Deadfolk by Charlie Williams Read Free Book Online

her.’
    ‘Hey,’ I says, still smiley of face and sing-song of voice. ‘Calm down, right? Juss me bein’ friendly, ennit.’
    ‘Friendly? Blinkin’ over-friendly if you asks me.’ This were the first one again—the one whose arse I’d molested. ‘I’ve a good mind to…’
    I stopped. A crowd of punters had formed behind em, laughing and rubbing hands together like it were bonfire night and I were Guy Fawkes. I thought I spotted Legs amongst em, but it were hard to tell. No, couldn’t have been him. Legs would have backed me up. I were starting to feel a mite dizzy, truth be told. All I wanted were for them birds to shut it and move on. Then the crowd would piss off and things’d get back to normal. I were only doing me job after all. I were only meeting and greeting and making punters happy.
    ‘Call the pigs, Kel. Folks like him needs puttin’ away and castratin’. If we don’t do summat about it he’ll go off and molest someone else .’
    ‘Reckon he’s one o’ them preverts, Kim?’ she says, looking at us and squeezing her lower lip between finger and thumb. ‘Here, go inside an’ call the coppers for us, will you?’
    ‘Call em yerself. You he raped, ennit?’
    The crowd were still growing. It weren’t a crowd no more, it were a mob. Seemed half the town were coming down to see old Blakey in his darkest hour. Meanwhile I’m stood there, hands behind back. What else could I do? I were a doorman. My job were to welcome them what’s welcome and send the others on their way. Only no one were interested in coming in. They was all coming out onto the street. They all wanted to watch me and Kel and Kim and the other lass.
    ‘Go on, Kim. I ain’t feelin’ all right an’ I don’t reckon I’d make it to the phone.’
    ‘Fuck off. Standin’ up, ain’t you?’
    ‘ Please , Kim. Go on.’
    ‘Woss goin’ on here then?’ It were hard to tell whose voice this were. It came out of the crowd, from amongst the laughs and hoots and catcalls. But in my heart I knew straight off who it were. It were one of them voices that’d been fucking with my head every night of late—winding us up and calling us names and telling us things I’d rather not have heard.
    It were Baz Munton.
    And suddenly he weren’t in the crowd no more. Suddenly his fat face were looming up behind Kel. Or Kim. I forgets the which. ‘This cunt botherin’ you, ladies?’
    ‘Hiya, Baz.’
    ‘Hiya, Baz.’
    ‘Oh, hiya, Baz.’
    ‘He molested her,’ says Kim. ‘Gettin’ the pigs onto him, ain’t us.’
    ‘Oh aye? Touched her up, did he?’
    ‘Aye, grabbed her arse. Tits an’ all.’
    ‘Deary me. You ain’t joshin’ us?’
    ‘I ain’t. Gospel truth, it is.’
    Baz shook his head slowly, eyes on mine. ‘So he touched up an innocent child?’ he says. ‘That what you’re sayin’, Kel? Grasped her pure white flesh and turned it to his own mucky ends?’
    Kim looked at Kel.
    ‘Aye,’ says Kel, her face screwed up with the pain of it all. When the tears started rolling, they took half her slap with em, leaving dirty great stripes down her face. ‘He used me.’
    You might be thinking I were just standing there like a cunt, taking it all. Well, that’d be about right. But you tell us, what were I supposed to do? I searched the crowd for Legs, but I couldn’t see him no more. Maybe I hadn’t seen him the first time. All them faces looked the same to me. Eyes dark and burning, lips hanging open, gagging for my blood.
    But I had to say summat. I were a doorman. ‘Come on, ladies and gents. Show’s over, ennit. Move along now. Come on—’
    ‘Are you tellin’ us to fuck off?’
    ‘Hey now, Baz. There’s no need for—’
    ‘Is you? You is, ain’t you. You molest these innocent birds here, an’ then you tells us to fuck off. Well make us. Make us fuck off, Blakey Boy. Come on.’
    He pushed me hard, slamming us into the brick wall. I were still standing, but he’d knocked the wind clean out of us and I