Three days before Christmas Danny had last seen everyone. Up at Robert’s flat and everything had seemed fine back then. No one had much gear, there hadn’t been much gear around for a while, but there was plenty of benzos and jellies going around, plus the scripts. Nothing to get excited about but enough to keep anyone from getting proper sick. Plus some more drinks than usual and
Walked along the towpath looking in at the water, wondering where to score and wondering where to go for a dig when he did. Rolled a fag from the ends he’d found but he knew it wouldn’t do much good. A heron standing watch up ahead, shoulders hunched over, looking in at the water. Heaving into the air on its big baggy wings when Danny got too close, Einstein chasing on ahead and Danny thinking about the works in his bag. The note in his sock weren’t worth nothing if he couldn’t find no one selling. The heron settled on the opposite bank a hundred yards ahead, folding its wings and hunching its shoulders and dipping its ash-white head towards the water as Danny called Einstein back and scrambled away up the
Only one chair in the room and that was Robert’s. Everyone else sat on the floor. Leaning up against the wall which meant Robert was always sat at the centre of things with everyone around him. All his things in easy reach. His cans, his papers, his tobacco. Good job because it took him a lot of time and trouble to stand up and someone mostly had to help him. Big man like that. Drank all day and didn’t do anything else. Seemed like the deal was if people brought him food and drink they could hang out in his flat, and it seemed like a good enough deal. Brought him plenty of food enough. Never asked Danny no questions the first time Mike took him up there, and that was the way he liked it. Just about the only one who didn’t do gear, but never seemed bothered what anyone
Jesus though. A man like that. Didn’t look ill the last time Danny had seen him. But the others must have seen him after that, must have noticed something was wrong. Had to find them and ask them, had to make sense of all
Weren’t like Robert didn’t have people looking out for him. He did, he had all of us. Not like some of these other cunts, these ones who’ve got no one and are always looking over their shoulders. Like the old man in the wheelchair, getting taxed near enough every time he comes out the post office. Like that one that turned up at the soup run a couple of times, no one knew his name and he never spoke to no one and word was he was sleeping out in the woods. Wouldn’t catch Danny going out in the woods in the daytime let alone at night. Never know what’s going off in the woods, it’s all shadows and hiding places and furry fucking creatures running around after dark. Anything can happen. But some cunts have got no one and they’ve got to find somewhere to hide. But Robert had no one to hide from, he had all us lot looking out for him. It was a what was it an understanding. Weren’t it and
Laura she couldn’t she said but
Had to find
Fuck
The van drives quickly now, the men in the front run dry of conversation and impatient to be done, to be home, to be off the streets on a wind-cold empty day like this, and through the darkened windows we watch the city pass us by; long dark streets splashed with light, empty parks and flooded playing fields, boarded-up shops and fenced-off factory ruins, and we see Steve, almost, dimly, we see the place where Steve’s been staying, a boarded-up room above a shop with the birdshit and feathers scraped out and a mattress from a skip hauled in and the walls whitewashed with a tin of stolen paint. A light and a television running on power cut in from downstairs. The room kept tidy, always, and no rubbish left lying around but thrown out through the window into the yard. The yard full of cans and bottles and batteries and bits of scrap he’s brought back because it might be useful, because he’s got a plan to do the place up and claim squatter’s rights and make something of it. Car tyres and bike frames and planks of wood. Plant pots and cable and window-frames. A crowd of pigeons picking around in the corner of the yard, shifting at the sound of footsteps and flapping into the air as Danny pulls himself over the wall and falls awkwardly
to the floor. He gets up again, wiping the filth from his hands and his coat, and he shouts up at the first-floor window. Steve! Steve! The pigeons swoop and circle overhead, settling on the sagging roof as Einstein barks and claws at the other side of the wall and Danny keeps shouting up. Steve it’s me! It’s Danny! Are you there, are you fucking there? His voice cracks, and he bends forward to hack and spit on the ground, his long bony hands resting on his knees, and he stays bent over like that for a moment, a long string of bile swinging from his mouth to the floor, and he straightens up and calls Steve’s name again. Steve where the
None of the others ever knew where Steve stayed, apart from Ant who stayed with him now and again. Only reason Danny knew was he’d helped Steve back there one night, dragging him along the towpath when he should have known better and left him lying in the bushes until morning. One time when Ant was in the cells. Not that he would have been any use anyway. Steve’s weak leg wet with piss and drink and his arm clamped round Danny’s shoulder. Only helped him out because he owed Steve from the last giro day, and when they got over the wall into the yard Steve sobered up enough to turn and hold him by the throat with his good hand and say You tell any bastard where I’m staying and I’ll murder you I’ll rip your bloody head right off. His voice quiet and slurred, his thumb pressing between the cords of Danny’s neck like a fishmonger finding his way to the bone. Which wasn’t what
He shouts again, his fists clenched by his side and his whole body straining up towards the window. Steve! Are you there are you fucking there? He picks up a handful of stones and throws them at the window, and they go arcing through the empty window-frame before clattering into the room where Steve lies, laid out neatly on his bed, a ghost of a smile twisting across his face and his eyes closed and Ant laid out against the opposite wall, the pigeons on the roof leaping up at the sound and scattering westward across the alley and the canal and the reservoir, climbing higher over the wooded hillside of the park and the dual carriageway beyond, their underbellies catching the last faint light of the day as we peer from the darkened windows of the van to watch them passing overhead, as we look down at the zippered bulk of Robert’s body between us and we remember he remembers we we
The ground a long way off and the branch in your hand a useless piece of dead wood and you’re falling through the
His brother still owed him from when they were kids, and he knew it. Danny had always helped him out back then, when he could, when they’d still been placed together, when it had been just the two of them against everyone else. Sitting in their room at night, whatever room they happened to be in that night because it kept changing. Talking about ways to get out and ways to find their parents and ways to go and live on their own somewhere with no care workers telling them what they could and couldn’t do. And every now and then when things had been bad his brother saying What were they like can you remember can you tell me what they were like? Which he couldn’t but he’d make out like he could, he’d say They were tall and Dad had red hair and sometimes a beard but then he got it shaved and Mum was a bit fat and she was always baking cakes she used to let us help and they had loud voices they both did a lot of shouting. His brother didn’t know better. He’d only been a baby when they’d been removed. Might have been true he could hardly remember himself but so what. He could remember the house sometimes but so what. Thick brown curtains in the front room and he could only ever remember them being shut. But so what. Red rug on the floor where he used to play with these wooden bricks and they were the only toys he could remember being in the house. Ants on the kitchen floor. Everything quiet one day, no one around when normally there were crowds of people in and out the house stepping over and around him and shouting and laughing and saying Will you get that fucking kid to bed. Putting one brick on top of another until the whole pile falls over. Door bangs open and people everywhere. Shouting and crying and footsteps up and down the stairs and someone picking him up and she smelt different she didn’t smell right. His brother didn’t know about that, he’d never asked and he’d never been told. No one had ever asked. And if they had. If they’d asked him how it felt. He’d say It’s like when you’re climbing a tree and the branch breaks off. You’re still holding on to the branch but you’re falling through
Why didn’t you contact the police immediately?
Don’t know, I was just, I was in a state.
Where did you go?
I went everywhere, I was looking for someone.
Where did you go?
I went to the Abbey Day Centre, and the Sally Army, but there was no one there.
And then you went to this squat, to your friend’s squat.
Yeah but he weren’t there.
And after that you went to
Went to Heather’s place, the supported-housing place, but she never answered the door. Kept buzzing her but she didn’t answer. Walked round the block and came back and buzzed again and kept buzzing and shouting up at the window. All the curtains shut. Buzzed all the other flats and got no reply. They couldn’t all still be in bed but cunts never answered the door. Walked round the block and came back and buzzed again and shouted up at her window and
She was older than all of them, older than Robert by a few years maybe, and this was the first time since she was a teenager she’d had a place of her own with an address of her own and a proper lock on the door. Weren’t allowed visitors but she’d told them so much about it they might as well have been on a tour themselves. Coathooks by the door, a table and chairs and a bed by the window, a shower and a toilet and a sink and a cooker and a fridge. And everything so clean, everything painted white and the furniture brand new almost and all that light pouring in through the windows. Weren’t allowed visitors and weren’t allowed drugs and they checked up on that so she still spent most of her time at Robert’s. But even so. It’s somewhere to go though Danny, she told him. It’s somewhere safe to keep my stuff and listen to my music and sort of look out the window and think about what I’m going to do next. Didn’t like thinking about that too long so she was always back at Robert’s soon enough. But she weren’t there now and she weren’t
Found a phonebox by the King George and tried calling his man again from there. Nearly out of shrapnel but there was no credit on his phone so it was all he could do. And still no cunt answering the phone. Just voicemail, like anyone was going to leave a message. Always hard to get them out of bed before dinner time, cunts always making the most of their own supply late into the night before, but this was something else, it was late in the day and someone would always be on it by now. Halfway out the box and he thought about phoning the police again. Got as far as some woman going What service do you require before he banged the phone down, didn’t make sense what did he think he was going to say
I found this body but it aint nothing to do with
I climbed in and out the window but I aint done
I don’t know
And still the van drives on, and the men in the front seats talk about what they’ll be doing for New Year, and the policeman asks his radio for confirmation that the photographer will be in attendance, and Robert’s bagged and rotten body lies between us, limp and heavy, like a roll of carpet being trundled out to the city dump. Shouldn’t be like this. Should be different, should be like it would have been in the old days, like we should be carrying his body ourselves, like bearing him high on a what on a bier of broken branches, hurrying him out to the burying ground. Burning bundles of herbs and that to hide the smell, and people coming out of their houses and lowering their heads and going Sorry for your troubles la, if there’s anything we can do. They should be closing the streets. There should be a piper or a fucking what a Sally Army band or something, TV cameras, helicopters. We should stop the van now we should climb out the van and fucking raise him up on our shoulders with our boots clattering in slow fury along the barricaded streets the traffic-jammed junctions and all the drivers getting out their cars and a big fucking crowd behind us as we turn off the main road and cut through that new business park with all them office workers coming out in their white shirtsleeves to watch us pass and all the drinkers outside the King George pouring their beer at our feet as a like sacrifice or a what a tribute to a life fully lived and then all the women stood along Forest Road like a guard of honour in their short uniforms and polished boots stepping out into the road to stuff folded twenty notes into his burial shroud as we keep walking carrying him high carrying him past the church and right through the gates of