by V. C. Linde
The sound was still clear in Jas’s ears, above the vicious laughter and the sound of Yassin retching behind a tree. Whiplash’s eyes were closing but he was still responding when Jas stroked his few patches of uninjured flesh.
Jas had tried calling his Dad, pretending he wasn’t crying, wanting to talk to him, get him to help, ask Thatch to help. But it was his fight, his dog, his job.
Jas knew what he needed to do. He’d been to fights and seen dogs shot, electrocuted and had their throats slashed. He pulled out the Euthatal but couldn’t uncap it. Yassin put a hand on his shoulder and reached down to open the syringe then handed it back to Jas. The two boys sat either side of Whiplash in the freezing mud and talked to the dog, stroking him as Jas pushed the drug under the fold of skin above the neck.
CHAPTER FIVE
January
Scarlet got up early and put the coffee pot on the stove. She went to listen whether she could hear the animals next door - she knew the owners must have several dogs in there, but she never saw them. There were far fewer people walking dogs in the area these days. She’d tried scratching at the wall at the place where she could hear them, but rather than helping to communicate with the dogs it seemed to drive them crazy. They starting barking and she could hear them tearing up the floor. As soon as one started, the rest of them joined in. They probably thought that the scratching noises came from vermin running through the floorboards.
She grabbed her coffee off the stove and added milk and sugar. Her desk was cluttered with work and she had to move everything to put her mug down without damaging any of the pieces that she’d been working on. The morning passed in a blur of colours while she worked on several commissions for the chain of restaurants in Ireland. She was doodling on a scrap of paper, messing around with new colours, when Nick rang the doorbell.
“High drama on the High street, so I came over with burritos and gossip!” Nick said, pushing his way into the room, tripping over a pair of George’s shoes and collapsing onto the sofa. Scarlet had seen more of Nick in the past couple of months than she had at any point since they were at university together. Since she had been seeing the Doc she had been trying much harder to fix the problems that had been caused by her anxiety. She knew Nick didn’t realise how hard it had been to show him this new side of her, but she hoped the effort had been worth it.
“Okay, tell me what I’ve missed,” Scarlet said, settling down next to Nick, who had already arranged their food on paper plates and divided napkins and cutlery.
“There was a huge bust-up near the shop, you know that massive crackdown the cops have been running against all those dangerous dogs?” Scarlet nodded, thinking again of the Doberman. “Well, there was a breeder in those scummy flats in that huge tower block. They had cages stacked up on top of each other. American pit bulls and some Japanese ones as well, according to the Boss. Whole lot of them illegal, apparently. Nasty looking things they were dragging away. Half-starved and snarling, but they looked more sad than dangerous. A couple of the blokes ran but they got three of them and two women as well. It was a family: the Boss said it was two of the sons that got away. The women were biting and yelling worse than the dogs when they tried to get them into the van.” Nick paused to chew a mouthful of food and hurried on. It had been a quiet day at the shop and this event had obviously provided some much needed excitement.
“The dogs have all been confiscated, including the ones that weren’t illegal, because of the conditions they were kept in. Some have gone to the pound and the others have been taken in by the RSPCA. One of the RSPCA guys was saying that the most they are likely to get is a few hundred pounds fine and a couple of months in jail. Bloody horrible.”
Down the road in The Phoenix it was unusually quiet. No one had really expected anything to come of Operation Scorch, and the arrest of the Palmer family along with the confiscation of some of the best fighting dogs in the city had made everyone angry and then nervous. Thatch was nursing a drink and most of the regulars were dotted around, waiting to see what would happen next. They all knew that once the raids started they would keep coming.
“We need to find the pound,” Thatch said eventually.
“What?” Roy was sitting on the other side of him.
“We find where they took the Palmer dogs and we get them back.”
“Are you nuts? No one knows where the pounds are, or even if the dogs are in the council one or somewhere else; and we can’t risk nicking dogs from a nick,” Roy said, sounding a little hysterical.
“Someone will be able to get information for us. I’ve sent a few of the lads to try and find out what people know. They should be back in a few hours. You should get ready to go.”
“Thatch, I know it’s a bad business, but we can’t break into a pound.” Roy was trying to reason with him.
“Are you saying you’re not coming?” Thatch asked quietly, his hand twitching towards his bag.
“No. Just saying I don’t think it’s the smart play,” Roy answered carefully.
“Fine. I heard you. I say we’re going. Get ready and be back here soon.”
“Why, Thatch? What good can it do?”
“We show them that this isn’t working, that any dog they take we can get back. We get the Palmers the best lawyers and get them out of there. We get back on track. We’re losing money and we’re being invaded. We’re going to stop these cunts before they come any closer. I’m not letting them take the warehouse. I’m not letting them get any of my dogs. I’m not letting them stop my fucking livelihood. I’m not letting them come anywhere near my business, my family, my home. They can take a fucking jump for all I care. The police, the fucking tree-huggers, this operation is over.” Thatch slammed his empty glass down on the table and stood up. He walked over to the bar, braced himself and Roy slipped out of the pub before he heard any more. He walked slowly home, knowing he would have to make sure everything was ready to follow Thatch to whatever hell-hole they were going to.
Scarlet shifted in the armchair. She was still not quite comfortable talking about George with the Doc. She had grown used to most of therapy, but she sometimes felt like it was a betrayal talking about other people while she was in session. They had been talking about coping structures.
“What’s the main emotion that you have in these situations?” the Doc asked, waiting quietly for her answer. She had learnt early on not to be pressured by silence. It reminded her of being in the bookshop. When the Doc paused after she felt she had answered a question properly, she simply imagined that she was back at A Piece of String and let the silence carry until he filled it or asked another question.
“Fear. Panic. Worry.” She sat quietly, waiting.
“That’s quite different from your lack of emotion in other situations.”
“Yes.” She answered the non-question and waited again.
“What is different about that situation that makes you feel so many negative emotions?” Doc asked.
“I suppose...” Scarlet trailed off, trying to grasp at her thoughts before they eluded her and hid behind the wall that she had been building inside her mind for the better part of a decade. “I suppose that there are a lot of expectations. Behaviours that people expect you to follow. I find that difficult.” She stopped, and looked up at Doc. Every word that she spoke to him was carefully chosen. She didn’t allow herself to relax, she sat tightly coiled, legs crossed and arms held close. Her words created the landscape that they walked through and she made sure that she meant each one of them; she didn’t want to give him any more to throw at her than he already had.
“What is making you worry? Is it the situation that you are in or your thoughts about the situation?” Doc pushed. Scarlet smiled. She had quickly realised why so many people didn’t like being in therapy:you couldn’t get away with being lazy. There were no short-cuts and you had to dig into your guts - look behind the walls and under the flaw
s to find where the root cause was hiding. There was nowhere to hide from your own mind. When she started out, Scarlet had been used to ducking behind the structures that she had erected in her own brain. If something was too painful or too confusing or cut too close to the bone, she pretended it wasn’t real and pushed it as far away as possible.
“I worry about people judging me, for seeing that I’m too lucky to be living. I have no right to the life that I have somehow managed to stumble upon. I don’t work hard enough, I love the job that I do and I think people hate me for getting to do what I love and not having to suffer for it. I worry that the guilt I have is only too justified. I worry that being so spoilt means that I am not worth the life that I have, the space that I take and the air that I steal. I worry that I’m only interesting because I lie about who I am. I worry that the lies I tell are permanent, because I’ll never be able to find my own real emotions again, so I’m going to forever have to bluff my way through. I’m scared that people hate me, resent me and think that the world would be better off if I were dead,” she said, letting her voice come from deep inside the city - far from the room she was sitting in. From a place that had been locked up for a long time.
The city walls were still in place, but there were more roads, more gates, more gaps, fewer guards. She walked through the streets, sometimes recognising that there were fingers interlaced with her own. She knew the main streets but was starting to explore the back-streets. She could spot the buildings and alleyways that she had built up over the years - she knew the scars, the potholes and all of the dirt underfoot. The graffiti covering acres of space was as familiar to her as the inside of her palm. Each time she opened a door and stepped into a new building away from the well-trodden paths, she could see all of the treasure hidden in there. A lot of the damage was hidden inside strongly-fortified houses, but so much real beauty was trapped between walls as well. Inner-city life was as fragile and incredible inside her head as it was in the city that she walked through to get to work, to buy food and to exercise. She never ran through the city in her head. It took too long to get there and she wanted to tread slowly, in case she suddenly found herself locked out again. Music played and the lyrics cut through her veins and pushed her blood back to where it was needed.
“Scarlet?” Doc’s voice finally pulled her back into his office and the over-sized armchair that she had become a part of.
“I’m sorry, I was just thinking.”
“That’s okay. What were you thinking about?” Doc asked, carefully.
“I was thinking about how much I have lost inside my own head.”
“In the place you call The Other City? Beyond the wall you built?” Doc asked
“Yes. I’m sorry, what were you saying?”
“I was saying, do you have any evidence to support the idea that other people are judging you or that they wish you were dead?” Doc said.
“Evidence? No.” Scarlet said carefully, smiling at the way Doc always managed to pull out the most dramatic parts of whatever she had been saying.
“I want you to think about what evidence you have for the negative thoughts that pop automatically into your head in situations when you are especially anxious; and then I want you to think about what evidence you have that those thoughts are wrong. Can you try to do that?”
“Sure. Evidence. I can do that.”
Scarlet left with a clutch of paper explaining how to work through negative thoughts, what evidence was positive and what was negative, and a series of diaries to complete. Bureaucracy. Forms. Even when the problem was that you didn’t fit into regular patterns, you still had to be put into a box, fitted into a category. She sighed as she reached the outside world. The academic of therapy helped her to understand the emotion. Everything that Doc had said made sense, he always backed up his thoughts with evidence and showed her how she could use that to make things easier, to grow and to understand the inside of her mind. If she could only understand, she thought that perhaps she could get rid of The Other City completely and allow back all of the old thoughts and emotions that she had been hiding for so long. She could reconnect and finally find out who she was and what she felt. She was shattered and wanted to head home, make a pot of tea and trawl through her favourite books for a few hours. She didn’t see the unbroken reality of the brick and mortar city when she walked. The human nature of people flowing past her was lost to her while so much of her was still locked away.
CHAPTER SIX
February
They didn’t go back to the pub. It was safer to meet at the warehouse where no one would see them. It was as dark as it would ever be by the time the six men met. Three of the men Thatch trusted completely and the other two owed him so much that he owned their asses, and their legs, and their arms: so they couldn’t fuck about with him.
Using her spot-lamp, Scarlet worked late at her sketching that night. She looked up to see the light from a torch passing
the window. The light flashed and voices whispered, became louder and dropped back into the night.
She had slept for a few hours and had then woken up, unable to sleep more, so she’d gone back to her desk to sketch the Doberman over and over again, always the same image of him standing at the door, not letting her out, refusing to leave her alone. Her desk was covered with sketches and paintings of black fur, cutting white teeth, acid spittle and hard eyes. She was still drawing when the lights and voices appeared and then faded away into the night outside.
“Okay. Turn the lights off now. We’ll go in the dark from here. Text the others, Roy.” Thatch was tense. It always made Roy nervous when he was swearing less, because it meant he was worried. They had chosen the two largest cars they had access to so that they could load the dogs straight into cages stacked in the back of each. It had turned out to be a simple matter of outlaying a little money to find out where the pound was that the Palmers’ dogs had been taken to. For a bit more cash they garnered the few details that they needed. They’d made a recording of the conversation so that they couldn’t be ratted on; if they were, they knew at least that everyone, including their betrayers, would be in the same sinking ship.
The six men were all carrying thick bags, wearing heavy gloves and had leads ready to take the dogs. Thatch led the way to the pound, which was surprisingly well hidden on the very outskirts of the city. Its main security measure was a thick wire fence which they took care of with bolt cutters. The single guard they encountered was put out of action with a couple of heavy thumps. In no time they had moved across the yard and into the buildings. They split up and followed the instructions that Thatch had given them.
The pound was a cross between a bare military complex and a veterinary surgery. The dogs were kept in long kennels and were obviously used to people walking around at all hours, because none of them barked and most paid no attention at all to the men running past them.
“Make sure you don’t leave anything behind,” Thatch said. “If we don’t manage to get the dogs out it’ll be better for the Palmers if it’s like we weren’t here. Better to get out with nothing than to get the dogs and leave something behind that means everyone will be sent down.”
Roy grunted a response and looked at the next clipboard, searching for where the dogs had come from. Too many fucking codes. Thatch’s phone buzzed in its cradle on his belt. He flicked it out and checked.
“They found them. They’re in the kennels on the side where we left the cars. Should be easy to load them up and get out. This way.” Thatch and Roy started off to meet the others when they heard barking.
“Fuck,” Roy swore quietly.
“Sounds like pit bulls, hurry up.”
Now that the dogs were making so much noise, they stopped trying to be quiet and ran full pelt through the pound, Thatch shoving doors open and Roy wrenching them closed behind them to make it less obvious where they had been and to slow down anyone who might be follow
ing them.
“Bollocks!”
“Grab the bitch, quick, before she goes for my arm again.”
The four men were struggling to get the dogs out of the kennels and onto leads. When Thatch and Roy arrived in the corridor there was complete chaos.
“Will you lot shut the fuck up,” Thatch hissed, as they turned to see him approach. The blond man seemed calmer now that they had found the dogs and were actually doing something. Sneaking around trying to find the right animals did not play to Thatch’s strengths. He was fine now there was something to do, someone to order about and something to hit out at. The dogs were not happy to be back on leads and they fought hard. They had become used to having a space of their own and not being beaten before they were fed. But the first lot were out in the yard, through the fence and into the cars without any real damage being done to any of Thatch’s men.
“Get those fucking dogs under control, you twats.” Thatch was keeping away from the jaws of the dogs and giving orders to the others from the far side of the corridor. A footstep, a crackling radio, a voice, a slammed door. In a few seconds the men were out of the door they had propped open and heading back towards the cut fence. They left cages open, forgot about closing doors, grabbed the dogs they had already leashed and fled, some of the loose dogs running along with them, thinking it was a game. Their feet crunched on the gravel of the yard, the noise mingling with yips from the dogs and shouts from the police, who had arrived at the main entrance a few yards away. Roy’s feet tangled with one of the dogs and he tripped, slamming his fist into the ground. He was dazed and it had slowed him down,and his fall started the dogs barking again. Police officers had come running into the yard. Thatch and three of the other men were already in the cars. Roy watched the last of their team reach the cars and jump in, slamming the door behind him. Thatch was leaning out of the window but Roy was much closer to the police than the hole in the fence.
