Frank leaped up, then, screaming, knocking the mug from Vinnie’s hand, and within seconds the two boys were surrounded by screws.
‘He tripped me up, sir,’ Vinnie protested, as Mr Green grabbed him by the shoulders. ‘And all cos I bumped into him in the queue!’
Frank himself was crying now. Spluttering and actually crying. Not so much the ‘big I am’ now, then, thought Vinnie. Good.
‘Well?’ Green wanted to know, his gaze seeking out all the lads in the vicinity. ‘You saw that? Is what McKellan says true?’
There was the gratifying and immediate chorus of ‘Yes, sir’ that Vinnie had been counting on – bar his henchmen, they hated Frank, and they mostly loved Vinnie, so he’d have been seriously concerned if it hadn’t happened. Know-it-all Downey though, watching from the sidelines with that assessing gaze of his – he hadn’t been convinced, Vinnie could tell. He’d been watching Vinnie carefully throughout all the questions afterwards, and even though he couldn’t prove anything (there was nothing to be proved – only Frank’s version), he decided that he’d punish Vinnie anyway.
And that had been a learning curve in itself, Vinnie thought, as he toiled up the hill for what must surely be the last time. An hour? It already felt like half a day. He looked down at Downey, stationed at the bottom, checking his stop watch every minute or so. He’d had a lot to learn in the last pissing years of his life, and chief among the lessons had been one he hadn’t even realised needed learning – that the screws seemed to be almost as sharp as he was. Not quite, but almost – certainly a good deal sharper than most ordinary run-of-the-mill adults who couldn’t see they were being manipulated even if you went up and fucking told them – particularly his dozy mare of a mother. Almost, he thought, coming back down, breathing heavily, but feeling surprisingly fit and lithe now. Almost but not quite. Never that.
‘No point in a shower, lad,’ Downey said as Vinnie came down the hill for the last time. ‘Go get a cup of water then it’s straight back out here for your run.’ His gaze met Vinnie’s and he held it there, his eyes narrowing as he did so. ‘Maybe you’ll think twice about trying to pull the wool over my eyes in the future, eh, kid?’
‘Piece of piss, sir,’ Vinnie laughed as he trotted back to the front door, passing the lads that were amassing for their run just outside it. The men who learn endurance, he thought triumphantly, recalling one of his favourite Dickens quotes, are they who call the whole world, brother. Yeah, right, Downey, he thought. Something for you to bear in mind.
Fuck the burning in his thighs, fuck the run. Fuck Downey. He wasn’t going to let the fat twat get one over on him.
By the time Josie came home from school on Friday afternoon, a couple of weekends later, June had already gone out. Noticing two roll-ups on the coffee table along with a note, Josie lit herself a fag as she tried to decipher her mother’s letter.
Titch
Left you ten bob in the junk drawer. Get some chips and pop. If you need anything, go up to our Lyndsey’s. Me and your dad will be late so don’t be out all hours. Bed at 10.
Love, Mam
Josie snorted as she screwed up the note and threw it on the fire. That’s that then, she thought, might as well go sit round at Carol’s for a bit. It would be better than being in on her own all night; something she’d been having to do a lot just lately, now her mam and dad were swanning around the estate, flashing all their cash. She didn’t bother getting changed out of her uniform. After all it was Friday, no school tomorrow, so it could stay. Grabbing her coat and the money, she flicked off the light and went back out onto the streets.
The atmosphere in the Bull was getting raucous. Jock, June and the rest of the ‘club cheque gang’, as they had recently named themselves, were crammed in together in one of the booths in the corner of the pub, where they’d been drinking steadily since the early afternoon.
There were two ashtrays in the centre of the table, one overflowing with cigarette ends, the other stuffed with £5 notes and coins. This was the ‘kitty’, the pool of money being rapidly depleted in the cause of getting them even more pissed than they already were.
‘Hey, Jock,’ June said, laughing as she watched her husband lurch sideways, while staggering to his feet to go to the bar. She passed him a couple of notes from the collection in the ashtray. ‘Get some whiskey chasers while you’re up there,’ she ordered. ‘I might feel like dancing later, and I can’t do my Tina Turner without some of the hard stuff inside me.’
The others all laughed on cue as June also hauled herself upright, having to grasp the table edge to do so. She then made an attempt, only partly successfully, to twirl an increasingly unsteady Jock around.
‘Sit down, you silly old get,’ Jock slurred, pulling away from her. ‘And let’s have a bit less of the big fucking spender routine in here. You know what nosey bastards they all are.’
Jock was worried. And particularly about his mouthy wife. Despite the growing haze that was blurring the sharp edges of his thinking, he was aware that they’d been attracting suspicious looks. As they would – it wasn’t like no one knew them, was it? Pretty much everyone knew where they came from and it didn’t take a brain surgeon to work out that as they didn’t normally have two pennies to scratch their arses with, they were acting a bit flash with their money.
In fact, looking at them now – as he tried to, steadying himself against the nearest chair – they looked like they’d come into millions. Which would of course make people wonder what the fuck they’d been up to – even Don the landlord must be wondering what the hell was going on. Because he didn’t know either. And they weren’t going to tell him. As Moira had said, it made no sense to shit on their own doorstep, so she and June had sold the cheap booze to town-centre pubs only. And they should maybe – least for the moment – be drinking in them too.
Jock blinked hard a couple of times to try and clear his vision. He was getting a bad feeling about the way things were going. Yeah, he knew that, all right. Knew how careful they had to be now. He must just make sure his bloody wife stopped forgetting. Stopped flashing the cash in front of the neighbours, stop behaving like a kid in a fucking sweet shop, because if she wasn’t careful, she’d have the whole lot crashing down on the lot of them. And who’d be blamed when she shit hit the fan? He would.
Josie climbed over the fence of Carol’s front garden, taking care not to land in any dog shit as she lowered herself down. The gate had been tied up with wire so that their stupid German Shepherd, Blue, didn’t get out, which meant that if she was in the garden when Josie climbed over – having no choice – the stupid animal would start barking and jumping up at her, thinking she was breaking in. And then, having sniffed her, try to lick her to death.
She wasn’t around now, though, so she dropped to her feet unmolested and unlicked and, in the silence, could hear the sound of raised voices.
As she went down the path she could make out specific words, many of them swear words – it sounded like a loud argument coming from inside. She banged at the door, hoping that this would be enough to stop it. She hated it when Carol’s mam, Tina, was on one. She could be a right vicious bitch.
It took a while for the door to be opened and then only a crack, through which the tear-stained face of Caz peeped through. ‘Oh, Titch,