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Lionel fell silent. He went to the glass door, pulled back the curtain, and gazed down at Jeff and Joe; they lay there side by side, humped in sleep.

‘I placed a bet today,’ he said in a surprised voice. ‘See for youself.’ And with a flourish he produced his newspaper and fanned it out on the table.

‘Reading the Sun now are we?’

‘Yeah. Gone uh, gone boffin for the day.’ A new beer can sneezed. ‘No, Des, Page Three Playoffs. And I’ve put money on Julietta. See, she reminds me of someone … I’m not a gambler, Des. Never was. I leave that to fucking Marlon.’

The odds on the gypsyish Julietta were duly noted and briefly discussed. Lionel turned the page, moving on to the Sun’s TV Guide. Again he turned the page: Dear Daphne!

I Feel Like a Tart As I Can’t Stop Bedding Strangers.’ Lionel read on (with his lips slowly shaping the words). ‘Well you are a tart, darling. Get on with it … Here, Des. Daphne reckons — Daphne reckons that a bloke dressing up as a bird is uh, is an attempt to create a marriage of one … Can a widow get hitched to her father-in-law? … Here. Here Des. There’s this lad from Liverpool … ‘

And Des gave thanks to the half-forgotten dream or dread that had prompted the stuff about Liverpool and Kensington. How was it he knew about Kensington and ‘Kenny’?

‘Gaw. This dirty little Scouse git’s been giving his nan one! His own nan … Funny old world, eh Des?’

Des nodded and coughed.

‘… Yeah, too right, Daph. Custodial sentence. Definitely. , they’ll love him inside. You know what they’ll do to him, Des? When he goes away?’

‘No. What’ll they do?’

‘Well. First they’ll fuck his arse off. Then they’ll slash his throat in the showers. They got nans too mate! … Kensington. “Kenny” — that’s where I did me Yoi!’

The room quietened and stilled as a passing cloud lent it the colour of slate.

‘Mum’s visitor, Des. He comes in, he goes out. Just as he pleases. He comes in, he goes out.’

And Des felt obscurely moved to say, ‘Half the time it’s probably just me, Uncle Li. I’m always in and out.’

Lionel detonated another Cobra. ‘You? Oh, sure. Listen. When you go calling on Grace, Des, is it you habit … Is it you habit to come in whistling at half past midnight? And go out whistling at ten? After another quickie and you English breakfast?’

She came hurrying down Crimple Way, quicker, busier, head tipped forward but chin outthrust, she’d had her hair shaped and trimmed and tinted, she wore a red sweater and a tight trouser suit of metallic grey. The gripped thinness of her mouth and the scissors of her legs were asserting something — asserting her determination to thrive. And she looked younger, he thought (he was leaning on her gate); but now, as she crossed the road, every six feet she got six years older.

‘Des,’ said Grace quietly as she moved past him. ‘Well come in, love, but you won’t want to stay.’

She laid out the shopping on the kitchenette counter: bread, eggs, tomatoes, a packet of bacon, a tin of baked beans (and her Silk Cut and a fresh bottle of Dubonnet). She was eyeing his reflection in the window above the sink.

‘What’s going on, Grace?’

‘Don’t say another word, dear. Everything’s as it should be.’

‘No, Grace,’ he said with his pleading frown, ‘everything’s changed. Lionel — he’s got old Dud with his ear jammed up against the wall!’

‘Lionel? Bugger Lionel. Listen. I’ll be forty any minute and all right I’m past it — yeah, past caring! … Ah, Des. I’ve got something to tell you, dear. I’ve got something to tell you.’

Outside, it had rained and grown dark under a lilac sky, and a film of water swam on the flagstones. Orange blotches of mirrored streetlight kept pace with him as he walked down Crimple Way. The awe of his relief was sumptuous, hallucinatory … Des Pepperdine was fifteen years old. And he supposed it was a good thing to get this learned early on. Now he bowed and threw his head back and almost laughed as he consented to the Distonic logic of it.

It’s better this way, Des. You can start calling me Gran again. You and me, we’ll just go back to how we were before. And no one’ll be any the wiser. It’s better this way.

It is. It is. But Gran. Think. He’s on to you and your new friend. Uncle Li knows!

Oh yeah? He doesn’t give a monkey’s about his mum. I haven’t seen him this century! And what’s he going to do about it? If this gets out, who’ll suffer more? Him! What’s he going to do? What’s he going to do?

9

LIONEL HAD A lock-up or godown on Skinthrift Close. You approached it crunching on a snowfield of shattered glass, and skirting your way past scorched or smouldering mattresses and swamps and copses of outlandish junk and clutter, including a wide variety of abandoned vehicles. Scooter, camper, tractor; there was even a dodgem, clog-shaped, its electric pole like a withered shank; and a lifesize rocking horse, with the eyes of an ageing barmaid … Des was summoned to this address by mobile phone: his sixteenth-birthday present had been brought forward, in response to the general emergency (and issued to him like a piece of military equipment).

‘I’m in here!’

The shop, as Lionel called it, was not looking its best — partly because Lionel had just finished smashing the place up. It comprised a double garage (housing the sooty Ford Transit), a congested office, and a chilly cubicle containing a deep sink and a cracked toilet. Des heard the jerk of the chain; and now a singleted Lionel emerged, mopping himself down with a length of kitchen towel. He said equably,

‘I’m over it now.’ He pointed to his left: a broken chair, splintered racks and brackets, stoved-in tea chests. ‘Because this isn’t a time for anger, Des. It’s a time for clear thought. Come in here.’

Lionel’s office: heaps of jumbled drawers full of watches, cameras, power tools, game consoles; a low bookcase full of bottled drugs (for bodybuilders — synthetic hormones and the like); a fruit crate full of knuckledusters and machetes. All of it swiped, blagged, hoisted … How intelligent was Uncle Li? Even the most generous answer to this question — which had bedevilled Des since the age of five or six — would have to include a firm entry on the debit side: there was no evidence whatever that Lionel was any good at his job. He was a subsistence criminal who spent half his life in jail.

‘Gran. Christ. I know it’s Town,’ he said, ‘but this is ridiculous.’

They faced each other across a raw table strewn with knocked-off jewellery and sold-on credit cards. Without warning Lionel gave one of his tight little sneezes: it sounded like a bullet fired through a silencer. He wiped his nose and said,

‘There’s been a sighting. It’s a schoolboy, Des. Purple blazer. The Squeers blazer. She’s doing it with a schoolboy.’

Des tried to look surprised. Because he wasn’t surprised. This was the Distonic logic of it: he was fifteen years old — and Gran had passed him over for a younger man. Lionel said,

‘Dud saw him. Purple blazer. Dud saw him taking his leave.’

Feeling an unfamiliar latitude, Des asked, ‘Sure it wasn’t me?’

‘He said it wasn’t you. He said, And not you spearchucker nephew, neither. Squeers Free. So, Des, you’ll be lending a hand with me enquiries.’

‘What d’you reckon you’ll do, Uncle Li?’