Bloodtide

My pig of choice was both fat and old. The old ones are usually the richest, and they deserve what's coming to them. They've got a lifetime of greed behind 'em. I spotted mine in the restaurant steaming his way through steak, chips, trifle for afters, bottle of wine on the table next to him. He had bleary, thick eyes and a stomach to match, and he sat there and chewed his way through the lot, even though they served huge portions, even down to wiping the grease off his plate with a roll and asking for a couple of extra after-dinner mints with the bill.

I thought, 'Too old to think, too fat to move.' My kind of pig.

And me? I was feeling clean and I was thinking hard.

I lurked by the lifts – they had their own generators – and I slipped in with him on the way up. He was huge. I thought to myself, they ought to charge you extra for using the lift What it cost to drag that bag of guts and blubber two storeys up I dread to think. I got out with him. I didn't follow too close, though. I waited back down the corridor while he got his key out and let himself in. There were a couple of other guests going to and fro. As soon as the way was clear I walked up and rapped on his door.

'Hello,' he grunted.

'Message for you, Mr Harabin.'

'I'm not Mr Harabin.'

'Room 127?' I read off the door.

'Yes…'

'It's for you, sir. Would you have a look, please?'

I could hear him lumbering about inside. The bed creaked. 'Can't be for me… the room number must be wrong.' But of course he was curious. Everyone's curious. He got to the door and opened it and I introduced him to my grin and the barrel of my gun.

'Get inside.' I gave him a shove on the shoulder. It was like pushing a car with the handbrake on. I poked him with the gun and he stepped back into his room. 'Stand next to the bed and empty your pockets,' I told him.

He was so fat you wouldn't believe it, a man that gross. He began to turn and as he did, he stuck out his hand and swiped at the gun in my hand. I stood there watching him do it, thinking, you idiot. I mean, if the gun had been loaded I might have killed him. Was his wallet worth that much to him? As it was I took a step back, but…

I'd forgotten, hadn't I? He was old, slow and almost certainly stupid. I was young and trained to kill. But I was also half starved. A couple of decent meals and a gun in your hand doesn't do away with being torn to pieces and spending three months on your back getting put back together. I took a step back but my legs seemed to have gone into slow motion. I watched his hand whip across – he was fast for a fatty – and I knew he was going to connect. My crabbed, skinny fingers squeezed tight but he caught my hand and flicked his wrist and I watched in amazement as the gun went flying across the room and rattled against the wall on its way to the floor.

He was about twenty times stronger than I was.

He took two steps forward and fell on me.

I almost blacked out. Next thing I knew he'd crawled up with his knees round my neck with his bum like a thirty-ton cushion on my chest. I couldn't even bream. My mouth was opening and closing. I went into a panic, just trying to move my arms half an inch and get a sip of air, but I couldn't.

'You little git,' he breathed. His great porky fist went up in the air and then down, smack! My head rolled about on my neck and I felt the warm blood on my mouth. Smack! I squirmed about, desperately trying to snatch a sip of air, watching his fist going up and down, up and down. I tried to say, I'm just a kid, but I couldn't get the breath. In between punches he was bellowing for help. I vaguely saw a couple of maids and blokes in suits peering in, and after a bit they grabbed hold of him and pulled him off. I think that's what they were doing anyway. They might have just been helping him to his feet.

The fat bloke bent down and pulled me up after him. I was nothing but a bloody invalid. He pulled me off the floor as if I was one of his old shirts.

'Bloody little thief,' growled the fat man. 'What sort of a hotel is this?' He ripped ray jacket off and went through the pockets, holding on to me with one hand on my neck. He pulled out the fat wad I'd taken from the till in the clothes shop. 'I don't suppose this is his,' he said. Then he shoved me in the back so I went flying through the air into the arms of one of the geeks in the suits.

He pushed hard. I was as weak as water. I put my head down under the strength of his push and went fluttering the couple of metres into the geek – plonk! Straight into his stomach. The geek curled off with an OUF! Me – I just kept on going. I didn't feel clean and hard now. I felt like a feather blowing along in the wind. Wet me and I stick to something, blow me and I fly. Catch me, I have no weight.

But feathers are hard to catch. The fat man, the maids, the suits, guests from the hotel were all running after me. I felt like the gingerbread boy. More and more of them kept appearing, jumping at me out of their rooms, coming round the corners, all yelling and shrieking, 'Thief, thief, stop him!' I was certain I was going to get caught at any second. All they had to do was touch me and I'd've hit the floor. My face helped. People are used to seeing ugly sights, but there was always a moment to flinch as they reached out their hands to touch me.

I carried on, fluttering down the corridor, under their arms, over their legs. I fluttered onto the stairway and then I fluttered down it. The foyer was full of people. I fell straight into their arms, then out of them again a second before they knew I was being chased. Someone caught my shirt. I shrugged the shirt off. I made it to the doors, and now I was going hard, digging up strength from somewhere, full of fear. My legs were pounding up and down, bang bang bang! Another hundred yards – my lungs were bursting, my legs were going under me like two strips of damp paper in a stiff breeze. I slid on something wet, went down on my bum and bounced back up. At last an alleyway into the slums opened up and I ran into it, into the dense cloisters of people and stalls, and stink. I became a feather again and started dodging and dashing this way and that.

Another couple of hundred yards and I'd had it. I sat down in a doorway, my whole body heaving for air and I was suddenly, wetly, hugely sick.

I waited for the hand on my shoulder, but it never came. I'd lost 'em. No one liked to go too deep into the slums to catch a thief. What was the point? The slums were full of thieves, you'd only get robbed.

I'd lost them, but I'd also lost everything else. I'd lost all my clothes, left back in the hotel room. I'd lost the gun, I'd lost the money. I'd lost the clothes off my back. I'd even lost my dinner. I sank my head in my hands and retched weakly. The poor people wandered to and fro. I sat there for maybe half an hour until I felt chilled to the bone, and I made my way back to the school.

I was the hard man.

I had nothing – a miserable twenty quid I found stuffed in the back pocket of my filthy trousers. Doing that clothes shop, the bath, the good food, the rest, they all fooled me into thinking I was myself again. I wasn't. I was useless. I kept thinking about Melanie waiting back there in the boiler room for me. I'd been making out I was her lucky day, but she'd starved herself half to death for me and what had I done to thank her for it?

She was there, waiting for me. She gave me this big, gummy, gormless, greedy grin. I'd guess she was half certain I'd cleared off, like everyone else in her life. Since I was back she thought she was rich.

She sat there shifting about on her scrawny old bum, waiting for the jackpot. I just dipped my head. I was so ashamed. I'd had it all and I'd lost it because of my big head, and this wasn't a party game, like it used to be for me and Signy. This was winter. This was life or death.

I thought, King Winter, and I bowed my head before him.

I dug my hand in my pocket and handed over the twenty quid.

Melanie stared at it. I could hardly look. Then, an even huger, even gummier big grin spread across her old creased-up, crisp bag of a face, and she flung back her head and opened her arms and she grabbed hold of me and began jigging up and down on my toes.

'You lovely boy, you darlin!' She kissed the money and she kissed me. I just thought, wot? What was there to be so pleasedabout?

It only dawned on me gradually. The thing was, as far as Melanie was concerned, twenty quid actually was a fortune. Her dreamshad all come true. Me, I hadn't any idea what things cost, I'd never had to buy so much as a sausage in my life. I'd been thinking of the sort of stuff me and Signy used to dole out to the poor – hundreds, thousands of quid. That was treasure to me. But the sort of stuff Melanie ate you could live for a couple of months off twenty quid. She danced and grinned and yodelled. I've never seen anyone look so happy, and all for twenty measly quid. I thought, it doesn't take much, does it?

And then I realised – sod it, I'd done it after all. Yeah…! I'd done it! I took her by the hands and we did a sort