slide my hand into my pocket and my fingertips caress the polymer frame of the Ruger. Nah, they are not gun dogs. But maybe I am.

  CHAPTER 8

  Normal rules no longer apply

  It has started to drizzle with rain. Not enough to worry about, but enough for me to see the tiny droplets coating the fleece of my hooded sweatshirt. My hands are in the pockets and the fingertips of my right hand are absently caressing the cool polymer frame of the Ruger P95. I don’t want to think about why the gun is in my pocket.

  I’m standing on the pavement opposite Uncle Jack and Aunty Margaret’s house. I’m still sad about what I saw last night. But I’m not weepy now. Actually, I’m numb. I want to know what exactly went on last night and why Uncle Jack has been arrested. I’m looking over at the house, where the curtains are drawn because it’s still pretty dark. It doesn’t look as though anyone is up in the house because no electric light escapes the inevitable curtain gaps.

  Every now and again, my gaze wanders to the side of the house and I have to look away quickly. I can’t bear to look upon the battered little Nissan. It makes my fingers tighten on the cold object in my pocket. So I look at the house, and while I’m still feeling sad and angry and ashamed at my impotence last night, somehow looking at the house is more bearable.

  I notice a twitch at the curtain. Someone in the house is awake. Whoever it is can’t help but have seen me standing here. Not that I’m trying to hide. And it’s not many seconds later that I see the front door slowly open. The hallway is dark behind, with no lights switched on. But there’s a figure in the doorway, a woman dressed, and not speaking, not beckoning. Just looking at me looking at her. It’s Aunty Margaret.

  We stand like this, facing each other like melancholic gunslingers, for a few seconds that feel heavy and burdensome. But it’s not a contest so I move first, crossing the road. As I approach, I see Aunty Margaret’s face as I have never seen it before, so sad and disillusioned and defeated. A lump comes to my throat and I fight it down. I open the gate and step onto the concrete path leading to the front door. The lawn to the left of the path is billiard table-neat, the surrounding borders of dark soil all broken and even and weed-free, even though it’s autumn and the best of the summer flowers have long since died.

  As I approach the front door step, I look up at Aunty Margaret and her face just crumbles as the tears begin to flow.

  ‘Oh Stevie…’

  I put my arms around her and hold her to me. She is so dejected that she cannot even bring herself to hug me back and her arms hang limply down by her sides. We stand like this for a few moments with her sobbing against my shoulder, before I gently usher her back inside the house and I close the door on a prying world that just wouldn’t care.

  Minutes later, we’re sitting in the living room with the curtains still closed, even though it’s getting light outside. We’re drinking tea and I’m eating slices of homemade sponge cake despite it being very early in the day. I know that I have to indulge Aunty Margaret right now.

  ‘He only went outside to tell them to clear off. They were climbing all over the car and throwing bricks at the house.’

  Bit by bit, through tears, I get the story. Uncle Jack went out to tell Rogers and his goblin followers to clear off after the rocks started to thump against the walls of their living room. And that’s when it did get personal. Once Uncle Jack had dared remonstrate with them, rocks that had until that point accidentally hit the car and the house, now began to rain down on those twin targets with a purpose. Uncle Jack went out to remonstrate again and told these young children to clear off and make their mischief closer to their own homes.

  ‘Who’s going to make us?’

  And you can just see the inbred Derek Rogers with his evil slitty eyes standing his ground against Uncle Jack, the Korean War veteran Grenadier Guardsman.

  ‘I’ll show you who.’

  And Jack had gone out and grabbed the kid and smacked him on the back of his head, and had kicked his backside as the kid had turned to run away. Within half an hour, Derek Rogers was back and this time his brother Wayne was with him. They began shouting and swearing outside the house. And further damaging the car. Uncle Jack went out again to stop them. I can only imagine how distressing and terrifying it must have been for Aunty Margaret. Actually, I don’t have to imagine; I can see it in her eyes right now.

  Well the swearing and the vandalism and the intimidation continued until eventually, Uncle Jack called the police. And this is the part that bewildered Uncle Jack and Aunty Margaret but doesn’t surprise me at all. It took half an hour to actually get to speak to someone, only to be told that no one could be despatched to come to the house. Friday night you see, and all units are busy in the town. You can hardly believe that can you? But let me tell you, you can never get a cop to come and deal with any kind of crime on our estate.
They just don’t want to know.

  Five times Uncle Jack called those cops last night, only to be fobbed off each time like he was some kind of senile timewaster. Finally, much later, with Aunty Margaret crying fit to break your heart and a brave old soldier made a prisoner in his own home by yobbish filthy criminal scum, blue lights could be seen flashing outside the house. The police had turned up after all. Uncle Jack had gone out to greet them, to invite them in, ready to give a statement. But it hadn’t been a statement that they’d been after. They’d come to arrest Uncle Jack. They hadn’t come as a response to his telephoned pleas for help. They’d actually shown up as a response to a complaint by the Rogers family. These filthy scum criminals had called the police to complain that Jack had assaulted their darling little boy, the angelic Derek.

  Oh come on, of course you can believe it. The filth don’t want to know about an elderly couple being terrorised by the violent, criminal Rogers family. But get the chance to arrest and terrorise that elderly couple themselves and they’re out mob-handed, quicker than you can spit. A quick and easy arrest of an unresisting old man and it helps their clear-up rate. They have crime clear-up targets to meet and an arrest and conviction of Uncle Jack will count for just as much as solving a child-murder or a rape. Oh yeah, they’re brave and trustworthy alright, the filth. I’ve known stuff like this all my life, but for people like Uncle Jack and Aunty Margaret, and even people like my mum and dad, it all comes as a shock. They still live in a past where the police could be relied upon to see that order was maintained on the streets. And worked to uphold the law in favour of the gentle and the good against the violent and the criminal and the selfish.

  I find out that Uncle Jack has been kept in the police station overnight and that Aunty Margaret is out of her mind with worry. I try to comfort her as best I can. In the end, I agree to go down to the police station with her. I don’t know what we’ll be able to do there, but it’s the only thing Aunty Margaret wants. And I’m not about to let her go there alone.

  CHAPTER 9

  Gun dog dreaming

  It’s gone midnight. I’m out on the streets of our estate and there’s no one about. I’m wearing dark jeans and a black cotton zip-up jacket and trainers. It’s a dark night – lots of cloud and no moon. My hands are thrust deep into the pockets of my jacket. In the palm of my right hand I can feel the cool shape of the Ruger P95 that I carry with me. My fingers are curled gently around the black handgrip; my index finger lies along the trigger guard. I don’t want any accidents; not like that stupid firearms cop who shot himself in the leg getting into his car. Christ, you couldn’t make it up, could you? If it had been in a movie, you’d have fallen about laughing. Sometimes I feel that criminals with guns are less of a danger to the public than police with guns. The police, after all, have been known to shoot an innocent man in the head seven times at point blank range. Whatever the circumstances, that sounds more like frenzy than a controlled use of firearms. Make your own mind up on that one.

  So I’m careful how I carry the Ruger and keep my fingers well away from the trigger. The Ruger does not have a manual safety catch. It fires with a double action of the trigger – first pressure cocks the weapon, second pressure fires it. After that, you just have to keep squeezing the trigger until the magazine is empty. Of course, there is a decocking lever that can be used to make it safe if you cock it and then decide not to shoot, or if you’ve finished shooting and there are still rounds in the magazine.

  Anyway, I’m outside the Rogers’ house. No point in wasting time, I walk straight into the yard and down the overgrown path to the front door. The Ruger is in my right hand now and my index finger is putting a light pressure on the trigger. I bang on the door with my left hand. I’m banging hard and long like I mean business. From inside the house there is swearing and shouting and I hear thumping footsteps clumping down the stairs. I step back as the door is thrown open and it is the hideously slobbish father of the clan. I don’t give him time to swear at me as I raise the Ruger right in front of his face and squeeze the trigger twice. Two red holes appear in his face, one in the centre of his forehead and one in his cheek and he drops to…

  ‘Stevie? Stevie!’

  I’ve been daydreaming and Aunty Margaret is tugging at my sleeve to get my attention. We’re sitting in the waiting area in the police station. We’ve been here for three hours now, waiting for them to let Uncle Jack go. In that time, I’ve been letting all kinds of scenarios run through my mind, all of them involving me roaming the streets with the Ruger and all of them involving me playing the tough man with the gun in my hand or just blowing away those who I consider to be expendable. Of course the Rogers clan have featured large in this latter category.

  Now I look up as Aunty Margaret wants me to, and I can see Uncle Jack coming out of a doorway, head bowed, wearing the clothes that he’d been wearing when I’d seen him being arrested last night.

  I get up, along with Aunty Margaret, and my hand slides inside my pocket. Of course, the Ruger isn’t there – I’m not stupid enough to carry it to a police station. I’d made an excuse to call in at home on the way here and put it back beneath my bed. I’m checking involuntarily, probably because my daydreams have been so vivid.

  A policewoman asks if we’d like her to organise a car to take us back home. Aunty Margaret and Uncle Jack are too wrapped up in relief, in each other, so I tell this policewoman, who is actually very pretty and is genuinely being kind, that we’ll get a taxi. I have enough money in my pocket to pay for this, and the policewoman gives me a card with the number of a local taxi company and offers to let me use the telephone behind the counter. I find myself surprised at her genuine concern and compassion. Maybe the police aren’t all bad after all. But then I only have to look at Uncle Jack and think about what we are doing here in the first place for that thought to evaporate. All the same, I can’t lose the idea that individual police officers just might be human after all. A few of them.

  So we take a taxi back to Uncle Jack and Aunty Margaret’s house. Not because of some childish disdain for police hospitality, but because I just know that a police car turning up at the house will cause a frenzy of curtain twitching from the neighbours. And Uncle Jack and Aunty Margaret don’t need to be subjected to that kind of embarrassing scrutiny.

  In the house, over a cup of tea and more cake, I learn that they’ve charged Uncle Jack with assault. Like I predicted, they’ve taken his fingerprints and a DNA sample. So now the largest DNA database in the world has the records of a pensioner added to it. I stay with Uncle Jack and Aunty Margaret for a while and we try to be positive about things. But there isn’t much to be positive about. What has happened is becoming only too familiar. If a householder defends his property against vandals and thieves, there’s a good chance that the householder will be arrested and charged. My dad gets enraged when these cases make the news, but the problem is they make the news less and less. Not because they happen less and less. Quite the opposite; because they have become commonplace.

  When I finally leave Uncle Jack and Aunty Margaret’s house, Uncle Jack is crying. I walk slowly down their garden path, consciously avoiding looking to my right. I don’t want to see the little car all smashed and dented. I can’t bear it. As I walk down the road, towards my own house, a road now busy with cars, with people going about their Saturday business, I see my brother Sean and a couple of his friends.

  ‘Where you been?’

  Sean gets straight to the point.

  ‘I’ve been around at Uncle Jack and Aunty Margaret’s place.’

  ‘You seen what happened to their car?’

  ‘Yeah, I’ve seen.’

  Sean shakes his head and looks away.

  ‘It was them Rogers what done it, init.’

  This is one of Sean’s friends, Jason Lewis. Jason doesn’t come from our estate. Actually, he lives a few miles away in a house on a leafy suburb. Jason’s dad is a doctor and Jason’s been friends with Sean since they started to
play for a Sunday league football team together a few years back. Normally I’d laugh and take the piss out of safe suburban Jason talking in this manner. But today it just doesn’t seem important.

  ‘Yeah, it was.’

  I can’t bring myself to discuss it further.

  ‘Somebody should take them out. It would be tons better around here without them.’

  I shake my head. Sean is saying what Andy had said last night. It’s right what they say – but only partly right. It would be better, yeah. But not tons better. The Rogers family are the worst and most obnoxious scum around here, sure, but there are others who would fill the vacuum if they went.

  I realise that sometimes I make it seem like everyone living on our estate is lawless and selfish and criminal. You know, that’s actually not the case. Most people are decent and hard working. But our estate’s reputation is not built around the hard working and the law abiding. Its reputation comes from the minority of lawless clans that rule the streets. And they can do that because the police no longer care, and they know it. Nobody cares about what happens on estates like ours. And that’s all I can think about, all the way home.

  CHAPTER 10

  Feeling like Travis Bickle

  ‘Christ, that’s ridiculous! Somebody should just shoot the bastards. They’re like wild dogs.’

  Listening to Dad venting his spleen like this makes me think of the Ruger. I can only agree, and I’d love someone to go around to the Rogers’ place and blow the stinking lot of them away. But it isn’t going to be me. There’s a world of difference between daydreams and reality.

  But something else has been intruding on my thoughts. This will make you something. This is what counts around here. It’s what Big Roddy had said the night he gave me the Ruger to keep. At the time I’d thought he’d been watching too many films and listening to too much Public Enemy. But I know how it felt this morning, when I was out and about early on with the Ruger in my pocket. I definitely felt different this morning. And when I picture myself, in my mind I see me walking around with my hands in my pockets and not a worry in the world. A bit like the poster for that old movie with Robert De Niro. What’s it called? Taxi Driver, yeah. I feel like Travis Bickle, before he really loses it. That’s scary on so many levels. But most importantly, because maybe Roddy was right.