Lottery Boy Read online

  The step that he slept on was at the back of an alleyway, a nice little dead-end off Old Paradise Street, not far from the station, past a little row of shops with a dancing lady painted on the end of the brick wall. She had a bowl of bananas and oranges and pineapples balanced on her head and Bully gauged how hungry he was by if he ever walked past and even thought about eating fruit.

  There were no cars parked in his alleyway. The only thing it was good for was rubbish. Two metal bins as big as cars took up most of the space. Even so, when the rubbish truck came reversing in from the main road on Tuesday nights, he made sure his wheelie bin (that he’d nicked) with all his bedding in was tucked out the way. He didn’t want to have to go looking for new blankets at night.

  He’d been lucky to get it. The first night in town he’d spent wandering around the station. On his second night he was so tired he’d fallen asleep on the steps where the names of the dead train drivers were written into the walls. COMPANY EMPLOYEES WHO GAVE THEIR LIVES IN THE GREAT WAR it said in the stone.

  Alfred Appleby

  John Ardle

  James Bootle…

  He tried to remember which war was the great one, that was so big, that everybody got so excited about. It said 1914–1918 on the wall but he wasn’t sure if that was the one with Hitler in or not.

  Phil had told him that in the army the fighting bit, the war bit, was OK, as long as you were pulling the trigger and doing something. And that gave you a bit of a rush, getting away with it for another day, but he’d never said any of it was great. And Bully had drifted off that second night thinking about all those dead train drivers driving ghost trains after their war and was nearly caught by the Feds.

  It was Chris who had saved him. He’d seen the Feds on their way, come over and given him a tap and got him and Jack moving. Bully’d wandered around for the rest of the night with Tiggs and Chris, in and out of takeaways to keep warm, and in the morning he’d gone round the back of McDonald’s with Jack and found this place.

  He lay down on his step. The doorway was too small and the step too narrow for a big man or even an older boy of much more than five feet and a half to bed down on, and his cardboard crinkled out over the edge. He didn’t know where the door went. No one had opened it while he was there, not while he was awake, anyway. There was no name or number on it, just a keypad, and sometimes he’d punch in numbers to see if he could get it to open. So far, he’d had no luck.

  “What’s this?” he said, picking fluff from his sleeping bag out of Jack’s coarse fur. “There’s a bit of poodle in you, mate.” He thought this was really hilarious and said it most nights even if he couldn’t find any fluff.

  What he spent most of his time picking out of Jack’s coat though was fleas. His eyesight was good enough close up. The warm weather the past few days had been breeding them up and yesterday he’d squished thirteen between his nails so that his fingers looked like they were bleeding. The thought of it had Bully checking Jack’s ear. The tear was ragged like a torn ticket and he rubbed a bit of his own spit into it for good measure, though human spit did nothing for dogs.

  Jack whined a little and then nuzzled up to him. Her dog tag touched his sore skin. And because it was metal it felt cold even though the night was warm. He scratched under her jaw with one hand and with the other rubbed the little brass disc between his fingers. His mum had paid out extra to have it engraved and he traced the letters of the name cut into the metal. It reminded Bully of his money.

  Jack suddenly twitched away from him and started up, pointing towards the bins. Her growl ticked over.

  Rats.

  A small one had got into his sleeping bag in the winter and bitten his ear. Bully had woken up screaming to see Jack shaking her head like she was saying no, no, no to the rat in her mouth.

  He was about to put Jack on it when there was a beep, beep, beep from the emergency exit at the back of McDonald’s. One of the burger boys was dumping the trash. It was twenty-four hour opening and this went on through the night. The alarm used to wake him up when he first moved in but nowadays most of the time he slept through it. Sometimes early in the morning he went looking for food in the bins, but he didn’t like climbing in there with all those black bags bobbling about and maybe rats trapped in there in the darkness with him too.

  When the door shut and the alarm stopped Jack settled down and the rat was gone. Bully got out his Top Trumps. He’d remembered to bring them with him when they left the flat. He went through them most nights, working out what Jack was from the pictures and descriptions of the different breeds. The categories were height, weight, guard-dog skill, rarity and lovability. Jack didn’t do so well on height or weight, losing out to the big hounds, but she made up for it in the other three categories. Though Jack’s breed wasn’t exactly in the pack, Bully was sure there were bits of her in among all those pedigrees and most nights he went searching for exactly what mixture of dogs she was. A bit of red setter, maybe, around her neck, and the way she sometimes pointed like a gundog with her long nose. Or … maybe Jack was crossed with something much, much bigger and she was just the runt of the litter. This was the first time he had thought this up. Maybe she was part English mastiff or Great Dane. They were big dogs, bigger than men and real breeds too, with proper ancestors and lineage. The dog magazines said so. It was something to think about.

  A while later, he put the pack of dogs away and tried to get to sleep but he was too excited. Every time he drifted off, thoughts started frothing up about what he would buy with his cash. Somewhere to live first of all. A penthouse flat right at the top of a block where you could scout everything out, nice and quiet with a swimming pool all to himself and no screaming kids. But would a penthouse be big enough for all his stuff? Maybe he’d just get a house, then, not joined up to next door but one on its own with a garden. A big, big house with lots of windows so he could see what was coming from miles away. And the roof would be made of glass too so that when he looked up he could see the planes and the sky. And it would have security alarms and razor wire and an electric fence to electrocute the scumbags who deserved it. And it would be where all the footballers lived. And all the rooms would have fridges full of cold cans of Coke. And it would have beds. Just normal-sized beds though, like the one he had back at the flat. That would do him. And Jack could have her own room full of squeaky toys and sticks and cans of food without any ash in them at all. He’d pay someone to pick it out.

  He got out his lottery ticket to look at it again, to make sure it was still real. He read the numbers. Then he turned the ticket over to read the back.

  Game rules…

  The tiny red print was difficult to read in the shadows. He got out a cigarette lighter and scanned the print through the top of the yellow flame. Some of the words sounded foreign – what were aspects? Was amended something that had been mended? It didn’t matter. He had the numbers. And he still had five days. He would phone them up tomorrow. Camelot at Watford. Get some credit or use a payphone. And then he would go get his millions. The drawbridge would come down and they would let him into Camelot, this castle place, and the knights would show him the money. He knew it wouldn’t really be like that but he liked to think of it that way all the same.

  He was down to the second-but-last one of the rules and the flint of the lighter was beginning to hot up his fingers.

  It is illegal for any person under sixteen to buy tickets or claim prizes.

  He’d never thought about the rules. He’d looked at them on the backs of the tickets before but he’d never thought about them, what it meant when he bought a ticket for his mum, Old Mac at the till turning a blind eye as long as you were in his shop. And just in case he hadn’t understood, there at the bottom was a red circle with 15 inside, crossed out.

  He dropped the lighter.

  He was too young to play.

  All night he spent making plans, dozing off then waking up with a jolt whenever the burger boys dumped rubbish. A couple of times
he got up and swore loudly enough to make it echo in the alleyway. Eventually, like a lesson at school with a strict teacher, he settled down to doing what he was supposed to, which was working out how to get his money. There was no name on the ticket. Nothing on it but his numbers and the date he’d bought it – like a receipt; proof of purchase but no proof of who purchased. If he couldn’t claim his prize because he was too young to play then he would have to find someone who was old enough to claim it for him.

  By the time the sun found the alleyway he’d drawn up a list in his head of people he could trust. It was a short list because at the top of it had to be someone he could trust to take his money and then give it back to him. There had only ever been one person at the top of the list but she couldn’t help him out. Chris was second from the top and Tiggs maybe further down but neither of them were about, so the two Sammies said. And suddenly he didn’t trust either of the Sammies. Third on his list was Kevin, but he’d gone back to live with his mum on the Isle of Dogs (wherever that was). So, fourth on the list was Stan. He was old enough, Bully was sure he was, and he was always around across the river. He went to text him but remembered he still didn’t have any credit. He thought about begging for a few quid but he wanted to get started, get across the river and think about it then. And someone would know where Stan was anyway, it was like that on the pavement. Someone knew someone who knew the someone you were after, and you could find anyone that way without any credit on your phone.

  He walked down Old Paradise Street, towards the river, every so often Jack rolling in the sunshine, scratching at a fresh batch of fleas. Bully stopped at the dual carriageway with the crash barriers and railings that ran alongside the river. There was an old tunnel that ran parallel with the road. He’d followed it over ground and it came out near the station further downstream. It used to be for cars but now it was just for the zombies.

  He never went down there though, even when it was raining. Even in the day with the strip lighting and the sun digging away at the edges of the darkness, he didn’t like being under the ground if he could help it. It made him think about his mum and where he’d left her.

  After she’d died, Phil had brought her back to the flat in a big plastic sweetie jar. What the fire left behind when they burnt you up. He knew you were supposed to scatter the ashes but when they went missing without any ceremony Bully had his suspicions that they had not been scattered but thrown away, which was not the same thing at all.

  He’d found them in one of the big bins at the bottom of the rubbish chute that served their landing. He didn’t say anything to Phil but kept them under his bed in the sweetie jar for two days. And then when he left the flat, he took them with him. He’d planned to do the job himself, scatter them into the river on the way to the train station because his mum had always wanted to go on a boat on a cruise. But when it came to it, he couldn’t bear to get rid of her like that, seeing her for the last time, shaking her out in the cold, in the winter time, and watching her sink to the bottom of the river. So, just with his hands, he’d buried the jar for safekeeping in a bit of dirt the council never got round to filling in with flowers. He’d marked the spot with a piece of broken paving-stone. When he got his money, he would go back and dig her up and take her on a cruise to the Caribbean and scatter her somewhere nice and warm.

  When he got down to his own river he went over the footbridge. When they were nearly across Jack squatted down, shivered, doing a big one. A woman on her own coming towards him stopped when she saw what Jack was doing and screwed up her make-up face like she couldn’t understand what it was coming out of Jack’s rear end.

  “Are you going to pick that up?” she said, a safe distance away.

  Bully flicked the Vs at her, told her his dog had to go somewhere, didn’t she? And then he told her where to go and how to get there. And when Jack was done, he didn’t pick it up – that was disgusting – and they carried on across to the other side of the water.

  He had a good look round for Stan in Trafalgar Square and along the Strand. It was still early though, shops just pulling their shutters up and a few men still sleeping in one or two of the doorways, their heads hiding from the light. Most of the doorways were empty and wet. It hadn’t rained. They’d been washed last night. The washermen only did it on the Strand and a few of the other big streets where the zombies spent most of their time walking up and down. He’d heard the Daveys complaining about it – hot washing they called it; get you up and start you talking first, they did, with a nice hot cup of tea and filling in forms, while a washerman hoses your doorway down behind your back, soaking your cardboard for the night. And Bully walked on through Covent Garden, feeling lucky that he had the luxury of a dry step every night. He traipsed around the bumpy streets looking for something to eat, yawning and scratching his head because the morning sun made it itch. He didn’t give the meal in the morning a name any more. It was just time to eat when he was hungry and that was most of the time.

  He patted his top pocket with the lottery ticket in as he walked, keeping an eye out for delivery trucks that pulled up outside the little supermarkets. Sometimes if they left the back open you could fish out a packet or a tin. Once he had got hold of a fish with a tail and silvery scales and frozen eyes but he couldn’t sell it or cook it so he’d carried it back as far as the river and then lobbed it off the bridge. It made a splash like a real live one going back into the water.

  When Bully got as far up as Shaftesbury Avenue he stopped. And though it was OK to cross, buses and taxis just toddling along in the early morning emptiness of a Saturday, he just stood and stared at the road. He didn’t normally go any further than this. It was like a river to him, in his head anyway, like there was dirty, dark water running between the kerbs. The problem was, Stan liked to hang out around Soho on the other side. And though he needed Stan’s help, Bully turned back towards Covent Garden to wait a while on his own side.

  He spotted a Davey looking for fresh cardboard in the rubbish the shops put out. He kept pulling at bits, testing them for quality, seeing how thick they were. Bully approached him warily, as if he were a breed of dog he wasn’t sure how to deal with.

  “All right, mate. You seen Stan?”

  “Keep that dog off me! Keep it away.”

  “She won’t hurt you.” The Davey twitched his nose, wasn’t so sure. And the man’s fear made Bully feel more confident about his questions. “So you seen him or what?”

  “You got a loosey, pal?” he asked, as if pricing up what he had to say.

  “Nah, mate.” Bully patted his pockets to show that he didn’t have anything to smoke and the old man crouched down and began scouring the pavement and gutters for ciggy butts. Bully watched him tear a Subway wrapper into strips, then open up all the ends of the butts he’d found with the edge of his fingernail and sprinkle the tobacco onto the paper, conjuring a fag from nothing. Bully’s mum never smoked, not in the flat, but Phil did, and there were little brown patches on the ceilings above the end of the sofa and the kettle in the kitchen. Bully had tried ciggies, real ones out of a packet. He didn’t like them – the feeling of the smoke cramping his lungs. And Bully didn’t do much he didn’t like.

  “So you seen him then or not, mate?”

  “Stan? No… I seen Mick though.” Bully nodded. Mick was an old, old Davey. For a few years he’d had a flat all to himself in Hammersmith but couldn’t get used to it – complained there were too many walls. So he’d started back on the pavement and that’s when Mick had palled up with Stan. It was like him and Jack, keeping an eye out for each other, though Bully didn’t trust Mick; he wasn’t anywhere on his list.

  “So where is he then?” Bully said, getting to the end of his patience, not so afraid of this Davey now because he was keeping still, sitting on the kerb.

  “He’s kipping round the back of Hanways.”

  “What? Where’s that?”

  “You boys get lost turning round. Off Oxford Street.”

  “Y
eah, yeah, I know it,” he said, though it wasn’t near his territory.

  “You got a light?” asked the Davey.

  “No,” said Bully reflexively but then pulled out one of his lighters. He wouldn’t be needing it. He could buy a billion lighters now and millions and millions of fags and maybe he’d give them all to Phil to smoke himself to death.

  “Have it.” He chucked the lighter and the old man caught it but carried on staring at him.

  “You the boy with the ticket?”

  “What?” Bully froze.

  “You ’im? That’s your dog, innit?”

  The shock of his own news coming out of the old man’s mouth made him feel sick.

  “Not me, mate,” he said. Jack sensed the change in Bully’s voice and growled at the man, gave him the front teeth stare.

  “Lend us a few quid,” the old man pleaded, holding out both his hands, dropping the lighter. He started shouting, swearing at Bully’s back as he ran away.

  The few people watching in Covent Garden might have thought it was an act; this boy punching himself in the arm and the neck, like he was trying to beat himself up. No one threw any money at him though. He stopped and got his breath back. Should have kept his mouth shut yesterday. He needed to think about this now, what he would say if anyone else came up to him asking questions. He would deny he was the boy but he couldn’t say Jack wasn’t that dog. There wasn’t another like her, with that head full of teeth and those funny front legs that reminded Bully of a little kid he’d once seen trying to carry a ten pin bowling ball. In truth they both stuck out; they didn’t fit in. He would have to do something about that but in the meantime he got his bag out and told Jack to jump in and be quiet.