Lottery Boy (25 page)

“Don’t wanna put a hole in this ticket, do we, Goldy.”

He motioned to one of his men to go down into the pit, both of them shaking their heads and saying no way, no way were they going anywhere near
that
.

“Fetch,” he said to Bully. “Give me the collar. Throw it up, easy.”

Bully felt for the buckle, tried to get his fingers to grip the leather but they were greasy with blood and he couldn’t work the strap.

“Don’t make me come down there, boy.”

“I’m tryin’, I’m tryin’…” Bully looked up to plead for more time. The man with the gun was watching him very carefully now and the two men with him, as if he was digging up buried treasure in this pit. What they weren’t seeing, though, was Janks on his knees, looking at the man with the gun and slowly, slowly feeling inside his boot and slowly, slowly, slowly pulling something silvery out of it.

Bully was already running when he heard the first shot. Like a sprinter with a flying start, he wasn’t looking at the gun. He’d started running the second Janks raised his arm like Superman to drive the skillet through the gunman’s throat.

Men were screaming, shouting, but he was out of the pit, out of the car lights and into the darkness, his bare feet padding across the concrete floor, Jack skittering along behind him on three legs.

He was fifty or sixty metres away when he heard Janks’s voice strung out with rage: “Get the dog! Get the dog!” And then a few seconds later the quick chatter of a car starting up, ragging the engine, spinning smoke and rubber into the air.

The car lights quickly moved round, stretching into the darkness, turning the concrete floor from grey to white, lighting up the bare brick walls, and
him
. But now he could see his way out and he adjusted his direction to aim for the sliding doors ten metres off. It would take a grown man, perhaps two, to pull them back but still he tried. He shook them and they rattled, but that was all.

Bully turned round then to see a tonne of white-eyed metal scorching his shadow away.

But what could he do? Dive left or right? Like a goalkeeper with a penalty, he’d already made his decision. He cradled Jack up in his arms and bent down until the headlights became just one beam of light … and then he jumped
up
.

The bonnet of the car tugged his feet from under him, and he hit the windscreen, bouncing off it just before the estate ploughed through the doors. The sound it made was like an animal squealing, trying to get out, the metal against metal. And when it stopped he heard Janks still inside the car, kicking at the chewed-up door. Bully crawled away underneath the car’s bumper, feeling for where the metal sliding door had been peeled back by the crash.

“Jacky, Jacky,” he whispered, felt his dog brush against his face, showing him the way. Bully squirmed after her, his coat catching on the jagged metal, and he twisted, ripping through it and skinning his shoulder.

Pap!
he heard, close to his head. And then he was through.

He was limping faster, the adrenaline numbing his feet, getting into a kind of hop and a skip. He thought maybe he could even
sprint
, if he had to. And he did. It was like he had scratchy cushions on his feet, couldn’t feel much now, only his breath carrying him along.

“Come on, mate! Come on!” he said. Every time Bully looked back, Jack put in an extra stride, like she was trying to catch up with herself. And Bully caught a look of how bad her back leg was in the streetlights, a twisted-up mess of skin and bone that looked as if it had been stuck on wrong.

And the pair of them went down one street after another just to get away, Bully putting no thought to it until he saw the lights, patches of brightness he recognized; he was back on his side of the river, further downstream.

A car sped past. He waved his arms but it didn’t slow down, just weaved round him. He couldn’t chance waiting any longer for help, and he pushed on down towards the river.

When he saw the couple arm in arm, he started running towards them, windmilling his arms like he was messing about. “Heeelp usss … heeelp usss,” he said, his voice coming out sloppy like he was drunk, because he’d bitten his tongue. They looked at him, and they saw the dog, and they made what they thought was the right decision at this time between day and night and scurried away. He
tried
to run after them but every step was taking a longer breath and soon he knew there would be nothing left in him, and he went down on his knees and began to cry. He didn’t want his millions. All he wanted was his mum back, and to be a little boy again, when it was just him and his mum in their old flat with two bedrooms and no Phil and no cat. If he could go back now to that time, the only thing he’d take with him would be Jack. And he looked at his dog, at what he still had. And he saw that it wouldn’t be for much longer because it wasn’t just her leg that was broke and torn…

… Jack was bleeding out, blood from deep inside her organs running from red to black. He had to stop it. He was on the pavement but in the
field
. Jack was a casualty of Bully’s own little war and he had to put pressure on that wound. He squeezed his hands around the top of her leg. It felt like a sodden dishcloth, and she yelped and snapped.

He needed a tourniquet. He started trying to tear at his coat but it was too thick and then he saw something better – the red elastic bands still on his wrists. He pulled them off and doubled them up to stretch them over Jack’s leg but nearly all of them snapped and pinged because they were either too thin or the elastic was too old and rotten. He saw then the palms of his hands were
grey
not white…

When he started to wrap the duct tape around the top of Jack’s thigh bone she turned on him. He flinched and screamed as her teeth broke the skin of his arm and cut into the muscle. The pain was
excruciating
and he wanted to hit her but he didn’t let go until the tape covered the hole in her leg.

He wiped the blood off his forearm where Jack had bitten him. It felt worse than it looked. At least Jack wasn’t whining any more; she was up on her three good paws and
growling
. But not at him. It was the sort of noise she made when a Fed or a fight was coming round the corner, telling him she knew more than Bully about the future, about what was going to happen next. It was time to
go
. Bully pulled himself up, and the pair of them hopped and stumbled a few steps closer to the river.

Then he saw the skinny bridge. And across the skinny bridge, he saw the big, big blurry ice-cream cone, just wasted and thrown away. Sanctuary.

He made it up the ramp, like running the wrong way up the escalators, and then:
Pap!
Pap!
He turned round and there was Janks taking pot shots from the riverbank – a bullet ricocheting off the steel safety rail, one last zombie fleeing from the bridge. Bully looked across at the big, big church, his body greedily soaking up the last few sups of adrenaline. He started to run and was nearly halfway across, and the church was just beginning to sharpen up in his sights when he heard a
yelp
.

He looked back and Janks’s pit bull had Jack on the bridge, its jaws clamped on her throat. Bully stopped but hesitated to go back, hopping from one foot to the other like a little boy who needed a wee while he watched the pit bull crush Jack’s windpipe, taking her air away. His dog would be dead in a quick minute because there was nothing in this field he could do for Jack now. Not with just his bare hands. He looked at them and they were black with blood and useless to him.

Crack!

Janks was there on the bridge, limping badly, dragging his leg along.

Bully looked down at the dark water, thick with ripples. It was too late for him, too late for his dog
perhaps
, because there was one last thing he could try. So he went back, back to her, and he got down on his knees, got his arms under both animals, still locked together, straightened up and, borrowing something from himself, he heaved this strange melded creature into the oily water.

Crack!

His shoulder took what felt like a hammer blow and he was rolling, spinning over the parapet, falling through the steel cables of the bridge.