Grass Read online

  ‘I’m a real loser,’ he said when he finally ripped open the envelope, read the letter inside.

  But my dad wasn’t a loser. He’d get a job, I knew he would. He wasn’t in the mood to listen to any of that. The atmosphere in the house was so bleak. Even David couldn’t cheer him up. So when Sean suggested I go back to his house after school that night to play Zombie Doom, I jumped at the chance. Anything not to have to go home.

  I phoned Mum on my mobile and she was all for it. ‘You have a nice time. Dad’ll come and pick you up later.’

  Zombie Doom was brilliant. And Sean’s mum made us popcorn and tablet. I loved Mrs Brady. She believed a boy couldn’t have too much sugar. It was a night to remember. We played so long we forgot the time, until I looked at my watch and realised Dad hadn’t come for me yet. I called my mum.

  ‘I was just about to call you.’ Her voice was a whisper. ‘Any chance of Sean’s dad bringing you home?’

  I was just about to tell her that Sean’s dad was working late tonight when I thought to ask her.

  ‘Why? Where’s dad?’

  She kept her voice low. David must be in bed sound asleep and she wouldn’t want to wake him. ‘Och, your dad’s been so down today, I told him to go out for a game of snooker with his mates.’

  Good idea, I thought, just what Dad needed, but it meant that Dad couldn’t collect me, Sean’s dad couldn’t take me, and Mrs Brady couldn’t drive. If I admitted all that to Mum she’d lift David out of bed to come and get me.

  So I lied.

  If Dad had got the job. If Sean’s dad hadn’t been working late. If his mum could drive. If I hadn’t gone to their house. So many ifs. If any of these things had been different, I wouldn’t have walked home alone that night.

  But I did.

  And changed my life.

  g

  7

  I lied to Sean’s mum too. Told her my dad was picking me up at the corner. Sean knew the truth and backed me to the hilt.

  ‘I don’t know why they think we’ve got to be picked up and dropped off everywhere anyway. We’re not parcels.’

  But at the door he had a warning for me. ‘Sure you’ll be able to avoid the Bissett Boys?’

  ‘I know how to miss them. I’m going up over the Larkshill Road. Catch the bus from there.’

  It’s funny looking back over that night. How so many things led to what happened. Here was another – if I hadn’t tried to avoid the Bissett Boys I would have caught another bus home, wouldn’t have taken the Larkshill Road. I remember reading a poem once.

  Can’t remember anything about it except one line – ‘Ten out of ten means you are dead.’ That night I scored ten out of ten.

  I left Sean’s and walked up behind the old railway station. Beyond that I was in the estate known as Larkshill. Sounds beautiful, doesn’t it? Larkshill. It used to be a dump but now it has sprouted new-build houses. Some of the old ones have been refurbished, trees have been planted. There’s a playground in the middle. Now the scheme looks great. It looks now the way it sounds. Larkshill.

  Sean’s dad and mine always say it should be an estate to be proud of, if they could just get rid of McCrae – the gang boss who ran the whole place – with his money-lending, his drugs, his protection racket. This was still McCrae’s turf. He lived round here somewhere, but I didn’t know where.

  I was only two streets away from the bus stop. Only two streets. Already, I could see the lights of the bus heading towards town. If I ran I might just catch this one. But I’d need a bit of energy for that. I put my hand in my pocket and pulled out my bag of Mint Imperials.

  One of them was halfway to my mouth when I heard the click. A sound I’d never heard before, yet a sound that seemed so familiar.

  I looked around. The street was in darkness, quiet and empty. All the blinds were drawn, curtains closed.

  Then I saw a movement. There was a man standing at the top of a flight of steps that led to someone’s front door. He held something in his hand. At first I thought it was a fishing rod, or even a baseball bat. Baseball bats are lethal weapons round here. Even my dad has one behind the front door for protection, just in case. Even though he hates the need for it.

  The man’s face was in shadow. I saw him rap at the front door and then he moved back and I knew right away what he was doing. He was moving out of the line of sight of the spyhole in the door.

  He didn’t want whoever opened that door to see him.

  I wanted to move. Wanted away from there. Couldn’t budge. Feet glued to the ground.

  Something was about to happen. Something bad.

  I held my breath. My eyes were drawn to the baseball bat. I saw the man raise it waist-high, ready to use it. Even from this distance I was sure I could hear the measured footsteps of someone walking down the hallway. Hear the chain being drawn across. The handle turning. I couldn’t breathe though I wanted to call out and warn whoever it was on the other side of that door. My voice was like a rock in my throat.

  The door opened. A shaft of yellow light let me see more clearly the man waiting outside. A big, solid man, straight backed, and it was then I saw that it wasn’t a baseball bat he had in his hands at all but something much more lethal.

  It was a shotgun.

  Everything seemed to go into slow motion, and yet at the same time move so fast. The man inside the house – I hardly saw him. He stepped back out of sight in the split second he recognised the man on the steps and saw what he was holding. He wasn’t quick enough. The shotgun was lifted and there was a sudden blast like thunder, like lightning, yet like no sound I’d ever heard before. The man stumbled back and sparks flew from his body. At least, at first I thought they were sparks, and then in a second I saw what it was.

  Blood.

  Blood, spraying. Drops of blood glowing like rubies in the streetlight. It sprayed across the gunman, and I saw how he lifted his hand, wiped the blood away that was spattered on his face, spat on his hands in disgust before folding his fingers round the barrel of the gun again.

  It was way too much like a movie. It couldn’t be real. This was my home town, not the mean streets of New York. If I could just switch it off, change the channel, delete the programme . . .

  My hands were shaking so much, the bag of mints began to tremble in my hand. I couldn’t hold them. One by one they tumbled to the ground. Hitting the pavement with the rat-a-tat-tat of a machine gun.

  Betraying me.

  Giving away my position.

  The man with the shotgun turned at the sound. For the first time I saw his face clearly in the light from the hallway.

  It was Armour.

  g

  8

  Armour. I had seen him once striding along a street in town as if it was his. As if he owned it.

  ‘The Man’, they called him. He was tall and broad and his face seemed etched in stone. He turned that stony face to me now. I wanted to dart back into the darkness but I couldn’t move. It was as if my feet were welded to the ground. I held my breath and the world seemed to be switched to silent mode.

  Armour’s eyes homed in on me. I waited for the shotgun to be raised again, aimed at me. I waited for it. Expected it.

  Surely someone would save me? Someone else must have heard the shot? Windows would be thrown open any second now. A voice would shriek at him. He would have to run.

  Why were there no people rushing from their houses?

  In the second I asked these questions, I answered them myself.

  Because it was Armour, and they would all know the shot had come from McCrae’s house. It was safer to sit tight and ignore the sound – for even the twitching of a curtain, a slat raised a millimetre on a blind, would mean someone in that house had witnessed it. No one would be safe then. So much more sensible to just turn
the volume of the television up a notch. Pretend to have heard nothing.

  Better to stay hidden.

  But I had nowhere to hide.

  Couldn’t anyway. For his eyes never left mine.

  And then his arm moved. He raised his hand. But the gun stayed where it was. He raised his hand, lifted it to his mouth and drew his fingers along his lips as if he was closing a zip.

  Keep your mouth shut. That’s what he was telling me.

  And then he did something that took me totally by surprise.

  He winked.

  And as he winked, he smiled. A slow, dark smile that scared me almost as much as the gunshot.

  Only then did I back into the shadows. He couldn’t see me. I wasn’t important.

  He probably thought I was already rushing away from the scene. Glad just to be alive. Because he knew he was safe.

  That one gesture was a warning he knew I would heed.

  Keep your mouth shut.

  Zip your lip.

  Yet even then, frightened as I was, I didn’t run. I tried to. Tried to step back, but my feet wouldn’t move. My legs were like concrete blocks embedded into the ground. I could see him through the bushes, couldn’t help but see him, couldn’t stop myself watching.

  Armour vaulted over the railings outside the front door, landing softly on the grass verge. He stayed low and a shaft of moonlight caught the grey metal of the gun. I almost lost sight of him as he merged into the darkness, but a moment later there he was across the street, heading for the back of one of the derelict shops tucked in the corner.

  It was only then my legs obeyed me and moved. The sensible thing to do would have been to run in the opposite direction, get as far away from there as possible. Why couldn’t I ever do the sensible thing?

  Because instead of running away I found I was moving silently after him, staying behind the cover of the bushes until I could see him, lying belly down close behind the wall of the old deserted Chinese takeaway.

  What was he doing?

  From here, no one could see him. Not from the houses, not from the street. Only I could see him.

  Only me.

  He pulled a black bin bag from his pocket and I watched him slide the gun inside it. I knew then what he intended. He was going to hide the gun.

  Even Armour wouldn’t want to be caught hurrying home carrying a firearm, especially a recently fired one. He couldn’t throw it in the river. He wasn’t close enough.

  So where was he going to hide it?

  Could he be burying it? But where? It wouldn’t be safe to bury it here. The police would search all around this area. And they’d spot newly turned-over earth a mile off. They’d dig the place up for sure. I edged closer to get a better view, couldn’t stop myself. I was practically crawling too. And I saw then exactly what he was doing. Not burying it at all. He was sliding the black bag deep, deep, down inside one of the rusty old exposed pipes. His arm almost disappeared up to his shoulder, he thrust it so deep. Then I watched as he stuffed more papers down there too – crisp packets, bits of newspaper that lay around – until the pipe itself was hidden from view. It was a good place to choose. Even if they found the pipe and thought to look there, anyone peering inside would never see the gun. It would be safe until he had the opportunity to retrieve it.

  I rolled back against the wall as Armour got to his feet. He looked around once more. His eyes would be alert, watching for anyone who might have seen him. I prayed this time he wouldn’t spot me. He dusted himself down and in a few sprints he was gone.

  Was it only then someone screamed? Or had they been screaming all along and I’d been deaf to it?

  I heard it now. A wailing, tormented scream. Someone at last had found the body lying in the hallway. Windows were opened, lights came on. The street exploded into life. Safe for anyone now to appear and say in all honesty they had seen nothing. Armour was gone.

  But not safe for me.

  I began to run as if the devil himself was after me. I can’t even remember getting the bus. Did I run all the way home? I don’t know. It’s all a blur, like a nightmare. That journey home, slamming my way into the house. My mum complaining she was trying to watch her favourite programme. I even had some vague conversation with her.

  How did I do that? I don’t know. It was as if I was on autopilot. Trying to appear normal, yet inside shaking, screaming, desperate to tell someone.

  But who could I ever tell?

  Too much information is a dangerous thing.

  There was no one I could tell. No one.

  I dreamed that night. Terrible dreams. Armour kicking down the front door, Terminator-style, coming in through the house, blasting his way into every room. Shooting my mum and dad in their bed. And David . . . I blotted out that part of the nightmare. I couldn’t even in a dream bear to think of him being hurt.

  And then Armour was coming for me.

  I must have cried out, because I woke up with my mum shaking me and cold sweat dripping from my brow.

  ‘That was some nightmare,’ she was saying. ‘That’s the last of these Zombie games for you, boy.’

  I was so relieved it was only a dream I almost kissed her. And then wee David pushed past her, climbed into bed beside me.

  ‘Want to sleep with Leo,’ he said. ‘I had a nightmare too,’ he lied. He always wanted everything I had.

  I was glad he was there. He comforted me much more than I comforted him.

  ‘Tell me a story,’ he said, when Mum had left us and the light was out. I knew the kind of story he wanted. The kind he always wanted. He and I were superheroes saving the good people from the bad guys.

  But I wasn’t a superhero – I had brought the bad guys right into the house, putting him in danger.

  He was asleep before the story finished, his eyelids fluttering, his wee mouth open. He looked so cute.

  ‘Please,’ I prayed. ‘Don’t let anything bad happen to him because of me.’

  g

  9

  I didn’t feel any better next morning. When I woke up I prayed it had only been part of the nightmare. It hadn’t really happened. It couldn’t have really happened. Things like this didn’t happen to boys like me.

  But I knew it was true as soon as I stepped into the kitchen for my breakfast. It was already all round the town. Someone had phoned my dad and told him. It was all he could talk about.

  ‘People getting shot on their doorstep. What kind of place is this turning into?’

  Shot on their doorstep . . . I felt the sick rise in my throat when he said that. The memory flooding over me.

  ‘It was only McCrae,’ my mum said. I knew she was trying to shut him up, calm him down. But this was my dad. Nothing would shut him up.

  ‘Anybody could have been caught in that crossfire. Look at that poor boy down south, coming home from football on his bike, the life blasted out of him just because he was in the wrong place in the wrong time.’

  He turned his eyes on me. I knew what he was thinking. He was imagining it was me on my bike, caught between two rival gangs. Yesterday it would have excited me. I would have imagined the Hollywood version. With stunts and phoney blood and guts all over the place. But not now. Not after last night.

  I saw again the blood spraying over Armour’s face, and this time I really was sick. Couldn’t keep it down.

  ‘I think he’s got a bug,’ my mum said. She felt my brow. ‘He’s burning up.’

  ‘Get him back into bed then,’ my dad said. ‘Keep him off school. I’m here to look after him.’

  David leaped in his chair. ‘I want to stay off school too. I’ve got a bug.’

  My dad smiled at him. ‘No chance, wee man. Anyway, Mrs Bates would cry if her favourite boy didn’t come to school.’

  Mrs Bates was h
is teacher and David adored her. He looked from me to the table. Thinking hard. Weighing up our merits. Mrs Bates won.

  ‘OK, I’ll go to school.’

  I wished I’d won. That he would stay with me. I didn’t want him out of my sight.

  Was Armour watching the house? Had he found out where I lived? I began to feel sick again.

  I was back in bed when Sean phoned me. ‘You’re not coming to school? Lucky you! What’s wrong?’

  I so wanted to tell him. Needed someone to tell. But whoever I told would be in danger too.

  Maybe I would go to confession this Saturday, tell the priest. He’d be safe and he couldn’t tell anyone.

  I even saw myself enter the confessional box, kneel down, begin to speak softly through the mesh on the little window between us. Then in my imagination the priest wasn’t a priest at all. Father Logan was lying dead somewhere and the man I was confessing to was Armour.

  ‘Hey, pal, are you still there?’ Sean bellowed in my ear, brought me back to the present.

  ‘Sorry, I don’t feel well,’ I said.

  ‘Hey, did you hear what happened last night? McCrae was shot on his doorstep. My dad’s up in arms. So’s yours. Everybody knows who did it – either Nelis or Armour. But they’ll get off with it, my dad says. No witnesses, as usual.’ I heard the bell in the background. ‘Better go, pal. Phone you later.’

  Sean sounded excited. The way I would have done any other time. A shooting on the doorstep – it was like something out of a movie.

  Yet his words cheered me up. Everybody knows who did it. Armour would be arrested soon. Why was I so worried? I’d seen it, but so must lots of other people. Scared people peeking through blinds, or out of darkened windows.

  Armour would be arrested soon, and it would have nothing to do with me.

  I felt so much better I went with Dad to collect David from school. He came running out, shirt hanging out of his trousers, dragging his rucksack behind him. He was clutching a drawing. It was of me and him.