The Bricks That Built the Houses (23 page)

‘Ellie O’Dowd from the year above.’ She speaks slow; each word drags out as she relishes the thought, watches the ghost of Ellie swaying through the platform. ‘I thought about her
every minute of the day, man. Used to walk out of my way before every lesson just to catch a glimpse of her. Then I couldn’t speak when she walked past.’ She shakes her head happily. ‘She used to, like, sit on my lap when no one was around and play with the chain I used to wear round my neck.’ She looks up laughing at Becky, shy but not embarrassed.

‘So you always knew you was gay?’ Becky’s voice is a missile. Straight to Harry’s core. Exploding on impact.

‘Yeah, think so.’

‘How did you know?’

Harry thinks about it. Rocks on her toes. Shuffling. ‘Well, how did you know you were straight?’

‘I’m not.’

‘You’re not?’ Harry’s voice comes out higher than she means it to.

Becky kicks at something on the station floor. ‘I like people, that’s all. I think it’s silly to limit yourself.’ Harry stuffs her hands into her pocket, leans backwards into her body. Stretching. Looking at a point in the sky. Smiling gently. ‘How old were you? With Ellie?’

‘I don’t know, thirteen maybe?’

Becky walks up and stands beside her. The crisp packets on the floor begin to spin and flutter. The Tannoy squirts a few muffled words. ‘I bet you were cute,’ she says. The train slams towards them. They watch the graffiti crystallising on the side panels as it slows.

When Becky gets home it’s dark and Pete is sitting on the step outside her flat.

‘I knocked. I don’t think no one’s in.’

‘How long you been out here?’

‘Not long. You took your time getting back.’

‘Why did you leave me at your mum’s like that?’ The moon is nearly full, tangled in thin clouds, high up in the sky. He doesn’t answer. ‘Pete?’

‘I just had to get out of there. It was doing my head in.’

‘You wanna come in?’

‘Can I?’

‘S’pose you better.’ She sighs. ‘Come on.’ She reaches her hand out, he takes it. She walks him into the house, he drags along behind her. His head hangs low, he’s all shoulders.

STINK

A rolling wind sprang up in the night and lifted the roofs of the garden sheds and pushed the heavy boughs of the trees around.

Leon stares out at the new morning. Something prickles in his body. He can smell fires burning in the cool new air, onions, curry paste, jerk ovens, motor oil, incense. The sirens scream their usual song, get louder, wilder, pass, grow faint again. He stares up at the sky. He can only access a little patch of it from the small brick courtyard, tall walls either side create a cuboid funnel upwards. He is shaken by the desire to see it stretching out, uninterrupted. To see it arching over sea waves, nothing stopping it at all.

Harry walks in, hair still wet from the shower, and finds Leon leaning against the door frame, craning his neck.

‘Morning,’ Harry says, flicking the kettle.

Leon turns his head and looks over his shoulder but his body stays facing the garden. ‘Let’s go to the beach,’ he says.

Harry joins him at the door. ‘What beach?’ She drapes an arm around his neck.

He points to the sky. ‘Yeah. Nice bit of sea air, settle us down.’

They stand and watch the pigeons on the barbed wire that scowls down from the top of their walls, separating them from the train tracks. Little round clouds puff like gunshots in the blue.

Harry lets her arm drop back to her side. Plays with the back-door handle. ‘You still feeling shaky? About tonight?’ she asks him without looking at him, noticing him massaging the muscles in his forearms, a thing he does when he’s nervous.

Leon turns, smiling, heads back into the kitchen. ‘Come on, let’s go have a walk by the sea, eat some fish and chips.’

Harry stands where she is, looking up at the sky, trying to see what Leon had just been seeing. The idea illuminates her. The pleasure of it washing out the dread that’s been churning her all night. ‘Alright then, yeah,’ she says. The kettle wobbles on its cradle, boiling madly.

They’re just turning onto Deptford Broadway, past the junction of the High Street where the anchor used to stand, when Harry sits forwards. ‘Stop,’ she says. ‘Pull over.’ Leon takes the next left and tucks in behind a Vauxhall outside the Kingdom Hall, the Jehovah’s Witness meeting room. ‘Stay here for a sec.’ Harry jumps out and runs back to the main road.

Becky is coming out of a shop on the high street, with a packet of tobacco and some Rizlas in her hand. She looks tired
and sad in the way that people look when they don’t know that anyone is watching. The anonymity of a city street makes it a safe place to let your guard down. ‘Becky!’ Harry calls as she jogs up. Becky turns, sees Harry and drops her Rizlas.

She bends to pick it up. ‘Shocked me.’ She laughs.

They stand in front of one another, not sure how to greet. Becky leans in and kisses Harry’s cheek. Harry puts her hand on her waist lightly as she does it.

‘What you doing now?’

‘Was just on my way to the caff but they don’t need me today, so I don’t know, actually, what I’m doing.’

‘Ah brilliant!’ Harry’s face is a lottery win. She throws her hands up, open arms.

‘What’s brilliant?’

‘You should come to the beach!’ she says, as if it’s obvious.

‘What beach?’

‘Me and Leon going now, to the seaside. Sheerness maybe, Camber Sands.’ Harry’s words come out like a racing commentary. Becky laughs at her enthusiasm.

‘Who’s Leon?’

‘He’s my mate. You’ll love him.’

‘What, now?’

Mothers sway past them with bulging carrier bags, stuffed like the last bus home. Their arms are like tree trunks as they carry yams, meat, sacks of rice and tins of beans. They walk three abreast, laughing, towards the market. Kids late for school drag their feet, their ties undone, showing each other
things on their phones. The men outside the greengrocer talk in Arabic, French, Punjabi, thick patois, Tamil. The men selling duvet covers from the patch on the corner talk in sing-song south London marketese –
Come and getcha covers eeyah, look, any pillahcayse a pand
. Students rifle through the old stereos, novelty cutlery and ancient brass ornaments that sit in boxes on the pavement. Looking for things for their art projects. Women test the fabric of the cheap shirts with expert fingers.

‘Yeah. Come on, let’s go? Leon’s just down there in the car.’ She points.

Becky imagines sunlight on the freezing sea. Fresh wind. ‘Pete’s got a job on today. He’s working at some event doing catering in west London.’

Harry nods. Raises her eyebrows. ‘That’s good,’ she says. ‘But you could still come, couldn’t you? Without him. If you fancied it?’ The words say more than Harry means them to.

‘Yeah.’ Becky nods heartily, speaks slowly through a blooming smile. ‘Why not.’ They walk together past the shouting market, past the drunks and schoolkids, past the mural on the wall, ducking out the way of old ladies with their shopping carts, and they find Leon watching the people in their suits and hats and smart shoes talking outside Kingdom Hall.

He shines his golden smile at Becky, surprised to see Harry returning with a stranger. ‘Hello!’ he says. ‘Seaside?’ And they climb in the car and they head for the beach. Becky in the front, Harry in the back. Becky fidgets with excitement, dances in her seat.

‘Seaside!’ She opens her window to feel the cold city wind. Smiling into it as it blows her hair back. She watches the road fall away beneath the car as they turn onto the motorway. House FM plays loud; the bassline is warm and the sunlight is golden. ‘This is nice,’ she says to Leon.

‘Yeah,’ he says. ‘The open road, eh?’ He drums his hands on the wheel. ‘Can’t beat it.’

The sun swells on its way down. They sit on the stones with their fish and chips, drinking bottles of beer. People walk dogs and hold hands. Harry stares at the waves, grey and green and breaking gently on the groynes. The cold English sea, rolling beneath its reflection. The sky is the sea is the sea is the sky for ever.

Leon finds a triangular stone and uses the point to dig down through the pebbles into the sand, hacking at the space beside his feet. They listen to the puck and glint of stone on stone. The wind whipping the tops of the fishing boats parked up the beach. The giddy cackle of the gulls. Harry lets her head lean on Becky’s shoulder as she eats her chips and Becky turns her face and feels her hair against her cheeks. Harry’s hair smells clean and warm and sweet. Becky breathes in deeply, eyes quenched by the endless sea.

She moves her hand along the stones, feeling the hardy blades of grass that sprout up through the sand. She picks up pebbles and holds them and lets them fall, enjoying their smoothness.

Waves greet the beach like giddy puppies. Becky’s hand comes to rest on Harry’s knee. It fills her with a silent heat. Harry lifts her knee and they push briefly towards each other. Harry looks sideways at Becky. Squints in the setting sun. Becky’s hair all messy in the breeze, her baggy shirt billows, her little feet in all-black Air Max 95s. Leon is making a pile of good skimmers. Engrossed. He gathers up the best ones and jogs towards the surf. Harry’s hand finds Becky’s, Becky turns hers round and they push each other’s fingertips. Stroke each other’s wrists. Burning up. All sound drowns in the bass of the touch. Harry sits back suddenly, quick as a swerving car. Puts her hands behind her and leans into them. Pushing them into the stones where they’ll be safe. Becky’s hand lies open, still resting on Harry’s knee.

Harry looks out at the water pounding the shore. She watches Leon, skimmer’s stance, his body tensed and tall, and feels a gnawing dread about the night they have ahead of them.

‘How’s Pete doing?’ she asks. Keeping her voice light.

Becky breathes deeply, shakes her head. Doesn’t know what to say. A day passes in the silence.

‘We’re fighting all the time.’

Harry looks over, making a pantomime of her concern. ‘How come?’

Becky finishes her chips, scrunches the paper up, enjoying the smell of sea air and chip grease and vinegar. She takes her time to answer, speaking without emphasis or sentimentality.

‘I’m pretty sure he only wants us to be together because he’s scared of what will happen to his life if I leave.’

The mood grows heavy as a fallen scaffold. Determined not to be trapped beneath it, Harry climbs to her feet, adjusting her clothes, pulling her jumper down, pulling her trousers up. She bends to pick up her chips and her beer. ‘You know how to skim stones?’ she asks.

‘Yeah,’ Becky nods, squinting up at her.

‘Can you teach me, please? Leon hates teaching me things.’

Becky gets to her feet in a graceful surge of travel, all movement a dance, even scrambling up from the shingle. ‘Help me find some good ones then,’ she says. ‘Just gotta be flat really, that’s all.’ They head towards the water, eyes low, looking for stones.

They drop Becky off in Streatham, she’s going to see a friend who’s been working in a recording studio there. Leon stares out the windscreen, watching the crowded street, waiting for the crossing to clear. Harry leans her head back into the seat, lets her eyes glaze on all the people moving. Arm in arm and on their own and holding kids and shopping.

A woman on crutches in a white RUN DMC jumper. An old man with a small face in battered leather trousers and a red cowboy hat. A girl in a massive duffel coat trying to get her lighter going. Harry watches all the people. Two young women in veils dance and push each other behind the counter of the empty coffee shop. A thousand different sudden colours sing through the window of the fabric store. A man holding a small bird in his fist brings it up to his lips and whispers to it as he passes the car.

‘Well?’ Leon says, pushing the accelerator gently and easing off.

‘Well what?’ Harry asks him, more defensively than she realises. Leon waits quietly. ‘What?’ Harry asks again.

‘She was nice,’ Leon says pointedly, not taking his eyes off the street.

Harry glances at him, looks back at the road. ‘What you trying to say?’ she asks him.

‘Nothing,’ Leon says simply. ‘She was nice.’

‘She’s going out with Pete,’ Harry tells him.

‘I know,’ Leon says.

They say no more until they reach New Cross.

‘Was a good day though, weren’t it?’ Harry leans her head back, watching the dark wet gloom of the night outside.

‘Yeah, lovely day.’

‘You feeling ready? To do this?’

‘Think so. You?’ Leon grips the wheel tighter. His hands begin to throb.

‘Yeah. Sure it’ll be fine.’ Harry blows breath onto the window and draws patterns in it with her fingertips. ‘I think she’s lovely, Leon,’ she says slowly.

‘I know you do, mate.’

‘What am I gonna do about it?’

‘Nothing,’ Leon says, reversing into a space outside their flat and turning the motor off. They sit there in the quiet car. ‘Right.’ Leon checks his watch. ‘Let’s chill for a couple hours and then head out.’

THE HEIST

It’s midnight in the metropolis. Harry’s driving. Leon’s in the back seat, as if he’s in a cab. They listen to the radio. Everything’s dreary and insubstantial. Generic rock, generic indie, generic indie rock, generic dance, generic rap pop. They wince afresh with each turn of the dial. Magic FM’s dishing out the power ballads. There’s a posh woman on Talk FM laughing at her own jokes. Harry switches it off, opens the window, listens to the engine. They pull up a street or two from their destination. They can see the bar they’re heading for out of the back window.

‘This it then, is it?’ Leon whispers into the car. He barely moves his head but Harry knows he’s just scoped out every entrance, exit, window. It’s a two-storey corner bar, run down, but with memories of better times clinging to its doorways, like a threadbare mink round the neck of an elderly showgirl. A sign above the door says
Paradise
. The
P
is a palm tree.

‘Must be.’ Harry turns the engine off. They sit and watch the entrance in the rear-view mirror.

‘What d’you make of it?’ Leon asks her. ‘Bit isolated, innit?’

Harry hears him, agrees. ‘Busy though,’ she counters. ‘Does seem busy.’

‘True.’

They watch for a moment. In the large courtyard, groups of people stand around by the picnic benches smoking. The girls are dressed in short skirts and long coats and the guys are in jeans and smart shoes.

‘Lot of muscle about,’ Leon says, pointing with his eyelashes towards the bigger men, standing slightly away from the others, watching the punters with their hands in their pockets.

‘Usual, then?’ Harry asks him, taking a deep breath in.

‘Yeah, mate.’ Leon passes his hand through the gap in the seats, palm up. Harry leans over and slaps him a soft five.

‘I’m right behind you, bruv,’ Leon says.

Harry gets out the car, leaving the keys in the ignition. She’s wearing dark trousers and jacket and a pale shirt, creased at the cuffs from rolling them up. A long dark navy trench coat, open, collar turned up. Her hair pulled back. She holds a briefcase in her left hand and smokes with her right. She strolls down towards Paradise as if on the way from the station, comes to a gentle stop at the courtyard and looks around. She asks one of the bouncers what kind of thing’s going on in there tonight. The bouncer smiles at her; he’s pushing sixty, skinhead, built like a building.

‘Oh you know, there’s a DJ playing, bit of a dance floor, cheap drinks. Bit of soul, bit of house, bit of, you know, groovy stuff. It’s a giggle in there, sweetheart.’

‘Gotta pay to get in?’ Harry asks.

‘Nah, not tonight, free all night on a week night.’

‘Thanks.’ Harry nods at him and goes to stroll in.

‘Ah, just check your bag there, darlin’?’ The bouncer touches her gently on the shoulder, hardly a touch at all, but still, enough.

‘Course you can!’ Harry smiles, sweet as a flower, opens her briefcase and stares at the bouncer, holding his eyes. ‘Just paperwork. I’m straight out the office.’

‘Right you are,’ says the bouncer, not even looking in the briefcase. ‘Have a good one now.’ He turns his gaze back to the group of girls jogging on the spot to keep warm while they share cigarettes.

Inside, there’s a long bar. Two barmaids move behind it, the same purpose and poise as wolves. On the other side, groups of just-legal boys slap each other on the back and swear loudly while older, more fashionable young men with beards and retro shirts stand nonchalantly with their arms round their girlfriends, looking around for something better going on somewhere else. Beyond them a couple of women, well into their thirties and long overdue a night out, giggle hysterically and talk in gestures, standing at the bar while the others in their group dance together, self-conscious and fake-laughing, waiting for the drinks.

The room is lit with strip-neons and cheap disco lights. There are tables in the corners and along the back wall, and a dance floor edged with bodies standing still, not drunk enough yet to forget how fat they feel in their new dresses. A group of five or six young kids, off their faces on pills and acid, stroke each other’s cheeks and grind innocently. At the tables, two women talk earnestly. Neither can really hear what the other’s saying, but it doesn’t really matter. The DJ is wearing sunglasses and playing soulless dance music, chart-friendly vocoder pap, beats-by-number dubstep with high-pitched synths cutting through. People throw their hands in the air.
I know this one! YEAH, this is my TUNE
.

Harry sits at the bar, nodding to the music, briefcase on the floor between her feet. She can feel it against the side of her shoe. She undoes a button on her shirt, gives her neck a bit of air, and leans on the bar with her elbows, catching the barmaid’s eye. She waits, looks around, eyes drawn back to the barmaid. She checks her body out, watches her shoulders, her waist. The barmaid holds her eyes, looks her up and down, sends a dark smile her way before turning to serve someone else.

Leon waits a while in the back of the car, sitting low, watching the club in the rear-view. After a few minutes, six, maybe eight, he lets himself out of the car and gets into the driver’s seat, drives down the road and parks up. He flattens his shirt and his hair and checks his blade; it hangs flat beneath his armpit in its sheath, sharp enough to cut through wood. He
goes to the door, pretending to be on his phone. Every now and then he says, ‘Oh come on, I know but . . . Wait. Wait a minute now . . .’ which gives him an excuse to walk distractedly in circles, while really he’s studying the courtyard from all angles, noticing the weaker panels in the fence, the loose chain on the back door, the bloodstained paving stone beneath the far-right window.

He smiles wearily at the bouncers, holds his phone between his ear and his shoulder, keeping his armpit clamped down on the handle of his blade, gesturing with his hands. He cloaks himself in an air of frustration and dejection, exchanging sympathetic nods with the bouncers.

‘Can’t live with ’em, eh?’ he offers as they pat his flanks down, nod, smile, roll their eyes.

‘No, baby, I wasn’t talking to you, I wasn’t, look . . . please . . . I didn’t mean . . .’ The bouncers chuckle, Leon strolls in.

The dance floor is starting to fill up with vague patches of clumsily moving girls doing fake sexy and ironic sexy, but secretly hoping that they look actual sexy. Sarcastic, overblown expressions are exchanged while they dance how they’ve seen other people dance in other, cooler clubs all their lives. Loneliness looms large in the room despite all the couples kissing and all the groups of women with their arms around each other’s shoulders.

Leon notices a man approach the bar stool next to Harry’s. He glances a little longer than necessary at the side of
Harry’s face, Harry notices. Leon keeps his eyes exactly where they need to be, aware of every inch of his best friend’s body. In the space between the slow strobes, all the years they’ve had each other’s backs play out in stop-motion. He sees the small rooms full of weed smoke and teenage giggling, talking in slang. Afternoons like eternities in the rain at the bus stop, freestyling four lines at a time about fuck all. When his mum threw him out coz her new boyfriend didn’t like him, threw him across the kitchen, bruised his ribs and split his lip in half and Harry put her arm around his shoulder and said nothing, walked next to him. Brought him home and made a bed on her bedroom floor and they went up the park and smoked hash. In Talia’s car with the windows down playing ‘It’s a London Thing’ on the way to the rave at the Lighthouse. Fresh fade and a gold bracelet. Pair of fucking dickheads. Leon watches, as he’s always done. Ready.

The man next to Harry is slim-limbed but with a sloppy paunch pushing against his shirt buttons, dark hair, long and greasy at the sides of his scalp. He wears a blue suit with a shine running through it, his shoulders slope away like cats after a kill. Leon doesn’t like the look of him at all.

‘Harry?’ asks the man. His voice cuts through the music and sends a chill through the veins in Harry’s neck.

‘Yeah.’ Harry sips her beer and doesn’t turn round.

‘I’m Joey. I’m a friend of Pico’s.’

Harry says nothing for a while, watches the barmaid moving at the other end of the bar, gathers herself, turns slightly and smiles at the guy, hardly moving her lips, but still, a smile.

‘I’ll be acting on behalf of Rags tonight. Now, if you wanna follow me, Harry?’ Joey’s voice is dull and monotonous but with a shriek running through it. He begins to move away without waiting for Harry to reply. Harry finishes her beer and places the bottle carefully on the bar before moving through the crowds, following Joey, watching the people who all seem a little drunker now than when she came in, pushing their bodies together.

Without being seen, Leon is standing now too, holding the wall. He sees the man opening a door he hadn’t noticed on the other side of the bar. He moves through the crowd and finds the door with his toe just in time to stop it closing. He holds it, breathes, checks for the muscle, three by the fire escape, two by the bar, another by the dance floor talking to a girl. Three more to his left. He walks through the door and presses his back against the wall, so cold it feels damp. Stairs going down; there’s a basement room beneath him. He hears their footsteps, Harry’s voice saying, ‘OK, no problem.’

The other guy’s voice. ‘Now, Pico’s gonna be away for a little while, as you know. It’s good to make acquaintance face to face. I hear you’ve been a loyal customer, and I respect that, but, the thing is, we don’t know each other, do we? Not met you, have I? So, I suppose it’s only natural that we start from the beginning.’

Harry steps off the last stair and onto the tiled floor of the basement. There is a large, low fish tank stretching out across the room, lit up brightly inside, with purple-neon under-lighting. A baby shark swims amongst plastic shipwrecks, pieces of coral and various tropical fish. Either side of the tank are two long white-leather sofas and a couple of smaller black-leather armchairs.
Pico would hate this place
.

Pico was an extremely stylish, flamboyant Peruvian man with impeccable taste, a charismatic wife named Angela, four beautiful kids, and a penchant for butterfly collecting. He and Ange had a good name for themselves in interior design; he was freelance, and she worked as a consultant at the biggest company in London. Together, they had collaborated on half the renovated stores on New Bond Street. He was subtle about his dealing – he sourced the best gear and sold only to a few trusted people.
Pico wouldn’t be seen dead in a place like this
. The hairs on the back of her neck stand up.

There’s a massive pile of powder on top of the fish tank, a rolled-up fifty, a small razor blade for cutting lines. Harry looks around, a poster on the wall of Marilyn Monroe in her underwear listening to a song on a record player. No light apart from the light coming from the fish tank. There’s a desk, a safe, an empty shelving unit and a chest in the corner.

‘Please.’ Joey indicates the sofa. ‘Be my guest, sit yourself down, make yourself comfy.’

Harry feels a prickling sensation in the back of her legs.
Who the fuck
is
this guy? With this trashy club and all that muscle
out there and a fucking baby shark in a fish tank?
She sits down, feeling uncomfortable, keeping her face absolutely still.

‘So, I heard that you move a good deal of gear?’

Harry says nothing, waits for the next part of the sentence; Joey finds the silence a little intimidating. Can’t help but break it.

‘But, thing is, mate, I been asking around, and no one I’ve spoke to seems to have even heard of you. Eh?’ He waits again, but Harry doesn’t speak. Harry watches him, legs crossed on the white-leather sofa. Not moving. Joey clears his throat, looks away from Harry’s eyes, continues. ‘No one seems to know a thing about you. They can’t tell me nothing.’ Harry stares at him, the shark moves through the water of the tank. ‘So, I want to know more. Basically.’ Joey puts his hands on his kneecaps, leans forwards. ‘Who the fuck is Harry and how are you moving all that gear and nobody knows who you are? Are you a policewoman, Harry?’ Harry says nothing. ‘Are you working for the Russians, Harry?’ Still Harry says nothing. Joey raises his arms, shows his palms, shakes his head. Brings his hands back down to his knees, leans even further off his seat. ‘Are you a deaf mute, Harry?’ Harry stays quiet. She watches the water. The light. The skin on the smaller fish. ‘OK, mate, OK. Poker face. I’ve heard the fucking song.’ Joey lights a cigarette. ‘You’re a private person, I can see that, like to keep yourself to yourself, do you? That’s all well and good, I can respect that.’ He smokes, leans back into the sofa, shiny suit squeaking on the leather as he slips down. His eyes jump to
Harry’s. ‘That weren’t a fart,’ he says, ‘it was the leather.’ Harry says nothing, keeps watching, but offers a smile of understanding. Joey gathers himself. ‘Don’t get me wrong, I just wanted to know a little about you before we start doing business, you know what I mean? And it’s looking like Pico might be away for a year or so, so we better get used to one another, wouldn’t you say? Mate?’ Harry waits.
What is he trying to say to me?
‘Would you like a drink, Harry?’ Joey stands up, suit trousers riding up between his thighs. He walks to the desk. On top are a few bottles, beneath is a little beer fridge. ‘I got vodka, bourbon, beers, what you gonna have? I’m drinking brandy.’

Harry tells herself to snap out of it. That really what’s happening is that this flashy guy who works in a shitty bar, which he obviously imagines to be some classy fucking joint because he’s got no taste, is some kind of relative of Pico’s, some husband of some niece or whatever, some mate of a mate with great expectations, who is desperate to be a big shot, so Pico’s let him handle things for a couple of months till he gets out, thinking what harm can he do. And he doesn’t mean to be putting the creeps on her, he’s just a weird, washed-up little man with a chip on his shoulder. Harry breathes deep. But she can’t shake the feeling, the discomfort, the tension in her ankles, the movement of the shark through that fucking tank.