Director's Cut (24 page)

Half the road was already levelled but numbers four to twelve and
three to eleven remained largely intact, two rows of five houses facing
each other across a rutted road in the midst of devastation, piles of
brick and jagged-edged concrete and twisted girders, like a war zone,
like one of the scenes from… Where was it?

Over there. One of those places where all the troublemakers came
from. Paul was more interested in the place in Africa where the civil
war was killing millions, the war our politicians weren't interested in.
No oil, no aerospace deal. No interest.

Four to twelve, as with three to eleven, surrounded by great mounds
of rubble, had broken windows, some of them boarded, and front doors
sealed by the shadowy authorities. When the wind was wrong it
whistled through the windows and filled the rooms with an icy blast.
Once, Paul remembered, he'd woken up with frost on his blanket. But
it was that or the Big Issue and some newspapers in a shop doorway.
And praying that the guy sleeping next to you wasn't from Glasgow or,
worse, Edinburgh.

Paul knew his way about, like most of them did. You took a shower
in the local leisure centres when no one was looking, you visited the
charity shops before they opened and went through the black sacks that
were left piled in the entrances.

Paul knew his way into the even-numbered row. There were
various windows the occupiers used as bolt-holes and one of the back
doors had been broken open. The local kids called the place the
Warren because holes had been knocked through walls so that there
were internal passageways to all five houses. There were a dozen or
more people living in the row. No one was quite sure how many
because people came and went. Some would stay for a night or two,
particularly when the weather was bad, and it hadn't been good lately,
and others had been there for months. The last house in the row,
number 12, even though it was serviced by three passageways, one
down and two up, was occupied by a single person and was out of
bounds to all the others. That was just about the only rule. You didn't
go into number 12.

An old-timer lived there. Rumour had it that he had South African
connections but he didn’t have a South African accent, more like
Huddersfield, Paul would tell you, for there were some odd people
from Huddersfield. There was also a rumour that he was an ex-Druid
who still, on occasion, wore his old robes and made his way to
Stonehenge every summer solstice. Truth told, they didn't know much
about him. But they did know that November the fifth and the weeks
leading up to it was his favourite time. He'd spend those weeks going
round the Paki shops, Londis and places like that, looking at the
fireworks. He loved the fireworks, the big bastards in particular, those
that cost a hundred quid a time and sent, like, a hundred bangers into
the air that fanned out with colour and shook the earth. There was
something about shaking the earth that he liked.

He liked to cook. But he wasn't very good at it. Not if the smell was
anything to go by. Clouds of wicked steam that made your eyes water
would pour through the passageways from number 12 and when that
happened, which was often, then the occupants of number 10 moved
down to 8, 6 and 4. It was inconvenient but no one complained. No
way. The old-timer was in charge. That was never an issue. They
called him Powder Pete.

Someone told Paul – he couldn’t remember who – that Powder Pete
had once worked in a paint spraying place, spraying metalwork and
turning the silver-grey into black and blue, and that’s how he got his
name. But it was only hearsay.

Powder Pete was a bit special. That's why they respected his
privacy. The authorities would turn off the water and he'd have it back
on in minutes. They'd cut the electricity and gas but that made no
difference either. He'd just go out in the night and an hour later the
lights would be back on. He looked after them and, for that, they were
grateful. People would pay him a little rent. Not much. Nothing if they
were sick and couldn't go robbing or dealing. One thing Powder Pete
didn't like was the kids on the game. Not the kids, just the game and
the adults who played it. He said that he was trying to give the kids
back their childhood and the game took that away. He didn't stop them.
That wasn't his way. But he'd try and talk them out of it. In a subtle
way so it didn't sound like preaching. Robbing was safer, he'd say. And
dealing, that was the thing. That was the present and the future. Dope
was the biggest growth industry going. Along with computers. Another
thing he didn't like was the youngsters taking the drugs. Drugs are for
selling, he'd say. But he understood that some of them were well
hooked by the time they got to him, so the least he could do was make
sure their gear wasn't spiked.

Take Ruth, for instance. . She was eleven years old

and she'd been on the game for over a year. She was quite
philosophical for her age. Her father and her uncles had been having a
go since she was six. If she returned home it would carry on so she
might just as well make some dosh out of it. And there was a lot of
dosh out there. Paul had asked her about her mother. Apparently, her
mother simply didn't believe her. Called her a wicked liar. Said she
was trying to come between her and dad. Said she was making excuses
for wetting the bed and bunking off school. Powder Pete got hold of a
rubber sheet to cover her mattress and until it was sorted he changed
her blanket every day without saying a thing. And he boiled her
underwear to get shot of the stains. Got it clean as new. And he never
said a thing to any of the others. As far as he was concerned it was
their little secret, not important at all, not even worth talking about. It
was Ruth who told Paul. And for a while back there, the sadness of it
all got to him and he forgot all about the people in Africa, a lot of them
Ruth's age.

For a while he thought of Ruth and nothing else and the way
Powder Pete looked after her, bedwetting and all. Paul snivelled,
“When you hear something like that it makes you realize what a
wonderful world it is. That black guy was right. What a wonderful
world.”

Powder Pete looked after the kids that society didn't want, the kids
that had fallen through the net. He was fighting a battle against
everyone and everything to give them a future. He was up there with
the good guys like…like Prince Charles, David Bowie, people like
that.

One night, when Paul cuddled up to Ruth – no sex or anything – he
explained to her that Pete, in a sense, was the social worker for the
children of the night. The children that no one else cared about. He
didn't give them rules, save the one, don't go into the end house, and he
let them do their own thing, run wild, make a noise, make a mess, eat
what they wanted, when they wanted. Play their music really loud. It
was the best sort of home you could have. Outside a real one. With a
mom and dad who loved you. And not the way your dad loved you.
At the time Paul hadn't known about her bedwetting. Not until the
morning.

She had a beautiful little face and a smile, with crooked teeth, that
was contagious. It made you want to hug her. But she died. Just like
that. Like the best people did. Like…like Frank Sinatra and Prince
Charles. Just like that. Before he went inside the last time. Pneumonia,
or something. Powder Pete dropped her off at the hospital. He'd found
her sweating and all his remedies made no difference. So he took her
to the hospital but it was too late. She died two days later aged eleven
and a quarter. And apart from the few months she'd spent at Powder
Pete's, she'd never had a childhood.

Powder Pete blamed himself. You could see it in his wild eyes.
Even now, eighteen months later, you could see it. He should have
realized how serious it was, that it wasn't just a heavy cold, and so on.
The sadness had pulled down a veil, like, and the colour, even the red
rage in his eyes, was dulled.

Enough to make you cry. And when Paul heard it that’s what he did
and Powder Pete had to console him. “Pull yourself together, Paul.
When life's had enough of you, it doesn't care whether you're innocent
or not, young or old, see? Life's a bastard judge that'll sentence you to
death at the drop of a hat. Just like that. No point in making long-term
plans, Paul Knight, because life's got a cruel sense of humour. You
gotta be rich for God to love you.”

Some said, and Paul believed them, that Powder Pete never really
got over it. That her death had galvanized him into more drastic
measures. Cooking, perhaps, because that started in earnest after she'd
died. Maybe concentrating on the recipes took his mind off the guilt.
He still took flowers to a little nameplate by a white rose in a garden of
remembrance. His were the only flowers. Probably cos the guy in
charge didn't like flowers in that part of the cemetery. They were
allowed on the graves, but not on the nameplates. Cremation,
obviously, was second best. Stupid, really. That's why Powder Pete
broke the guy's nose and promised him something worse. That's why
the guy didn't mind the flowers anymore. He probably knew that when
Powder Pete made a promise he kept it.

One other thing that stood Powder Pete from the rest of mankind,
the kids had noticed, was that whenever he went out and, that was
mostly at night, he wore a waistcoat of steel tubing. A dozen tubes
about nine inches long, fastened together around his waist. The kids
accepted them as part of Powder Pete. A new fashion, maybe. Beneath
his black jacket, of course, once he'd buttoned it up, you wouldn't
know the difference. Apart from the lumps.

A girl named Jenny had taken Ruth's mattress. She was older,
fifteen maybe, and streetwise. And she had a foul mouth. But she was
like, seven months pregnant, so she wasn't all that. Maybe it was all
talk. Maybe she wasn't so streetwise after all. Her hair was all over the
place, brown streaked with blond with mousy roots, in need of a wash.
Bit of a stale smell. Smoke. Once she started to swell she started to roll
her own, for the baby's sake, she said. Increased the weed and cut back
on the tobacco. She was going to be one of those conscientious
mothers, one of those green friends of the earth. Pity there weren't
more like her, really, then the world would be a better place. She'd got
a tattoo on her arm. Barbed wire, like, all the way round. Maybe that
said something about her life. Maybe she was, like, being kept in, or
out.

“Feel that,” she said.

Paul hesitated. “No, I don't think so.”

She showed him her belly, and a little ring in her bursting navel,
and a trace of dark-brown hair until she pulled up her pants.
“Go on.”

Tentatively, Paul reached out.

“See,” she said.

“Fuck!”

“Yeah.”

“Fucking right.”

“See? Told you.”

He felt some more, the ends of his fingers slipped under elastic.
She said, “That's far enough.”

“Right. Just checking.” He withdrew his hand. “Amazing that is,
though. Makes you think, dunnit?”

He found Brian Lara in the shadows, tube of fuel in one hand, in the
other a paper funnel to help with the huff.

“All right, Jay?”

“It's Brian Lara now.”

“Fair enough, but you ain't black.”

“You can have a black white man, if you want, if you ain't
prejudice. I mean, no one's white, are they? They're red, they're pink,
they're lightly cooked or they're well cooked. No one's white, except
the Irish.”

“Fair enough. How's it going, Bry?”

“Dick, dick, dick, dosh, dosh, dosh. You know?”

“Yeah. Waiting for Powder Pete, see?”

“Yeah. Powder Pete’s OK.”

“He knows everything, about the universe and important stuff. The
scientists should talk to him then they wouldn’t waste their time with
telescopes and writing on blackboards. Powder Pete reckons it’s all
crap. He says you can’t have something inside of nothing so that
proves it goes on forever. The universe, everything. And that means it
never started. That’s it then, innit? No God.”

“Who cares? Why bother? Waste of time thinking. It don’t stop the
sore throat, does it?”

“Good point. No point.”

“Dick dosh, innit? Nothing else matters. Never did.”

“Yeah. That stuff's probably done your throat.”

“Gotta be done, though.”

“Yeah, suppose.”

“Tick tock, tick tock, dick dosh, dick dosh.”

“Yeah, it's a living innit? I heard you was with the kozzers.”
“Yeah, was.”

“Fuck that.”

“Yeah, that's what I thought.”

“What they want?”

“About the girls getting knifed innit?”

“They thought you…? Where do they get off nowadays? No
wonder the streets ain't safe no more.”

“No, not me. Fucking hell. Thought I might have seen something,
that's all.”

“Oh, that's all right then. Did you?”

“Might of done. That's the point. You see people, don't you? But
you don't. People is people. They're meaningless ain't they? When you
think about it. A whole fucking person, but we don’t give a fuck. I've
been sitting here thinking about that.”

“I've been thinking about the people in Africa.”

“That's what I'm saying, innit? That's the point. Faces is faces. Can't
remember. Thinking about the dosh. Don't see nothing else, do you?
Gotta get through today. Dick, dick, dosh, dosh. Scratchcard later,
maybe. Fuck tomorrow. All the faces innit? Don’t give a fuck, see?”
“Absolutely. See that. Right. But, you helping them?”

“Sort of. Not grassing.”

“I didn't mean that. Fuck that.”

“The geezer they're looking for, right? Who might be a woman.
They reckon he's going to kill somebody. Maybe next time. They
think, maybe, one of the toms might have seen him. Like. So they want
me to finger the toms. Bit silly cos they've only gotta go down the road
and they finger themselves and they know them all anyway. That
fucking sergeant geezer, you know the one, big geezer, he’s always
sniffing around the toms. But there’s this one I saw, they’re interested
in her.”