I rummaged in the bottom of the wardrobe. I had a black bin bag in there. Maya’s stuff that I’d held onto after she went missing from the house of lads.
I took it out and stood there thinking.
That key had been burning a hole in my wallet. I’d forgotten it was there until I’d dug it out in a panic and used it to open the tunnel. Now I couldn’t bloody stop thinking about it. I was sure I was going to lose it.
It was my key down into the heart of the job. I was going to need it sooner or later. If I got jumped and robbed and lost it… It was too risky, carrying it around.
I wrapped it in a sock and stashed it in the back of the wardrobe.
I put the rucksack on and swung the bin bag over my shoulder and walked back to the pub.
Becky let me in her room without a word.
I put the bag down beside her on the bed. She didn’t look at it. Just sat there, staring at her phone.
“What’s up?” I said.
“I’ve got to go to work.”
“They called?”
She shook her head and wiped her nose. “No. But I’ve got to. It’s who I am.”
“Work?”
“Doing the right thing.”
“Stick with me. We’ll do plenty.”
I’d never really believed Paterson when he wazzed on about fighting the good fight. But I got why he did it now. We all had to pull the same way. It’d be a fucking tiring life otherwise.
“This is your job right here,” I said.
She looked around the trampy hotel room. The chipped wardrobe with its door hanging open and scratchy tartan blankets laid in the bottom.
“Feels like one kind of job in here. It’s not the one I do.”
“We’re going to stitch up those twats,” I said. “So you can write about them. This is where we start.”
She wiped her eyes and looked at her phone.
I sat down on the bed next to her.
“It’s not safe,” I told her. I didn’t want to spell it out. Didn’t want to say her Sandra’s name and remind her. That was the bottom line, eh. How could I say it? If you don’t let me and Paterson help you, you’ll be dead in a bin like your girlfriend.
“They’ll be after you too,” I said.
“I wouldn’t be much of a reporter if I got scared off.”
“You don’t know what you’re saying.”
She hadn’t got that far in her head yet. Her eyes were a mess but she had this bolshy look on her face like she was still set on going to work. She wasn’t thinking about what would happen to her if she showed up where they could find her.
She was still dealing with Sandra. It had only been a day. Less. She was still taking it in.
She wasn’t ready.
I tried to think what to say. I wasn’t a shrink, was I. I didn’t have a fucking degree. All I had was a change of boxies and some shit old Sig Semi that looked like Paterson had used it to knock in nails with.
I started to lose my rag. Paterson wanted Becky down in the tunnels quickly. I didn’t know how long I could afford to put us up in this dive. I didn’t have six months to spend while she got over her ex getting slotted. And she wasn’t Maya. I didn’t have any magic pills to sort her head out.
Maybe Becky wasn’t the one. But who else could I find? Anyway I had my hands full with her, one way or another. I couldn’t turn her loose. Let her go to work. She’d blab about me or get slotted, or both. But I couldn’t force her down the tunnels either. If she went there and cracked up, she’d be dead by teatime. Then they’d be onto me.
My heart was racing. I wanted to shout and grab Becky and shake her. I was grown-up enough to know that wouldn’t work. I stood blocking the door like I thought she might make a run for it. I tried to breathe and cool myself down. I closed my eyes. My head spun.
I was falling forward. I took a step to steady myself. I opened my eyes. Thought I was just dizzy. But I was falling again.
The bedroom door was opening inwards, pushing against my back. I turned and grabbed the handle with one hand, slipping the Sig out of my waistband with the other.
A hand in a black leather glove gripped the edge of the door. A black suit-sleeve. A navy wool scarf.
Paterson murmured as he stepped in. Soothing me. Talking me down.
He plucked at the legs of his trousers and sat down on the bed next to Becky. She shrank back and looked at me. She looked at him.
“Becky,” Paterson said. That was far as I understood. The next thing that came out of his mouth I couldn’t make head or tale of. It was in some language. He said it in his soft honey-milky voice. Smiling at Becky and sliding his hand in black leather palm-down over the duvet towards her.
Her face softened. Her eyebrows raised. Her green eyes fixed on him.
She whispered back to him. In the language too.
I thought I was tripping. Dreaming. No. All my benders and good nights’ sleep had been cancelled till further notice, hadn’t they. This mad shit was all in a day’s work now.
Paterson looked made up. He smiled wide and nodded his head. Patted Becky on the calf with his leg.
He turned to me.
“You’ve recruited us a scholar, Azo.”
I frowned at him.
He beamed at her. “Becky speaks Arabic.”
“Fuck off.”
I looked at her.
“I’ve got a degree,” she said. “From Preston.”
“Eh?”
“Uni.”
“Fuck off.”
“You’re welcome.”
I sighed. I looked at Paterson. He was grinning like a div. He’d known all about this jackpot before he walked in there. He had her on file, just like he’d had me.
“Anything else you’ve not told me?” I asked her.
“Erm… “
“What?”
“Azo, there’s any number of things I may not be telling you,” she said. “Where should I start?”
I grabbed my head in rage. I nearly bashed it against the wall. I growled. I breathed. I put my hands down.
"Just tell me what you’re up to,” I said.
“Nothing. I studied it. It’s a step on the way.”
“To where?”
“To working abroad.”
“Where?”
“The Middle East, hopefully.”
I got it now. She wanted to be one of those smartarses you hear on the telly.
I breathed deep.
I stared out the window of the pub bedroom. The black-painted fire steps. The red brick of the terrace next door.
“Just tell me if there’s anything else I need to know about you,” I said. “Or don’t bother. He’ll tell me.”
“There’s nothing,” Becky said. “I was learning the job. I was planning to go to the Middle East and string for the broadsheets.”
I punched the wall. “What does that even mean?”
“What?” She was upset. She was trying.
I took another deep breath. “Have you ever been there?” I said. “Syria? Iraq?”
“God, no.”
“Do you know Raz? Beshat?”
Her voice went soft. “Azo, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
She really didn’t, did she.
I let my breath out. “Alright then.”
“Alright?”
“Just don’t ever hide stuff from me like that.”
“Azo, I wasn’t… “
I slammed the door and went downstairs for a drink. Left Paterson sitting with Becky. So he could weave his charms and get inside her head.
He didn’t take long.
12
After he’d left, I went back upstairs. Becky was looking at the bin bag on the bed. She leaned over and opened it. Pulled the clothes out and spread them on the cover.
Maya’s tatty old white trackie and spare trainies. Her vests and Kappa shorts. Bunch of socks and pants and hair bobbles. Hair dryer.
She looked at it all and then at me.
“Where did you get this stuff? Oxfam?”
“No.”
“Then whose…”
She worked it out in her head as she was speaking. She rolled her eyes and looked at the stuff closer. Then back at me.
She picked up the hairdryer. She was getting into it now. This was stuff for her story, eh. Took her closer somehow to what she was after.
“You kept hold of her knickers?” she said.
I coughed. She was right. It was a bit sick. Standing over her in a cheap rented room, asking her to dress up like my ex.
“You’re a nice girl from Crosby,” I said. “We’ve got to make you look like someone else.”
She looked from me to the clothes and back again a few times. Paterson had made the job sound well high and mighty, the way he’d told it. Now we were down and dirty. That was my end.
“Do I have any choice?” she said.
I left her to it and closed the door behind me.
She came to my room half an hour later. She’d took off her jeans and floppy woolly top and was wearing Maya’s trackie, open with a little vest underneath. She’d tied her hair back.
That was more like it. Fit and skanky at the same time. Sharper though. She didn’t have that fuzzy look on her face. Maya was clever too but she’d not let you think it to look at her. You’d think she was half asleep. That’s how she’d shafted Raz.
“What?” Becky said.
“Could you stop looking like such a smartarse?”
“Charming.”
She looked at her phone. I looked at it too.
She’d thank me for it later.
I stepped towards her and snatched it from her hand. She tried to get it back. I chucked it through the open window. She stared after it as it clattered down the fire escape. She turned to me and whacked me on the chest.
Paterson had come in with his smooth bit and wowed her. He’d even spooled out some crap from some writer they both knew. He’d pushed all the right buttons on Becky’s keyboard. Now he’d left me under the desk, with my arse crack showing, to fix the wiring.
She was looking at me with her chin up. Toughing it out. She thought that’s what was needed. She didn’t get it yet.
I shoved her arse-first onto the bed. That shocked her but she bounced back quick. She stood up again. It still felt like a game. I didn’t know how to show her what it really was.
I shoved her down again, harder. She met my eye and stood up. I spread my palm over her face and forced her back down. Her cheeks were soft and cold from spent tears.
I took my hand away and stared her out, daring her to move. Praying she wouldn’t. But she bounced up again and hit me. Mashed the heel of her hand sideways against my nose. I bent and soaked it up. She went for it again. I caught her wrist, yanked it down behind her and lay on top of her. She wriggled. I heaved my weight over her.
She squirmed and growled.
I clenched my teeth. It wasn’t me. I’d tried to do the right thing. But I didn’t know how.
My weight was squishing her. She started to whine.
I felt tears pulsing at the back of my eyes.
It wasn’t fair. There wasn’t time. I didn’t know how to talk to people. Paterson had never taught me that. He just told me to do things.
I reached behind me for the gun.
“Do you want what your girlfriend got?” I sobbed.
Fresh tears spilled out down her face. But she said nothing.
Paterson’s face came into my head. I daydreamed that I was smashing it.
I breathed out hard and pushed the thought away. I trained my eyes on Becky’s face. Held still for five ticks. She said nothing.
I brought the gun up and laid it against her cheek.
I said it again, slower and quieter.
“Do you want what your girlfriend got?”
She shook her head.
I stood up and put the gun back in my trackies. I was shaking. I lit a ciggie.
Becky lay there, looking at me.
I took a big drag and wiped my eyes.
“That’s it,” I said. “That’s how you’ve got to look when the banshee sees you.”
I left her on her own and went into my room. Kneeled down on the floor and growled and snarled into the bedcover.
It wasn’t fair. On Becky? On her bird? Maybe not. But it wasn’t fair on me, either. Becky was the one who’d come after me. She had more brains than me. More guts. She had more going for her than I’d ever had.
I raised my face from the bed and breathed deep and hard, pushing the knot out of my chest.
I’d never been shown any other way to handle folks. I’d never been handled any other way myself. But I’d never picked on someone like Becky either.
It wasn’t me. Paterson was turning me into someone else.
I went down into the yard behind the pub, found her phone and smashed it. I felt better. I dropped the bits in a wheelie bin. Paterson wouldn’t track her now.
We smoked and drank cider all afternoon. Becky thought that was my way of trying to show her a good time. Really I wanted to stink her clothes out and get some bags going under her eyes. She drank more than she was used to and slept bad. Next morning she was already looking rougher.
“Don’t worry,” I told her. “You’ll have a boss story at the end of this.”
We went through it. I messed around with her like Paterson had with me at the start. Use bits of yourself so it comes out sounding all real. So she was a girl from Crosby whose folks lived in Spain. Her friend had got killed. She’d moved to Tocky with a feller and now he’d booted her out. It was pretty much true.
Once we’d got her story down we sat and carried on drinking and smoking. We talked about all sorts. It was boss, talking to her once she’d calmed herself down. A bit like it was talking to Frank sometimes. Like he cared about you. Like you were learning something. But it was more buzzy with Becky.
She taught me a thing or two. About how the world worked. About the rules - the kind they never taught lads like me. She knew even more about it than Frank did. The bizzies weren’t the law, she said, not really. She told me what you could and couldn’t do to people, whoever they were, wherever they were from. Even foreigners. There were some things only a judge could make you do. And someone like Paterson? He wasn’t the law either, though he’d tell you it didn’t matter.
I went out. Left Becky in her room. Bit of cabin fever to help her get in the part.
I headed out to Princes Road. I’d hoped not to have to spend another day freezing my arse off hanging around outside that old house again. Couldn’t see any shortcut yet though. I sat back on the bench and smoked.
I’d had a nice early start. Turned out better than the other day. I didn’t have to wait too long. The banshee showed about ten o’clock. She came out of the front door in a white polo neck and body warmer.
She headed west over to Park Road. Along to the big Tescos. I put my hoodie up and sat off across the street at the bus stop.
She came out ten minutes later with a bag of shopping. Milk and bread and biscuits it looked like. She didn’t take it home to the castle, though. She headed south, still on foot.
I followed her down into Aigburth. A bit of zigzagging, then she turned a corner by a newsagents into this leafy street. She crossed over and walked up some steps on the far side. Into a building on the corner and out of sight.
I trotted up on the near side to see where she’d gone.
This grand old grey stone terrace with pillars. A glass case with papers pinned on a board inside. And a big sign up on its front, painted blue with gold letters.
Saint Hugh’s.
The front door was open. I crossed and peeped into the porch. Big space. It looked like there was a door at the far end with a table by it and hymn books. Two other doors leading off on the sides.
No sign of the woman. The porch was empty but t
he light was on.
I crossed back over the road and hid behind a car to watch.
No one came out of the church. But after a bit some more folks went in. Two more women. A bit like the banshee, but not as scary. Then a while after them, a load of others came, bit by bit in small groups.
Mums and dads with kids. Some couples. One or two on their own. They were younger than the women who’d gone in before them, mostly. And they didn’t look like they were from around there. They were darker. The fellers wore leathers and trainies. The birds had puffer jackets and headscarves.
They went in the front porch and through the side door on the left. I couldn’t see what was beyond it.
When it looked like no more were coming, I crossed the street again. I looked at the pin board. Printed pages. Lists of dates and church stuff that I didn’t understand. An ad for an Easter jumble sale. In between them was a sheet with big letters.
Friends' drop-in. Daily 10 til 6.
I walked up the steps into the porch.
The middle door with the table by it led to the church as I’d thought. Quiet and dim. No one there but a big knobbly Jesus lit up at the far end.
The right-hand door was locked.
I turned to the left hand one. Pushed it open a couple of inches and poked my nose round.
They were sitting at tables chatting. One of the white women had old clothes and whatnot laid out. The third one was sitting at the table with some of them, thumbing through a file.
The banshee was at the far end serving coffee and biscuits.
I closed the door before anyone looked at me.
I took Becky there the next morning. I sent her to stand by the church door while I skulked around, a few cars down on the other side.
I watched her cross the road. This hunch had come into her shoulders. Don’t know if she meant to do it. If she did, it was good acting.
She went in the porch. The plan was for her to try the side door. It must have been locked because she came out again a minute later. She stood looking at the pin board.
The woman showed up like the day before, just before 10. She glanced at Becky as she mounted the steps. Becky spoke to her.
The woman looked about. I turned my back, bowed my head and made like I was talking on my phone. When I looked again the woman was digging in a pocket of her body warmer, getting her ciggies out. She lit one up for Becky. They talked. Becky asked her something. The woman looked like she was thinking for a sec. Like she was about to reach in her pocket again. Then she changed her mind.
House of Birds: Forget who you were before... (The Azo Coke thrillers Book 2) Page 6
