Decay Inevitable

It was the profanity rather than the explosion that followed it that startled the boy onto his backside. He heard a burst of static and then the voice say: “Round the back. Quick. Watch out for the boy.” Once the radio had been switched off, he heard the voice say: “Godspeed, Joe, you stupid, stupid bastard.”

Now feet on the stairs.

The boy scampered back to his room just as his mother emerged from her bedroom, her hair in curlers, a white dressing gown wrapped around her.

“Joe?” she called, querulously. Another explosion: the top of her head came off. The boy watched, open-mouthed as his mother elegantly lifted her hand from the door as though about to primp her curls. She fell like something without bones, the remaining half of her head spread across the balustrade.

The boy ran to his window and shoved it open. He swung his body out and, clinging to the lintel, waited until he’d stopped swinging before dropping to the ground. He landed awkwardly and twisted his ankle. He didn’t feel a thing. Glancing at his window – the light just coming on – he ran across the garden and began leapfrogging the neighbouring fences until he’d lost count and the sounds of his pursuers’ cries were lost to a cacophony of disturbed dogs and the labour of his own lungs. By the time he stopped running, thin light was breaking above the roofs and he was standing bare-foot, bare-chested, at a traffic island, shivering with cold. The early-morning churn of the M56 lay below him. He realised he didn’t have anybody to turn to.

He hurried to the southbound sliproad and huddled by the verge. Tired, dirty and half-naked, he guessed it would be a while before he flagged a lift, if at all, but the first vehicle that swung by – an Escort van driven by a builder on his way back to Birmingham – stopped for him. The driver’s name was Jerry. He provided the boy with a jumper and a pair of boots three sizes too big from the back of the van. By the time they arrived in Birmingham, the boy had been offered a job as a builder’s mate on a site just outside Walsall.

Wolfing breakfast in a lorry drivers’ café at the end of his journey, the boy watched TV over Jerry’s shoulder and was surprised to see his parents’ house appear on the screen. It seemed alien to him, pinned beneath the harsh lights of the TV crews, barricaded by yellow police tape, despite the many years he’d spent there. A hunt was on for the killer of his mother and father. A photograph of their missing son appeared, shocking him. His own face seemed unfamiliar to him. He glanced around at his fellow diners, but they were deep in their tabloids, or their bacon and eggs.

He couldn’t risk anybody recognising him. He knew it could only lead to his being presented to the people who had destroyed his parents. When they’d finished, Jerry led him to the van and took him home, which turned out to be a small terraced house in Acocks Green. Jerry showed him the spare room and told him he could stay until he’d earned a bit of cash and found some digs. When Jerry disappeared into the bathroom for a shower, the boy walked through the kitchen into the utility room at the back of the house, plugged in the Bosch drill and drove the hammering bit deep into his right eye.

PART ONE

UNREAL CITY

Parting is all we know of heaven,

And all we need of hell.

– Emily Dickinson

CHAPTER ONE: SUDDENLY, AT HOME

IF THIS JOB was a dog, I’d have it put down.

Sean watched Sally let the steering wheel spin back through her hands as the squad car righted itself; a fluid movement. It was early, no need to use the sirens, a good hour and a half before the traffic began to breed. Sally was a good driver and she drove best when she was telling a story. She was deep into one now.

“Next time I took a wander along Loampit Vale, Hunter had shrunk. He was about two foot six. He was kneeling down on the floor counting the coins he’d made from that morning’s begging.”

Sean watched the dawn parade of buildings stream past the liquid windows. Limp Christmas decorations hung from telegraph poles like ropes of phlegm. Neon lights sizzled: Happy 2K9. Static barked from his PR; his first coffee of the day was a greased, tepid knot in the centre of his chest. He was glad of Sally’s persistent murmur. He hated getting the Devil’s Hour calls; they were always the worst. This morning looked like being a total bastard. On the shift ten minutes and already there was someone intent on ruining his good mood. He thought of his bed, probably still warm but getting colder by the minute.

“I actually says to him, ‘Come on there, Hunter. Up and at ’em. Bow down for royalty if you like but I’m a far cry from that.’ I didn’t realise, did I – the bastards at the nick never told me – poor Hunter there’s had both his legs off. Thrombosis. Been injecting Temazepam. I gave him a quid – he saw the funny side.”