Num8ers (18 page)

I had a big lump in my throat. He’d got this all in his head, what he wanted for us. Christ, it wasn’t much, was it? But we’d never have it. We’d never have even that. I started to cry. They were hot tears of frustration and longing, tears of hatred for the ticking clock.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m so sorry. I never meant for any of this to happen. I never meant for you to get scared. You’re right, Jem. It’s only money. We’ll get some more. Let her go,” he said to Tattoo Face, “and you can have your money.”

“Yeah, right, soft lad. I wasn’t born yesterday. Give me the money and I’ll let her go.”

“We’ll do it together, yeah?”

“No, you’ll give me the money,” Tattoo Face said evenly, “and then I’ll let her go.”

Knowing Spider, I knew what was coming next. I could see it all in my head in slow motion, but Tattoo Face couldn’t. He let out a great cry of dismay as Spider got the money out of the envelope, took the rubber band off, drew his hand way back, and then flung it up and forward, launching the roll into the sky.

Tattoo Face’s grip slackened. He dropped the knife, dropped me, and hurtled down the embankment to the railway track.

I ran toward Spider and we met halfway. He gathered me into him, pressing me into his chest, clutching at my hair.

“It’s alright. I’ve got you. I’ve got you, Jem.” His voice was thick, he wasn’t far from tears himself. “Let’s get out of here. Leave him to it.”

The air was full of money. The pound notes were still falling all around us as we picked our way up the embankment. I looked back at Tattoo Face, bent over, picking up note after note. You could tell he was mad, really mad, muttering to himself as he puffed and panted his way along, facedown.

Spider had both arms around me. When we got to the top of the slope, he helped me over the fence again. I waited for him to join me, but he was standing there, one hand on the railings.

“Come on, let’s get away from here,” I said.

He looked over his shoulder. I groaned.

“No, please, leave it. It’s only money.”

“Just a hundred quid, Jem. Think what we could do with a hundred.”

I reached through the railings and grabbed his sleeve.

“Spider, don’t.”

He unwound my fingers and kissed them.

“I’ll be back in one minute,” he said and started back down the slope.

“Spider, no! No!” I screamed. He was down on the tracks now. Tattoo Face looked up at him.

“Come back for more, have you?”

“I just want a little bit. My cut — it’s mine, anyway.”

“You’re not having any, you little shit. You go back to your girlfriend, right now, or I’ll give you a good hiding.”

Spider squared up to him. “I’m not frightened of you.”

“Funny, that’s what your gran said when I paid her a visit.”

“You what?”

“I just wanted to know where you were. Bit of information. She wasn’t very cooperative, your gran. Gave me a bit of lip, just like you. Still, she wasn’t saying anything by the time I left her….”

“You bastard! What have you done to her?” Spider launched himself straight at him, charging head down into his stomach. He knocked Tattoo Face off his feet, and they rolled together
down the embankment onto the tracks. They were tumbling around, wrestling and landing real punches on each other with the sickening noise of flesh slamming into flesh. Behind their animal grunts and groans, there was other noise building up in the background: the rumbling of a distant train, and sirens, lots of them, getting nearer and nearer.

“Spider!” I screamed. “Just get away from him! Get away!” I don’t know if he heard me.

Suddenly, there was so much happening at once. Two police cars and a van swung into the road, screeched to a halt, and spewed out teams of uniforms. They swarmed over the fence. Two feet down the track, a train came into view, rattling along blindly.

“Spider, get out
now
!” My voice was impossibly thin against the chaos around me. He didn’t hear, or he wasn’t listening. I couldn’t watch. I turned away and sank down to the ground, knees hugged in, eyes tight shut.

All around me people were shouting and screaming. There was an earsplitting squeal as the driver of the train rammed on the brakes. It seemed to go on for hours. I waited until the noise stopped. I would have to look: I needed to know. I tried to make myself breathe — three breaths in, three breaths out — before I turned around.

Through the railings, I could see the train. It had ground to a halt with the last car level with where I sat. The police had Tattoo Face in an armlock. He was still putting up a fight, even with three of them trying to get him under control. There was
no sign of Spider — without wanting to, my eyes scanned along the track under the train. The police were obviously thinking the same as me — some of them were walking along beside the end cars, peering underneath. My mouth was dry. “Oh, please, no,” I breathed to myself.

There was movement on the far embankment, something scuttling from bush to bush. I thought it was an animal at first, then glimpsed it again. It was a person on hands and knees: It was Spider.

He was making his way up the slope and away to the right. When the bushes ran out, he got down on his stomach and crawled on his elbows. I got to my feet and started walking along the road in the same direction. I was limping, but I didn’t notice the pain. I kept my eyes on Spider, and soon enough I caught him looking over toward me. I gave him the thumbs-up and he mirrored me. At the top of the embankment now, he scrambled to his feet and vaulted over the fence.

Below him, someone shouted out, “Oi! That’s the other one! Stop him!”

Spider broke into a run and I did, too — well, as much of a run as I could manage. We ran parallel to each other for a while, and then he disappeared from view, hidden by a wooden fence. We caught up with each other at a road bridge a few hundred feet farther on. He grabbed my hand, and we went for it, blindly running wherever our legs took us.

We had nothing to carry anymore, nothing to slow us down, and adrenaline was surging through us again. After a few twists and turns, we found our way into a park. This was better: only a few people around, a couple of old ladies with their dogs. We walked along the paths, looking for somewhere to hide. Spider kept sending me into gaps in the bushes.

“Go in there and have a look.”

“You do it!”

“Don’t be like that. You’re smaller than me. Go and check it out.”

I got ready to squeeze my way in, moving the branches out of my face. “People like you sent people like me up chimneys a hundred years ago. Just ‘cause I’m small,” I called behind me.

“No, mate, people like that woman who gave us a lift would have had us both cleaning her house, or polishing her shoes, or wiping her arse. ’Specially me. I’d have been someone’s slave.”

Point taken.

That opening was no good, but we found one a couple of minutes later. If you bent down and ducked under the bushes with thick rubbery leaves, there was a space behind, next to
an old wall. It was big enough for us both to sit down and the ground was dry. No one could see us. We would be alright here for a bit.

We sat down next to each other, our backs leaning against the wall. The instant my butt hit the ground, all the strength went out of me. I was so, so tired. I closed my eyes.

“Ciggy?”

“No. Nothing.” I didn’t want to think, or feel, or see things anymore. I didn’t want to run or to hide.

“You alright?” His voice came to me through a thick fog. I’d nearly fallen asleep, just in that instant. I opened my eyes.

“I’m just tired.” He put his arm ’round me, pulled me in toward him.

“Did you hear what that bastard said?”

“About your nan?”

“Yeah. I should’ve killed him, Jem, while I had the chance. I was so mad, I just went for him. I forgot about my blade — should’ve pulled that and finished him there and then.”

“What good would that have done? Killing him? It would’ve just meant more trouble for you.”

“I don’t care. He don’t deserve nothing different for what he done. He had no right…”

“I know. But I’m glad you didn’t. Anyway, he—” I was going to say,
Anyway, he’s going to die today,
but I stopped myself just in time. Surely, if Tattoo Face was going to die, it would have happened; Spider would’ve knifed him, or he would have split his
head open on the rail when they were wrestling, or the train would’ve hit him. I was certain I’d seen his number, certain it was today. I didn’t get it. I wasn’t sure anymore — were the numbers just in my head or were they real? If I’d just made them up, that was cool — I could ignore them, try to change them, whatever. I could stop the clock ticking Spider’s life away. If they were real, though, that meant Spider’s nan was OK — she had years to go. It was getting all muddled up in my head. Whatever the truth of it, though, there was one way I could comfort Spider.

“I think she’ll be OK, your nan.”

“Really? I don’t even know if she’s still alive.”

I turned around to face him. “Spider, I know she’ll be OK.”

“Because of her number?”

“Yeah.”

“But what if you’re not the only one to see numbers? What if someone else sees completely different ones? What if her number’s changed?”

“They don’t.” I hesitated, checking Spider’s number again — yeah, it was still there, still the same. “They don’t change.”

“So, the date we’ll die is set from the minute we’re born. Is that what you’re saying?”

He was starting to piss me off now. I was trying to make him feel better, and he was giving me the third degree. Questions I didn’t have answers for.

“I’m not saying anything.” I couldn’t keep the irritation out of my voice. “You’re the one saying it all.”

“But I want you to say it, ‘cause it doesn’t make any sense to me.”

“What?”

“How everything is fixed for us. It’s like it don’t matter what I do because the end will be the same.”

“P’raps that’s how it is. Things happen.” I wanted him to stop it, but he was like a dog with a bone.

“So everything’s preset? It’s all meant to be?”

“I dunno.”

“That bomb was meant to go off. That bastard was meant to beat up my nan. That’s not right, Jem, is it? That can’t be right.” He was raising his voice now. He’d taken his arm away from me and was waving it around. He seemed bigger than ever in this confined space.

“’Course it’s not right.”

“It don’t make any sense.” A bit of his spit hit my face. He was well worked up.

“That’s what I’m saying.”

“What?”

“Nothing makes any sense. Nothing means anything. You’re born, you live, you die. That’s it.” My philosophy in a nutshell.

That shut him up for a while. We sat, side by side, backs against the wall, both of us with our arms folded. But while I was still, Spider was shaking his head back and forth — it
made his whole body move, his shoulder joggling into mine. Knowing, as I did now, how still he could be when he was happy and relaxed, it was disturbing to see him so agitated. He was out of his mind with worry. It felt like my fault. I wanted to reach him; I wanted to take his distress away.

“Spider, listen. Maybe I’m wrong.” I was scared of what I was about to say. The words crept out of me like quiet little mice.

He was still shaking away, caught up in his own dark, mad world. I sat up on my knees, facing him, and put my hands on both his shoulders. “Spider.” He couldn’t hear me. I moved my hands up to his face, held him firmly, slowing but not stopping his movement.

“What I said. That’s not right, either.” At last he was listening. His face was still and he looked up at me, his eyes haunted and sad.

“Why not?”

“It’s not all random. It can’t be.” I took a deep breath. “Because I was meant to meet you, and you were meant to meet me.”

His eyes filled with tears. Without saying a word he unwound his arms from around his ribcage and wrapped them around my waist, burying his face in my shoulder. Kneeling there, I held him to me, and stroked him, his back and his hair, and we cried together. There were no words to say what we were feeling; the tears said it for us — terror, relief, love, and grief, all mixed into the salt.

Later, much later, we disentangled ourselves and sat up. It was getting dark, and in our leafy cave I could only see Spider as a vague shape now.

“We need to get out of here, Jem,” Spider said. “We couldn’t have brought more attention to ourselves if we’d bloody tried earlier on.”

“Yeah, I know.” I had no energy left. My hand was hurting, my knee was hurting. I didn’t want to be found, but it would be so easy just to curl up here in Spider’s arms and wait for the inevitable.

“The best way to get out of here fast is to get another car.”

“And then what?”

“Drive to Weston. We must be bloody close now. You’ll love it.” Even in the dark, I could tell he was smiling again. I wanted to feel it with him, I really did, but I couldn’t. I felt cold inside, miserable, scared.

“What are we gonna do at Weston, Spider? They’ve got TV and newspapers there, too, you know, and police and sniffer dogs and —”

He put one of his long fingers up to my lips. “I told you. We’re gonna eat ice cream and fish and chips and walk along the pier.” He was saying it like he believed it. Perhaps he did.

I gently took hold of the hand that was shushing me and laid it on my open left palm, softly tracing along his bony fingers with my other hand.

“What you doing?”

“Nothing. You’ve got lovely hands.”

“You’re soft in the head, you are.” He leaned across and kissed me tenderly. “OK,” he said, like his mind was suddenly made up. “I know you’re tired, so you stay here and be ready to run when I come back for you. I’ll find us some wheels, don’t worry. I won’t be long.” He started to crawl out from under the branches.

“Spider.”

“What?”

“Be careful.”

“’Course. Be ready, OK? I’ll only be a few minutes.” And he was gone, the branches swishing for a minute where he’d pushed his way through. I watched as their movement slowed and stopped. And I sat in the gathering dark, and waited.