Lottery Boy (18 page)

He took a long time getting out of the station, willing himself to leave. He was confused and couldn’t understand how they were getting
ahead
of him, waiting for him now, not even chasing along after him. And then when he’d got safely away from the tube station, he did a little angry dance. He’d told the Sammies he was going north, to Camelot, hadn’t he? So they knew where he was going, they were taking short cuts, getting ahead of the game like the wolf in the fairy tale.

He blinked. His eyes were stinging with the salt that had dried and crusted into the corners. He spat on his fingers and rubbed them until they itched. Then he rubbed them some more. He knew it made it worse but he carried on doing it. He got his compass out. A little bubble of air trapped inside came to the surface of the glass as he watched the arrow inside slowly turn to find its way.

He stopped walking. And he really thought about what he was doing, about the boys and men now maybe further up the road, higher up, waiting for him, and he tried to think how they would think.
Getting to know his enemy
. They would be expecting him, just like a kid, to carry on up the road, carry on heading to Camelot to get his money. Then he had a moment of clarity, how to turn this thing on its head and let them spend all night chasing his shadow while he stayed put until the morning. It would lose him time but he might get to keep his ticket.

He left the main road through the town and crossed a park. He needed a place indoors: a place that never closed, where you didn’t have to buy anything. Somewhere they let
anybody
in, even someone like him without any shoes.

He found this sort of place on a quiet road. It was called the
Royal Free Hospital
. Well, that sounded good to him, and though it didn’t look anything like Buckingham Palace it was definitely
free
. The sign said so. Also, he might find someone to cash in his ticket for him. Someone old or, better still, on their way out, who didn’t have much time left, like him. Because three days was all he had now.

They didn’t let you take dogs into hospital though. There wasn’t a sign but he just had this feeling, so he kept Jack in the rucksack and told her to be quiet and walked on in through the revolving doors, pushing too hard and having to wait for them to catch up and let him through. He walked past two nurses dealing with people just walking in like him who didn’t seem any more hurt than he was.

He went to the café place. It was closed up on a Sunday night, and the shutters were down. There was a vending machine along the corridor but he’d dropped his change on the hill. He looked up and down the white hallway. And then quickly, with his rucksack hiding what he was doing, he bent down and put his arm in through the slot and shoved it up as high as he could but he couldn’t quite reach the chocolate.

When he pulled his hand back out, it was stuck on the metal lip of the lid. He yanked it but it only hurt more, and in frustration, he barged the machine. The alarm went off, his arm came out grazed and bleeding.

He took the stairs to get away, passing a doctor coming down, who saw his empty feet but carried on going. No one seemed bothered that he had no shoes in here. He understood why on the next floor when he pushed through some double doors and an old lady in bare feet with a balloon full of water shuffled towards him. Even though the corridor was plenty wide enough he got out the way. She looked like she had her bed dress on back to front, and he was horrified when he saw her bare old bum following along after her.

He decided to go up another floor. And when he came out of the doors there was a trolley with a few empty dinner plates waiting to be taken down in the lift. He picked out a spud and a sausage. He forced himself to feed the sausage to Jack and wondered if there was more where that came from. He went to the end of the corridor to take a look.

Blarrr, blarrr, blarrr!

His head filled up with an alarm much worse than the little
shriek, shriek
of the vending machine and he assumed he’d set it off, whatever it was, by nicking half a sausage. He put his hands to his ears to keep any more of the
blarrr, blarrr
from getting in while he tried to run away from it.

Then nurses started leaping out of rooms and coming down corridors as if they’d been hiding there all day, just waiting for this. But they ran past him and he heard them yelling
“Crash! Crash! Crash!”
and he saw it was nothing to do with him.

Two doctors were coming now, pushing a heart start trolley really fast towards him. To avoid them he went round the corner, spied a door with a little window and, thinking it was a store cupboard, he was already in it before he saw the man in the bed.

“Now
where
have
you
been?” An old Davey was lying on the bed, staring right at him. “Now
where
have
you
been?” He said it again like he was asking him and not giving him a telling-off. Bully just stood there, not wanting to say.

“Come in then, come in.” He waved his withery hand. He looked as good as dead but then all Daveys did.

“Shut the door, shut the door. On your back, the thing … the thing, that bag on your back. With the
sack
,” he said, still waving his arm, the skin hanging down and flipping about like it might slip off his bone. “That’s a rucksack! Now
where
have
you
been?”

“The zoo,” Bully said because that had been the best part of his day so far.

“Oh, the
zoo
…” The old man’s face relaxed, like he’d taken a big swig of something good. “What did you see?”

Bully looked round again, checking the door. The nurses and doctors were still shouting at each other.

“Now
where
have
you
been?”

“I said. The zoo.”

Jack began to whimper, the bit of sausage had started up her guts because it was well gone her teatime.

“Shh,” said Bully.

“What’s that? What have you got there, in your sack? A penguin? What is it that you’ve got there?”

Bully sniggered. “Nah!” he said. “It’s a dog.”

Bully wasn’t scared of this Davey, even if he was dying, saying things like did he have a penguin in his bag.

“Oh. A dog.” The man’s face lit up and his eyes stopped wandering. And instead of asking if it was
his
dog, he said, “Well, let’s have a look at him then! Get him out, get him out.”

Bully put the rucksack on the ground and got Jack out. He winced with the pain, the skin raw on his hips.

“Oh, is that a Staffy?” said the Davey and now it was Bully’s turn to smile because this Davey knew at least one thing about dogs.

“Yeah, yeah. She’s a Staff cross. She’s crossed with something really good, a real proper breed with a pedigree and everything.”

“Oh, what does that matter? What’s her name? That’s all that matters. Having a good name. That’s all that matters. What’s her name?”

“Jack. She’s Jack.”

“Oh… Jack! That is a
good
name. I know someone called Jack. Who is it?” he said.

He was mad, this Davey, but he was all right, Bully decided, as long as he stayed where he was. Bully sniffed the tray at the end of the bed and the man caught him looking as he hoped he would.

“Are you hungry?”

“Yeah.”

The man looked around the little room helplessly. “Sometimes they leave things to eat.”

“That.” Bully pointed to the dinner.

“Oh, what is it?”

“Food.”

“Oh, yes, you can eat that.”

Bully took the lid off and it was shepherd’s pie. His mum used to make it and Phil used to say it had real shepherd in it to put him off.

He took a big spoonful and then another two and then put the plate on the floor for Jack to finish.

“Finish it all, finish it all,” said the Davey when he saw Bully looking at the custard dessert. Bully finished it and pocketed the metal spoon because he had lost that too in his coat, along with the last little bit of his mum in the card.

“I’m private and this is
my
room with a view,” the Davey said and pointed to the window. The darkness outside was beginning to reflect the light back into the room and Bully could see nothing out there, just the road and a few trees.

He checked the door again, put his face right up to the glass. Things were getting calmer now, one of the nurses shaking her head, another one nodding. He looked at the old man. He thought he would be polite and ask how long he’d been here and what was wrong with him, like you did when you came to visit people in hospital.

“You been here long?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think so. I don’t know. Do you?” he asked hopefully.

Bully shrugged. “You had a bit of a kickin’ or sumin’?”

“No, no,” said the man and Bully nodded because his face didn’t look too bad, not bashed about. Just those spiders up his nose, and red and blue lines all over his cheeks, like a little kid had been colouring him in while he was asleep.

“I’m going home tomorrow.”

“Yeah?”

“Yes. I’m going home…”

“You ever been to Watford, mate?” The question came out before he thought about it.

“Oh, Watford. I don’t know. I’d
love
to go.”

“You got a car then?”

“Oh, yes. I do. I’m sure I have. I have a car somewhere out there. A silver one,” he said and it reminded Bully of the men who’d been following him. A car was good news. A car was luxury. A car was a flat on wheels; somewhere to sleep, to eat, somewhere to get you someplace. Back on his estate you had to wait to go anywhere, for a bus or a lift into town. A car would get him out of here straight away.

Bully took a big breath. “Could you do me a favour, mate?”

“What? What?”

“I’ve got this ticket, yeah?”

“A ticket? Yes?” He was staring at Bully but as if he were further back in the room.

“Yeah, but I need someone to collect on it. It’s a secret though. And gangstas are trying to rob me.
I
bought it for
my
mum
and
she
gave it back to
me
for my birthday because she was dying.” He thought it best to get that straight. “But I’m too young to play, so it’s got to be someone older than me who has to go and get the money from Camelot in Watford. And then you go and give it back to me. It’s got to be that way. I’ll give you some of it but you’d have to give me all of it first, you get me?”

“What?”

“The money,” said Bully. “What I won.”

“Bit of luck on the gee-gees?”

“The what? No.” This guy wasn’t understanding straight. So Bully told him a bit more of the story, filled him in so that it sounded like something believable, something real instead of just a story a kid with a dog was telling him to cheer him up in hospital. It took a while with the bloke nodding him along, then pointing out the window, going on about his private view of the darkening road and the trees.

Finally Bully stopped talking. He could see the Davey was thinking it over. Bully had decided he wasn’t going to give him anything like half. He could have
half
a million instead. That would do him for what he had left to live.

He checked the little window in the door. No one was rushing about any more. And when he squinted sideways there was just one nurse over at the desk.

He looked back. Jack was up on the bed and the old man was patting her and crying, his eyes like little yellow fried eggs. That frightened Bully because he was smiling at the same time. He picked up the rucksack, nervous and wanting to get when this Davey was going to take him to Watford sorted out.

The man looked at him and stopped crying. He didn’t rub his face dry but instead just looked surprised.

“Now
where
have
you
been?” he asked in the same voice as he’d done a Scooby-Doo ago.