A noise down in the hall. Rattling.
I legged it down the staircase, thumping and creaking on the bare boards. Got down there as the front door slammed behind him.
I caught up with him as he was fiddling with the gate. Put my hand on his shoulder.
“Come off it, lad,” I said. “You can’t... ”
BANG. He lamped me on the gob with his little fist. Then again, in the bollocks.
I crumpled to my knees. Didn’t stay down for long though. I tucked the pain away deep inside like Ralph taught me. Sprang back up. Got my arms round the lad’s ribs and tried to drag him sideways up the path. He pounded me on the head. Caught me on the eardrum. I went deaf for a sec. Dizzy. Faint. I didn’t let go of him.
He lunged up and bit my ear.
I drew my breath in and tried not to roar. He slipped out of my grasp. I felt blood down my neck. He legged back to the gate and I was after him again. Arms round him. He elbowed me. Raked his heel down my shins. He’d almost wriggled free. His hands yanked at the gate.
A curtain twitched across the road.
I snapped. I legged him up and he hit the ground, behind the hedge where no one could see him. He went quiet and wheezed when my foot hit his stomach.
I pulled him up on the porch steps by the hair. Slung him through the front door. Down the hall. Into the lounge. Shoved him onto the settee.
There was a key in that sitting room door. And another in the one to the kitchen beyond it. I turned the sound up on the telly and locked him in.
I leaned my back against the door in the hall. Sank to the floor, shuddering.
This voice there was, inside me. Some kind of judge. It knew I should have gone down for killing the lad in The Grace. Now it was watching everything I did. Well Azo, lad, it said. You done a lot of bad things, but at least you always knew the reason. Till now. How’s this for a new job, eh. Beating up children.
My breath steadied after a few minutes. But I’d not forgive myself. I’d played this game to get myself out of trouble. I should have known it would just mean more dirty fighting.
Two hours later I heard the front door open. I was sitting in the back room on the sofa. Split lip. Bleeding ear. Hanzi in the armchair next to me. Graze on his head from the garden gravel. Calmed down, he had. Scared of me now. All white. He went whiter when he saw Raz come in cracking his knuckles.
“How did you get on, la’?” Raz said. He frowned. Looked at the lad. Put on this big stern voice. “Hanzi? You been a good lad?”
The kid got up and ran past Raz, trembling. He legged it upstairs to his room. Raz let him go.
I stood up. Shifted my feet to ease my aching bollocks. “He tried to do one,” I said to Raz. “I grabbed him. He went mad.”
Raz clapped me on the shoulder and winked. “I reckoned you’d be up to the job.”
He knew what would happen, the big shady twat. It was a test.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ll not call the filth!”
I thought of Paterson. How I’d tell him all this and stitch Raz up. Made me feel a bit better. Only a bit.
The front door opened again and shut. Mossie came in. Another young lad with him.
About fifteen. Hard bristles on his chin. Big dirty parka jacket, trackie bottoms and old white trainies, stained grey with skank. He nodded at me and Raz showed him upstairs. Put him in the same room as Hanzi.
I looked in on them before I headed back to the shop. The new lad was sitting on one of the beds next to Hanzi, chatting away to him. Talked like a Manc. He was speaking in English but somehow he seemed to be making Hanzi understand. The little lad was smiling for a change.
I stood and watched them for a sec. They looked up and saw me. The Manc nodded at me again. Hanzi glared.
Raz said he’d sleep the night there. I had to get the train back to Tocky. I ran into Mossie coming up the garden path. He saw the shock on my face.
“Hanzi acting up?” he said.
I lit a Regal.
“Don’t worry about the little lad, mate,” Mossie said. “He’ll be alright now. You should have seen the last one who tried to get away.”
I didn’t want to know. I was feeling sick enough in my belly already. But it was worth hearing, for Paterson’s sake. I made myself ask.
“What happened?”
He smirked. “Raz took him in the cellar.”
“Where is he now?”
“He went to do his duty. Like we all must. No running and no grassing. Raz doesn’t like it.”
“Better not cross him then, eh?”
“Better not.”
I called Paterson later from my flat. Calm as I could. But I broke down when I told him about Hanzi.
Paterson said he knew how I felt. Sometimes we had to do bad things to do good.
“You’re a right saint, you,” I said.
“And you are one of my best assets.”
“You said I could see my lad if I did well.” I didn’t let on I’d seen him already. I was fishing around for Paterson’s blessing. Least he could do, eh. I’d held up my side. “So?” I said. “When?”
“When I say you can.”
14
I was on shop duty on my own the next few days. Working the till and shuffling chocky bars around. All quiet. On the Friday morning Raz showed up. He told me two more lads had moved into his house.
He handed me the car keys. We shut the shop and headed off.
He made me drive south and turn first left.
“We not heading to Litherland?” I asked him.
“Ay, la’. Little pit-stop first though.”
“What for?”
“Pack yourself a bag.”
We’d reached my building.
I parked the Astra and tugged the handbrake up.
“We going somewhere?”
“Oh ay, la’,” he said.
“How long will I be gone then? Need to know how many pairs of boxies to take, eh?”
He laughed and thumped my shoulder.
“Call it a work trip, la’. Business class!”
I bobbed up to my flat and stuffed some clothes in a rucksack.
I felt sick driving over to Litherland. Kept thinking I’d see someone I knew. No way round it, though. If I got spotted, I’d have to work something out.
I rolled the Astra into the crescent and stopped by Raz’s front gate.
A right scout camp it was now. Hanzi was hoovering in the hall when I came in. The Manc was washing up dishes in the kitchen. The lino was wet from mopping and the whole place smelt of bleach. The windows were open airing out all the rooms. Mossie was sat in an armchair in the back.
Raz stomped around checking on it all, like some big hairy Mother Hubbard on crack. He pointed through the kitchen window to the back garden. Two others there, hanging up sheets on a line. Pair of skinny black lads in matching turquoise trackies.
There were sleeping bags laid out on all the beds. Raz had moved into the downstairs room at the front. Another one across the hall from it, not taken yet. He led us upstairs. Hanzi and the Manc were sharing one room with the two other lads next door. That left one other room untaken on the other side, looking out on the back garden.
On the landing Raz pointed to the ceiling. Ladder going up through a trap door. Attic. He made me climb it.
Another bedroom up there. Sloping ceiling, skylight and a folding camp bed.
Raz looked at me.
“Get lost,” I said.
“Ay, la’. Good for you this way. Save you rent. Food. Stick with all the others in the house of lads. Make friends. Brothers.”
I stared at the camp bed, then out through the skylight at the high tree branches in the back garden. Green leaves and grey slate roofs beyond.
This was what Paterson was after. Have me right on the inside.
“Big step for you,” Raz said. “Move you up the ladder.” He grinned and slapped me on the shoulder. “Better like this. You help me out here. We help you. Deal.”
> Time for my grateful orphan act.
“Raz, mate,” I said. “Are you sure?”
Tears in my voice. It must have been a real Oscar job, because Raz put his arm round me. Hot sweat from his armpit soaked onto me through his t-shirt.
“Look Azo lad,” he said. “Truth is, I need your help. These lads got nothing. Like you said you didn’t, when I met you. Well now they got me. Me and Mossie feed them. Roof over them. Need someone to help though. Mentor, like. Someone more their age.”
I might have believed that Good Samaritan bollocks if he’d not set me up like that with Hanzi.
“What you running here, Raz?” I asked him. “Shelter?”
“More than that, la’. These lads are here to learn. School of life!”
He squeezed me deeper in his pit.
“That’s where you come in, la’. Teach them stuff.”
“Like what?”
“Like what I saw you giving that lad in the shop. That neck-lock. Class. You told me about your boxing an’ all. What you learned at that ring. You useful to us, lad. Gifted. Trained.”
He was whispering in my ear.
“Me and Mossie teach them lads there’s something to fight for,” he said. “You teach them how to fight.” He pinched my cheek. “We teach them to live. You teach them to stay alive.”
I smiled. Tried to look keen. Hoped he’d let me out of his armpit.
“Why though, Raz?” I said. “Why you helping these lads?”
“’Cos I can.”
“But who’s paying? Who were you off to see the other day?”
He closed his eyes and shushed me, laying a finger on my lips.
“Mossie teach the good book. The bits that suit him. He talk to the people with the money. You and me, we’re the ones who get stuff done.”
“What stuff?”
“You’ll see. I’ll teach you things that’ll make you angry. Make you fight. Make you change the world.”
“Can I still have my Sundays off?”
He chuckled and nodded.
“You going to do great things, la’,” he said. “You and me together. I’m the Big Daddy here. You the Big Brother!”
“Thanks, Raz, mate,” I said. “For the room. For everything. I’ll not forget it.”
Raz hugged me closer. The doorbell rang downstairs.
“Here he is. The new lad.”
This one’d got there on his own. I caught a glimpse of him in the hall as Mossie opened the door. Black tracksuit with white three-stripes. Mossie took him upstairs.
Raz rounded up the others and had them line up in the back garden.
“This is Azo, lads,” he said. “Anyone starts on you, he sort them out. You need anything, you worried or got troubles, you can talk to him.”
I worked along the line, shaking hands with them like we were about to play footie.
First up was little Hanzi. His thick black hair and eyebrows. His sad eyes.
“Sorry I hit you, mate,” I said. “Hit me back if you want. I won’t do nothing.”
He held his hand limp round mine and looked at me. Smiled for a sec, but not with his eyes. They stared right through me. Wait till I’m bigger, the eyes said. Then I’ll hit you back.
Next to him was the Manc in his skanky old parka. Lee, his name was. He’d made friends with Hanzi.
Then the two in turquoise trackies. Twins. About fifteen, sixteen. Tall and lanky with short curly hair.
They told me their names.
“Casho,” said the first one.
“Ayax,” said the other.
Their voices had hardly broken, but their handshakes were deadly. They were more edgy than the others. Gangly, hungry-looking, like a pair of wolves. Matching grazes on their knuckles.
When I thought all the handshaking was done, Mossie came out with the new one.
Lean Asian lad. Handsome. Older than the others. Eighteen? Nineteen? Bumfluff moustache and fresh face. Stocky though. These thick upper arms. Chunky thighs. Massive bulge in his trackie pants. He came straight up to me and shook my hand. He held himself up straight, shoulders back. Stared right in my eye.
He looked well up himself. I didn’t trust him.
“Azo. Rodney,” he said. “How are you doing.”
West Indian twang.
We shook hands hard, testing each other’s grip. He pulled me off balance. I steadied myself and tugged him towards me. It was his turn to steady his feet.
He smiled as we let go.
Something about him put me on guard. Something not right. Too cocky he was. Too happy.
The others were still standing in line. Rodney turned and went to shake hands with each of them. Like he was older and smarter. He joked with Casho and Ayax. Patted Hanzi on the head and ruffled his hair.
I felt Raz’s hand on my shoulder.
“One more to come,” he said. “Then we’re a full house.”
He pulled a load of tenners from his shorts and handed them to me. Then he dug in the other pocket and found a bit of crumpled paper. List of groceries scrawled on it.
“Need you to drive to Tesco’s, la’.”
I went off in the Astra and did a big shop for us all. Crisps, oven chips, ice cream. On the way back, I pulled over in a side street, killed the engine and slipped out the Nokia.
I was checked into Raz’s House of Lads. I called Paterson and told him all about it.
15
The weather broke that night. Next morning the sky was grey and spitting. Raz had us all put our coats on and walk with him down to the docks.
A right sight we were. Six lads and this big scally leading us along. A pig car went by. This rozzer stared out at us. They didn’t stop though. Better things to do. Or maybe he spotted me and knew the deal. Had Paterson told all the bizzies about me? Anyway. They weren’t my arse-ache any more. It was the locals I was worried about.
We fetched up on this high patch of waste ground. Green weeds gleaming in the drizzle. A street of old warehouses below with rubbish in the gutter. Old pub on the corner, boarded up. Scrap yard. Then the docks. Those massive blue cranes and stacks of shipping crates. Red, blue, green. Rusty. Some with Chinese writing on. Some with Arabic. At the seafront, white metal windmills turning in the mist.
Raz gazed over at it all.
“The New York of Europe,” he said. He stared round at us. “That’s what they called Liverpool. The warehouse of the empire. Not anymore.”
We shuffled our feet and shivered. The rain was coming down harder.
“It’s just a few crappy crates nowadays,” he said. “But back then, more freight passed through this port than you can dream of. Tobacco. Cotton. And don’t forget the sugar!”
He did this spoddy chinny-reckon face and put on this daft posh voice. “Tell me, lahds, how does one caht down tannes of sugar cane in the Caribbee-arn to ship it over to Liverpewl? Does one get up off one’s rich fat arse and caht it oneself?”
The lads looked at each other. Rodney spoke.
“Slaves,” he said.
Raz nodded. He let the word hang there. “Right, lad,” he said. “That’s how Liverpool was built.”
He led us to the far side of the waste ground. Someone had dumped a chunk of giant conky piping there. Huge grey thing, nearly big enough to stand up in. Raz stepped in and bashed around in it, kicking out old cans and bottles.
I watched him. He looked like some old meff settling down to sleep in the park. The mad bastard. Is that all there was to him? Some crap about what happened hundreds of years ago?
He stooped in the mouth of the pipe and faced us.
“They stopped bringing the slaves through them docks,” he said. “After a while. But there’s other stuff coming from Africa now.”
“What stuff, Raz?” I said.
“Naughty stuff. In them containers. Too many to search them all. Used to be dockers who’d handle the cargo. Keep an eye. Fired most of them, didn’t they. Now they going to reap the storm.”
He sat us al
l down inside the pipe and made each of the lads tell his story.
Casho and Ayax went first. They took turns to talk. Patchy English they had. But we all understood.
They ran away when some clan killed their mum and dad, Casho said. Fourteen, they were. But they had their heads screwed on. Robbed enough money to get out of Somalia. Boats and the backs of trucks. All the way to Liverpool. They had cousins who’d been there for years. The cousins didn’t want to know them though. Things were mixed up back where they came from. They met Mossie at the Mosque.
The two lads stopped talking. Raz sat there nodding and let it sink in.
“Tell us more about your mum and dad,” he said. “What happened?”
Ayax couldn’t bear it. He clutched his brother’s arm and tried to bury his face behind him while Casho told us about the day the clansmen came to their village.
He tried to talk us through it all. The wars and the leaders. The past. I was lost, but Raz sat there nodding, like he knew it all already. When it looked like Casho was going to cry too, Raz growled and made him go on. About their mother. Ayax curled into a ball.
Casho finished talking and pulled his brother into his arms. None of us spoke. Raz got up, stooping in the low tunnel, and stepped towards them. He gently lifted Casho’s hands, put his own arms round Ayax and hoisted him up standing. He wiped the tears off Ayax’s face with two big thumbs and hugged him to his chest.
“Alright, lad,” he said. “We all here with you now.”
Ayax tightened his arms around Raz’s back and mumbled through the tears.
“Thank you.”
Next to their story, Manc Lee’s sounded like In The Night Garden. He reckoned he had all this behavioural crap that messed with his head. That and a sheet or two of speed, eh. It wasn’t really why his mum and stepdad chucked him out. That was after he started going to the wrong kind of meetings in a room above a chippy. They were run by Mossie’s mates.
He still had a crooked finger from where his stepdad slammed the door.
“I’m a lippy twat,” he said. “Been chinned enough times, you’d think I’d shut up and sit down. I don’t.”
House of Lads Page 6