Call Down Thunder (24 page)

‘What she doin, Reve? She comin after us now?’

It was only a second, them standing there like that, Fay on the one side of the road, them on the other, rain pouring down on them, the gutters rushing, but it felt so much longer. Then Fay made
a sharp, almost impatient gesture with her hand. Reve didn’t know whether it was to them or to her children, but like a flock of birds all her ragged, rain-sodden little army took off,
scattering back across the square towards the Barrio, disappearing into the grey of the storm.

Then Fay turned and hurried after her children and Mi took a shaky breath.

Behind them there was the crack of a gunshot and then another one and then Pelo came running out, doubled down. ‘Go!’ he shouted. ‘Get away from here! Go!’

They took off down the pavement and were just about to pass the Captain’s car when the door swung open and a hand beckoned them.

Mi responded more quickly than Reve. She grabbed him and pushed him into the front and then piled into the back.

It was crazy; there was Demi so charged up he was bouncing on the passenger seat. ‘Baz got that police so mad he gone running for her! Fool! He catch nothing but rain. You hear me hooting
this horn?’ He blasted it again. ‘I done that!’ Demi was gabbling, words tumbling out of him. ‘Fay say: stir it up! You know how to drive this thing? I got the keys. You
better know how to drive!’

There was another flat crack of a pistol shot and Reve twisted around.

‘Don’t look back!’ yelled Demi. ‘Drive!’

But Reve did look; they had to wait for Pelo.

A dark figure stood hunched in the doorway of the bar.

Another shot.

Pelo was spinning round, one arm out straight like a dancer.

Crack!
The back window of the car spiderwebbed, a small bullet hole in the centre. They shrank down in their seats.

Mi picked a tiny shard from her arm and frowned at the blood prick.

‘What you waiting for, country?’ screamed Demi. ‘Put you’ foot down!’

‘Pelo? You see him, Mi?’

Mi craned her neck and saw the dark shadow of a body sprawled on the ground, and the man, the barman, running towards them. He was so close she could see his white teeth. It looked as if he was
grinning. Behind him, figures piling out of the bar and into the rain.

‘Gear stick! Where the gear stick?’

Another gunshot, and Reve flinched as the side mirror exploded in a silvery burst of glass and metal.

‘All you got to do is put yo’ foot down! Go!’ Demi yanked at Reve’s arm. ‘It’s automatic, country. Go!’

‘Reve!’ Mi’s hand touched his shoulder, and he twisted back to see her door being yanked open – and there was the barman, reaching in to grab Mi.

Reve jammed his foot down and the car leaped forward, screeching against the kerb and then jolting up on to the pavement. Instinctively he jerked the wheel. It probably saved them because there
was another shot, but this must have gone wide as they lurched back on to the road and now Reve had the measure of the steering. They accelerated away from the edge of the square, skidding on the
wet surface, the tyres spinning, skating in a slow arc and then catching grip again and heading down one of the wide boulevards that funelled into Agua. Rain smeared the windscreen. He could hardly
see a thing and he had no idea how to get the wipers going.

‘OK! OK! You got it, country boy! Baz say you never manage a car; I say any boy can do a thing like that, come natural to a boy. When I get a little taller I goin drive all over this place
. . .’

Reve slammed on the brakes to avoid someone running across the road and the car jigged wildly, throwing Demi hard against the door.

‘Whoo!’

Reve felt his neck wound up tight as a wire spring. His eyes flicked to the mirror. Lights. One. Two. ‘We got to go back for Pelo.’

‘Who’s that you talkin ’bout? . . . Right! Right!’ shouted Demi.

Reve braked, yanked the wheel down and they slid around into a narrow street.

‘Down the end. Pull up.’

Reve braked, jolted them to a stop.

‘You think they see us take the turn?’ said Mi, peering out of the rear window. Demi was looking back too, half turned round, fingers drumming on the seat.

‘Dunno.’ Reve sat rigid, staring into the rain-dark alley, his hands gripping the wheel tightly. He didn’t want to let go and see that his hands were shaking like old
Arella’s did sometimes.

A moment later two black cars roared down the road, passing the alley in an eye blink.

‘Whoo! Tha’s sweet, country. We vanish them!’

Reve looked in the mirror and saw that Mi’s eyes were on him. ‘We got to go back, Mi.’

Demi made a noise like a puffed-out whale. ‘We got to do what?’

Mi quietened him. Then she put her hand on Reve’s shoulder. ‘We can’t do that, Reve. You know we can’t go back there. We got to let Pelo go.’

‘Who this Pelo man anyhow? I don’t see him doin much of nothin helpin you out of Moro place.’

Reve ignored him. Is that what Fay had done? he wondered. Just let them go? Is that what that look on her face had meant? He bowed his head. ‘What am I goin tell LoJo?’ he said.
‘What am I goin tell Ciele?’

‘You tell what happen,’ said Mi, her voice unexpectedly gentle.

‘You goin say nothing to no one ’less you move you’self!’ said Demi, scrambling out of the car. ‘Come on. We gotta move real quick.’

He scrambled out and Mi and Reve followed him; and then Demi led them at a run through a cut, then along a wide street.

They heard sirens wailing, tearing across the city towards them. Right to them – that was the way it seemed. Mi gripped Reve’s hand as they ran, keeping on Demi’s heels as he
ducked this way and that, cutting through alleys and over railings, avoiding the main streets as much as he could.

Twice they had to dive for shelter: once in the doorway of a closed cafe and another time they just threw themselves flat on the wet road and held still as the cars drove by, more slowly now,
lights sweeping over them as they lay face down.

Demi jumped up first, shaking himself like a dog. ‘They lookin so hard but they can’t see nothing,’ he said. ‘Baz say I got magic in me, cos I’m so quick no one
ever see nothin, you know.’

‘Magic?’ Reve gently detached Mi’s hand from his. ‘Nothing magic in this place. How far you takin us?’

‘Takin you nowhere. This is it.’

He pointed to a tram stop over on the other side of the road. ‘Tha’s the one,’ he said, and gave them the number of the tram that would take them to the edge of the city.
‘Number nine to end of the line.’ He wiped the wet from his face and bobbed up and down on his toes. ‘Last tram run at midnight. You a’right, but you on your own now. Fay
tell me to wait till you catch one.’ He didn’t look like someone who ever liked to wait for anything. ‘But you don’ need me, and you not goin to go telling Fay nothin, so
I’m gone.’ He glanced up and down the road. ‘Stay back in that doorway there, on this side. Run when you see the tram comin. Watch police all the time. They goin be lookin.
Looking for the car you stole.’ He laughed. ‘That first time you go stealin a police car, country?’

‘You the thief, Demi.’

Mi touched Reve’s face and then dabbed at the cut on his cheek with her thumb. ‘You got red tears, Reve.’ She said, wiping away a little smear of blood.

‘That don’ mean nothin,’ he said. He was thinking about the Captain with his oiled-back hair and his tootight uniform, and the way he had looked at Mi, all hungry to wrap a
coil round her, drag her down . . .

‘Thief someone who get caught,’ said Demi dismissively. ‘Me, I’m too fast for anyone catch me.’ He looked curiously at Mi. ‘This girl don’ say
much,’ he said, jerking his head like an old guy. ‘She got less word than Baz.’

‘Maybe you steal words right out o’ her mouth.’ Reve said, touching Mi’s arm.

Demi laughed. ‘That what Baz say! Say I’d steal the air right out of her lung if she let me.’

Then he was all business again. He looked up and down the street, shrugged, suddenly looked older, smarter, like someone who knew the streets half an edge sharper than the police who stayed safe
in their vans and patrol cars. ‘I’m gone.’

‘Hey, wait,’ said Reve, instinctively holding out his hand, wanting to thank Demi. ‘We owe you, I reckon.’

Demi glanced down at his hand and shrugged. ‘Reckon you do, but you don’t got any dollar in that hand of yours.’ He stood there for a second, the rain pouring down, his T-shirt
clinging to him. ‘Who you to Fay she give so much trouble for you? She never give trouble for anyone, ’cept maybe me and Baz.’

Reve didn’t know what to say. ‘Maybe she tell you one time, Demi.’

A police siren wailed somewhere in the night.

‘Sure.’ He gave a little bounce on his toes. ‘She tell me most things. Tell me more than she tell Baz anyhow.’

And he was gone.

A car pulled round the corner and Reve edged Mi right back into the doorway, keeping her head down against his shoulder so the light wouldn’t catch her eyes, his arms wrapped round her,
holding her tight, as if that could keep her safe, keep them both safe.

They stayed like that for a while. Reve didn’t know how long. Twenty minutes. Half an hour. Cars passed. Sometimes a truck. A police van came by, first time fast and second time slow,
shining a powerful torch on doorways by the tram spot, not bothering with their side of the road.

‘You a’right now?’ he asked.

She pushed away from him and squeezed up her face, like she was scrunching up a bad thought, and then said, ‘Where you learn do all that? Theon, was it, or Tomas, he do that?’

‘What? Drivin a car? Tomas don’t know one thing ’bout cars. Theon show me gears on the truck . . . Wasn’t so hard.’

‘Not that,’ she said. ‘Who tol’ you how to hold a gun and go point it like you done? Tomas show you that?’

Reve hunched up his shoulders. ‘No one show me.’

She put her head on his shoulder. ‘We near lost our way back there,’ she said. ‘Near got pull down the devil hole. Seen him down the devil hole.’ She shivered.

‘That where yo’ yellin come from? Cos you feelin you down in that place?’

‘Did I go yelling?’

‘Yes, you did, Mi. Think you put fear in them.’

‘Think you did too. Maybe we make a gang, you an’ me, put fear in this place. Put the devil back in his hole. What you think, Reve? We special people, you an’ me?’

‘Sure.’ A truck pulled by. A tram had to come soon. How late was it? Maybe it was after midnight . . .

‘Reve, you stay with me if I go some place else?’

‘What you mean?’

‘Just that . . .’

Then there was the tram slinging along the road under its hanging wires, lit up like a steamship, and the moment for asking her what she meant had passed.

Reve was already out on the road’s edge, ready to dart across, when he realized Mi had hung back. ‘What you mean? Come on!’ He ran back and took her arm, but
she shook him off.

‘No.’

‘Mi, please!’

The tram squealed and its doors hissed open. He tugged at her but for all that she was skinny she was like a rooted tree when he tried to move her. ‘It’s not safe.’

‘What? They all in their beds, Mi. No one’s come looking down this place for more than . . . I don’t know.’

The tram pulled away. A man, hunched up against the rain, hurried back towards Agua.

‘Look at at that!’ Reve threw his hands in the air in frustration. ‘You make thing so hard. You know that?’

She didn’t move.

The tram was about a hundred metres down the street and there was nothing to see. ‘Mi, this our one chance of a dry ticket out of here and you go . . .’

He was drowned out by a siren, a blaze of lights, brakes squealing and two, no, three cars blocking the road. Police spilt out and ran to the tram while Reve and Mi huddled back in the
doorway.

‘How you know that goin happen?’ breathed Reve. ‘You think they lookin for us?’

She didn’t answer.

Moments later they watched the uniformed men stand back and impatiently wave the tram on. It disappeared with a rattle and a hiss down the dark shiny street. The policemen conferred, one of them
spoke on the radio, called the others, who then ran back to their cars and drove off.

Mi exhaled. ‘How much reach that man got?’ she said.

‘Him and the Captain,’ said Reve. ‘Seem they throw a net round the city.’

She shuddered. ‘And they know where we from.’

They did, and Moro had unfinished business in Rinconda. The spider would take his time, but he would track down whoever had called in the coastguards – the cellphone number Theon had been
so keen for Reve to pass on to Moro, that had been the squeal-pig’s. Some night, some day, Moro would appear in Rinconda, and there would be another killing, another body snagged in a net,
left out in the middle of the village for everyone to see.

Mi stood close to him and held his arm tight. ‘They goin follow us all the way back, Reve. There’ll be no hidin.’

She was right, but he didn’t want to admit it. ‘That captain never goin put a hand on you, Mi, I swear it. They’re goin think we’re here, somewhere in the city.
It’ll be a while before they decide to sniff around down in Rinconda, and by then Theon goin figure something.’

‘You trust Uncle Theon?’

‘Sure,’ he said with a confidence he didn’t quite feel. Theon said everything was a matter of business. He did business with the police, and giving that number to Moro meant he
was willing to do business with him too. But hiding Tomas, that wasn’t business; helping them get away from Calde, that wasn’t business either. Maybe there were some people who you
couldn’t ever figure out, but did that matter? Theon would never sell them to someone like Moro, never sell them to anyone.

‘Sure,’ he said again, more forcefully this time. It would be dangerous, but they had to go back. He had to see Tomas. He had to see Ciele and tell her about Pelo, how he had saved
them. He wanted to see LoJo, and have Sultan walking beside him . . .

The gutter streamed with rainwater and the road glistened like a dolphin’s back.

The street lights were like sentries posted down the long road, each casting a circle of white. He saw a figure, huddled against the rain, scuttle from one side of the road to the other and then
disappear into the dark. In the distance a siren wailed. They were so far from anywhere.