Lets Drink To The Dead Read Free Page B

to get out of here and never have to look at your face or this shithole town again.”
    Fitton’s face tightens. “I could make you tell me. I’ve got your brother.”
    “Hurt him and I’ll have the law on you and take my chances. Just be sensible, Mr Fitton. Do this and we go our way, you go yours. You carry on doing what you do and that’s us done.”
    Fitton looks at her. Sweat trickles down her back. How much time now? “Alright,” he says at last. “But you try to fuck me over–”
    “I won’t.”
    “And even if I’m in the clink I’ll find a way to get you. Wherever you are.”
    Those eyes, like a fish on a slab. Like the shark she saw on the telly that time. “Fair enough,” she says.
    Fitton nods once, then goes out, the door banging behind him then swinging wide. Muffled noises; the van door opens and slams. Alan stumbles up over the pavement and in through the door. As Vera goes to get him the van roars away leaving only a whiff of diesel fumes, as she hears the blare of the ambulance siren at last, getting louder as it nears Shackleton Street.
     
     
    W HAT TIME IS it now? Alan in his narrow bed, looking up at the ceiling and trying to believe.
    Sis said Daddy Adrian’s dead. Well, he is dead, isn’t he? Alan’s seen the body. It didn’t look like Daddy Adrian, not anymore. But she says he’s dead. And she says she’s fixing things so he won’t be hurt again, the way Daddy Adrian hurt him, and Mr Fitton, Father Joseph, the Policeman and the rest. Alan looks up at the bare bulb and tries to believe that. Men have trooped into this room, all of Daddy Adrian’s friends, and they’ve hurt him. They’ve done things to him. But Sis says they won’t anymore. Sis says they’re going away.
    If he keeps secrets. Sis says he has to keep secrets. Well, he’s used to that. He’s kept them for years. He’s done alright, so far. He was with Mr Fitton and Yolly because he wants to be a butcher one day and Mr Fitton lets him help out a bit, for a few quid, cash in hand. There was a policeman, came round. Didn’t look much older than Yolly.
    Is everything really going to be alright?
    Alan wants to believe it, but he can’t.
    He tried to tell Vera. Tried to tell her about the farmhouse off Dunwich Lane. About Johnny, Mark and Sam. About the Shrike. But she didn’t want to hear. Didn’t want to know. She doesn’t know about the Shrike, doesn’t know how bad he is. But then he hasn’t told her. Because she said, Do you want to get out of here? Then sod every bugger else. It’s just you and me, sweetheart. We can’t trust any fucker round here. And I’m not having you going in a care home. We get out. You and me .
    And that shut him up, because Daddy Adrian told him all about the care homes they have for kids like him. Full of people make me and my mates look like the Roly Polys , Daddy Adrian said, shark’s teeth gleaming in a smile. And so Alan’s said nothing. And so eight o’clock will have come and gone, both here and at the old farmhouse off Dunwich Lane. And he knows what that means, knew it before, when there was a time he could’ve spoken and he didn’t. Alan knows.
    There are things Alan doesn’t want to think about, and that’s one of them. Another is Yolly, or rather how when Yolly kissed and cuddled him hefelt his own body respond, his dick stiffen. No, not like him. He won’t become like Yolly. He won’t.
    Alan wants to believe it’ll be all alright. But he can’t. Not least because something’s changed in the room.
    Normally Shackleton Street’s a noisy place. You can hear them shouting and screaming next door; hear the drunks roll home on the street outside. But all of a sudden that’s gone. It’s dead silent. He turns on his side but he can’t even hear the thump of the blood in his ears. He breathes deep, in and out, but he can’t hear that either.
    Panic growing slow and clammy in him; he doesn’t know yet what it is he has to be afraid of, but he fears