‘Why?’ asked the boy.
‘Because they’ll be watching my flat, waiting for me.’
The boy’s expression hardened, then he turned to the girl and said, ‘We gotta take care of him.’
‘Oh no!’ said the girl quickly. ‘Not another of your lame pigeons!’
‘Duck,’ Jake corrected her automatically.
‘What?’ she demanded.
‘The saying is lame duck,’ said Jake. ‘Not lame pigeon.’
The girl glared at him, then she said defiantly, ‘Well, I ain’t never seen no lame duck, but I seen plenty of lame pigeons. So, it’s a lame pigeon, right.’ And she turned to the boy and said, ‘And he’s on his own. We ain’t takin’ care of him.’
‘Why?’ appealed the boy. He gestured towards Jake. ‘Look at him. He’s scared. He’s messy. He ain’t got nowhere to go. He’s on the run. This is a man looking for help. It’s up to us to help him.’
Jake stared at the boy, and a feeling of amazement came over him. Here were two kids, street kids, he guessed, much younger than him, and they were talking about protecting him, an adult — well, more of an adult than either of these two. He wanted to run away from them and hide, but where? He was adrift and alone on the streets, and until he could get hold of Michelle and get the book to her, he needed help. And here were these two kids, offering that help.
‘I’m Jez,’ said the boy, ‘and this here’s Ronnie.’
‘I’m Jake,’ said Jake, and he held out his hand. The boy, surprised, took it and shook it, then released it. Ronnie just looked at Jake’s proffered hand with a cold eye, as if it was some suspicious thing that was about to bring them bad luck, and sniffed disdainfully again.
She turned to Jez, her expression one of disapproval.
‘Guess we got us a lame pigeon,’ she said.
Chapter 21
‘First thing we gotta do is get you off the street,’ said Jez.
‘And cleaned up,’ added Ronnie. Her nose wrinkled in distaste. ‘There was some real stinky stuff in that dumpster.’
‘Benjy’s,’ suggested Jez. He looked at his watch. ‘He’ll be in.’
Ronnie laughed.
‘He’s always in when it’s daylight,’ she said. She grinned at Jake. ‘We call him the vampire.’
‘Benjy the Vampire?’ said Jake, laughing despite himself. ‘It doesn’t really have a terrifying ring to it.’
They walked north from Oxford Street, to the outer reaches of Regent’s Park, and then crossed Marylebone Road, where luxury houses and flats gave way to street after street of council flats. Benjy, it seemed, lived on the third floor of one of the blocks, and as they walked along the balcony to the flat, Jake could hear music coming from inside — so loud it made the concrete beneath their feet vibrate.
‘Don’t his neighbours complain about the noise?’ asked Jake.
Jez shook his head.
‘That ain’t from Benjy’s,’ he said. ‘That’s from his neighbours, some old gran and grandad couple.’
The trio walked past the flat with the thumping music, and arrived at the door of the next flat. Jez rang the bell. Jake was surprised that anyone inside the flat would be able to hear the sound of the bell with the deafening sound of drums’n’bass from the next flat, but Benjy obviously had his ears tuned in for it. He opened the door a crack and peered out suspiciously, and then opened it wider when he saw it was Jez and Ronnie.
‘Yo!’
Jez gestured with his thumb at Jake.
‘We got a refugee here,’ he said. ‘Needs some help.’
Benjy opened the door wider.
‘Come on in,’ he said.
With that, he went into one of the rooms off the hallway.
Jez and Ronnie ushered Jake in, then shut the door, but it didn’t shut out the noise of the music from next door.
‘Doesn’t Benjy complain about the noise?’ asked Jake.
‘Well, officially this flat is empty,’ said Jez. ‘And if Benjy complained they’d find out he was, like, livin’ here, and then they’d kick him out. And they’d also find out about everyone else who’s living here, too, and kick them out.’
Jake frowned.
‘Everybody else?’ he asked. ‘How many?’
‘That depends on who’s around at any one time,’ said Ronnie.
‘So you two live here?’ asked Jake.
Jez shook his head.
‘We don’t live anywhere,’ he said. ‘We just stay with friends now and then.’
Jake looked at them. They seemed to be about fifteen.
‘You’re runaways,’ he said, startled at the sudden realisation.