Director's cut

by I K Watson

  “See? Told you.”

  He felt some more, the ends of his fingers slipped under elastic. She said, “That's far enough.”

  “Right. Just checking.” He withdrew his hand. “Amazing that is, though. Makes you think, dunnit?”

  He found Brian Lara in the shadows, tube of fuel in one hand, in the other a paper funnel to help with the huff.

  “All right, Jay?”

  “It's Brian Lara now.”

  “Fair enough, but you ain't black.”

  “You can have a black white man, if you want, if you ain't prejudice. I mean, no one's white, are they? They're red, they're pink, they're lightly cooked or they're well cooked. No one's white, except the Irish.”

  “Fair enough. How's it going, Bry?”

  “Dick, dick, dick, dosh, dosh, dosh. You know?”

  “Yeah. Waiting for Powder Pete, see?”

  “Yeah. Powder Pete’s OK.”

  “He knows everything, about the universe and important stuff. The scientists should talk to him then they wouldn’t waste their time with telescopes and writing on blackboards. Powder Pete reckons it’s all crap. He says you can’t have something inside of nothing so that proves it goes on forever. The universe, everything. And that means it never started. That’s it then, innit? No God.”

  “Who cares? Why bother? Waste of time thinking. It don’t stop the sore throat, does it?”

  “Good point. No point.”

  “Dick dosh, innit? Nothing else matters. Never did.”

  “Yeah. That stuff's probably done your throat.”

  “Gotta be done, though.”

  “Yeah, suppose.”

  “Tick tock, tick tock, dick dosh, dick dosh.”

  “Yeah, it's a living innit? I heard you was with the kozzers.” “Yeah, was.”

  “Fuck that.”

  “Yeah, that's what I thought.”

  “What they want?”

  “About the girls getting knifed innit?”

  “They thought you…? Where do they get off nowadays? No wonder the streets ain't safe no more.”

  “No, not me. Fucking hell. Thought I might have seen something, that's all.”

  “Oh, that's all right then. Did you?”

  “Might of done. That's the point. You see people, don't you? But you don't. People is people. They're meaningless ain't they? When you think about it. A whole fucking person, but we don’t give a fuck. I've been sitting here thinking about that.”

  “I've been thinking about the people in Africa.”

  “That's what I'm saying, innit? That's the point. Faces is faces. Can't remember. Thinking about the dosh. Don't see nothing else, do you? Gotta get through today. Dick, dick, dosh, dosh. Scratchcard later, maybe. Fuck tomorrow. All the faces innit? Don’t give a fuck, see?” “Absolutely. See that. Right. But, you helping them?”

  “Sort of. Not grassing.”

  “I didn't mean that. Fuck that.”

  “The geezer they're looking for, right? Who might be a woman. They reckon he's going to kill somebody. Maybe next time. They think, maybe, one of the toms might have seen him. Like. So they want me to finger the toms. Bit silly cos they've only gotta go down the road and they finger themselves and they know them all anyway. That fucking sergeant geezer, you know the one, big geezer, he’s always sniffing around the toms. But there’s this one I saw, they’re interested in her.”

  “Fuck that.”

  “That's what I thought.”

  “Yeah. No way.”

  “Then this other geezer, bright bastard, not a kozzer…”

  They both laughed.

  “He says, like, he'll give me his word that he ain't interested in anything other than the geezer who's doing it.”

  “You said it might be a woman?”

  “Yeah, that's what he said.”

  “Did you believe him, about the other?”

  “Yeah. Can't believe I did. You don't believe no one, do you? But I did. I got a feeling, just a feeling, you know? He'll be back. With dosh. Dick, dick, know what I mean?”

  “Fucking hell!”

  “Yeah. That's what I thought.”

  In the corner, in the flicker of candle, something stirred. Two girls, sharing a mattress. Paul caught their faces, didn't know them, put them around thirteen but who could tell nowadays?

  “Keep the noise down,” one said. “We're trying to sleep.” Maybe not thirteen, after all. Too confident. Maybe fourteen. Apologetically he whispered, “Yeah, sorry. Talking, see? Innit?” They disappeared again beneath a dirty quilt. Between them, on top of the quilt, lay a black cat, disturbed by the girl's movement, its tail flicking like something from hell.

  “Look what I got here,” Jason or Brian said. He opened up a strong Robot City carrier. “Bats.”

  “Bloody hell, how many you got?”

  “Six. Worth, maybe, forty each.”

  “Tennis.”

  “No.”

  “Squash, then?”

  “No, no.”

  “Badminton.”

  “Yeah, that’s it. And I got these trainers, bag full. Mostly Reebok, see? Need to offload them. What do you think? Will they sell in the shop?”

  “The Gallery? Maybe. I could try.”

  “Half-half, right?”

  “Sounds all right.”

  “Done, then. Take them with you. Get nicked around here as soon as I close my eyes. Can't trust no one, can you?”

  “No. You're right.”

  It was much later when Powder Pete found him. Paul had been dozing, woke to find Powder Pete standing over him. It wasn't a pretty sight. Powder Pete was wide-boned and covered in clothes to go out in. They made him wider, more threatening. And lumpy.

  He said, “Thought you'd got a job?” The bones in his face were prominent. And his skin, pale, stretched over the bones.

  “That's right. Just gotta make myself scarce for a day or two.” “So how's it going? You learning to paint?”

  “Yeah. Gotta learn about the classics first. That's the thing, see?” “You're an arsehole, Paul Knight, you know that? The only thing you're ever going to paint is numbers, and even that'd turn out shite. The only thing you're good at is robbing, and you should stick to what you're good at. You got a gift, a divine gift, and you should use it. TVs and DVDs and computers. The future, the bollocks. Not junk. Playstations, Internet, Kings Cross, E-something. Mail. Shit hot. Right?”

  “Right?”

  “And car batteries. I need lots of car batteries.”

  “You in to cars now then, Powder Pete?”

  “No, not cars, sulphuric acid, Paul. I need it to clean things up.” “What things, Powder Pete?”

  “Things. The world. The planet. I’ve decided to become a one-man cleaning company. But never you mind about that and tell me what you’re doing now.”

  “Staying out of sight for a while, see?”

  “Staying out of sight is good. It's good for the soul. But this isn't the place to do it. Had visitors earlier, some of Ticker Harrison's mob. Started throwing their weight around. We gotta move out, find another place and build a stockade, a barrier against the so-called civilized world.”

  “Yeah, wouldn't want to mess with them. No way. How long you got?”

  “Ten days, they said.”

  Paul shook a resigned head.

  “But that's not the point. I told you last time, this place is for the youngsters. No one over eighteen.”

  “I know that. I know you told me. I thought you'd make an exception, just for a day or two.”

  “Over eighteens are over the road. It's the rule. My rule. The only one that counts.”

  “I do know that. But like, I fit in here, don't I?”

  Powder Pete smiled. “Yes you do. I've noticed that. You've never grown up, Paul. Something went wrong with you and I don’t know what. You’re a rogue and a rascal and an impossible dreamer but most of all, you’re innocent, you’re one of the meek and, if you live, Paul Knight and, I have my doubts, the
n you’ll inherit the earth. And that's why, before, I've made you an exception. But you're a grown man and these children are vulnerable and, no matter what your problems, I shouldn't put them at risk. They gotta come first.”

  “I'd never touch them, Pete, Sir, never! I'd take care of them, and I'd cuddle them if they needed it. And that's all it would ever be. If they cry out in the night I'd hold them till they settled. That’s all. I’d fight for them, just like you!”

  “I believe you, Paul Knight. Many wouldn't. But I do. You said it well and you can stay for a couple of days or so. And right now, you can come with me. I've had a tip-off, a word from the underworld. One of Ticker Harrison's villains that came to threaten us gave me the word. Even villains hate the nonces. There's a couple of children in trouble, and that should be everybody's business but it isn't. So it's down to us. We're all that they’ve got. So let's go. We won't be in time but we can pick up the pieces.”

  “I'm with you, Powder Pete.”

  Paul quickened his pace and ran to catch up.

  Chapter 19

  As they led the children through the silent backstreets bells chimed out midnight, the apogee of darkness, the time when cold-blooded things began to stir. Frost fell like snow. The children shivered. Teeth chattered. Their trainers smacked the cold pavements. The tiny hairs on the girl's legs stood out, caught in unearthly light. The same light that sparkled in the boy's frightened eyes. Paul tightened his grip on the children’s sweaty hands. The wind whipped into their faces. It drew out their tears and snatched them away.

  Voices, even their breathing, sounded deeper.

  “You ever noticed, Paul, you take an 'o' out of good, you got God, you take the 'd' out of devil, you got evil? There's a mystery to life, more than we know.”

  “You're right, Powder Pete, I see that.”

  The pavements were bare. They seemed wider. The slabs glistened. They seemed harder.

  The children clung on knowing instinctively that these strange men, the old man and his apprentice, were their salvation.

  “Warm milk,” the older man said suddenly, and left them wideeyed and wondering.

  They'd travelled a dozen streets, maybe ten minutes, when they heard the explosion, a huge ear-splitting thump that shook the ground and rattled the windows in the dark properties butting the pavement they trod. Then came the sound of breaking glass. Along the street a few lights went on and a couple of people came out to scan the rooftops. Beyond the terraced rows a curl of smoke spiralled on the wind and a few stars blinked out.

  Then came the sounds of distant fire-engines and police cars. “Bloody hell, Powder Pete, that was more than a sparkler, that was more than a Chinese cracker. I reckon you've taken out half the street.” “No, just the one house.” Powder Pete’s voice was calm and dependable. “They won't do it again, will they? Hope they find tranquillity for that’s the sea that their bollocks are swimming in. That's what I call justice. Nothing else will do. Their names will never be on the sex offender’s register, and they'll never come out of prison to do it again. And that is good.”

  They held the children's hands and led them back to the squat in Avenue Road, that huge run-down nursery for the children of the night. Powder Pete told them, “Now's not the time to talk. It's a hot bath for you both to get rid of the filth, then hot milk and bed. In the morning we can talk.” He turned to Paul and added, “Wake one of the older girls, the one who’s pregnant will do. She can help this young lady to clean up. And she’ll know if a hospital’s called for.” Paul nodded thoughtfully. Powder Pete wasn’t taking any chances. Not any more.

  The boy said abruptly, “We ain't going back home. No way.” Powder Pete answered sternly. “Did I say that? Did I? That's up to you and your sister.”

  “It's me dad. He's not our real dad. But he does things.”

  The girl nodded in agreement. She was all of nine. The boy was older by a couple of years.

  Paul said, “So you got her out of it, did you?”

  “Had to. No choice.”

  “What about your mum?”

  He struggled. “She don't know.”

  “She should know.”

  The boy shook his head and a tear squeezed from his eye. “Those two geezers back there, they meet you at the station?” “Said they knew a place we could stay.”

  Powder Pete cut in, “Now's not the time. We'll sort it in the morning. But you're too young to be on the streets. This is a dangerous place.”

  “So's my bedroom at home,” the girl said suddenly, surprising them.

  In the early hours the Warren, dark apart from the occasional flickering night-light, tiny candles in silver containers supplied by Powder Pete, was damp with tears. Nightmares woke the kids and in the darkness they tasted the fear of abandonment. Those that were streetwise slept through it, barely disturbed. They had learned the hard way how to shut out the unforgiving world.

  Powder Pete listened to their cries and sometimes he'd throw on his old dressing gown and fight with his slippers and he'd make his way through the tunnels to the source of distress. There, he'd stroke a sweaty brow and whisper. “It's all right, all right. You're safe. And I'll look after you.”

  The dark things that crawled in the night were outside and they couldn't get in.

  “You're safe here,” he'd whisper. “I won't let anyone hurt you. Go back to sleep.”

  The crying became a whimper and then a snatch of breath and then, moments later, soothed by his certainty, the deeper sigh of sleep. Powder Pete was the guardian, the protector, the trustee. The bollocks, really.

  The difference between hard men and the rest of mankind is not subtle. Hard men are willing to do things that others are not. They'd use a knife or a gun or a broken bottle without compunction, without a single thought to the consequences and without pity. The difference lay in a tiny gene, or the lack of it, that created a conscience, that moral sense that made cowardice a virtue. Paul's suitor was a hard man. Suitor is probably the wrong word, for he is a man who pursues a woman. But Paul was becoming more feminine by the day. Hard men can find things and other people easily, because people talk to them. It might have been the kids, or perhaps the trail started in The British, but someone talked, and the big hirsute – bald – unsavoury type turned up, just as Paul was turning in.

  “Oh, it's you.”

  “You don’t seem pleased to see me.”

  Paul tried to hang back from the beer-breath but it was impossible. “I heard you'd become a painter of pictures.”

  “Yeah, something.”

  “Maybe you could paint me.”

  The words came slowly, strangled in the throat, fighting phlegm and swollen glands.

  The lights were out. Only a distant candle gave Paul the outline and it was even bigger than he remembered.

  “I've been looking for you. All this time I've been thinking of nothing else.” His voice dropped a notch. “After you got out, I didn’t know what to do.”

  “I, I, I thought of you too.”

  “That's good.”

  Paul felt his balls being stroked, then he felt them being crushed. He gasped out loud.

  “I heard you been fucking hiding from me!”

  “No, no, that's wrong.” His voice rose a couple of octaves. “It was the kozzers.”

  “You was supposed to be waiting for me.”

  “I was waiting, honest, but they was all over the place. You must have seen them.”

  “I been fucking celebrity and I ain’t waiting no longer.”

  “There's children in here.”

  “They're asleep, or they should be. This time of night.”

  Paul had no choice and it went like it always had. Surprisingly, to begin with, and it always happened even though he knew what was coming, it gave him an erection, but that folded when the beating started.

  There was no doubt about it, if this affair continued, then Paul would be beaten to death.

  “I'm sorry, Paul, this is difficult, but I can't ha
ve the children put at risk.”

  “I understand. I agree with you. It's my problem.”

  “I'd help you. But you're an adult, old enough to help yourself. Sort it out and you're welcome back. That man is a lunatic. Can't take the chance. Not on my account, but for the kids. Responsibilities, see? If it wasn't for the kids I'd help you out. But he's dangerous and I got to weigh the odds. And they don't come down on your side.” “I understand, Powder Pete. Really I do. I'll go.”

  “You could go over the road, with the dossers, but sooner or later you've got to sort it. He'll be back.”

  “I know that. I know that. It's decisions, innit?”

  “Decisions, right. They're the things you got to make when you're an adult. And you’ll know when you’re an adult when you realize there might not be an answer. Where will you go?”

  “Back to the shop.”

  “He'll find you there.”

  “Yeah. Mr Lawrence will help me.”

  “He's the painter?”

  “Yeah.”

  “He's an old man. What can he do?”

  “He's a thinker, Powder Pete. He'll think of something. I heard, somewhere, that brains is better than muscle.”

  “That’s bollocks. Fear is the key, Paul Knight, the fear of death, that inventor of heaven and hell and all the gods there ever were. When people know that you have no fear then they will fear you.” “So I'll make myself scarce, then.”

  “Yes. I've got to let you go, Paul. I want to help you but, if I get hurt…bad, then who's going to look out for the kids? And time's against me. Gotta find a new place, a safe place. The villains, Ticker's men, are coming back and this time they'll mean business.” “You don't need to say nothing, Powder Pete. Just help me out, will you? I'm hurting a bit. Just a bit.”

  “You're bleeding.”

  “Yeah, a bit. It ain't much, is it?”

  “You ought to get to the hospital, boy. Something might be busted, inside. But they'll ask questions. It didn't happen here, right?” “Don't you worry about me, Powder Pete. You got enough to worry about with the kids. I'll make out. Always did, right? You take care of the kids. I'll be back… Terminator, innit?”

  Powder Pete helped him through the window and passed out the bags containing the badminton rackets and trainers. He shook a sad head. Paul Knight was one of life's losers, a non-starter in the race of the nobbled. Had he been a dozen years younger then Powder Pete would have taken an interest, taken care of him, but lines had to be drawn. Aid agencies across the world drew them and one man could only do so much.