Lottery Boy

by Michael Byrne

  Chris turned round when he heard the outside rushing in. “Bully boy! What you doin’? Wind it up, man. Wind it up! Don’t want anyone seeing you, do we? It’s secret squirrel.”

  “What?” said Bully, hadn’t heard of that.

  “Sick … listen up, this a barking beat,” said Tiggs. And Chris looked round, and Tiggs started giggling and clamped the big headphones over Bully’s head. He didn’t know this one, didn’t like things on his ears. There were no words in it and he didn’t think that much of the beat. Bully liked words; he liked rap but his favourite song was “Under the Boardwalk”. He didn’t know what a boardwalk was but his mum used to like it because it made her cry – why that would be a good song for her, he didn’t understand.

  He looked out, squinted hard and thought he saw a sign for Romford, and that sounded like Watford and made him feel better for a bit.

  “Yeah, sick.” He felt his heart beating along. “How long do you reckon to get there?” he said, but even though he was the one with the headphones on, neither of them seemed to hear what he was saying, so he took them off.

  Slowing down for the traffic lights he caught sight of seagulls and then between the buildings, smudges of the river. He thought perhaps it was a different one to his river. He tried to get a proper look but Chris was wheel-spinning away towards the next set of lights.

  Then the roads got smaller, narrower, and he could read the signs. They took a sharp turn up Gutter Lane and then down Milk Street, with Chris hitting the kerb, texting as he drove. It was like they were in some sort of game with funny names but one that he had stopped wanting to play.

  “We nearly there?” He knew they weren’t anywhere near anywhere but he didn’t have the heart to tell himself the truth. And he pictured his knights checking their watches, getting itchy under their armour, almost ready to wind up the drawbridge when tomorrow came to an end.

  “Bloody kids,” Chris said and Bully realized he meant him. It was quiet then in the car until Chris pulled up on the kerb.

  Chris leaned over the back seat. “We just got to stop here, drop something off. Five minutes. And then we’re off to Brent Cross. You go in with Tiggs and give him a hand. You know what he’s like, eh?” He smiled, raised his eyebrows, making Bully feel like perhaps Chris had meant Tiggs was the kid and not him after all.

  Bully looked in the car rubbish for what it was they were dropping off, peering over the back seat into the boot.

  “What you dropping off?” he asked as he opened the car door.

  “Nah, I meant we’re picking somin’ up. Leave Jacky with me,” said Chris.

  Bully hesitated. “What?” he said because no one else in London had ever called her that. And for some reason it made him feel very, very sad.

  “I said leave the dog.”

  “I dunno…”

  “It’ll be five minutes. Go on. Get your arse moving.”

  “OK, but don’t feed her no more chocolate though.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” he said.

  Bully and Tiggs got out, went towards the empty face of an office block being built, the windows missing, and lots of noise coming out of the gaps that Bully didn’t like – pile-driving – thump, thump, thump – and drilling.

  “Tiggs! Tiggs!” Chris had wound down his car window and was waving him back.

  “What!” Tiggs took off his headphones. “Wait there,” he said to Bully and went back to the car.

  “What did Chris want?” Bully asked when he came back.

  “Nuthin’… Down here.” Tiggs motioned towards a narrow brick alleyway between the buildings.

  “Where’s it go?” Bully shouted with his hands on his ears. Tiggs just pointed up ahead. And Bully looked up and saw the house then, a big house at the end of the alleyway with lots of chimneys at the top. And all the big square windows were boarded up with black sheet metal except for this one at the bottom.

  They carried on past an old lamp-post in the alleyway, the glass in it smashed, no light there and the drilling getting louder and thump, thump, thumpier between the walls.

  Up closer, Bully could see the window was wedged open with a stick. And he could see the alleyway didn’t end here but was blocked off to stop people getting through to the front of the house.

  “In you get,” said Tiggs.

  Bully was slow getting in, trying to keep his hands on his ears and climb with his elbows and knees and feet, and Tiggs swore and gave him a lift. He sat on the windowsill, still with his hands on his ears because the thump, thump, thumping was even worse inside, shaking through the whole house and into him. Tiggs gave him a nudge and followed him in. The room was empty apart from some ripped-up, soggy-looking sleeping bags. Bully could see from the fag ends around the sill that it was well used, like a doorway, a hang-out.

  “It’s too loud,” said Bully and he went to go back out the window.

  Tiggs grabbed Bully when he saw what he was doing. “No, wait! Wait. No, listen. Chris says you’ve got to give me a hand.” Bully shook his head, his palms flat on his ears. “You don’t like noises, do yer… Look, put these on. Come on… It won’t be long now,” Tiggs said and he clamped his headphones over Bully’s head and shoved the iPod in his pocket.

  The same sick sound was playing.

  “Yeah,” Bully said, nodding because the thumping and the drilling was deadened by the thick foam and he felt better for a little while, keeping what was outside his head from getting in. Tiggs motioned to keep them on as they walked through into the dark clattery house.

  From what he could see by the glow of Tiggs’s mobile, they were in a hallway and just this bit of the house was huge, as big as his old flat. There were no carpets or rugs, only black wooden boards on the floor, like in a ship. And the walls were made of wood too, and looked like hundreds and hundreds of empty old picture frames stuck together.

  “Up ’ere,” motioned Tiggs, waving his mobile. Bully saw in the darkness a little circle of light, like a spotlight, coming from a tiny round window at the top of the stairs that they had not bothered to board up, too small for even a skinny boy like him to fit through. Bully went up, not liking the dark. Tiggs prodded him in the back. Bully turned round and told him to cut it out.

  “Can’t I wait down here?” he mouthed. Tiggs shook his head. He mimed out the act of trying to lift a dead weight, hunching his shoulders and putting his hands to his knees, showing him just how much he needed his help. And then he pointed to Bully’s ears. “The real sick bit …” Tiggs shouted, so that Bully could just about hear, “it’s coming up…”

  Bully nodded and sniffed. He didn’t care about the sick beat. He would take the headphones off as soon as they found what they were looking for and got out of this place. He wiped his nose with his hand. His cold was getting worse but something familiar was squirming up his nose, a smell that he couldn’t quite put his finger on with the beat in his head messing with his senses.

  He sniffed again, rubbed his nose again. Something oily and warm was in the air around him … a scent. The smell was there in his head now, desperately tugging at his memory, but he was almost too embarrassed to tell himself what it was. Like those questions at school that the teacher doesn’t tell you the answer to because it’s so obvious, right there in front of you.

  Tiggs gave him another shove. Bully turned round, taller than him on the stairs. He gave him a look and yanked off the headphones because at that moment he didn’t care about the noise outside or the real sick bit coming up… And he heard a dog begin to howl and bark. And then another, and another starting up, barking to a different beat, the one coming from his heart.

  Bully turned and jumped down the flight of stairs, going past Tiggs in the air, and it felt suddenly as if the whole place was falling down, but it was him doing the falling, his bad foot giving out, him falling towards the man in the spotlight, coming up the stairs with the lizard smile and the unwrapped eyes.

  This was Janks’s place.

  Bully was blind. He kept bl
inking hard, opening and closing his eyes, but just like inside the gun he still couldn’t see anything and all he could hear was drilling and thumping. It stopped for a minute. Somewhere beneath them, dogs took up the slack in the silence, yapping and howling, and he remembered where he was then, and that no matter how many times he opened and closed his eyes he would still be tied up in Janks’s house.

  Then his mum spoke to him.

  … I love you … I love you so much … I love you more than … more than anyone … more than anything else in the world… Happy Birthday, Bradley! Happy birthday, love… Lots and lots and lots of love from your mummy… Mmpur, mmpurrr, mmpurr… Mmmmmrrr…

  He tried to yell and scream but something stopped the sound from getting out of his mouth and he found he was having to breath through his nose. His head thumped and he felt sick with the gag in his mouth. And then someone started trying to rip his face off. That’s what it felt like, anyway, when the duct tape came away from his eyes. And then a beam of light shining into them blinded him all over again.

  “It’s good this,” said Janks. “This card of yours. The way it talks. Your mum, is it? The dead one?”

  Bully tried to stand up and began to choke himself, and saw that he was naked except for his boxers. Janks pushed him back down with the toe of his boot.

  “Whoa, boy! Stay, stay…” And Bully slipped back down the radiator.

  Janks tapped him on the head with his knuckles, to see if there was anyone in.

  “So you’re in the land of the livin’? You got a thick skull, that’s all I’m sayin’. Ain’t he, eh? See, look,” said Janks. “They thought you was dead too.”

  Bully blearily peered around Janks’s face, a shrunken balloon of light coming from a phone. Everything was more blurry than normal. As his eyes adjusted to the light, Bully made out the orange ears and red rag that were Tiggs and Chris wavering in the background like two anxious ghosts from his past.

  Terrible thoughts dripped into his head and melted the shock for a second. They had tricked him. They had lied and cheated to get him here. They had betrayed him; his friends.

  “Hey, no need for all that,” said Janks when there was a pause in the work outside and he heard Bully swearing. He shone his phone back on Bully but not right in his eyes this time.

  He squatted down closer so that there was just a few centimetres between their faces, and Bully saw the creases in his face shifting about, getting comfortable. And Janks smoothed back his little stickleback bit of hair, and it stayed stuck.

  “They was worried about you. We’ve all been worried – ain’t we?” Chris and Tiggs nodded their heads. “I’ve had everyone out lookin’ for you. That’s how worried I been. Now I hear you’re looking for someone to do you a favour? Eh?”

  “He’s taped up, Janks. He can’t speak, can ’e?” said Chris in a nervy rush.

  Janks stood up. The light strayed and Bully saw he was in a long, low room not much higher than him, the ceiling cracked and fuzzy and grey, like rain might come out of it.

  “What? Do you think I’m stupid?” he shouted all of a sudden, boom-box loud.

  “I was just sayin’,” Chris said, in case it was a trick question and he got it wrong. And Janks yanked Chris’s rag off his head and wiped his face with it. Then he slowly ground it into Chris’s face, round and round like it was very dirty, until Chris pleaded with him to stop.

  “And what about you, big ears? You got something to say?” Before Tiggs could answer Janks ripped his headphones off his head and smashed them against the wall until the big orange ears were hanging off.

  “Right… We got that sorted. Now let’s get back to business.”

  He knelt back down, put his finger to his lips (though the drilling was louder than any noise Bully could make) and ripped the tape off in one sharp move. And Bully coughed and coughed, felt the short relief of breathing in and out through his mouth.

  “As I was sayin’. I hear you got something you want cashin’ in? Am I right?”

  Bully shook his head.

  “No?” Janks smiled to himself as if reminded of some moment in his past similar to this one. “Well, I must have got that wrong then. You must have told me wrong, Chris.” Chris stood very still, didn’t want to say anything this time. “Right, well, we all got places to go.” Janks stood up again as if waiting for him to do the same. “Well, go on then! I haven’t got time to waste on little kids like you. Sling your hook!”

  “I can’t, Janks… I’m tied up,” he said at last.

  “Is that right?” Janks looked at him, all surprised, like this was news to him. But Bully couldn’t help playing along, hoping there was a chance, even if it was just one in a million, that Janks really was going to let him go.

  And Janks was making a meal of it now, enjoying himself, taking his time, spreading a look of fake concern slowly across his face. “Who put you on a lead then, Bully boy? Was it one of you two?” And Chris had to nod his head then, and Tiggs shook his as if that way they were covering themselves, right or wrong.

  Janks’s eyes narrowed then popped.

  “Well … what you two waiting for? Untie him then, untie him. I haven’t got all day.”

  Chris and Tiggs bent down hesitantly either side of Bully where his hands and neck were knotted against the radiator.

  “I can’t do the knots, Janksy,” whined Chris.

  “Waste of space, ain’t they?” Janks casually said to Bully. “I don’t know why I keep ’em.”

  “He keeps pulling,” said Tiggs.

  “Come on then, while we’re waiting,” said Janks to Bully. “Let’s have a look at it.”

  “What?” said Bully, knowing what.

  “This big-money ticket, eh? Let’s have a look-see. Where is it? Where do you leave it? What you done with it? Where you stashed it, because for the life of me, I can’t find it here, in this lot…” He motioned to the lumpy outline of Bully’s old coat and the small pile of his clean new clothes.

  “I didn’t win nothing. There was nothin’ on it,” he pleaded.

  “Is that right?” Bully nodded, turned his head, hoping desperately that Chris had got maybe one of the knots undone and was really still his friend.

  “Ha… So there is a ticket? Caught you out, didn’t I? Because a little birdy told me you were going to Watford to cash it in. So if you won nothing, why would you be going to Camelot, eh? So tell me, Bully boy.”

  “I was going to see my—” Janks slapped his face very quickly and very hard, like he’d been trying to swat this fly bothering him all day and had finally got it dead, bang on the palm of his hand.

  “To see your dad? I don’t think so. Why’d you nick the passport? Oh yeah, we found that. And your little key. Chris has been telling me all about your nice little family. I know all about you, Bully – I know everything. So, I don’t want to hear any more stories coming out of that.”

  He pointed to Bully’s mouth, and then picked up Bully’s card. He flapped it open.

  I love you … I love you so much…

  And then Janks began to tear the card very slowly into pieces so that Bully’s mum had nearly got to loving him more than anything else in the whole world when her voice finally died.

  Janks tutted. “Now, see? Look what you made me do. You got me all tempered up. So let’s start back with an easy one. All you’ve got to tell me is just two little things; two things – where’s the ticket and where d’you buy it? Two things. One, two, easy as pie for a clever, sneaky little thing like you.”

  “Dowley Road Spar,” Bully said, his fear grassing him up. He could tell Janks one thing though, that didn’t matter – just one thing without the other didn’t matter much, like a credit card without a pin.

  “Where’s that then?”

  He told him, stuttered a bit as he described the road, the shop, Old Mac who sold it to him almost six months ago when he was nearly twelve.

  “That’s good. That’s a while ago. No one’s going to remember that ticke
t, are they? They got security tapes in there? Well, even if they have,” he said, answering his own question, “they’re not going to be keeping them for getting on for six months, are they? Good, that is good. Good boy. You done well. Right, now just one more thing – where is it?”

  “It wadn’t worth nothin’ so I binned it. I just binned it! I can’t remember what I done with it.”

  “Well, it’s lucky, innit,” said Janks and knuckled Bully’s forehead again, but grinding them in like kids did at school, “that I’m ’ere. Because one thing I’m really good at is making people remember things. You would be amazed at all the remembering that goes on in this place.”

  He looked around him and sighed, pointed his phone to the back of the room, at the ceiling. “See that?”

  Bully strained his eyes and twisted his neck as far as the muscles would take his head in that direction. He made out a long wooden beam, like the benches at school, running the length of the room. And hanging from it by its jaws was a dead dog, sweat and drool pooling underneath.

  He stifled half a scream, but it was the wrong colouring to be Jack and he squinted harder and saw it was heavier set too, a pit bull. And it wasn’t dead, either. He could hear it wheezing softly through its teeth.

  Bully blew what compassion he had left, felt sorry for this dog, thick white scars clotted like cream around its ears from fights it must have won.

  “See, that’s Scoff. You know Scoff? You know why he’s up there?” Janks said, turning back to Bully, patting his head almost affectionately now. Bully shook his head.

  “Well, he let me down in the park the other night – which reminds me, where was you hiding out? On the roof? Up that tree?”

  “In one of the guns.” He hoped that didn’t make Janks angry but he seemed pleased, like it was a good story.