House of Lads

by Roland Lloyd Parry

  I liked him. He’d learned some crap off Mossie and his mates, but he didn’t shove it down your throat. He still knew how to have a laugh.

  Raz coughed and shifted on his feet where he was squatting down in the mouth of the tube. “Tell ’em the best bit, Lee lad,” he said.

  The Manc widened his eyes, all harmless like he didn’t know what Raz meant. It was a crap act. Raz frowned and the Manc went on. He’d spent two years living in a squat in Moss Side. He learned how to take care of himself for real.

  “He learned to pick locks,” said Raz, beaming.

  Mossie had found him giving out leaflets by a book shop in Saint Helens.

  Raz dipped into the pockets of his Berghaus, pulled out two bags of Nik-Naks and handed them round to us. We sat munching the powdery crisps while Rodney started talking.

  Paterson had said he wanted me to tell him how people talked. His spods trained me for what to look for. How to break people’s voices down. Rodney’s was all over the place. Caribbean, Indian, northern. It did my head in. I needed to suss him out. I couldn’t.

  His mum and dad came over from Trinidad in the seventies, settled in Toxteth and had Rodney there. He reckoned his dad got his head kicked in by the bizzies in the riots and was never the same since. He was right enough to jizz you out though, wasn’t he, I wanted to say. Toxteth riots, my arse. Meant to be eighteen, this lad. His dad would have been wrong in the head for years before he had Rodney. He chucked Toxteth in there because he knew it was the kind of thing Raz wanted to hear.

  “Hey, Raz,” I said, butting into Rodney’s story. “Was you around in Tocky in eighty-one? Did you see it all go off?”

  Raz stuck a long knobbly Nik-Nak in his gob and talked as he crunched it.

  “Nah,” he says. “Eighty-one I weren’t in the ’Pool. I were somewhere else.”

  That look in his eye. Same one I saw the first day I met him. Like he was remembering something nasty.

  He didn’t care how likely Rodney’s story sounded. He could do the maths. But he knew what he liked. What mattered was Rodney thought it was true.

  Rodney’s dad ended up in some loonie bin and his mum headed back to Trinidad. Rodney ran away. Streets. Squats. One night in a Syrian cafe he tried to sell a rose to a man called Mossie.

  Rodney stood up and stepped out of the concrete tube. Paced around and stretched. Looked up at the sky and stuck his tongue out to taste the rain. It had eased off. He stepped back in the tube.

  So that was his story. I looked round at the lads. They were all staring at him. None of them smiling. None of them thinking what a scrote. Great. They’d all swallowed it.

  “Where were you?”

  Raz looked round. It was Ayax. He wiped his nose and asked again.

  “In eighty-one,” he said. “You said not in Liverpool. Where?”

  Raz screwed up his bag of Nik Naks and licked bits out of his teeth. He frowned. Then his gob split into a grin.

  “I were in a war.”

  Ayax nodded.

  “I didn’t go to fight,” Raz said. “I were a doctor.”

  Manc Lee tittered.

  “Yeah,” Raz said. “I were a smartarse. Been to uni. Thought that could help win wars. Soon learned better. I ended up fighting like all the rest.”

  “Where?” Ayax said.

  “Afghanistan.”

  I felt my skin tingle.

  Ayax nodded. The Manc rustled his crisp packet. Then all was still.

  “Helping us out, this country was,” Raz said. “Helping the Muj fight the Ruskies. Food and drugs to heal their children. Them friendly Yanks and Britskies. That’s why they sent Raz there. Young doctor man. Helpy helpy. Silly silly. Gets slotted by a Rusky shell.”

  He pointed at his lazy eye. His left one by the scar. He tapped it with a finger nail. Glass.

  “In the hills,” he said. “In a cave. Looked after by the Muj. Liked it there, I did. Liked the folks. Most of all I liked the poppy. Liked it all so much I stayed fifteen years. Learned the lingo. Stopped talking like a uni spod.”

  He picked a scrap of Nik-Nak from his teeth.

  “As long as it suited them Brit and Yank pigdogs, they helped us,” he went on. “Sent us guns to slot them Ruskies with. Twenty years on, they change their minds. Didn’t like the Muj no more. Bombing them. Us. We still had the weapons they give us. But not the food or meds!”

  Raz twisted his neck and flobbed a big greeny out into the rain.

  “It did us proud, this country,” he went on. “Just like it did with the sugar. Grew fat on slavery, it did. Filled this city with red-brick mansions. Azo. Did you grow up in one of them?”

  “I grew up in shite.”

  “So all that empire. All them riches. Still left us living in that.”

  I looked round at the lads. They were lapping it up. Their eyes locked on Raz. I tried to lock all his crap in my head for Paterson.

  “It’s done you proud, hasn’t it, this country?” Raz said. “You ready to show you’re grateful?”

  He pointed at Hanzi, sitting next to the Manc with his knees under his chin.

  “How about this lad here,” Raz said. “How many chances you think he’s had in life? Well, I tell you.”

  He sniffed and curled his lip.

  “He been used. Begging. Handing the money to his boss every night. Till along comes Uncle Raz and sets him free.”

  He moved over and sat down next to Hanzi. Patted him on the shoulder.

  “Well today, Hanzi’s going to be the boss,” Raz said. “First time in his life now. Hanzi.”

  He stood up. Stooped and stepped out of the pipe. We followed him. Hanzi first.

  Raz strode to the low fence of the playground and stood looking out at the docks. He put his hand round Hanzi’s shoulder again.

  “Down there.” Raz pointed. “See it? That big metal box?”

  Hanzi nodded.

  “That’s where your old boss lives,” Raz said. “He owes me money.”

  An empty street down the rise, between the waste ground and the docks. Old shipping container next to the kerb among the scraps of old carpet and chip papers. One end of it pried half open.

  The drizzle had stopped. The air was still and close. The crackly sound of a radio coming from inside the container.

  “You go in there, lad,” Raz said. “You get me money. Money?”

  He made that greedy rubby sign with his thumb and middle finger. Hanzi understood. Someone had taught him that before. He nodded three times, quickly. Like he might get hit if he didn’t do a good job.

  “You get his money,” Raz went on. He knelt down beside Hanzi with his hand on his shoulder, his face close to the boy’s. “Then you show him how grateful you are.”

  Hanzi was nodding like mad now. His eyes wide. Raz reached in an inside pocket of his Berghaus. Took out this little black tube. Flicked his wrist.

  A steel cosh, a foot and a half long. It sprung out of the handle and narrowed to a little black knob at the end.

  I looked over my shoulder for that bizzie car. Nothing. I looked back at Hanzi. He had the cosh in his hand now.

  I felt sick.

  Hanzi looked up at Raz. Raz nodded. His top lip unpeeled, up over his sticky-out tooth. Smiling.

  Hanzi ran off down the slope, the cosh in his hand, wagging as he went like a magic wand. He rounded the crate and went up to the half-open door at the near end. Pried it wider open with a groan and creak of metal.

  We watched him step up and vanish inside.

  16

  For ten seconds all was quiet. Just the crackle of the radio.

  The sun had pricked through one of the clouds. I was sweating under my anorak. I held my breath. The other lads too. Our eyes on the door of the crate.

  Then the noise.

  Banging. Shrieking. Moaning.

  I made to run down the slope but Raz reached out and grabbed my collar. Dragged me back to stand beside him. I tried to hold still and stop trembling.

  All
hush again. For ages.

  And then there was Hanzi, running back up the slope. Panting. The cosh still in his hand and something blue in the other.

  He stopped in front of Raz, holding the cosh down by his side. Blood and black hairs on it.

  Hanzi looked up at Raz. At me. A flash of something awful in his eyes. Some animal thing that tore right through me.

  He held out the blue thing. Little steel safe box. Raz took it and patted him on the head.

  I touched Hanzi on the arm and tried to gently take the cosh from his right hand. His little black eyes darted at me. Again, that tiger-flash in them. His hand tightened on the weapon. I squeezed his shoulder and talked to him, all calming like.

  “Good lad,” I said. “Alright.”

  He let go.

  Raz put his arm round the boy’s shoulders. “Mr Hanzi, ladies and gents,” he said.

  The lads had stayed quiet till then, watching. Now they blew up. Whooped. Cheered. Crowded round Hanzi, slapping him on the back and messing his hair.

  I wiped the cosh on the grass and close it back up in its handle. I was about to slip it in the pocket of my coat when Raz called and reached out for it. He took it from me, turned and handed it to Ayax. The lad grabbed it. Snapped his wrist, locking the weapon out again in one go.

  His turn.

  “All together now, lads,” Raz said. His eyes went wide and mad, his lips snarled back. “Get down there, the lot of yous. Take that shack to pieces.”

  The five lads roared and slithered down the slope.

  I looked at Raz. He winked. “Not you, la’,” he said. “Best I keep you on the bench. Head coach!”

  I looked back down at the container. The lads piling in through the opening. Banging noises from inside. Rodney got there last, strutted along the length of it and slipped behind.

  Raz put a meaty hand round the back of my neck and shook me. Matey. Like we were all in it together.

  Rodney showed up again, round the far end of the crate. He’d found an iron bar from somewhere. He jumped up on the roof of the shipping box and started putting dents in it, trying to bust through the rusty metal.

  Raz cheered them on. Then he couldn’t help joining in. He let go of my neck and bent down. Picked up a brick and lashed it down the slope. It clanged and bounced off the box.

  I cacked myself all the way home trying to calm the lads down. Looking over my shoulder for that pig car while they ran along hooting and yelling.

  Raz left me to it and plodded ahead on his own. Nice one. That was my job then, eh. Keep the lads in line once he’d stirred them up. I had to keep yelling to hush them till we were back at the house.

  Soon as we were home Raz got a big pan of macaroni cheese on the go. I sorted the lads out. Made them go up to their rooms and change out of their wet stuff. Not Manc Lee though. He had bits of broken mirror stuck in his knuckles.

  I’d calmed down myself now we were back inside. My hands had stopped shaking. I sat on the sofa with Lee and picked out the shards. Swabbed his hand and bandaged it up. All stuff they taught me inside, on Paterson’s orders. Raz saw. Asked me where I learned first aid. I told him my mum was a nurse. It was true.

  Raz sent Casho and Ayax out in the back yard with the money box and some tools. I heard them bashing around getting it open. Soon enough they came back in. Five hundred quid’s worth of tenners in their hands. They handed it over to Raz. Anxy look on their faces. Raz counted it. Eyeballed them. He knew they’d not nicked any. They were too shit-scared of him to do that.

  “The spoils,” he said. “Of this war they make us fight.”

  He stashed the dosh in his room. He locked it and went in the kitchen. We all followed him in and sat down for lunch together like some big nasty family, pouring each other squash and passing the Daddies’ Sauce.

  “You done well today, lads,” he told them. “Listened to old Raz. Told us your stories. Spoke truth without fear. Fought bravely for them spoils. But hear the rule. No more stealing unless I say. No scrapping unless it’s with Azo on them mats. No mischief. Or you bring the pigs down on us. And you’ll answer to me.”

  After lunch it was still pissing with rain so we stayed in. Raz sat the lads all down in the back room to talk at them. He let me off though.

  “Take a break, la’,” he said. “You done good looking after the lads today. You’re management now!”

  He shut himself in the sitting room with his little class. His voice drifted through the door, growing louder as he got well into it. I put my ear to the wood and listened in for a bit. More of the crap he talked down at the docks. He was on about Syria now.

  I went out the front door, down the garden path and walked round the corner to a playground. Sat on a bench and got the phone out of my pocket.

  He wanted to know everything. About the house, the street. The lads. Names and what they looked like and where they were from.

  I told him about the talk Raz had given us down by the docks. The lads’ stories. Raz’s. How they’d all been headhunted by Mossie.

  Paterson didn’t sound shocked by any of it. He said “Hmm” a lot. This tightness in his voice that I’d not heard before. I wondered if he was stressed. Wondered something else too. Deep down. I wondered if he’d spied on me. If he knew I’d been to see Ali.

  I told him what Raz had said about the container ships.

  “He’s smuggling something through the docks?” Paterson said.

  “He said there’s too many of those containers to check every one.”

  “He’s right.”

  I told him about the feller they battered with the cosh. “He’s using these lads,” I said when I was done.

  “Hmm.”

  “He knows they’ve got nothing. He can make them do whatever he says.”

  “That’s the kind of evil we’re trying to fight all over the world, Azo. Those lads are lucky you’re here, doing your bit.”

  “So will all this be enough to put Raz away?”

  “Why, Azo? Have you got it all worked out?”

  “Won’t you need me to point the finger at him?”

  “No thanks, lad. Last thing we need’s a murderer standing up for us in court. You keep your head down and carry on digging.”

  I stood up off the park bench and paced around the swings.

  “We’ve chaps all over the place working through your leads,” he said. “You just keep the calls coming. Names, places. Times. Keep an eye out for guns. Watch, listen, tell. Don’t worry about trying to nail anyone. Your stuff is safe with me. Some of it I’ll pass along, but if you’ve a big nugget that could get traced back to you, I’ll sit on it to keep you safe.”

  “Can I see my kid?”

  I asked him every time. I’d already done it without his blessing, hadn’t I. But it didn’t feel too safe running around behind his back.

  “Sure,” he said. “If you do your job.”

  I made myself sound calm. Mustn’t look like I was losing it.

  “They got me living in Litherland now,” I said. “Stone’s throw from my old place. What if I see someone I know?”

  I heard him sniff as he took that in. He paused. I chewed my nail. Then he spoke.

  “Azo. Are you threatening to mess this up unless you can see your boy?”

  “I’m just saying. What if someone spots me? Someone who knows what happened in The Grace? If Raz finds out I killed a lad he’ll wonder why I’m not inside. He’ll sniff around. He’ll add it up. And it most likely won’t even be him who slots me. He’ll set the lads on me. They’ll cosh me to death.”

  Paterson sighed. “If you have any bother round there, call me.”

  “And what’ll you do?”

  “I’ll make the bother go away.”

  I couldn’t help pushing it.

  “Look, I’ve done all you said. I’ve kept my mouth shut. Will you not let me see my kid just once?”

  He sighed again. Like all the weight of the world was on his shoulders.

  “I ca
n give you more money. How about that? You can spend it, or save it up for Ali later.”

  I said nothing for a bit. He’d been leaving me envelopes of cash. It had kept me from starving before I moved into the house. But not much more.

  “Well?” he said.

  “Go on then.”

  “Good man. If you do well, you’ll see him soon enough,” he said. “Keep the calls coming.”

  “That’s all you really care about isn’t it? You’re like Raz. You’re using me.”

  “We talked about this, Azo. What you do for me can save lives.”

  “So to stop Raz using them lads, you use lads like me. Where does it all end?”

  “Stay put in that house and you may find out.”

  Sod that, I thought. The next day was Sunday.

  17

  I got back from seeing Ali at six in the evening. As I reached the front gate, Mossie was pulling away in his Honda.

  “Where’s he off?” I asked Raz as I stepped through the front door.

  “Going to pick up the new kid,” he said.

  The lads had been having a rest. They came down from their rooms as I was setting the table.

  Raz got chips in. Treat for Sunday night. We sat round the kitchen table, all seven of us. Greasy papers strewn all over. Raz at the head, joking and laughing. He poured coke in our glasses and spooned out ice cream for afters.

  When the washing-up was done, he sent me out to the garden.

  Another of those weird wet summer days it had been, but the sky was clear now. The tufty grass was dry and yellow but the rain had soggied it up.

  I went to the wooden shed at the bottom of the lawn.

  All this sport stuff inside. Crazy-golf clubs. Flyaway footies. Gym mats stacked on top of each other. And what Raz sent me for: a cricket set.

  He took us down the park.

  I’d never touched a bat and ball in my life, but Raz knew what he was doing. He hopped around in his trainies and his green cap, showing Casho, Ayax and Hanzi how to bowl. Pivot the shoulders, swing the arms. Bicep brushing the ear. And with the bat. Knees bent, arse out like you wanted to get bummed.

  Casho and Ayax picked it up quick. They started tonking it all over the park. Raz ran around fielding, catching and stumping and cackling. Rodney was good too. He helped Raz coach me and the lads. Patted them on the shoulder all the time, like he was in charge. Got right on my wick.