Lottery Boy (10 page)

He put Jack’s collar back on. Her fur was nearly the same colour as the collar. He rubbed a bit of dirt and grease from his coat into the chewing-gum to make it look more like the leather. Jack licked his face.

“You’re a million-dollar dog now,” he said, stroking her head. And then in the darkness he felt her ears go back, like she was a
bat
dog.

He flicked his lighter on to see what she was thinking. She was listening to something… Something Bully couldn’t hear yet but when he saw her eyes go very still, he knew what it was.

It was the sound of a dog, after them, following the invisible trail they had laid. Someone must have taken his bedding as scent for their dog. And a trained dog could follow their scent, chase their smell all round London for at least a day.

And Jack knew it too. And she was telling Bully now, showing her cleverness the only way she knew how, growling and whining, asking Bully:
Do we fight or run away?
Because someone was coming for them, coming for his millions with a dog, and from the way Jack’s eyes were beading up she knew
which
dog, too. Bully caught sight of the notch torn out of her ear: Janks. Janks was
here
, looking to tax Bully of everything he had.

Jack snapped at the darkness. And this time Bully just about heard the tail end of a howl. It was coming, he thought, from behind the back of the house, another gate on the other side of the park. He licked his first finger and held it up to the air… Not much wind but maybe enough to take their scent in the
wrong
direction. He didn’t think he could outrun them now, not with his ankle this bad.

He scanned the park.
Never get caught on open ground
… All he could see were black blobs, litter bins dotted about – he could maybe just about fit in one, doubled up with Jack, pull some rubbish over their heads. Instinctively, though, he knew they needed to find
higher ground
.

He ran to the trees. He tried to jump up to reach the lowest branch. He didn’t miss it by much but when he landed his ankle collapsed under him and he knew it wouldn’t take another fall. He tried climbing then, wrapping his arms around the trunk, but his foot kept letting him down. Even if he got up the tree and dragged Jack up …
even
if they got up the tree, the dog would find them, because any old dog would know they were up there. Even if they went right to the top, Janks’s dog would see him in between the branches and the leaves, no matter how dark it was.

That thought gave him half an idea. He took his coat off. He fumbled about with numb fingers and got his phone out, and his penknife and Jack’s lead. He tied the lead around his neck because his pockets were too small. He heard another howl, the sound getting closer. He panicked and threw his coat up into the branches as high as he could with whatever else was left in his pockets. And as it left his hand he felt a small emptiness open up inside his head that told him he’d forgotten something… His card! His
mum’s
card. He tried jumping up to get it back but it was too late. He smacked the back of his neck. How stupid he was! But he had to go now. And he took off his trainers and balled up his socks and threw them back towards the war museum, and then his phone too because the screen was smashed in and leaking grey and black. No good to him any more. He threw all his stuff as far away as he could, like a
false
trail. That might mess things up for a while. The rain might be thinning out his real tracks, he thought, as he limped back to the guns to crouch underneath them.

He knew that hiding under the guns was a bad place to be but he didn’t know where else to go. He couldn’t think, couldn’t get the dots to join up inside his head. The sharper sound of the dog barking snapped Bully’s head back into the steel breach – the dog somewhere inside the park now – his last line of defence gone.

Panic is a killer
…
takes your head off as neat as a round…

“Come on…” he said, slapping his ears.
“Come on…”

Then he got the other half of his idea.

He got out from underneath the guns and stood up. He could just about see the outline of the two barrels tapering off into the darkness. If he could climb up there and go right to the end of the barrel, then even if he couldn’t get away, it was at least a position he could
defend
.

The first thing he did was stash Jack inside his hoodie, tucking his top in like his mum used to do to him when he was little. “Stay,” he said, clambering up onto the gun, struggling with Jack’s weight on his front – like carrying a four-legged baby.

The angle of elevation was steeper than it looked from the ground but he managed to stand up on the barrel. The metal was cold under his feet, and his ankle started to hurt again without his shoes. It wasn’t as wide as he’d thought and he had to sidestep, balancing with his arms like he was one of those street performers messing about for money.

He’d been higher up than this before; much, much higher, on the roof of their old block of flats. He’d gone up there one day to see what it was like looking all that way down without anything to hold on to. He wasn’t frightened then, not in the way he was now, in the dark, in the rain, where looking down was all around him. He tried not to look down, but couldn’t help it. The ground kept tugging at his head. And when he did, he slipped and fell.

He threw his arms wide and caught the barrel but hit his jaw against Jack’s skull and she snapped at him, caught him on the ear. But Bully didn’t care for a few long seconds. And he put his face to the metal and hugged it almost harder than he’d hugged anything or anyone in his life. And though he was squashing Jack against the barrel, and she was wriggling out onto the gun, he couldn’t move, couldn’t go any further…

Jack got her head out from under his and licked his ear, whimpering, thinking she had done something wrong and this was her punishment, being stuck up here, squashed inside Bully’s hoodie.

“All right … all right…”
he whispered. “Shh. Shut it… All right… All right…” He gave his dog some air, let go a little, took his face away from the barrel and she stopped struggling.

He slowly raised his head and then sat up. He could see the lights from the road and the cars and the buildings speckling in the rain. He realized it was no good being up here if Janks found him, no way he could defend himself just sitting on the barrel. He would fall off. There was only one place left to go when he got to the end:
inside
the gun.

He could hear a pit bull clearly now, though he could not risk turning round to look back at the museum. And it
was
a pit bull, he was sure of it; less echo to its bark, more bite, as if that was the only thing going through its head. He pushed forward with his knees, getting into a rhythm, still hugging the barrel until he felt the steel lip of the mouth.

But something was covering the end. It made a plasticky
thwacking
noise, like a sheet of tarpaulin covering the back of a truck, and though he hit it with his fist, there was no give in it. He tried to pull it off but it was tied on with a metal rope looped around the barrel’s end. And it was too late to get back down. The barking was louder,
keener
, the dog getting a real taste for his scent now, getting closer and closer. And voices! He could hear men shouting directions. He took out his penknife, opened the big blade up and slashed at the thick plastic two, three times, putting all his effort into pulling the blade through the material.

He went feet first, with Jack’s paws round his neck, clinging on, then scrabbling, trying to get out. Bully couldn’t blame her, felt as if he was being swallowed alive himself – and he began to struggle too. And then he was stuck.

He held his breath. Half in, half out of the barrel, he had a split-second horror of the dog getting up here and taking chunks out of him, as easy as ice cream. He frantically twisted sideways, skinning his hips, the widest part of him, but wedging himself tighter in, trying to keep a hold of Jack.

“Calm it! Calm it down,” he whispered. But he wasn’t calm. He wasn’t calming it down. What could he do? He had to be thinner! He had to make himself the
right calibre
. How could he do that? He let go his breath and felt a bit of give in the little bit of fat and skin between his insides and the barrel. And he slipped; he moved just a little… He let out more breath, emptied his lungs,
pushed
out his spare air and shifted one side of his body down at an angle, collapsing it like a cardboard box. And then
right
down
he went inside the barrel.

When he got to his shoulders he wondered how he was going to stop them sliding
all
the way down? And he was having to think off the top of his head and to
shh
Jack, and keep himself from slipping down. He tapped Jack on her muzzle, telling her to
cut it out
, and felt the lead still round his neck. And with one hand he pulled it off and opened up the large metal hook on it and jammed it over the metal rope around the rim. And like a climber going into a cave, he lowered himself and Jack right down inside the gun.

Instantly his world went out. He lay there, arms stretched above his head, blinking in the darkness but seeing nothing. He could hear everything though, even louder inside the barrel: the creaking wet lead, Jack panting ever so quick, and louder than everything, the voice inside his head telling him to get out, to get
out
.

And then a man’s voice crept down the barrel, one that he knew, putting the shudders into him, the words seesawing up and down, shouting and giving orders.

“All-right … list-en!
You
check the bins while I have a look round here.”

“What’s he gunna be doing in a
bin
!”

“Just do what I say,” said Janks.

Bully pushed his ear flat against the cold steel of the bore, and against the splatter of the rain he could hear the other voice still complaining, asking questions, and he realized there were just two men.

“Here, Janks! Over ’ere! Here’s his coat … and his shoes. And a mobile. He’s up that tree!”

But the pit bull whined like it knew better and then the whine deepened into a howl, and Bully thought he could hear it straining at the lead, the scent of the chase thick as soup in its mouth now because it
knew
where they were.

Still, though, Bully begged his plan to work. Maybe when they saw he wasn’t up the tree they’d think he’d made a run for it. He twisted a little, shivering on the end of the dog lead because he was encased inside a couple of hundred tonnes of cold steel.

Plink!
What was that?
Plink
…
plink
… His last little bit of shrapnel rolling away. He had a hole in his jeans. Never much money in them to lose. He couldn’t get to his pocket; had to lie there like he was tied up and listen…
Plink … plink … plink…
And he knew that even in the rain, Janks’s dog would be hearing it too.

He kept
very
,
very
still. Sweat and rain dribbled and mixed down his back. Then he heard a different noise, not metal on metal but a living, skittering, scratching sound … something coming
up
the barrel! And he thought of all those films he’d seen with aliens and insects hatching out of the darkness. There it was again! He couldn’t look down but put his chin to his chest and felt Jack’s nose twitch against his neck. And Jack made the quietest bark she had – a little cough – like in class at school, getting a message across without the teacher turning round, and Bully understood what it was then: Janks’s dog was
on
the gun.

He got ready with his knife still in his left hand. He waited. The rain was making his grip slip on the lead and he twisted it around his wrist so he could still stab the pit bull’s snout with his other hand.

“What’s ’e doing up there, Janks?” shouted the other man. He sounded miserable and angry. “What’s ’e doing? Look at ’im… Just look at ’im! What’s gone
wrong
with ’im!”

The scratching stopped. A yelp, thinning, falling… And the man laughing, mean and hollow. The dog had slipped and hit the ground, that’s what it was! The dog had slipped and fallen off the barrel! And the man was laughing at that and making fun of Janks’s dog.