Maxie’s Demon by Michael Scott Rohan Page B

hundred yards could mean about five potential muggers, but it was near four now, probably outside their union hours. Either that, or the Turtle Wax made me look too slippery.
    The neighbourhood I was favouring just then wasn’t so much the wrong side of the tracks, it practically was the tracks, a railway freight junction embalmed in thick layers of authentic IndustrialRevolution soot. By now the roof would have stayed up if you’d taken the actual bricks away, and chances were my landlords had. My street was like that. The local ethnics were always complaining we lowered the property values.
    All the same, I got back to my door with only a minimum of ducking and dodging. It wasn’t the most welcoming sight, a massive Victorian affair in about the same state asthe British Empire and patched up with rough-nailed sheet steel and spray graffiti. If there were ever a name on that sort of door you just knew it would read
Dunlurkin
or
Sticky End
.
    Or possibly just
No Fixed Abode.
    I stepped overthe usual ammonia-rich body snoring among the dustbins and slunk up to the opulent penthouse apartment I rented, or rather owed rent on. I slid the door to behindme, shot the bolt, turned the key, kicked in the scrap-wood wedge, put my back to it and slid down to the floor, groaning. The floor groaned back. Then I made a wild grab for the envelope, shielded by my leather jacket, and tore at the wodge of notes inside.
    Fifty grand it was, new notes but none of them dodgy as far as I could tell. The marsh had got to it, a little, and the carwash too – launderedmoney, ha ha ha – but it was deep and crisp and even still. I stared at it, giggling feebly. This was luck. This was the break, the moment I’d been praying for. This was the ride out, the getaway. I started cackling like Scrooge. This was the way back. This was – the light went out.
    Hastily I shoved another coin in the meter, tore off my trousers and trainers and thrust them into the crackedlittle handbasin. There was still a lot of mud in there, and car shampoo as well, so they turned into a sort of horrible pink frothing slough. But eventually I hauled them out much cleaner, stuck them on the window line to dry and retreated to bed to keep warm. I couldn’t sleep. The sheet and mattress felt cold and clammy, but then so did I, and I was used to that, anyway. The blankets were better,so I rolled up in them as best I could, trying to enjoy the friendly tickle, and dug my head into the pillow to cool my jittering brain. Did the bloody thing always stink of stale vomit? How long since I’d changed it, anyhow?
    Fifty grand! Myold man would have laughed at that, once. How much had he pulled down? Maybe eight times that a year, maybe nine. Laughing with his hearty City cronies –that was how I remembered him. Laughing with them, scowling at me. Scowling whatever I did, but most of all when it started with the cars. Me standing there shivering in what he called his study, my ears ringing where he’d boxed them, and him stalking back and forth in front of me.
Stealing! A son of mine stealing! What would your poor mother have said if she’d known you’d turn out a common thief!A joke? D’you know just how much keeping this bloody little joke of yours quiet has cost me?
Always the same – the lines, the reproaches, the blunt
Get out!
that finished it. Until the next.
    Laughing with his friends – the jolly, avuncular types who dug me in the ribs and slipped me cigars and took me off to clubs on the quiet.
We’ll see you OK, Max! College? Well, if you must, but remember,your desk’s just waiting! Me and your old man, we’re like that, eh? Like that!
    And then the grey days beginning. The vintage Bentley, with that colossal outside handbrake I could hardly work, and getting sent down in my second year, and finding the old man away in the City and all the jolly uncles somehow never around and impossible to reach on the phone. Then the quiet grey men at dawn, trampingall over