by Peter Boland
“That’s okay,” said Savage. “We’ll take Tannaz with us.”
Tannaz lost interest in the orange juice. “What’s this?”
“Fancy putting your training into practice?” Savage asked.
“Hell, yeah,” she replied.
Chapter 4
Savage’s white VW Caddy slotted itself into the inside lane of the M3 as they left behind the clogged-up cholesterol lanes of London’s orbital M25, a road that achieved consistent slowness regardless of the time of day. Barring any more traffic hold-ups, Southampton would only take another hour of driving.
During the journey, Luke tried several more times to push the signed Jam album on Savage. Savage was having none of it and each time Luke asked, Savage held up his hand to silence him.
Tannaz sat in the back, playing on her monstrously powerful laptop. Luke kept glancing back at her. After a while he plucked up the courage and asked, “Is that a gaming laptop?”
“Kind of,” Tannaz replied, not looking up.
“Are you a gamer?” Luke asked.
“Kind of,” Tannaz replied, this time giving him a cheeky smile.
Luke smiled back nervously.
“Tannaz is a computer genius,” said Savage. “Built that laptop herself.”
Luke suddenly lost his inhibitions. “Really?” he gushed. “That’s amazing. I’ve never met anyone who can build computers. That’s like having a superpower or something.”
Tannaz laughed.
“That’s not too far from the truth,” Savage added. “You wouldn’t believe what Tannaz can do with a computer.”
“You wanna go?” Tannaz offered.
“Could I?”
“Come on, climb in the back and I’ll show you some tricks.”
Luke leapt out of his seat, clambered over into the van’s payload and sat himself next to Tannaz, who passed the laptop to him. “Wow, it’s heavy,” he said.
“That’s because it’s a hardcore machine, built for cyber combat,” Tannaz said with plenty of melodrama.
Giggles and woops of delight followed, interspersed with a geekfest of conversation about stuff that Savage didn’t fully understand, as if the two of them were speaking a different language. They would have carried on forever, apart from the fact that Savage insisted on stopping for tea at Winchester services. As the three of them headed to the café, Luke broke away to visit the toilets.
Savage leant in and said to Tannaz, “I think Luke’s got a little cyber crush on you.”
“What’s wrong with that?” she replied.
“Well, I don’t know how good his gaydar is. He might not know you bat for the other team.”
“Well, I have been known to cross over to the dark side, on very rare occasions,” she said, playfully.
Savage stopped and stared at her. “Tannaz Darvish. I learn something new about you every day.”
“Luke’s cute and very sweet,” she said. “Brings out my maternal instincts. Makes me want to look after him.”
“Fine, just remember he’s been through a lot.”
“Savage, what do you take me for?”
“Just saying.”
After their drinks stop, they followed the M3, turning off onto the M27 into the heart of Southampton, a city renowned for its Premier League football club, deep-water dock, overloaded container ships and Leonardo de Caprio winning passage onto the fateful Titanic, although that probably happened on a green screen five thousand miles away in Hollywood.
“Did you know over eight thousand Spitfires were built here during World War Two?” Savage said. “Luftwaffe bombed it to kingdom come to stop production.”
“Is that why Southampton is so ugly?” asked Tannaz.
“Don’t joke, Tannaz. A lot of people lost their lives when the Spitfire factory got destroyed.”
“I’m not joking. I’m Iranian. We’re still getting over the war we had with Iraq.”
“True,” said Savage. “That was a nasty war.”
“So what happened after the factory was destroyed?” asked Luke.
“Production continued.”
“How?” asked Tannaz.
“Blitz spirit. Spitfires got built all over the city, anywhere there was space. Garden sheds, bus stations, launderettes. Parts got taken to airfields all over the country and then assembled. Just like a giant Airfix kit.”
“What’s an Airfix kit?” Luke and Tannaz asked simultaneously.
Savage sighed. “Only the best part of growing up in the seventies. I’d save up my pocket money from my paper round, run down to the model shop…”
Tannaz whispered in Luke’s ear, “Uh-oh, now we’ve set him off.”
“… buy a model-airplane kit to build like a Messerschmitt 109, a Mustang P-51 or the best fighter plane in the world, the Supermarine Spitfire. Make sure I’d saved enough to buy a little tin of Humbrol to paint the underside duck-egg blue—”
Tannaz interrupted, “And then you’d have a slap-up meal in front of the TV and watch, what was that weird show you told me about, Crackerjack?”
“Or Banana Splits or Grange Hill or Rentaghost. TV was great when I was a kid.”
“Didn’t you say all kids’ TV presenters were paedophiles when you were young?” asked Tannaz.
“Not all of them. You’re spoiling the warm glow of nostalgia. Way to go, Tannaz.”
Savage flicked down the indicator and took a right into the notorious area known as Thornhill, where Dave Mosely had lived out his last days.
“Bloody hell,” said Tannaz as the VW pulled into the post-apocalyptic housing estate, immediately passing the black skeleton of a burnt-out car sitting in a ring of charred tarmac. It looked as if it had been there for some time, like a fossil. “I thought South London had some dodgy areas, but this makes them look like Beverly Hills.”
If anyone in the future wanted to know how to create a community where crime, anti-social behaviour and childhood obesity would flourish like germs in a petri dish, Thornhill would be it. The predominant architectural style, dotted around the area like acne spots, seemed to be squat, four-storey blocks of flats, clad in dirty biscuit-coloured concrete with spindly pale blue balconies bolted to the outside. Only slightly better than scaffolding, each balcony, probably designed for the resident to access fresh air, had been adapted as a place to store rubbish and junk or washing. In between each block of flats were rows of tatty council houses where the front gardens had long since perished and become driveways of dirt, also littered with rubbish of a heavier kind—cars that didn’t work, twisted-up bicycles and of course the ubiquitous dumped shopping trolley.
“Jeez,” said Savage. “I can see why you didn’t want to come here on your own.”
Tannaz prodded away on her laptop in the back of the van. “Here’s what someone posted on social media about Thornhill, ‘Even the cats don’t go out at night’ then someone else has posted, ‘Don’t be daft, cats don’t live long enough in Thornhill to go out at night’.”
Savage glanced across at Luke, sitting rigid with fear. “Don’t worry, Luke,” he said. “I’ve been to far worse places than this, where people were trying to shoot me.” Luke’s expression didn’t change, perhaps not considering the thought of not getting shot to be comforting.
A young teen in a black Adidas top stood beside the road waiting to cross, holding onto a scratched-up BMX with a flat front tyre. Savage slowed to a stop and waved him across. The boy walked halfway, looked towards the van and stuck up his middle finger.
“Charming,” Savage remarked. “How much further?”
“Next right,” said Luke, his voice small and fragile.
They passed a convenience store, its graffiti-covered metal security shutters firmly down, apart from the one over the door. Savage wondered if there was ever an occasion when it was safe enough for all its security
shutters to be up.
He took the next right, into a cul-de-sac that, though an almost impossible feat, managed to look worse than the streets they had just driven down. Savage had to swerve to miss a mattress that had been dumped in the middle of the road—no doubt it would be set on fire after dark, courtesy of the local kids. Luke pointed to a large three-storey building at the end. “That’s it,” he said. “That’s my dad’s place, Tivoli Gardens.”
While the rest of the buildings in Thornhill looked as if they had been built in the period when architects had decided everything should be built from brutal slabs of concrete, this building gallantly held on to its 1930s’ arts-and-crafts period features. For how long was anyone’s guess. As they pulled up outside, behind the one and only car on the street, Savage gave the building a quick appraisal. Being a keen DIYer, he had an eye for construction, although he didn’t need to be any sort of building surveyor to tell the place should’ve been condemned years ago. It looked like an old battered leather suitcase about to split open and disgorge its contents. Every inch of deformed brickwork had lost its pointing, and ruptured guttering spilled green slime down the side of its walls. The roof had a hole in it that had been half-heartedly nailed over with a black tarpaulin, the edge of which flapped around lazily in the icy breeze. Each rotten window frame, the ones that weren’t broken, sagged hopelessly. They looked original and he doubted if any of them closed properly. Savage felt sorry for the old three-storey pile. Probably a once splendid residence, it now reminded him of a wounded animal that needed putting down.
Savage got out of the van, followed by Luke and Tannaz. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s get Luke’s stuff and get out of here.”
Just at that moment the doors of the car parked in front of them opened, polluting the air with dreadful high-beats-per-minute techno music and smoke of dubious origin. The car was a green modified Vauxhall Corsa. Though it was a small car with a gutless engine, the owner had added a huge exhaust the size of a bazooka in a bid to make it go faster. Savage had seen these before on tiny underpowered cars, their only function appeared to be making a racket as they drove around.
Three men got out of the Corsa, blocking their way.
The driver spat on the ground, swore at them and said, “Where do you think you’re going?”
Chapter 5
To call them men might have been pushing it somewhat. Barely in their twenties and still in that gangly stage, each one wore training shoes and tracksuit bottoms that rode high up their lanky legs, revealing plenty of white-socked ankle. The top halves of their bodies had that hunched-over, hollow-chested look, not quite filled out yet. Immature bodies, maybe, but their faces wore permanent pinched sneers with hard unemotional eyes earned from growing up far too quickly on a rough estate. The driver of the car had odd patches of sprouting facial hair, not enough to merit having a full shave. The one from the passenger side had a painfully acned face, while the one who’d got out of the back breathed through a mouth that constantly hung open.
“Afternoon,” said Savage.
“You ain’t going in there, ‘less you buying,” said the driver with the bum fluff. They were local dealers, not the big shots by any stretch, just three low-level minions, selling on product, but dangerous none the less. Keeping their position, no matter how low on the food chain, meant enforcing it with fear and intimidation and, if needed, physical violence.
“Sorry, we’re not buying,” said Savage.
“Do you know who you’re talking to?” said Spotty Guy. “We’re legends round here. I’m the Chicken Man.” Then he nodded to his mates. “That’s Malarkey Shark and Bonafide Ride.” They both cracked their knuckles.
“You need better gang names,” said Savage. “You sound like a bunch of race horses about to enter the Grand National.”
Luke sniggered. Then wished he hadn’t.
Bum Fluff or Bonafide Ride, as he preferred to be called, got all up in Luke’s face, trying his best to be the tough guy. “You laughing at me, boy?” Bum Fluff asked, arms wide open and waving about, trying to goad Luke into a fight. “I’ll shank you. Kill your dumb ass.”
Savage put himself between Luke and Bum Fluff. Then he smiled at the three thugs, not to be friendly but to show he wasn’t worried in the slightest by their housing-estate hardman act—he’d seen it done a lot better, and by much more physically intimidating individuals. “Sorry, lads. We’re just not buying today.”
“Then you got a problem,” Spotty Guy said in a fake Jamaican accent.
“It’s okay,” said Luke. “We can come back another time.”
“That’s right, you little bitch.” Bum Fluff was now hitting his stride, swaggering all over the pavement, pointing in Luke’s direction as if he were holding a gun sideways, gangster style. “You’re a dead man. I’ll come after you. Won’t know what’s hit you.”
“Okay, guys,” Savage replied calmly. “We’ve had a long drive from London—”
“Still not coming in,” said Bum Fluff. “Not leaving neither, ‘less we get paid.”
Savage gestured to the guy’s Corsa. “Is that your nan’s car?”
Bum Fluff snapped. Started leaping around all enraged. With his long wiry frame, it just looked comedic, like he had a live rodent down his trousers. He threw a couple of F-bombs in Savage’s direction.
“Good comeback,” Savage replied. “You ought to do stand up.” Bum Fluff spat on the ground. It landed at Savage’s feet. “I presume that was supposed to land on my shoes?” asked Savage. “You should try spitting next time, not dribbling.”
“I’ll kill you,” said Bum Fluff. He was still bouncing all over the place, unable to contain his rage, but he wouldn’t engage Savage or throw a punch.
Savage’s confidence radiated off him like a forcefield.
“I’m not going anywhere,” said Savage, “I must warn you, I don’t hit children.”
Spotty Guy lunged forward. He was held back by Mouth Breather, who hadn’t said anything yet. He stepped in front of his mate and approached Tannaz, eyeing her from top to bottom, finally resting his gaze on her breasts, mouth still hanging open.
“You two can kill these pricks,” he said. “I’m going to have a go on her. You’re well fit.” He grabbed Tannaz’s breasts with both hands and started fondling them.
“Please, let’s go,” Luke pleaded.
Savage ignored him and spoke to Mouth Breather, “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”
“Why? What are you going to do—”
Before he’d finished, Tannaz grabbed Mouth Breather’s hands viper-fast, thumbs on top, fingers gripping underneath, twisting his wrists outwards. A move she’d practiced a million times with Savage. Except this was no training exercise. She didn’t hold back. The guy cried out in agony. She rotated his wrists past the point of no return, snapping them both simultaneously. He hadn’t stood a chance.
Tannaz released her grip and the guy collapsed on the floor in the foetal position, trying to hold his arms in a way that would lessen the pain. His screams echoed off the buildings in the vicinity.
Savage turned to the guy with the bum fluff, who backed away, fearing the same would happen to him. “Do your friend a solid, put him in your little Noddy car and take him to A&E. He’ll need to get his wrists set, okay?”
Bum Fluff nodded rapidly, as if his head might come off. He and the guy with the acne wasted no time, dragging their screaming friend, who was now holding his broken arms in front of him like a T-Rex, into an upright position. They shoved him into the passenger seat, then got into the Corsa.
“Bye, guys,” said Savage, as they slammed the doors shut. “Make good decisions.”
The little car sped off, its ridiculous exhaust sounding like an angry fog horn and spewing black smoke into the cold air.
When the car had disappeared from view, Tannaz turned to Savage and said, “Do your frie
nd a solid?”
“What’s wrong with that?” Savage asked.
“It sounds like you want him to go to the toilet.”
“Really?” Savage looked at Luke for support.
“I’ve always thought it sounds like that too,” said Luke.
“Wow,” Savage said thoughtfully. “Well, I won’t be requesting any solids from either of you two, then.”
“That just sounds wrong,” Tannaz remarked. “Come on, let’s get these vinyls and go home.”
They crossed the patch of dirt that used to be a front garden, walking around a rusted bike lying on its side missing a front wheel. An old armchair sat against a wall, slowly decomposing. Cigarette butts were strewn everywhere and, as they neared the entrance, Savage noticed a clutch of used hypodermic needles lying by a drain next to a mountain of empty booze bottles.
Luke stood at the front door, pushed in the key and gave it a turn. The door opened about half an inch but no more. It had swollen, and was wedged into the door frame. Savage shouldered it. The door budged a little. He gave it another shove. As it opened farther, Savage poked his head in and could see the reason for the door’s reluctance to grant them access. Mountains of junk mail and takeaway leaflets, piled against the inside, acting like a barricade. One more push and it opened far enough for them to enter.
The first thing they noticed was the smell. Mould and decay, of course, mixed with rotten food and the acrid stench of urine. In the dingy light of the hallway, Savage could see the culprit. A large damp patch, presumably where a drunken resident hadn’t made it to the bathroom in time and had to relieve themselves on the carpet.
“This place stinks.” Tannaz pushed the door behind her. It took several attempts to close it.
Savage looked around. The hallway was narrow with a high ceiling. He could see about six bedroom doors and a set of narrow stairs at the end, going down to a basement, and another set of stairs leading to the floors above.
