Even the Dogs: A Novel

by Jon McGregor

  Weren’t always easy to know what Mike was talking about and half the time it didn’t seem worth making the effort to ask. Weren’t always that easy to know who he was talking to anyway. Look round half the time and he’s on the phone. Ask him to speak up and he goes What’s that pal eh sorry I wasn’t talking to you. And when he was it didn’t always make sense and it was best to just go Yes Mike I know what you’re saying. All this stuff about the police, the government, surveillance agencies and that. All this stuff about watching your back and looking out for who might be listening. Harmless stuff most of it but it made him pretty uptight to be around. Like when he talked about those blokes being after him, the ones he said they’d seen down the centre. They hadn’t seen no blokes down the centre, not that Danny knew about. Always talking about someone being after giving him a beating but from what Danny knew they never had. Danny had taken a few since he’d moved up here, and plenty before that where he’d been staying before and then of course when he was a

  Mike always going on about it but it never seemed to happen to him. Always saying something like Danny you know what’ll happen if they try it la, you know what they’ll get for their troubles it don’t matter how many there are they’ll get their just rewards maybe not right then but later I will make sure of it I will track them down and find them one at a time and they won’t be so brave then you know what I’m saying not with an iron bar across their kneecaps an that not with a slab of paving stone dropped on their heads they won’t be laughing an that then you know what I’m

  Why did it take you so long to contact the police?

  I was worried I might look dodgy or something.

  Why would you think that?

  Just, because I was the last one there. And my record.

  Do you want to tell us about your record?

  You’ve got it, you can look it up for yourself.

  What do you think happened to Robert?

  Fuck should I know, I weren’t there.

  And what do you think has happened to your friends?

  I don’t fucking know.

  Where do you think they’ve

  Waste of time thinking about all these questions anyway, waste of time worrying whether the police were going to suspect him of anything. Like they were going to give a shit either way. Like Robert was even going to get in the papers for

  Got up by the roundabout and phoned the number and it weren’t a voice he recognised, mostly they were faces you’d seen about or people you’d been introduced to but not this one. Girl who answered wanted to know where he’d got the number before anything else, so he told her about the kid and where he’d seen the kid and that he knew Ben from

  Lights on in the pub but hardly no one there. Bloke in a rugby shirt behind the bar rubbing his face and looking up at the ceiling. TV on in the corner and Christmas decorations still dangling off the walls. Door swung open a minute but someone must have changed their mind because no one came out. Intercity train rattling along by the sidings, the empty carriages lit up like shop windows, the squares of light skimming over the rubbish and weeds and treestumps at the side of the tracks. The old man in the wheelchair pushing himself up the hill, the stuffing spilling out of his coat and his feet dragging along the ground as he inched his way forward one grunt at a time, each small turn of the wheel marked by a grimace across his

  Huh. Hah. Huh. Keeps going but it takes him

  She said All right then what you want and he said Ten dark. She said That’s all? You having a laugh? He said That’s all, and he heard her talking to someone else again, checking on something while the cramping in his stomach had him bent over and gasping, desperate to shit and his hands shaking and

  The girl said It’s difficult right now see

  Einstein running circles outside and scratching at the glass

  And she said Right well wait there we’ll see what we can do it’ll be half an hour or something and he shoved the door open and puked into the long dead grass

  And we see him there for the last time, bent double on the wasteground behind the phonebox, stumbling around in circles, desperate, waiting. We watch him through the darkened glass, getting smaller as we circle the roundabout by the Miller’s Arms and turn into the grounds of the teaching hospital, slowing between the landscaped embankments and security huts, round the outskirts of the site towards the mortuary buildings. Maybe in another place or another time we would be carrying his body ourselves, there would be music and prayer, there would be crowds, and carriages, and cameras. But there’s none of that now. We drive round the back of an industrial-looking building and down a long dark ramp, and some metal shutters are rattled open, and the photographer records each movement as the bagged weight of Robert’s body is slid on to a large trolley with a squeaking wheel by men who had hoped not to be at work today, who would rather be at home with their families, who are even now thinking about phoning and telling their wives they’ll be home soon in the hope that something will be put in the oven for their tea, and as the policeman rolls the shutters closed behind us we think of Danny out there now, still walking in circles, still waiting, his dog beside him and his bag getting heavy and the sky getting darker all the time

  three

  They lay him away behind a shining steel door in a room as cold as stone.

  We gather together in the room, sitting, standing, leaning against the wall, and we wait. For the morning. For someone to come back. For something to happen.

  Waiting is one thing we’re good at, as it happens.

  We’ve had a lot of practice.

  We’ve got the time.

  We’ve got all the time in the world.

  The room is windowless and dark, tiled from ceiling to floor, with a row of heavy steel doors at one end. Each door has three tags clipped to it, with names, dates and reference numbers. The doors feel cold and hard and smooth. Two rows of fluorescent lights hang from the high ceiling on long cables and chains. A large clock sits on the end wall. The quarry-tiled floor slopes down towards a narrow gutter, and the gutter flows into a grated drain. Everything is dark. Everything is spotlessly clean.

  And those days he was waiting there like that. For someone to come and find him. For someone to come and help. Just lying there, looking up at the ceiling and waiting. Or was it, what, sitting in his chair. Did it not even take that long. Lying there waiting for help and then all the waiting come to an end and his tears all wiped away or something more or less like that.

  Which is something else we know about. Lying on the ground and looking up and waiting for someone to come along and help. In some kind of trouble. A turned ankle or a cracked skull or a diabetic epileptic fit or just too drunk to stand up again without some kind of a helping hand.

  Which is when you’re most invisible of all. Get a good look at people’s shoes while they’re stepping around you. Like they’ll leave you there for days. Like they’ll leave you there as long as it takes.

  And how many times had he been lying on his floor like that. Over the years. Waiting. The way he waited when Yvonne and Laura first left. Must have waited weeks and months before he really gave up. If he ever did. Waking up each morning going What was that. The sound of the softly closing door. Remembering they were gone and thinking about what he could do to make them come back.

  Weren’t nothing he could do to make them come back and he knew it.

  He knew it but he couldn’t help waiting. What else could he do.

  Lying in bed in the mornings, and getting up to watch television, and sitting there waiting for his wife and daughter to come home. Even tidying the flat once or twice, throwing out all the things he’d smashed up, washing the few dishes that were left, opening the windows to clear out the smell of drink so he could sit there in a state of what, like some respectability, while he waited to welcome his wife and daughter home.

  Must have known they were never coming home. But he wanted them to. Jesus. Weren’t all that much to ask. He wanted the phone to ring one mor
ning, and to pick it up and hear Yvonne asking if they could talk, if they could meet and talk and like work something out. He wanted her to pass the phone to Laura, and to hear Laura say she missed him and she wanted to come home, and to be able to say You are coming home my sweetheart, you’re coming home very soon.

  He told Steve that one time. Steve didn’t say much. What could he.

  And here we are. Sitting here waiting and all of this coming to mind.

  Yvonne’s tense, whispering voice on the phone.

  Saying stuff like I have to put me and Laura first for a change. Saying I love you but I can’t be with you no more I just can’t.

  And then her mother’s voice on the phone, talking briskly, telling him he couldn’t speak to Yvonne and telling him not to call them any more.

  The sound of the unanswered phone.

  The sound of the television while he sat and watched it and waited for the phone to ring. The sound of one morning when he couldn’t bear waiting any more and he threw the phone against the wall, picking it up and throwing it and picking it up and throwing it until wires and circuit boards and silenced voices spilt from its broken body and were trodden into the floor.

  And tidying up those pieces as well, eventually, putting them out with the rubbish, the flat a little bit emptier than before.

  He could have gone there himself though.

  What was he scared of.

  It was a long way but it shouldn’t have been too far should it. Instead of just waiting. Waking up each morning going What was that. The sound of the softly closing door. And when there was nothing left to tidy up he started drinking before he’d even got out of bed. Because was there any point waiting.

  It was the drinking that had made Yvonne leave in the first place.

  That’s what she said, on the phone.

  And if she thought it had been bad enough that she had to get away then she should see him now. Was what he thought, then.

  She should see him now.

  The last things to go, as the flat kept emptying out, were the television and the washing machine. Two men from the rental shop came and collected them, and he didn’t have whatever it might have taken for an argument. Strength, heart, fucking, gumption or something. There’s nothing worth watching anyway, he joked, as they unplugged the television and carried it out of the flat without looking at him. Mind your backs lads, he said, as they eased the washing machine down the hallway, dripping water behind them and taking a chunk out of the doorframe on their way through. When they’d gone, after he’d kicked the kitchen cupboard doors from their hinges and emptied the drawers out on to the floor, he’d sat on the front step with a bottle of cider and started to feel better. And when he’d finished that bottle, and finished another, and was lying on his back on the hallway floor, he’d realised he wasn’t waiting for them to come home any more.

  Which is when Steve first showed up, come to think of it.

  The way these things all come to mind. When you’re sitting and waiting somewhere. In a room, like this. A waiting room like any other.

  We’ve got all the time in the world to sit and wait now.

  We watch the hands of the clock tick through the seconds and minutes and hours, and we wait. For someone to come and open one of those heavy doors and roll Robert out. Bring him out to us. Take him away.

  We sit and we look at the featureless door. Like, what, keeping watch.

  And those hours and days he was lying there like that, in the dark, in the light, in the dark again. No one passing him by but still. Someone could have done something, could they. When Laura got out of the taxi like that. What was she doing. Or Mike, or Ben. What happened in there.

  Keeping watch for what though la.

  Waiting for what and these things keep coming to mind.

  Heather outside the flat again. When was this. Must have been Christmas Day was it. Before she knew anything was wrong. Sort of before any of us knew. Waiting outside with a bag full of cans and snap, waiting for someone to come to the door.

  Didn’t usually wait long for someone to open the door so what was going on this time. Heather thought, then. She knows now, sort of. We all sort of know now.

  Banging on the door, and shouting through the letterbox, and turning round to look up and down the street. Like he might have been standing out there in the cold morning light, watching her, saying her name. As if.

  Banging on the door again, and the old woman with the tiger-paw slippers shuffling out of her flat and saying Excuse me but I think you’d be as well to give it a rest. I haven’t heard a thing for days. They must have gone away.

  Heather ignoring her because what did she know. Robert would have said something if he was going away. He would have told her first, wouldn’t he. He would. He would have told her basically if anything was wrong.

  Banging on the door again and the old woman still there. Saying If you ask me I’d say something’s probably happened. Saying I’m surprised it’s taken so long.

  Heather had only talked to this woman once before. When was it. When she came and knocked on the door herself. This was a few years back. Standing there with her arms folded when Heather opened the door, going Could you keep the noise down just this once, could you please? Basically like trembling with sort of determination, backing away even while she started talking and she was right to be scared with some of the people who were hanging around the flat at that time. No one likes being told what to do, but some of that lot sort of liked it even less than most. Heather just shut the door in her face before anyone else could get to her, and the old woman probably never realised she was being done a favour did she. And now here she was giving it all Oh something’s probably happened, and hurrying back into her own flat before Heather even realised what she meant.

  And that was basically the first thought she’d had that something might be wrong. Pressed up against the filthy glass but she couldn’t see a thing. Shouted Robert’s name, and called him a silly fat cunt, and banged on the door. Thought about kicking in the door or something but she didn’t think she could. Thought about climbing up on the garage roof and getting in that way, like some of them did, but she knew she wouldn’t make it. And anyway. She wasn’t sure she wanted to. Not if she was going to find something. She thought about going and getting some help. She thought but surely, a man like that, what’s going to have happened to him. Thought she might say something anyway though, when she got down the day centre, if she saw someone. But probably by then someone would have dealt with it. And it was probably nothing. Because so what if no one answered the door, he was probably just asleep or something, they were probably all sort of asleep in there. So what was the daft cow on about. Heather thought, then.

  So what if no one answered the door. Weren’t like it was always busy in there all the time.

  So how was she to know, how was any of us to know.

  Except Danny who found him but that was different.

  For a long time it weren’t like he would have answered the door anyway. Years back. When it was just him on his own and he weren’t expecting no one. Anyone at the door would have been some kind of trouble.

  But if he could have just shouted.

  If Heather could have done something about it, something like, instead of just wandering down to the day centre and getting stuck in to that Christmas dinner and more or less just forgetting about it.

  She remembered about it later. But she was back in her room by then and what could she do.

  Mike and Ben too busy going over Jamesie to think about getting back up to the flat. And what was all that. Something about Jamesie owing Mike money, but it was Ben who went steaming in and took him out from behind. Like a what like some kind of hired hand or something. Hired fist. Steaming across the lobby in the day centre, Jamesie standing by the toilets with Maggie and Bristol John and Tommy, booted him straight in the back and then clattered him around the head on his way down. Kicking him on the floor until someone got a hold of him. Near en
ough laughing or something.

  Don’t take much to knock Jamesie out. He’s usually halfway there already. But Ben made sure the job got done. Didn’t he just.

  Everyone waiting for Christmas dinner and they could have done without that getting in the way.

  Decent Christmas dinner they do there as well. All the trimmings, and a bit of drink allowed in for a change, and the place all decorated up nice. Even Maureen letting her hair down a bit with what must be her one drink of the year or something, a glass of dry sherry and suddenly everything’s hilarious. Probably a good job she saves it for Christmas. Seems like she might have a, what you call, a propensity.

  Weren’t laughing about this though, fucking, Jamesie out cold and bleeding all over the floor and four or five big blokes holding Ben down.

  That kid though. Ben. Fucksake. Give him a few rocks and he goes all like strength of a thousand bears and that. Does himself enough damage trying to batter his way out of trouble, running into doors and walls and taking on coppers twice his size. Makes a big impression for a small kid.

  Plenty of volunteers coming in for the day, and presents for everyone, and decent food. Sausages wrapped in bacon and roast parsnips and proper horseradish sauce. Don’t often get to eat proper horseradish sauce.

  They had him in handcuffs by the time Heather got there. Mike long gone by then, striding off through the markets with his long coat swinging, making out like he had some phone call to attend to or something.