She said nothing. She was holding her breath to crank me up standing again. I jerked up with a groan.
It was hopeless. She always had to try and do the right thing. She’d get herself killed. But what could I do to stop her, eh. I had nothing to gain from just lying there.
“Move,” she said.
I thrust my right foot out in front of me. The pain shot up to the roof of my head. My stomach lurched. Fat tears spilled out of me and splashed down my trouser leg.
Becky got under my pit again. Her arm curled round my waist. I leaned on her shoulder. Skinny, wrapped up in a woolly hoody. Felt like she’d break.
She helped me hobble over to the door.
I was in worse shape than when I’d been laid up in the house of lads after that twat shot me. And I didn’t have Doctor Raz on hand this time to patch me up.
I rested against the wall. Waited for the dizziness to fizz away.
My eyes cleared. I wrenched my foot forward again. Out into the passage.
I gazed over into the gloom beyond the railing.
We looked up and down the walkway. The cell doors were all closed. No sign of Dicey and Rodney.
“They’ve gone up to the house,” she said. “To make a call.”
She helped me along to the end of the walkway. Propped me up as I let my feet down onto the steps. My whole skin flamed when my soles touched the iron grilling. Then it was dusty soft earth on the floor of the vault.
I sat down on the bottom step. Becky ran back up and along the walkway to my cell. She came back with my trainies. She knelt and squeezed my feet into them.
She helped me up again.
Over to the tracks. Where the tunnel started that I’d got out by the last time.
As we reached its wide black mouth, we stopped. Something had caught my eye. To my right.
A door.
I’d not spotted it that first time in the rush. Dusty planks, set into the stone wall of the embankment. A round red knob with a silver lock winking in the dim light.
I hobbled towards it.
“Azo,” Becky whispered. “This way.”
I looked at her over my shoulder in the gloom. Then back at the door.
“You won’t make it out,” she whispered.
She took my arm. I shook her off. She hissed and swore.
I heard her footsteps as she ran off down the tunnel.
I let her go.
No one to lean on now. Just the sick fire in my balls driving me on. I dragged myself on.
I almost blanked out before I got to the door. I leaned my forehead on it and panted.
I rattled the knob.
I knocked.
Quiet. Then a noise inside. A key turned. A bolt clunked. The door gave inwards an inch.
I pushed it open wider.
Black. No light switch, no lamps.
I listened into the dark. Nothing. Just the blood in my ears.
The ceiling got lower as I stepped forward. The rock of the earth closed in. I got down on all fours and crept. My palms ploughed the dust and felt the stone floor beneath it.
A few yards on I stopped and listened again.
I called out.
No echo. It felt like the end of the tunnel couldn’t be far. I crawled on.
My hand touched something.
A trainer. A bare ankle. Warm skin.
I felt my way right up her leg with the tips of my fingers.
Her legs and hips in trackie bottoms. Skinny bare arms. Lean neck. Her head, hard and round with the hair pinned up. Her hard cheekbones and dry lips. Her eyelashes.
I couldn’t see how high the ceiling went, but there must have been a vent shaft up there. A draft fluttered over my face.
Dead black.
Still. It beat the last time I’d seen her: me hanging arse-first out of a window, her flicking a sparkling spliff in my face, almost sending me flying.
I kneeled there. I was close enough to take her in my arms, but I couldn’t. I didn’t know if I was too tired or sore or if I just didn’t want to.
I lowered my hand from her cheek to her shoulder.
“I know a way out,” I told her.
Maya said nothing. I heard her breath faint in the dark. She had her back to the stone wall.
“Come on,” I said.
I was kneeling holding her wrist. I tugged at it.
She snaked her arm up and over my shoulder. She raised her other hand and stroked my neck.
“They’ll be back,” I said. “Come on.”
“You come on.”
She pulled me down towards her.
I yelped. It wrecked. The bruises on my ribs and sides. My knees were raw on the ground. My legs were full of aches. It was stuffy and warm in there. Sweat prickled on me. Salt seeped out into the burns. My whole skin stung.
She wrapped her arms round my neck and dragged me down onto her. She pressed my face onto her chest. I tried to speak.
To say sorry. For messing up. For letting this happen to her. “But I’m here now. I’ll help you,” I mumbled. I’d said that before. “I’ll get you out.”
My voice got muffled on her chest. My tongue tangled in her hair.
I freed my nose. She pressed it into her neck.
I smelt her. Not the reek of skunk on her breath like in the old days. The sweetness of her skin. The sweat in her hair.
She twisted her head and gave me her tongue.
She reached into my trackies. Got her hand around it.
I lay there and let her. Not because I wanted to. Because I needed a rest. Because I couldn’t move.
Nice one, Azo. You’re getting what you always thought you wanted. Now you’re not sure you want it anymore. And it might get you killed. You always did have to do things arse-about-face.
She was humping her hips against me, but it was hard work even for her. I was sprawled on her half-dead. She gripped my arms, one in each hand in her strong fingers, and shoved me to my right onto the floor.
I whined. Pain shot up to the roof of my skull.
“I can’t,” I said.
“Yes you fucking can.”
She tugged my trackies and my boxies down. I tried to sit up but she landed on my midriff with one thigh either side of me. She put the heel of her hand on my head and pressed it back down to the ground.
After, I heard her moving around in the dark. Shuffling back into her trousers.
I creaked up onto one elbow. Tried to pull up my own trackies with one hand. Too much. I gave up and lay on my back.
I heard the clink of the latch. A smear of dim light where the door opened.
“What are you going to do?” I said.
“Slot Paterson.”
The shape of her shifted in the gloom and vanished.
“You’ll need me then,” I called out.
The door shut.
I yelled after her. “You’ll have to find him!”
The lock clicked and I was in the dark again.
24
I was half awake when they dragged me out of that dungeon. Maya got her hard shoulder under my left armpit. Rodney’s long arm under the right. They humped me back up the steps.
Dicey was standing in my cell. She stood and watched them lay me out on the floor. She knelt by me and gave me a jab in my arm with a needle. Then she vanished without a word.
Morpho.
I lay there floating, half-asleep. My ribs stopped creaking. My skin stopped burning and glowed.
Things had changed in the cell.
It wasn’t just the jab. There was a mattress under me this time. A pillow. A light in the corner. A torch hanging on a string.
Rodney brought me a real plate of food. A placky tray wrapped in white takeaway paper. Chips and a pie. The meat filling burst in my mouth. And a full-size bottle of Pepsi.
They’d put a little garden table in the cell. He laid the grub out on that with a metal fork from the kitchen.
I sat up on the mattress and ate. My face felt better. I swigged the
pop from the bottle.
Dicey gave me another sweet jab to put me down for the night. I slept through like a puppy.
No more cricket ball, eh. And now when Rodey was there, he kept his gob shut. Like he was thinking about something.
I didn’t see Maya or Rodney the whole rest of the time. Just Dicey.
I’d been coughing for days. Now I was yokking up greenies. Dicey gave me meds to fix my chest.
She’d sit there not talking.
After a couple of days the greenies cleared up. The cough weakened. She gave me the pills for a week and a half, three times a day.
“Where did you get all these meds?” I said. I couldn’t look her in the eye. It made me too anx. I stared at her mouth.
She handed me a bottle of Volvic to chug the pills down with. She looked me in the eye but said nothing.
“Raz?” I said. I handed the bottle back. “He stocked this place up, eh? Before he shot off?”
She had a white placky box by her side. A red cross on the side. She put the pill-bottle away in it and got to her feet.
“Stay,” I said. “Have a chat.”
She stood and looked down at me.
I couldn’t make out her eyes in the gloom so it was easier to take. I leaned on my elbow on the mattress and turned my face to her.
I tried to make sense of this Dicey. What she was doing there. What she wanted. Why.
She’d nursed me like she knew what she was doing. Now she just stood there without speaking. Tall and standing like Darth Vader. The hard face and dead eyes.
Something had died in her alright. But something was alive an’ all. Just. I could think of what might have happened to her, knowing the kind of scums she hung round with. I’d been around them myself. Same kind, same places. Same life. But I couldn’t grasp at what made her tick now. At what was left of someone after a lifetime of it.
“Come on,” I said. “We’re housemates now. Who are you? What were you before?”
I heard her breath.
“Raz, Rodney… You’re not one of them,” I said. “How did you get here?”
She didn’t move. She wasn’t leaving though, was she.
“You know what I did to Raz. To Beshat,” I said. “But you’ve still patched me up. Why?”
She looked at the white box in her hand.
“Why waste your meds on me?” I went on. “All this grub an’ all? After all those friends of yours I’ve slotted?”
She handed me a Lion Bar. She spoke. A Gollum-hiss of pure Scouse.
“There’s one more slotting you’ve got to do.”
After a few days I was stretching my legs around the cell. Rodney came in.
He had a muffin in a placky wrapper in one hand. A phone in the other.
I pointed at the muffin.
“That for me?”
He waved the phone. “Once you’ve called your boss.”
They had to take me upstairs so the phone would work.
I walked out of the cell all by myself. Along the passage. Dicey came out of her room as we passed it. The key to the trapdoor in her hand.
I was out of puff once I’d climbed the ladder. I had to lie down on the floor of the cellar.
They helped me up to the kitchen. First time I’d been there since that night with Sanky. They sat me down at the table. They opened some Jaffa Cakes.
Rodney unlocked his iPhone and handed it to me. Silver one in a black rubber cover. Four bars on it now.
“Call him.”
Dicey looked at Rodney. He scratched his nose.
I called.
Paterson picked up.
“There you are, you big bellend,” I said.
I ate the muffin there in the kitchen. They let me make myself a hummus butty and a hot Ribena. They took me back down to the dungeon.
Maya was standing on the walkway, dressed in black. Jeans, fleece. New white trainies.
Rodney turned and went into his cell. I looked back at Maya. She paced around at the bottom of the steps. Flexed her arms behind her.
She smiled. “So where’s my date?”
“If it was me I’d settle for a night in. Netflix and a blowie on the settee. But he’s a soppy old twat, Paterson. He wants to show you the high life.”
“Tea at The Adelphi?”
“Better. The Grace.”
It was Paterson who’d chosen it. It was more or less on our turf.
“It’s been shut down for months,” I said. “Paterson thinks he’s safe there.”
I wasn’t lying. He’d told me they’d save Maya. I’d have helped her. I’d have done what I said I’d do.
Rodney came back out of his cell with a black hold-all over his shoulder. Rubber torch in his hand. He put the hold-all down. He laid the torch on the floor and switched it on.
He pulled out a semi and handed it to Maya.
She weighed it in her palm. She fiddled with the string at the front of her Kappas, tightening them up. Then she stuck the gun in the waistband behind.
She turned to go.
“Shall I call her an Uber?” I said.
“No need,” said Rodney.
He pulled a bunch of car keys out of his pocket. Put them in my hand.
I swallowed. My throat gave a dry click.
“How do you know I won’t bolt?” I said.
Rodney frowned like he didn’t get it. Dicey had come down the stairs behind him. He looked at her. She had her hands in her fleece pockets. She glared at Rodney. Her cold blue eyes. Her diamond-sharp nose. Her mouth half-open like a hot bulldog.
Rodney looked back at me. He gave this pussy little smirk.
“They didn’t brief you?” he said.
“What?”
“We’ve got your boy.”
“My arse. His mum’s the only one who can pick him up. Yous aren’t on the list.”
“Dicey is.”
I snorted. I turned to her. She looked me in the eye. First time ever. I felt my belly drop away. I leaned against the wall.
I stared at her mouth. Her jaw slackened further. Her eyebrows rose. Her way of saying yes. And. What are you going to do.
Rodney went on.
“She takes our own little fugee lad to school,” he said. “She’s down as his carer.”
“So?”
“Our little lad’s made good friends with Ali,” he said. “Been looking after him at school. Like a big brother.”
I put my hand in my trackie pocket like I’d find a phone there.
“Dicey’s become good friends with his mum,” Rodney went on. “She picks Ali up from school. Tuesdays and Fridays. So your Leanne can go to pilates after work.”
I punched the bottom of my trackie pocket. I looked at Dicey and back to Rodney. To Maya. Thinking about the gun in her pants.
“And who would pick him up them days,” I said, “if you didn’t show?”
Dicey spoke up. “Our boy’s big enough. He can look after your Ali by himself. He can take him to our friends at church.”
I sniffed. I saw how it worked. Rodney ruled the cave. Outside, it was Dicey who got things done.
I looked over my shoulder as I followed Maya up the stairs. Dicey was kneeling by the holdall. Rummaging and tugging something out of it.
Black straps. Webbing.
It was like the vest they’d put on Maya and others the summer before. The ones Raz made. I’d found him stitching them together in the cellar in the house of lads. Then he’d pulled a Klashni on me.
Dicey held the vest up and passed it to Rodney. She turned her back to him. She was slipping her arms in it as we climbed the steps out of sight.
25
I sank into the squishy seat of the Mazda. Maya clicked her seatbelt.
I stared ahead at the turnoff to the main road. Frost on the pavements and blue skies. My legs were working again but my head was odd. I was blinking in the sun. I hadn’t seen daylight for weeks.
We were parked just across from the alley that ran behind the house. I could
see the brick wall and the back gate. It opened and Dicey came out. Black jeans and fleece. The fleece was chunky and lumpy with the bomb vest underneath.
I turned the key and rolled the Mazda forward. Dicey crossed the road just before the turnoff. She was heading to Aigburth. Going to pick up the kid from church, like Becky had said.
And then take him to school.
“They’re going to hit Saint Rock’s.”
My foot hovered over the gas. I could ram it down. Rip forward. Break Dicey’s legs as she crossed. Then back up over her and crush her ribs and pelvis. Leave her karking it on the zebra crossie. Take Maya’s gun and wait for Rodney to come running.
They had their claws in Ali though, didn’t they. They and whoever else was out there. If anything happened to Dicey, someone else would step in. The bizzies had been letting Dicey come and go with my little lad. I couldn’t trust them not to let some other twat do the same.
I watched Dicey drop out of sight.
I turned to Maya. Her hair was down over the collar of her fleece. She was looking ahead at the road. That sad smile like she’d had in the house of lads. When she was half asleep, smoking skunk and gazing off over the rooftops. But her eyes were sharper now. Deep black and shining. She’d been lost before. Now she knew what she was doing.
I humped the Mazda up Princes Avenue.
I reckoned I had time to make it to the meet and warn Paterson. Before Dicey got to Saint Rock’s with the kid in tow.
We drove along Upper Parly.
Something was bugging me too. Something else, I mean. A thought in the back of my mind trying to break through. Some snag I’d not straightened out. Something I’d forgotten.
We left the red brick houses behind and turned onto the dock road. Frosty pavements and steam from over the fences. The blue and yellow cranes at Seaforth.
The pub sign was still hanging over the door on the corner. The paint was peeling on it but you could still see the piccie of the Liver Building with the birds on top.
The Grace.
I felt sick just driving near it. I remembered all those hangovers I’d had after nights out there. All the teas I’d sicked up on that same bit of pavement. I’d grown up since then but… Oh yeah. It wasn’t the drinking, was it. It was what happened the last time. It was shooting my dad on the carpet there. It was what happened later, to Gibbsy.
House of Birds: Forget who you were before... (The Azo Coke thrillers Book 2) Page 12
