Authors: Julie Shaw
His chest heaved, as if in answer to her unspoken question; a sudden and massive inhalation, quickly followed by an out-breath and a groan.
Momentarily relieved, Josie exhaled too. Then she saw the blood again. How much there was of it; all red and slick and glossy. He might be dying.
Oh my God
, she thought,
he might be bleeding to death in front of me!
She scrabbled to her feet and flew from the room. Then she yanked open the door.
Then she ran.
She had no idea what the time was, only that the house was in darkness. Though it wasn’t bitterly cold inside, as the fire, not long died, was still glowing red. The lounge was empty, though, as was the kitchen. Only the grease-laden stale smell of chip-paper lingered. She ran back into the lounge and looked up at the clock. It was now almost 11 o’clock at night.
Maybe her mam and dad had just gone to bed. The thought cheered her. ‘Mam!’ she called, hitching up her nightie and taking the stairs two at once. ‘Mam, you up there?
Mam
! Mam, I need you!’
There was no response, and putting her head round her parents’ bedroom door confirmed it. The Bull, she thought wretchedly. They’d be at the sodding Bull, having a fucking lock-in, wouldn’t they? She had to fight down an urge to just drop to her knees and sob. It was
her
who had to go round and fucking babysit – even though they were her mam and dad’s fucking grandkids – while they went and got pissed with their mates. How was
that
fair? And what the fuck was she supposed to do now?
Auntie Maureen, she decided, trying to gather her wits and think rationally. She’d go there. She didn’t hold up much hope of having any luck with Moira next door – she’d be at the Bull with her mam, probably. No, better to dash to Maureen’s and pray that she was there.
The cold of the lino was seeping into her feet now. She needed shoes, she realised, her slippers being still round at Lyndsey’s, where that bastard Robbo was probably still lying right now. And perhaps still bleeding, too. The thought galvanised her. She could go to prison, after all, couldn’t she? Be done for murder! She ran into her bedroom and scrabbled around under the bed till she found both of her plimsolls, then rat-a-tatted her way back down the stairs.
She’d already cannoned into Vinnie by the time she saw him.
‘Whoah!’ he yelped, jolted back against the coat hooks on the wall. He was obviously as surprised to see her as she was to see him. He’d clearly just come in from somewhere – he smelt of cold crisp night air. ‘Vin!’ she cried, grabbing his forearms. ‘Oh, shit, Vin – you’ve got to help me! You’ve got to come with me, right
now
!’
‘Whoah,’ he said again. His arms were pinned by his sleeves. He must have just been about to take his coat off. ‘Hang about,’ he said, shrugging it back onto his shoulders again. ‘Come with you where?’
‘To our Lyndsey’s,’ Josie gabbled at him. ‘Quickly, Vin – it’s Robbo. I think I’ve hurt him.’
Vinnie pinged on the hall light, flooding the small space with a bright yellow incandescence that made Josie squint.
‘
Hurt
him?’ Vinnie asked her. ‘Hurt him
how
?’
Josie pushed past him and pulled the front door open. ‘Hurt him badly, I think. I hit him. Vin, come on – we’ve gotta go there. I could have
killed
him!’
Her brother didn’t seem to need any further explanation, thank goodness, and, snapping the light back off, he followed her out of the door, down the path and into the night.
‘What d’you hit him with?’ he wanted to know, as he followed her the short distance up the street to Lyndsey’s.
‘That fish,’ she called back, ‘you know – the one they have sitting on the telly? Oh, Vin,’ she said, swerving onto their front path, though the gap in the fence where the gate used to be, ‘I hit him so hard – I just went for it, but it was so heavy … I didn’t quite realise. I just grabbed it in a panic, and …’
‘But
why
?’ he wanted to know, grabbing her wrist just as she was about to push their door open. He held it firmly, his eyes glittering in the light from the street lamp as he took in the nightie, the woolly cardigan, the grubby plimsolls, her tear-stained face. She could see him computing it; his agile mind coming to conclusions, calculating, waiting for an explanation. ‘What did that fucking
shite
do to make you hit him, Titch?’
There was a fraction of a second when she could see where this might lead; and it was enough to still her tongue momentarily. But his gaze was so direct and probing that her brain couldn’t quite unscramble. There was absolutely no question of her lying to him. He had this way of making you tell him the truth – something she’d long forgotten but now remembered. There was no question – and, besides, that bastard Robbo deserved everything he had coming to him, didn’t he? He just mustn’t be dead. She shuddered. She just mustn’t have killed him.
‘He tried it on, Vin,’ she told her brother. ‘He tried to feel me up when I was sleeping. I just woke up and he was, like, looming over me …’ She felt herself reddening under Vinnie’s stony-faced scrutiny. ‘And he had his hand, like, inside my nightie, and …’
She didn’t need to say any more. Vinnie let go of her arm, mounted the step and pushed the front door open.
Josie followed. ‘So I hit him,’ she explained, ‘on the back of his head. And there was just so much
blood
– I never expected that, I mean, I just meant to
stop
him … I never meant to split his skull open, to –’
‘Shh!’ Vinnie cautioned, putting a finger to his lips, ‘or you’ll wake the kids up.’
She mouthed a sorry and followed him into the living room, where Robbo was lying exactly as she left him. Seeing the amount of blood again made her start, but she was quickly reassured, seeing that his chest was rising and falling steadily.
Oh, thank God
, she thought.
Thank God he isn’t dead
. Though she could see from the set of her brother’s jaw that he might soon wish he was.
Vinnie strode across the room and squatted down beside him, lightly touching his hair so he could peer at his wound. Then he stood up and, glancing at Josie, slowly took off his precious coat, before draping it carefully over the back of one of the dining chairs.
He nodded towards the kitchen. ‘Get me some water,’ he told Josie quietly.
Josie hurried out and looked for a glass. She’d tidied the kitchen earlier but Robbo had obviously been banging around in there after she’d gone to sleep, and she could see a plastic beaker half-submerged beneath the beige surface of some old washing-up water. She reached in and retrieved it, feeling a perverse determination not to treat him to a clean one from the cupboard. She was also conscious of being quiet because of the children sleeping upstairs, and the sound of banging cupboard doors would go straight up through the floorboards. They’d obviously not been woken by the struggle as there was no sign of the three of them. Thank heavens for that at least, she thought.
She swilled the beaker around in the tepid water then turned the tap on so she could rinse it and fill it, wondering as she did so quite what was going to happen now. It was only beginning to hit her that perhaps Vinnie wasn’t the best person to have encountered and brought back here. Had it been her mam, it would have been one thing – she’d have been merciless with him, certainly – but this was Vinnie and, if she’d noticed one thing about him in the short time he’d been back, it had been this new edge he had to him; an unfamiliar tension, a kind of simmering aggression that she didn’t know the reason for. It wasn’t directed at her, and she was certain it never would be, but still she felt it, and it made her uncomfortable.
Thank God he wasn’t drunk at least, she decided, taking the beaker of water back into the lounge. No, he probably wasn’t quite sober – he’d obviously been out and about with his mates, too, and perhaps to the Bull – but at least he wasn’t drunk, so hopefully things wouldn’t get too nasty.
But as soon as she got into the lounge she realised she was wrong. She’d just been thinking of asking Vinnie if he thought Robbo might need stitches from where she’d hit him, when she saw there’d be nothing like that going on.
Not tonight, anyway. The first fronds of a new anxiety began to stir within her. The water she’d been asked to get obviously wasn’t intended for Robbo to sip. Far from it. Vinnie was kneeling on the floor now, in the middle of gagging him.
It seemed pointless to ask him what he was doing. So she just stood stupefied as she watched him stuff Robbo’s mouth with something. A hankie? A sock? There were plenty of both lying around – just stood clutching the water as Vinnie then wrapped another piece of cloth – black, this time – round his mouth. He then tied it at the back of his head. Josie looked around. What was that? Where had he got it? Did he just have this sort of stuff on him? It was a question she couldn’t answer, and it bothered her.
He tied it tightly, too, Robbo’s previously slack mouth yanked back into a kind of rictus, then fixed the grim bandana only an inch or so above the wound. He then pulled Robbo round so that he was lying face up on the floor, and held out his hand for the beaker.
Josie handed it to him, clutching the edges of the cardigan together with her free hand, and realising that the gag was a pair of Lyndsey’s tights. She then winced involuntarily as her brother did exactly what she now expected; threw the contents of the beaker over Robbo’s face. She shivered. It was mains water, and she’d let it run, so she knew just how cold it was.
The effect was instantaneous and surprising. Having failed to wake up at any point during Vinnie’s ministrations with his gag, Robbo blinked into consciousness immediately. It was shock, Josie supposed – shock then compounded by terror, as he realised he was unable to cry out.
He raised his arms as if to shield himself, but Vinnie grabbed his wrists and brought them down again. Robbo just stared then, transfixed. He didn’t try to raise them again. ‘Vinnie –’ Josie began, as Robbo blinked at her too, his fear now palpable.
‘What?’ Vinnie said mildly, turning to look at her.
She lowered her gaze. ‘Nothing. I mean, Vin, you know, you don’t need to …’ she tailed off. Didn’t need to
what
? She didn’t even know what he was going to do to Robbo, did she? And whatever it was, well, she knew speaking to him was going to be pointless. There was something in his expression that said everything his voice wasn’t. He’d do what he wanted to do, whether she liked it or not.
‘Bring me that chair,’ Vinnie commanded. ‘That one over there.’ He pointed. And as she went to get it, he hauled the now wide-eyed Robbo effortlessly to his feet. He’d become so strong since he’d been away. So unexpectedly big and strong. And though Robbo was Vinnie’s height, he was so emaciated and feeble from all the drugs that he looked like a bag of skin and bones in comparison. Why had she been so scared of him? She could probably have knocked him out with a punch. And now, instead … She swallowed hard. Now what?
‘What the fuck is that?’ Vinnie said suddenly, as he plonked Robbo down onto the chair. He wasn’t even resisting, Josie noticed. He was flopping about like a rag doll.
‘What?’ she said, following Vinnie’s gaze.
‘That fucking sword there!’ Vinnie supplied, pointing at where it lay on the carpet.
‘He got it down,’ she told him. Her voice felt scared and shrunken. ‘He got it down off the wall, but I was too quick for him. Like I told you, I grabbed the fish, and –’
Her words were drowned by the thunderclap of Vinnie’s palm hitting Robbo’s cheek. ‘You fucking cunt,’ Vinnie snarled at him. ‘You fucking
cunt
.’
Again, Robbo made no defensive move to stop it, but even so, Vinnie wrenched his arms roughly behind the chair back and, grabbing a length of rubber tubing that was coiled in the hearth, deftly secured his wrists to the dining chair. Yet again, Josie looked on in a kind of stunned fascination. Robbo, whose drug-smoking paraphernalia had just been used to tie him up, seemed reactionless, like a shop-window dummy. He was that stoned. That defenceless. That inert.
A sudden thought gripped her. Was he brain damaged? Had the fish knocked out some key part of his mind? She opened her mouth to speak but Vinnie was already on the move, stalking past her and out into the kitchen. She went to follow him, but just as she did, she became aware of a noise upstairs. She listened harder. It was one of the girls, crying.
‘Vinnie, that’s Lou or Sammy,’ she began nervously. ‘And if they both start up, they might wake up Robbie, and …’
‘So go up and sort it, little sis,’ he said. He wasn’t even looking at her but his tone was clear.
Go
. He was now rummaging in the cutlery drawer.
It was as if it was the sign she’d been waiting for. An escape. She rushed from the room and hurried up the stairs.
Vinnie looked at the excuse for a bloke that his sister was inexplicably still shacked up with and felt a small fizz of something like excitement in his chest. He couldn’t have played it better if he’d tried to. Robbo really was the biggest piece of shit, he decided. And an even bigger idiot than his name already suggested. He had put himself exactly where Vinnie wanted him by sticking his filthy, shitty hands up his sister’s skirt.
Vinnie brought the knife from behind his back and raised it slowly in front of him. Actually, it hadn’t been her skirt, had it? It had been her nightie. Her fucking prim little-girl nightie, while she’d been asleep. Vinnie swallowed, feeling the disgust rising up through him like a kind of nausea. Robbo had known, even. Known what that fucking pervert Melvin had done to her – had even been fucking touching him for money, the bastard. And not content with that – not once considering how she’d already been so
fucking
defiled – he thought he’d try and grab himself a bit of her as well.
Or perhaps it was
because
his little earner had dried up. Was that it? A kind of ‘so there!’ revenge? Or was it nothing more thought out than the sort of shitty, opportunistic grope blokes like Robbo made their speciality? Vinnie focussed his attention firmly in the present, grinning manically at the shivering wreck he now had at his mercy, and who he’d enjoy giving some abuse to in return. ‘You fucking cunt,’ he whispered, advancing on him. ‘You want to see something stuck somewhere you don’t want it stuck, do you?