Gun Dog (6 page)

It’s gone midnight. I’m out on the streets of our estate and there’s no one about. I’m wearing dark jeans and a black cotton
zip-up
jacket and trainers. It’s a dark night – lots of cloud and no moon. My hands are thrust deep into the pockets of my jacket. In the palm of my right hand I can feel the cool shape of the Ruger P95 that I carry with me. My fingers are curled gently around the black handgrip; my index finger lies along the trigger guard. I don’t want any accidents; not like that stupid firearms cop who shot himself in the leg getting into his car. Christ, you couldn’t make it up, could you? If it had been in a movie, you’d have fallen about laughing. Sometimes I
feel that criminals with guns are less of a danger to the public than police with guns. The police, after all, have been known to shoot an innocent man in the head seven times at point blank range. Whatever the circumstances, that sounds more like frenzy than a controlled use of firearms. Make your own mind up on that one.

So I’m careful how I carry the Ruger and keep my fingers well away from the trigger. The Ruger does not have a manual safety catch. It fires with a double action of the trigger – first pressure cocks the weapon, second pressure fires it. After that, you just have to keep squeezing the trigger until the magazine is empty. Of course, there is a decocking lever that can be used to make it safe if you cock it and then decide not to shoot, or if you’ve finished shooting and there are still rounds in the magazine.

Anyway, I’m outside the Rogers’ house. No point in wasting time, I walk straight into the yard and down the overgrown path to the front door. The Ruger is in my right hand now and my index finger is putting a
light pressure on the trigger. I bang on the door with my left hand. I’m banging hard and long like I mean business. From inside the house there is swearing and shouting and I hear thumping footsteps clumping down the stairs. I step back as the door is thrown open and it is the hideously slobbish father of the clan. I don’t give him time to swear at me as I raise the Ruger right in front of his face and squeeze the trigger twice. Two red holes appear in his face, one in the centre of his forehead and one in his cheek and he drops to…

‘Stevie? Stevie!’

I’ve been daydreaming and Aunty Margaret is tugging at my sleeve to get my attention. We’re sitting in the waiting area in the police station. We’ve been here for three hours now, waiting for them to let Uncle Jack go. In that time, I’ve been letting all kinds of scenarios run through my mind, all of them involving me roaming the streets with the Ruger and all of them involving me playing the tough man with the gun in my hand or just blowing away
those who I consider to be expendable. Of course the Rogers clan have featured large in this latter category.

Now I look up as Aunty Margaret wants me to, and I can see Uncle Jack coming out of a doorway, head bowed, wearing the clothes that he’d been wearing when I’d seen him being arrested last night.

I get up, along with Aunty Margaret, and my hand slides inside my pocket. Of course, the Ruger isn’t there – I’m not stupid enough to carry it to a police station. I’d made an excuse to call in at home on the way here and put it back beneath my bed. I’m checking involuntarily, probably because my daydreams have been so vivid.

A policewoman asks if we’d like her to organise a car to take us back home. Aunty Margaret and Uncle Jack are too wrapped up in relief, in each other, so I tell this policewoman, who is actually very pretty and is genuinely being kind, that we’ll get a taxi. I have enough money in my pocket to pay for this, and the policewoman gives me a
card with the number of a local taxi company and offers to let me use the telephone behind the counter. I find myself surprised at her genuine concern and compassion. Maybe the police aren’t all bad after all. But then I only have to look at Uncle Jack and think about what we are doing here in the first place for that thought to evaporate. All the same, I can’t lose the idea that individual police officers just
might
be human after all. A few of them.

So we take a taxi back to Uncle Jack and Aunty Margaret’s house. Not because of some childish disdain for police hospitality, but because I just know that a police car turning up at the house will cause a frenzy of curtain twitching from the neighbours. And Uncle Jack and Aunty Margaret don’t need to be subjected to that kind of embarrassing scrutiny.

In the house, over a cup of tea and more cake, I learn that they’ve charged Uncle Jack with assault. Like I predicted, they’ve taken his fingerprints and a DNA sample. So now the largest DNA database in the world
has the records of a pensioner added to it. I stay with Uncle Jack and Aunty Margaret for a while and we try to be positive about things. But there isn’t much to be positive about. What has happened is becoming only too familiar. If a householder defends his property against vandals and thieves, there’s a good chance that the householder will be arrested and charged. My dad gets enraged when these cases make the news, but the problem is they make the news less and less. Not because they happen less and less. Quite the opposite; because they have become commonplace.

When I finally leave Uncle Jack and Aunty Margaret’s house, Uncle Jack is crying. I walk slowly down their garden path, consciously avoiding looking to my right. I don’t want to see the little car all smashed and dented. I can’t bear it. As I walk down the road, towards my own house, a road now busy with cars, with people going about their Saturday business, I see my brother Sean and a couple of his friends.

‘Where you been?’

Sean gets straight to the point.

‘I’ve been around at Uncle Jack and Aunty Margaret’s place.’

‘You seen what happened to their car?’

‘Yeah, I’ve seen.’

Sean shakes his head and looks away.

‘It was them Rogers what done it, init.’

This is one of Sean’s friends, Jason Lewis. Jason doesn’t come from our estate. Actually, he lives a few miles away in a house on a leafy suburb. Jason’s dad is a doctor and Jason’s been friends with Sean since they started to play for a Sunday league football team together a few years back. Normally I’d laugh and take the piss out of safe suburban Jason talking in this manner. But today it just doesn’t seem important.

‘Yeah, it was.’

I can’t bring myself to discuss it further.

‘Somebody should take them out. It would be tons better around here without them.’

I shake my head. Sean is saying what Andy had said last night. It’s right what they say – but only partly right. It would be better, yeah. But not tons better. The Rogers family are the worst and most obnoxious scum around here, sure, but there are others who would fill the vacuum if they went.

I realise that sometimes I make it seem like everyone living on our estate is lawless and selfish and criminal. You know, that’s actually not the case. Most people are decent and hard working. But our estate’s reputation is not built around the hard working and the law abiding. Its reputation comes from the minority of lawless clans that rule the streets. And they can do that because the police no longer care, and they know it. Nobody cares about what happens on estates like ours. And that’s all I can think about, all the way home.

‘Christ, that’s ridiculous! Somebody should just shoot the bastards. They’re like wild dogs.’

Listening to Dad venting his spleen like this makes me think of the Ruger. I can only agree, and I’d love someone to go around to the Rogers’ place and blow the stinking lot of them away. But it isn’t going to be me. There’s a world of difference between daydreams and reality.

But something else has been intruding on my thoughts.
This will make you something. This is what counts around here
. It’s what Big Roddy had said the night he
gave me the Ruger to keep. At the time I’d thought he’d been watching too many films and listening to too much Public Enemy. But I know how it felt this morning, when I was out and about early on with the Ruger in my pocket. I definitely felt different this morning. And when I picture myself, in my mind I see me walking around with my hands in my pockets and not a worry in the world. A bit like the poster for that old movie with Robert De Niro. What’s it called?
Taxi Driver
, yeah. I feel like Travis Bickle, before he really loses it. That’s scary on so many levels. But most importantly, because maybe Roddy was right.

‘Why wouldn’t the police come out when Jack called them?’

Dad’s still ranting and fuming about what’s happened, like he never reads the papers or watches the news. I just let him get on with it. Then Dad reaches into his pocket and takes out a ten pound note and hands it to me.

‘What’s that for?’

‘The taxi this morning. I’m really proud of you, looking after Jack and Margaret like that.’

Dad isn’t looking at me when he says this. And I’m glad, because I’d be embarrassed too. We don’t go in for that sort of soppy sentimental praise in our family. But I’m also wondering how proud Dad would be if he knew that I’d seen the Rogers kid and his goblin friends starting it all off last night and did nothing. I wonder how proud he’d be if he found out I’d stood and watched Uncle Jack getting arrested last night, then just walked on by. Just being reminded of that makes me ashamed all over again.

Mum looks up, ‘I’m going to go around later, make sure they’re alright. I’ll take one of these cakes.’

She’s been baking all afternoon. Probably to take her mind off it all.

‘I’ll come with you.’

That’s Mum and Dad all over. They usually go down to the social club on Saturday nights. A few drinks, a few games of bingo. A few laughs with friends. But they’ll forgo this to sit with Uncle Jack and Aunty Margaret. And, actually, there are a lot of people like Mum and Dad on this estate, so that you wonder why it’s actually got such a bad reputation.

Mum looks at me and I see that she’s weary with sadness.

‘I called Catherine earlier.’

‘I’m amazed she was in.’

I say this because I call Catherine all the time. Not because we’re so wonderfully close or anything, but because I want her to keep telling me about university, about Brighton. I use her to stoke the fire that keeps my dream alight.

‘She’s coming back tonight. She’s going to take a few days off.’

This is so unlike Catherine. She hardly ever comes back here. She has a job in Brighton and she uses that as the excuse, but when I talk to her I know that she just isn’t comfortable back here. I don’t mean with us, with Mum and Dad and me and Sean. I mean it’s this town, this estate. She’s moved on and she’s no longer a part of it. And, amazingly, it’s no longer a part of her either. That’s the magic I so desperately want for myself. It’s why I call her all the time, like somehow she’ll one day give up a great secret that she’s so far been keeping from me.

‘Did she say what time she’s getting here?’

‘She’ll be late. She’s going to start out after she’s finished work.’

And that means she
will
be late. It’s a six-hour drive up from Brighton. But it’s good because it means that I’ll be in when she gets here. I’m going over to Andy’s, but we’re only going to hang out. Nothing special. And that reminds me; I’d better
get going or I’m going to be late.

I’m walking down the road wearing a black cotton jacket and my hands are in the pockets. In the right pocket sits the Ruger, caressed by my fingertips. Usually I’m not as relaxed as this when I’m out and about. And what’s really strange is that I didn’t realise that until now. It’s taken the degree of confidence and lack of fear that I’m now experiencing to make me understand just how tight and wary I usually am when I’m walking the streets. Surely there can only be one reason for that, and it’s sitting in my pocket. That’s not a comfortable thought at all. Because I’m analysing it now as I make my way over to Andy’s in the fading light. And the only way that the Ruger can make me safe is if I am prepared to use it. I don’t believe that I am. But I still feel that confidence it brings all the same. I have to fight the urge to take the Ruger out of my pocket and just look at it right there in the open.

Another dreary Wednesday at school. The days are all starting to drag with the mornings getting darker and the evenings coming in quicker.

On the weekend, Catherine came and Catherine went. She spent all of Sunday with Uncle Jack and Aunty Margaret. I went round there with her for the morning, but I had to go home in the afternoon. I had a ton of homework to do. And on Sunday night, Catherine set off back to Brighton, so we didn’t get to talk much at all. She’s coming back this weekend though, driving up on Friday night. I think it shocked her to see how unhappy we all are, Mum and
Dad and Sean and me. And how depressed Uncle Jack and Aunty Margaret are. Before we even knocked on the door of Uncle Jack and Aunty Margaret’s place, she saw the little Nissan all damaged and smashed up and she just broke down and cried. I had to hold her and comfort her for ages. Anyway, she’s coming back at the weekend. It’s taken something like this to remind her that we are her family and that some part of her will always be lodged here with us.

It’s been a pretty dismal day at school today, all told, and I’m glad it’s over now. I’m walking with Andy towards the school gates and we’re in the middle of a crowd of kids who move faster now that it’s home time than they ever did to get here in the morning. Andy and me are not going straight home tonight, despite the mound of homework we both have. We’re going into the town centre to the shopping mall. Andy still has birthday money left over and he wants to get a couple of DVDs. He says he doesn’t know what he wants to get but I’m betting he walks away with
the first two Jason Bourne movies. I kind of hope he does, because I’d like to watch them again too.

‘Stevie, Andy, wait!’

I turn to look and Rebecca Wardle is waving over at us. Rebecca is in the same class as me for French and, I have to admit, I like her. She’s got this sort of dark blonde hair that’s thick and kind of straight and her mum is a hairdresser so it always looks fantastic. Right now it’s cut to look like Jennifer Aniston’s and it suits Rebecca down to the ground. Our school is pretty casual about what we have to wear, but Rebecca is wearing this grey pleated skirt and a white blouse under a black sweater and these flat black leather shoes and white socks. She’s sixteen like Andy and me and she looks pretty fantastic – she must be one of only a few girls at school who just look impossibly cute in a school uniform.

Andy and me stop and wait as she hurries over to us without running, carrying a pile of loose books awkwardly in her arms.

‘Qu’est-ce que vous allez?’

She’s all smiles and a little breathless as she asks. Andy just rolls his eyes, but I’m looking at the brilliant white smile and I can’t help but think it’s cute the way she talks in French like this.

‘We’re just going into town to get some DVDs.’

I answer in English for two reasons; my French is nowhere near as good as Rebecca’s, and Andy doesn’t take French.

Some of the books she’s holding start to slip, and she reacts quickly to clutch them to her.

‘Here, let me take those.’

‘No, it’s OK, I can manage.’

But she’s already handing them to me, and we’re starting to saunter slowly towards the school gates, the three of us.

‘I was wondering if you wanted to come round tonight to do that French assignment. But if you’re going to be out…’

Rebecca lives on our estate and sometimes we have got together to do French homework. I really should ask her out sometime. I want to. But I’m kind of scared that she’ll say no. And I don’t take rejection well at all. I mean, I think she likes me. And it’s been her asking me to come around to do homework. But I keep wondering if that’s all there is to it. Maybe one day I’ll pick up the nerve to ask her.

‘We’re not going to be long.’

The words slip out and I look at Andy, who just shrugs to say he doesn’t care either way.

‘I could come around later if that’s OK? What time do you want me to come?’

‘I dunno… is seven o’clock OK?’

‘Yeah, we’ll be back ages before then.’

I nearly ask her if she wants to come into town with us right now, but I bottle out of it.

As we approach the gates, I notice the groups of kids milling about there. Lots are smoking already with absolutely no fear of reproach; seeing them makes me want to reach for my own smokes, but my hands are full with Rebecca’s books.

Sammy Williams is standing among one group of lads. Sammy hasn’t been to school all week, but he’s here now. He’s keeping pretty low key, I can tell, and so are those around him and it all seems so unnatural. Everywhere else the kids are noisy and boisterous. As you’d expect.

I can see what’s happening of course; they’re being as discreet as possible, but I can see the little packets being passed, palm to palm. It’s like Sammy is giving out secret sweets. Only, let’s face it, it’s not sweets. It’s some drug or other. I can’t say which from here.

I watch Sammy break away from the group and walk quickly, his hands in his pockets and the peak of his Burberry cap pulled way down, to the corner of the road a little way away, where a couple of older lads, maybe eighteen or nineteen, are standing around, their eyes roaming everywhere. I don’t recognise them so they are not from our estate.

We’ve already crossed the road as we approach Sammy and these other two. I see one of the older lads reach quickly into a pocket and just as quickly his hand comes out again and something is handed to Sammy, who stuffs it out of sight in a pocket of his own. It all happens so quickly and smoothly that you’d think they were stage conjurers.

Sammy turns to head back towards the school gates and, as he does, he notices us. Well, I think it’s me he’s noticing. It’s pretty obvious that Sammy is a cog in the local drugs machine. And that the two older lads are bigger cogs in that same machine. I immediately think of Big Roddy and what he might have been doing over at the Concrete
Canyon where he was stabbed to death. Has Sammy simply taken Big Roddy’s place?

Sammy nods at me and just carries on hurrying back to the school gates. What the hell did that nod mean? I’m thinking about the Ruger of course. Is Sammy going to ask for it back? In a way, it would be great to just hand it over to Sammy. At least then there would be no link between him and me. For now, I can’t help feeling that the Ruger is somehow binding us, simply because Sammy knows that I’m holding it. On the other hand, I don’t want to let it go.

‘OK, I’ll see you at seven then?’

Startled, I turn to Rebecca. We’re standing next to a parked car at the bus stop and I know that it’s her mum’s.

‘Wake up dream boy, pay attention.’

I grin sarcastically at Andy to let him know what I think of his comment as I pass the pile of books to Rebecca who has already got into the car.

‘Yeah, seven. I won’t be late.’

I shut the car door for Rebecca, nodding hello at her mum, who smiles back at me. Rebecca has already turned her attention to something else and I see her saying something to her mum as the car pulls away into the traffic. Now Andy and me are left standing at the bus stop, waiting for the bus to take us into town.

I keep thinking that those older boys on the street corner opposite are looking at me. As though they know that I have Roddy Thompson’s gun. A shiver runs through me at the thought that it might have been
their
gun, loaned to Roddy.

I’m willing the bus to arrive, even though I know I’m probably just being paranoid. And anyway, it’s not like being on the bus makes you safe. There was a story in the news recently where two kids were being obnoxious and actually smoking dope or something – I think it might even have been crack – on a bus somewhere. They wouldn’t get off when the driver asked them, so that
driver took his bus directly to the nearest police station. No kidding, that’s what he did. And here’s the great part. When he got out and went into the police station to report what was happening on his bus, parked right outside, you know what they told him? They told him that they couldn’t come out to deal with it and suggested that he should call 999. Can you believe it? You’d better believe it because it truly happened. He’s there, inside a police station, reporting a crime going on right outside the door, and they told him to call the emergency number.

So I don’t know why I think I’ll be safe when the bus comes. If those guys want to follow me onto that bus, I’ll just be trapped. Not for the first time since I got it, I’m wishing that I had my gun with me.