On the fourteenth floor the door to flat 142 hung open an inch or two. Drums, screaming vocals and a crash of cymbals escaped through the gap. I knocked but there was no response. I pushed it open, and flinched as a greyhound leapt out, then skidded dangerously down the deep concrete stairwell.
‘Hello?’ I called, and stepped inside.
The flat was dark and cold. Faded paisley wallpaper lined the walls, torn and curled in places. The carpet was slippery and had thick concentric stains as though the grime had been trodden in layer by layer. The music stopped.
‘What the fuck?’ Adrian stood at the far end of the room next to a window. He was dressed in baggy blue jeans and a Sex Pistols T-shirt. He put out a flat palm and I stopped. ‘I don’t know what the hell you’re doing here but if you don’t fuck off right now I’ll set the dog on you.’
‘Dog escaped.’ I shrugged.
‘What?’
‘Went down the stairs.’
Adrian clamped a hand to his forehead. ‘Oh fuck, someone will nick him.’
‘Won’t he know his way back?’
He laughed suddenly. ‘Only nicked him myself yesterday.’
‘I’ve seen that lanky, greasy-haired paedo fucking Paki,’ I said.
He looked serious again. ‘What fucking paedo Paki?’
‘Bobby — remember him? The pound note you never got.’
‘Okay.’ He briefly closed his eyes. ‘Don’t go on.’
‘I spotted him in this new mosque. You wouldn’t believe it — the man’s a fucking miracle. He levitated! He’s going about like he’s some kind of fucking prophet.’ I paused and raised my eyebrows as though issuing a challenge. ‘And I know where he lives.’
We left the flat and walked for a while in the drab drizzly silence without speaking. Raindrops were suspended in Adrian’s closely cropped blond hair. His strong broad face was pale and freckled and a thick chin jutted vulnerably. His eyes seemed to scan the horizon and then dart to the side in small movements like those of a rat-catcher in an old movie. He held his shoulders stiffly, and his T-shirt, damp from the rain, outlined the bulge of his pectoral muscles and hung limply over his lean stomach. His hands hung at his sides, clenching into fists and unclenching.
The high street was nearly deserted. ‘Normally, if I’ve got coin I can’t go past without going in,’ said Adrian, glancing at Ivan’s chip shop. Ivan, visible through the glass frontage, wore a chef’s cap. When not ladling chips into or out of hot oil, he always stood and smiled at every passer-by. He had left the door ajar, and I took a deep luxurious breath of the smell of vinegar, pickled onion and hot chips.
‘I’ll just smash that Bobby cunt with whatever.’ Adrian stopped and turned to me. ‘I’ll pretend it was a spur-of-the-moment thing.’
I dug my hands into my pockets. ‘You don’t have to kill him.’
Adrian exhaled loudly and bit his lower lip, thinking. ‘I was going to enlist in the armed forces.’
‘You could just scare him?’
‘You know, after renting myself to that greasy Paki. ’ Adrian’s laughter betrayed his inability to finish the sentence. ‘Whatever happens, I want you to know I’m not bashing him just because he’s a Paki. I wouldn’t do that, I’m not like my dad.’
‘Army, navy or air force?’ I kicked at a stone, sending it careering into the road.
‘I’m not a skinhead. No skinhead amounted to nothing.’
‘We’re all a little bit like our fathers,’ I offered.
‘Proper army — infantry,’ he said proudly.
‘I reckon you’d be good at it.’
He nodded. ‘I reckon it’s all I’m good for.’
‘You get to leave this shithole.’
‘Yeah, I got brochures from the job centre: there’s winter training in Norway and jungles in Belize, no pain. ’ His chin thrust forward. ‘Yeah, I could train myself to feel no pain.’
‘I believe that.’
The high street terminated with a newly sprung-up video rental shop on one corner and an old pub on the other. The wind carried a blue plastic shopping bag in circles around a roundabout, and the road ahead sloped downwards, disappearing into a bend, towards the railway station and beyond to the old walled factories bordering the canal.
‘You must be making plenty of coin?’ he said.
‘I’ve been thrown out.’
He considered me suspiciously. ‘I thought you Pakis stuck together.’
‘I didn’t want to marry no Paki, so I left. My father’s last words were Where will you go?’
‘And you came here! You poor cunt. I could see it coming, though. Your dad’s a bit like mine. All mine wanted was a quiet life, earning, spending, his mates and the boozer, but that’s all gone and he blames the Pakis.’
‘I went to stay with Maley’s dad for a bit.’
‘Anywhere’s better than mine.’
‘They’ll send you down for murdering that paedo, unless of course you tell them what he did to you.’
Adrian looked back towards the towers, and shrugged helplessly. ‘Manslaughter, not murder, still both cowardly things to do.’
‘No pain, have that army life instead,’ I urged.
‘Fucker.’ He slowly unclenched a fist at his side and nodded to emphasize each word. ‘Something always gets in the fucking way.’
‘Come on, right now. Let’s go to the army recruitment office.’
Adrian shook his head.
‘It’s my fault, I shouldn’t have let him.’
‘You’re the only person that knows. ’ His lower jaw trembled and he pointed a finger inches from my eye.
I took half a step back and gazed up at the grey afternoon sky. It was broiling and darkening, readying for another assault of hard rain. ‘I’m sorry.’
Adrian stared at a road sign. ‘Did you see that guy with the rabbit, in the pram? That’s Paedo John and the rabbit’s called Fred. He uses it to lure kids back to his flat. Nothing hardcore like, takes pictures and weirdo-old-man shit, and everyone knows, but he’s got coin. If you’re short of a fiver, he’s good for it.’
I opened my mouth to say sorry again, but nothing came out. I looked at Adrian. He dug his hands into his pockets, his T-shirt flapping around his shoulders. He turned his head to look further into the distance.
*
It seems that for Grace, the lights have been put out. The philtrum above her upper lip vibrates loudly and her chest rises and falls in slow exaggerated movements. I don’t suppose she has heard anything I have said, and curiously, it doesn’t seem to matter.
I picture the ordnance as an X-ray in shades of grey, cylinders of power and a sprig of coiled wire coming from each. The wires connect to a small transparent box, the fuse, which is connected in turn to a cluster of small rectangular nine-volt batteries linked in series to compound the input. The X-ray view shows the inside of the batteries, a dense network of crisscrossing plates.
I continue to stare at Grace. Nagging at me is the irrational thought that it could blow while we sleep. That would ‘put the lights out’ like she wanted. It’s the best way to die, in your sleep. But it won’t happen, not without detonation, and the detonator, a mobile phone, sits in the breast pocket of my tunic on the chair. If I squint my eyes I can believe I see its bulging flat surface.
I close my eyes and picture Adrian as merely an outline in pencil; then, picking up my felt-tip pens, I begin to colour him in.
*
Cradley’s own army recruitment office was sandwiched between Café Oregano and a clothes shop I couldn’t see into because every inch of window space had been covered with the word SALE in tall red letters. Adrian and I stood by the door and smiled nervously at each other.