Crack Down

Wayne a hug. ‘You’ve got to stay with us for a while, Wayne,’ she said in a soothing voice. ‘I know it’s not the same as home, but tomorrow we’ll go back to your house and get your clothes and the rest of your stuff and you can be at home here, OK?’

‘We’ll go to the ice-cream place, then,’ he said grudgingly to me. Wayne shrugged off the woman’s arm and pushed past her into the hall, where he stood expectantly by the door. Daniel followed him, and, after a quick glance at me for permission, so did Davy.

‘I’ll have them back in an hour,’ I promised.

‘Don’t worry about it,’ she said. ‘Quite honestly, love, the more worn out they are tonight the better.’

For the first twenty minutes, I said nothing about Cherie or the shooting. We pumped money into the Wurlitzer, we argued the relative merits of everything on the menu. Then I sat back and watched while the boys wolfed huge ice-cream sundaes, gradually returning to something approaching normal behaviour, even if it was tinged with a kind of hysteria. I even joined in some of their fun, dredging my memory for old and sick jokes. When I reached the point where the only one I could remember was the one about the Rottweiler and the social worker, I reckoned it was time to change tack.

‘Davy got a lot of new transfers yesterday, didn’t you?’ I said brightly.

‘Where did you go?’ Daniel asked.

‘VIRUS,’ said Davy and proceeded to enthuse about the virtual reality centre.

‘Maybe we could all go together the next time Davy’s up,’ I suggested. ‘Show them your tattoos, Davy.’

He took off his New York blouson to reveal tattoos that spread up from his wrists and finally disappeared into the sleeves of his T-shirt. Wayne and Daniel studied the intergalactic warriors and dinosaurs, desperately trying not to look impressed.

‘Huh,’ Wayne finally said. ‘I’ve had ones just as good as that.’

‘Where from?’ Davy challenged.

‘From Woody on the estate. You know, him that gave you a load last week.’

There is a god. ‘I don’t think I know Woody,’ I said. ‘Where does he live?’

‘Up the top. Near the Apollo. Where the chip van parks,’ Daniel said positively.

‘Wasn’t your mum going to go and see him last night?’ I asked, feeling like I was walking on eggshells. It was the first time Cherie had been mentioned, and I didn’t know how they would react.

Wayne stared into his sundae dish, scraping his spoon round the sides. But Daniel didn’t seem bothered. ‘Nah,’ he said scornfully. ‘It wasn’t Woody she went to see. She’d already seen Woody and gave him a right gobful about giving things to us. And Woody said he was just doing what he was told to do, and she said he was a waste of space and who told him, and he said, the guy in the house on the corner. And that’s where she went.’

‘What guy is that, do you know?’

Daniel shook his head. ‘Don’t know his name. We don’t go there.’ ‘What house is it?’ ‘You know I said where Woody lives? Well, if you was standing at the chip van and you looked across the street that way,’ he said, gesturing with his right arm, ‘it’s the house on the corner. That’s where my mum went last night,’ he added.

I was impressed. ‘Were you with your mum when she saw Woody?’ I asked. Daniel’s information seemed almost too good to be true.

‘Course we weren’t,’ Wayne said contemptuously. ‘She didn’t even know we were out. We followed her. We always follow her. She says we’re the men of the house and she needs us to take care of her, so we follow her, but she don’t know. We watch and listen so we’ll know if anyone did bad things to her and we could get them back later. She never saw us,’ he added proudly.

‘I wish I was that good at following people,’ I said. ‘It would come in really handy in my job. You’ll have to give me lessons one of these days. Where did you learn your tricks? From the TV?’

Wayne shook his head, swinging it elaborately from side to side. ‘Our dad showed us. He trained us to be silent and deadly, just like the Paras.’

I felt a chill in my heart. According to Cherie, Crazy Eddy hadn’t been near the kids in years. ‘When was this?’ I asked casually.

‘For ages. He just turns up at the common where we go with our bikes and takes us up Levenshulme and trains us. But he made us promise we wouldn’t tell anybody because he didn’t want Mum to know. But now Mum’s not here, it doesn’t matter about telling, does it?’ Wayne’s face crumpled and he rubbed his eyes savagely with his fists.

‘No, it doesn’t matter. Your dad must be really proud of you. When did you see him last?’

‘We saw him yesterday,’ Daniel said. ‘But he’s been around for ages. He came back at Easter.’

Chapter 23

I knew that if I betrayed my surprise I wouldn’t get another word out of Daniel or Wayne. Somehow, I had to keep superficially calm at the news that Crazy Eddy was back in town. I breathed softly and thought about something restful; a room freshly painted barley white, actually. ‘I thought your dad worked away,’ I said.

Daniel stuck his chest out like a sergeant major. ‘He does. He’s a warrior, my dad. He teaches whole armies how to fight like him. But when they’ve learned how to do it, he comes home and sees us.’

‘Does he come home often?’ I asked.

‘Once or twice a year,’ Wayne muttered. ‘The first time was just after I was five. We were playing in the playground at school at break time and this soldier came up to us, and he crouched down beside us and said, “You know who I am, don’t you?” And we did, because Mum had his picture on her dressing table.’ At the mention of the photograph, something clicked inside my head. Wayne looked up and met my eyes. ‘Do you think we can go and live with him now? Be soldiers with him?’

‘You’ll have to ask your foster mother about that,’ I said, distracted by the piece of the jigsaw that had just fallen into place. ‘Where does your dad stay when he’s here?’ I tried to sound casual.

‘In the Moss. With a man that used to be one of his squaddies,’ Daniel said. ‘He’s never taken us there. He’s too busy training us.’

‘Of course he is. It’s a tough job, being a good soldier.’ Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Davy getting restive. I pretended to be stern. ‘And you soldiers are letting the side down now.’ All three looked puzzled. ‘Do you know what’s wrong with this picture?’ I asked, gesturing at the table. They all held their breath and shook their heads. ‘Empty plates!’ I mock-roared. ‘Time for seconds! Who wants more?’

I didn’t have to ask twice. After the waiter had brought the second round of ice-creams, I said, ‘So what training were you doing with your dad yesterday?’

‘Tracking and observation,’ Daniel reported. ‘We met Dad round the common, and then we went and hid across the main road, on the waste ground. We had binoculars, and we watched the outside of the flats and we waited for Mum to come out, then we trailed her and spied on her talking to Woody. Dad said she should keep her nose out of other people’s business when we told him she was on about the transfers.’

‘Did he know about the transfers, then?’ I asked through a mouthful of chocolate hazelnut. I’d succumbed the second time around.

‘Course he does,’ Wayne said, scornful again. ‘He told us to get the transfers off Woody and get the other kids to use them. He said they’d all want them and that way they’d do what we told them to. But we don’t use the ones we take off Woody. Dad said that would be a sign of weakness, so we don’t.’

Eddy wasn’t wrong about the transfers being a sign of weakness. I couldn’t help wondering just how much he knew about what was going on in the house on the corner. It was time I paid it a visit. But first, I had to keep my side of the bargain I’d made with myself. I’d had my needs met; now, Daniel and Wayne were entitled to the same thing. I dug my hand in my pocket and dumped a handful of change on the table. ‘Who wants to play?’ I demanded, gesturing with one thumb towards the array of video-game machines at the far end of the ice-cream parlour.

I kept half an eye on them as I struggled with the significance of what Wayne had told me without realizing.