Lottery Boy (24 page)

Janks bent down and pulled out the skewer and it squeaked and squealed as it came out of the wood like a puppy waking up.

He slid it back down the leg of his boot. “Say I
do
torture ’im. Say I do. Just say I
do
. Say that. And then what? He starts yelling and screaming, getting blood all over the place and telling me the first thing that comes into his head; that it’s here or there. And then it’s somewhere
else
… and gets us racing all over town until the time’s run out on this ticket of his. What’s the good in that, eh?”

Chris and Tiggs nodded. There was no good in that.

“So, no. No, I’m not gunna torture ’im, Chris. I’m gunna torture that
dog
of his and kill two birds with one stone and make some money out of this either way.”

Outside the drilling on the building site stopped for the day and all was quiet. And then, as if they’d heard what their master said, on the floor below, the dogs started howling again.

Hours later, Janks barrelled Bully up in the boot of Chris’s car without telling him where they were going. When the car stopped and he heard the dogs starting up, that was the worst, waiting to see what would happen when the boot opened again.

A man with a squashed-up face he’d never seen before was looking him over, like, what was a half-naked boy doing here, and wanting nothing to do with him. Janks pulled him out, hauled him up and cut the tape around his feet but not his hands. Another man was pointing him out, staring at him, shaking his head and then turning away.

Bully felt like a whelp, like a newborn puppy, when he stood up, his bare feet tender on the concrete. He looked around. His eyes were puffy from crying and he had to open them on purpose to see anything. He felt he was inside somewhere big, somewhere empty; an old factory or a warehouse, a wet, dirty smell to the place creeping in past his cold.

“Here,” said Janks. And he led him over to a proper circle of lights, made up of cars, some of them with their boots open, dogs – illegals by the looks of them; nasty mixed up messes – sat there panting and snarling. One car had its boot closed, thumping and barking coming from inside … until it went quiet. He heard a man saying how you
had
to bait a dog, put it up against something before its first proper fight, just to give it a taste. And Bully could see now that in the middle of all the cars was a pit in the concrete floor, seven, eight metres long, two or three wide, with steps at one end.

Janks grabbed him by the hair, turned him round.

“So you want to play games, do you? With
me
, do you?” said Janks. “You want to—”

He paused as the man with the squashed-up face tapped him on the shoulder. “It’s not right,
this
. It’s not right having a lad here.”

Janks hit him just beneath his chin so that he clutched his throat as if an invisible man was strangling him. Then Janks turned back to Bully.

“So let’s play.”

Bully knew what the bait was before Janks signalled Chris to throw Bully’s old green coat into the pit. It made a thud when it hit the floor, something wrapped inside.

“Last chance – where’s this ticket?” said Janks. “
Where
is it?” Bully continued to stare at his coat twitching on the concrete. “She’s all taped up in there, dudn’t stand a chance. She’s dog meat. Come on… No? All right then. You’ve had your chance.”

“Get on with it!” said a voice among the men. Janks motioned to one of them with a nod of his head and at the other end of the pit a black shadow approached the steps, its coat getting darker and darker in the bright light.

Bully couldn’t help staring at it like it wasn’t real. The way its skin folded up around its face and dripped down under its chin. The way its big black eyes drew you in, like a kid had crayoned them as good as he could. He’d seen one before, just in a picture; something just like it. One of half a dozen lessons he could pick out from his days at school. In the book, the Romans were attacking the English in their little straw huts with these big, big bulldogs. And he’d asked the teacher what kind it was and when she didn’t know, he’d looked it up. It was a bandog, an old mix, not strictly a breed at all, but with a mastiff’s size and weight and a bulldog’s speed, born to fight anything. And this wasn’t a picture in a book, this was
real
.

The bandog was pawing the concrete floor, moving forward towards the bundle, smelling the dog but then retreating while it figured out
where
the dog was. And Bully realized it was its first fight.

“You wouldn’t think they’d pay good money for this, would you?
I
wouldn’t waste my dog on this. It’s not even a fight,” said Janks.

The bandog snapped at Bully’s coat then, and shook it and shook it, thinking it was dog
skin
, and a cheer went up from the crowd.

And now the dog had worked out that there wasn’t any meat between its teeth and it spat it out because
that
was what it was after, squirming on the floor, trying to get to her feet.

“This is it,” said Janks. “
Last
, last chance…”

Bully jumped into the pit. His knees buckled under his jaw, catching his tongue, and blood filled his mouth and he spat it out, spots on the floor.

A
huge
cheer from some in the crowd drowned out a smattering of concern.

“Get him out!” yelled someone, but in that tired, irritated voice that people use in a crowd when a dog or even a child is about to spoil a game. And some men left, and a few of the lights got smaller and smaller as cars reversed away. Didn’t want to see that. Not a fair fight. But the rest, they stayed. They wanted to watch this.

The bandog had its back to the steps now, struggling to decide who was the enemy; this skinny black-and-blue thing with wrists full of rubber bands or the other dog. It didn’t know what it was up against because even though its ancestors might have bated bears and lions and even Christians, this one had never fought a boy before. And Bully had to take advantage of this little bit of time, this little bit of confusion, before he became just another funny-looking dog.

He scraped his hands up and down in a sawing motion on the rough concrete wall, making them bleed but tearing the tape. And then he unwound what was around Jack’s muzzle and legs, wrapping the tape around his fists just to get it off quick. Straight away Jack scrambled to her feet, barking,
up for it
, back end bristling, nosing past him, anxious
to take point
. The two dogs started heads up, haunches down, looking for weakness, showing their defences, snapping at the air.

But Bully was making things easy for the bandog, standing there behind Jack – the pair of them just one target. He needed to
outflank
it – that’s what Bully had to do. Work his way round the side of his enemy to attack from behind.
But what with?
He didn’t have his knife. They’d taken that, taken everything. He could use his coat maybe. The pockets were all ripped open, just like the dead man in the park, but even so, if he could get round the bandog and use his coat to strangle it or something…

So Bully shrank against the pit wall, scraping his back against the concrete as he began to edge past the bandog. He was nearly past the head and neck, at the limit of the dog’s peripheral vision, when its pointed ears twitched and it went for him. It turned incredibly quick; the thin ribbon of white on its belly flashing towards him, the jaws opening, and the last thing Bully saw was his own arm going to protect his face.

He waited to feel the pain, could still see his arm and when he pulled it away from his eyes, there was the bandog squirming on the floor, Jack hanging from its belly.

Bully ran at it – his chance – went to kick at its ribs with his bare feet but he slipped and fell.

He heard men begin to cough and clear their throats over and over again. They were laughing … they were laughing at him, that’s what they were doing, and he began to swear and shout back every name he could think of, as if the words might cut each bobbly face to pieces.

Clink
… He looked down. He was standing on his coat. The metallic sound sent him looking for his penknife but all he found in the inside pocket was the squashed-up tin can he’d saved all that time five days ago. Without thinking he put his coat back on, as if it were a suit of armour. And at least he was behind the bandog now. And that was something. He watched the bandog shake Jack off, leaving her with a mouthful of fur and skin, and then, getting its confidence, coming straight back to catch her leg. Above the din, he heard the bone snap and Jack squeal like words might come out.

Bully reached for the can and he worked it open and slipped his right fist into it. When some of the men saw what he was doing, they started up heckling and whining, as Bully ran up to the bandog to stave in its ribs. The dog shuddered with the first punch, twisted away, taking his teeth out of Jack to show them to Bully.

Bully tried to land another one but he wasn’t quick enough. He was tired now, his breathing sending his whole chest up and down, and the dog came back at him, much too
fast
– so fast it didn’t see Bully’s tin fist swinging under its chin.

It shivered and went down wheezing, and Bully thought they’d won. But then, as he watched it struggle to its feet, he saw that a dog wasn’t like a boy, it didn’t know it was beaten until it
couldn’t
go on. And before he could think what to do next, it came straight back at him.

Pap! Pap!
he heard as the dog brought him down, and when he scrambled out from underneath it, he saw its guts glistening like uncooked sausages, a twitching shiny hole the size of his fist there pulsing away.

He got to his feet, leaned against the wall. The crowd was silent, motionless, cut out of the light as if they were cardboard figures, only one man moving, waving a gun around, giving directions that he was not to be messed with. Two men were standing either side of him, checking their sightlines, looking out for the alpha dog.

“Your bitch?” He was looking down at Jack.

Bully nodded.

“And
you
Goldy, yeah?”

Bully looked at him, didn’t understand.

“You the golden boy,
yeah
? You got the
ticket
?”

“Yeah, yeah,” he said numbly.

“You tellin’ me the truth, Goldy?”

“There ain’t no ticket!” Janks said, piping up. “Why d’you think he’s ’ere!”

Woah
… went the crowd because the man was levelling the gun at Janks’s head now, no more waving it about.

“Shh,” he said.

Bully got himself to the corner of the pit to look at Jack. She was whimpering, licking her wounds. Her back leg was crushed and mangled and there was a long pink tear in her cheek, like she was showing her teeth and grinning. Bully stroked the top of her head because her fur was torn and grazed across her back and ribs.

“Yeah. I won it… I got it,” he said, his voice squeaking in the empty space, making him sound like a little kid.

“So where’s the
tic-ket
?” said the man with the gun, tapping the word out with the end of the barrel.

Bully looked back to the man. “I ain’t got it.” And the barrel shifted towards his chest and he pushed Jack back into what bit of shadow there was behind him. “
She’s
got it. It’s in her
collar
.”

“He’s havin’ you on!” yelled Janks. “There ain’t no ticket! Shoot ’im! Shoot the
little
—” And the gunman flipped his pistol in the air, caught it and clubbed Janks with the stock, flooring him.

“Now, Goldy… You see this puppy?” he said, still talking with his gun. “Now you tell me lies and I’m putting a hole in your dog. And then you keep on telling me more lies, I put one in you? Understand?”

“It’s in her collar. I hid it. I hid it in her collar.” Bully looked to Janks and watched his life, the one he
could
have had – the one with millions in it – blaze up and die in front of his eyes. Whatever happened to Bully now, he was glad.

“
Arigh’
, now we getting somewhere… Out the way, boy,” said the man with the gun and took aim at Jack. When Bully didn’t move he adjusted his aim a little and closed one eye, like he didn’t
really
want to hit a boy but it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world. And then he lowered his pistol.