Lottery Boy (13 page)

He put the problem of his age to one side and for a few minutes he tried to think of ways of hiding Jack. There was nothing to put her in. So he had a go at wrapping her up in his hoodie but her long grey-and-white snout kept poking out and anyway, the Feds might think she was some sort of terror threat, a
dog bomb
. So he took his hoodie and tied it round his waist. Then he untied it and put it round his shoulders to make him look wider like the bouncers in the tunnel but it just made him look like a
girl
. What else could he do? There was nothing else in the tent, just this
crustie
stuff
. He had nothing on him except his lighter, Jack’s dog lead and half a dozen rubber bands on his wrists.

He had another look and
still
there was nothing in the tent but rubbish and dog shit and the banner. He unrolled the banner. Someone might be coming for it soon to hold it up, he thought. It didn’t have any writing on it, just a picture of a big red missile blowing up a little white pigeon with a twig in its beak.

“Errgh,” he said because the paint was oily and wet and coming off on his fingers.

And then he had a weird, brilliant idea to get out of the square, so brilliant that it was as if someone else had thought of it and told him about it. And so weird he could only imagine someone else pulling it off.

It wasn’t
camouflage
exactly…

But how was he going to get Jack out? Then he had a thought: maybe he wasn’t going to get Jack out. He looked into her eyes. Sometimes he felt like she was older than him not just in dog years but in human ones too, like she knew more about him than he did.

He lay on his belly and looked out the back of the tent again to scope out the sightline and see what he could see.

“Come ’ere, mate,” he said. And he got a hold of her head and worked his fingers around her tight collar. He took it off. He felt bad about this.

“All righ’ then… All right, mate… Listen, mate…” He put on his kindest voice, the one he saved just for dogs nowadays. And Jack made a noise like she was trying to eat invisible meat, as if she was chewing over what he was saying.

“OK. Look … mate. Look. Now stay … stay…” he said as gently and calmly as he could, though the final words still came out as a squeak. “You got to
stay
…”

The two policemen in charge of the north exit had been there since the barriers had come off the back of the lorry first thing that morning. And now it was getting on for midday and the sun was burning through the cloud, they were getting hot underneath their stab-proof vests.

“You’re going to be there for a while,” the officer warned the couple at the head of the queue, waiting to get into the demonstration. It was one in one out like in a nightclub at capacity and the police officers were stopping the new protesters coming in and checking their bags for bombs and sharp instruments and other
illicit
material.

“You don’t mind, do you, Luke, if we go in separately?” the girl said to her boyfriend. “It’s only just started and you won’t have to wait long.”

He shrugged like he did a bit, because he’d only just started going out with her, but he didn’t want to say anything in front of the policemen.

“Why do we have to be caged up like this anyway? It’s like a protest
zoo
you’ve put us in,” he said to the officer so he didn’t have to answer his girlfriend’s question.

“Section 60. Criminal Justice and Public Order Act. Your health, our safety,” he said in a sing-song way because he’d been making the same joke all morning.

Luke looked round, conscious now of the queue of people building up behind him, waiting to get in to protest against the war on the other side of the world. On the other side of the barrier there was a much shorter line of people trying to get out. One teenage girl at the front, looking embarrassed, like she was thinking of changing her mind and staying put. Luke didn’t think she looked quite right for a protest in bare feet with her cut-offs and
Transformers
T-shirt; more a festival vibe, he thought – especially with that belt clipped round her waist. And he gave her a disapproving look because peace was a serious business.

“Look, let’s just leave it for now, Becky, OK. I don’t want to lose you or anything. Why don’t we come back later? We can see it from over there anyway.” Luke pointed back towards St James’s Park and they stood out of the way to let the man behind through. But even though this man didn’t have any bags to search, the officer still stopped him.

“Just a minute, sir. Can we let this young lady out first, please…” He nodded to the girl, her shoulder-length, wet-look hair tied back with a couple of elastic bands, the sort that postal workers regularly discarded on their rounds.

“Oh, mind your toes, miss,” he said when he saw her bare feet. “There’s broken glass all over the place.” And then he smiled because he had a daughter himself, a few years younger than this girl, who looked about sixteen or seventeen though he couldn’t be sure, the way girls made themselves up nowadays. He hoped his own daughter would use a little less lipstick when she got to this age.

He waved the girl through and she was about to move off when the second officer put up his hand.

“Just a minute, love. Do you mind if we take your photo?”

The girl went very shy then.

“You don’t have to let them, you know,” said Becky, still there. “You can say no, it’s not against the law to say no.”

But the girl just nodded meekly while a third policeman took her picture. “Can you lift your head up … a bit more … a bit more… Lovely… What’s your name?”

“Jacky… Jacky Bradley.”

“Nice name,” he said, as he said to all the girls, and he let her go. And the next man went through into the square.

A few seconds later, safely on the other side of the police line, the same girl jumped up on a bench and shouted in a rough squeak: “Here, mate! Here, Jack!” She put a finger from each hand to her mouth and tried to whistle.

“Jack! Here! Here! Come on!”

“Someone’s lost their boyfriend!” a voice piped up and a few people laughed along at the edge of the good-natured crowd.

“Here, Jacky! Here, girl!” yelled the girl, her voice breaking up, stopping short.

“Oi! Come on … let’s have you down from there,” said the first officer, seeing her up on the bench, and she screwed up her face, looking much less pretty now, and stayed where she was, stretching up on one foot. He was about to go and have serious words about health and safety when he heard rising laughter and a few shrieks coming from inside the peace camp. He turned back and saw fingers pointing and the crowd parting. People were looking down at their feet and jumping sideways like an earthquake was putting a crack in the road. And then he saw a funny-looking dog with a face full of teeth galloping out of the square straight for the north exit barrier.

The police officer got out his baton in case it went for his ankles but on its last stride it sat back on its hind legs and sprang – more like a cat than a dog – giving everything it had to clear four feet of galvanized steel,
just
skimming the top of the barrier, its front legs going ten to the dozen like it was doing doggy-paddle in mid-air. He got ready to give it a wallop but the dog wasn’t going for him. It went through the crowd queuing to get in and skidded to a halt underneath the girl on the bench. And the girl gave him a final twist of her face and then jumped down and ran off, one leg a little wonky, the dog following along after her.

“Funny-looking pair,” he said, watching them head north towards the lake in St James’s Park. And he put away his baton.

Bully tried to wipe the oily red paint off his lips with the back of his hand but he just smeared it more and more because he didn’t have any spit left, so in the end he got Jack to lick his face and wiped it on his hoodie.

“Good girl, good girl!” He kept telling her that, over and over again. He had never read anything like it in all his magazines (and that included
Modern Dogs
and
Dogs World
and
Dogs Now
). Not in any of them had he heard of a dog staying like that. At that distance. With all that noise. Running through all those crusties and hippies in the square. And getting through a line of Feds too! He should get her a treat. He had an old bit of chewing-gum in his pocket but that was worse than chocolate for dogs so he put it in his own mouth instead.

He got his compass out again, careful to hide the knife, some Feds still hanging about on the road. Straight north to Camelot from here wasn’t possible; there was a long lake in the middle of the park and he would have to go round it first. So he shadowed the wide straight road lined with trees, keeping a lookout for motorbikes and for cars that were moving slow, not trying to get somewhere fast like the rest of London was.

And besides, it was easier on his feet on the grass. As a rule, back at his place, he never took his shoes off, even at night. And he thought about his place then and missed it – half wished he was back there, going through his usual routine without his millions to think about, just maybe something extra to eat. Because his life was more messed up now than it had been before. He had never thought money could do that. Make things more complicated, maybe even worse. It seemed to make things easier and better for footballers and celebrities. And even if they got chased it was only for a photo. It wasn’t serious. And it wasn’t with dogs. And no one got stabbed to death in a park.

Perhaps when he had the money in his hands, throwing it up in the air like millionaires did at least once a day, perhaps when he had a chance to
spend
it, then every single thing in his life might start to get simpler and better.

He took his hoodie off his shoulders and put it back on. He never went anywhere in just a T-shirt. He didn’t feel safe or right, like he was missing the top layer of his skin. He went to pull the elastic bands off his hair but then he changed his mind. It occurred to him that anyone looking for him and looking
at
him might still think he was a girl. And though this was bad because he was a boy, it was worth putting up with for a while longer if it put them off the scent. He comforted himself that it was practical: that it kept the hair out of his eyes and ears and in kung fu films the men wore it clubbed like that too.

He heard Jack doing her thirsty panting. He saw her licking at the wet grass in the shadows and then eating it, too. Guilt put a stop to Bully’s escape celebrations. He thought about what Jack had been through, all that waiting she’d done in the hot green tent, not knowing if Bully was coming back. And dogs got stressed, that was a fact. It upset him now to think of it – how he’d done that to his dog – and he started scouting out for water, trying to make it up to her.

There was water in the lake but he only ever fed Jack clean water, the same as humans. Generally speaking (except for dog food) if it wasn’t good enough for him, it wasn’t good enough for Jack. He spied a drinking fountain further along the path, tourists queuing with their rucksacks strapped to their fronts like they were going to blow themselves up. He pulled a crackled plastic bottle out of a bin and queued up, got to the front quick with Jack there, a couple of the girls looking frightened because she was sniffing their ankles, logging their smell as friendly among the billions and trillions of London smells. He filled his bottle up and then he put his thumb over the spout of the fountain.

“Water. Here, mate, open up,” he said. Jack opened her mouth and Bully squirted the water and the girls surprised him then by clapping like it was a trick. He thought about asking for money like the street performers did, but when he held out his hand the girls walked away and all he got was a lick from Jack on his shins. He bent down and patted her, scratched the little brown ring of fur between her ears and around her neck that stopped her being streaky white and grey all over.

He panicked for a second when he didn’t see her collar but then remembered he’d taken it off just in case and put it in his back pocket. He checked his pockets. But there was nothing there. He checked the others. Nothing. A chainsaw of horror started up in Bully’s head as he clumsily went from one pocket to the next, refusing to believe it was gone. It was God punishing him and Jesus too for even thinking that Jack might not make it out of the square. He should never have left her. He should never have taken her collar off. He promised he would never do that again, but the collar still wasn’t in his back pocket.