Paul quickened his pace and ran to catch up.
Chapter 19
As they led the children through the silent backstreets bells chimed out midnight, the apogee of darkness, the time when cold-blooded things began to stir. Frost fell like snow. The children shivered. Teeth chattered. Their trainers smacked the cold pavements. The tiny hairs on the girl's legs stood out, caught in unearthly light. The same light that sparkled in the boy's frightened eyes. Paul tightened his grip on the children’s sweaty hands. The wind whipped into their faces. It drew out their tears and snatched them away.
Voices, even their breathing, sounded deeper.
“You ever noticed, Paul, you take an 'o' out of good, you got God, you take the 'd' out of devil, you got evil? There's a mystery to life, more than we know.”
“You're right, Powder Pete, I see that.”
The pavements were bare. They seemed wider. The slabs glistened. They seemed harder.
The children clung on knowing instinctively that these strange men, the old man and his apprentice, were their salvation.
“Warm milk,” the older man said suddenly, and left them wideeyed and wondering.
They'd travelled a dozen streets, maybe ten minutes, when they heard the explosion, a huge ear-splitting thump that shook the ground and rattled the windows in the dark properties butting the pavement they trod. Then came the sound of breaking glass. Along the street a few lights went on and a couple of people came out to scan the rooftops. Beyond the terraced rows a curl of smoke spiralled on the wind and a few stars blinked out.
Then came the sounds of distant fire-engines and police cars. “Bloody hell, Powder Pete, that was more than a sparkler, that was more than a Chinese cracker. I reckon you've taken out half the street.” “No, just the one house.” Powder Pete’s voice was calm and dependable. “They won't do it again, will they? Hope they find tranquillity for that’s the sea that their bollocks are swimming in. That's what I call justice. Nothing else will do. Their names will never be on the sex offender’s register, and they'll never come out of prison to do it again. And that is good.”
They held the children's hands and led them back to the squat in Avenue Road, that huge run-down nursery for the children of the night. Powder Pete told them, “Now's not the time to talk. It's a hot bath for you both to get rid of the filth, then hot milk and bed. In the morning we can talk.” He turned to Paul and added, “Wake one of the older girls, the one who’s pregnant will do. She can help this young lady to clean up. And she’ll know if a hospital’s called for.” Paul nodded thoughtfully. Powder Pete wasn’t taking any chances. Not any more.
The boy said abruptly, “We ain't going back home. No way.” Powder Pete answered sternly. “Did I say that? Did I? That's up to you and your sister.”
“It's me dad. He's not our real dad. But he does things.”
The girl nodded in agreement. She was all of nine. The boy was older by a couple of years.
Paul said, “So you got her out of it, did you?”
“Had to. No choice.”
“What about your mum?”
He struggled. “She don't know.”
“She should know.”
The boy shook his head and a tear squeezed from his eye. “Those two geezers back there, they meet you at the station?” “Said they knew a place we could stay.”
Powder Pete cut in, “Now's not the time. We'll sort it in the morning. But you're too young to be on the streets. This is a dangerous place.”
“So's my bedroom at home,” the girl said suddenly, surprising them.
In the early hours the Warren, dark apart from the occasional flickering night-light, tiny candles in silver containers supplied by Powder Pete, was damp with tears. Nightmares woke the kids and in the darkness they tasted the fear of abandonment. Those that were streetwise slept through it, barely disturbed. They had learned the hard way how to shut out the unforgiving world.
Powder Pete listened to their cries and sometimes he'd throw on his old dressing gown and fight with his slippers and he'd make his way through the tunnels to the source of distress. There, he'd stroke a sweaty brow and whisper. “It's all right, all right. You're safe. And I'll look after you.”
The dark things that crawled in the night were outside and they couldn't get in.
“You're safe here,” he'd whisper. “I won't let anyone hurt you. Go back to sleep.”
The crying became a whimper and then a snatch of breath and then, moments later, soothed by his certainty, the deeper sigh of sleep. Powder Pete was the guardian, the protector, the trustee. The bollocks, really.
The difference between hard men and the rest of mankind is not subtle. Hard men are willing to do things that others are not. They'd use a knife or a gun or a broken bottle without compunction, without a single thought to the consequences and without pity. The difference lay in a tiny gene, or the lack of it, that created a conscience, that moral sense that made cowardice a virtue. Paul's suitor was a hard man. Suitor is probably the wrong word, for he is a man who pursues a woman. But Paul was becoming more feminine by the day. Hard men can find things and other people easily, because people talk to them. It might have been the kids, or perhaps the trail started in The British, but someone talked, and the big hirsute – bald – unsavoury type turned up, just as Paul was turning in.
“Oh, it's you.”
“You don’t seem pleased to see me.”
Paul tried to hang back from the beer-breath but it was impossible. “I heard you'd become a painter of pictures.”
“Yeah, something.”
“Maybe you could paint me.”
The words came slowly, strangled in the throat, fighting phlegm and swollen glands.
The lights were out. Only a distant candle gave Paul the outline and it was even bigger than he remembered.
“I've been looking for you. All this time I've been thinking of nothing else.” His voice dropped a notch. “After you got out, I didn’t know what to do.”
“I, I, I thought of you too.”
“That's good.”
Paul felt his balls being stroked, then he felt them being crushed. He gasped out loud.
“I heard you been fucking hiding from me!”
“No, no, that's wrong.” His voice rose a couple of octaves. “It was the kozzers.”
“You was supposed to be waiting for me.”
“I was waiting, honest, but they was all over the place. You must have seen them.”
“I been fucking celebrity and I ain’t waiting no longer.”
“There's children in here.”
“They're asleep, or they should be. This time of night.”
Paul had no choice and it went like it always had. Surprisingly, to begin with, and it always happened even though he knew what was coming, it gave him an erection, but that folded when the beating started.
There was no doubt about it, if this affair continued, then Paul would be beaten to death.
“I'm sorry, Paul, this is difficult, but I can't have the children put at risk.”
“I understand. I agree with you. It's my problem.”
“I'd help you. But you're an adult, old enough to help yourself. Sort it out and you're welcome back. That man is a lunatic. Can't take the chance. Not on my account, but for the kids. Responsibilities, see? If it wasn't for the kids I'd help you out. But he's dangerous and I got to weigh the odds. And they don't come down on your side.” “I understand, Powder Pete. Really I do. I'll go.”
“You could go over the road, with the dossers, but sooner or later you've got to sort it. He'll be back.”
“I know that. I know that. It's decisions, innit?”
“Decisions, right. They're the things you got to make when you're an adult. And you’ll know when you’re an
