Shiny stud she had, in her belly where the top rode up. She let go of the tin. Me too. I let it drop by my side. She put a hand to the back of my head and grabbed a fistful of hair and scalp. Jerked it back and went deep in my mouth with her tongue.
I wanted to eat her up in gobfuls. But she slowed me down. Hushed me so we wouldn’t wake the others. The quiet and the dark. Them fizzy orange street lights winking off the slate roofs all across north Liverpool. The swish of cars on Church Road. Her sweet skin, nose stud, belly. Our cloudy eyes clearing as we touched each other.
23
Next afternoon Raz and Mossie went out to Warrington. Told me to stay home and look after Maya and the lads.
I asked him who they were going to see. He just gave us his barmy look and pumped one of his fists like he was pulling a lever.
“Cherching!” he said. “All the fruit!”
“Someone rich?” I said. “One of Mossie’s mates?”
“Pay unto Caesar,” Raz said, winking at me.
“Right.”
“Never mind the ins and outs, la’,” he said. “You keep showing the lads the way of the dragon.”
He put his arm round Mossie’s neck, all matey, and dragged him out of the front door. He winked at me as they left. He didn’t slap me on the back like he used to.
I made Rodney take the lads out to play cricket in the park. Stood on the doorstep smoking a fag as they went off down the road. I turned and stepped back into the hall. Maya was standing outside Raz’s door. A minute later the Manc came back up the garden path.
He’d found some old crappy hacksaw blades in the shed, snapped one of them up into bits and ground away the teeth on a flagstone at the bottom of the garden. Then he’d shown me this springy metal pin thing he kept in his wallet.
He got on his knees and started frigging around in Raz’s lock with the two bits of metal. He started off gently, but no luck. He got wound up and started swearing to himself. Tensing up. No good for teasing the lock.
After twenty minutes I put my hand on his shoulder.
“Alright, lad,” I said. “Have a break, eh.”
“I’m sorry, Azo, mate. I did my best.”
“Forget it.”
I patted the Manc on the shoulder and turned to look at Maya.
She was smiling, holding her phone.
“What?” I said.
She held it out to me. A photo of me and Lee on there. She swiped a finger across the touch-screen. More pics. Lee on his knees with his tools in Raz’s lock and me kneeling watching.
She slipped the phone in her jeans pocket and pulled something out of it with the same hand. She held it up.
A silver Yale key.
“I nicked it out of Raz’s pocket when he was giving me my pills. He leans in close.”
The Manc stared at her.
“Give us that phone,” he said.
“I’ll wipe them off this one if you like,” she said. She did it as I watched. “But I’ve already saved them to the cloud.” She squeezed his arm. “Don’t worry, love,” she said. “I’ll not show Raz nothing. But I will need your help. Both of you.”
She moved towards the door. I grabbed the wrist of the hand with the key in it.
“There’s no need for that,” I said. “We’re all in this together.”
She tried to yank her hand free but I held it firm. She looked at me. “Raz comes to see me at night,” she said. “We’re not in that together, are we?”
“If he touches you, I’ll have him.”
“All these big strong men around, eh,” she said. “A girl’s got to be careful.”
She shook my hand off. She stepped past us both and unlocked Raz’s bedroom door.
The laptop was on a scratchy wooden desk in the far corner. Maya went straight to it while me and the Manc looked around the room. Not much to it. Bare floorboards. Single bed against the near wall with a rumpled duvet. Chest of drawers in front of the window. Little fridge in one corner.
Not much else. Old trainies on the floor. Newspapers and magazines stacked up by the bed. Nothing dodgy that I could see. Just a smell of socks.
On the inner wall, to our left as we came in, that big metal box we’d picked up in Bootle. The Manc kneeled down in front of it and started fiddling with his tools in the padlock.
I looked over at Maya in the far corner. She was sitting in the wooden chair at Raz’s desk. She’d switched on his laptop. To try and get her back, I took a pic of her sitting there. Came out shit on my crappy Nokia though didn’t it. Blurry photo of a girl at a desk. Could have been anywhere.
A pinboard hung on the wall behind her, all covered in maps. I went and stood next to Maya so I could look at them. She didn’t look at me. I stared at the maps. They’d been ripped out of a big atlas.
Syria.
Most of the place names meant nothing to me. Someone’d drawn rings round ones in the shit-end of nowhere, miles from anything that looked like a town. I tried to store a few of them in my mind. I felt panic stirring in my belly. When Paterson had first stopped answering I was just mad at him. Now it was making me anxy. This was getting real. He needed to know about it.
I looked over my shoulder, down at Maya. Saw the desk had three drawers, to the left of her. I reached down and tried them. Locked, all three.
She’d tried to open the internet. Nothing. There was no wifi in Raz’s house. Maya took her smartphone and switched on the wireless hotspot then got the laptop online through that.
She looked in the browsing history and found he’d used Hotmail. She opened it. There was his address saved in the login field.
“How’s Raz get online without wifi?” I said.
“Same way I do, I guess. He’s got a smartphone like me.”
She looked up and grinned when she saw me watching her.
“I’ve never seen it,” I said.
“He puts it on the bedside table at night.”
I ground my teeth.
“Hey.”
I looked across the room. The Manc was kneeling by the box, holding up the padlock in his hand.
I stood over his shoulder and watched as he lifted the lid.
I took them out gently, one by one. Half a dozen Glocks and Sig Sauers. Half a dozen Klashnis. I counted them and laid them gently back in the box.
I looked around Raz’s room. A lightbulb hung from the ceiling inside one of them paper globe shades. Not much else to see. Just them three locked drawers in the desk. And the fridge. I went over to look inside it.
It was locked an’ all. Little silver keyhole at the top of the door.
A locked fridge.
I called the Manc over to come and have a go. He sighed and sat himself in front of it, fiddling away.
I looked over at Maya. She sat back in the chair with a grin. I went over to her and peered at the screen.
“You’re joking,” I said.
She’d got into Raz’s mails.
The inbox was empty.
“Who’s he writing to?” I said.
“Don’t know,” she said. “No sent mail. No saved mail. Nothing in the trash. Looks like he’s scrubbed it all.”
“Great.”
“Hang on.”
She clicked.
“There’s something in the drafts.”
A message. Just the one. Nothing in the ‘to’ field. Just an unsent mail. One line:
You tell us when. We tell our man in Raqqa. Peace mercy
I glanced behind me at the map. There it was near the top. Raqqa. That spod Lawrence had talked about it in the posh jail.
“So Raz knows a man in Syria,” I said.
Maya stared at the screen a sec. Then she shook her head.
“Nah,” she said. “Not Raz.”
“What’s he talking about then?”
She logged out of hotmail. Then she delved into his settings, wiping stuff to cover her tracks.
“Go on then,” I said. “Why does he say he’s got a man there?”
&nbs
p; “Raz didn’t write that.”
“Right. Some other guy called Raz using this laptop.”
“It’s not signed Raz. It’s not how he talks. It’s his friends.”
I was lost.
“Raz didn’t write this,” she said again. “Someone’s written it for him. He’s sharing this mail with his mates, whoever they are. They’re saving drafts for each other to read.”
“Why?”
“Less chance of getting traced if they’re not sending them. They take it in turns to log in and read.”
“You mean we’ve just hacked into the emails of a Syrian gang?”
Maya just smiled. She twitched her shoulders and straightened her back. She checked what web pages he’d been on. Nothing juicy. The only sites we found were BBC news and CNN. Outbreaks in Africa. Same old world going on out there. Same old shit footie teams. Same dirty fighting.
Maya pulled a memory stick out of her back pocket and stuck it in the side of Raz’s laptop. I heard the Manc swear.
He couldn’t get anywhere with that fridge lock.
I tried Paterson later, out on the roof. Didn’t answer, did he. I lost it this time. Nearly lashed the phone off into the garden. Stopped myself. Reined it in.
This was too big. I couldn’t get through it without Paterson. I saw that now. I needed him.
In the end I did it the old-fashioned way. I popped out to the post office. I scribbled a note about the guns and the mails. Didn’t sign it or anything. I just stuck it in an envelope and mailed it to Paterson, care of Saint Anne’s Street bizzies.
24
“How did you learn to fight like that then?” Rodney said.
Few days later. He was sitting in his dressing gown after a sesh on the mats. I’d given them bananas to use as knives. We were in the back room, waiting for the Manc to get out of the shower.
“My mate Frank,” I said. “Taught me at his ring.”
“Where?”
I didn’t say nothing. Kicked myself. Wondered what Rodney’d ask next.
Maya came in and put a tray down on the coffee table. Tea and Jaffa Cakes. Rodney picked up a cup and slurped it. Stuffed a spongy Jaffa Cake in his gob. Fixed his eyes on Maya’s arse as she straightened up.
She turned and handed me a cup. Caught my eye. Rodney glanced sideways at me and her standing there together. He’d seen how we looked at each other.
Maya was heading back to the kitchen when Raz came in. She halted in the doorway.
“Alright boss?” I said.
Raz fixed me with a frown.
“You was working in your room,” I said. “So I took the lads out on the mats.”
“I wasn’t in my room, la’. I was in yours.”
I felt my stomach turn over, thinking of the stash of weed.
“Why?” I said.
“Why not?”
He glared at me. His big bottom lip hanging open. Maya stood behind him, watching.
Raz reached in his combats, took something out and thrust it towards me. Little white thing.
I nearly threw up.
Worse than the weed, it was. The smartphone. The one from the lad on the tracks.
I’d forgot about it. Wrapped up in pants under my bed.
I heard Rodney munching behind me. Didn’t know how he managed to make a noise chewing a fluffy Jaffa Cake. He was a gifted little shit.
I turned round and gave him a look. Lee called from the landing. Shower was free. Rodney swallowed and licked his lips. Picked up his bath towel and ponced upstairs.
I turned back to meet Raz’s glare. Stayed calm, like I’d nothing to hide. Tried to think. It was only a phone. Didn’t prove nothing.
I shrugged and looked Raz in the eye. “I don’t know what to tell you, mate,” I said. “It’s a phone.”
“It is, la’. But it’s not your old Nokia, is it? One like this cost hundreds of quid in the shop. Where did you get it?”
I said nothing.
He pressed one of the keys and the screen lit up.
“I switched it on,” Raz said. “Then someone called.”
I started mapping out the house in my head. Living room door, hall. Front door, Chubb latch. Porch, doorstep. I sized up Raz as he loomed over me. Casho, Ayax and the Manc sitting around. Wondered what my chances were, if it came to it. Whether I’d get out in one piece.
“I answered it,” Raz said. He stepped closer, his mad green eyes burning a hole in my head. I remembered the last time he’d got that close. He’d dangled me by the neck till I foamed at the gob.
“And?” I said.
“Someone told me I was a dead man. And hung up.”
My heart was banging.
“Where did you get it?” he said again.
I opened my mouth to speak but Raz looked away. Down at his shoulder. Maya had laid her hand on it.
“Raz, love,” I heard her say. Her face was hidden from me behind his huge bulk. “It’s not his. It’s mine.”
I peered over his shoulder at Maya, frowning at her, shaking my head. She wouldn’t meet my eye. She looked up at Raz instead. Flash of fear on her face for a second, then she hid it.
“I robbed it,” she said.
“You what?”
“Last night. I went out for ciggies. Spotted it in this feller’s pocket, in the queue at the garage.”
Raz glanced back at me.
I should have spoken up. Couldn’t let her take the shit for that. Never knew what Raz might do. Scared though, wasn’t I. Losing my grip on this now. I kept my mouth shut. Tried not to tremble. Tried to think.
“Azo doesn’t know anything about it,” Maya said. “I stashed it in his room. I never told him.”
Raz stepped towards her, flexing his knuckles. The floorboard creaked. I braced myself to grab him. I’d let him hit me instead. Let him try.
No need though. He swerved clear of Maya and punched the old door frame. Loosened a trickle of dust and plaster onto the floorboards.
“I told you all,” he yelled. “No thieving, no fighting, no nothing unless I say. Or you’ll have the pigs round.”
Maya shrank back against the kitchen door. Her voice came out all soft. Pleading. Or faking it well. “I was going to show it you today. It’s yours, love,” she told him. “I did it for you.”
Raz looked at me again, over his shoulder, then back at Maya. And the weirdest thing happened. Nothing.
He didn’t know what to say. Maya was due a bollocking, but he was into her, wasn’t he. Turned him all soft. He couldn’t hit her. Couldn’t knob her. Couldn’t do nothing.
“For you,” she whispered. “For looking after me.”
She stepped forward and touched his arm, gazing up at him. The two of them stood there. He gazed back.
He shook her off. Handed the phone to me.
“Get rid of this, la’,” he said. “And search the whole house. Make sure there’s no more knock-offs lying around.”
He stomped out and shut himself in his room.
I looked at Maya. I tried to say something but she didn’t wait to hear it. She gave me a crooked smile and went into the kitchen.
I waited on the roof at midnight. No sign of Maya. I sat there, smoking her skunk and thinking.
I could see why she owned up. Looking after herself, in a funny way. Made it seem like she cared for him. Made her seem a bit slow an’ all. Loopy kind of gift, like a cat bringing you in a dead bird. He couldn’t bollock her the way he could one of the lads. She’d got her claws in him. But he’d get his into her too.
He must be with her now, I thought. His nightly visit. Give her the meds. Her trying to find out his plans. Bit of pillow talk. Him holding out for more. Not getting it. At least I hoped not. But what did I know? I didn’t know anything about Maya really. Never guessed she’d stick her neck out for me like that. No one made her do it. Why did she? Because she liked me? Or because she had plans of her own? It was true, what she’d said. There was a lot of things I didn’t know.
She’d sav
ed my arse with Raz, but it had put all kinds of thoughts in my head. The way she looked at him. Acting? I couldn’t be sure. It gave me a nasty suss feeling that I couldn’t shake.
I’d been sat there worrying a whole hour when I heard a noise behind me. At last. Her head popped through the skylight. I coughed my smoke out.
She slid softly down the tiles and sat cross-legged beside me. Snatched the spliff from my hand.
“You headcase,” I said.
“You’re welcome.”
She took three huge drags, piling them up in her lungs.
I must have been getting too into her, because I felt like I was owed something. When she didn’t speak, I felt miffed. After all that waiting, least she could do was talk to me.
“You’ve had a nice long bedtime story,” I said.
“Lucky me.”
She thrust the spliff against my chest. Spilt hot rocks in my lap. I grabbed it clumsily from her fingers. Saw them shaking.
I jumped up, patting and batting the sparks off my trackies. She lay back against the roof, trembling, slowly calming down. Alright, Azo, I thought. Back off. Done you a favour, hasn’t she. Last thing she needs now is you winding her up.
I sat down again. She shifted closer to me. Her knee touched my leg. I put my hand down and squeezed it.
“So what did he say?” I asked her. “What did he do?”
She sighed and sparked up a Regal. “Nothing. Won’t hardly talk. Just stares and mutters to himself.”
“He still miffed about the phone?”
“Don’t know. For that. Or because I’ll not get off with him.”
“I’ll have a word.”
“No,” she said. “I’ll handle him.”
“Don’t be soft.”
“I’ll handle him,” she snapped.
I puffed on the spliff. “How? By hacking his mails?”
“For a start.”
“Then what?”
She sighed.
“You don’t know, do you?”
She stared at her lap. “Yes. I do,” she said. Sounded like she was talking to a five-year-old kid.
I watched her. The gear had made my face go numb. My bottom lip was hanging down. I must have looked like a right gormless sod. She sighed again.
House of Lads Page 11