“Can I have a biscuit with it?” I said.
“Why would I give you a biscuit?”
“For my blood sugar.”
“I’ve not got any biscuits.”
Soft husky Scouse voice. This sad drag to it.
“What’s in the tin then?” I said.
“Trouble.”
“Not a very good dinner lady, are you?”
“I’m not a dinner lady. That was a favour I did you. Raz said I’m not meant to go up to the lads’ rooms unless I’m tidying them. And I’m never to go up to yours.”
“Guess I owe you one, eh?”
“Nah, you’re alright.”
“Well do yourself a favour, then. Don’t take Raz for granted like that.”
She rolled her eyes. “Do you mind?” she said. “I was about to have a dump.”
“Well, wash your hands before you make my breakfast.”
“Why? Don’t you like girls when they’re dirty?”
She wrinkled her nose in a smile and snapped away at the chewy with her mouth open. I looked away. At the window, at the floor. I got my tongue back and spoke again.
“You living here now?” I said.
“Raz put me in the room across the hall from his. I got here last night.”
“From where?”
“Not far.”
She bit her lip. Little cut on it. These grey tired rings round her eyes. She pulled her feet up on the bog lid, folded her knees to her chest.
I opened my mouth. But before the words came out, she said: “Maya.”
“Azo.”
She smiled.
“Azo. You want to look in my biscuit tin?”
“I’m meant to be the Big Brother round here. Meant to know all what goes on.”
She reached a skinny arm behind the bowl, pulled out the tin and held it out to me. She had that red paint on her fingernails too.
I stepped forward and took it. Old metal thing, with a hinged lid. Tartan pattern. Shortbread. I stretched my fingers and thumbs round it and worked it open.
Half an inch deep of skunk, wrapped in a plastic bag. Two packs of king size Rizlies on top. And her morning’s work: a spliff.
“This my breakfast?” I said.
She smirked. “Get knotted.”
I stuck my nose in. Almost got chonged off the smell. “What would Raz say if he saw this?” I said.
“He’d kill me.”
She laughed again. A chuckle that shook her chest and shoulders and rolled on into a wheeze and a cough.
“Does Raz know you smoke?” I said.
“Knows I used to.”
She licked the cut by her mouth. I pointed at it.
“Did Raz do that?”
“No,” she said. “Raz helped me out.”
“Where did he find you?”
“Mossie found me. Online.”
“Asian bride?”
“Not that kind of site.”
“Oh, I see.” I mimed mouse-clicking and whacking off at the same time. I’m a real gent, me.
“Get lost.” She giggled. “The kind of site that doesn’t show up in searches. The kind for real people.”
“You a believer?” I said.
She shrugged. “I was brought up one. I’m enough of one to make everyone in that web forum like me. That’s why Mossie picked me up.”
“You don’t talk like one.”
“There’s lots of ways of believing.”
“So why did you… ”
A noise came from downstairs. Raz, bellowing my name, then hers. Maya jumped up from the bog, hugged herself and looked at the door.
“He’s in the hall,” she said, and glanced at the biscuit tin in my hand. “What are we going to do with that?”
“Don’t ask me. How did you get it up here?”
“Wrapped it in my towel.”
“Well then.”
“My towel’s wet now. Raz said I’ve got to leave it on the rail.”
“That was clever.”
I knew what she was waiting for. Wanted me to play the gent and hide it for her. I took my time. Leaned my back against the door.
“I never knew Raz was so house proud,” I said.
“I bet there’s a lot about him you don’t know.”
“And you do?”
She shrugged. “There’s a lot you don’t know about me too.”
I looked down at the biscuit tin and back at Maya. She winked at me, her jaw pounding the chewy. Something about her. I couldn’t put on my act the way I did with Raz and the others. I felt like she could see right through me.
I muttered and looked at the biscuit tin. She stepped towards me. I smelt her clean wet hair. Downstairs Raz bellowed my name again.
“Can I not stash it in your room?” she said. “Just till tonight.”
Maybe she was setting me up. Was Raz making her do it? Testing me after last night? While I was trying to think, he shouted again.
I’d take a chance. Get her on my side. I stepped away from the door.
“My hero,” she said.
Her chest grazed my arm as she passed. Nuke charge through my whole body. I heard the lads whooping downstairs.
I nipped back up the ladder and stashed the biscuit tin on a beam in the attic ceiling. I scrambled some clothes on, had a quick piss and went down. The lads were sitting waiting in the back room.
Raz was standing in the kitchen in a green basketball vest, finishing his coffee.
“No hurry, la’,” he said.
“Sorry, Raz mate.”
He was frowning, wondering what had got into me. I should have been on my best behaviour after the night before. I stayed cool. Didn’t go crawling to him. One sorry and that’d do. Cool things down while I had a think what to do.
Raz thought for a second, sniffed and let it go.
“You take the lads out the back,” he said. “Give them some of your training. Teach them how to stay alive!”
I grabbed a banana and a Penguin bar from the worktop. Stuffed the bicky in my gob as I zipped my coat up and put the banana in my pocket.
As I was heading out the kitchen, Maya came through. She looked at me as we edged past each other in the doorway, face to face. My mouth was full of chocky biscuit.
I ordered the lads out the back. Spitting with rain it was. They grumbled. I raised my voice and they tramped out, through the little washing room off the kitchen, to the back door. Only Rodney lingered there in the sitting room, staring at the telly.
“And you,” I said.
He turned and stared at me. I pulled him out of his chair, kicked him up the arse and shoved him in the back.
He turned and gave me a look.
“Got something to say?” I growled.
I held his eye. Two seconds. Three. He snorted, slouched out and strutted down the back steps.
I was about to follow him down when I heard Maya and Raz talking low in the kitchen. The door was open a crack. I peered through.
She was standing at the table in front of him. He got a key from his trackie pocket, turned and unlocked one of the upper cupboards. Took out three little boxes. White ones from the chemist with printed labels. He popped capsules out of their plastic bubbles into his palm and laid them on the table.
He handed her a glass of water and grabbed her chin. Her cheek turned white under his fingers. He slotted the pills in her gob one by one, held the glass to her lips and watched her as she swallowed.
He locked the packets back in the cupboard and pocketed the key.
Outside I had the lads pull the gym mats out the garden shed and lay them on the lawn. I stuffed the banana down me for strength. Didn’t enjoy it. Didn’t feel hungry. Felt sick. I couldn’t taste. Couldn’t think.
Afraid someone’d come for me. Paterson would hear about the lad on the tracks and send his pigs to haul me in.
Teach the lads some moves, Raz had told me. Teach them what you learned at that boxing ring.
I did my best. Slapped Casho and M
anc Lee round the head to calm them down. I had them all stand round and watch while I taught them some bits and pieces. Falling, ducking, blocking. Wrist-, arm- and neck-locks. I made the lads run through the moves with me, one by one, then pair off and try them on each other. Gently.
I finished up by showing them that wicked neck-pinch. I took Rodney as a guinea pig. The cocky knobhead was well into stepping up for a demo. He hopped around on the mat, clucking away like Bruce Lee. He shut up quick when my fingers reached his throat. His knees buckled. Down he went on his back.
I looked at the lads over my shoulder. They shut up and stood there watching.
“This’ll kill him if I squeeze hard enough,” I told them. Turned and grinned down at Rodney. His eyes were buggling. “Don’t try it at home,” I told him. “Oops, I forgot. This is your home now, isn’t it?”
A voice came from the kitchen step. Raz.
I eased my grip on Rodney’s neck. He spluttered and gasped and rolled over panting. He lay there on his side for a bit then slowly got to his knees.
Raz called out again. Mossie had come, he told me. School time for the lads.
I had them put the mats away, then file up the back steps one by one. Me last and Rodney in front, still panting. He avoided my eye. Raz stood at the door and saw them through into the sitting room.
Mossie was sat there on a stool, waiting with his back to the telly. He had his white pyjama-suit on with a trackie top over it. Slippers on his feet. Book on his lap. Rodney leaned over as he came in, reached for Mossie’s book and turned it up to see the cover. Mossie wrenched it away from him and pointed him to one of the chairs.
The lads settled down around him. I sat off behind them on a kitchen chair. The vacuum cleaner was whirring upstairs. Maya had set out cups of tea and plates of fig rolls on the coffee table. The lads scoffed the bickies and left the steaming tea to cool.
Raz came in from the kitchen and closed the door behind him. They twisted their heads round as he stood and spoke to them from behind the settee.
“Learning to fight, lads? Top stuff. God knows you’ve had a lot taken from you. Lot of fighting to do to get it back.”
“With God’s help,” Rodney said, through a mouthful of fig roll. He was sitting there slumped in the settee, holding a biscuit in one hand and rubbing his neck with the other.
Raz pointed at him and nodded, frowning. “Right on, la’,” he said. “That’s why we’re here. This house gives back to you lads everything that this country has taken from you. Raz give you food and shelter. Azo give you power to fight. Now Mossie give you the third pillar. The dearest of all. He give you back your soul.”
Book-bashing class with Mossie, eh. This should be a laugh.
I didn’t get to sit in, though. Raz headed out into the hall and beckoned me to come with him. I heard Mossie’s wool drawl start up. Raz shut the sitting-room door behind him and stood with his back to it.
He planted a hand on my shoulder.
“I’m taking the lads to Warrington this evening,” he told me.
“What for?”
His eyes sparkled. “See a teacher who’ll show them the way. These lads know they have to fight. Our wise man teach them just why.”
“Who is this feller?”
He gave a tight smile. “You’re not coming,” he told me. “You’re driving to Tranmere with Casho and Ayax.”
“The oil dock?”
“Right, la’. There’s a big jolly ship stopping there tonight. Jolly sailor on board got something for me.”
He held up a hand for me to wait and went in his room, closing the door behind him. I heard him rummaging in a drawer. He came out again with a white envelope in one hand and something black in the other.
“This is for the jolly sailor,” he said, passing me the envelope. “He give you the goodies.”
“What goodies?”
He winked. “Pressie from my friends in Monrovia. My man be looking out for you near the gate.”
“It’ll be guarded.”
“You’d be amazed, la’. My man’s a very clever man.”
“Bloody hell. Alright.”
“Then you got another stop to make. On your way back.”
He handed me a slip of paper with an address. Unit number. Some warehouse off Derby Road.
“Another jolly ship docked at Seaforth. Something else for me. Pressie from my chums in Tirana. Truck driver’s going to park it up in the depot. Casho and Ayax help you load it in the car.”
Another envelope.
“This is for the driver. From Raz, you tell him.”
“I’ll take the Astra, then?”
He shook his head.
“The Mazda.”
“The what?”
“Old car. But a goodie.” He took a key out of his pocket. “Just for tonight, lad. Anything go wrong, that souped-up Chitty-Bang’ll get you out of there quickie-quick, la’. Then you dump it. No one trace. It’s parked outside.”
I breathed deep and held down the sickness in my gut.
Late afternoon, Raz took the other lads to get the train. Me and Casho and Ayax stayed home and headed out at dusk.
20
It was a bit rattly and dusty but it ran fine. I drove it down to the main road, turned right and peeled off the roundabout towards the big set of lights. When they turned green we shot off along Hawthorne Road.
Past the gutted warehouses I turned at the old pub and drove along Linacre Road, towards the winking lights on the derricks. Good old Bootle docks. We were going beyond them this time, though, to the other side of the river.
We had a clear run down to the Queensway tunnel. Last time I’d been over the river was with Leanne three summers back. She’d had some auntie there or something. I couldn’t remember much about it. I was speeding my bollocks off that day. But I know we took the ferry. Leanne was a soppy cow back then. We’d stood and snogged on the deck.
This time I went under the river. We came out in Birkenhead and took this dingy road towards the oil terminal. Half a mile along there was a turnoff to the left by a locked gate.
We got out. I told Casho and Ayax to keep an eye up and down the road. Someone had left a load of pallets stacked up there. I clambered up them and stood at the top for a view to the river. Liverpool on the far side, all sprinkled with lights. And on the near bank, a few hundred yards south, the fat round tanks of the oil dock.
A ship was moored at the north jetty with its arse towards me. Long and black with a red hull, lit up by blazing yellow lights on the pier.
I strained my eyes to read the writing on the back.
“Monrovia. That where it’s from?”
Standing down there in the dark, Casho heard me. “Liberia,” he said. “That where it’s flag from. The ship could sail from anywhere.”
I climbed back down the stack. We all got back in the car.
“How do we get in there then?” Ayax asked as I started the engine.
“We can’t.”
I palmed the Mazda out of the lay-by and crept along another half-mile. Signs pointed off left for the way in to the dock. We skirted a wall with barbed wire on the top and saw the entry straight ahead. Double yellows all along the road to a grey steel gate. Beyond it, the big white tubs, yellow cranes looming and lights twinkling on the ships.
No sign of Raz’s man, whoever he was. To the left of the gate stood a little red-brick house for the guards. No way I was hanging around there.
I crunched through a three-point turn and drove back up to the main road.
I spotted something in the rearview as I went. Walking along behind us going the same way, heading off from the terminal gate. A feller in a grey hoodie.
I slowed down and let him get closer. Just round the bend, I stopped. The feller turned and looked at me as he walked past. I got a glimpse of a young pale face. Little string rucksack on his back. He seemed to nod under his hood and wagged the tips of his fingers at his mouth like he wanted to eat something. He pointed up the r
oad. I drove off slow, keeping him in the mirror.
There was a drive-thru KFC just over the dual carriageway across from the dock. I pulled up in its car park with the nose of the Mazda pointing north. I unclipped my seatbelt, rolled down my window and sparked up a ciggie while we waited for the hoodie lad to catch up.
Casho asked if he could go in the KFC to get a drink. Okay, I said. I could use a sip myself. My mouth was well dry. It was one of them weird English summer nights when the air smells all foreign.
I looked in the rearview. Four lads were sitting on the far side of the car park with KFC bags and bottles. Pissed-up, dicking around. Flicking hot rags of chicken batter and sloshing each other with cider. Cackling and swearing.
The hoodie lad took a while to cross the carriageway and make it round to the KFC. After a few minutes he popped up at the way in to the car park. He saw the Mazda, stopped and glanced around him. I waited. He looked like he was about to walk towards us. Just then Casho came back out through the sliding door, a paper cup in his hand. He loped across the car park towards us under the street lights.
I turned to watch him. As he reached the car, he slowed his step and looked behind him. He’d heard something. I heard it too, through the crack in my window.
A voice from the far side.
“’Ey, mate. ’Scuse me lad, ’ey. Have you got any Rizlies there mate?”
Casho didn’t understand. He stopped and looked at me, then behind him at the group of lads. He shook his head without a word and walked on.
“’Ey, lad. I’m talkin’ to you.”
The back door handle clicked on my side as Casho reached it. He was halfway in when one of the cider lads showed. This boss trackie he had, all black with the red, green and gold three-stripes down it. Big and lanky with boned short hair. His eyes were blurry and grumpy. His voice tightened a notch as he spoke again.
I turned the key.
“’Ey, lad. D’you speak English?”
He ran towards us as Casho slipped in and slammed the door shut. I glanced left. Another scrote had shown up on that side.
I felt the sliding clunks behind me as Casho and Ayax locked their doors. I let the handbrake down and reached for my lock a second late. My door opened.
House of Lads Page 9