Even the Dogs: A Novel (7 page)

But still if he hadn’t laughed, she wouldn’t. Don’t bother talking to me again, she said. Don’t even come looking for me. I don’t want to see your four-eyed face again. I need people around me who can support my fucking choices, she said, and that was mostly something her keyworker had said and she was just saying it again like a parrot. So he’d called her a bitch and a slag, he’d taken his works and his gear and he’d told her to fuck herself, and he’d slammed the door so hard that more plaster came off the wall around the frame. It was automatic. It was part of the script. Never occurred to him to

Or if we lived in a hot country we would more or less just roll him in sheets of sackcloth and put him on a funeral pyre made of olive branches and packing crates and old car tyres and fold him up in the middle of it, all of us stood around saying like prayers and that while we watch the flames lick and tease around his body and the sackcloth glowing and sparking as it fell from off him, raking up the embers and stacking them over his cooking flesh to make sure he burnt completely, fucking praying and singing as his skull opened out with a soft pop and his bones cracked and splintered into ash. Instead of this. Instead of hiding him away in a van and sneaking him out through the deserted

Through the darkened windows we watch him. Danny. Desperate now in a way only we can know, his ragged trousers catching under his feet and his blankets sodden, Einstein leaping and barking as she climbs through a gap in the fence which straggles around the emptied streets and maisonettes of the old Parkside Estate, the last of the tenants cleared out two years ago now and the demolition still hardly begun. Unless you count what the kids have done already, the windows all smashed, the doors torn from their hinges and sent sprawling across the streets and yards. Bathtubs and wash-basins thrown from fourth-floor landings and sinking into shrubberies grown wild on human manure. Black scorch-marks like smudged mascara around the gaping windows of burnt-out flats. And a great red X painted on the front of every flat to tell the contractors that the services have been safely cut off, and to tell the squatters and junkies and dealers that they can settle in for a while without fear of being disturbed. The van moves off along the road again, down into the underpass beneath the railway sidings, and we lose sight of Danny as he steps into a dark abandoned stairwell with Einstein still chasing at his

Mike weren’t even there though. Got up to the flat where the two of them had been staying for near enough a month but he weren’t there. Would have been crashed out on a pile of blankets or standing at the window or even cooking up but he weren’t there. Weren’t no one there. Weren’t nowhere else Mike could be he should have been there if he weren’t at Robert’s, if he weren’t at the centre, but he’d gone off somewhere it looked like so that’s one more cunt letting him

Stairs all slipping with ice and piss and the handrails ripped out from the walls and the sickness coming on bad. Voices coming out of darkened doorways, mutters and murmurs and moans. Shouts from another block across the courtyard, splintering wood and a silenced scream. Dogs barking and being told to stop and barking some more and the flickering orange light of flames against the dark evening sky and the sparks flying upwards into the clouds

Thought Mike had maybe gone in a different flat for some reason but he tried a few and he weren’t in there and the cramping and the aching and the rattling was so bad that he couldn’t hardly stand up straight couldn’t hardly walk and nothing now he needed he

Mike had never ripped him off on a deal except one time or two times and that was different that didn’t

Kids coming up the stairwell shouting and breaking bottles so he went back the other

He’d had a reason those times, Mike had, he’d told him, his voice low and fierce in his ear going I’m sorry and that la but I thought you weren’t coming back. The kid Benny boy said you’d gone off with Laura an that so I thought you were sorted, an I heard these blokes you know those blokes I told you about what I saw down the centre them ones what have been after me since that kid told them I grassed them up, I heard they was on their way round to tax us so I thought safest bet was to use all the gear so they couldn’t take it off us, plus that way if I did get a kicking it wouldn’t hardly hurt anyhow you know what I mean la. So that’s all it was I wasn’t trying to shaft you, you know that la, you know I wouldn’t do that, it was just a pure out-of-necessity thing you know what I’m saying it was just, only it turned out Benny boy was wrong and them blokes didn’t turn up neither, but still like it was I had the best of intentions it was out of necessity it was the mother of what is it like you know what I’m saying la

Been sleeping in any old place before they found the Parkside flats. Doorways and alleyways. A tunnel down by the incinerator where these huge heating pipes go under the shopping centre, it was warm enough in there but there were too many rats, big fierce cunts that even Einstein was smart enough to leave alone, so they gave up staying in there. Tried sleeping in the toilets sometimes but they mostly got kicked out. Sleep weren’t even the right word for it. One last fix to get their heads down and then it was like no more than a blink before they were awake again and cold and sick and crawling around looking for the next score. Might have been a few hours but it never felt more than a minute. Woke in some yard one morning and found a whole bunch of dead mice about the place, frozen solid. Lucky they woke up at all that time. Some cunts don’t. Easy to get too cold and not wake up, easy to get damp and stay damp and not do any fucking thing about it, numbed out by the gear and it don’t feel no different anyway. End up frozen solid like them mice. Take a last dig and curl up and go to sleep and never fucking wake up. Some bloke looks like he’s still snoozing in the morning only he’s gone milky-blue and he’s stone cold to the touch. It happens. There’s worse ways to go. But the Parkside flats was better than that. Four walls and a roof and no one to bother them. They could even leave it and come back, there were plenty to go round and they didn’t have nothing to nick. Made a change. Made the days easier when they knew where they were going to sleep. Sometimes seemed like he’d spent half his life looking for a bed. All the running and breaking and shouting and arguing and stealing and it was all about getting somewhere warm and dry to cook up and get some rest. Somewhere safe and quiet and it weren’t never easy to find. Don’t matter how many blankets there are if it’s in the wrong place. Don’t matter if it’s cotton sheets and feather duvets when there’s no lock on the door and a mean bastard in the house. Don’t matter if there’s a lock when someone

Jesus but it aint much to ask

Went down the other stairwell and found a kid standing there like he was waiting for someone, like he was waiting to do business. Cap on and hood up and one trouser-leg rolled, bike leaning up against the wall. Seen him around a few times and bought off him once or twice so asked if he was selling, if he knew anyone who was selling. Kid didn’t say nothing for a minute, just looked at him. Asked him if he was a mate of Ben’s, and when Danny said yes he gave him a number to call. Said to call it from the phonebox by the Miller’s Arms and ask for Michelle. Said it was difficult at the moment, said he’d heard there’d been a few accidents and it was all a bit on top. Danny was off across the courtyard, past all the doorways marked with a red painted X, back to the gap in the fence and off up the main road towards the roundabout and the Miller’s Arms and the phonebox

Weren’t always easy to know what Mike was talking about and half the time it didn’t seem worth making the effort to ask. Weren’t always that easy to know who he was talking to anyway. Look round half the time and he’s on the phone. Ask him to speak up and he goes What’s that pal eh sorry I wasn’t talking to you. And when he was it didn’t always make sense and it was best to just go Yes Mike I know what you’re saying. All this stuff about the police, the government, surveillance agencies and that. All this stuff about watching your back and looking out for who might be listening. Harmless stuff most of it but it made him pretty uptight to be around. Like when he talked about those blokes being after him, the ones he said they’d seen down the centre. They hadn’t seen no blokes down the centre, not that Danny knew about. Always talking about someone being after giving him a beating but from what Danny knew they never had. Danny had taken a few since he’d moved up here, and plenty before that where he’d been staying before and then of course when he was a

Mike always going on about it but it never seemed to happen to him. Always saying something like Danny you know what’ll happen if they try it la, you know what they’ll get for their troubles it don’t matter how many there are they’ll get their just rewards maybe not right then but later I will make sure of it I will track them down and find them one at a time and they won’t be so brave then you know what I’m saying not with an iron bar across their kneecaps an that not with a slab of paving stone dropped on their heads they won’t be laughing an that then you know what I’m

   Why did it take you so long to contact the police?

I was worried I might look dodgy or something.

Why would you think that?

Just, because I was the last one there. And my record.

Do you want to tell us about your record?

You’ve got it, you can look it up for yourself.

What do you think happened to Robert?

Fuck should I know, I weren’t there.

And what do you think has happened to your friends?

I don’t fucking know.

Where do you think they’ve

Waste of time thinking about all these questions anyway, waste of time worrying whether the police were going to suspect him of anything. Like they were going to give a shit either way. Like Robert was even going to get in the papers for

Got up by the roundabout and phoned the number and it weren’t a voice he recognised, mostly they were faces you’d seen about or people you’d been introduced to but not this one. Girl who answered wanted to know where he’d got the number before anything else, so he told her about the kid and where he’d seen the kid and that he knew Ben from

Lights on in the pub but hardly no one there. Bloke in a rugby shirt behind the bar rubbing his face and looking up at the ceiling. TV on in the corner and Christmas decorations still dangling off the walls. Door swung open a minute but someone must have changed their mind because no one came out. Intercity train rattling along by the sidings, the empty carriages lit up like shop windows, the squares of light skimming over the rubbish and weeds and treestumps at the side of the tracks. The old man in the wheelchair pushing himself up the hill, the stuffing spilling out of his coat and his feet dragging along the ground as he inched his way forward one grunt at a time, each small turn of the wheel marked by a grimace across his

Huh. Hah. Huh. Keeps going but it takes him

She said All right then what you want and he said Ten dark. She said That’s all? You having a laugh? He said That’s all, and he heard her talking to someone else again, checking on something while the cramping in his stomach had him bent over and gasping, desperate to shit and his hands shaking and

The girl said It’s difficult right now see

Einstein running circles outside and scratching at the glass

And she said Right well wait there we’ll see what we can do it’ll be half an hour or something and he shoved the door open and puked into the long dead grass

And we see him there for the last time, bent double on the wasteground behind the phonebox, stumbling around in circles, desperate, waiting. We watch him through the darkened glass, getting smaller as we circle the roundabout by the Miller’s Arms and turn into the grounds of the teaching hospital, slowing between the landscaped embankments and security huts, round the outskirts of the site towards the mortuary buildings. Maybe in another place or another time we would be carrying his body ourselves, there would be music and prayer, there would be crowds, and carriages, and cameras. But there’s none of that now. We drive round the back of an industrial-looking building and down a long dark ramp, and some metal shutters are rattled open, and the photographer records each movement as the bagged weight of Robert’s body is slid on to a large trolley with a squeaking wheel by men who had hoped not to be at work today, who would rather be at home with their families, who are even now thinking about phoning and telling their wives they’ll be home soon in the hope that something will be put in the oven for their tea, and as the policeman rolls the shutters closed behind us we think of Danny out there now, still walking in circles, still waiting, his dog beside him and his bag getting heavy and the sky getting darker all the time

three

They lay him away behind a shining steel door in a room as cold as stone.

We gather together in the room, sitting, standing, leaning against the wall, and we wait. For the morning. For someone to come back. For something to happen.

Waiting is one thing we’re good at, as it happens.

We’ve had a lot of practice.

We’ve got the time.

We’ve got all the time in the world.

The room is windowless and dark, tiled from ceiling to floor, with a row of heavy steel doors at one end. Each door has three tags clipped to it, with names, dates and reference numbers. The doors feel cold and hard and smooth. Two rows of fluorescent lights hang from the high ceiling on long cables and chains. A large clock sits on the end wall. The quarry-tiled floor slopes down towards a narrow gutter, and the gutter flows into a grated drain. Everything is dark. Everything is spotlessly clean.