Sweet (16 page)

A curtain twitched – but it wasn’t theirs. It was next door, and of course it weren’t no ordinary lace curtain, not in Clifton Hill – it was one of those dyed black lace ones like that mate of Kate Moss’s makes and flogs for a fortune – seen ’em in
Heat
. And then a window opened and a man looked out, one of those men who’d be half fit if he didn’t look like he had a permanent kipper under his nose. Like Jude Law or Preston from
Big Brother
.

I realized I was going to be jail-meat pretty soon if I didn’t do a bit of damage limitation. As I stood there peering back at old Jude-features, it did dawn on me that probably this wasn’t my smartest move ever – returning to the so-called ‘crime scene’ and throwing alleged ‘verbal abuse’ at the absentees.

‘Hiya!’ I waved at the Law looky-likey. ‘I’m just collecting for, um . . . Tourette’s sufferers!’ I grinned broadly and took a step towards him. ‘Would you like to make a fucking contribution, you twat?’ That’d do! Sure enough he pulled down the window with a look of absolute horror and I took off down Clifton Hill at a trot.

17

What had I done
now
? All it needed was for Jude to ring the cops and tell ’em that some really fit horny chick had been banging on the Bag-Ag door and threatening them with further damage to property, and all roads in Brighton led to me!

But let’s be sensible here, I reminded myself. It was far more likely that he’d tell the gruesome twosome about it rather than squeal to the fuzz. And even if their suspicions were confirmed about my culpability, I still couldn’t believe that they’d actually be so dumb as to point the finger or press charges – I mean, to be crude about it, I knew where those fingers had been, and what they’d been pressing, and it definitely wasn’t legal, let alone honest, decent and truthful!

No – the weak link here was young Duane; weak link, missing link, whichever way you sliced it he wasn’t the thickest doorstep in the loaf. We’d already established that easy livin’ was his number-one priority; you don’t become a fag of convenience with types as loaded and loathsome as Bags ’n’ Ags for the good of your health, so he must’ve been getting a backhander every time. So what was to stop the dimbo trying to get his mitts on the reward money, without it occurring to him that by giving me the key he was an accessory?

I pulled out my mobile and called him. No answer. ‘Duane, it’s Shugs. Need to see you. Give us a call.’ As I stuck my phone back in my bag I saw the Whitehawk bus and jumped aboard.

Approaching Duane’s mum’s house I reminded myself not to lose my rag again – imagine doing it twice in one day, from the white Regency houses of Clifton Hill to the council estates of Whitehawk; from riches to rags, shouting the odds all the way! So after ringing the bell, stepping back, checking the curtains for movement and finding none, I settled for scribbling a note and sticking it through the letter box.

DUANE – GIVE US A CALL. WE HAVE TO TALK – SUGAR

Well, they say that what goes around comes around. ‘Sugar – we have to talk!’ Asif hissed in my ear at work the next day.

I fixed him with a stony glare and shook my mop at him. ‘Go on then – Chummy here’s all ears.’

‘MARIA!’ He caught me urgently by the arm. ‘I saw those men on the news last night! That you have wronged! That you must put right!’

‘Talk to the mop – the moppet ain’t listening.’ I dipped my trusty pal in the soapy bucket, wrung it out and we were off, accidentally on purpose slopping dirty water all over Asif’s shoes.

‘But, Maria! . . . to make a hate crime! You know what I have been through, because of hatred.’

‘Listen, Asif.’ I leaned on my mop and glared at him. ‘I’ve got every sympathy for you and your people and what you’ve been through at the hands of those crazed nutters back in Pakistan. But two nasty rich gayers having something spilt on their carpet is hardly rape and murder, is it!’ I resumed my mopping. ‘But don’t let me stop you. You want to go round there and comfort them, go on and give them a treat. Go round there and turn the other cheek – butt cheek, that is. Mind you, don’t take it too hard if they don’t welcome you in with open arms – you are a bit too old for ’em, after all.’ He looked blank. ‘They’re kiddy-fiddlers – child molesters.’

Now he looked absolutely horrified. I couldn’t help laughing. ‘Then you must go to the police immediately and report them for this awful crime!’

‘Make your mind up! What are they – victims, or villains?’

He backed away, mumbling something about the world being turned upside down and turned inside out. A bit like the fate that would have awaited him, probably, if he’d gone round there all wide-eyed and opened-mouthed to comfort that pair of perves. I only hoped he felt suitably grateful to me for saving his arse.

But they say there’s no rest for the wicked. I was just sitting down for a quick fag when the Dracules bowled up looking like they’d lost a silver bullet and found a sprig of garlic. ’Cept they didn’t even look like Goths any more, even though they’d just arrived and were in their street clothes rather than their uniforms. And all the metal had been removed from their numerous piercings – they looked like a pair of human sieves.

‘Can we go outside, Sugar?’ Mr Munster muttered, and I noticed that the little fang implants were missing.

‘Sure thing, Drew.’ I grabbed my fags and grinned at him.

‘It’s Josh,’ bustled Drina, and I saw that her novelty gnashers had gone too.

‘OK, Drina!’

‘It’s Katie!’ fussed Josh. Jeez, this was gonna be fun!

Identities firmly established, we went outside and found ourselves a choice bit of concrete, where I could look at the most beautiful sight in the world – planes taking off, carrying people escaping, if only for a short while. I lit up and squinted at them in the winter sunlight. ‘So. How’s tricks? How’s little Bela doing?’

‘IT’S LUKE!’ they chorused as one. I obviously wasn’t too hot at the name game today.

‘OK . . . Luke it is. So what’s on your mind?’

They got either side of me and made me start walking, darting paranoid glances all over the place. It was like being in a crap old spy film. ‘We saw the
Argus
!’ Josh eventually muttered. ‘About . . . what we did that day! And the local news!’

‘I know! – if they keep it up at this rate, there’s gonna be a Hollywood blockbuster about it by Christmas. Bags me gets played by Angelina Jolie!’ I jested, in what turned out to be a doomed attempt to lighten the mood.

‘This is no joke, Sugar! It’s not funny!’ hissed Katie.

I stopped still, pulled my arms from their grasp and glared at them. ‘With all respect, nothing ever is to you lot, is it! Bloody Goths. Why’s everything under the sun have to be a fret-fest?’

‘We’re not Goths any more,’ Luke boasted. ‘We had an epiphany.’

‘Ooh, really . . . you can get stuff from the chemist for that these days, you know. No script, straight over the counter!’

‘SUGAR!’ Katie grabbed me and shook me. In a feeble sort of way. ‘Stop treating everything as though it’s a stand-up routine! When are you going to grow up and . . . smell the roses!’ she ended, again feebly.

Josh took this as his opportunity to come on all Dad. ‘What Katie means, Sugar, is that this . . . incident, which we were stupidly involved in, has been something of a wake-up call for us. So we’re going to grow up and accept our responsibilities as married humans, and as parents to Bela . . . Luke, sorry!’ He yelped as Katie gave him a dry slap on the back of the head.

‘But we still have a lot of time for our religion,’ Katie continued, shooting him daggers, ‘and to be a pagan, at the end of the day, is about being kind to people –’

‘What about the “Wicker Man”!’ I protested. ‘They wasn’t being kind to no one – they was doing human sacrifices left, right and centre!’

‘Oh, stop nit-picking, Sugar! The point is that you made us, Josh and myself, complicit in a hate crime!’

I couldn’t believe this. ‘Hang about now! When the three of us were romping about slashing shit and pouring crap everywhere, what did you think was going down? Did you think we were doing a bit for
Extreme Makeover
? Or a spot of spring cleaning, perhaps!’

They did look a bit sheepish here, and I took advantage of their retreat to press home my point. ‘Look, it wasn’t a hate crime – it was revenge. It wasn’t attacking – it was defending. Like, um . . . Frankenstein’s monster . . . when them peasants with the sticks on fire tried to murder him for summat he never done . . . or did he?’ I mused. I swear, sometimes I think I should have been an intellectual – I’m always thinking. Still, I suppose you can’t be an intellectual if you come from a council house.

‘SUGAR! Stop avoiding the issue – and stop thinking you can lead us up the garden path talking about Frankenstein,’ Katie tutted. ‘We’re just not interested any more. There’s only one story we’re interested in – and that’s the one you’re going to tell the police if you get caught.’

It took me a minute to twig what she was saying. Then I laughed, it was so silly. ‘Oh! – you’re trying to find out if I intend to grass you up.’ I laughed again with real pleasure and confidence. ‘No, we don’t do that where I come from. That’s the last thing you’ve got to worry about.’

They looked well relieved, like they’d both taken off shoes three sizes too small at the same time. And now they felt safe, of course, they could afford to care about me, or at least pretend to. ‘But what about you, Sugar?’ simpered Katie. ‘Aren’t you scared they’ll tell the police it was you?’

‘Not really.’ I caught their arms in mine and started walking us all back to the building. ‘Seeing as how we’ve got a mutual friend. A fifteen-year-old mate of my brother’s that they’ve been playing Strip-Twister with. I doubt they want that getting out – unless they fancy a bunch of peasants with sticks on fire going round and doing a damage to their precious house that’d make what we did look like a quick go-round with the Shake ’n’ Vac. In fact –’ I held the door open for them – ‘I really can’t imagine why they went to the cops in the first place, knowing that I know what I do.’

Josh swept through, Katie following him, and sniggered over his shoulder, ‘Publicity, Sugar! Before this, they were just empty-headed rich micro-celebs. Now they’re heroes. What’s a few carpets compared to that! You’ve done something for them that no amount of money could buy.’

I gaped at him in complete and utter amazement; this brain-dead ex-Goth had seen right through to the meat of the matter in a way that had totally passed me by. So it was even worse than I thought; I had been screwed two ways by those fuckers, first as a phoney friend and second as a sworn enemy. And if Duane decided to cross over, that’d make it a hat-trick. I’d never be able to hold my head up in this town again.

But on the other hand, he had stuff to lose too – like my brother, he may have been fond of playing with make-up and walking with a wiggle when it suited him, but no way was he gay. I had to get to him, look him in the eye – one aspiring failed petty criminal to another – and make him realize how rubbish it was going to be for all of us if he squealed.

After all, I would lose my liberty. But once it got out that he had been the paid plaything of a pair of dirty old men on a semi-regular basis, he would never get laid by a hot girl again. And when you’re fifteen, that’s a whole new level of punishment. Sweet!

18

The next few days were like some mad game of kiss-chase organized by the – what’s their name, them mad policemen always bumping into shit – the Keystone Kops. Asif followed me around shooting me lovelorn glances with eyes so cow-like I felt like slaughtering him and eating him between two bun-halves with cheese on top and a side order of salsa. Meanwhile I sought the elusive Mr Trulocke, lurking around every skatepark and graffiti wall in town, not to mention the benches above the walkway on Madeira Drive, until I felt like an ocean-going kiddy-fiddling perve myself.

Would you believe it, at the start of the second week I randomly came across him at a bus stop in Churchill Square, cruising for an ABSO with his poxy posse. He clocked me the second before my hand shot out to grab the collar of his school blazer, and tried to hustle his way on to the bus that had just pulled up, but an old lady hit him in the shins with her walking stick and he fell back yelping. His gnarly mates boarded the bus jeering and pointing at him. ‘Collared by a girl! – dude, you’re such a dick!’ one of them yelled before the bus pulled away, leaving Duane bleating on the bus-stop bench, nursing his shins like a right royal wuss.

I eyed him coldly. ‘Don’t look good, does it D, letting a girl get on top of you.’ Beat. ‘Boy, how much harder would they mock if it came out that you let an old man get on top of you! Or two,’ I added for good measure.

He scowled, rubbing his leg. ‘Leave it out, Shugs – I’m dying here!’

I held out my hand to him. ‘I thought you’d be used to taking punishment from senior citizens by now. Come on, let’s go for a walk.’

We crossed the road to the Pizza Frita stall in front of the mall and I bought us a slice and a Coke each. We went and sat on a bench, and watched the language students flirt with each other in an international language they needed no phrase book for.

Duane washed the last of his slice down with the last of his fizz, burped appreciatively and said, ‘That was the bollocks! – better than “Get in the car!” and a bullet in the head like in
Goodfellas
!’

‘The only Goodfellas you and me are ever gonna get close to is the kind that comes in a box and has mozzarella on top,’ I said, finishing mine up too. ‘Damn! – whoever thought up frying ’em was a clever bugger!’ I lit up a fag, sat back and inhaled happily. ‘Now. To business . . .’

‘Gis one!’ Duane snatched at the pack.

I slapped him sharply. ‘Paws off! – you’re not old enough. Still,’ I continued sneakily, handing him one, ‘I s’pose that’s a bit like locking the stable door after the horse has bolted.’ I sniggered. ‘Whore, rather!’

It was all psychology, see; I was being good cop, bad cop, carer and cusser, and the poor little tosser didn’t know whether he was coming or going. I lit his ciggy and narrowed my eyes. ‘But I guess if you’re old enough to screw, you’re old enough to smoke. And you’re old enough to do business with too . . .’