“So they told you to keep your mouth shut,” I said. “They do anything else for you?”
“Did they heck.”
“I didn’t think so.”
I took him for a pint.
He’d been at the gate that morning. He’d run down the road. He’d followed Rodney after he stabbed the copper.
Then he’d seen the Mazda. It had done a loop and come back up the main road. Stopped at the end of the school lane.
Rodney had got in it.
“Who else?” I said.
“Some girl in the back in a veil. Some feller next to her in the back seat. A woman at the wheel.
“What was she like?” I said.
“About sixty.”
“Headscarf?”
“No. Pony tail. White hair. Shell suit.”
I stared up at Judge Judy on the pub TV and tried to think.
“She pulled a U'ey," he said. “Drove ’em all off towards Toxteth."
Something clicked.
I’d been searching in my head for the woman in the white shelly. Now I remembered.
It was back in the early summer. I’d just started driving Raz around. He’d had us park up off Princes Avenue. He never took me inside with him. But I’d got used to sneaking out of the car and creeping after him to see where he went.
He’d gone along to one of them shabby old redbrick houses. Someone had come out of the front door and down the porch steps to meet him. Like she didn’t want him coming in. A woman in a dirty white trackie and a ponytail.
I watched the caretaker walk back towards the school gate. I turned and rounded the corner. The side road where they’d put Maya in the car. Another dead street of semis. Plenty of empty parking spots. Everyone was out at work. I couldn’t go knocking door to door. Anyway. I had something now.
What I really wanted to do was go back to the school gate for another glimpse of Ali. But I’d have to wait.
I carried on round the block and back along the main road. When I’d looped back all the way to the school lane I stopped. I stood and lit a ciggie.
I looked up and down the road. Nothing. A newsagents. A chippie. Cars going by. God, life was boring. How did folks put up with it? Only one way that I could see. You went off to some job, and all the time you reminded yourself that just down this road was a school with your kid in it.
At least most folks had that. Not me. I just had to skulk around in the street. Felt like being on the dole. Worse, cos I did have a job to do. I just didn’t know how.
6
I got off the train at Brunswick and walked through the maze of streets. Across Park Road and on into east Toxteth. The terraces got bigger and older, but they looked scabbier than any. The stumpy grey ones. The old high red- and yellow-brick ones. And the peely ones that used to be whitewashed. You could see how posh they were meant to be once.
It was by one of them big old terraces that I’d seen her. The scrag in the white shelly. I should have told Paterson all about it, like always. But it was in those weeks when he wasn’t taking my calls. Punishing me for going to see Ali behind his back.
To get my bearings I had to find the side road where he’d made me park. About half way up Prince’s Road. Then he’d crossed the pathway with the trees that split the street down the middle. She’d come to meet him out of the front door.
I walked up and down the middle pathway until I spotted the house across the road. I lit a ciggie and looked around me, up and down the avenue. Back across the road the way I’d come.
Oh, for fuck’s sake.
Becky was walking towards me.
I stuck the ciggie in my gob and my hands in the pockets of my Berghaus. I puffed on it without taking it out of my lips as she came. The smoke mixed with my white freezing breath. You could hardly see my face through it.
“I’ll call the filth,” I said.
“My arse.”
“Is that an offer?”
She didn’t laugh. She was carrying a paper cup of coffee. Woolly gloves on her hands.
“Did the caretaker tell you something?”
I don’t know what got on my tits more. That she’d not stayed away like I asked her, or that I’d let her follow me without knowing. I used to be able to spot a tail straightaway. Most of all one with a daft bobble hat.
I shook my head.
“What’s here then?” she said.
I didn’t say anything. I puffed my fag and stared off up the avenue.
“What were you looking at through the rails?” she asked. “In the playground?”
“Shut up,” I said.
“That beats ‘get lost’.”
I found a bench. She sat down by my side.
“Did the caretaker tell you to come here?” she said. “How did he know?”
I lit another ciggie.
“Was he in on it, the caretaker?” she said.
“Forget about the caretaker.”
She pointed at the house.
“So what’s this place?”
I took a deep breath. I’d wanted to spend a few hours smoking and just watching who came and went. Build it up slow. Move in when I spotted what I was after. I couldn’t do that now. Even when Becky kept her mouth shut, there was something buzzy and loud about her. You could feel her looking at you and hear her brain working. She stuck out in Toxteth like a sore arse.
“Is that where Maya is?” she said.
“Dunno. You should knock and ask.”
I should have known better than to be sarky. It just didn’t work on some people.
She started crossing the road.
“’Ey,” I called. “’Ey!”
I put my hand on her arm and held her back.
“What’s your story going to be?” I said.
She gave me an odd look.
“Nothing,” she said. “We’re looking for Maya.”
I shook my head.
“You think we should say we’re Jehovah’s?” she said.
“Why not? They’d be more likely to open the door.”
We stood there in the middle of the road.
How old was this girl? When she’d first swooped on me I’d thought she was older than me. Now in her bobble hat, with her daft plan, she looked like a kid.
I was no biddy but I’d aged about 10 years in my head that past summer. It must have made me a bit wiser because I found myself taking her hand. I had to learn to be like her. Use feelings sometimes to get what I wanted.
“Becky,” I whispered. “These people. They’ll hurt you.”
She followed me back onto the pathway.
“You know them?”
“I know what they’re like.”
She came close. Stood right in my face. The zip of my Bergie touched the placky pen-shaped buttons on her duffle coat.
“You sound like you know what you’re talking about,” she said.
“I wouldn’t go that far.”
“You seem like a clever lad with a lot to share.”
“Stop. I’ll make a mess on your coat.”
She smirked. “Alright, Azo Coke,” she said.
“Don’t say my name.”
“What? Rumplestiltskin?”
“And don’t talk like a ponce.”
We sat there for four hours. It got colder. We ate chips. No one went in or out.
It got dark. No lights came on in the house.
Becky went and knocked on the door. No one.
“That makes things harder,” she said.
“No it doesn’t.”
7
The front door looked flimsy enough. Frosted glass top and this Yale lock in the round handle. Then there were the old sash windows, single-glazed. Thin white curtains drawn behind them.
I stepped back away, onto the gravel. Becky was watching me. A bizzie car drove by on the far side of the avenue. I stood and watched it float past. She followed my gaze.
We walked round the corner to the back.
I left Becky standing in the alley while I climbed the fe
nce. Up and over. A yard of slimy flagstones, then the back face of the house. Sash windows there too. More to choose from. A kitchen door up four steps. In the ground next to it, a stone vent under an iron grid. It sloped down into a cellar.
I looked up and down the back of the house. No lights. Just the glow from the lamppost behind me over the fence. I stooped and got my fingers in the grid. I lifted it clear. Worms and slugs and soil dropping from it. I laid it on the flagstones.
I peered down the vent. Got my phone out and swiped on the light.
A dusty grey slope down into the gloom.
The vent was only about a foot across. Too narrow for me.
Becky Suarez might fit.
It was worth asking.
Be a way to get a grip on her, wouldn’t it. Breaking the law together. I had Paterson behind me. What did she have? Nothing. Nothing but me.
It was too good a chance to miss.
She was out in the alley, standing in the shadows. Under a tree, clutching her phone.
I took her over to the back fence of the yard. I lowered my hands in a cradle to give her a leg up.
She looked at me. “You’re joking.”
“No. Something to show you.”
“Just tell me.”
I said about the cellar.
“Don’t be daft.”
“Do you want to find Maya?”
It was nearly all dark but I could tell she was thinking about it. Just for a bit.
“Azo. I don’t work like that.”
“Good luck with your story then.”
She held her phone to her chest and turned away.
“Fine,” I said. “I’ll break the glass.”
“Azo, don’t be daft.”
“You’ll be back round mine tomorrow morning,” I said. “To see how I got on.”
I scrambled back over the fence.
I went to choose a window. Kitchen looked best. The upper bit of the door was glass.
I wrapped a brick in a wet doormat and stoved it in.
I held my breath and listened.
I reached in and turned the key. Stepped inside and listened again. Nothing. Not the drip of a tap or the fart of a mouse. I pushed the door shut.
The kitchen was clean. The tiles were sparkly white. No dust in the sink. Squeezy bottle of Fairy and a spongy yellow swab. It was wet.
I opened the cupboards.
Nescafe. Pasta. Tins.
The fridge was plugged in. I opened it.
The light made me blink. I shut it straightaway, crouched, and listened. The house was quiet. I heard a car swishing by in the side road and fading away up the avenue. I pocked open the rubber seal of the fridge again and looked in.
It was full of food. Half-empty jar of salsa dip. Fresh milk from Tesco, one day old.
The kitchen gave onto a back sitting room. If you could call it that. There was no chairs in there. Just a boxy old telly, not even plugged in.
Into the hall, up the stairs. It was laid out like Raz’s old place. Three downstairs rooms and three bedrooms. There was an attic too but no ladder up to it like at his house of lads.
There was no one in. But someone would be back at the fridge when they got hungry.
Back down in the hall I found the door to the cellar.
The light switch didn’t work. I poked my feet down the steps one at a time.
I couldn’t see a thing.
I listened. Nothing. I stood there a whole five minutes and let my eyes get used to the dark.
I heard a sound. Not in the cellar though. Up above. In the house. Or outside it.
I nipped back up the stairs, stopped close to the top and listened through the crack in the cellar door.
Again. A bump and rattle.
It was through in the back. Someone was opening the kitchen door.
Glad the light wasn’t working now. I listened. Nothing. They’d be standing there listening to me listening to them.
I backed down a step. Chest level with the ground floor. I could see through a gap in the door to the hall. The glow from the street lights out front. I could make out the bottom of the sitting room door. It opened slowly.
He was dressed like me. Trainies, trackies. I couldn’t see his face. Just a white hand with the gun in it.
He came straight towards me.
He nudged the door open with the nose of his Sig.
“I don’t care what you say,” I said. “I am not sucking that unless you have a shower.”
He twitched in shock. His eyes were still getting used to the dark. He tried the cellar light. Click-click in the dark.
“Come out,” he said.
He took a step back and flicked the switched in the hall. An eyeful of hard white bulb-glare. We blinked and looked at each other.
“Could you not wait till I was back at the offy?” I said. “You’d not have to wait long.”
His mouth was pulled tight. His scalp shone under the hall light, through his short blond hair.
“Come off it, Sanky,” I said. “Just tell us what you’re doing and let’s go home.”
His hand was steady on the gun. But he couldn’t come up with anything to say.
“Well, it’s not about your little bro any more, is it?” I said. “So who are you working for?”
He looked pleased that I’d asked.
“Pazzer,” he said.
Toxteth gangs. They had some daft names alright. Des Pandy. Pazzer to his mum. The muscles from Tocky. He owned clubs and had a thing about doing weights. He’d even tried to buy out Frank’s gym once.
“Where’s your bird?” he said.
“Eh? Oh. She wouldn’t come in here. She’s not as kinky as me.”
“Where are the others?”
“Eh? I’m on my own, lad,” I said. “If you only knew how badly.”
“I thought this was where yous all lived.”
I frowned.
“All who?”
He didn’t answer. He took a step forward. He had the gun half raised by his side.
“So who lives here?” he said.
“No one, by the look.”
“Then why did you come?”
“I didn’t know.” I shrugged. “What about you?” I said. “Why’s Pazzer send a foot soldier after a pisshead like me?”
“He doesn’t like what’s happening to the neighbourhood.”
“Tocky? Where’s he been the last hundred years?”
“He doesn’t like some of the groups that’s moved in.”
“Have they?”
He raised the gun a tad. I did my best shocked look. Didn’t have to work too hard for once. There was more to this scally than I’d thought. Sounded like he knew more than I did about what was going on.
He scowled at me. He’d been counting on a scrap. I wasn’t giving him one and there was nothing to see in the house. He didn’t know what to do.
I held out my hand. “Azo,” I said.
He raised the gun further.
“Come ’ead,” I said. “I’ve kicked your arse. You’ve kicked mine. We’re pretty much married.”
I kept the hand out. “I’m not one of them,” I said.
“My arse,” he said. “That newsagent’s you was working at. Pazzer shut them down.”
“Then he’ll know I wasn’t there when he did.”
“You were there when I came by.”
“And what do you think they did after I kicked your arse in there?” I said. “Fired me, didn’t they. I wasn’t one of them. I didn’t even know that’s what they were.”
He licked his lips. “Fired you?”
I nodded. “So it was you lot who shut the place down. How?”
“We fired a shottie through his shop window. Chucked a mollie in there.”
I stepped back away from him and sat down on the floorboards. He twitched and raised the gun a tad. I leaned my back against the wall and took out my Regals. I offered him the pack. He shook his head. I sparked one up for myself.
As fa
r as I knew Raz had kept his shop running while I’d lived in the house of lads. His mate Mossie behind the till. He’d been in on the attack too. Went missing the same day as Maya and Rodney. No one knew where Mossie was now.
I looked up at Sanky.
“Does your boss know Mossie?” I said. “The feller who ran the shop.”
“No. But he wants to. Wants to know who Mossie’s mates are too.”
“Does he know where Mossie is?”
“We heard he was here.”
He raised the gun and pointed it at me.
“Lad,” I said, as calmly as I could. “We’re on the same side.”
He sniffed. Something about my good scally act had worked in his head. His body loosened. He lowered the gun to his side.
He turned. Looked to the front door. He scuttled backwards and smacked the light off.
Too late. There were lights outside now. The blue flashy kind.
I jumped up. We both legged for the back. It was a scramble for the sitting room door. I let Sanky through first. We crunched over the glass on the kitchen floor, flung the door open and reached the back yard.
There were lights flickering out in the alley and all. Just over the fence from us.
We looked at each other. I glanced at the grill leading down to the cellar. He stared up at the back face of the house. Then he saw where I was looking.
He turned his eyes back to the kitchen door and ran at it. He vanished back inside the house. I glanced over my shoulder at the fence. Sure enough. A pair of hands in black gloves slapped up over the top of it.
I ran for the kitchen and all.
Through in the hall I saw Sanky again. He had his back to me. He was standing in the door of the cellar, shining his phone. He started down the stairs.
I came up behind him and laid a hand on his shoulder.
“Did you miss me?” I said.
He shrugged me off. At least he didn’t try and shoot me. I shut the cellar door behind us.
Lumps of plaster on the steps. Crunchy. We nipped down quick. We stood at the bottom. He flashed his phone around.
Empty. Not even a box for a rat to crap in. We swore together under our breath. Nowhere to hide. That was my first worry. But soon I thought of something else. We paced around.
Something wasn’t right.
You never saw an empty cellar. I’d done removals. Even when folks had just moved out, there’d be at least an empty box or a pack of nails on the floor. Here there was just nothing. He shone the phone on the walls, on the stone floor, in the corners. It was spotless. Hardly a speck of dust. Someone had swept it.
House of Birds: Forget who you were before... (The Azo Coke thrillers Book 2) Page 3
