Grass Page 10

  He smiled at me. ‘Just like that. When and where? You’re some boy, Leo. Cool as they make them.’

  The boat’s horn sounded on the river. Armour started up the engine again. ‘Do you know something, Leo? One day you could be The Man.’

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  31

  I could be The Man. I couldn’t get those words out of my head all that night. I could be The Man.

  Taking over. In charge. People listened to Armour. People stepped back to let him pass.

  I imagined myself in his place. Taking over. Ordering men around. Seeing them move aside when I approached.

  It was happening already. At school when I walked into the playground they would watch me. They would move to let me pass.

  Did I change then? Or had I already changed? I don’t know. But next day when I went to school I felt different. Not alone any more.

  But apart.

  Like Armour said – when you’re The Man, you’ve got to keep friends at arm’s length. Not let anyone get too close. I liked the way I felt that day.

  I was to meet Nelis the next day. Only this time it was to be in town, in full view of everyone. It was to look like a chance meeting – an accident. I was going to bump into him in Tesco’s. And this time it was me who arranged it all. A simple text message to Nelis’s mobile.

  4PM TUESDAY. TESCOS. CAKES.

  Couldn’t sound more innocent.

  An undercover operation, that’s what it felt like. And I was excited at the thought of it. It was the kind of thing Sean and I used to love pretending to do. A game we loved acting out.

  Sean.

  I pushed him to the back of my mind. He was the past. This was now.

  All I needed was an excuse to go to Tesco’s. Let’s face it, me in Tesco’s would set Mum’s alarm bells ringing right off.

  Then my dad solved it all with his petition. He was all talk of it at teatime.

  ‘I’ve put one in each shop in the area. I went into Mr Brown’s and every customer in the shop signed up right away. That’s how desperate people are to get rid of guns.’

  My mum chimed in. ‘Give me one. I’ll get them to sign it at the hospital.’

  A bulb switched on above my head. ‘I’ll hand one into Tesco’s for you. Tomorrow after school.’

  My dad beamed at me. ‘Good thinking, Leo.’

  Did I feel guilty about that?

  No. I felt good. Good and clever. Clever enough to find a perfect cover for my meeting with Nelis.

  First thing I did when I went into Tesco’s was hand in the petition. Dad was right, they seemed eager to get it. One of the smaller Tesco’s on the road out of town had been held up last week at gunpoint. The manager told me they were going to photocopy the petition and put it at the end of every checkout.

  Then I lifted a basket and sauntered round the store.

  Cakes and biscuits – Armour had liked that. ‘Suits him. He’s nothing but a fairy cake anyway. And past his sell-by date.’

  I wasn’t even afraid of Nelis any more. Though his reputation was vile. Nelis seemed weak and insignificant to me now. Not like Armour at all. Armour wanted him out of town. But he wasn’t threatening violence. He was willing to pay to get him out. Give him money to go.

  I picked up a choc ice and a couple of packets of sweets. Not Mint Imperials – I couldn’t look at them now without feeling sick – and I headed for the cake aisle.

  I saw him right off, at the other end of the aisle. Pretending an interest in home baking. But he’d seen me too, though he didn’t look my way. He began to move, step by step, in my direction.

  My heart didn’t beat any faster at the sight of him. I wasn’t afraid. I wasn’t even nervous. If anything I was excited. I was determined to do this right. And this was going to be the tricky bit. Trying to make our collision look natural.

  One more step. I could reach out and touch him if I wanted but I didn’t. Instead I swung round. My basket caught on his jacket. I let it drop. He stumbled.

  He was all apologies. ‘Sorry, son. Sorry. Here, let me get them.’ He bent to pick up the sweets. So did I.

  As we crouched together he smiled at me. He had a tooth missing. I had never noticed that before.

  ‘Here, son – tell Armour I don’t come cheap. This is my price.’ The price he mentioned almost made me fall back on the floor. ‘Not a penny less. No negotiation. OK? And he’ll get what he wants.’

  I said nothing. Just took the packet from him and stood up.

  ‘No worries,’ was all I said.

  I walked away and all I could think was how well I had carried it off. Anyone watching would have seen an accidental collision. Nothing more.

  ‘Here, son, wait a minute.’

  I froze. Nelis calling me back. It had all gone so well. What was he doing?

  I turned and he was walking towards me. ‘Here, you nearly forgot your choc ice.’

  And he dropped it in the basket and walked on.

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  I sent a text to Armour with the price Nelis had mentioned. That was all. He would know what it meant.

  Would Armour be able to pay that much money? And was it just to get Nelis out of town? He would only move somewhere else, wouldn’t he? Start all over again. Or was the payment to stop all his drug dealing, his violence? And could he be trusted? Armour was too clever to let Nelis fool him.

  ‘He’s the dangerous one,’ Armour had told me. And didn’t I know it? Hadn’t I found his hoard of guns? ‘But he’s greedy too. He’ll take the money.’

  If Armour had been there with me at that moment I would have told him about them. About the guns. I realised how much I wanted to talk to him. Tell him how Nelis had looked, tell him all that happened. A step-by-step account.

  But this was nothing that I could talk about over the phone.

  I crossed into Boots, had a look at the perfumes. Mum’s birthday was coming up. I walked with a real spring in my step. I’d read that once in a book and had thought it was the daftest way I’d ever heard to describe how someone walked. Now I realised exactly what it meant. I bounced with confidence. I had carried an important message for The Man. I was trusted.

  One day I might even be The Man myself.

  I didn’t feel like a boy any more. Remembering the games I had played with Sean – C.S.I. investigators, detectives, commandos – they all seemed juvenile and silly now.

  The games I played now were for real.

  Armour called me next day. To congratulate me. Thank me for all my hard work. ‘If all this works out, it’ll be all down to you. Do you know that?’

  I felt a pride rise in me. All down to me. ‘Are you going to pay him?’

  ‘What do you think? Is it too much?’

  He was asking me! ‘It’s a lot of money,’ I said. ‘Have you got that kind of money?’

  He didn’t answer that. All he said was, ‘If it gets us what we want I’m willing to pay.’

  If it gets us – us what we want? He was including me in all this.

  ‘How do you know you can trust him?’

  I could hear the smile in Armour’s voice. ‘If you were in my shoes . . . how would you make sure you could trust him, Leo?’

  I thought about it. ‘I’d have something in place, something of his that I could use to make sure he doesn’t change his mind. Insurance.’

  I’d seen that once in a TV detective series. Armour obviously hadn’t seen the same programme. He thought it was all my idea.

  ‘You are one clever boy, Leo. That’s exactly what I have in mind too. If he tries to go back on his word . . . I have insurance too.’

  I should have known he would.

  ‘I’m going to think about this, Leo. Then maybe you’ll set up the meeting
. Would you do that?’

  Me? Set up the meeting that would get rid of Nelis, maybe bring peace to the town?

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘How am I ever going to thank you for all this, Leo?’

  But I didn’t need his thanks any more. I was doing this because I wanted to.

  I hardly noticed Sean and Veronika when they passed me in the corridor that day. They hardly looked at me anyway. It was as if we’d never been friends. I was a world away from Sean now.

  Dad came in from work that night and I could see right off he had a spring in his step too.

  He had flowers for Mum and handed them to her and kissed her.

  ‘Wow! What’s happened to you?’ she asked him.

  He looked around at us. I was at the table helping David with his homework. He beamed a big smile at us.

  ‘I’ve got another job. In electronics. The job I nearly had a few weeks ago, remember? Well the guy who got the job let them down. I was next in line. I’ve got it. More money. Permanent job. Exactly what I wanted.’

  His voice was excited. Mum ran at him and threw her arms around him. David grabbed the opportunity to escape his homework and ran and jumped on top of them both.

  Me, I just sat there thinking.

  My dad had a better job.

  How am I ever going to thank you? Armour had asked.

  What better way than this? My dad had the job he’d always wanted.

  My mum noticed my silence then. ‘Nothing to say, Leo? How about, “That’s brilliant, Dad.’’’

  She was watching me, so was Dad.

  ‘It is. It’s brilliant, Dad. It’s just . . . such a surprise.’

  ‘When did you find out?’ Mum asked him. ‘You didn’t get any letters this morning.’

  ‘A phone call,’ Dad explained. ‘Today at lunchtime. Out of the blue. Can you believe it?’

  I didn’t listen to the rest of what he was saying. I didn’t need to.

  When I spoke to him on the way to school this morning, Armour had asked me ‘How am I ever going to thank you?’ And by lunchtime, he had figured out how to thank me. Set the wheels in motion.

  Quick work.

  He really was The Man.

  ‘Seems to me,’ Dad said, when he’d finally settled down to have his tea, ‘that this family has a lot to be thankful for.’

  It was only later he remembered his other news, driven to the back of his mind by the more important matter of his new job. ‘By the way, I was interviewed by the paper this afternoon. About the petition. I’m going to be on the front page tomorrow.’

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  33

  I wanted to thank Armour. I had to thank him. This was the job my dad had dreamed of. Wanted so badly. Back at his trade. Big money.

  Did I dare go to his house again?

  In the end all I did was text him.

  THANKS

  He would know what I meant.

  He called me, as he usually did now, on my way to school next morning. I always walked past the Police Club – discreet, isolated – to wait for his call.

  ‘I’ve decided I’m going to pay him. But this time we have to meet. Face to face.’

  He didn’t even have to ask me this time. ‘I’ll go to the pool hall after school. Bet he’ll be there.’

  ‘Bet he will,’ Armour said, with a smile in his voice. ‘You be careful, Leo.’

  I promised him I would. ‘Did you get my text?’

  ‘You’re thanking me enough,’ he said. ‘Doing all this for me.’

  ‘But that new job. That’s the one Dad really wanted. I don’t know how you managed it so quickly.’

  There was a long pause on the line. So long that for a moment I thought we’d been cut off.

  ‘Oh, that,’ he said at last. ‘That was nothing.’

  I laughed. ‘Nothing to you. A lot to my dad.’

  ‘Well you set this up and we’re even.’

  I would set it up – and I’d do it well. It was all I thought about that day. Meeting Nelis, asking him to name a date, a place, hoping that Armour could trust him. I thought of nothing else.

  Even when Aidan actually spoke to me in the corridor it hardly registered. ‘Looks like your best pal’s stolen your girl,’ he sneered. And he nodded in the direction of Sean and Veronika. They were standing together, laughing. Together so often these days I realised. Sean and Veronika. Had he always fancied her? Was our fight just an excuse for him to move right in?

  I’d always thought it would be Aidan she’d go off with. By the bitterness in his voice – and the look on his face – so did Aidan.

  ‘Jealous, Aidan?’ I asked him.

  ‘Not half as jealous as you must be.’ And he moved away from me.

  I wouldn’t care about it, I thought. Wouldn’t think about it. I had enough on my mind.

  Nelis was slumped in a chair at the pool hall, flanked by two of the hooded lowlives who were supposed to be his bodyguards. He stood up when he saw me coming.

  ‘Ah, here comes my ticket to the big money.’

  ‘Armour says just name the place and the date and he’ll meet you.’

  ‘Hear that, boys? Armour needs Nelis, eh?’ His mouth widened in a smile. He shouldn’t even try to smile, I thought. His teeth were so badly stained with nicotine. ‘Let’s make it next Sunday morning. 3 a.m. We don’t want any witnesses, do we?’

  ‘Where?’ I asked him.

  ‘My turf,’ he said. ‘Up at the old Willow Bar. And tell him to come alone. He brings anybody with him and the deal’s off.’

  The old Willow Bar. How often had Sean and I explored in that place? It was supposed to be haunted. Haunted by the ghost of a man who’d been shot in there. Nelis had been behind that shooting. Everyone knew it. His men had rushed in when the place had been crowded and sprayed the place with bullets. The man who died was a complete innocent. Caught in the crossfire. Because of that shooting, customers had stayed away. The Willow Bar had eventually closed down. No surprise there. You don’t go out for a quiet drink and expect a battalion of gunmen to rush in and blast you to kingdom come.

  I sent a text to Armour as I was walking home. Telling him the where and when. Added:

  B CAREFUL

  Nelis was dangerous. Nelis had guns. A whole stash of them in fact. Clyde Terrace was only a street away from the Willow Bar. Could Nelis be trusted? What if he couldn’t? I should tell Armour about the guns. But it wasn’t something I could text, or even say over the phone. I’d have to wait until I saw him.

  I had forgotten all about my dad’s interview until I got home.

  Mum had pinned the newspaper up on the wall in the kitchen. A photo of him was splashed across the front page holding up his petition. The headline:

  NO MORE GUNS

  ‘He’ll do it,’ my mum said. ‘I’ve never known your dad to start anything he didn’t finish.’

  The phone kept ringing all night. People congratulating Dad – people wanting to help. Even the town Provost phoned to ask what he could do. I could see my dad swell with pride with every call. He was doing something at last.

  I was up in my bedroom reading when the phone rang again. David was in his room – supposed to be sleeping, but I could hear him on his Nintendo. Dad dived for the phone, his feet skidding across the hall. Didn’t want it to wake David, on the remote chance he might be asleep.

  I heard the low murmur of his voice downstairs, then growing louder. ‘Who is that? Who is that?’

  I don’t think he got an answer. The next thing his feet were bounding noisily upstairs, not caring how loud he was now. That should have warned me.

  The door of my room was flung open with such force it banged against the wall and flew back. My dad was standing there – his face pu
rple with rage.

  ‘What is it?’ I asked. Yet somehow I already knew.

  ‘I’ve just had a phone call to say I’ve got some nerve trying to clean up this town when my son runs messages for Armour.’

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  My dad grabbed me by the shoulders, lifted me from the chair. My dad – who hardly ever lost his temper – was scaring me.

  ‘Tell me it’s not true. Tell me . . . and I’ll believe you.’

  I wanted to lie but I couldn’t find the words.

  He looked puzzled, as if he didn’t recognise me. ‘It’s not true. You’re too sensible. You know how bad this guy is.’

  My mouth was so dry I could hardly get the words out. ‘Maybe . . . he’s not as bad as you think.’

  If I’d slapped him he couldn’t have looked more shocked.

  ‘Not as bad as I think! Are we talking about the same person? Armour? He’s a loan shark, a drug dealer. He gets people beaten up, he’s been up for murder . . . that Armour? And you’re saying . . . he’s not as bad as I think? What planet are you on, Leo?’

  By this time, my mum had flown upstairs too. Her face was white. ‘Leo, how did you get involved with Armour?’

  How could I tell her, explain to either of them? ‘I’m not involved with him. I’ve met him, that’s all.’

  My dad turned to Mum. ‘He runs messages for him.’ He dropped me and ran his hands through his hair. ‘I can’t believe this is happening. A man on the phone there, telling me my son runs messages for Armour. He’s Armour’s boy, he said.’

  I decided to get angry then. ‘And you believe somebody on the phone and not me?’

  My dad looked deep into my eyes. ‘Tell me it’s not true. I’ll believe you. You don’t know how much I want this to be a lie.’

  ‘How did you meet him, Leo?’ my mum said softly. Not wanting it to be true either.

  My brain was desperately trying to come up with an answer that sounded credible. ‘It was an accident. I bumped into him. He was nice – he seemed OK.’

  ‘I was told you’ve been to his house,’ my dad said.