by Steve Tasane
“She’s dead!” I yell at him.
He blinks for a second, stopped in his tracks, drops the bolt-cutters. Daddy played too hard. Tears before bedtime. But this won’t last for long. He’s got further murderousness coiled inside him.
It’s time to blind him with the truth.
I let him see who I really am.
“You may as well know,” I say. “It’s me you’ve been looking for. I’m the one. I’m Byron.”
At last.
I suppose I thought I was going to have him chase me out of the house, away from Grace and Alfi, but my legs won’t let me move. I’m standing there, not Citizen Digit, but a real boy.
Byron.
He blinks at me. Looks down at Grace, slumped. Wails, despairing, desperate. Looks back at me. Blinks again. His fist smashes forward, and my lights go out.
*
Jackson Banks is still gripping the razor. He don’t say nowt, just glowers.
I’m saying nowt either. I’m fixed by his looney mad-dog eyes.
Burning at us. Like he’s going to do me too. I don’t care. I see who he is. I can’t turn away. There’s nowt here, just his eyes and mine, the dog whimpering from under the table, Grace and Byron lying silenced on the floor.
He shudders, looks away towards his dog. Anywhere but at me. Anywhere but at Byron. Anywhere but at Grace.
Jackson Banks has seen what he has done. I see what he has done. He turns back to me. If he’s going to do us in, let him do it. I’m only a boy. There’s millions others.
I don’t really count.
Grace dun’t count.
Scarlett and Danny will take in other kids. Jackson Banks will find another Grace, another Crow. Call-Me Norman will hold other parties, with other men and other kids. Virus will gather a thousand more Citizen Digits. Byron ain’t owt special.
We might not be owt special, but so what? We are who we are.
So I look at the man.
“I en’t Crow,” I say. “My name is Alfi Spar. Me mam’s name were Katariina. She were young, just like Grace. You can do what you like, but you can’t take who we are. I’m Alfi, son of Katariina, friend of Byron, friend of Grace.” I meet his eyes, and I say, “Who are you?”
He drops the razor, and the bolt-cutters. He grabs Grace’s coat off o’ the table and chucks it over her, like she’s some dead pet run down in the road. So you can’t see her face.
Then he grabs the bolt-cutters. But instead o’ clobbering us, he starts tapping them against the side of his head, like he’s trying to drum sense back into hisself. Clank, it goes, and he smiles like he’s realizing how funny it is. Clank, again, and he tilts his head sideways to greet its beat. Clank, again, and a red trickle flows down into his ear. Clank, smiling like an idiot. Then his fist gripping the tool wobbles, like it’s suddenly heavy, and he holds it out towards us, and cuts me chains. He frees me.
I’m rubbing at me wrists where the chains were chafing, wondering if it’s all over, finished at last. And his hand comes round to me face, wi’ that stinking rag, and I can’t breathe. I’m going to go under. Again.
22. WHOOSH
Byron’s eyelids may well be drawn, but Citizen Digit’s found a tiny gap between them and is peeping out.
My head is laid against Grace’s chest, where I fell from Jackson’s punch, and I can feel her, still breathing. And here’s me, pretending not to breathe, let JB think he’s done for the two of us.
Watch, and wait.
Alfi Spar is staring at Jackson Banks. Jackson Banks is staring right back at Alfi. The Digit ought to be doing something right now.
Alfi Spar’s eyes are bright, round, innocent. Baby blues. They fix themselves on Banks’s bulldog eyes, blazing murder.
Alfi’s angel gaze will not waver. Jackson relaxes his grip on the weapon. Obnob pauses in his scratting at the door, turns to stare at them both.
It’s me, the dog and Jackson, all caught in Alfi Spar’s clear blue wonder.
Alfi Spar is a witness.
Alfi won’t free Jackson from his gaze. He shifts his head, slowly, taking Jackson with him, round and down to the floor where Grace lies. Alfi lets Jackson’s gaze settle on her.
Alfi knows. And he shows him. Blabber-Boy lets Jackson Banks know what he’s done.
The dog howls to be free, free of the stench, and the spell breaks, and JB grabs Grace’s coat from the table, hurls it over her head, so you can’t see her face.
Breathless, I see my sisters’ faces.
We remember the bad dads. Mean old daddies with their bunches of fives.
What does Jackson do? He does what he’s learned to do, don’t he? He picks up the bolt-cutters and strikes. He smashes. Each time he bashes the bolt-cutters against his own thick skull his eyes widen a little more, like he’s getting pleasure from it. Like he thinks it’s Alfi he’s bashing. Over and over with the greatest of pleasure.
Is this how it’ll be for all of us, if we ever reach Groandom? Once we’re too big to be clobbered by others, we do it to ourselves? Self-administer, like Virus and his zapper? Is this how it’ll be?
Jackson bashes himself and glowers at Alfi. Battering the child.
Then he turns to Alfi, raising the bolt-cutters up over his head, and gives an animal roar.
He cuts Alfi free.
Then he knocks him out with the chloroform, and he packs him back into the gym bag, and casts one final look of horror at the coat on the floor, the coat that makes the shape of Grace.
He shudders, and throws open the door. Obnob barks relief and flurries out, fleeing the scene.
When my father was finished with my sisters he fled the scene. Little Byron was left, scrunched up tight inside the washing machine, not wanting to climb back into the world.
Just waiting. Wishing everything different.
It’s like that now.
My eyes are awake, but my face is a few moments behind, and my arms and legs several minutes after that. That was some wallop Jackson hit me with. Grace still ain’t coming round. I crawl my way towards the kitchen, find a tap, water. I let out a sob, I can’t help it, and I go over into the corner and curl into a chair and tears are leaking all over, leaking for Grace, and for my sisters.
Then I gulp the water and I gain the strength, and I pour more for Grace, and this time I’m going back on two feet rather than two knees.
Truly deeply – it may be minutes, or more, or less – I have the water to bring Grace round, I dab a finger to her forehead, cool against her burning pain, when there’s a screech of brakes. It can only mean JB went away. It can only mean he went away and he is back. I hear him bashing his way through the door and stromping up the stairs. I hear him sloshing liquid from a can all over everywhere. I smell it.
I know what. I know he’s pouring it all over the house, but he won’t come back into this room, won’t look at what he’s done. What he thinks he’s done. I know he’s trailing a stream of it through each of the rooms and back down the stairs. I listen and sniff as he fumes back through the house towards the front door. I’m immobility itself as the door thunks shut behind him. The click of a lighter, the snap of the letterbox and the whole building, with us inside, takes like a lit-up gas ring.
Whoosh.
23. TO HELL
I’m watering Grace. She’s coming back to the world. I got a pan, with water, I poured it, I soaked her. There’s a fire licking at our toes, and I have to get her out of here. I soaked myself. I’m hearing the sirens as the fire trucks arrive. We are meant to live. She splutters and coughs, and I’m tending her, bruised and battered and burned and smoky.
We are at the top of the house and there is only a skylight, out of reach. Smoke is flurrying upwards, mobbing us. I heave her up. I drag her down. She’s heavier than me, but I have sister-memory muscling my arms. I won’t be stopped. I am Byron; I am Digit; and Grace is loved and I will not let her go. I clunk her down the stairs, biff goes her head on each stair, biff, and I try to cushion her as I drag her, tell her I
won’t let her cinder. She knows it’s true; she flutters those eyelashes and the flames will not flicker too close to us. Though we are inflammable, whooooosh goes my breath, blowing the flames away. Yellow and red and orange like one of her billowing skirts. Grace is the kaleidoscope of life.
Little brother flesh melts away from me, fresh muscles bulge and bubble with air and heat. I doused us with bath water, see us through the baptism of fire. Is it a game, or life? Fire, Fire, Pans On Fire. Byron and Sister playing on the stairs, coughing and staggering, hamming and heroic, skin and blister, secret cigarette smoke killing young lungs, the darkest, greyest dream…
Daylight drags us through the doorway, cold pavement kissing our singes, traffic fumes cooling our airwaves, coughing up ashes into North-London drizzle. Grey and wretched and all Groan-out.
“Digit.” She splutters to life, from the dusty gutter.
“Yes,” I say. “What? What?”
“It’s Cash Counters,” she rasps. “That’s his deal. He’s going to get Virus’s stash, so he can start again. Whatever he’s got planned for Alfi, the stash comes first. Cash Counters. You got to get to Cash Counters.”
Even now, she’s thinking how to rescue Alfi. I’m of the same infurious state. Whatever our own personal ills, JB’s animal verocity is shifting to Cash Counters’ vicinity.
I rest her on the pavement, ambulances and fire engines sirening up to us, and I know she’ll be OK, but I have to go. I have to save Alfi.
It’s simplicity itself.
Banks’s Bentley is jack-knifed across the kerb outside Cash Counters and the front door is smashed wide open. Hulk-Head has torn it off its hinges.
As I take my cautious pause across the street to check out the scene, I realize I’m a little too late. Again. There’s a gunshot from within.
I take two giant leaps into the next-door shop doorway. And I watch. Jackson Banks marches purposefully out of Cash Counters, gun in hand, metal safebox under his arm.
He wastes no time, tossing it into the passenger seat, flooring the accelerator and screeching away.
Alfi, gym-bagged Alfi, no doubt stuffed in the boot.
Citizen Digit feels a sudden sadness pass through him. I’m all Predictiv Tex as to what might be found up them Cash Counters stairs.
The Good Citizen spirits his bones across the road and up the stairs, following the stench of murder. As he reaches the top, the stench turns, again, to that of blood.
The word of advice is: leave no prints, leave no marks; this is the scene of crime – of the first degree – and the Digit must engage with no part of it.
And, oh, but it’s sadness itself. For what do I find upon the floor of Cash Counters’ fine dining room, but Mr Virus, the Great Manager, breathing and berating his last? I’m bending down to him, cradling his head, and his redness is juicing up all over his floor.
“Oh, Didge,” he says, “I knew I could rely on you to see me through.” He coughs and splutters. “I’m all messy, aren’t I? Bloodstains on the boards.”
“It’ll mop,” I say. “Don’t be fretting it.”
He points his eyes towards a hole in the wall, where one of his fancy artworks hung. The artwork is snapped and ripped, and the hole behind is empty like a slurped-out breakfast bowl.
“He took my safebox,” says Virus. “Much good as it’ll do him. He could never get the lock code out of me. I tried to stop him, you know.”
“Surely you did.” His Smartphone is still vibrating in his fingers, the Zap App sizzling to find a target. But the bullet hole in Virus’s stomach shows he was evidentially outgunned.
He says more, but his voice is faint. I lean in close. “He’s got Alfi, you know.”
“I know.”
“He’s taking him back. He thinks you’re dead.” His eyes go all watery. “And Grace?”
“Grace will be fine.” I wipe the sweat from his forehead, with one of his hankies. “Back where, V? To Tenderness?”
He blinks agreement. “He has to do something to silence him. Alfi’s now a witness to murder, so he thinks. Now you’re dead. Grace. And me. And Newton will keep Alfi quiet… Then Banks can go off somewhere – start again. With my savings. That was my pension.”
I’d figured as much.
“Newton’ll never let Alfi go. He knows too much, and he means too much.”
The Digit understands that there’s still more to this than meets the eyeball, but the one thing I’m sure of is, if Virus could have, he’d have protected us – Alfi, Grace, and me as well. He was just a bit rubbish, is all.
“Tell me, Didge,” he says, “I wasn’t too bad, was I?”
I smile at him, shake my head.
“And Newton.” He stiffens in my arms. “Newton. If there were no Newtons … well, there’d be no Jacksons. Isn’t that so, Didge?”
“Sure, V, and if there was no Mr Virus, there’d be no – well,” I say, “there’d be no fun and games, would there?”
“Did we?” he goes on. “Did we have fun?”
I make myself nod. His voice is fading now. He whispers, and I lean in closer. “I did you that favour,” he says.
“You shouldn’t be worrying about that now.”
He smiles, feeble. “You get what you deserve. We all do.”
I nod again. “What happens now?”
“Let’s end it.” He coughs and splutters.
“End it?”
“All the badness comes from Tenderness House. It’s where it all started. Norman Newton. You’ve got to bring him down.”
I snort. Can’t help myself.
His eyes gleam back at me. “You know what is funny?”
Everything? We’re having a right old laugh.
“He started paying up. Our plan was working. He just transferred the second sum of money. Meaningless now. Let’s do it.”
“Do what?” I say.
“Tell.”
“Tell?”
“End the silence. How many more years should we let them get away with it?” His fingers twitch themselves towards his phoney. He forces a lopsided smile as I pass him his box of tricks.
“I have a magic app. In the untimely event of my death. I believe it’s time to activate it.” His eyes fill with a fierce warmth as his fingers clutch the Smartphone. “This is for all you boys,” he says, “and all the girls.”
His thumb dances, its final dance. I watch as a series of images and info flash merrily one after the other across the display. First up, mine and Alfi’s horrible You’ve Been Framed Jimmy clip – faces of the kids pixilated out – directed to YouTube and shared with several hundred Facebook “Friends”. Then, some choice Twitterings to all and sunny.
Next up, names, addresses, photo ID of Chris Primrose, Minister for Urban Development, and top cop Chief Constable Wedderburn, as well as all details of Tenderness House, hacking themselves into what looks like dozens of media, government and police websites. Telling. Telling all. Instantaneous tittle-tat, blabber-mouthing to the whole wide world. Alfi would be so proud. It’s what he wanted all along.
Finally, instant imagery of Mad Dog Jackson’s SH4NK1 mean machine, sent to every media outlet Virus could find.
All good. All flashing by in the space of seconds.
Virus looks content. He lets the phoney fall from his fingers.
“And Digit?”
“Yes?”
“I’m sorry.”
So I smile again, soft for him. And I let him go.
24. GYM-BAGGED
I’m floating. I’m floating up in the blackness, and I can smell the oil and petrol fumes. Floating around in the stinking dark.
I’m dreaming me mother’s name. Katariiiiiiina. But not her last name. Not my last name. It’s what I were going to do, find me name. Find it, wi’ Digit, and wi’ Grace. But I lost Grace. Digit’s probably dead an’ all.
I’m rattling now, bruising me ribs. An engine starts. I’m in Jackson Banks’s car. He’s driving us away. Away to?
Where? Back whe
re I came from? Back to Tenderness?
Me eyes bust open. Darkness! Me arms wave and me legs kick, but they won’t wave and they won’t kick, and I yell, I yell me loudest, me voice muffles back at me, and I wiggle and I yell more. But I’m stuffed in a bag. I’m stuffed in a boot. Am I, am I really going back?
Call-Me Norman Newton just won’t let us go. It en’t fair. He let Grace go, and all t’others. How come I have to go back? I wanted to stay wi’ Scarlett and Danny, make them my home. Not Call-Me and the Jimmys.
I’m crying now, en’t I, like a little kid, and what ’ud me mam think? She’d think I were a right crybaby. There’s no point in it, is there? I need to think instead, and work out what’s the best I can do.
I need to use me ears.
First up, Jackson Banks is talking to someone in the front o’ the car. No. Not someone. Obnob. Obnob’s all he’s got left. He’s droning on, all about Grace.
“You miss her already, don’t you?” he’s saying to the dog. “She looked after both of us, didn’t she? Proper good, she was. And we had a right laugh, the three of us, didn’t we?” And then he adds, “And Crow.” Then there’s a pause, ’cos he dun’t want to talk about Crow, really, does he?
Obnob whimpers. I bet Banks is tickling him behind his ripped-up ear, giving him reassurance.
“She never did as she was told, that was her trouble. You do as you’re told – don’t you, dog? – and there’s no problem. I always did what I got told by Mr Newton and there was no problem. No problem. Do what you’re told.”
Obnob whimpers again. What Banks dun’t get is that Obnob in’t his dog any more. He’s my dog, in’t he? He’s only in the car, ’cos I’m in the car. I’m his master now. What the dog hears, I hear.
He’s only letting Banks tickle behind his ear ’cos he’s too soft-hearted to let him know that he’s on his own now. He’s got no one.
Banks is sniffling.
“Ohh, we had some laughs,” he calls out. “Made some good old messes, me and Grace and you … and Crow.”
