House of Lads

by Roland Lloyd Parry

  “I’ll clean him out. His money.”

  The spliff was nearly dropping out of my fingers. She snatched it back.

  “You know how to hack his bank?”

  She sucked the spliff almost to the end.

  “Not the bank. You hack the person. You stick spyware on them. Log all their passwords and secret shit. All the stuff they enter in web forms. Even the words they search for tell you stuff. Then you get in their online banking. Or if they’re not using it, you get their numbers and passwords and you phone their bank yourself.”

  She ground the spliff out. I was too chonged to roll another. I took one of her Regals.

  “So you’re going to slip him a spy bug on his laptop?” I said.

  “What do you think I was doing the other day?”

  We looked out over the rooftops and the orange street lights.

  How was I going to handle Maya? If she messed with Raz, it would tip the house on his head. That wouldn’t be good for anyone. Least of all me. I’d thought I’d ditch Paterson before I met her. But next to Maya, he was a safe pair of hands.

  I wondered if I should trust her. Just weed fear, maybe. I tried to keep my spy head on. But I felt myself losing my rag, bit by bit.

  “Why are you even here, if you’re so sorted?” I said.

  “Not that sorted. I’ve made enemies, haven’t I. Need somewhere to shelter.”

  “Raz?” I snorted with laughter. “He’s up to something. Not sure I’d call it giving us shelter. Why did you pick him?”

  She looked at me and lit a Regal.

  “The bank,” she mumbled.

  “Eh?”

  “Where I worked.”

  “You told me it went tits up.”

  “I went out with one of the managers. Right gobshite. He let stuff slip. I hacked him. Got hold of some passwords.”

  “I know some boss cheats to Battlefield 4. Can I be in your gang?”

  “Cheats? I already know them.”

  I shut up while she enjoyed that. Then she went on.

  “This dickhead let me know when the bank was about to go down. I got out first. Took a bunch of data with me. Ripped off a load of card numbers. Printed new cards.”

  “You must be minted.”

  “My arse. I spend it as I go. Half of it I give to my mum.”

  “Why?”

  “Pay off her house.”

  “Isn’t that her job?”

  “It’s my fault. I sold her the loan. And she’s sick. Needs this, needs that.”

  “Why did you come here then?”

  “The list of bank accounts I nicked. Raz was on it.”

  I wanted to slap her arse and kiss her at the same time.

  “You’ve already been in his bank files? You know where he gets his money?”

  “Lots of funny places. Only now he’s switched to some other bank.”

  I frowned and swore to myself. This was all boss, but I couldn’t do anything about it without Paterson. It might have been enough to get me out of there and back to Ali. Raz wouldn’t even trace it to me. But that prick Paterson wasn’t answering the Azo hotline. I didn’t even know if he’d had my letter.

  I clenched my teeth thinking of Paterson. Then I looked at Maya. Something about her still didn’t add up.

  “Why are you telling me all this?” I said. “I could grass you up.”

  “Nah,” she said. “You’re more the look-after-me kind.”

  “Don’t take me for granted.”

  “Alright,” she sighed. “I won’t. You’re a good lad, Azo. I had to tell you, cos I need your help.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “It’s Raz.”

  “I told you, if he touches you, I’ll have him.”

  “That wouldn’t fix it.”

  “Why? What’s the worst he can do?”

  “He’s done it already. I can clean Raz out. But I can’t hack him if I’m not thinking straight.”

  I gritted my teeth. “What’s he done?”

  “He’s punishing me for that phone. He’s stopped giving me my pills.”

  25

  On Saturday morning Raz and Mossie went out to meet some friends of theirs. They took Rodney with them. And Maya. I didn’t like that. I knew what Rodney was thinking about me and her. Wondered what he might say. Most of all to Mossie. Wondered what Mossie would do if he stopped believing Maya was the good girl he’d hooked in the chatrooms.

  I kept my mouth shut though. It wasn’t the best time to be nagging, after that crap with Raz and the phone.

  As they were leaving, Maya came into the hall. She had a dark blue headscarf on.

  She didn’t say anything. Mossie showed up behind her and helped her on with her coat. I told myself she knew what she was doing. When Mossie saw her, he had this smug look that I’d not seen on him before.

  No teaching or training for the other lads today, Raz said. Day off. I stayed home with them and made them do the housework. Washing dishes, hanging clothes on the line. I got Hanzi scrubbing the bogs. He’d thank me for it one day. I thought I’d send the Manc down the garage for milk and bread, but I couldn’t find him. His stuff was still in his room but his coat was gone from the hall.

  I sat around, drinking tea and chewing my nails. Wondering if Paterson had got my letter.

  They got back about teatime and Maya went straight to her room.

  Come night I sat up on my bed with the skylight open, ready to climb up there when Maya came. She didn’t.

  I gave it an hour. Sat there wondering what Raz and Rodney got up to on their outing. They’d not told me anything. I smoked three Regals. Listened to the water pipes groaning. Then another noise, sharper than the others. A little clink and rattle.

  I climbed down to the landing and stood at the banister to listen. Another rattle downstairs. Someone was undoing the chain on the front.

  The porch door scraped.

  I nipped back up to my room, put my trainies on, grabbed my trackie top off the bed and my house key from the bedside table. Then I crept back to the landing and downstairs.

  The front door was standing open. To the right of it, light was coming from under Maya’s door. Snores from behind Raz’s across the hall. I pushed Maya’s open and looked in. Her bedside lamp was on but the bed was empty.

  I remembered what happened last time I went walkabout without telling Raz. Almost choked me, he did. God knew what he’d do if he caught me bunking off in the middle of the night.

  I tiptoed past his room, stepped out the front door and clicked it gently shut behind me. Down the path and out the gate. I looked up and down the road then set off to the right. Then right again, towards the roundabout.

  By the garage I glimpsed something white. Maya in just her vest, heading for the crossroads and the canal. No headscarf now. Barefoot, from the slow waddly way she moved. Hands down and out by her sides.

  I started to run. Stopped. If I had a real heart in me, I’d catch her up, I thought. Put my arm round her. Take her straight back. But my heart was all twisted out of shape. I did what I was trained for instead. Sneaked along behind her and watched where she went.

  She crossed the walkway over the canal and took the steps down to Church Road. Skirted the roundabout by the Lidl and dropped into the shadows under the railway bridge.

  I jogged under there after her and turned into the foot tunnel leading up to the trains. There she was at the top of it, lit up by the yellow lights.

  Midnight. The guards had gone home. I got up there as the last train was pulling in.

  She was at the far end. She got in the back carriage.

  I jumped in the front one as the doors hissed shut. Back on the Northern Line, eh. Where all my troubles started.

  It clattered off towards Crosby.

  Hardly anyone in my carriage. A couple of smelly-rockers sat a few rows away, copping off with big tongues under a blinking tube light.

  I stood by the doors with my hood up and watched the black mounds of the scrap yard
s speeding by.

  When the train stopped, I pulled my hood down and popped my head out the doors to look back up the platform. Empty. The grey metal shelter, yellow bench. No one got on or off.

  The doors squeezed shut again and it rolled on through Crosby. Big houses now. Leafy streets. Soon we were right out of the city, cutting through the dunes and golf links to Hightown. No one got off there either.

  Over a level crossing, then a platform, shelters. Formby. It slowed down and jerked to a stop. Doors.

  I stuck my head out.

  There she was. Her white top under the yellow lights. By the back carriage, at the platform gate. She went through it, out of sight.

  I ran after her, out onto the road. All hush. Trees. Big houses and cars. The gates had come back up to open the level crossing. Beyond it, there was the white top, heading east.

  I followed her.

  She hit a roundabout and turned left. I caught up two minutes later. A wide road lined with big gateposts.

  No one about but us two. I trailed her as close as I could. Weren’t many cars to hide behind. They were all parked up on these big gravel drives. I crept along in the shadow of the hedges instead, and tried to keep sight of Maya.

  All hot and still, the night was. I heard her bare feet slapping on the tarmac. Her smoker’s wheeze.

  She crossed the road and stopped at the gate to one of the big houses. Big red-brick job. Blue flicker of a telly on the walls upstairs.

  Maya reached in the pocket of her trackie bottoms and lit a ciggie. She stood there in the gateway, staring up at the house as she smoked. Then she tossed the fag away and crunched over the stones up the drive.

  I was about to call out to her when a light went on in the house.

  I crept across the road and up to the driveway. Hid behind the gatepost and peered round it at the upstairs window.

  A woman was standing in it. A frizzy mop of hair backlit by the telly light. Maya stepped to the front porch and rang the bell, then backed off again onto the drive.

  I crouched in the shadows and watched.

  The woman vanished from the window and turned up a minute later down in the porch, rattling around with a key in the outer door. Maya’s shoulders tightened.

  The door scraped open on the stones and the woman stepped out under the porch light.

  “Hiya,” I heard Maya say, all soft and scared. She was blocking my view of the woman, but I heard the voice come in reply, husky and faint.

  “Who’s that?”

  Maya sighed and fiddled with her fringe. “Me.”

  “Uh? Oh,” the woman said.

  She stepped towards Maya. Grey frizz of hair in the porch light. I craned my neck round the gatepost, my cheek against the brick, to get a better look at her. Heard Maya’s reply.

  “I need my pills.”

  “Oh. You not so well?”

  I couldn’t tell if she was mean, this one, or just slow.

  “I’ve got none,” Maya went on. “You know what’ll happen.” Her voice was breaking. She tugged her fringe like a little girl. “Please, mum.”

  I pulled myself back behind the gatepost. Pushed my forehead against it and bit my lip.

  Maya was in tears. “I need them,” she said again.

  “Is that all?”

  I caught Maya’s reply through the sobs.

  “Please. I’ll look after you. I want to come back.”

  “I thought you just wanted the pills?”

  Maya spluttered and snorted with tears.

  “I’m sorry!” she said. “I miss you.”

  “Oh. Have you got any money?”

  She sounded soft in the head. Maya didn’t say anything.

  “Are you working?”

  “Course not,” Maya said.

  “Oh.”

  I peeped round the gatepost again. Maya had fallen to her knees. Her mum was lighting a fag. She looked down at Maya through the smoke, crunched two steps towards her and touched her head. Smoothed her hair. Pulled her gently to her feet. The fingers clasped her shoulder, then both the hands went to her back. Hugging.

  Maya straightened up. The woman’s face showed over her shoulder, the chin resting on it. I got a full view of her in the porch light.

  She had the same stubborn gob as Maya. And something about the eyebrows. Arched upward. All bolshy and sad at the same time.

  I stared too long. Careless. Sprang back out of sight behind the gatepost. Too late.

  She’d seen me.

  I heard a scuffling, scraping sound. When I looked again Maya was sitting on the gravel rubbing her elbow. Her mum reached down and grabbed her by the hair.

  “After your pills, love?” she hissed. “Well who’s that? One of your junkies come to rip the place off?”

  Maya was on her knees, gripping her mum’s wrist. Trying to free the fistful of hair. Whimpering. She twisted her head round and looked where her mum was pointing. At me. Anger spread on her face.

  No point hiding now. I got up and stepped onto the drive.

  “I just wanted to talk to you,” I said.

  Maya was looking at me like she’d rather I got lost.

  “Come ’ead,” I said. “Leave her alone.”

  Her mum looked at her. “He’s nice, this Paki,” she said. “Where did you find him?”

  Maya struggled to her feet. Wrenched the hand off her head, losing hair with it. She broke away towards me but her mum caught up.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” she yelled. She put her hands round Maya’s neck from behind and pushed her to her knees. Grabbed her hair again and twisted her round to slap her.

  I ran over and got between them. Held her mum’s wrists and prised them off. Tried to trundle her back to the house. She swore. I locked her wrists down behind her back, shoved her into the porch and closed it.

  I glanced up at the house next door. Lights coming on there. Window sliding open. Voices.

  I turned back towards Maya.

  The porch door rattled behind me. Opened. Maya’s mum jumped on my back. I shook her off and whipped round. She came again, slapping at my face. I reached out and grabbed her shoulders. Held her off.

  I got my fingers round her neck. That slowed her down.

  Maya yelled at me to stop. Her mum went for my face again.

  I thrust her to the ground but kept hold of her neck. Looked in her eyes and squeezed. One fist on top of the other. One-potato, two-potato. Wrung her like a dishcloth till she ran out of strength.

  I heard Maya sobbing, further off than before. I turned round and she was gone from the drive. Gash of scattered stones where she’d gone down.

  I eased my grip and left her mum wheezing on the gravel.

  I ran to the gate.

  26

  Maya was a hundred yards off, legging flat out down the middle of the road. I caught her up. Tried to talk to her. She’d not look at me.

  There was a noise. Flicker of blue pig car lights up ahead.

  I put my arm round Maya and pulled her off to the left, through a little alley between two houses. She broke free of me and ran ahead.

  I followed her down a cul-de-sac, another alley, and so on. Weaving around northwards, avoiding the bigger streets. Panting after her in the darkness.

  We came out by another rail crossing. Another leafy road of big houses.

  I stopped and caught my breath. Looked both ways and listened for cars. Heard the faint sound of one a street or two away. Maya had turned left and was running along the pavement, leaving red prints with her bleeding feet.

  I called out but she’d not listen. I started running again. Keeping Maya in sight.

  After twenty minutes the road got narrower, with wooden posts lining either side. The tarmac turned to sand and woodchips under my feet. Pines, towering overhead. No more lampposts. I kept running. The darkness calmed me. The salty sea smell.

  Formby pine woods, eh. My mum took me there as a kid. Red squirrels, that was the big thing there. I remembered her p
ointing them out to me, these slinky little meffs running up and down the tree trunks. Gobbling nuts and poking their heads out the nesting boxes.

  Endangered, they were. Too chinless to stay alive on their own. Give the grey squirrels a chance, they’d come and steal the red ones’ nuts and shag their birds. So they had to live in this wood, the poncy reds, munching their pine nuts and not knowing how nasty life outside was.

  My thoughts were racing. I slapped myself. Snap out of it, soft lad. Kept my eyes on Maya’s white top up ahead. Listened to my own footsteps and breathing.

  Not for long.

  A whoop and a bleep. I spun round to look. Far behind me along the path, through the tunnel of pines, the blue lights of the bizzie car.

  Keep going, Azo lad. But where? Hide in a tree? And Maya? What you going to do when you reach her? They’ll only bring her in too when they catch you up.

  Further on the forest thinned out and the path broadened into the sand dunes. Maya was still pelting along but the sand was slowing her down. I legged on after her, puffing up over the steep dunes and sliding down them.

  I caught her up at last.

  I put my arm round her shoulder. She shoved me off. I tried again. She swung her fist and cracked me on the jaw. I hardly felt it.

  “I just want to talk to you,” I said.

  “You were going to kill her.”

  She hit me again. I put both arms round her and kissed her. My teeth scraped her cheek as she struggled. Her face was basted in tears and snot. She bit and scratched me but still I held on. We keeled over onto the sand, the pine needles and rabbit droppings.

  I kissed her neck. I was crying too now. Hugging as if to make her feel better, but really it was me that needed that. I clung on like a scared kid.

  She touched my lips with her fingers. My face. My hair. Trying to calm me down so she could prise my hands off.

  I heard shouts through a loudhailer. Couldn’t make out the words. Torches came flashing behind us on the forest path, moving closer. When I turned to look, Maya shoved me away. She struggled to her feet and ran off, scaling the next dune.

  I scrambled after her, up and over and down. Another dozen feet, and there we were on the beach. Miles of flat wet sand and the Irish Sea.