Double Cross (6 page)

The summer morning was already blindingly bright and
blazing hot with a promise of a lot more sunshine to
come. A heat haze rose up from the pavement, creating a
muddled urban mirage of shimmering skyscapes and
flickering, glistening buildings. To be honest, I was already
sick of the heat. Roll on autumn. I pulled the strap of my
rucksack further up my arm to rest upon my shoulder.
The thing was heavy and uncomfortable and made me
walk with my whole body tilted to one side. But that
wasn't why I was in a bad mood.

Breakfast with Mum and Jessica had been bad enough.
But then Callie had let me down. She must've decided to
walk to school by herself today, in spite of telling me last
night that she'd knock for me. I was so used to going to
school with Callie that when it didn't happen, it felt
strange, like I'd set foot out of my house and forgotten
something vital.

But I shouldn't have been surprised. More often than
not these days, Callie was a silent companion. Since
her nana had died, she'd changed. According to the
newspaper reports, some anonymous Nought guy had
died in the explosion as well. The authorities didn't
seem to be straining themselves to establish his identity.
Or maybe it'd been reported on page thirty-odd of
the dead guy's local newspaper and hadn't managed to
make it any further up the 'does-anyone-give-a-damn?'
scale.

What had happened in that hotel the day Jasmine
Hadley died? Was she really so unlucky as to be in the
wrong place at the wrong time? Was life really that arbitrary?
It would appear so.

An executive jet-black WMW – known as 'white man's
wheels' – pulled up alongside me, its back window gliding
down in expensive silence.

'Tobey Durbridge, isn't it?'

I stepped back, pulling my rucksack closer to my
side. The WMW before me was almost limousine-like
in its proportions. It had to be custom-made. The alloy
hubcaps had been polished to a high shine and I could
see my distorted reflection in them. I took another
step back, as did my reflection. We both had the same
idea.

A Nought man's face moved into view. I recognized
him at once. Alex McAuley. Aka Creepy McAuley (only
ever said behind his back) or Softly McAuley (occasionally
said to his face by close friends only) because he could be
kicking your head in and he'd never once raise his voice.
No one – as far as I knew – had ever heard him shout. He
didn't need to. His dark-grey suit covered a middleweight
boxer's physique. He was still in shape, even though he
was in his mid thirties. He wore his blond hair swept
back off his face. His light-brown eyebrows framed hard,
ice-blue eyes. The single yellow diamond stud he wore
in his left ear twinkled like a giggle in the morning
sunlight. He smiled at me, pulling back thin lips over
perfect, high-price, sparkling white teeth. I fought my
natural instinct to take another step back or, better still,
do a runner. It wouldn't do any good anyway. I saw
the silhouette of another Nought man in the back
seat of the car next to McAuley. Between them was a
state-of-the-art laptop, McAuley's no doubt, with a
memory stick attached. The driver and the guy in the
passenger seat were also looking at me. McAuley's car
was full. The rumours were true. He never, ever travelled
alone.

I answered the expectant look on his face. 'Hello, Mr
McAuley.'

'Ah. So you know me?' he replied, his tone soft and
lilting.

I didn't bother responding to that one. If he needed
his ego stroked he'd have to find someone else to do it
for him.

'I've been hearing a lot about you, Tobey Durbridge,'
he said.

My heart flipped like a pancake. Didn't like the sound
of that. Not one little bit.

McAuley raised his eyebrows when I failed to reply.
'Aren't you going to ask me what I've heard?'

I shook my head.

'You're not the least bit curious?'

'If it's bad, it'll crush my ego, in which case I'd rather
not hear it. And if it's good, it'll make my head swell, in
which case I'd better not hear it.'

McAuley considered me. I was pinned by his gaze
like a lepidopterist's butterfly. 'Curiosity moves us
forward,' he said.

Around McAuley, curiosity could also move you under
– buried two metres under, to be precise – but I decided
to keep that to myself.

'You know when to keep your mouth shut, don't
you?' McAuley smiled, even though there was nothing
to smile about. Mind you, if I'd forked out the kind
of money he must've spent on all those porcelain veneers,
I'd show them off too. 'Tobey, how would you like
to work for me? I could always use a smart boy like
you.'

I'd rather have my toenails extracted one by one
without benefit of a general anaesthetic, but McAuley was
just the man to make that happen.

'Well? I asked you a question, Tobias.' McAuley's
eyebrows began to knit together and, if anything, his voice
grew quieter.

'I'm still at school, sir.'

'I have little jobs that need doing over the odd weekend
and a couple of evenings a month – nothing onerous. And
I'm very generous, as you'll find out.'

I'm a fish and he's the fisherman and he's got his hook in
my mouth. My silence will let him reel me in. Say something,
Tobey. Godsake! Speak.

'I'd rather not, sir,' I replied quietly.

Inside McAuley's car, his crew began to laugh.

'You're very polite, aren't you? "I'm still at school, sir."
"I'd rather not, sir,"' McAuley mimicked. 'Three bags
full, sir.'

A single line of sweat trickled down from my left
temple in front of my ear, but I didn't dare wipe it away.
My heart was a punching bag being viciously pummelled
over and over.

'Tobey, you don't want to say no to me,' McAuley said
softly. 'I don't like that word. I mean, I
really
don't like
that word.'

A children's book. A first reader. My photo, legs pumping,
terror on my face. See Tobey run. Run, Tobey, run.

I stood still, my feet glued to my shoes, my shoes glued
to the pavement. My useless frickin' body. Adrenalin
coursed through me. Fight or flight? I couldn't do either.
Useless.

'I'm a good man to work for, Tobey.'

Why can't I just slide away on McAuley's oily
smile?

'I'm a loyal friend and I look after my own. Ask anyone
who works for me. Ask your friend Dan. But I think
you'll find I'm also a—'

'Tobey! How come you didn't wait for me?'

Callie's voice reached me before she did. That girl had
the ability to go from mute to surround sound in less than
a second. She trotted up to me, to stand between me and
McAuley.

'You were supposed to wait for me, toe-rag. Thanks for
making me run after you. Now I'm all sweaty.'

I pulled at her arm and stepped in front of her.

'What's wrong?' Callie frowned.

My eyes were still on McAuley. His gaze swept over
Callie then back to me.

'This your girlfriend then, Tobey?' he asked. 'She's very
pretty.'

'No. We're just . . . we walk to school together, that's
all,' I replied.

'And we'd better get going, Tobey. We're going to
be so late.' Callie grabbed my arm and pulled me after
her. I had to trot to keep up. I trailed in her wake,
forcing myself not to turn round and look into McAuley's
glacier-cold eyes. Half a minute later, his black limo
slid past us, the tinted windows now up. Callie and
I carried on jogging until the car turned the corner.
Callie let go of my arm and dropped her rucksack to the
pavement, trying to drag air back into her lungs in
rushed gasps.

'Tobey, are you OK?'

'Yeah.' I shrugged.

'You left without me.' There was no mistaking the
accusation in her voice.

'I thought you'd already gone to school, that's why.'

'You can knock for me once in a while, you know. It
doesn't always have to be me running after you. Would it
have killed you to check?' Callie looked up and down the
road. 'What did Creepy McAuley want?'

'He offered me a job.'

'Hellfire!' Callie turned to stare at me. 'You didn't say
yes, did you?'

'I'm not entirely stupid,' I replied. 'Although saying
no to that man might just be the stupidest thing I've
ever done.'

'People who work for him usually end up in prison or
dead,' said Callie.

Tell me something I didn't know.

'Which is why I said no, Callie.'

'D'you think he'll leave it at that?' Callie's teeth worried
at her bottom lip.

I shrugged. 'Who knows? No point losing sleep over it.
We'd better get going.'

I picked up Callie's rucksack and handed it to her. We
walked to school without saying another word. Callie kept
stealing glances at me, but I wasn't in the mood for
conversation. She had known me long enough to figure
that out for herself.

McAuley knew my name.

Worse than that, I was now a blip on McAuley's radar.
It was hard to say which was spinning harder, my mind or
my stomach.

'Tobey, you can't work for that man. You just can't.'
Callie finally broke the silence between us. 'The Dowds
run things around here. If they hear you're working for
McAuley you won't be able to walk from your house to
school without slipping.'

Slipping. The technical term for entering enemy
territory. If I ever agreed to work for McAuley, it was
only a matter of time before the Dowds got to hear about
it, and then my house and my school and all the routes
in between would mean I'd be slipping daily. That's
what it was all about in Meadowview. The streets didn't
belong to the government or the local authority; they'd
been fought over between the Dowds and McAuley's
mob. The Dowds ran practically every crooked operation
on the east side of Meadowview. McAuley had carved out
the west side for himself. He'd established his turf by
speaking softly and ensuring that no one but himself
and the few good men in his car knew where the bodies
were buried. People who opposed him had the habit of
'disappearing' – including two of the Dowd family before
an uneasy truce was brokered between them.

Now McAuley wanted me to work for him, even
though he knew I lived on the Dowds' patch. And I didn't
like what he said about asking my friend Dan for a reference.
Surely Dan wasn't stupid enough to talk to McAuley
about me? If McAuley didn't have any problem telling me
that Dan worked for him, who else had he told? Dan only
lived two streets away from me – in Dowd territory.

Damn!

How on earth was I going to extricate myself from this
one? Dan might be one of my best mates, but he was
stupid as a bag of rocks to get involved with McAuley.
Now that I'd seen the man up close and personal, I'd have
to try and persuade Dan to get out and stay out of
McAuley's clutches. But most important of all, I had to
make sure that McAuley kept his eyes off Callie.

Nothing bad was going to happen to Callie Rose.

Not on my watch.

Tobey remained taciturn all day. It wasn't like him at all.
He laughed everything off, never took anything seriously.
But not today. After break, we sat together for our double
science lesson, but try as I might I couldn't get him to
open up to me. After the umpteenth mumbled monosyllabic
response, I conceded defeat. Tobey stood over me as
I put my stuff in my locker before lunch. We walked into
the food hall together, but we peeled off in different directions
once we'd got our lunch. I sat with Sammi and some
of my other friends. Tobey sat by himself, but not for long.
Some of his mates joined him, but from what I could see
he still wasn't saying much. Tobey was a strange one. He
didn't have many close friends, but that seemed to be by
choice rather than design. He chose his friends carefully,
but once he was your friend, he was your friend for life.
And the mates he had were fiercely loyal in return. And
I'm one of them. Every time I looked up, I caught Tobey
watching me. I smiled a couple of times, but he immediately
looked away.

For heaven's sake! I wanted to invite Tobey out for a
meal or something the following night, but it was hard
when he would barely speak to me. I mean, I didn't need
three guesses to figure it out why. He was worried about
McAuley. And I couldn't say I blamed him. But why take
it out on me?

McAuley was a lowlife, just like the Dowds. They
climbed high up life's ladder by stockpiling the misery of
others beneath them. Even the Liberation Militia were
aware of their activities in Meadowview. At least, they
were when I was a member. The Liberation Militia didn't
bother with them over much. The L.M. considered themselves
above that kind of petty wheeling and dealing.
Drugs, prostitution, loan sharking, extortion – those kinds
of criminal activities were left to the hag fishes, as
McAuley, the Dowds and all other 'common' criminals
were known within the L.M. – with the emphasis on
common. The L.M. considered their cause more noble.
They believed themselves to be freedom fighters. Their
objective? Equal rights and equal justice for Noughts. And
the means? By dispensing their own brand of justice to
those they believed deserved it. And if you were innocent
and got caught up, then tough luck. The world according
to the L.M. The kidnap, torture and murder of the L.M.'s
enemies was, in their eyes, honourable. If the government
and the Cross-owned media didn't see it that way, if they
chose to call the L.M. terrorists instead of freedom
fighters, then so be it.

I wanted no part of any of them, not the L.M., nor the
hag fishes. Never again. Uncle Jude was the worst. A hag
fish masquerading as a warrior fighting for the greater
good. The only greater good Uncle Jude had in his heart
and his mind was getting revenge on my mother. So many
things I knew now that I wished I'd known a few years
ago. Even now my blood ran cold at the thought of what
I'd almost done so that Uncle Jude could have his revenge.
Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.

But I'd been snatched back to sanity before I could fall
irrevocably to Uncle Jude's scheme. In spite of knowing it
was pointless, I still hated my uncle. And my loathing
grew with each passing day. He was dead and I was still
here, but it didn't make any difference. Each angry
thought revolved around him. Uncle Jude was evil incarnate.
He was so full of hatred that he could experience
nothing else. The messages each of his senses sent to his
brain were somehow transformed into one hundred per
cent hate and nothing else. That was all his brain could
register. When Nana Jasmine died, my uncle had died
with her. I wondered about his last thoughts as the bomb
he'd instructed me to make went off. That split second
before his death, who had occupied his thoughts? Mum?
Callum, my dad, and his brother? His family? His wasted
life?

I knew it wasn't me, unless it was to curse me for
fouling up his plans. I don't want to end up like him – but
it's so hard. 'Cause Nana Jasmine isn't here any more.
Where was the justice in that?

Mum and Aunt Minerva are going to talk to Nana
Jasmine's solicitor, Mr Bharadia, again next week. They
need to find out when they'll be able to hear her will and
get probate, though it could be weeks still before that
happens. When will it all be over?

It's taking so long because of the way Nana died and
the length of time it took to prove conclusively that
it really was Nana Jasmine who died in the explosion at
the Isis Hotel. And then there were a number of other
matters concerning her death to be sorted out first like the
postmortem and the authorities releasing the body so that
Mum and Aunt Minerva could arrange the funeral. And
after the funeral, thank God for Tobey. Like Mum, he
always seemed to be there when I needed company. I
really don't know what I would've done without him.

I can't help wishing . . . but what's the point? Tobey is
always going to treat me like the younger sister he never
wanted. I'll just have to get used to it. I had hoped that
maybe our kiss in his bedroom meant something to him.
It meant something to me. But that's just me daydreaming.
I all but held up a placard to tell him how I feel about him.
I practically threw myself at him. For a moment there,
when he pulled me closer, I could've sworn . . . Wishful
thinking again. The best thing he could find to say about
me was that I smelled of biscuits.

Biscuits! I ask you.

I was wearing the perfume he gave me last Crossmas
and he thought I smelled of biscuits. I hope he didn't see
how much that hurt. Biscuits . . . I'm not going to forget
that one in a hurry.

It's funny, though. Even when I'm mad at him, I'm not
really mad at him. Thinking of Tobey clears my head of
other bitter thoughts. Thinking of him makes me smile.
Maybe that's why I find myself thinking of him more and
more often.

Maybe that's why . . .