Lottery Boy (23 page)

Tiggs gave him another shove. Bully turned round, taller than him on the stairs. He gave him a look and yanked off the headphones because at that moment he didn’t care about the noise outside or the real sick bit coming up… And he heard a dog begin to howl and bark. And then another, and another starting up, barking to a different beat, the one coming from his heart.

Bully turned and jumped down the flight of stairs, going past Tiggs in the air, and it felt suddenly as if the whole place was falling down, but it was him doing the falling, his bad foot giving out, him falling towards the man in the spotlight, coming up the stairs with the lizard smile and the unwrapped eyes.

This was Janks’s place.

Bully was blind. He kept blinking hard, opening and closing his eyes, but just like inside the gun he still couldn’t see anything and all he could hear was drilling and thumping. It stopped for a minute. Somewhere beneath them, dogs took up the slack in the silence, yapping and howling, and he remembered where he was then, and that no matter how many times he opened and closed his eyes he would still be tied up in Janks’s house.

Then his mum spoke to him.

He tried to yell and scream but something stopped the sound from getting out of his mouth and he found he was having to breath through his nose. His head thumped and he felt sick with the gag in his mouth. And then someone started trying to rip his face off. That’s what it felt like, anyway, when the duct tape came away from his eyes. And then a beam of light shining into them blinded him all over again.

“It’s good this,” said Janks. “This card of yours. The way it talks. Your mum, is it? The dead one?”

Bully tried to stand up and began to choke himself, and saw that he was naked except for his boxers. Janks pushed him back down with the toe of his boot.

“
Whoa
, boy! Stay, stay…” And Bully slipped back down the radiator.

Janks tapped him on the head with his knuckles, to see if there was anyone in.

“So you’re in the land of the livin’? You got a
thick
skull, that’s all I’m sayin’. Ain’t he, eh? See, look,” said Janks. “They thought you was dead too.”

Bully blearily peered around Janks’s face, a shrunken balloon of light coming from a phone. Everything was more blurry than normal. As his eyes adjusted to the light, Bully made out the orange ears and red rag that were Tiggs and Chris wavering in the background like two anxious ghosts from his past.

Terrible thoughts dripped into his head and melted the shock for a second. They had tricked him. They had lied and cheated to get him here. They had
betrayed
him; his friends.

“Hey, no need for all that,” said Janks when there was a pause in the work outside and he heard Bully swearing. He shone his phone back on Bully but not right in his eyes this time.

He squatted down closer so that there was just a few centimetres between their faces, and Bully saw the creases in his face shifting about, getting comfortable. And Janks smoothed back his little stickleback bit of hair, and it stayed stuck.

“They was worried about you. We’ve all been worried – ain’t we?” Chris and Tiggs nodded their heads. “I’ve had everyone out lookin’ for you. That’s how worried I been. Now I hear you’re looking for someone to do you a favour? Eh?”

“He’s taped up, Janks. He can’t speak, can ’e?” said Chris in a nervy rush.

Janks stood up. The light strayed and Bully saw he was in a long, low room not much higher than him, the ceiling cracked and fuzzy and grey, like rain might come out of it.

“What? Do you think I’m
stupid
?” he shouted all of a sudden, boom-box loud.

“I was just sayin’,” Chris said, in case it was a trick question and he got it wrong. And Janks yanked Chris’s rag off his head and wiped his face with it. Then he slowly ground it into Chris’s face, round and round like it was very dirty, until Chris pleaded with him to stop.

“And what about you, big ears? You got something to say?” Before Tiggs could answer Janks ripped his headphones off his head and smashed them against the wall until the big orange ears were hanging off.

“Right… We got that sorted. Now let’s get back to business.”

He knelt back down, put his finger to his lips (though the drilling was louder than any noise Bully could make) and ripped the tape off in one sharp move. And Bully coughed and coughed, felt the short relief of breathing in and out through his mouth.

“As I was sayin’. I hear you got something you want cashin’ in? Am I right?”

Bully shook his head.

“No?” Janks smiled to himself as if reminded of some moment in his past similar to this one. “Well, I must have got that wrong then. You must have told me wrong, Chris.” Chris stood very still, didn’t want to say
anything
this time. “Right, well, we all got places to go.” Janks stood up again as if waiting for him to do the same. “Well, go on then! I haven’t got time to waste on little kids like you. Sling your hook!”

“I can’t, Janks… I’m tied up,” he said at last.

“Is that right?” Janks looked at him, all surprised, like this was news to him. But Bully couldn’t help playing along, hoping there was a chance, even if it was just one in a million, that Janks really was going to let him go.

And Janks was making a meal of it now, enjoying himself, taking his time, spreading a look of fake concern slowly across his face. “Who put you on a lead then, Bully boy? Was it one of you two?” And Chris
had
to nod his head then, and Tiggs shook his as if that way they were covering themselves, right or wrong.

Janks’s eyes narrowed then popped.

“Well … what you two waiting for? Untie him then, untie him. I haven’t got all day.”

Chris and Tiggs bent down hesitantly either side of Bully where his hands and neck were knotted against the radiator.

“I can’t do the knots, Janksy,” whined Chris.

“Waste of space, ain’t they?” Janks casually said to Bully. “I don’t know why I keep ’em.”

“He keeps pulling,” said Tiggs.

“Come on then, while we’re waiting,” said Janks to Bully. “Let’s have a look at it.”

“What?” said Bully, knowing what.

“This big-money ticket, eh? Let’s have a look-see. Where is it? Where do you leave it? What you done with it? Where you stashed it, because for the life of me, I can’t find it here, in this lot…” He motioned to the lumpy outline of Bully’s old coat and the small pile of his clean new clothes.

“I didn’t win nothing. There was nothin’ on it,” he pleaded.

“Is that right?” Bully nodded, turned his head, hoping desperately that Chris had got maybe one of the knots undone and was really still his friend.

“Ha… So there
is
a ticket? Caught you out, didn’t I? Because a little birdy told me you were going to Watford to cash it in. So if you won nothing, why would you be going to Camelot, eh? So tell me, Bully boy.”

“I was going to see my—” Janks slapped his face very quickly and very hard, like he’d been trying to swat this fly bothering him all day and had finally got it dead, bang on the palm of his hand.

“To see your
dad
? I don’t think so. Why’d you nick the passport? Oh yeah, we found that. And your little
key
. Chris has been telling me all about your nice little family. I know all about you, Bully – I know
everything
. So, I don’t want to hear any more stories coming out of
that
.”

He pointed to Bully’s mouth, and then picked up Bully’s card. He flapped it open.

And then Janks began to tear the card very slowly into pieces so that Bully’s mum had nearly got to loving him more than anything else in the whole world when her voice finally died.

Janks tutted. “Now, see? Look what you made me do. You got me all tempered up. So let’s start back with an easy one. All you’ve got to tell me is just two little things; two things – where’s the ticket and where d’you buy it? Two things. One, two, easy as pie for a clever, sneaky little thing like you.”

“Dowley Road Spar,” Bully said, his fear grassing him up. He could tell Janks one thing though, that didn’t matter – just one thing without the other didn’t matter much, like a credit card without a pin.

“Where’s that then?”

He told him, stuttered a bit as he described the road, the shop, Old Mac who sold it to him almost six months ago when he was nearly twelve.

“That’s good. That’s a while ago. No one’s going to remember that ticket, are they? They got security tapes in there? Well, even if they have,” he said, answering his own question, “they’re not going to be keeping them for getting on for six months, are they? Good, that is good. Good boy. You done well. Right, now just one more thing – where is it?”

“It wadn’t worth nothin’ so I binned it. I just binned it! I can’t remember what I done with it.”

“Well, it’s lucky, innit,” said Janks and knuckled Bully’s forehead again, but grinding them in like kids did at school, “that I’m ’ere. Because one thing I’m
really
good at is making people remember things. You would be
amazed
at all the remembering that goes on in this place.”

He looked around him and sighed, pointed his phone to the back of the room, at the ceiling. “See that?”

Bully strained his eyes and twisted his neck as far as the muscles would take his head in that direction. He made out a long wooden beam, like the benches at school, running the length of the room. And hanging from it by its jaws was a dead dog, sweat and drool pooling underneath.

He stifled half a scream, but it was the wrong colouring to be Jack and he squinted harder and saw it was heavier set too, a pit bull. And it wasn’t dead, either. He could hear it wheezing softly through its teeth.

Bully blew what compassion he had left, felt sorry for this dog, thick white scars clotted like cream around its ears from fights it must have won.

“See, that’s
Scoff
. You know Scoff? You know why he’s up there?” Janks said, turning back to Bully, patting his head almost affectionately now. Bully shook his head.

“Well, he let me down in the park the other night – which reminds me, where was you hiding out? On the roof? Up that tree?”

“In one of the guns.” He hoped that didn’t make Janks angry but he seemed pleased, like it was a good story.

“No! What, one of them big ones in the front? You got all that way up there, did you? Right under my nose?” He gave him a big broad smile. “I had a feeling you was. Scoff didn’t find you, did he? He fell off that gun. He let me down. He didn’t do as he was told. So I’m reminding him, like I’m gunna be reminding you in a minute. Do you know what I’m reminding him of? You all know, don’t ya?” he said, looking round, searching each face until he got a nod or a yes out of it.

“Course you do. Because animals is the same as
you
, they all need reminding. Now when I first started out with dogs, I used to have a favourite.
Arny
he was called. And he was always up for getting fed ahead of the rest of the pack, never letting the others near me if he could help it. But one day I wakes up after a night of it and what do I find? No more Arny … just bits and pieces … all over the place. He’d got old and slow and they’d torn him apart. And you know why they did that?” he said, just to Bully now, patiently waiting for him to shake his head.

“Because Arny was my top dog. And given half a chance,
everyone
wants to be top dog.”

And then all traces of a smile left his face. “Right, you two…”

Tiggs and Chris hesitated. Janks’s gaze drifted down to Bully’s bare feet. “Well, sit on ’im then! I ain’t got all day!” And Bully writhed and twisted, nearly shaking both of them off when he saw Janks pull the skewer from his boot.

“See this … you know what this is, don’t you? It’s for putting through meat. See.” He slid it between the gap in his thumb and forefinger and Bully was mesmerized, couldn’t look away. “Right, hold his foot… Last chance,” said Janks. “Where is
my
ticket? I don’t want to hear any more of your little stories.”

“I never won … nothing,” Bully said as slowly as he could, making it last. He felt the skewer tickle the sole of his left foot.

“Arrgh!” said Chris, jumping up. “He’s wet himself!”

“Never mind that,” said Janks. He lifted the skewer up slow and high above his head and then drove it down quick. Bully screamed but felt nothing, and when he looked, there was the skewer, sticking out of the floorboards between his ankles.

Janks stood up.

“What?” said Chris, forgetting himself. “You not getting it out of ’im?”

Janks’s voice took on a mocking hurt tone. “Oh, you want to try, do you? What you saying?
You
know how to get things out of people, do you?”

“No, no… I’m just sayin’, Janks, aren’t you gunna torture ’im, though?”

“
Torture
’im! Torture a little boy! What
am
I? An animal?”