brown knew where to find them. For the three teenagers it was a night the same as any other, and cold rain spattered the shoulders of their leisure suits as they waited for the early buyers.
It was like the first steps on an ice-covered pond.
Malachy laid out in front of him what he had bought: rope from the hardware shop on Walworth Road and a penknife to cut it, parcel-binding tape from the stationer's in the side-street off the market, and a plastic toy from a stall. He also had the clothes from the bin-liner that had been under the bed.
He checked the purchases and the clothing, as he had before. It might have been kit and weapons for an exercise on Salisbury Plain, the Northumbrian moors or a patrol in a sprawling Iraqi village. He went through each stage of the plan that had fastened in his mind.
He could rely on what he had seen done.
He had been at the depot for recruits, a week short of the end of fifty-six days' Basic Training. Before he had left home, his father had told him, 'You're pig stupid to have gone this route. I wash my hands of you. All I can say is, remember that a lion pride rejects a weak cub. Drop short of your platoon's standards and the rest of them will be merciless. The private soldier turns into a ruthless thug when punished collectively for the failure of one of their number… but it's your choice.' He'd gone. No letters from the retired brigadier, and none written to him or to Malachy's mother. One recruit was useless – should have gone for premature voluntary release – but hadn't quit. That recruit had been half dragged and half carried, in full kit, on the half-mile road run. He had been covered-for when he had lost his beret. His final act had been the making of his barrack-room bed: wrinkles in the hospital corners of the blanket.
An officer doing the inspection with the platoon sergeant had commented on it snidely. After escorting the officer out of the barracks room, the sergeant had come back and gone nose to nose with that recruit and had bollocked him with a spittle-dense volley of obscenities, then barked the punishment: the sergeant had been shown up in front of the officer and had gone for the top-heavy punishment, collective. The platoon was 'confined to barracks' for five days, with extra duties and doubled inspections. Malachy had stood at the back, not spoken, not intervened and had not taken part when the platoon took its revenge on that recruit. In flat thirteen, on block nine of the Amersham, he remembered the revenge of the platoon.
It was what he would replicate, but he did not know whether it was for Millie Johnson's bruised face and broken arm or for himself.
When he had checked each item he would take with him for the third or fourth time, the rope had been cut into lengths and the plastic toy was out of its packaging, Malachy stripped off the clothes that had been bought for him at the charity shop. The trousers in the bin-liner stank, as did the shirt and socks. He dressed in the vagrant's clothes he had worn in the underpass at Elephant and Castle when he had begged, drunk, and slept. He put on his head the rolled-up woollen hat that had been pulled down over his face, with eye slits and a mouth hole, on the nights when it was cold enough for a pond to freeze.
Last out of the sack were the old shoes, and he slipped them on.
He locked the door behind him and went off along the walkway, paused for a moment at the top of the stairs, ground his nails into his palms, as if that would strengthen him, and joined the night's shadows moving on the Amersham.
Chapter Four
On another morning, the sirens would have woken Malachy.
Dawn was breaking over the estate. He slept until full daylight. There was no reason for him to rouse himself, get up and wash, decide whether to shave with the blunt blade and dress in the charity-shop clothes. He had not been asleep when the sirens started, vague and distant at first, then clearer as they came closer. He had not slept because he had waited for the sirens, had lain in his bed, ears keen, through the long hours of darkness. When the sirens approached, coming up the Old Kent Road, then swinging into the Amersham, he could have pushed himself off the bed, gone to the window and looked out over the plaza towards the flat roof of block eleven, but he did not. He knew what the ambulance-men, the fire brigade and the police would find.
It had rained in the night but with the dawn came a low sunshine that spilled through the window. He had not drawn the curtains. If he had slipped off the bed and looked out on to the far side of the plaza, the sun's weak light would have fastened on his work.
He had no need to see it.
The clothes from his work were now back in the bin-liner, with his shoes, the penknife, the remaining tape on the roll and the plastic toy. He did not know yet whether he felt satisfaction at what he had done.
He rubbed his cheek, and could feel the thin scratches from fingernails that had penetrated the woollen hat.
There was a bruise on his right shin where one had kicked him but it was only with a trainer and the bruise was little more than an irritant; nothing in comparison to those on the face of Millie Johnson.
He rolled over, turned his face to the wall and his eyes were locked shut. Others would come to stand and gawp, but Malachy had no need to.
A crowd gathered on the worn grass beside the kids' swings and roundabouts in the plaza.
That morning, Dawn would be late for the ministry.
It was too good to miss: her supervisor always said that a watch could be set on Dawn's punctuality at work – even when she had had the flu she had been there with the mop and bucket and the vacuum cleaner. Not that early morning. She positioned herself at the edge of the crowd, did not reckon to use her bony elbows to force a way to the front. At the back she was closer to the parked fire engines, the two ambulances, the police cars and wagon. It was the best show she had seen in many years on the estate, better than any of the Christmas cabarets at the Pensioners'
Association or at the annual parties for the Tenants' Association. Two of them had been hoisted up on to the flat roof of block eleven and one still hung suspended from the rope. Where she was, Dawn could hear the conversations among the firemen, the ambulance teams and police officers, and it was good listening.
A fireman said to his senior, who had just reached the plaza, 'Never known anything like it, Chief, not on the Amersham. I suppose it's a feud between the low-lifes, what the army would call 'blue on blue'. Done a proper job, though. They're all taped up, ankles together and wrists behind their backs and they've gags in their mouths. Then rope was tied round the ankles and they were hung out over the edge of the roof with the rope fastened to the block's communal TV aerial. Been there half the night and they couldn't shout because of the gags in their mouths, and they wouldn't have wriggled around, would they? Bloody sure I wouldn't, not with more than a sixty-foot drop under me and my life depending on whether the rope's knot held. I'd have done what they did, stayed damn still. The word is that they're the kingpins of the local horror story, call themselves the High Fly Boys. Tell you what, Chief, they were that. They were high and they were flying, except for the rope. Must have been there for hours, and nobody saw them till the light came up. What I'm getting, they're right nasty scallys. They're the gang that push the class-A stuff round the estate. Last night, if you'd asked me, I'd have said – and sworn on it – that they were frightened of nothing. Different story now. Don't quote me, Chief, but this call-out's been a real pleasure.'
In front of Dawn the crowd parted. Few of the residents who lived in the flats overlooking the plaza dared to look direct into the faces of the two youths who were escorted by the ambulance crew and police officers through the opening that the residents made.
Dawn recognized Leroy Gates and Wilbur Sansom – everybody on that part of the Amersham knew them.
They sold; the vagrants bought. It went through her mind fast: because they sold and the vagrants bought, her best friend, the closest, was in hospital with an operation scheduled for that evening – the swelling would be down enough – to pin or plate a broken arm, and her face was a bright mass of bruises. The thought of Leroy Gates and Wilbur Sansom swinging upside down through half the night, and no help coming, was sufficient to bring a smile to Dawn's face, the first time she had allowed herself that little luxury since the call had come and she had rushed out – no night buses – to tramp all the way to the hospital by the river. She did what none of the others in the split crowd did: she fastened her eye on them. But they didn't meet her gaze: they shivered. If the ambulance crew had
