“I just want to sell my jewellery and buy some food.”
“Your jewellery? I doubt it. Do you know what they do to pretty little thieves like you?”
He brushed his fingers down her cheek and as she pulled away he grasped her neck tightly. The girl tensed up and with an effort wriggled out of his grip. At that moment a man with grey hair and glasses stepped into the store banging a shopping cart against the doorframe. The storeman was instantly alert and busied himself behind the counter while the girl snatched up her jewellery and practically ran for the door. John followed her without thinking, side-stepping the old man’s shopping cart as he left the store.
He found her leaning in the alleyway beside the buyall. Her face had taken on a greyish tinge and she was gasping for breath. Slowly she sank to one knee and leant her forehead against the dirty bricks in the alley.
“Are you okay?” John asked.
The girl didn’t look up. Instead, her hands worked away at the lid of a small bottle. A single white tablet fell into her hand and the girl swallowed it down. Then she sank fully to the ground and wrapped her arms around her knees. People walked by the alleyway, but no one stopped. John knelt beside her with no idea what to do.
“Shall I get someone?” he said.
Slowly her breathing levelled out and she shook her head, eyes closed. “No, I’ll be fine. Will you help me up?”
John put a hand beneath her armpit and gripped her wrist with the other. She let him support most of her weight and haul her upwards. “Are you sure you’re alright? You don’t look well.”
“I’m fine. It happens sometimes.”
“Have you been to a doctor?”
The girl gave an unhappy laugh. “Do you know any free doctors round here?”
“Well my mum’s a nurse. I’m sure she would help.”
She looked at him then as if she had only just realised he was there. John reddened up beneath her stare. “I know you from somewhere, don’t I?”
“We go to the same school. I helped you through the knife gate?”
“That’s it,” she said, a sudden brightness to her face. A moment later it had slipped away to be replaced by a deep sadness. “God what must I look like. Don’t tell anyone at school about this will you?”
“Of course not,” John said earnestly. “I never would.”
She tried to walk out of the alleyway but immediately stumbled, only staying upright when John steadied her. “Come on,” he said. “You’re not well. Let me get my mum to look at you.”
“That’s not what I need. The only things that can make me better were in this.” She held up the empty bottle.
“Are they pills? How can you get them if you don’t see a doctor though?”
“It’s not that hard. But I’ll need your help.”
John glanced at his watch. He was already late and the thought of being told off by his dad was churning at his insides. Even so, the decision was an easy one to make. “Of course I’ll help.”
“Thankyou.”
She assured him that it was only a few streets away and looped her arm through his for support as they walked. They moved off the main street and into narrower roads. Natural light was filtered out here by the imposing three-storey slum housing and John swallowed down his fear and forced himself onwards.
So distracted was he by the shadowy figures and half-hidden doorways that he never saw the patrol car crawling slowly up the street behind them. He never heard the engine cut out and certainly didn’t see the gunnerman follow them into the alleyway. Which was why he never imagined that he would soon be staring down the muzzle of a gun.
Chapter 24
“I’m Alia by the way.”
“John.”
“Pleased to meet you,” she said with mock formality. “So how old are you John?”
“I’m fourteen,” he lied. “How about you?”
“Sixteen.”
Although she seemed more surefooted now, Alia’s arm was still looped through his. John had scarcely dared to move it in case she suddenly remembered. They took a left and then a right off the main street and that was when she slowed down and disentangled herself. She brought out the handkerchief of jewellery and picked out the pearl earrings. The rest of the bundle she placed back in her pocket.
“What’s that for?” John said. “I thought the man wouldn’t let you use it.”
Alia scowled. “He’s not a man. He’s a vile excuse for a human. Do you think I look like a thief?”
“Of course not. You look…normal.” John realised how lame that had sounded but Alia didn’t seem to notice.
“It’s the next street,” she said. “But you should stay here.”
“What’s the next street? What are we doing here?”
“I’m going to buy some more tablets. I need them.”
John looked doubtfully at their surroundings. “This doesn’t look like the kind of place you’d find a doctor.”
“No it doesn’t. But these are the people who sell what I need.”
She turned the corner and moved out of sight. John wondered if he should follow, but buying drugs from the back streets of the Trade District didn’t sound like anything he wanted a part of. He wished his dad was here.
After a few moments, he peered around the edge of the building and saw that Alia was approaching a short, stocky teenager. The youth stared with hard eyes as Alia spoke to him. John was too far away to hear their words, but he saw her presenting the earrings.
Behind him, there was the sudden crunch of footsteps and when he span around there was a gunnerman not ten paces away. They both froze until the gunnerman reached for his sidearm. “Stay where you are.”
Until that moment, John had not thought of fleeing, but as soon as the idea was there, he could think of nothing else. Like a startled rabbit he tore round the corner, blundering into Alia and the pusher.
“Gunnerman,” John called.
The youth gave three sharp smacks of warning on a metal shutter beside him and then pulled a neat black handgun from his belt.
“Did you do this?” he growled, pointing the muzzle at Alia.
Before she could answer, the gunnerman ran into view. He stepped back when faced with the youth and his pistol, quickly levelling his own weapon. Holding it at shoulder height with a straight arm, he stalked forwards.
“Drop it.”
“Fuck off.”
The youth squeezed off three shots in quick succession while the gunnerman dropped to one knee and returned fire. Alia threw herself against the wall, but John wasn’t prepared to stay there with bullets zipping past. Ducking low, he grabbed her wrist and dragged her out of the crossfire. Alia quickly found her feet and together they raced out of the alley.
Behind them, they heard more gunfire followed by a grunt of pain and the wet smack of someone hitting the ground. A heartbeat of quiet followed until the clatter of a bike engine reverberated between the narrow streets.
It growled through the gears and more shots were fired. John gave an involuntary duck of his head with each recoil, but neither he nor Alia stopped running until they were across Main Street and safely out the Trade District.
Back home, Robb prised the plug from the wall and the radio cut to silence. He paced the length of the kitchen biting down his anger. It was becoming harder to lock it in these days. Harder to keep the rage from bubbling over. Beside him, Eliza was slicing vegetables, her knife clipping rhythmically against the wooden chopping board.
“Was I too hard on him?”
She shrugged, sweeping tiny discs of carrot to one side and then reached into the sink for another. He leaned against the worktop with his arms folded and watched the nub of Eliza’s fourth finger rest on the knife.
“All they need is an excuse,” he said. “Just one little thing.”
“He knows that. He was trying to explain. If you had listened to him properly you’d see it too.”
“I did listen,” his voice gave an involuntary rise in
volume and immediately he sensed Eliza shutting down. “At least I tried to. It’s just that when he was away so long, I knew he was… I knew something.”
That part was true. He had watched John follow his brother from the house and it had prompted a churning sense of dread inside him. By the time three hours had passed, that feeling had gnawed away at any thread of self-control he still possessed. So when John finally appeared, wearing a wide-eyed look of guilt, all Robb could do was tear into him.
“I should never have let him go on his own.”
“It could have happened just as easily if we were there.”
He heard the truth in her words. Worse still, he also knew that part of him had wanted this to happen. He had lived in fear of someone noticing his family for so long now, that he almost welcomed the certainty that the gunnermen had finally proved him right. All John’s excuses had been swatted away without any concern for how scared he had been. It hadn’t even been about him at that point. So when John fled upstairs, blinking back tears, Robb had paced the lounge, swearing in his own disbelief and shouting himself to a standstill.
“Maybe you should try to talk to him,” Eliza said. “He’s not Ryan. He’ll still listen.” Before he could feel the unintended sting behind that comment, she suddenly gasped and the knife clattered to the floor. Eliza ran to the sink, suckling at her finger, squeezing lines of pain into the corner of each eye.
“You okay?” Robb said, standing beside her and reaching for her hand. He was surprised when she let him guide her fingers below the jet of cold water. It had been so long since they touched that even this small contact was strangely intimate.
The knife had opened a clean slice across the pad of her middle finger. Eliza winced at the sting but held it there until the blood had washed from the cut. When she pulled it from the tap, fresh blood quickly swelled up.
“We don’t have any plasters,” Robb said, taking a cloth from the kitchen drawer and wrapping it round her finger. “I’m sorry. I was distracting you.”
For a moment, he withdrew, a natural reaction to the number of times she had retreated from his touch in the past. To his surprise though her hands sought his out. “No,” she said quickly. “I wasn’t paying attention.”
“I’m still sorry,” he said quietly.
“Why?”
“Where do I begin?” His anger had receded, leaving a void that suddenly pitched with emotion. He tried to speak again, but his voice cracked and he simply shook his head. Eliza breathed deeply, closing her eyes as she brought Robb’s hand to her lips.
“We’re okay. Go and speak to John. He needs you now.”
Chapter 25
One of John’s earliest memories was going to the Trade District with his dad. He had only been four or five at the time, chattering away to the gunnermen at each checkpoint. In his mind’s eye, the sun had been shining fiercely that day making everyone red-faced and short-tempered. Even so, his dad had worn trousers and a long-sleeved shirt which was buttoned all the way to the top. It was only when he grew older that John understood the significance of that. Only after seeing the scars.
That day – maybe eight years ago – there had been a long queue at the buyall. They waited in line, shuffling forwards a few steps at a time as people paid and left. His dad picked up a newspaper and placed his ID card on top. The electronic ones had only just been released and John remembered how special it had seemed to own a shiny plastic card with your face on it.
When they reached the counter though, John’s dad was sweating worse than before. He kept checking over his shoulder at the dozen or so people who were now waiting in line. Reluctantly he passed across his ID card. As soon as it was scanned, a high-pitched alarm sounded on the terminal and the storeman tensed up. John watched him reading through the list of words that cascaded down his screen. He didn’t know at the time, but they were a list of his dad’s previous convictions, the first of which read Treason.
“Get out,” the storeman said, his whole body trembling with anger and fear.
“It’s okay,” his dad said calmly. “Check your screen. I have permission to buy this.”
“Out of my shop, now. Or I’ll call the gunnermen.”
“Please. I’ve queued for ten minutes. Just let me buy the paper.”
“Get out,” the storeman shouted as he fumbled with the latch on the counter flap. The high-pitched alarm was still sounding and John felt the mood in the shop change. The other customers stepped back, leaving a circle of empty space around them. He remembered placing one hand inside his dad’s.
“What’s happening?”
“Nothing son. We’re leaving.”
Despite the fear he had felt at the time, John knew now that it hadn’t been so bad. No gunnermen arrived and no one had been hurt. He knew for certain that the damage to his family on Saintsday was much worse. Even so, that day with his dad in the buyall had been the first time he felt truly afraid. He had hated the ID cards for a long time after that and had always found reasons to stop his dad scanning his.
It was true that he had been elated when his own card arrived last year. It just wasn’t for the reason that his parents believed. The wonder at having his face on a card had left him forever that day in the store. Owning one himself though, meant that he would never have to watch his dad be shamed like that again.
As if on cue, the bedroom door opened and his dad gave three quiet knocks. “John. Have you got a minute?”
He was lying face down on the top bunk and quickly rubbed away the tears from his face as the door creaked further open. John’s dad limped into the room and leant against the rails of the top bunk.
“I didn’t handle things very well earlier, did I?”
“No you didn’t.”
“You were trying to tell me what happened, but I just shouted at you.”
“Yes you did.”
“I’m sorry.” John couldn’t remember a time his dad had apologised. “I just got so worried. You were only supposed to be gone half an hour and then…” as he went over it again, his voice began to rise. He took a deep breath. “I’m trying hard to listen now. Tell me what happened.”
John slid to the back of the bed and held a pillow front of him. It was a difficult day to explain. He didn’t want to get Ryan or Alia in trouble, but his head was spinning from everything he’d seen. Since the first time he followed his brother, so much had happened and it was just too big for a twelve-year-old boy. Any words he had to explain it though suddenly felt trapped in his throat and instead hot tears pooled in each eye and his bottom lip shook.
“Hey? What is it?”
A sob broke from deep inside him and John squeezed the pillow even tighter, letting his tears flow while his dad waited in silence.
“Are you in trouble?” he said eventually.
John shook his head.
“Hurt?”
“No.”
“Is it someone else then?”
He nodded, but sensing his dad’s frustration, forced himself to speak. “It’s Ryan.”
Immediately, his dad’s jaw clenched tight. “Go on.”
“I think he’s in trouble and I don’t know what to do.”
“What’s he done?”
“First, you’ve got to promise not to say any of this to him. He can’t know that I’ve spoken to you about it.” His dad nodded, never actually saying the words. “No, you’ve got to promise. Do you promise?”
“I promise,” he snapped. “Now tell me. What’s wrong?”
He explained how he had been following Ryan for weeks. That he had seen him handing out posters at the factory gates and then later watched him run from the gunnermen. He described the man from the abandoned chapel who had threatened to kill him. Finally, he told him about why he had really volunteered to get a newspaper today, so that he could find out where Ryan was going. When he got as far as the buyall his dad interrupted.
“Who’s Alia?”
“Just a girl I know. When she went to the c
ounter to pay I saw…”
“Know her how?”
“From school. She’s only been there a few weeks. She was trying to buy some food, but the man there wouldn’t take any of her jewellery. He kept trying to touch her face and whisper to her so she left the store. Then she was in the alleyway outside and it looked like she was having a heart attack or something.”
“John,” his dad groaned. “Why do you get mixed up in these things?”
“I didn’t try to. But how was I supposed to leave her when she asked for my help.”
“What did she ask you for?”
“To help buy her pills.”
“Pills?” he near shouted.
“You’re doing it again,” John cried, meeting the volume of his dad’s voice. “You never listen.”
His dad bit back a comment and his hands balled up into fists. The next words were much softer. “Okay. Go on.”
“I told Alia she should go and see a doctor if she was ill, but she said she didn’t have enough money. Then she went to this man who was behind the Trade District. She asked me to wait for her around the corner while she spoke to him, but a gunnerman had followed us.”
His dad folded his arms but remained silent.
“He told me to stand still but I didn’t listen. I ran around the corner and the man that was selling the pills suddenly pulled out a gun. They started firing at each other and I think one of them got shot. Me and Alia were already running though and we hid for ages in a building site until the sirens had gone. She left after that and I came home.” A small tremor passed up his back when he finished the story. An aftershock of the adrenaline.
“Did they see your face?” his dad said quietly. “The gunnerman or the pusher?”
“Pusher? No Dad, he was just someone that sells pills. Like a doctor for people that don’t have money.”
“Did they see your face?”
“Maybe, just for a second. But I don’t think they’d remember me.”
Straybeck Rising Page 14
