The Killing (16 page)

James didn’t acquit himself too badly on the football pitch and even curled in a fluky goal from the halfway line. When the six lads got knackered, three of them headed off to the shop to buy drinks, leaving James with Max and a black kid called Charlie. They sat on the remnants of a vandalised wooden bench and had the conversation thirteen-year-old boys always have: football, fit girls and funny stuff that had happened to them, or to other kids.

Charlie was the kind of guy whose story had to top everyone else’s, and James suspected he was making stuff up, or at least exaggerating. Not that he minded. Anything that kept the conversation away from his fictional background was good. Even the most detailed back story requires you to fill in some details on the fly, and the more you invent, the easier it is to forget something you’ve said and contradict yourself later on.

When it got to lunchtime, Max invited James and Charlie for Sunday lunch.

‘Won’t your old lady mind?’ James asked.

‘My mum’s a
nutter
,’ Max explained. ‘She
 
loves
 
cooking.’

The layout of the
Tarasovs
’ flat was identical to where James and Dave lived, except there was a narrow staircase off the hallway that led to extra rooms on the next floor up.

Max led the chain of boys into the kitchen. ‘I’ve got two extra for lunch, OK Mum?’

James could hardly believe the amount of stuff crammed into the steaming hot kitchen. There were shelves lined with pickle jars and catering sized tins. Pots and pans hung from a rack over the dining table and sacks of vegetables were piled beneath.
Sacha Tarasov
had pale skin, rounded features and a Garfield apron knotted around an ample waist.

‘I think your brother is upstairs, with Leon,’
Sacha
said, giving James a friendly grin. She fixed her eyes on Max and used the more severe voice that parents reserve for their own offspring. ‘Get these boys something to drink, then fetch me down a frozen stew. And shoes off in the house.’

Max poured three glasses of Coke, which the boys carried upstairs after ditching their trainers in the hallway. The patterned wallpaper, zigzag carpets and exuberant paintings of wild animals on the staircase seemed to be locked in a battle to see who was the gaudiest. There were piles of folded laundry and boxed electrical goods stacked against the walls.

Although everything was tacky, James appreciated the overall effect. It was the kind of home that’s full of people, smells and noise; where everything is a little shabby and you immediately feel comfortable.

‘Here’s why I say my mum’s a
nutter
,’ Max grinned, as he led James and Charlie into a box room at the top of the staircase.

It was Leon
Tarasov’s
study. There was a desk mounded in paperwork and a faux-antique swivel chair, but it also contained the largest chest freezer James had seen outside of a frozen-food store. Max raised the lid, revealing half lambs, pork loins and a mass of homemade meals in plastic tubs. Each tub was labelled by hand in Russian script, and James was pleasantly surprised to find that the limited understanding of the language he’d picked up at CHERUB enabled him to read most of them.

‘You could eat for a year out of this lot,’ Charlie gasped. ‘All we’ve got in the freezer round my house are chicken nuggets and ice cream.’

‘At least you’ve
 
got
 
a freezer,’ James said.

‘I tell you what, James,’ Max said. ‘If you and your brother ever get hungry, just ask my mum. She loves giving food away, as long as you wash up the dish before you bring it back.’

Max crunched the solid lumps of food around until he found a circular Pyrex dish filled with frozen beef stew.

‘You two might as well go through to the living-room,’ Max said. ‘I’ll take this down to my mum.’

The
Tarasovs
all slept in the flat next door, so they’d knocked two of the upstairs bedrooms together to make a giant living-room. James’ sock got swallowed in shaggy turquoise carpet as he stepped in.

Dave was in one corner, sitting on the arm of a sofa alongside eighteen-year-old Pete. Sonya sat on the opposite side of the room pretending not to know Dave, while Liza was curled up on a rug in front of the TV. Liza looked happy to see Charlie, who sat cross-legged on the floor next to her like a regular member of the family.

‘You must be James,’ Leon
Tarasov
said, reaching out his hairy hand. His accent was east London, with barely a hint of his Russian heritage.

Leon was a huge fat man, with a bald head and a line in chunky gold jewellery. James had to step around the side of Leon’s fully reclined armchair and reach over his giant belly to shake hands.

Leon burrowed into his shirt pocket and stripped out a twenty-pound note. ‘Here.’

‘What’s that for?’ James grinned.

‘Bounty,’ Leon said. ‘A
tenner
for every Grosvenor Estate yobbo you lay out. If I had my way, I’d go over there with some baseball bats and sort out the bastard lot of ’em.’

‘
Jesus
, Dad,’ Sonya said angrily. ‘You’re a total fascist.’

Leon shot an evil glance back at his daughter. ‘Shouldn’t you be out in a dinghy, saving whales with all the other hippies?’

He pressed a button on his armchair, making his giant body whirr electronically into an upright position.

‘Pete and Leon have been absolute stars, James,’ Dave said enthusiastically. ‘I couldn’t get my car started this morning, so Pete came down to take a look at it. Leon says he knows a scrap dealer who can get me a good deal on a compressor for the air-con and a couple of the other bits I need to get the car sorted.’

‘I thought we were broke,’ James said. ‘I mean, we need the money we’ve got left for food and furniture.’

‘Don’t worry about it,’ Leon said. ‘I’ve known this dealer for years. He’ll charge me pennies. So I’ll get the parts and you can use my lot to fix up the car. In return, Dave’s gonna run me some errands. Between the car lot and the two pubs, I can always use a dogsbody for a few hours here and there. You can work off your tab at a fiver an hour.’

Dave nodded, ‘I really appreciate that, Mr
Tarasov
. And I’ll work hard, I swear.’

‘How do you manage to insure that car?’ Leon asked. ‘Seventeen-year-old driving around in a two-litre
Mondeo
. That must have set you back a few bob.’

Dave acted uneasy. ‘I got insurance quotes, but it was over a grand. There’s no way I could ever pay that much.’

Leon shook his head. ‘You want to be careful. When some middle-class kid gets pulled up, he gets a fine. Magistrate sees some peasant like you or me driving without insurance, they’ll throw the book at you. Especially if you’ve got previous.’

‘Have you got previous, Dave?’ Pete asked.

‘I’ve been in a few scrapes,’ Dave said, acting ashamed.

CHERUB had carefully tuned every detail of James and Dave’s background stories to maximise their chances of getting close to Leon
Tarasov
. The broken-down car enabled Dave to approach him for advice on getting it repaired, while the combination of criminal records and a shortage of money made James and Dave the kind of youngsters that experienced crooks like
Tarasov
enjoy taking advantage of.

‘I got nicked driving a stolen car a couple of years back,’ Dave explained. ‘I thought I was gonna get sent down, but they put me in this special programme where you learn to fix cars and stuff.’

James had to smother a grin as he caught the glimmer of opportunity in Leon’s eye. It was spooky how a well-planned CHERUB operation could manipulate someone.

‘You know, David,’ Leon said, interlocking his sausage-shaped fingers and grinning. ‘My late brother and I arrived in this country thirty years back. All we owned were rubber boots and overalls spattered in fish guts. So when I see kids like you and James, my heart goes out. I know what it feels like and I’m gonna see what I can do to help you out.’

Dave and James both smiled. ‘Thanks Mr
Tarasov
,’ Dave said. ‘We appreciate it.’

*

James was back home, watching TV with his feet on the coffee table. Five hours after lunch he still felt bloated from
Sacha’s
cooking; it was no wonder the
Tarasovs
were all on the porky side. Dave came in holding a microwave curry with Bombay potatoes.

‘How can you eat after that lunch we had?’

Dave demonstrated the technique as he sat down next to James. ‘Stick in fork, remove from dish, insert in mouth. Want a chunk?’

Dave held a fork-load of curried chicken under James’ nose. He batted Dave’s arm away.

‘
Don’t
,’ he said angrily. ‘If your stinking curry makes me spew up, I’ll be turning my head in your direction.’

‘You’ve got nobody to blame but yourself,’ Dave said. ‘You ate that massive bowl of stew, then pork chops,
roasties
, piles of
veg
and three chunks of cake. You ate as much as Leon and he must weigh a hundred and twenty kilos.’

James contemplated
Sacha’s
frosted carrot cake. He couldn’t reconcile how amazing it had been when he’d eaten it, with how ill it now made him feel just thinking about it.

‘Do you still feel sick?’ Dave grinned, as he swallowed a mouthful of Bombay potato. ‘What would you least like to eat right now? Runny eggs? How about nice sloppy trifle? Or a beef burger, all raw in the middle so you feel the blood trickle out when you bite into it?’

‘Dave, you’re not funny,’ James tutted. ‘Can’t you shut up and let me watch this?’

Dave cracked up. ‘What, you’re seriously watching
 
Songs of Praise
? I never had you down as the religious type.’

James shrugged. ‘I was watching this show about hippos. I wanted to change channel when it ended, but I think the remote went down between the cushions and I’m too stuffed to move.’

This made Dave laugh harder and James couldn’t help seeing the funny side of his own predicament.

‘Stop taking the piss,’ he grinned, rubbing his belly. ‘I’m in agony here.’

‘Tell you what,’ Dave said, turning serious for a moment. ‘I think there’s indigestion medicine in that green first-aid box Zara gave us. I put it on the shelf in the bathroom.’

‘Oh cool,’ James said, pulling himself up off the sofa. ‘A swig of that should do the trick.’

The medicine helped and James felt OK by half-ten when he went to bed. He slept through until the doorbell rang at 8 a.m., Monday morning. He dashed out into the hallway and found Dave opening the door to Leon
Tarasov
.

‘Hi Mr
Tarasov
,’ Dave said, dressed in his boxers and sounding surprised.

‘I’m not your teacher, Dave. Call me Leon.’

‘I thought I was coming to see you at the car lot,’ Dave said.

‘I’ve got a little proposition,’ Leon said. ‘Easy work. Mind if I come in?’

Dave gave the impression of not being awake. ‘Um, I guess … Sure, sure.’

Dave led Leon through to the living-room. Leon’s giant gut lumbering down the hallway had an outlandish quality that reminded James of a geography lesson where he’d watched a video of a
supertanker
passing through the Panama canal. Leon collapsed on to the tiny sofa as James stepped through the doorway behind Dave.

‘You two have both been in trouble with the law,’ Leon began. ‘So you should understand the old saying: loose lips sink ships.’

Dave nodded. ‘I’m no grass.’

‘It’s not so much grassing with you young lads, it’s all this,’ Leon said, making his hands talk to each other. ‘Mouth. Word gets around, you understand?’

‘Loose lips sink ships,’ Dave smiled, as James nodded.

‘I know the only money you boys have coming in is social security. I was thinking in bed last night and I realised I could put something your way that’ll really kick start your finances. Maybe even to the tune of a couple of grand over the next month or so. You interested?’

James and Dave made a point of grinning at one another, like you’d expect from a couple of dirt-poor kids who’d just had four figures dangled under their noses.

‘Course we’re interested,’ Dave beamed.

‘Good,’ Leon said. ‘The scheme obviously isn’t legit, but it
 
is
solid
. I know dudes who work for some of the biggest domestic cleaning agencies going. The clients are mostly well-off folks who can’t be bothered with the hassle of employing a cleaning lady. Instead, they ring up Big
Kleen
, The
Brite
House,
Supa
-Maid or whoever. Missus mop turns up and cleans when they’re out at work, and the closest they ever get to scraping the mould out of their own shower basin is when they pay their credit card bill.

‘Now here’s the beautiful part: at this time of year, most of these rich
turds
take a nice long holiday and cancel the cleaning service. That leaves my contacts holding sets of their house keys and burglar alarm codes for two or three weeks, while their expensive motors sit in the garage.’