Utterly Monkey (9 page)

Danny too was on his feet. He heard Jacksy scream ‘Nice one Williams,’ and then he found himself pelting up the main street towards his dad’s office, even though it was closed and his dad miles away. He glanced back and saw Micks pounding after him. The other boys had gone, probably down Molesworth or up the Burn Road, legging it, laughing. Danny was pinballing through the crowd, shouting ‘Sorry’ as he went, as much to Slim as to the tutting people he was knocking into. He was electric, shocked. What the fuck had he done? He’d cut his own throat.

Danny took the entrance into the gravel car park behind his dad’s office and ran to the wire fence at the back of it. There was a gap in it that his dad had been going on about getting fixed for years. Danny, giving thanks for his father’s laziness, had one leg through it when he heard Micks’ brays from the other side of the car park. He didn’t appear to be using words. Danny ducked his head down through the gap and felt a tug at his neck–his yellow Nike T-shirt was caught on one of the cut wire prongs. Micks was running across the car park, sending up little flurries of stones as he ran. Danny yanked the rest of himself through the fence and heard the T-shirt rip. He legged it over the field. It sloped down over the course of a few hundred metres onto Monkey Lane, which ran alongside the Glencrest estate. Clambering over the gate at the bottom of the field, he paused and glanced back up the hill. Micks was standing behind the fence watching him. When he saw Danny look back, he waved, perfectly normally, as if he was waving him off from his doorstep. It was terrifying.

Danny made as if to walk down Monkey Lane and out onto Taylor Road, but instead crouched down after
a few metres and doubled back behind the hedge that ran along the field. He could cross the Glencrest estate to his own road. He squeezed through the straggly privet, popped out the other side (the branches folding their arms again behind him) and hunkered down on the pavement. His T-shirt was now an off-the-shoulder number. And his breathing was raspy, like his dad’s when he was angry. Staring at the pavement he noticed minute red bugs, a score of pinpricks, meandering over the paving slab. They didn’t seem to have any sense of direction or purpose, veering off this way or that. Danny smeared one into the grey with his thumb. It left a tiny scarlet blur. He stood, pulling his T-shirt up to cover his thin shoulder, and started to dander across the estate. It was Protestant, this place, and therefore pretty empty. Everyone was either at the marches or on holiday. The houses were private, not council, and built only a couple of years ago though already the pebbledash white was discolouring–like snowfall thawing out to slushy grey. A kid’s bike had been abandoned on its side on one of the neat front lawns and the wheel was still spinning. Danny had an urge to cross the lawn and press his hand against the rubber, to stop its ticking, but he walked quickly on to the estate’s entrance. He was about to exit onto Milburn Road, his own, when Philly Stewart walked past on the far side of the road, heading towards Danny’s own house. Did he know where Danny lived? Danny didn’t know. Philly was doing his simian shoulder roll and staring blankly forward. Danny felt his legs go, and he leant into one of the redbrick entrance pillars to steady himself. Philly’s peculiar gait made it seem he was pushing an imaginary wheelbarrow: his arms hung out by his
sides and his shoulders were arched and lowered. He pushed it on up Milburn as Danny spun slowly around on a crack in the pavement and headed back into the estate.

Danny was walking swiftly again but unsure where to. He’d have to hang about in the estate, find a hole in the ground and sit in it for a year or so. When he passed the house again with the bike outside, its wheel spinning slower now, he heard a car from somewhere nearby, pulling away sharply. He glanced over towards the screech of tyres and saw, instead, Geordie running along the top of the T-junction. Danny shouted ‘Geordie’ and set off after him. Geordie slowed down and he caught up. Geordie looked edgy as always.

‘All right Williams, how’s things?’

‘Fucking wick. Me, Del and Jacksy and Wee Jim were watching the march down the street and fucking Slim and Micks and Philly came along and started hassling us. I don’t know what happened but I ended up smacking Slim in the balls. He’s going to go through me for a fucking shortcut.’

Geordie’s face broke into that overwhelming grin. Danny started to laugh, from relief.

‘Fucking hell, Williams. Slim’s hard as nails. They’ll be looking for you.’

‘Aye I know. And Micks chased me down through the back field onto Monkey Lane and I just saw Philly walking up Milburn towards my house. What you doing round here?’

‘Nothing really. Here, c’mere. Follow me for a sec.’

Geordie turned around and walked back in the direction he’d just come from. He walked up towards the back
gate of an orderly corner house with two hanging baskets, ablaze with pansies and fuchsia and geraniums. The estate was still deserted, although a television could be heard blasting from the open windows of the house next door: the parades’ hullaballoo occasionally narrated by the respectful, deep-voiced and slightly bored observations of an anchorman.

‘Here. We can nip in round the back. It’s me uncle’s but they’re all down at the parade. I just been to see whether they’re around.’

Geordie pushed at the back gate with one hand and it swung open, banging against the pebbledashed side of the house. A pebble skitted off and landed on the paving stones, joining the others that were scattered across the path.

‘Will he mind? I mean just for an hour or so. I could just sit in the garden or maybe use his phone and get Karen to nip down and get me or something.’

‘Well he’s not here so he won’t know, will he? I just told you that, didn’t I?’

Geordie looked quickly at Danny who nodded assent. Round the back of the house there was an ornamental pond, much too big for the garden. Its water pump gargled, unseen amongst the overgrown foliage. Danny went to the edge of it. Two carp, luminous bars, hung in the dirty water. As Danny’s shadow moved over the surface they flicked away. Danny called out, not looking up: ‘Your uncle’s got two carp in here you know Geordie. My dad says they’re worth a lot of money depending on how big…’

Danny glanced up to see Geordie standing on top of one of the bins. He had his arm in through the small
window of what must have been the downstairs toilet. The windows of it were all frosted over.

‘What’re you doing? We can just wait here ’til your uncle gets back or head off in a bit anyway. They’re not going to miss all the marches in order to get me.’

‘Naw, I always do this. It’s fine. C’mere. Give me a booster.’

Danny moved across and stood beneath Geordie. He interlocked his fingers and Geordie placed one track shoe, flecked with grit, into the makeshift stirrup. Danny lifted and Geordie went halfway through the window. A scrabble, rubber-screech on glass, and he was all the way in.

‘I’ll come round and open up. Hold on.’

Danny sat on the grass beside the pond. The pump had changed its sound and was now respiring hoarsely, unhealthily. He heard the back door open. There was no key being turned, just the scrape of a Chubb lock. The back door opened directly into the kitchen. Danny started to wipe his feet but Geordie said, ‘Forget about that. Get inside.’

‘But I’ve mud on my gutties. I don’t want to get it on your uncle’s floor.’

The kitchen was spotless. Either no one here cooked or they were incredibly tidy. Danny said, ‘Do you think I could get a glass of water?’

Geordie was leaning against one of the work surfaces. His forehead was varnished with sweat and he looked obscurely worried.

‘I’m sure you could.’

‘It’s all right to be in here, isn’t it?’ Danny said, opening a cupboard to look for a glass. There was only a single
cornflakes packet inside it. Danny accidentally slammed the cupboard door shut.

‘Is your uncle married?’ Danny went on, but Geordie didn’t respond. Danny turned on the tap and there was a loud rattling of pipes. He twisted the tap further to stop the sound but the banging increased. Sticking his head under the flow, he pursed his lips to catch the water. Running from Micks had left him incredibly thirsty. When he eventually lifted his head up, he said, ‘I must have drunk three pints of…’ but Geordie was gone. Maybe he’s finding the phone, Danny thought. He turned the tap off and walked out into the hallway. Then everything stopped.

The hallway was an elevator, jerked to a stop, mid-floors. It was a carriage in a stationary train shunted from behind. It was a rollercoaster car tipping over the brink of the slope. It was entirely silent.

Geordie was standing at the far side, by the glass-panelled front door. Between him and Danny there was a body. A man was lying splayed on the paisley carpet. He was in his forties maybe, wearing a dressing gown that was hitched up round his middle. He wore old blue Y-fronts and the lower part of one of his spindly legs was bent up under the thigh. The knee was all pink and bulgy. The man’s neck was twisted round too far to the left. Danny could only see a little of his face but it was waxy and completely white. He had a few days’ beard growth. He looked terrified. One eye stared straight ahead. Danny followed its gaze to the skirting board. He was dead. The man was dead.

Geordie said, ‘We need to get the fuck out of here. Come on.’

Danny still stood there. He felt a shaking rise within him. The bones of his body were banging inside him like the water pipes. Geordie pushed past, back into the kitchen. Danny looked at the body, and then turned and followed him. For some reason Geordie had pulled off his T-shirt and was rubbing the kitchen cupboards with it and the taps. Danny stood watching him stupidly. Then he went into the bathroom and Danny trailed automatically after him. Geordie rubbed the door handles. He was professional somehow, agitated and upset but professional. He strode outside and rubbed at the outside window and frame of the bathroom while Danny leant against the sharp pebbledash of the back of the house. He could feel his legs going and tears coming. Lastly Geordie rubbed the bin lids and then yanked the T-shirt back over his xylophone frame. ‘NOW,’ he suddenly shouted and Danny jumped, then followed him, running, back round the side of the house and down through the estate. They hit the Milburn Road and legged it through Danny’s open front door and past the living room where the girls were building a lego metropolis and up the stairs into Danny’s bedroom. Geordie closed the door behind them and stood against it, leaning into Danny’s too-small blue velour dressing gown. Danny perched on the edge of the bed. They were breathless.

‘What the f-fuck are you doing? Don’t you want to see if your uncle’s all right?’

Geordie looked at Danny like he was about to punch him.

‘Something happened, something awful happened. That wasn’t my uncle’s house. It was Barry Hughes’s. From the school.’

Of course. The man was Barry Hughes. He had looked familiar, even like that. Barry Hughes was a vice-principal and maths teacher at Ballyglass High. Danny had never been taught by him though he was known to be strict, despite wearing daft patterned jumpers and singing snatches of operas in the corridors.

‘
What?
Why the fuck did you do that? Why did you think it was your uncle’s? How’d you get the wrong house?’

‘Danny, it wasn’t my fault. I just found him there. He was lying at the bottom of the stairs. It wasn’t my fault. I just saw him. I went up to him and looked at him but he was a funny colour and he wasn’t making no breathing sounds and that leg was twisted back behind him.’

‘But why’d we go in there? Why Hughes’s house?’

Geordie’s eyes were filmy. Danny thought he was going to cry as well. His stomach was all jittery. ‘Why’d you go in the house at all? Did you know it was Hughes’s house?’

‘Look.’ Geordie pushed at his own forehead. Danny had seen men do that on television when they were upset. It looked fake when Geordie did it, like he’d seen the same TV shows. ‘I knew it was Hughes’s house but I thought he’d be at the parade all right? An’ I thought we could just go in and use his phone.
You
were the one who wanted a place to hide out.’

‘YOU FUCKING TOLD ME IT WAS YOUR UNCLE’S HOUSE.’ Danny stood up.

‘Aye I know. But you helped me break in.’

‘Fuck you Geordie.’ Danny was shaking his head and biting his lower lip. ‘We have to call the police and go back to the house. He might still be alive.’

‘He wasn’t alive, Danny.’

‘He must have heard us come in and then slipped or something, fallen over the banister. He must have thought we were burglars. But we would have heard him fall. He would have shouted.’ But Danny was thinking of how loud the pipes had been banging. And how noisy the tap was. His T-shirt was still wet from the water. They wouldn’t have heard anything. And Danny had slammed the cupboard door. He must have frightened him. He had killed him. ‘But we would have heard him,’ Danny said again, slowly this time. ‘We have to go back. He might be alive still.’

‘He’s not alive Danny. He was
white
. Chances are he never heard us. He could have been dead hours for all we know. Dead for days. We’re not calling the fucking police. They’ll say we killed him. We’ll be sent away. For breaking and entering. For murder. There’s nothing we can do but keep quiet. It’s not our fault Danny. It’s just one of those things.’

Geordie slid down the door. Danny’s dressing gown slithered off the little plastic holder shaped like an elephant, its trunk the hook, and fell onto his head. He pushed it off and it draped over his shoulders like a cape. He was a boy playing at being a superhero. Danny felt a tear break from his eye and run down his cheek.

‘We can’t do nothing. We have to tell someone.’

‘Shut up. Just
shut
up.
I’m
the one who’ll get it.
I’m
the one who’ll be in trouble.
I’m
the one they’ll blame.’

‘Well it’s your fucking
fault.
’

‘Danny, I didn’t do nothing wrong. I was just going to go in and get the phone.
You
wanted the phone. I was only trying to help you.’