The Norway Room (9 page)

ASHLEY

17

Kieran said nothing as he drove Ashley to Selly Oak Hospital, where the soldiers from Iraq go. There were lots of men and women in uniform about the place. ‘Nurses,' Kieran told him. ‘Military nurses. They train here before going to the front line.'

There were none in casualty, although it looked like the front line: full of bleeding, broken, sighing people. An old woman sat with her foot up on a chair. It was wrapped in a towel, blood seeping through. Ashley registered; Kieran said he was his uncle, next of kin.

They took it in turns going outside to a little cubicle like a bus shelter that was the only place you were allowed to smoke. Ashley had lit up right outside the casualty doors and was surprised when Kieran had said, ‘Behave, Ash. This is a hospital. Go in there.' The first time there were three women in there with him, all in dressing gowns, all patients, the second, two girls and a kid in a buggy, the third a young bloke in a wheelchair with only one leg, and that was only half, thickly bandaged. A bandaged stump really. Ashley asked him if he was from Iraq. ‘No,' he said. Then, after a long pause, ‘Motorbike.' He was still there the next time Ashley went back, chaining.

The nose was broken. But no ribs. Nothing hurt. ‘It will,' the doctor told him. ‘Tomorrow. For a few days.' They cleaned him up. Four stitches under his eye. Checked his teeth. ‘Seem okay. See how they go.' Kieran told the doctor it was a fight, with the kid next door. ‘Big lad. Much bigger than Dean.' That was the name they had given. No, they weren't going to report it. Just a fight between lads. There was a fight going on in the waiting room as they left.

Kieran went quiet on the way back.

‘Where we going?' Ashley asked. They were travelling down the Bristol Road.

‘Small diversion. Call to make.'

Ashley thought he ought to say something about what had happened. Reassure Kieran that he wouldn't breathe a word. Reassure himself that Kieran would let him stay in the house. Fear. Where was he taking him? It was getting dark. Kieran had his lights on. A police siren. Kieran checked the mirror. Checked his speed. Slowed a little. The police car sped past.

‘I'm sorry. About this afternoon. About Benjy Graham.'

‘I thought no one knew you were there. I told you to keep a low profile, stay out of trouble.'

‘Sorry.'

After a pause. ‘So. Tell me. What happened with Graham? I heard some of it through the wall. But tell me.'

Ashley told Kieran about his job walking Graham's dogs. He tried to make him laugh when he described Mrs Graham always going on about not letting the dogs shit till they were in the street. But Kieran remained quiet. Ashley told him about meeting the bloke by the canal, seeing him several times. He was friendly, good with dogs. Then he told him how he was attacked and the dogs were stolen. By the time he was finished they were on Burnside Hill heading for the Mendy. ‘What we doing up here?' The fear again.

‘Told you. Got to see someone.'

The tower blocks glittered beneath them. Hundreds of tiny rectangles of light in a huge block, the blocks ranked behind each other in neat rows, like perspective lessons at school; little rectangles of light in neat rows. And headlights from the Tallis Road. A chain of headlights, following on from one another, a trail of headlights moving down into and through the estate. Ashley thought about the story of the kids who dropped the seeds on their way through the forest.

They drove over Kinny Bridge past the towers: Grainger, Walton, Elgar, Vaughan Williams, and into the curving groves of maisonettes. Kieran pulled up in the Pooch. Its proper address is Puccini Plaza, but everyone calls it the Pooch. Most of the shops were shuttered now. A few security lights. Sickly yellow. Blue. A fag and booze shop was open behind its iron grille.

‘Come on.'

Ashley followed Kieran out of the car. Perhaps they were heading for the pub in the middle of the row. ‘Are we going to the Maddy?' Ashley asked. Its proper name was the Madrigal, but everyone called it the Maddy. Sometimes the Mad. ‘Will they let me in?'

Kieran secured the car. ‘Come on,' was all he said.

It wasn't the Maddy that Kieran was making for – he strode past that, Ashley following, his hood up against the cold – but to Bamboo Garden, the takeaway next door.

There was a Chinese girl behind the counter. About eighteen. Pregnant. Pretty. She knew Kieran. ‘You want Feiyang?'

Kieran nodded. ‘He said to go straight up.' Her head indicated a mirrored door at the other end of the shop. It made the place look bigger. Ashley saw his bruised face in it. He looked a mess. Kieran placed a fiver on the counter. ‘Give the kid some food. Wait here,' he told Ash. ‘I won't be long.' And he disappeared behind the mirrored door.

The pregnant girl pushed a menu towards Ashley. He selected a Shanghai Special – chicken, pork, prawns, egg fried rice – sat down on the bench facing the counter and waited.

He was eating his food with a plastic spoon from a polystyrene tray when Kieran put his head round the door. Beckoned him. ‘Bring your grub with you.'

Ashley climbed the narrow staircase behind Kieran, followed him into a room illuminated on the one side by a large plasma screen television showing Sky Sports News with the sound off, and on the other by a long fish tank that ran the length of the wall. Brightly coloured fish – blue, pink, yellow, yellow and white, yellow and black, pink and blue, just black – swam through a jungle of green waterweed. In the corner of the tank the oxygenator valve noisily discharged columns of bubbles. It sounded like somebody being sick.

In the space between the tank and the TV a number of people sat around a Formica-topped table. There were two free chairs. Kieran took one. ‘Sit down, Ash. You can carry on eating.' Ashley felt self-conscious but was hungry so he did. Next to Kieran sat the bloke with the gun from this afternoon. His suit was gone and now he wore a white vest and dark tracksuit bottoms. Smart ones. His arms weren't big, but muscled. Tattooed. Tiger stripes coated his right forearm.

‘This is Feiyang, Ash. And his mom, Mrs Wei, and his nan.' There were two other men at the table, wearing vests like Feiyang, but Kieran didn't introduce them. A copy of
Racing News
lay open on the table between them, and one man held a biro. There were marks on the paper against the lists of runners.

The men all looked at Ashley eating. He would have liked to finish it, it was nice food, but he pushed it away. ‘That was very nice.' He looked at Mrs Wei as if she had personally cooked it for him. He didn't want to let Kieran down in front of these people. ‘But I'm full. Thanks.'

Mrs Wei smiled. Bowed her head. Feiyang's nan collected up Ashley's rubbish and disappeared with it. She was old and bent and walked slowly. Wore black pyjamas and sandals.

‘Look, Ash,' Kieran started. ‘You really fucked up today.'

‘Sorry.'

‘A lot of plans. They've all been screwed. So. We, that's Feiyang here and me, we've got to make new ones. And quick. Just in case that tosser you brought round talks.'

Ashley was afraid now. ‘He won't, Key. He was scared shitless. Really.' He looked at Feiyang. ‘I was too.' Back to Kieran. ‘He won't talk. And I didn't bring him round. He knows where I live. He knows my dad.' Ashley was trying not to cry.

Kieran had his hands clasped together, fingers enclosing each other, like the way some people pray, only resting on the table. He leaned forward towards Ashley. ‘If I let Crawford know what has happened today,' he paused. ‘If I tell him. Do you know what he would say? Do you?'

He looked around the table. They were all watching him. Even the fish seemed to be looking at him from across the room, the bloke on Sky Sports News. ‘He'd tell you to throw me out?' Ashley offered quietly. This was a bit like being back at school, being bollocked by the headteacher; but the most dangerous school in the world.

‘No, Ash. He wouldn't tell me to throw you out. Or at least not exactly. What he'd say is, kill the kid. Shoot him. Drop him on the railway. Tie him up and dump him in the canal. That's what he would say, Ash. Not a shadow of a fucking doubt.'

Ashley didn't know what to say. His heart pounded, and it felt as if he might bring up his Shanghai Special. Mrs Wei smiled at him kindly.

‘So,' Kieran continued. ‘Listen good. You're staying here tonight.' Ashley wanted to stop him right there. Shout, no, no way. But he knew it was pointless. ‘While Feiyang and me sort things out. Got me? You stay here till I come and pick you up. Probably tomorrow. Take you back.'

Ashley was being punched in the chest. From the inside. And it was hurting. When he spoke he sounded like a baby. ‘You will come for me?'

Kieran roared with laughter. Feiyang laughed too. Mrs Wei's smiled broadened. The two men picking winners ignored them.

‘Course I will, Ash,' Kieran said kindly. ‘I'm not going to leave you here, am I?' He spoke reassuringly. ‘It's just till we get everything sorted out. Okay?'

‘Okay.'

‘Cheer up. At least you'll get well fed here. Anything you like, as long as it's chinky.' Then to Feiyang, ‘All right mate, let's get out of here.'

Feiyang said something to his mom in Chinese. She looked across at Ashley.

At the door Kieran turned and threw a pack of cigarettes on to the table before Ashley.

‘Bensons. Cool.'

‘Mrs Wei will look after you. Behave. See you.'

For a while he just looked at the soundless television. Smoked a cigarette. Looked at the fish for a bit. A big blue one was being chased by a tiny black-and-white-striped one.

The old lady came in with a tray of food. Three bowls of rice. A big dish of Chinese food. Looked like pieces of beef. And vegetables. She placed a bowl of rice before each of the two men. Gave them chopsticks. Spooned the beef and vegetables on top of their rice. She tipped the remaining beef and vegetables into the last bowl of rice and took it to sit cross-legged on the floor beside the television. She reached for the handset and started the video. It was horse-racing. With a Chinese commentary. She watched as she ate, her old black eyes glinting brightly. The two men followed it from the table, shovelling food into their mouths. Ashley wondered at how they could do that with chopsticks. An argument started between the two men. In Chinese. One called to the old woman. She put down her chopsticks and rewound the tape. As it replayed she found something funny and laughed, so she had to push food back into her mouth. The men waved their chopsticks and pointed them towards the television as they made their points.

Ashley looked at the cigarette pack. Bensons, but not English Bensons. Knock-offs. Must be. In a white band across the lid of the pack was
Las autoridas sanitarias advierten.
Ashley sounded the letters. He knew that a lot of knock-off fags were coming in from Latvia. Perhaps this was Latvian. The cancer warning was inside a thick black box like the edge of a funeral card. Foreign as well. Ashley traced the words with his finger, tried to sound them.
Fu-mar per-jud-ic-a.
He gave up after the first line. He knew what it meant anyway –
you're going to die of cancer!
Or, as he'd heard Kieran say –
We've got your money; now you're going to die.
He turned the pack over. Another black box. Another warning.
Fu-mar prov-oc-a. Fumar
must mean
smoking
in Latvian. He wondered if the men beside him might know Latvian; but then he hadn't heard them speak a word of English.

He took a cigarette from the pack and lit it. Might as well get on with it. Then he wondered if he should be smoking while people were eating; but nobody seemed to mind. Nobody seemed to notice him at all. He was like the invisible man – the invisible boy. And this, together with the strange languages, Chinese, Latvian, made him feel uneasy. The smell of food, that had been so appetising before, was now horrible, and made him feel sick. His face was hurting again. Hot and stinging. He could feel the stitches. Feel the skin of his face tightening. He was in a room on the Mendy. In the Pooch. The Maddy was only next door. The Maddy on the Mendy, that's what people called it. He'd heard his dad say that a hundred times. Walton Tower and Sophie were just down the road, but he felt very far from everything. Like he'd fallen down a hole into another country.

When the food was finished the old lady turned off the video, turned down the sound and let Sky Sports News play silently. There was something on about Chelsea. Ashley saw the players training. Their kit the same blue as the fish being chased by Stripy; like an Albion defender on the trail of a great big Chelsea forward. The old lady collected the bowls from the table and shuffled out of the room.

A man in a black suit came in carrying a wooden box. He set it on the table and opened it. Removed stacks of small tiles. Ashley watched the men play a game with them. He thought they might invite him to join them – teach him how to play – but they didn't.

Mrs Wei came in and gave him a choc ice. When he had eaten it, she beckoned for him to follow her. She led him along the landing to a room containing five mattresses. The old lady was lying on one. Mrs Wei pointed to a mattress on the other side of the room. ‘For you,' she said carefully, moving her finger from the mattress to Ashley.

The fear. He didn't want to stay here. Who else was going to sleep in this room? The men at the table probably. No. No way. And he definitely wasn't going to bunk down yet. It was too early. He lifted his wrist so Mrs Wei could see his watch and pointed to eleven. ‘I don't go to bed till late.' She seemed to understand and nodded. She followed him back to the table.

His face was hurting bad. His nose felt hot and huge, like it was growing. He thought about the kid in the story, the wooden one. Or the kids lost in the forest who the witch traps. He tried to assess the men beside him. The one in the suit didn't look too bad. But then you never knew what he was carrying; you don't have to be hard if you've got a gun. The two in vests did look hard. Lean and muscled. Like they could have been in Kung Fu movies. Mean-faced. Both had tattoos on their arms. Chinese writing, and tribal stuff. One had roses on his lower arm, blue and pink, climbing up towards his elbow. He had a mashed-up nose; almost completely flat. And Ashley didn't think he'd had that from birth. He touched his own nose. It hurt. He hoped it wouldn't end up looking like that.