Chapter 13

BLOOD BROTHERS

Three of them. Michael and Paul Sharpley and Luke—known as “Lethal”—Ellis. They strutted around the underpass, not letting anyone walk by without giving something up—your phone, your wallet, or if you were a girl, you give them a feel.

The underpass. The gates to hell. ADHD central. Stinking of piss. An obstacle course of thugs, dog shit, and litter. Graffiti splashed over the walls.

Kids gathered here in the day to drink and fuck and mug. They gathered there at night to drink and fuck and mug again. It was twenty-four-hour drinking and fucking and mugging.

The underpass stood on the path that snaked round the estate. The bridge overhead walked you from behind a street of houses, along a public footpath, across the common ground, through some back alleys, and into Commercial Street.

Paul, sixteen and with a swastika tattoo on the back of his hand, kicked the grass verge, taking clumps out of it. A rhythmic kick-kick-kick-kick . . .

He stared at his Adidas trainer as it thumped into the earth—thump-thump-thump-thump . . .

“Should’ve let me shank that cunt,” he said.

Michael, a year older and wiser—wiser defined as knowing better how not to get caught—bicep-curled a rusty petrol can loaded with soil and rocks, topped off with water to make it heavy.

He said, “His fucking eyes said fuck off, Paul. Don’t mess things up. I’m fucked off with Spencer. He’s a fucking twat, and he nicked my PS3. I don’t want nothing else getting in the way. We do him, we get our fucking property back.”

“I want to”—thump-thump-thump-thump—”do that fucker. Don’t care who he was—don’t give a shit about his eyes or anything.”

Michael swapped arms—curl-curl-curl-curl . . .

He said, “If he’s around, we find him after we do Spencer.”

Lethal Ellis, sitting on the arch of the underpass and dangling his long leg over the edge, said, “We going to shank him?”

There was a puppy-dog eagerness in his voice.

Michael said, “Yeah, bleed him.”

“It’s fucking shit without my PS3, man,” said Paul.

“Yeah, well get it back, though,” said Michael. “That Spencer, man—he is so fucked.

He’s going to bleed for what he did, bruv. Bleed.”

“Yeah, that’s excellent,” said Lethal. “Bleed, man, bleed.”

Laughter up the path made Michael stop curling.

“Stop kicking the fucking ground,” he told his brother, and shouting to Lethal, “Who’s that?”

“Bloke and a bird.”

“We do ‘em,” said Michael.