The Deadly Game (14 page)

‘I didn’t,’ came the curt reply.

‘Yes you did,’ said the boy. ‘That’s assault, that is. I could bring the law in and have you arrested. Get compensation.’

‘Shut up,’ snapped the man. ‘Where did he go?’

‘Who?’ came the girl’s voice.

‘The man who ran through that arch,’ said another voice, the second man.

‘Why you wanna know?’ asked the girl.

‘That’s our business,’ said the first man sharply.

‘Yeah? Well, that’s what this is,
business
!’ said the girl firmly. ‘How much?’

Oh God, thought Jake, they’re going to sell me out! That’s what this is about, street kids making money!

There was a pause, then the first man said: ‘Here.’

The girl responded with a derisory laugh.

‘A fiver!’ she said. ‘You jokin’ me? A
fiver
!’

‘We’re losing time,’ said the second man urgently.

Immediately, the first man said: ‘Here.’

The girl said, ‘A twenty. That’s more like it.’ Then, with a smile that Jake heard in her voice, she said: ‘You must want him bad. What’s he done?’

‘Just tell us where he went or I’ll have that back!’ grated the first man.

‘Whoa!’ said the girl. ‘No need to get crazy.’

No, begged Jake silently. Don’t tell them. If I’d known this was about money, I’d have given you every penny.

‘He went that way,’ said the boy, ‘down Dean Street.’

Jake heard a grunt, then the clatter of shoes running off. There was a pause, then a bang on the side of the dumpster. He raised his head and looked down at the boy and girl.

‘They gone,’ said the boy.

‘Thanks,’ said Jake.

He struggled to get a grip on the top of the dumpster, and then climbed out and dropped down to the pavement.

‘You was lucky we was here,’ said the girl.

‘I know,’ agreed Jake.

‘They’re cops, right?’ said the boy.

‘Sort of,’ said Jake.

‘So what you do?’ asked the girl.

‘Nothing!’ protested Jake.

‘Yeah, like the cops is gonna chase you for nothing!’ sneered the boy. ‘And you wearin’ proper good clothes ’an all, not a hoodie or nuthin.’

‘Yeah, you ain’t street, and they plain clothes, so it’s gotta be somethin’ heavy.’ The girl nodded in agreement. She frowned at Jake suspiciously. ‘You a murderer?’

‘No I am not!’ said Jake vehemently.

‘So who are they?’ asked the boy. ‘Them people chasin’ you?’

Jake hesitated. He was about to brush the kids off by saying he didn’t know, or it was mistaken identity, but one look at them told him they were too smart for that. And they had saved him, so he owed them.

‘They’re government agents,’ he said.

The kids looked at him, momentarily awed, then the impressed expressions on their faces were replaced with sneering disbelief.

‘Yeah!’ said the boy, his lip curling, and he spat on the ground. ‘Expect me to believe that!’

‘It’s true!’ insisted Jake. ‘They tracked me through my mobile phone. I had to take it apart.’

And he reached into his pocket and pulled out the remains of his mobile phone, the battery and SIM card.

The boy and girl exchanged questioning looks. Then they turned back to Jake and the girl demanded: ‘So why they chasing you?’

‘They think I’ve got something they want,’ said Jake.

‘And have you?’ asked the girl.

Jake hesitated, then he shook his head.

‘No,’ he told them, and reflected that it wasn’t a lie, the book was still at Euston Left Luggage office. At least, he hoped it was.

‘So why you run?’ asked the boy. ‘Why don’t you stop and tell them you ain’t got this thing, whatever it is?’

‘Because they won’t believe me,’ said Jake.

The two kids looked at him quizzically. Finally, the girl asked: ‘You a spy?’

‘Yeah,’ the boy nodded, ‘that’s who he is. He’s James Bond.’ He grinned. ‘Even if he look a wimp.’

‘I’m not a wimp!’ responded Jake, put out.

‘Well, you sure look one,’ said the boy.

The girl nodded in agreement.

‘Anyway, you owe us,’ she said.

‘I do,’ said Jake humbly. ‘And I thank you.’

The girl looked at Jake challengingly.

‘You
thank
us?’ she echoed. ‘You think your thanks is gonna get us a bed for the night, or put food in our bellies?’

Of course, they wanted paying, Jake realised.

‘Look, I haven’t got much cash on me,’ began Jake.

‘That’s OK, we don’t want your money,’ cut in the boy.

The girl glared at the boy.

‘What you tellin’ him that for, fool!’ she said angrily. ‘Of course we do! You got any money?’

The boy looked uncomfortable.

‘That ain’t the point,’ he said. ‘He was on the run from the man. We’ve all been on the run like that, and we got help when we needed it. People was there for us. That’s what this is about. What goes around comes around. You gotta pass it on.’

The girl shook her head and looked at the boy disdainfully.

‘You’re full of bullshit,’ she snapped. ‘You bin hanging around them Hare Krishna people too much!’

‘I’m just sayin’ . . . !’ the boy snapped back at her defensively.

‘Look, please . . . !’ cut in Jake, eager to stop an argument developing between the two.

‘You’re right, I do owe you. And I want to give you money for helping me.’ He took out his wallet and looked inside. He had thirty pounds in ten-pound notes. He took two of them and held them out. ‘This is all I’ve got, except for ten pounds left for me,’ he said, and he showed them the inside of his wallet to prove he wasn’t lying.

‘I don’t know . . .’ began the boy thoughtfully, but the girl snatched the two ten-pound notes from Jake’s fingers.

‘I do,’ she said firmly.

The boy looked Jake up and down, curious.

‘So, what you gonna do now?’ he asked.

‘Do?’ repeated Jake.

‘Yeah. Those agent dudes still after you.’

‘Easy.’ The girl shrugged. ‘He’s gonna go home and come up with some other story to explain why he’s all smelly from being in that dumpster.’

‘I can’t go home,’ said Jake. The girl and the boy looked at him, the boy puzzled, the girl suspicious.

‘Why?’ asked the boy.

‘Because they’ll be watching my flat, waiting for me.’

The boy’s expression hardened, then he turned to the girl and said, ‘We gotta take care of him.’

‘Oh no!’ said the girl quickly. ‘Not another of your lame pigeons!’

‘Duck,’ Jake corrected her automatically.

‘What?’ she demanded.

‘The saying is lame duck,’ said Jake. ‘Not lame pigeon.’

The girl glared at him, then she said defiantly, ‘Well, I ain’t never seen no lame duck, but I seen plenty of lame pigeons. So, it’s a lame pigeon, right.’ And she turned to the boy and said, ‘And he’s on his own. We ain’t takin’ care of him.’

‘Why?’ appealed the boy. He gestured towards Jake. ‘Look at him. He’s scared. He’s messy. He ain’t got nowhere to go. He’s on the run. This is a man looking for help. It’s up to us to help him.’

Jake stared at the boy, and a feeling of amazement came over him. Here were two kids, street kids, he guessed, much younger than him, and they were talking about protecting him, an adult — well, more of an adult than either of these two. He wanted to run away from them and hide, but where? He was adrift and alone on the streets, and until he could get hold of Michelle and get the book to her, he needed help. And here were these two kids, offering that help.

‘I’m Jez,’ said the boy, ‘and this here’s Ronnie.’

‘I’m Jake,’ said Jake, and he held out his hand. The boy, surprised, took it and shook it, then released it. Ronnie just looked at Jake’s proffered hand with a cold eye, as if it was some suspicious thing that was about to bring them bad luck, and sniffed disdainfully again.

She turned to Jez, her expression one of disapproval.

‘Guess we got us a lame pigeon,’ she said.

Chapter 21

‘First thing we gotta do is get you off the street,’ said Jez.

‘And cleaned up,’ added Ronnie. Her nose wrinkled in distaste. ‘There was some real stinky stuff in that dumpster.’

‘Benjy’s,’ suggested Jez. He looked at his watch. ‘He’ll be in.’

Ronnie laughed.

‘He’s always in when it’s daylight,’ she said. She grinned at Jake. ‘We call him the vampire.’

‘Benjy the Vampire?’ said Jake, laughing despite himself. ‘It doesn’t really have a terrifying ring to it.’

They walked north from Oxford Street, to the outer reaches of Regent’s Park, and then crossed Marylebone Road, where luxury houses and flats gave way to street after street of council flats. Benjy, it seemed, lived on the third floor of one of the blocks, and as they walked along the balcony to the flat, Jake could hear music coming from inside — so loud it made the concrete beneath their feet vibrate.

‘Don’t his neighbours complain about the noise?’ asked Jake.

Jez shook his head.

‘That ain’t from Benjy’s,’ he said. ‘That’s from his neighbours, some old gran and grandad couple.’

The trio walked past the flat with the thumping music, and arrived at the door of the next flat. Jez rang the bell. Jake was surprised that anyone inside the flat would be able to hear the sound of the bell with the deafening sound of drums’n’bass from the next flat, but Benjy obviously had his ears tuned in for it. He opened the door a crack and peered out suspiciously, and then opened it wider when he saw it was Jez and Ronnie.

‘Yo!’

Jez gestured with his thumb at Jake.

‘We got a refugee here,’ he said. ‘Needs some help.’

Benjy opened the door wider.

‘Come on in,’ he said.

With that, he went into one of the rooms off the hallway.

Jez and Ronnie ushered Jake in, then shut the door, but it didn’t shut out the noise of the music from next door.

‘Doesn’t Benjy complain about the noise?’ asked Jake.

‘Well, officially this flat is empty,’ said Jez. ‘And if Benjy complained they’d find out he was, like, livin’ here, and then they’d kick him out. And they’d also find out about everyone else who’s living here, too, and kick them out.’

Jake frowned.

‘Everybody else?’ he asked. ‘How many?’

‘That depends on who’s around at any one time,’ said Ronnie.

‘So you two live here?’ asked Jake.

Jez shook his head.

‘We don’t live anywhere,’ he said. ‘We just stay with friends now and then.’

Jake looked at them. They seemed to be about fifteen.

‘You’re runaways,’ he said, startled at the sudden realisation.

Ronnie looked at him angrily, and then turned to Jez.

‘I told you it was a mistake helping him,’ she said.

‘No,’ Jake assured them. ‘You can trust me. I won’t say anything.’

‘You say that now, but what about when you get out of this flat?’ demanded Ronnie. ‘For all we know you go runnin’ to the police!’

‘That ain’t likely, Ronnie,’ pointed out Jez. ‘He’s on the run, remember.’

‘Yeah, but he might try and cut a deal. Sell us out to get himself off the hook.’

In spite of himself, Jake couldn’t help smiling at her accusation.

‘Really, you don’t need to worry,’ he said. ‘That is so not me!’

‘Oh yeah?’ demanded Ronnie, still angry. ‘How we know? You, with your good clothes and the way you talk.’ Angrily, she turned on Jez. ‘Why we helpin’ this fool again?’ she demanded.

‘Because I got a feelin’ about him,’ said Jez defensively. ‘He’s OK. He’s just a guy in need of help. He’s clean.’

Ronnie shook her head.

‘You said that before, and look what happened. We nearly ended up back in the home . . .’ Then she realised what she’d said and shut up abuptly, whirling back to glare defiantly at Jake.

They’re runaways from a children’s home, realised Jake.

‘I won’t say anything,’ he said. ‘I know what some of those places can be like. Children’s homes. Foster homes.’

Jez hesitated, then shook his head.

‘You don’t know,’ he grunted.

‘Oh, but I do,’ countered Jake.

Ronnie looked at him scornfully.

‘Yeah, from things you read in the papers and see on the TV,’ she snapped at him angrily. ‘But that ain’t the same as livin’ it!’

‘But I did live it,’ said Jake quietly. ‘I was raised in foster homes, some good, some bad, some I never even wish to think about ever again.’

Jez and Ronnie looked at Jake, astonished.

‘You serious?’ asked Jez.