Paul had time on his hands so he took care of Mr Lawrence's little errand. He caught a bus to the Ridgeway and found the house he wanted, more of a cottage, really, with a large square of nipped grass surrounded by a waist-high fence. It was neat and moss free. You just knew the owners spent a lot of time fussing around with Black amp; Decker. It was a street where the houses had drives and extensions, and boys and girls delivered broadsheets instead of tabloids and always on time. There were fewer satellite dishes. Paul noticed things like that. And here kids used playing fields with real goalposts instead of concrete and shop fronts. And dogs? They were smaller. And mostly white. Funny, that as the IQ went up the size of dogs and TV screens went down. Funny that, innit? And sad in a way, cos it meant that kids from the rich homes didn't have big TVs to watch. And that meant they'd probably end up with glasses, short-sighted or squinting, or something. Yeah.
He spent a couple of hours there, hanging around the street, watching the comings and goings. Eventually an old couple emerged from the cottage and the old man shouted over the fence.
“You there! Yes, you! We've got our eye on you. Clear off or we'll call the police. Understand?”
Tory voters!
Fuck that.
Paul cleared off.
It didn't take much savvy to reason that Mr Lawrence had given him the wrong address. The old man had got it wrong. They say age messes with the memory and they were right. There was certainly no girl living there. No beautiful Indian girl with dark eyes and black hair and legs that went all the way to… Yeah, right! And those two old Tory voters weren't her parents. No sir. NO SIR! No way. By the time he got back to the High Road dusk was falling and the street lights turned on Saturday night. Christmas illuminations gave the road a party feel, added a little excitement and cheer, like three lemons on a slot machine. Like a cold smile from a bargirl that meant no chance sunshine, no chance at all.
Shops stayed open late and a choir sang Christmas songs while a dozen Santas collected money in fat Toby jugs. He looked in the shop windows for the Christmas message, the birth of Christ, goodwill to all men, but couldn't find it between the spend, spend, spend and the banks of computers and widescreen TVs tied in Christmas ribbon. For a while, like, twenty minutes or so, he stood in front of a window and a TV, and watched in Cinerama – you’d need an extension on the house to get it in – a million people on the move. Africa was a vast graveyard, still uncivilized and uncaring, and while he watched the dark leather-skinned children cry while their mothers gazed out of helpless eyes and the shadows of vultures slid across the cooking battleground, a choir sang, ‘Oh come, all ye faithful, joyful and triumphant…’
And suddenly, in front of that wide living screen, Paul knew that the whole business of religion was crap.
He heard, ‘ All things bright and beautiful’.
He ran down the High Road, trying to outrun the voice. But it caught him up and mixed up the harvest festival with Christmas.
He gave us eyes to see them
He gave us leprosy
He made the highest mountains
To fall on you and me…
See? See? See what I mean? Stop! Stop right now!
And Paul stopped. And passers-by looked at the strange young man who was sweating and steaming while a heavy frost fell around him and turned the litterbins white.
Christmas, goose fat, a penny for the old man’s hat. Kick his head in more like. Steal his pension. Take that!
It was right, wasn’t it, that in a lawless society those with would soon be without? It was right that at Christmas the bosses and toffs should get their comeuppance, that they should be forced to sleep in a stable…in Africa. Yeah.
And then it was Saturday night for real.
The scene was set, the third act, and Paul was in heaven. It was his first time in the theatre, and it moved him to tears. He cried out loud and the people beside him were, for a while, amused. The barber had given him the ticket in exchange for a TV set. It was a complimentary given to the barber when he agreed to hang a poster in his window. The barber wasn't an Anthea Palmer fan. He liked Sophia Loren. He'd been keen on her ever since he'd seen Boy on a Dolphin in 1957. He remembered the year well, he told Paul. The EEC was formed. Macmillan was Prime Minister. Sputnik took off. But the highlight was Sophia's tits poking out of a see-through vest. Nipples the size of halfcrown pieces, the colour of a good claret. Technicolor. Remember
Technicolor? It was going to change your life. Right? Paul wondered what a half-crown piece was.
The stage was a hospital ward and Anthea Palmer had arrived with her best friend.
Anthea sang:
I'm looking for the gynaecology department.
And as she looked around for assistance, her best friend sang:
She's looking for the gynaecology department
She needs a professional point of view
A little sperm has found its way
And decided it wants to stay
And now she needs advice on what to do.
A male consultant passed by:
What have we here? Internal examination?
Cervical smear, dear? Contraceptive fitting?
Sit you on the end of a rubber glove, shall we?
Routine check-up, is it? High chair, stirrups and a…speculum!
Paul experienced an urge to kill the consultant. His eyes narrowed to slits and a muscle in his temple began to pop.
Anthea Palmer, lonely and beautiful and drawing yet more tears from Paul, moved to one side of the stage and sang:
We want more female gynaecologists
Who understand our feelings and our fears
Why should we have this humiliation
Each time we need an examination?
Anthea sounded innocent and fragile; he just knew that in real life she wore white underwear. He saw the girl on TV, in front of the map of the British Isles, pointing at clouds spitting three huge teardrops. And so Paul, Paul Knight, weeping, fell in love with Anthea Palmer, ex-weather girl, the blond-bobbed goddess of countless travel shows and tabloid front pages, and he couldn't get over her. His eyes were still red when he arrived at Avenue Road, the dangerous place of run-down terraced houses. But Paul had no option. Mr Lawrence had been right. He had to disappear for a little while and keep well out of the way of his ex-cell mate. He couldn't think of a better place to disappear than Avenue Road. People had been disappearing there for years.
The area was in the process of being demolished to make way for a new development. Huge diggers and concrete crushers stood idle; giant stick insects reaching out of the red-tinted darkness. In the morning they'd come to life, belching plumes of black smoke, flattening the earth. And then, in time, there'd be another Robot City, where robots shopped.
Half the road was already levelled but numbers four to twelve and three to eleven remained largely intact, two rows of five houses facing each other across a rutted road in the midst of devastation, piles of brick and jagged-edged concrete and twisted girders, like a war zone, like one of the scenes from… Where was it?
Over there. One of those places where all the troublemakers came from. Paul was more interested in the place in Africa where the civil war was killing millions, the war our politicians weren't interested in. No oil, no aerospace deal. No interest.
Four to twelve, as with three to eleven, surrounded by great mounds of rubble, had broken windows, some of them boarded, and front doors sealed by the shadowy authorities. When the wind was wrong it whistled through the windows and filled the rooms with an icy blast. Once, Paul remembered, he'd woken up with frost on his blanket. But it was that or the Big Issue and some newspapers in a shop doorway. And praying that the guy sleeping next to you wasn't from Glasgow or, worse, Edinburgh.
Paul knew his way about, like most of them did. You took a shower in the local leisure centres when no one was looking, you visited the charity shops before they opened and went through the black sacks that were left piled in the entrances.
Paul knew his way into the even-numbered row. There were various windows the occupiers used as bolt-holes and one of the back doors had been broken open. The local kids called the place the Warren because holes had been knocked through walls so that there were internal passageways to all five houses. There were a dozen or more people living in the row. No one was quite sure how many because people came and went. Some would stay for a night or two, particularly when the weather was bad, and it hadn't been good lately, and others had been there for months. The last house in the row, number 12, even though it was serviced by three passageways, one down and two up, was occupied by a single person and was out of bounds to all the others. That was just about the only rule. You didn't go into number 12.
An old-timer lived there. Rumour had it that he had South African connections but he didn’t have a South African accent, more like Huddersfield, Paul would tell you, for there were some odd people from Huddersfield. There was also a rumour that he was an ex-Druid who still, on occasion, wore his old robes and made his way to Stonehenge every summer solstice. Truth told, they didn't know much about him. But they did know that November the fifth and the weeks leading up to it was his favourite time. He'd spend those weeks going round the Paki shops, Londis and places like that, looking at the fireworks. He loved the fireworks, the big bastards in particular, those that cost a hundred quid a time and sent, like, a hundred bangers into the air that fanned out with colour and shook the earth. There was something about shaking the earth that he liked.
He liked to cook. But he wasn't very good at it. Not if the smell was anything to go by. Clouds of wicked steam that made your eyes water would pour through the passageways from number 12 and when that happened, which was often, then the occupants of number 10 moved down to 8, 6 and 4. It was inconvenient but no one complained. No way. The old-timer was in charge. That was never an issue. They called him Powder Pete.
Someone told Paul – he couldn’t remember who – that Powder Pete had once worked in a paint spraying place, spraying metalwork and turning the silver-grey into black and blue, and that’s how he got his name. But it was only hearsay.
Powder Pete was a bit special. That's why they respected his privacy. The authorities would turn off the water and he'd have it back on in minutes. They'd cut the electricity and gas but that made no difference either. He'd just go out in the night and an hour later the lights would be back on. He looked after them and, for that, they were grateful. People would pay him a little rent. Not much. Nothing if they were sick and couldn't go robbing or dealing. One thing Powder Pete didn't like was the kids on the game. Not the kids, just the game and the adults who played it. He said that he was trying to give the kids back their childhood and the game took that away. He didn't stop them. That wasn't his way. But he'd try and talk them out of it. In a subtle way so it didn't sound like preaching. Robbing was safer, he'd say. And dealing, that was the thing. That was the present and the future. Dope was the biggest growth industry going. Along with computers. Another thing he didn't like was the youngsters taking the drugs. Drugs are for selling, he'd say. But he understood that some of them were well hooked by the time they got to him, so the least he could do was make sure their gear wasn't spiked.
Take Ruth, for instance.. She was eleven years old and she'd been on the game for over a year. She was quite philosophical for her age. Her father and her uncles had been having a go since she was six. If she returned home it would carry on so she might just as well make some dosh out of it. And there was a lot of dosh out there. Paul had asked her about her mother. Apparently, her mother simply didn't believe her. Called her a wicked liar. Said she was trying to come between her and dad. Said she was making excuses for wetting the bed and bunking off school. Powder Pete got hold of a rubber sheet to cover her mattress and until it was sorted he changed her blanket every day without saying a thing. And he boiled her underwear to get shot of the stains. Got it clean as new. And he never said a thing to any of the others. As far as he was concerned it was their little secret, not important at all, not even worth talking about. It was Ruth who told Paul. And for a while back there, the sadness of it all got to him and he forgot all about the people in Africa, a lot of them Ruth's age.
For a while he thought of Ruth and nothing else and the way Powder Pete looked after her, bedwetting and all. Paul snivelled, “When you hear something like that it makes you realize what a wonderful world it is. That black guy was right. What a wonderful world.”
Powder Pete looked after the kids that society didn't want, the kids that had fallen through the net. He was fighting a battle against everyone and everything to give them a future. He was up there with the good guys like…like Prince Charles, David Bowie, people like that.
One night, when Paul cuddled up to Ruth – no sex or anything – he explained to her that Pete, in a sense, was the social worker for the children of the night. The children that no one else cared about. He didn't give them rules, save the one, don't go into the end house, and he let them do their own thing, run wild, make a noise, make a mess, eat what they wanted, when they wanted. Play their music really loud. It was the best sort of home you could have. Outside a real one. With a mom and dad who loved you. And not the way your dad loved you. At the time Paul hadn't known about her bedwetting. Not until the morning.
She had a beautiful little face and a smile, with crooked teeth, that was contagious. It made you want to hug her. But she died. Just like that. Like the best people did. Like…like Frank Sinatra and Prince Charles. Just like that. Before he went inside the last time. Pneumonia, or something. Powder Pete dropped her off at the hospital. He'd found her sweating and all his remedies made no difference. So he took her to the hospital but it was too late. She died two days later aged eleven and a quarter. And apart from the few months she'd spent at Powder Pete's, she'd never had a childhood.
Powder Pete blamed himself. You could see it in his wild eyes. Even now, eighteen months later, you could see it. He should have realized how serious it was, that it wasn't just a heavy cold, and so on. The sadness had pulled down a veil, like, and the colour, even the red rage in his eyes, was dulled.
Enough to make you cry. And when Paul heard it that’s what he did and Powder Pete had to console him. “Pull yourself together, Paul. When life's had enough of you, it doesn't care whether you're innocent or not, young or old, see? Life's a bastard judge that'll sentence you to death at the drop of a hat. Just like that. No point in making long-term plans, Paul Knight, because life's got a cruel sense of humour. You gotta be rich for God to love you.”
Some said, and Paul believed them, that Powder Pete never really got over it. That her death had galvanized him into more drastic measures. Cooking, perhaps, because that started in earnest after she'd died. Maybe concentrating on the recipes took his mind off the guilt. He still took flowers to a little nameplate by a white rose in a garden of remembrance. His were the only flowers. Probably cos the guy in charge didn't like flowers in that part of the cemetery. They were allowed on the graves, but not on the nameplates. Cremation, obviously, was second best. Stupid, really. That's why Powder Pete broke the guy's nose and promised him something worse. That's why the guy didn't mind the flowers anymore. He probably knew that when Powder Pete made a promise he kept it.
One other thing that stood Powder Pete from the rest of mankind, the kids had noticed, was that whenever he went out and, that was mostly at night, he wore a waistcoat of steel tubing. A dozen tubes about nine inches long, fastened together around his waist. The kids accepted them as part of Powder Pete. A new fashion, maybe. Beneath his black jacket, of course, once he'd buttoned it up, you wouldn't know the difference. Apart from the lumps.
A girl named Jenny had taken Ruth's mattress. She was older, fifteen maybe, and streetwise. And she had a foul mouth. But she was like, seven months pregnant, so she wasn't all that. Maybe it was all talk. Maybe she wasn't so streetwise after all. Her hair was all over the place, brown streaked with blond with mousy roots, in need of a wash. Bit of a stale smell. Smoke. Once she started to swell she started to roll her own, for the baby's sake, she said. Increased the weed and cut back on the tobacco. She was going to be one of those conscientious mothers, one of those green friends of the earth. Pity there weren't more like her, really, then the world would be a better place. She'd got a tattoo on her arm. Barbed wire, like, all the way round. Maybe that said something about her life. Maybe she was, like, being kept in, or out.
“Feel that,” she said.
Paul hesitated. “No, I don't think so.”
She showed him her belly, and a little ring in her bursting navel, and a trace of dark-brown hair until she pulled up her pants. “Go on.”
Tentatively, Paul reached out.
“See,” she said.
“Fuck!”
“Yeah.”
“Fucking right.”
“See? Told you.”
He felt some more, the ends of his fingers slipped under elastic. She said, “That's far enough.”
“Right. Just checking.” He withdrew his hand. “Amazing that is, though. Makes you think, dunnit?”
He found Brian Lara in the shadows, tube of fuel in one hand, in the other a paper funnel to help with the huff.
“All right, Jay?”
“It's Brian Lara now.”
“Fair enough, but you ain't black.”
“You can have a black white man, if you want, if you ain't prejudice. I mean, no one's white, are they? They're red, they're pink, they're lightly cooked or they're well cooked. No one's white, except the Irish.”
“Fair enough. How's it going, Bry?”
“Dick, dick, dick, dosh, dosh, dosh. You know?”
“Yeah. Waiting for Powder Pete, see?”
“Yeah. Powder Pete’s OK.”
“He knows everything, about the universe and important stuff. The scientists should talk to him then they wouldn’t waste their time with telescopes and writing on blackboards. Powder Pete reckons it’s all crap. He says you can’t have something inside of nothing so that proves it goes on forever. The universe, everything. And that means it never started. That’s it then, innit? No God.”
“Who cares? Why bother? Waste of time thinking. It don’t stop the sore throat, does it?”
“Good point. No point.”
“Dick dosh, innit? Nothing else matters. Never did.”
“Yeah. That stuff's probably done your throat.”
“Gotta be done, though.”
“Yeah, suppose.”
“Tick tock, tick tock, dick dosh, dick dosh.”
“Yeah, it's a living innit? I heard you was with the kozzers.” “Yeah, was.”
“Fuck that.”
“Yeah, that's what I thought.”
“What they want?”
“About the girls getting knifed innit?”
“They thought you…? Where do they get off nowadays? No wonder the streets ain't safe no more.”
“No, not me. Fucking hell. Thought I might have seen something, that's all.”
“Oh, that's all right then. Did you?”
“Might of done. That's the point. You see people, don't you? But you don't. People is people. They're meaningless ain't they? When you think about it. A whole fucking person, but we don’t give a fuck. I've been sitting here thinking about that.”
“I've been thinking about the people in Africa.”
“That's what I'm saying, innit? That's the point. Faces is faces. Can't remember. Thinking about the dosh. Don't see nothing else, do you? Gotta get through today. Dick, dick, dosh, dosh. Scratchcard later, maybe. Fuck tomorrow. All the faces innit? Don’t give a fuck, see?” “Absolutely. See that. Right. But, you helping them?”
“Sort of. Not grassing.”
“I didn't mean that. Fuck that.”
“The geezer they're looking for, right? Who might be a woman. They reckon he's going to kill somebody. Maybe next time. They think, maybe, one of the toms might have seen him. Like. So they want me to finger the toms. Bit silly cos they've only gotta go down the road and they finger themselves and they know them all anyway. That fucking sergeant geezer, you know the one, big geezer, he’s always sniffing around the toms. But there’s this one I saw, they’re interested in her.”
“Fuck that.”
“That's what I thought.”
“Yeah. No way.”
“Then this other geezer, bright bastard, not a kozzer…”
They both laughed.
“He says, like, he'll give me his word that he ain't interested in anything other than the geezer who's doing it.”
“You said it might be a woman?”
“Yeah, that's what he said.”
“Did you believe him, about the other?”
“Yeah. Can't believe I did. You don't believe no one, do you? But I did. I got a feeling, just a feeling, you know? He'll be back. With dosh. Dick, dick, know what I mean?”
“Fucking hell!”
“Yeah. That's what I thought.”
In the corner, in the flicker of candle, something stirred. Two girls, sharing a mattress. Paul caught their faces, didn't know them, put them around thirteen but who could tell nowadays?
“Keep the noise down,” one said. “We're trying to sleep.” Maybe not thirteen, after all. Too confident. Maybe fourteen. Apologetically he whispered, “Yeah, sorry. Talking, see? Innit?” They disappeared again beneath a dirty quilt. Between them, on top of the quilt, lay a black cat, disturbed by the girl's movement, its tail flicking like something from hell.
“Look what I got here,” Jason or Brian said. He opened up a strong Robot City carrier. “Bats.”
“Bloody hell, how many you got?”
“Six. Worth, maybe, forty each.”
“Tennis.”
“No.”
“Squash, then?”
“No, no.”
“Badminton.”
“Yeah, that’s it. And I got these trainers, bag full. Mostly Reebok, see? Need to offload them. What do you think? Will they sell in the shop?”
“The Gallery? Maybe. I could try.”
“Half-half, right?”
“Sounds all right.”
“Done, then. Take them with you. Get nicked around here as soon as I close my eyes. Can't trust no one, can you?”
“No. You're right.”
It was much later when Powder Pete found him. Paul had been dozing, woke to find Powder Pete standing over him. It wasn't a pretty sight. Powder Pete was wide-boned and covered in clothes to go out in. They made him wider, more threatening. And lumpy.
He said, “Thought you'd got a job?” The bones in his face were prominent. And his skin, pale, stretched over the bones.
“That's right. Just gotta make myself scarce for a day or two.” “So how's it going? You learning to paint?”
“Yeah. Gotta learn about the classics first. That's the thing, see?” “You're an arsehole, Paul Knight, you know that? The only thing you're ever going to paint is numbers, and even that'd turn out shite. The only thing you're good at is robbing, and you should stick to what you're good at. You got a gift, a divine gift, and you should use it. TVs and DVDs and computers. The future, the bollocks. Not junk. Playstations, Internet, Kings Cross, E-something. Mail. Shit hot. Right?”
“Right?”
“And car batteries. I need lots of car batteries.”
“You in to cars now then, Powder Pete?”
“No, not cars, sulphuric acid, Paul. I need it to clean things up.” “What things, Powder Pete?”
“Things. The world. The planet. I’ve decided to become a one-man cleaning company. But never you mind about that and tell me what you’re doing now.”
“Staying out of sight for a while, see?”
“Staying out of sight is good. It's good for the soul. But this isn't the place to do it. Had visitors earlier, some of Ticker Harrison's mob. Started throwing their weight around. We gotta move out, find another place and build a stockade, a barrier against the so-called civilized world.”
“Yeah, wouldn't want to mess with them. No way. How long you got?”
“Ten days, they said.”
Paul shook a resigned head.
“But that's not the point. I told you last time, this place is for the youngsters. No one over eighteen.”
“I know that. I know you told me. I thought you'd make an exception, just for a day or two.”
“Over eighteens are over the road. It's the rule. My rule. The only one that counts.”
“I do know that. But like, I fit in here, don't I?”
Powder Pete smiled. “Yes you do. I've noticed that. You've never grown up, Paul. Something went wrong with you and I don’t know what. You’re a rogue and a rascal and an impossible dreamer but most of all, you’re innocent, you’re one of the meek and, if you live, Paul Knight and, I have my doubts, then you’ll inherit the earth. And that's why, before, I've made you an exception. But you're a grown man and these children are vulnerable and, no matter what your problems, I shouldn't put them at risk. They gotta come first.”
“I'd never touch them, Pete, Sir, never! I'd take care of them, and I'd cuddle them if they needed it. And that's all it would ever be. If they cry out in the night I'd hold them till they settled. That’s all. I’d fight for them, just like you!”
“I believe you, Paul Knight. Many wouldn't. But I do. You said it well and you can stay for a couple of days or so. And right now, you can come with me. I've had a tip-off, a word from the underworld. One of Ticker Harrison's villains that came to threaten us gave me the word. Even villains hate the nonces. There's a couple of children in trouble, and that should be everybody's business but it isn't. So it's down to us. We're all that they’ve got. So let's go. We won't be in time but we can pick up the pieces.”
“I'm with you, Powder Pete.”
Paul quickened his pace and ran to catch up.