It was growing dark already as they left. Zak weighed up his options: a shop doorway or Midge’s. He rang Midge. ‘Just a night,’ he asked. ‘I’ll find somewhere tomorrow.’
Midge hesitated. Zak waited, hoping.
‘Can’t be any longer,’ Midge said.
‘Course not. Thanks, mate.’
There was a girl living with Midge now, Stacey, and she didn’t take to Zak, wrinkled her nose and went off to the bedroom when he got there. Midge raised his eyebrows and said she was a mardy cow but not to take any notice.
Later Stacey went out, trimmed up like a Christmas tree, all shiny and gaudy. Midge gave Zak a fiver and he went for chips and jumbo sausages and curry sauce (no sauce for Bess).
Midge had to stay in; he’d business to do. People calling round to score.
Zak and Midge had a blow after the chips. Started Zak’s cough off but he liked the blurry feeling that followed, made him dopey and giggly.
One of Midge’s customers brought a couple of big bottles of cider with him and they shared them and watched Top Gear and a Bear Grylls rerun, surviving in the jungle. Zak got the giggles, then the munchies, but Midge said they had to leave some stuff for Stacey.
Zak slept on the sofa, Bess alongside him on the floor nearby. Midge had turned the lights off but the curtains were sheer and the street light, a fierce blue-white, filled the room with a glow.
In the early hours he heard Stacey come back and clatter around. He smelt toast and bacon and his stomach growled. Bess twitched, raised her head and looked at him. He put his hand on her head for a bit. Then she relaxed again, settled back with a sigh.
Zak had a dream he was with Bear Grylls in the jungle. Bear was picking grubs off the floor and eating them. Zak felt sick and Bear was yelling at him, ‘Eat it or starve, see if I care!’ Then Bear was hitting him, hitting his head and making him feel even more sick. Zak woke up and he was glad he was in Manchester, on Midge’s couch, even if he was dead cold.
In the morning he didn’t see Stacey but Midge made him a fried egg buttie and a coffee. Zak took his pills. Midge asked him what they were but told him there wasn’t much of a call for them. Midge dealt in temazepam and co-codamol as well as weed and E’s. Zak thought he’d keep them anyway, try and sort his chest out for good.
‘Where you gonna go?’ Midge asked him.
Zak shrugged. He hated the hostels and they wouldn’t let him in with Bess, anyway.
‘Maybe another old wreck.’
Midge narrowed his eyes. ‘They’ve boarded up the Narrow Boat,’ he said. Zak imagined the pub, dark, smelling of old fags and beer. Better than nothing.
‘Need somewhere I can get into without too much bother.’
Midge waggled his head. ‘They’ve put grills up.’
They were watching Jeremy Kyle, the people screaming at each other, some lard-arse whinging about his girl’s spending habits, and there was a knock at the door. Midge let the lad in and took delivery of an M &S carrier. Paid him. When the boy had gone, Midge told Zak he was one of Carlton’s runners. ‘You know they put a reward out for Danny Macateer?’
Zak felt a shimmer of unease. Did Midge know something? Had Zak let something slip last night? He’d been pretty wrecked – he hadn’t said anything, had he? Something slithered inside him, a worm in his belly.
‘Twenty grand,’ Midge said.
‘You’d have to be mad,’ Zak said. ‘Even if you did know something.’
Midge agreed. ‘Never live to spend the dosh.’
Twenty grand. Zak’s head swum with pictures. A little flat and him and Bess with all their own stuff. Fridge full of food, the heating on, a power shower. Two bedrooms, one for his mam. He thought of Carlton raising the gun, the lad spinning and falling. Bess barking. Imagined himself turning down a road one day, brought up short, two lads with guns in their hands. Zak putting his own hands up as if palms could stop bullets. The jolts as one then another punched through him. A waterfall of fear and pain and Bess barking, barking as his sight went.
Zak shivered. ‘Suicide,’ he agreed. No one would ever give up Carlton, no matter how high the reward.
That afternoon he set out, went by the Narrow Boat but the grills were heavy duty, a professional job. You’d need power tools to break in there. He walked all round for hours but didn’t see any likely spots. He sat with Bess in the launderette to warm up a bit. The smell was good in there, clean and soapy. He was starving by teatime. He did an hour on the supermarket car park and made a few bob. Bought a double cheeseburger and shared it with Bess. He thought about trying town. They were still building stuff round the canals but the trouble was the security in the new places was really tight. Dogs and nightwatchmen and cameras. A condemned building would be better.
He got the bus over to Longsight, got off on Dickie Road by the street market and walked along Stockport Road to Levenshulme. One or two places did seem derelict but when you looked closer you’d see movement inside, or steamed-up windows, and know better.
Zak’s feet were hurting. He’d got a blister on his little toe. It grew dark and began to rain, soft and fine like a net. He bought some Lambrini and tobacco and Mars bars and food for Bess. Then he found a cardboard box left out for the recycling. Off a new dishwasher. Still pretty dry. He took that and went up to Levenshulme train station. Once the platform was empty, he clambered down on to the tracks and underneath the platform where he could rig up a hidey hole. The cardboard flattened out was their bed. He’d have to get a sleeping bag sorted in the morning.
He slept fitfully. After eleven nothing stopped at the station but the trains ran all night; the vibration singing in his bones before he could even hear the engines, then the rattle and crash and roar and the dust as they came racing through. Freight trains. He couldn’t tell what they were carrying, some had old-fashioned trucks but others were long lines of containers, some with signs he thought might be Chinese.
He’d have to find a place to stay. He’d never make it sleeping rough. The knife in his chest was twisting again and he couldn’t stop shivering, his skin was greasy from the trains, he felt like he’d got diesel in his lungs. He cuddled up to Bess, desperate to get warm. She whined and licked his face. Good dog. He closed his eyes and felt the tickle of her fur on his cheek, breathed in her doggy smell and listened to a police siren whooping through the night.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Cheryl
Vinia told Cheryl that she’d heard Carlton and his boys talking about the latest shooting and the chat coming round to Danny. Carlton bragging how that had sent a message plain and clear to the rival gangs.
‘What message?’ Cheryl asked. ‘That they’re stone killers and they don’t care who they hit?’
Vinia cut her eyes at her, pulled her hand away. Cheryl had manicured Vinia’s nails, was now doing the base layer. ‘You want me to tell you or you just gonna keep interrupting all the time?’ Vinia snapped.
‘Don’t have a fit,’ Cheryl said.
Vinia huffed.
‘Just tell me.’
‘He said Danny wasn’t a player but he was a blood relation to some of the Nineteen Crew. Taking him out would show them this was war. No rules all’s fair.’
Cheryl looked at Vinia. ‘By that reckoning, makes you fair game an’ all. Relation of Carlton.’
‘I ain’t agreeing with it,’ Vinia protested, ‘just saying, that’s all.’
Cheryl hated Carlton for what he’d done, probably hated him more because they were all so weak and helpless around him, no one to raise a voice. Except Nana and even she wouldn’t be so stupid as to do it in the man’s hearing. How come Nana was so brave? Had she been born brave or did she get braver as she grew older?
‘You seeing Jeri soon?’ Vinia held her other hand out. Cheryl checked the nails were dry and began applying the next coat. Vinia wanted sunsets on each naiclass="underline" real bright, you hear me.