Devil You Know (4 page)

“I keep telling you. You shouldn’t have anything to do with her,” Baz said as we ran. “She’s not right in the head.”

He had never liked her. Just as she didn’t like him. I didn’t want to remind him that I did like her. And she was in my class at school – hard to ignore her. So I said nothing. I said nothing because I was always afraid to annoy Baz. I can see that now.

There was no time to talk about Lucie anyway. There were other things on our minds.

We caught up with the rest of the boys at the precinct. “So where to tonight, boys?” Baz called to them.

“It’s a nice night, ’mon we’ll go for a walk,” Gary suggested.

“Opposite direction from the bridge,” Claude said.

“I second that,” said Mickey, and Ricky barked with approval.

Baz was more annoyed than the rest of us that there were areas out of bounds. “Why should that be? This is a free country, ain’t it?”

Gary shrugged. “It’s just the way it is around here. Boys from the Drago in my class, they won’t even sit in the same group as the Gardy Boys.”

Baz snorted.

“Drago?” I asked. “Gardy Boys? Where do they get these names?”

“Maybe they didn’t have enough spray left in their cans for the ‘n’. They really wanted to be called ‘the Dragons’.”

Gary laughed. “Sometimes you say the craziest things, Logan.”

“These gangs get better by the minute.”

“Nothing funny about them though,” Claude said. “Dragos are nearly
as bad as the Young Bow.”

“But not quite,” Mickey said. “Nobody’s as bad as the Young Bow.”

“Anybody for getting that bus… the one that takes us to the community centre?” Gary said it warily, his eyes darting around to check out what people thought. It was Baz who answered him.

“I can just imagine us sitting on the bus, and passing that bunch we had the fight with. That would really give them a laugh, eh? ‘Ooo, there’s them wee boys on the bus.’”

I had to admit he was right about that. We would just look stupid. Finally, the other boys agreed.

“There must be some place we can go.”

“There’s a few other gangs we’ve got to avoid.”

Baz kicked the wall. “Aw, come on. More no-go areas.”

Mickey laughed. “No, we’re safe here. This is Drago territory. Arch enemies of the Young Bow. Young Bow would never risk coming in here.”

“This town ain’t big enough for both of us.” Baz had us laughing with his American accent.

“There really is nothing to do in this dump,” Claude moaned.

“We could go swimming. There’s a good swimming pool here,” Gary suggested. “And I don’t think this place is a dump. It’s getting better. All these new houses being built. This is a great estate. The people are terrific. They stick by each other, they’re kind.” That was something I really liked about Gary. He always saw the best in people. While I looked at the gutter, he saw only stars.

Baz didn’t laugh. “Swimming?” he sneered, as if Gary had suggested ballet dancing. I wondered then if maybe Baz couldn’t swim, and he didn’t want to tell us. I wouldn’t have blamed him. I couldn’t swim either, the doggy paddle was the best I could do. I’d be mortified if the rest of them had wanted to go swimming. But a moment later it seemed I was wrong about Baz.

“I used to swim all the time. Used to love it,” Baz went on. “Diving,
got medals as well.” I’d never known that. “But here,” and now he sneered again. “Bunch of amateurs here. Weans splashing about. Old men farting in the water.”

“Maybe if you had your own private pool it would be different, eh?” Gary said, and I wondered was he being sarcastic?

“I will one day,” Baz said. He said it as if he meant it.

Just then, a boy I didn’t recognise came hurrying up to us. “Hi Gary, Mickey…”

“What’s up, Tadge?”

“You lot better be careful. Word on the street is the Young Bow are looking for you.” He included us all in the ‘you’. “You better watch your backs.”

We were all alert in a second. “Tonight?”

Tadge nodded.

“Are they coming here?”

He nodded again.

“How come they can come here, but we can’t go there?” I asked.

“This is rubbish!” Baz spat on the ground.

This Tadge looked around, almost as if he expected the Young Bow to suddenly rush from between the shops, armed and ready for battle. “Just watch yourself, Gary. If I hear anything, I’ll let you know.”

“They said they’d get us,” Gary said. “And now they’re coming. What do we do?”

“Run!” Claude said. He would have been off if Gary hadn’t held him back.

“I’m going home.” Mickey was always the first to leave the sinking ship. Him and his dog.

Baz stood up. “So, we just hide in our houses till they go away?”

Mickey only thought about it for a moment. “Sounds like a good idea to me.”

“And tomorrow night… if they come back? What do we do then?”

Even Gary saw the sense in that. “They’re going to just keep coming back.”

“I’m not going to fight with the Young Bow,” Claude was shaking his head. “Once was enough for me. We don’t do fighting.”

“None of us wants a fight with them,” I agreed.

They were coming to get us. I imagined them, like the villains in an old cowboy movie, a line of them heading our way.

“So tell me, smart alec. What do we do? Face up to them, fight them, get taken home again in a cop car? Or… run back home and hide under the bed?”

“We should never have gone there the other night,” Claude said.

“And if we hide, we’ll get a reputation. Cowards.” This was Gary.

I shook my head. “There has to be another way, something else we could do.”

It seemed we were trapped. No matter what we did, we were done for.

We were all silent for a moment, trying to think up a way out of this that wouldn’t involve blood being shed. Our blood.

Baz stood up, a big smile spread across his face. He snapped his fingers. “I think I might have an idea. And if it works… our troubles will be over.”

We had all listened to Baz’s idea, our mouths hanging open – at least that was the way I imagined it. What he was suggesting was dangerous, and could end up getting us into even more trouble. But he was right, if it worked…

So here we were, doing exactly as he wanted us to do. We had talked about it, discussed it, argued about it and finally decided to just go for it. Or had Baz decided for us? I’m still not sure.

We had to ask this Tadge to help us. He had come out of the takeaway and Gary had called him over. Told him what we needed him to do. He was up for it, but only if Gary would put in a good word for him with a girl in their class. Then we had waited at the shops for Mickey while he ran home with his dog. To be honest, none of us had been sure if he would ever come back.

But he did. He looked nervous and he was shouting as he ran towards us, “They’re heading here. A couple of boys told me. Does Tadge know what he’s got to do?”

Gary held up his phone. “He’s just texted me. He’s done it.”

Mickey was looking back as if he expected the Young Bow to be running at his heels. “We’ve got to move.”

Baz held us his hands. “Right, we know exactly what we’re doing?” He looked around at us. We all nodded.

It was Gary who had decided where we should go. He knew the estate better than anybody. “We know where we’re heading, don’t we?” His phone buzzed then. He checked it. “That’s Tadge just texted me again. The Young Bow are crossing the bridge.”

My heart drummed in my chest. “Ok, let’s go.”

We didn’t run. I think I remember that more than anything. Now that we had a plan, we moved confidently. I can picture it in my mind still, and I love how we walked, a line of us, like… like the Magnificent Seven. Ever seen that movie? Ok, there weren’t seven of us, but the feeling was the same.

My legs shook though. We weren’t running away from the Young Bow. We were heading straight for them. It was dangerous, and exciting at the same time. Gary was up there with Baz, they knew exactly where they were going. Me and Mickey and Claude followed behind.

We saw them in the distance, the Young Bow. I still thought they looked stupid. Trying to be so cool in black leather and studs, trying too hard. They stopped dead when they saw us.

“Heard we were coming, did you?” the leader, this guy Fury, shouted at us. His lip curled up in a sneer.

It was Baz who spoke for us. And what he said made my legs shake even more. “Is that you, Furry? Didn’t recognise you under all that gel.”

Fury’s eyes went wild. “It’s Fury! Fury!” he yelled at Baz.

Baz answered him, cool as could be. “I think Furry suits you better.”

If I hadn’t been so scared, I think I would have laughed.

Furry – can’t call him anything else now – turned to his gang: “Get them!”

Before he had even finished saying it, we had turned and were running like crazy.

I heard one of them shout behind us, “Aye run, but we’re going to get you anyway!”

We kept close, the five of us. We knew where we were going, at least Gary did. The Young Bow didn’t.

“What if they catch us?” Claude whispered breathlessly. He could never run as fast as the rest of us.

“Then we fight,” I told him. “If that’s what we’ve got to do. We fight. We
don’t leave anybody. I promise.”

And Baz agreed with me right away. He turned and yelled, “All for one…”

Gary finished for him, “And every man for himself.”

So I ran with Claude, behind the rest. I had promised him I’d stay with him, and I wasn’t going to let him down. Even when I could hear the Young Bow closing in, and Claude stumbled beside me, I didn’t run on ahead.

We ran through streets, and up lanes, and climbed over walls, and finally burst into open ground where houses had been demolished and new builds would soon spring up. The Young Bow were close behind us, and the chase was only making them mad. “Turn and fight!” they were all yelling.

We didn’t waste our breath answering them. I glanced at Claude, he was breathing heavy, his face bubbled with sweat. “You can make it, Claude,” I whispered.

“We’re nearly there,” Gary shouted. Now we were back among canyons of tenements and lock-ups and warehouses. “Round the next corner. Up here.”

He held up his hand and waved in the direction we were to go, and we all followed him. We found ourselves in an alley. There were lock-up garages on one side, and a big empty warehouse on the other. Signs plastered all over the walls and windows:

And in front of us, brick wall. We had run into a dead end.

Gary and Baz and Mickey were already there, standing in front of the brick wall, facing us.

“Good for you, Logan,” Gary shouted, when he saw I had paced it with Claude. And even in that moment when I was so scared, I felt proud.

“Hey, we made it, Claude.” I took his arm to help him on those last few
steps.

When we reached the others, Claude stopped. He bent over, hands on his knees, trying to get his breath back. He glanced up at me and smiled. “Thanks, Logan. I’ll not forget that.”

We were all waiting, standing in a line, when the Young Bow came into view. Fury let out a yell of triumph, “Rats in a trap!” He pointed all round the alley. “You ran into a dead end. You idiots. Nowhere to run now, boys!”

They all laughed, Fury and his gang, sure there was nothing we could do.

We were trapped.

And then, as if they had all the time in the world, the Young Bow started walking up the alley towards us, one slow, menacing step at a time.

And at that moment, behind them, another group of boys arrived. Skidding round the corner into the alley, forming at once into a line and looking every bit as menacing as the Young Bow. The Dragos had come.

“Guess who’s caught in a trap noo, Fury?” one of them called out.

Fury swung round. He looked at them and back to us, then back to them again. He was puzzled. They were all puzzled.

That had been the plan all along. Baz’s brilliant plan. The Young Bow might have thought they were chasing us, but actually, we had been leading them. Leading them into an ambush.

Gary had told Tadge where we would run to, the dead end where the Dragos could find their archenemies, and Tadge had let the Dragos know our plan.

We didn’t wait to see what happened next, though we heard about it later. Turned into a running battle through the streets of the estate. Baz was on the roof of one of the lock-ups as soon as Fury’s back was turned, and then in the same moment Gary was up there too, jumping on a wooden crate that had been left lying about, helping each of us in turn. They were taller than the rest of us; Mickey, Claude and I could never have made it up there on our own. And then we were off, running over the roofs of the lock-ups, and leaping back down onto the ground, out of sight. As we ran we could hear yells and shouts in the distance. The fight had begun.

“That was brilliant!” Gary’s face was red with excitement. “It worked.”

“I didn’t think it would,” Mickey said. “I was sure they’d catch us.”

“You were in front of everybody else, wee man,” I told him. “I’ve never
seen you run so fast.”

“It’s called terror. I’ve never been so scared.”

We stopped for a moment to catch our breath. We couldn’t stop laughing and going over it again and again. “Furry! Where did you come up with that one?”

Baz was laughing. “He’ll never be called anything else from now on.”

“Furry of the Young Bow!”

“Hey,” Baz began to run again, and we all followed him. “I’ve got a great idea.”

“Another one!” Claude shouted.

We followed him to one of the underpasses, where I had seen the graffiti earlier.

Baz picked up a piece of slate from the ground and began scraping it against the wall, using it to add one more letter.

“What are you doing?” Gary asked him.

Baz didn’t answer. He stepped back when he was finished. And when we saw what he had scrawled, we all laughed.

He’ll know that was you, Baz,
I almost said. But I didn’t. Our mood was so great. Was it adrenalin? We felt we had been clever and smart and I didn’t want the feeling to end.

That night, for the first time, I really felt like one of the gang. Claude slapping me on the back, thanking me. Gary grinning at me. A grin that said I’d done good. I had a feeling of belonging I had never had before.