‘There’s a dog
coming over,’ he replies, tonelessly. ‘I figured you’d want the
gun.’
‘What?
Why?’
‘To shoot it
with, obviously.’
‘What? Why
would I shoot it?’
‘Why not?’
Charlie, with the revolver now in his hands, flicks open the
cylinder and inspects its contents. ‘Two rounds left. One for the
dog, and one for the owner.’ He clicks it back shut and hands the
gun to me. I look at him with bemusement.
‘Why would I
shoot the dog?’
His bemusement
mirrors my own.
‘It’s odd that
you would ask that about the dog, but not the owner.’
‘It just
seemed weird; the dog can’t rat us out, can it?’
‘Okay, just
kill the owner, then.’
‘I’m not
fucking killing either of them.’
‘So what,
you’re just going to leave it up to fate?’
‘Yup.’
‘What if he
comes over?’
‘Then I’ll
just ask him nicely to not inquire as to why we’re out here digging
a hole at five in the morning.’
‘Think he’ll
keep quiet?’
‘He might
do.’
‘Or he might
ring the police and tell them exactly where we buried this orgy of
evidence.’
‘He might do
that, too.’
‘You ready to
take that risk?’
I’m too cold
to play this fucking game with him, right now.
‘Look, if you
want him dead so fucking much, fucking kill him yourself.’
‘I don’t want
him dead. I just want to make sure you understand the implications
of leaving him alive, so you can make an informed decision about
whether you’re going to kill him.’
‘And why the
dog?’
‘Because it
might bite me if you kill its master,’ he replies. ‘It’s a dog; who
gives a shit?’
‘Hollywood.’
He
chuckles.
‘This is
England, bitch.’ Suddenly his pupils dart over my shoulder, and he
adds: ‘Now’s your chance.’
I jump and
spin as I feel the dog’s nose rub against the back of my neck. Its
keen, inquisitive eyes stare back into my own, the brain behind
them being smart enough, apparently, to realise that finding three
young men crouched in a freshly-dug grave is not a normal
occurrence, and yet innocent enough to not suspect that we’re up to
no good. It’s a scruffy little creature; one of those mutts who
makes up for his lack of poise and grace by letting passing
children pat him with their little sticky hands. I raise the
gun.
‘Rufus!’ a
gruff voice calls from beyond the trees. It’s not the kind of voice
whose owner would be easily threatened into silence. ‘Ere boy!’
Even though my
brain immediately dismisses the idea as a crazy one, I could swear
that the dog gives me a curt nod, as if to say, ‘about your
business,’ before it turns tail and leaves. As it disappears into
the fog, another idea occurs, one which my brain can’t discard
quite so easily. The dog walking away, the guy in the car park
walking away, even Liz falling asleep on my sofa that time; over
and over I keep being brought to the precipice, only to have fate
pull me back before I can jump. I can’t rely on the whims of fate
to keep me safe forever.
THE RAT
Way back in seventh
year, when the worst thing I had hanging over my conscience was
Lucy Cogburn shooting me down, I would react to problems in much
same fashion as I do today; curl into a ball and hide under my
duvet. This is, of course, the dumbest course of action one can
take when faced with such a predicament, since blocking out all
sight and sound only serves to make the memories louder by
comparison, and the voices in your head are always worse than the
piss-taking or telling off you would get from your friends or your
parents, respectively. The smartest course of action, right now,
would be to get out of bed, take a shower, book a restaurant, get
out of the house and spend as much time with Liz as I can before
the hammer falls. So why am I still lying in my pants in the foetal
position, sniffling from the pneumonia I probably contracted whilst
walking home sopping wet last night, and rubbing my swollen
left-knee in a pathetic attempt to convince it to stop hurting me?
Because I know the whole thing would be an act, a hollow sham of
normal life? That can’t be true. I love movies, after all, and
especially the ones which are nothing more than a hollow sham of
reality. Perhaps the sad truth is that I prefer my duvet and my
self-loathing and my crappy movies to the normal life I could’ve
had. That sounds more like me.
At a couple of
hours past sunset I finally throw off the covers. My knee-joint
grinds painfully as I shuffle, zombie-like, out of my bedroom and
onto the landing. I do this mostly through guilt; my conscience
can’t quite bear the idea of Liz standing around, alone, in the
cold. Considering all the shit I’ve done to her of late, not to
mention the fact that I am, as Charlie so convincingly argued, a
murderer, this clearly suggests that there is some bad wiring going
on in my head.
I don’t bother
with the shower and head straight downstairs, transferring as much
of my weight as I can from my left leg to the bannister. Charlie
and Freddy are bunched together on the sofa, staring at Charlie’s
laptop. Johnny, it would appear, is at the library or with friends
or has found some other excuse to not be around us. Stretching a
mocking grin across my cheeks, I make an educated guess about what
they’re reading:
‘So. We famous
yet?’
Freddy looks
up without so much as a charade of mirth. With one hand he spins
the screen around to face me:
21-YEAR-OLD MAN FOUND
DEAD, SUSPECTED MURDERERED
A picture of a
much younger version of Sid stares back at me from under the
headline. He looks much happier than usual, or much less surly, at
least. Half of my brain, and all of my stomach, wants to flee back
upstairs and once again take refuge under my duvet, but instead I
bend down and crane my neck to within a couple of inches of the
screen.
A 21-year-old man
was shot dead at his home in
Byker, Newcastle-upon-Tyne in the early hours of this morning, BBC
News can report. The victim has been named as Sidney Quinn, an
unemployed father of one. There was no sign of forced entry at Mr
Quinn’s home, and police have received reports of a person dressed
in a black hooded sweatshirt, around 5’4” in height, leaving the
scene shortly after a gunshot was heard. Anyone with information or
sightings of a person fitting this description in the vicinity of
Byker are urged to contact police as soon as possible.
In the ‘Most
Popular Stories’ section at the side of the page, I spot a link
entitled ‘One dead after hostages taken in Newcastle’. At least
we’re not being labelled as terrorists anymore.
‘You never
said he had a kid,’ I say to Charlie.
Charlie
shrugs, and heaves himself to his feet.
‘Neither did
he. Can I get anyone a drink?’
‘We got any Dr
Pepper left?’ I ask.
‘Nope. We’ve
got either single-malt or champagne.’
I sigh. It’s a
more rock-and-roll approach than the duvet, I guess.
‘Champagne,
then.’
‘Freddy?’
Freddy
declines to answer. Charlie gives an inebriated titter and ambles
off towards the kitchen. The very second he vacates the room,
Freddy rounds on me:
‘You know
we’re next, right?’ The whisper comes out louder than regular
speech. ‘Black hoody? “Person”, not “man”? About five-foot four?
Ring any fucking bells? She’s coming back for us next!’
I look
appraisingly at him. Even by his standards, this is far-fetched.
Why would Phoebe kill Sid? Sid doesn’t have the first clue who she
is. Me and Freddy know barely any more than he did. If she was
going to kill anyone first, it would be Charlie.
‘Lots of
people wear black hoodies,’ I tell him. ‘I’d bet the guy who sold
us the guns has a few in his wardrobe.’
Freddy stands
up. He puts his hand on my shoulder, in a fatherly kind of way.
‘Look, I owe
you an apology. I know you didn’t kill that girl in the storeroom.
I know you couldn’t do that. But she
can
. I’ve fucking seen
her do it, just…just blow someone away to make a point, like they
were the full stop at the end of a fucking sentence. Whoever the
guy who sold you the guns is, he’s not that. He’s just a kid who
listens to too much Wu Tang Clan. Phoebe; she’s the fucking devil.
She did Sid, and she’ll do the three of us without a second
thought.’
I’m not sure
why, but I have to stifle a laugh as I recall something Phoebe said
to me a long time ago. Freddy notices this, and affixes me with a
disparaging, albeit inquisitive, scowl.
‘She told me
she’d bury me under a railway bridge if she thought I’d talk,’ I
tell him.
‘She meant
it,’ Freddy says, with deadly seriousness. A pained expression
suddenly crumples his face, as though he has either forgotten
something or is trying to forget something. ‘[
bleep
], I’m
sorry,’ he says.
‘What the fuck
are you sorry for now?’ I ask.
‘Charlie came
up with this idea, then he actually went through with it to try and
impress
her
. I did it to prove to him that I’m not just big
words and white guilt, but you… we just kind-of dragged you along
for the ride. I’m sorry, man.’
‘You said it
yourself; It was my plan,’ I reply darkly.
‘Yeah,
but-’
‘No buts,’ I
retort. ‘Let me make this very clear…’
But I don’t
get to make anything clear, because Charlie suddenly announces
something from the kitchen. He’s too drunk for his slurred words to
make any sense, but the announcement holds a strange portent
somewhere within it, nonetheless. Me and Freddy glance at each
other.
‘What?!’ we
shout back in unison. Charlie emerges into the doorway, swigging
from a large mug of what for his sake I hope is tea and not
whiskey.
‘I said, I
think the devil might be on our doorstep.’
Before I know
what’s going on, Freddy’s yanked me by the collar and tossed me
across the hall, like Charlie with a dish of baked beans. I splat
against the wall, bounce off, and careen into the bannister. From
the heap I land in at the foot of the stairs, cradling my knee, I
whimper:
‘Were you
holding a grudge from last night?’
‘
Shut up –
she’ll hear you!
’ Freddy responds, this time in an
honest-to-God whisper. Personally, I think that all the shouting
and banging about we were doing just a few seconds ago renders the
whispering now a bit redundant, but I obey all the same. Freddy
inches up to the peephole. The sudden tensing of his shoulders
tells us that Phoebe’s on the other side. I can literally see the
hairs standing up on the back of his neck. Standing there,
motionless, impotent, I watch a single pinprick of sweat at the tip
of Freddy’s spine swelling into a bead, then a blob, then a trickle
as it slips down under its own weight and into his t-shirt…
And then his
shoulders deflate. She must’ve moved on. When he turns away from
the peephole, the transparent relief on Freddy’s face is enough to
confirm this suspicion.
‘You know
what, Charlie?’ he says. ‘I think I might need that drink,
now.’
Charlie hands
one of the mugs over. Seeing as how he’s suddenly in a position to
be buying champagne I’d assume that the whiskey inside the mug is
worth a fair bit, but as it passes under my nose all I can smell is
paint thinner. I guess I wasn’t built to be rich. The funk of
Freddy’s terror-sweat forms the aftertaste, and that’s only a
slightly less pleasant aroma.
‘So we got
away with it that time,’ Freddy says, after a generous glug of
Glen-something, ‘but she’ll be back. I don’t know why she didn’t
try to force her way in, though. That would’ve been more her
style.’ He addresses these musings to me, since Charlie has
migrated back to the kitchen for a fresh drink. I’m barely
listening, though; the smell of Freddy’s sweat - or, at least, I
think
it’s Freddy’s sweat – has unlocked some strange,
Pavlovian canal in my brain. The smell of it makes me nostalgic,
almost, for something I never realised I had.
‘Because she
had a feeling that someone’s bedroom window would be unlocked,’ a
voice mutters in response to Freddy’s enquiry, as Charlie’s bedroom
door opens to reveal Phoebe behind it.
‘Oh, for
fuck’s sake!’ Charlie exclaims, returning to the hallway just as
she makes her appearance. ‘Have I got to pour you a drink now, as
well?’
Charlie’s
nonchalance throws an even starker light onto Freddy’s reaction.
The tension which clasped his shoulders at the peephole has now
taken his entire body prisoner. Even the muscles around his
eyeballs seem to have tightened, pulling the glassy orbs back into
his skull. Along with the deathly shade of white his skin has taken
on and the black hoody that Phoebe is wearing, it’s like watching
the Grim Reaper coming to collect a fresh corpse. Phoebe, being
Phoebe, examines Freddy with mild, mischievous curiosity. Freddy,
despite being large enough to pick her up by an ankle and shake her
like a disobedient puppy, looks as if he’d abandon me and Charlie
and flee for his life if she were to make any sudden moves.
‘So I guess
I’d better get this out in the open,’ Charlie says. ‘Phoebe; are
you planning on murdering any of us? Because if you are, it would
be very poor etiquette not to give us some kind of warning
beforehand.’
A very slight
shift takes place in Phoebe’s features. It’s not quite anger, it’s
something more controlled than that, more threatening. A twinge of
a tendon here and there and I can suddenly understand why Freddy is
so terrified of her. Only Charlie remains unabashed.
‘Is this about
the guy in the breakroom?’ she enquires.