Mosi's War (3 page)

‘This means trouble for us,’ Mosi’s father said.

Mosi agreed. The media made things worse, calling this a grim estate, talking of racist attacks, all this would stir up bad feeling when the majority of them – asylum seekers and the local people – just wanted to keep their heads down. Live quietly. Like Mosi and his parents. And so many of the people here had been helpful and kind. People had offered them furniture, clothes, even food. There were a lot of good people here. But of course, that didn’t make such a good story for the media.

Mosi had a tight knot in his stomach. Fear. He recognised it. Had felt it so often before. Something inside him was warning him, bad things were coming. And he didn’t know how to avoid them.

After dinner he stood at the window. Looked out over the grey concrete concourse. Black clouds hung so low over the tops of the flats it seemed he could reach out and sink his hands into them. It had begun to rain hard, hitting against the glass like needles. It
was
a grim estate, Mosi agreed, thunder-grey skies, dark stone, cold winds. Not like his own country – cornflower-blue sky, the hot sun.

But there was no homesickness in him. He missed the sun, but that was all. Even hemmed in by all this grey concrete he felt safer here, safer than he could ever remember.

Yet, he knew he wasn’t safe. Would he ever be?

A figure ran out of the flats and across the concourse. A boy, his maroon hood pulled over his head. He stopped for a minute waiting for a car to pass before he crossed the street. For a moment he turned and looked up. Almost as if he was looking up at Mosi. Instinctively, Mosi stepped back from the window. The figure was Patrick.

Chapter 7

‘Here’s wee Patrick.’ Cody was waiting for him by the betting shop. He was surrounded by a group of boys. Some Patrick knew, some he didn’t. ‘Are you up for it, Patrick?’

Patrick stopped in his tracks, spread his arms wide. ‘Ready for anything, me.’

That wasn’t completely true. Sometimes Cody got up to things Patrick didn’t want to take part in – smashing the chip-shop windows came to mind, or the night they set fire to one of the derelict buildings on the estate. But once he’d started running with Cody’s gang, it was hard to say no. And Cody liked him, Patrick was sure of it. He made Cody laugh, and not a lot of people could say that. Most important for Patrick, he had somewhere to go at night, people to share things with. It was always exciting, and Patrick liked exciting.

‘We’re going to the underpass,’ Cody said, pulling Patrick on.

‘The underpass?’ Patrick was already running alongside him.

‘They’ve cleaned it up. Fresh walls just waiting for us.’

No one ever used the underpass, not at night. It was a short cut under the dual carriageway, leading from the estate to the retail park on the other side of the road. But at night, people would rather take the long way, use the pedestrian crossings, or cross over the bridge. Some people even used the old cemetery that stretched right up behind the estate as a short cut. Safer than the underpass at night-time. The lights were always broken. People had been mugged in there. Only recently a headless cat had been found hanging by its feet, its blood dripping on the ground. That had caused quite a stir. Some people blamed the asylum seekers, especially the African ones. Convinced it had something to do with the voodoo rituals they must have brought from their own countries. Others blamed the gangs of boys who roamed the estate at night, trying to cause trouble. Gangs like Cody’s, or his older brother’s.

Only one dim light was working. It gave the underpass an eerie glow. But even in this semi-darkness Patrick could see that Cody was right. The underpass had been cleaned up. The walls had been freshly painted white – ready and waiting. Patrick couldn’t help feeling excited. There was something about a blank wall that made his heart beat faster. Did that mean there was something wrong with him? He would never tell anyone how much he enjoyed this. He had a talent, he knew he did. A talent his teachers didn’t appreciate, a talent his mother had never noticed. But Cody had. That was maybe why he wanted Patrick with him on these nights when they roamed the estate, painting anonymous messages on walls, leaving trails and signs behind them.

Cody turned to him. ‘Come on, wee man, do your stuff. Something about that guy falling off the roof, eh? I mean, you saw it. Draw what it looked like, eh? Go on.’

Patrick had already taken out his can, but he felt his hand tremble. He tried to say no. He didn’t want to draw that. He wanted to shake the image away. Cody held his gaze, daring him to defy him.

‘Got a problem wi’ that?’

Patrick hesitated for only a second longer. Cody’s minions were all around him, waiting for his answer. He tried to sound cool and casual. ‘Who knows better than me what it looked like?’

And he began to spray in swirls and turns. He was impressed himself by the way he could capture a picture. The others watched him in admiration for a moment then they took out their cans and began to spray too, but to Patrick they were just vandals. He, however, was an artist. So, it wasn’t too bad what he was doing, was it?

But when he began to paint the figure falling, his hand froze, he felt his whole body go cold. He couldn’t go on.

Cody stopped his spraying, watched him. ‘What’s the matter?’

Patrick took a deep breath. ‘I’m an artist, Cody. Gotta get it right, you know?’

Cody laughed. So did Patrick. But he felt cold inside as he finished the picture, drew the man, his arms wide, sailing through the air, going down. He stepped back. It was good, yet he felt that something was missing. Something that should be there, and he couldn’t quite remember what that something was.

‘Fantastic!’ Cody bowed in front of him. ‘You’re a master, Patrick. A master.’

The other boys howled their appreciation. Patrick felt good. Couldn’t help it. Who else gave him compliments like this?

‘Come on,’ he said, taking charge for once. ‘We better go. We’ll get caught in a minute.’

Cody held him back. ‘Just one more thing, the finishing touch.’ Cody bent to the bottom of the wall, began spraying again. Patrick stiffened. He was going to spoil his work. Then Cody took a step back. He was laughing.

‘There!’ he said. ‘Now it’s perfect.’

And Patrick saw what he had added, and his blood ran cold.

Too bad it was only one

The other boys laughed. Patrick didn’t. ‘Bad idea, Cody. That’ll cause trouble.’

That only made Cody laugh louder. ‘Big deal, who cares?’

There was a sound at the other end of the underpass. Someone was coming. Patrick looked up. A huge black shadow seemed to fill the whole entrance. Cody pushed him. ‘Time to go,’ he said, and he began to run. Patrick took one last look at the painting, at the words written underneath. Yes, they were going to cause trouble.

And then he ran, following the other boys out back on to the estate.

Patrick had nightmares that night. His dreams were filled with them. Again and again, he saw that man falling, imagined his face, close against his own, as if Patrick too was falling alongside him in free fall. But they had no parachute.

‘I don’t want to die,’ the man was saying. He reached out and grabbed at Patrick’s hands, but he didn’t want to die either and he pulled his hands away and the man was crying and screaming, ‘Help me, please. Help me.’ And he fell past Patrick, and instead of falling, Patrick rose like a bird, rose to the sky so he could see the very top of the tower block. He drew his eyes away from the falling man. So he missed, even in his nightmare, the sight of him hitting the ground.

Chapter 8

‘Did you hear about what was drawn on the underpass?’ Hakim asked Mosi as soon as he stepped through the school gates. Hakim was one of the other asylum seekers, an Iraqi, from Baghdad. A little older than Mosi, he was tough and hard and unafraid. He refused to step back from any fight. Mosi always kept well away from Hakim. Hakim asked again, his voice angrier. ‘The underpass; did you hear what’s been painted in it?’

Mosi had heard. He’d heard it muttered and whispered in the lift of the tower block, in snatches of conversation as he walked to school. ‘I’ve heard,’ he said.

‘They’re out to get us, Mosi. We have to stand up to them. We have to stand together.’

There were boys behind Hakim, watching for Mosi’s reaction. Waiting for his answer. They despised him. Mosi knew that. He didn’t care. His answer was softly spoken, but firm. ‘Better let it pass.’

Hakim’s eyes flashed in anger. ‘Let it pass?’ He turned to his friends, no, not friends, they were for the most part, afraid to go against Hakim. ‘Do you hear this dog?’

They all began muttering in anger, their fury aimed at Mosi. ‘We’re not going to let them walk over us,’ one of the boys shouted.

Hakim pushed Mosi in the chest. He stumbled back. ‘There was blood smeared all over that graffiti. I hope that was a message to whoever did it. A warning. Something bad will happen to them.’

Hakim looked over at Cody and his mates when he said that. Cody stared him down.

Then Hakim turned his attention back to Mosi. He pushed him again, and this time Mosi almost fell. He only just kept his balance. Still Mosi said nothing. Hakim spat on the ground. ‘Coward!’ he said. He beckoned his gang on with a nod of his head. ‘Come on, leave him be. He’s not worth the trouble.’

Mosi stood alone. He saw Cody and his mates sniggering at him. Bliss and her friends were watching him with something like pity in their eyes. He hoped she didn’t come over. He wished all of them would just let him alone.

Patrick could feel the tension in the school. Everyone was talking about the graffiti in the underpass and the words written beneath it. He was sure they all knew it was him who had drawn that falling man, though any talent he had for drawing had never been noticed in school. Yet he was certain they were all watching him, whispering about him, waiting for him to scribble on a notepad, or scratch on a desk. He hoped no one would believe he could have written those awful words.

He should have stopped Cody doing that. In his mind he had. He had stood up to him, held him back from writing those words. If this had been a movie, that’s what he would have done. But would it have made any difference? Or was the image he had drawn bad enough?

But the blood? They had had nothing to do with that. It had only made it worse. He remembered the figure in the underpass, that giant black shadow. Had he added the blood? And why would anyone do that?

‘Blinkin’ voodoo, that’s what my dad says,’ Cody insisted, and the others, apart from Patrick, all agreed with him.

It made Patrick sick to think of it. He’d never go out and draw any graffiti again, he promised himself. He shivered, remembering his dreams, his night terrors. He’d hardly slept.

But a moment later, when Cody had looked across the playground at him, and winked, what had he done? He had winked back.

Bliss, of course, noticed it. ‘What are you winking at him for?’ She came right up to Patrick. ‘You don’t really want him for a mate, do you?’

‘Maybe I just had something in my eye,’ Patrick said coolly.

‘You should keep back from him, Patrick,’ she said.

‘Wait a minute, are you actually going to say something bad about Cody?’

One thing about Bliss, she always found something good to say about everybody.

She shrugged. ‘I just don’t think him and you are a good mix. Did you hear about that graffiti?’

Did his face go red? He was sure it did.

Bliss was furious about that. ‘That was terrible. How can people be that cruel? That poor man had a family.’

‘Did he?’

‘He had a brother, but he disappeared a couple of weeks ago, scared he was getting sent home. But he would have family back home . . . where was it he came from? Somalia, I think.’

Bliss would know. Her dad did a lot to help the asylum seekers on the estate. A lot of people didn’t like him for that.

He hadn’t thought of the man having a family, a brother, a mother. It made him feel even worse.

‘Doesn’t Mosi come from Somalia?’ he said.

‘It’s a big country. He says he didn’t know him.’

‘Wouldn’t admit it if he did,’ Patrick said, his eyes watching Mosi, who was standing in a corner, alone.

‘Anyway, I think whoever did it should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves.’

‘I agree,’ Patrick said, and he meant it, because he did feel ashamed.

‘It’s gone already anyway. The council had workers out this morning, cleaning it up.’

Gone already, but not before the television, the papers, photographers had their chance to capture the image for the evening news.

And by that evening, Patrick’s handiwork was all over the TV.

And the blood.

Chapter 9

There was a man and a woman in the flat when Mosi got home. Mosi recognised the woman. She’d been to the flat before. Rose Myer. She was from some group who were meant to help asylum seekers – but all she seemed to do was to tell them how miserable they should be; how grim the estate was; how little hope they had. She was the most miserable woman Mosi had ever met. And here she was again, dragging misery along with her like a suitcase on wheels.