Mosi's War Read online

  ‘You’ve got to go now, Mosi,’ he said. ‘Keep out of this.’ There would be people coming to his flat soon. ‘Hurry.’

  Mosi got to his feet. He backed into the flat. He looked almost as pale as Patrick. ‘But that man saw me from his balcony.’

  Patrick was thinking fast. ‘I can hardly make him out in this rain. He saw a boy. We’re both wearing school hoodies, we all look the same. And it’s dark and misty, he won’t have seen much else. I’ll say it was me.’ Blackness was swimming in front of his eyes. It was hard to keep talking. ‘They can’t find you here.’

  Mosi seemed to be fading down a long tunnel. He was saying something, but Patrick could hardly make out what it was. His voice coming from somewhere far away.

  Patrick was so frightened he would be caught. ‘Go, Mosi. They’ll be here soon . . .’

  There was a sound at the door. Someone was here already. No time for escape.

  ‘The cupboard in the hall, Mosi, hide in there . . . get out when you can.’ Mosi’s flat had the same cupboard. Mosi ran for it. Stopped for a moment at the door. ‘Thank you, Patrick.’

  The door was knocked again. In a second they would realise it was on the latch and come right in.

  Patrick wanted to say something, but the pain was too much and he felt blackness closing in on him. ‘Go, Mosi,’ was all he managed to say. He waited till Mosi was safely inside the hall cupboard, till he heard the door click closed, only then did he call out weakly . . . ‘I’m in here . . .’ He heard the footsteps running up the hall. Voices calling him. It seemed to him the room grew darker and darker, and he slumped to the floor.

  Chapter 52

  Patrick was drifting in and out of consciousness. He would open his eyes to try to make out who was there, but the picture was fuzzy, the faces crowded round him smudged, and the people were speaking as if they were in a badly dubbed film.

  ‘The ambulance’s coming.’

  ‘His arm’s broken.’

  ‘Where’s his mother?’

  He wanted to tell them everything, but his lips seemed to be glued together. A spasm of pain made him moan and the blackness wrapped itself around him again.

  How long he was unconscious he didn’t know but when he opened his eyes the paramedics were there, hovering over him.

  ‘Give the boy some breathing space.’

  ‘We’re giving you an injection for the pain, son.’

  And then a face, a voice. ‘I saw it all. That wee boy is a hero. That big guy trying to chuck him over the balcony . . . I couldn’t believe what I was seeing, and it was him that went over instead, thank God. Big guy, lost his balance, must have slipped on the wet tiles. Over he went, still clinging on for grim death and then, that wee boy there!’ The man’s face seemed to zoom closer. ‘He was on his feet and trying to help him. Trying to pull him up and him with a broken arm.’

  The faces turned to him, looking at him as if he’d changed in some way. He wasn’t an ordinary boy any longer.

  He was a hero.

  Patrick began to shake his head. He wanted to tell them. No, it wasn’t him. He wasn’t the hero. He would have let him drop. It was Mosi who was the hero.

  But the words wouldn’t come and the pain was easing and he slipped back into unconsciousness again.

  It was so easy to step unseen from the cupboard. People were filling the flat, but they were all in the living room. And even if he was spotted he was just a boy who had come to see that Patrick was OK, to check on his school friend.

  But no one saw him. He left as soon as he could, passing the paramedics rushing into the flat. As he hurried down the stairs to his own flat he looked for a moment out of the landing window. It was alive down there on the ground. There were police cars, ambulances, blue lights flashing, people crowding round.

  Papa Blood was dead. Mosi had escaped him. He need fear no longer. He would tell his father and mother all that had happened when he got home. Safe to tell them now.

  What had made him go then to Patrick’s? Choose that moment? A few seconds later and he would have been too late. Patrick would have been dead.

  Something had brought him to Patrick’s home.

  Something stronger than witchcraft.

  Something more powerful than magic.

  And in that moment Mosi got his faith back.

  And it felt good.

  Chapter 53

  When he’d come out of hospital Patrick had discovered that he wasn’t the only hero. Hakim was sharing in his glory.

  Because in the end it wasn’t fingerprints or DNA that gave up Papa Blood’s true identity, though they would have before long. It was all down to Hakim’s iPhone. He had caught Papa Blood on video in the cemetery that night and had posted it on YouTube. Seen by half the world, someone, somewhere had recognised him for what he really was. Papa Blood, a cruel warlord, the world’s most wanted.

  Patrick and Mosi were sitting on a wall beside the football pitch. Patrick’s arm was still in plaster. It had been a bad break. ‘I will never play the piano again,’ he had told Bliss when she’d come to visit him.

  Her answer had been typical. ‘You never played it before.’

  ‘Lucky break, then, eh?’

  Still making a joke about everything.

  ‘Lucky break, eh? Get it?’

  It was a bit annoying though that Hakim was getting almost as much attention as Patrick. ‘Hakim’s walking about as if he’s superman. As if he’s the one who exposed Mr Okafor as Papa Blood.’

  Mosi shrugged. ‘That’s not a lie. It was his video on YouTube that did it.’

  ‘He wouldn’t have been taking the video at all, if it hadn’t been for me.’

  ‘Well, you’re a hero too,’ Mosi said.

  Patrick stared at him. ‘Are you winding me up? You know I feel guilty about that.’ His voice became a whisper. ‘You’re the hero, Mosi. And nobody knows it. Nobody knows you had anything to do with Papa Blood. You kept well out of everything. You really did stay invisible, Mosi.’

  Mosi smiled. ‘I am free of Papa Blood and that is all the reward I want.’

  And he had felt it these past few days. He and his parents had smiled more often.

  It had been discovered that Papa Blood had been here on someone else’s passport. Mr Okafor, the real gentle giant, had been murdered by him.

  ‘That ring belonged to the real Mr Okafor, did you read that?’ Patrick said, not for the first time. ‘And it was the ring that gave him away . . . do you not think that’s funny. The Lord works in mysterious ways, my granny says.’

  ‘My mother says the same thing, Patrick,’ Mosi said.

  ‘It’s over, Mosi. You’re safe.’

  Mosi nodded. ‘Things will be better now, Patrick.’

  ‘Do you think so?’ Patrick didn’t sound so sure. ‘My granny’s decided to move in with us. No more getting out at night-time . . . for me or my mum. We’re both grounded. She’s driving us mad. She’s even teaching my mum to cook.’ He made a face. ‘Don’t ever taste my mum’s cooking if you want to make it out alive.’

  Mosi smiled. Patrick always made him laugh.

  ‘Me and Mum are trying to think up ways to get rid of her. I suggested giving her a plate of my mother’s soup. That would poison anybody. Failing that, I think my mother should get another man. A new daddy for me. Eh, what do you think?’

  A ball dribbled to a halt in front of them. One of the boys on the pitch, Brian, shouted over, ‘Hey, kick it back.’

  Patrick held up his arm. ‘Wounded soldier here. I cannae do it.’

  And Mosi, for the first time since the day he was taken by the soldiers, took aim and kicked the ball high. The boy caught it with his foot and called back, ‘Want a game?’

  He beckoned Mosi over.

  Patrick grinned at him. ‘On you go. I‘ll sit here and watch. I need a laugh.’

  And Mosi ran on to the pitch.

  And joined the game.

  The Fact Behind the Fiction

  One of th
e amazing things about Mosi’s War is that the inspiration for it partly came from a true story. In 1954 there were rumours of a vampire roaming the Necropolis, a large cemetery in Glasgow – a seven-foot vampire with iron teeth. Hundreds of children, aged from four to fourteen, were so convinced there was a vampire that they decided to try to trap it in the cemetery. There was a stampede when many of them thought they had seen the vampire wandering in the darkness. The police came and dispersed the children. Teachers assured them there was no vampire. But they came back night after night.

  The vampire was even discussed in Parliament, and this led to the banning of American horror comics, thought to be the cause of the mass hysteria among the children.

  The story died, but there were many who thought the vampire had only disappeared, and one day he would come back to have his revenge.

  In real life, though, there are worse things than vampires . . . War criminals, just like Papa Blood, are hiding throughout the world under false identities, and they are the ones who should be exposed and brought to justice.

  1

  ‘Want a Mint Imperial?’ I handed over the bag of my favourite sweets to my mate, Sean.

  He pushed it back at me, and pulled a Mars bar from his pocket. ‘You know I hate them things, Leo. Gimme chocolate any day.’

  We were on the train heading home after the Saturday match. Our team had lost 3–0, but in our minds we had not been defeated. We usually lost by a lot more than that. Nearly all our friends supported Rangers or Celtic. But not me and Sean. We liked to be different. We were Barnhill men, like our dads before us. We supported our local team, Barnhill. Or, ‘Barnhill Nil’, as some rotten people liked to call them.

  We were well pleased that day as we headed home on the coastal railway line past Dumbarton Rock, watching the river sunset red and the whole town bathed in a pink glow.

  ‘We’re really lucky living in the best place in the world, with the best football team.’

  Sean laughed. He agreed with me. ‘When they were handing out luck, McCabe, God gave us an extra share.’

  That’s how me and Sean always were. We agreed about everything. We were best mates. Had been since Primary

  1. We liked the same things . . . except when it came to Mint Imperials – but then you can’t have everything.

  We were just drawing into one of the stations when Sean pointed towards a wall surrounding one of the derelict factories. ‘Hey, look at that.’

  It would have been hard to miss what was written on that wall. Painted in giant whitewashed letters.

  SHARKEY IS A GRASS

  I hadn’t a clue who Sharkey was, but I knew one thing. ‘Sharkey’s a dead man,’ I said. ‘They should have added RIP – Rest in Peace.’

  ‘Or rest in pieces.’ Sean laughed. ‘’Cause they’ll prob­ably cut him up and drop his body bit by bit into the Clyde.’

  Me and Sean are big C.S.I. fans and they’d had a storyline just like that only a couple of weeks ago.

  ‘I wonder who Sharkey grassed on?’ I said.

  ‘Could have been Nelis, or Armour, or McCrae.’

  Everyone knew the top gang leaders in the town. The drug dealers, the hard men, the bad men. Nelis had an evil reputation for doing the most awful things, and Armour was simply called ‘The Man’. As if there was no other. McCrae was vile. His name would always be linked to the Sheridan lassie. She’d come from a decent family but once she’d started running about with McCrae he’d got her on to drugs. Her life had spiralled downhill, and when she’d finally had the courage to leave him she’d been found shot dead not far from McCrae’s house. No one leaves McCrae. He had even been charged with her murder but managed to get off when two of his ‘friends’ had supplied him with an alibi. But no one doubted his guilt. Andy Sheridan, the girl’s dad, had sworn all kinds of vengeance on him for that.

  McCrae and the others always got off due to lack of evidence – or lack of surviving witnesses. No one ever grassed on them because once you did you’d be a dead man, like Sharkey would be soon.

  ‘He’s probably left town already,’ Sean said.

  But Sharkey, whoever he was, the drug dealers, the crime bosses, everything was forgotten by the time the train stopped at our station. We were going to Sean’s house. He had a new PlayStation game and we were dying to try it out.

  Sean lived in McCrae territory. Crazy, I know, that they claimed areas of the town as their own, but that was the way it was. Sean and me, we were streetwise enough to know that. But we kept back from any trouble. My dad and Sean’s would have gone spare if they’d caught us having dealings with anyone connected to McCrae or any of the others.

  And on the way to Sean’s house we did what we loved best. We explored.

  The area where Sean lived had so many boarded-up houses and derelict properties and shops, and me and Sean were experts at getting inside them. It was exciting and a bit dangerous as well. You never knew what you might find. It was about the only risky thing we did and it didn’t hurt anybody. We’d sneak inside, pretend we were SAS commandos searching out terrorists, or crime scene investigators looking for clues. Always the good guys, me and Sean.

  There was a new boarded-up shop to explore that night. Azam had finally had enough. He’d given up after all the hold-ups and break-ins and vandalism to his shop. He had closed up and decided to move to somewhere less dangerous. ‘Baghdad, I think,’ he had told Sean’s dad. ‘It’s a lot safer there.’

  ‘My dad says it was a blinkin’ shame,’ Sean said. ‘Azam was trying to give the people here a good corner-shop service. They never gave him a chance.’

  It sounded like something Sean’s dad would say. Like my dad, Sean’s was always complaining about how the town was run by those three gang bosses.

  ‘If Azam had paid McCrae protection money, he could have stayed,’ I said to Sean. And he agreed. Everyone knew it went on. McCrae would threaten the small shopkeepers with his gang of hard men, who would break up the shop or warn customers to stay away

  – shop somewhere else. In the end most of the shop­keepers would pay up just for the sake of peace. But after that they would be in McCrae’s pocket for ever.

  ‘The Untouchables’, my dad called Nelis and Armour and McCrae. Because the law could never seem to touch them. They got off with everything. Verdicts not guilty, or not proven.

  So now Azam’s once brightly whitewashed shop was covered in graffiti – on the walls, on the door. Even on the steel panels that boarded up the windows. It was easy getting inside. Me and Sean were experts at finding a way. One of those steel panels was lying askew at the back door, and first me and then Sean squeezed through. First thing that hit us was the smell. Somebody had been using this place as a toilet.

  Sean started dancing about like a cat on a sizzling hob unit. ‘Hope I don’t put my feet on something yucky.’

  I was almost tempted to squeeze back through into the street, but my crime-busting instincts took over. I pulled out the pen-torch I carried with me (well, I did say we were always exploring) and flashed it across the ground. Just as well. Another few steps and Sean would have stepped on something yucky. The vandals had obviously been here already. It never took long for them to get inside any derelict properties. There was broken glass all over the floor, pipes had been ripped from the walls. There was graffiti on every empty space.

  ‘I hear something,’ Sean said.

  I could hear it too. A low moan from one of the dark corners. We were always hoping to find evidence of a crime or a robbery in progress, maybe stumble across the aftermath of mayhem – a dismembered body in black bin bags strewn across the floor. So far the only thing we’d ever come across was a gold watch. We took it to the police. Got a reward too. Didn’t I say we were always the good guys, me and Sean?

  But here in the dark, listening to that moaning coming from the shadows, it occurred to me that right at this minute I’d rather be at Sean’s playing his new Zombie computer game.

  Neither of us moved. The
moan became a growl. I flashed my torch towards the sound.

  I thought at first it was a wild animal. All hair and teeth. It leapt at us. Me and Sean yelled and this time Sean didn’t miss the yucky stuff. He sank his foot right in it.

  The face became clear. It was an old man, a dosser. He was yelling like a beast.

  ‘Get oota my place! Ya wee . . .’ He threw something at us. We didn’t wait to find out what it was. We had never moved so fast, squeezing out of the door almost at the same time. It was only as we were running away that we started to laugh. Laugh until we couldn’t stop.

  ‘Oh, we would be brilliant crime scene investigators,’ I said. ‘One old weirdo and we’re off faster than a speeding bullet.’

  I made a whizzing sound, and it only made us laugh all the more.

  My dad picked me up later at Sean’s. My dad nearly always picked me up . . . or my mum did.

  ‘I’m not having my boy walking these streets late at night,’ they would both say.

  I had a great mum and dad. A great family and the best mate in the world. Sean.

  That night as my dad was driving me home and I was yattering on about the match – giving him a kick-by­kick description of the game – I was really happy. Life was good.

  Nothing was ever going to change that.

  Also by Cathy MacPhail

  Run, Zan, Run

  Missing

  Bad Company

  Dark Waters

  Fighting Back

  Another Me

  Underworld

  Roxy’s Baby

  Worse Than Boys

  Grass

  Out of the Depths

  Secret of the Shadows

  The Nemesis Series:

  Into the Shadows

  The Beast Within

  Sinister Intent

  Ride of Death

  Bloomsbury Publishing, London, New Delhi, New York and Sydney